FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Dear Jonah and Kelly,

Your post, “Refocusing the conversation” aroused strong feelings in me.

What you said was outrageous, false in many respects, and even insulting. But there are  extenuating circumstances:

• You suffer from the arrogance of youth
• You are angry at your treatment at the hands of the religious establishment in Israel

That’s about it. You are also ignorant of history and security matters, but take it from me, once you publish your thoughts, ignorance is no excuse.

You find the discussion about Jewish rabbinical and education students who are anti-Israel “shallow and paternalistic” because you feel that it finds fault in you, when you would prefer it to find fault in the state of Israel.

I wonder if, in your fault-finding, you’ve taken into account how Israeli Jews got to where they are today? I mean, things like the pogroms, the ‘riots’, the Holocaust, the farhud, the wars, the privation, the expulsions, the terrorism? Have you compared these things to the way you grew up in America?

Probably not, because you write,

The world changes, people’s perceptions change, reality changes and our generation has been raised to understand that we must work to build a better future for Israel and to appreciate but not dwell on its past.

In other words, the experience and perspective of the older generation of Jews — indeed, history — counts for nothing.  ‘Don’t dwell on the past’, you say, but you mean ‘ignore it’. Talk about a ‘shallow’ discussion!

You say that “no human being should live subject to tyranny … every individual should be judged on her or his own merit and to seek out the personal interaction needed for true understanding.”  Can I remind you that until the state of Israel was created, the majority of the world’s Jews lived under various tyrannies? Did the Czar, Hitler  or the King of Iraq judge each individual according to merit? What would be the position of Jews in ‘Palestine’, if such a state were to replace Israel?

You say that “We are comfortable and confident Jews – and this reality is not a character flaw.” What a remarkably revealing comment! Clearly the character flaw is the self-absorption that makes you unable to conceive of other Jews who have not been able to be ‘comfortable and confident’ in the past, and are insecure that they may not be so again in the future.

You write,

We see injustices, religious and political, that need to end. This is true not only because we refuse to see all Palestinians as our enemies, but fundamentally because we refuse to blind ourselves to the fact that the reality that has been created is bad for the Jewish People as a whole.

Leaving aside the false and insulting statement that Zionists “see all Palestinians as our enemies,” what makes you so sure that the ‘reality’ that bothers you so much was created by Israeli Jews alone? Could the Nazi Mufti al-Husseini and his heirs, Yasser Arafat and even the ‘moderate’ Mahmoud Abbas, who have continuously incited murderous hatred of Jews for almost a hundred years, have anything to do with this ‘reality’? What about Hamas and its antisemitic covenant?

Oh — I forgot. We mustn’t dwell on the past.

You write,

When we are confronted by the deep fear of the other and the ways in which that manifests itself into structural violence and racism, we are shocked and want to work to make it better. We, who were taught that the Israeli Army is the most moral army in the world, are thrown into disequilibrium when we see our own acting cruelly to innocent Palestinians at checkpoints. We stand witness in disbelief as the very land we were taught to love is overturned, as trees are uprooted and mountains are moved all to build a giant concrete wall in the name of security.

This is also remarkable. There is ‘great fear of the other’ — but it’s a justified fear. The ‘other’ blows us up every chance that he gets. And it’s not ‘racism’ — it has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with the response to a hundred years of murder as a political tool. Yes, most Israeli Jews are suspicious of Palestinian Arabs — they have good reason to be.

The IDF is “the most moral army in the world.” Name one that is more moral. No, it isn’t perfect. War is not the most morally simple business. Try being a soldier yourself (most Israelis have) and see how you do.

The ‘giant concrete wall’ which is in most places a wire fence, is not being built merely “in the name of” security. It is being built for security. It, and the checkpoints that you object to — as well as incursions of the IDF into Arab areas to arrest terrorists — are what put an end to the second Intifada, in which more than a thousand Israelis were murdered.

Sorry, I’m dwelling on the past again.

You say,

While we must always be engaged in making ourselves and our programs better, what we most need is a collective commitment to fixing the brokenness of our greatest project, The State of Israel, and with it the growing brokenness of the Jewish People.

Could you possibly be more arrogant! What you correctly call the greatest project of the contemporary Jewish people has thrived despite enormous odds, overcome huge challenges and done so at great human cost. It has been in peril of destruction since the beginning, and today possibly faces its greatest existential threat ever. And you have the chutzpah to call it “broken” because it doesn’t fit your wild academic fantasies of an ideal society!

I understand that you are upset and insulted by the attitude of the Israeli rabbinut toward liberal Judaism. You know what? I’ll give you this one. It’s unfortunate and should change. It’s an even bigger problem for thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union who can’t produce documentation for their Judaism. But compared to the security situation, this is a 1 on a scale of 10. Get over it. It’s not a reason to aid Israel’s real enemies.

Finally, you write,

As an educator and rabbinical student, we have been tasked with caring deeply for the intellectual and spiritual needs of our students and congregants. We are taught that we are responsible for their achievement and behavior. If a student is having difficulty, do we simply tell her that she is doing fine? If a congregant is in crisis and doing damage to himself, do we tell his family to cheer him on? The State of Israel deserves, at the very least, the level of respect and care we have for our own students and congregants. We have no choice but to view ourselves as responsible for Israel’s achievement and behavior.

Would you entirely ignore a student’s or congregant’s background and experiences? Would you judge his or her behavior according to a fantastic standard so high that only a tzadik could achieve it? Would you criticize him or her by repeating lies told by someone that you know hates him and wants to kill him?

The degree of smug self-righteous ignorance that you display might be relatively harmless if your career choices were different. It might irritate me to have one of you as a cab driver or barber if you insist on talking while you work. But the fact that you have chosen to be Jewish spiritual leaders and educators is shocking.

You are not qualified for those positions, because you lack an elementary understanding of the Jewish people and its history, and because you have an astonishing deficit of humility, a form of moral autism.

Unless you mature, and perhaps put your anger at the rabbinut in perspective, my recommendation is that you take different jobs, ones that do not require you to work with other humans, particularly Jewish ones.

Technorati Tags: rabbinical students, Jonah Geffen, Kelly Cohen, Israel

Don't be stupid, Mahmoud.

News item:

A nationwide civil-defense exercise called “Turning Point 5” started Sunday. For the first time, the drill will simulate extensive damage to critical national infrastructure such as the water system and the electric grid.

During the weeklong drill, the Home Front Command, Defense Ministry’s National Emergency Administration, Israel Police and other emergency services will test their responses to a massive bombardment of missiles from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Iran…

Estimates in the IDF are that up to 800 missiles and rockets a day could be fired into Israel in the event of a war fought on several fronts.

“No water or electricity means no production, and makes it impossible to run the country,” a defense official said. “For this reason we need to know what are the most important facilities that we need to continue working, and what needs to keep on receiving water and electricity, and how to make that happen.”

Whenever there was talk of an attack on Iran, we saw descriptions of the terrible retaliation that Iran would wreak on Israel and the US (both would be targets regardless of which one provoked the fearsome wrath of that nation).

Now Israeli officials are working on the assumption that an attack on their country by Iran and its proxies is inevitable. There is a great deal of talk about death and destruction in Israel from Iranian and Iranian-sponsored missiles.

What is not talked about is the degree and nature of Israeli retaliation.

Israel is a small country and the rhetoric from Iran has called for its annihilation. It must be taken seriously.

When the missiles start to fly, the first priority will be to take out their sources, primarily in Lebanon, secondarily in Gaza, and perhaps also in Syria. You can be sure that the planners in the kiriya have been staying up nights developing tactics and targets to do this. During the 2006 war, Israel was not able to stop the short-range rockets, although it did neutralize most or all of the longer-range missiles in Hizballah’s hands. This time, I expect that the response will be more effective.

But Israel needs to do far more than just defend itself. When you are attacked over and over by the same people, your response ultimately has to be to end the threat. In previous wars, Israel has always either chosen not to do so or has been held back by threats from the US (and in some cases the then-Soviet Union).

The risk today is even greater than in the past and the response will need to be commensurate. The kind of rocket barrage that they are talking about, even if it is stopped after a few days, will cross red lines. Israel will have no choice, despite the orders coming from Washington, but to end the threat.

For one thing, this will mean directly targeting enemy leaders. The top officials of Hamas and Hizballah should not expect to survive the war. If missiles are fired from Syria, then the same goes for that regime.

Former Mossad head Meir Dagan has warned against a preemptive attack on Iran. He should know. But if Iran attacks Israel, even if primarily by proxy, there’s nothing to lose. Once the rockets are stopped, the IDF can turn its attention to “cutting the head off the snake” as Saudi King Abdullah is reported to have said.

It is not unthinkable that Israel will use weapons that have never been used before. Remember, the damage that will be done to Israel in the initial attack will probably be quite severe. As I said, red lines will be crossed. Retaliation will be massive.

The Palestinian Arabs should understand (but they won’t) that their interests would be best served by staying out of this conflict.

Technorati Tags: Israel, war, Hizballah, Iran, Syria

It’s time to start over.

The “Arab-Israeli conflict” is apparently a problem for many who are neither Arabs nor Israelis. This isn’t necessarily because of their humanitarian instincts, or because they are afraid a war will start in the Mideast and spread to where they live. In some cases the reasons that they ‘care’ are pretty ugly. But let’s leave all that aside for now.

It’s a problem for the Palestinian Arabs because they want to possess all the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and — after all these years and wars — they don’t. It’s easy to prove this  — if the problem were only that they don’t have a state, that could have been solved many times in the recent past. Let’s leave this aside too.

In my judgment, the biggest problem is for the Israeli Jews, who are sick and tired of Arabs and now Iranians trying to murder them in big and little ways.

The entire thrust of debate about how to end the conflict up to now has concentrated on the first two aspects, with lip service at best paid to the third. So the US and Europe are working hard to solve their problem, to appease their oil suppliers by forcing Israel back to pre-1967 lines.

And everybody is so concerned about the poor Palestinian Arabs, a people created out of a disparate population of Arabs by a combination of 1960’s-era Soviet propaganda and huge amounts of welfare assistance, combined with Arab-imposed restrictions on a captive population of ‘refugees’. This ‘people’ has given much to the world, having popularized hostage-taking, airline hijacking and suicide bombing as means of political expression, but their situation is usually described as their ‘plight’.

It seems, though, that nobody has tried to solve the third problem, that of the Israeli Jews. Oh, President Obama is fond of swearing up and down that the US is absolutely committed to Israel’s security, but the policies of his administration belie this. Security implies defensible borders, and this is exactly what he would like to deny Israel.

My thought is that I really don’t much care about the issues of the US and Europe with their oil suppliers. That is their problem to work out. And to be honest, while I wish the Palestinian Arabs well, I don’t think their desire to violently destroy the state of Israel and murder much of its population ought to be indulged.   I also don’t think that their behavior for the past hundred years or so implies, as President Obama has said, that they deserve a state –  surely no more so than the Kurds or any number of stateless peoples. And they certainly don’t deserve one at the expense of the one and only Jewish state.

I suggest that we need to start looking for a solution to the conflict in a different place. Instead of the primary objective being bringing a Palestinian state into being — as it seems to be for the Obama Administration and the Europeans — we need to see it as protecting and preserving the Jewish state.

In fact, it seems clear that the establishment of  a ‘Palestine’ along the 1949 armistice lines (with or without swaps) that refuses to accept the right of a Jewish state to exist would be inimical to the continued health of said Jewish state. So not only are they tackling the wrong part of the problem, they are doing it in a way that is likely to make the conflict worse rather than better.

Instead of asking for concrete Jewish concessions of land and security, I suggest we start by asking for Arab concessions. Let’s see them unambiguously announce in all relevant languages, that they recognize and accept the presence of a Jewish state, a state that belongs to the Jewish people, with defensible borders, between the river and the sea.

Let’s see them stop whipping up hatred and incitement to murder among their people, stop teaching their children that they should grow up to be martyrs and vicious terrorists.

Let’s see them agree that a solution for the Arab refugees will have to be found outside of the Jewish state.

And there’s no reason that only the Palestinian Arabs should make all the concessions. The various countries in which Palestinian Arab refugees reside must agree to remove the apartheid-like restrictions placed on them, and to assist any of them that want to to integrate into their societies.

If they can’t do these things — and I’m sure they can’t today — then the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict may not come about for another 63 years. It will be up to the Arabs. But until that time, Israel should be provided with the means to protect herself and should be allowed to do so when attacked.

Countries that share Israel’s democratic principles should make every effort to pressure Israel’s enemies to desist from their aggression. There is no justification for the massive arrays of missiles in Lebanon and Syria aimed at Israel. The US, for example, should stop sending military aid to Lebanon — now controlled by Hizballah — and should support the forces trying to overthrow Syria’s Assad.

Of course I don’t think the present US administration will take the path that I’m advocating. Even if the President and his advisers could see things clearly, it would take courage to act against the forces arrayed against Israel in the world. This administration is remarkably craven in dealing with its enemies (who, incidentally are mostly the same as Israel’s enemies).

Today, although rhetoric is not anti-Israel, US policies are squarely on the side of her enemies.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arab-Israeli conflict, Obama Administration

Borders mean nothing
When you have wings.

— Tom MacMaster, American pro-Palestinian activist pretending to be a Syrian lesbian.

I admit it, I missed this story. When I first saw the “Gay Girl in Damascus” blog, I said to myself: “what a load of crap. I bet this is written by a 40-year old straight male American grad student” (OK, actually I thought it was an undergraduate).

In any event, I didn’t give it another thought. Who would be stupid enough to take this seriously? Just another hoax in the place where “nobody knows you’re a dog.”

Well, lots and lots of people, including some who work for the ‘real’ media believed this moron.

One of the reasons he did it was to make his rantings against Israel and the US more believable. Who’d listen to a white guy attacking Israel and the US? But an attractive Syrian lesbian — now that carries authority!

I’m not sure I follow his reasoning. After all, his character, “Amina Arraf,” was a Syrian Muslim, who might be expected to think like one. I guess what he meant was that nobody would listen to him, but his persona’s blog got hundreds of thousands of hits, was quoted in The Guardian, Time, CNN, NPR, etc. So he had a much bigger audience for the usual ugly lies.

Well, his cleverness got him kicked out of the University of Edinburgh’s History program. And it got the Jews, the Arabs and the LGBTQ crowd all seriously pissed off at him. I think his wife is also annoyed.

The really best part of the whole story was something I didn’t know about until this afternoon when a friend mentioned it. It seems that Amina Arraf was a frequent commenter on a lesbian blog called (sorry) “LezGetReal,” which was run by a Paula Brooks, with whom Arraf sometimes exchanged flirty remarks.

Of course — how could it be otherwise? — “Paula Brooks” turned out to be another middle-aged straight male named Bill Graber.

This could have made a good Jack Lemmon movie, if it weren’t for the vicious political purpose behind MacMaster’s deception.  The ‘Gay Girl’ blog is down now, but some of ‘her’ writing is quoted here:

As soon as I post this, I know, the defenders of the Holy Nation will come and denounce me, will ask why it is that I do not see their cause as holy and my own people, my own heritage, my own history, as nothing more than the squawkings of baboons.

Don’t laugh; I am sure they will come. And they will again and again demonstrate their arrogance and their ignorance. When not claiming that their innate superiority in all things means that democracy is not for the likes of me (after all, how else to justify their state?) or that we are all needing just a firm, pale hand to guide us, they will show their ignorance of history.

I for one know my own history. And I know my own country. I know that Jaulan [the Golan Heights] was lost after the Syrians had agreed to cease fire. I know who started that war; it wasn’t us. I know that the Israelis hold Jaulan because they would steal our water and need a nice platform to keep Damascus in their gunsights. I know that there is no difference between what keeps them there and what took Saddam to Kuwait … I know of American sailors who died to keep the world from knowing … I know that their own generals admitted that all the ‘vicious wicked Syrian attacks’ were provoked by them, not us …

I know also of the ethnic cleansing that they undertook up there; 131,000 people made homeless so that Russian migrants might have a place to illegally live.

Bad, bad writing. And worse history.

Technorati Tags: Amina Arraf, TomMacMaster, Bill Graber, LezGetReal, Syria

The following is from an article by Anne Hertzberg of the intrepid NGO Monitor:

…a group of NGOs, primarily funded by European governments, the EU, and the New Israel Fund (NIF) have initiated a campaign to denigrate the Israeli justice system in order to bolster efforts to have Israelis arrested for “war crimes” in Europe, and in order to support the PLO’s application to the International Criminal Court for an investigation of Israel.

They also play an integral role in the PLO strategy to use UN frameworks, not to resolve the conflict, but to “internationalize the conflict as a legal matter” and to “pave the way for (the Palestinians) to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice” as Mahmoud Abbas tellingly revealed in a May 17 New York Times op-ed…

Adalah, an Israeli NGO heavily funded by the NIF and the EU, is a leader of this strategy. At a 2008 conference in Brussels funded by the Swedish government, Adalah’s General Director Hassan Jabareen recommended that Palestinian activists “should try to portray Israel as an inherent undemocratic state” and “use that as part of campaigning internationally.”

Adalah has implemented this strategy in many submissions to UN committees, including the Human Rights Council. Additionally, in 2009, Adalah filed an “expert” opinion on behalf of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) in a lawsuit brought by the group in Spain seeking the arrest and imprisonment of seven Israeli officials for alleged “war crimes” arising out of the killing of a senior Hamas terrorist, Salah Shehade.

In 2007, Adalah presented its proposal for a “Democratic Constitution” for Israel. In its introduction, Adalah begins by demanding that

The state of Israel must recognize, therefore, its responsibility for the injustices of the Nakba and the Occupation; recognize the right of return of the Palestinian refugees based on UN Resolution 194 [understood by Arabs as return of any ‘refugees’ who choose to do so — ed]; recognize the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination; and withdraw from all of the territories occupied in 1967.

The constitution proposal also contains several options for providing the Arab minority with a veto over all decisions of the Knesset. There is lots more, and it’s clear that the adoption of this constitution would mean the end of the Jewish state.

As Hertzberg wrote, Adalah is supported in part by the New Israel Fund (NIF). In fact, Adalah received more than one million dollars from the NIF between 2006 and 2010.

This is the same NIF that was a center of controversy last year when it was revealed that the great majority of NGO’s that contributed ‘evidence’ for IDF ‘war crimes’ to the Goldstone report — most of which consisted of the repetition of unsubstantiated charges made by Gaza residents in the presence of Hamas officials and translators — received funding from the NIF.

This is also the same NIF that made news again this year when it became known that the NIF funded an extremist group called “The Coalition of Women for Peace” which had little to do with women or peace but a great deal to do with demonizing and promoting the boycott of Israel.

Its 2008 IRS form 990, the most recent one that I have, shows that the NIF distributed more than $20 million in grants in 2008. Not all of the NIF’s projects are anti-state, and these programs are pointed to by its defenders to justify their support. For example, there is a grant for “support for women suffering battering or sexual abuse.” There are numerous grants for “religious pluralism” which I presume means support for non-Orthodox Judaism. There are grants for environmental purposes (although in many cases ‘protecting the environment’ means opposing the security fence).

But the overwhelming thrust of the NIF’s grantees is antagonism to Israeli society as it is. Over and over one sees grants for promoting or protecting ‘rights’ for various groups (mostly Arabs, but also women and some Jewish immigrants). There are a great many grants for ‘community organizing’, and for ‘promoting equality’ in one or another realm. The overall impression is that Israel is oppressive and undemocratic, and NIF funds are used to pressure the ‘establishment’ into changing its ways, following the example of the civil rights movement in America.

And then of course there are things like a grant of $140,000 to “promote peace” (there are numerous large grants for this purpose) and $700,000 for “protecting human rights of all populations in Israel”, $308,000 for “protecting the human rights of the Arab minority in Israel”, and multiple grants totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars for “protecting human rights in the occupied territories”. There was even a grant of $458,500 for “promoting democracy and human rights in the media”. Could Israel’s media possibly be made more democratic?

The NIF is big business.  Its 2008 income was almost $35 million in contributions and grants (the Ford Foundation gave it $5 million). Its CEO in 2008, Larry Garber (the present CEO is Daniel Sokatch), was paid more than $228,000 in that year, a consultant named Aaron Back was paid $235,000 for ‘program management services’, and there were seven additional employees with annual salaries over $100,000. Just because it’s a non-profit doesn’t mean that nobody profits!

This huge enterprise is focused on one tiny, embattled democratic country, aiming to remake it in accordance with the fantasies of an ideal society as imagined by liberal American Jews.

This is bad enough, but it also funds a darker enterprise, which is to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state. I’m sure its supporters would claim that they are only trying to bring about peace (by opposing the policies of its democratically elected government), but the effect is to weaken the state and strengthen its enemies.

Oh — did I mention that this is the same NIF as the one of which Rabbi Richard Jacobs, the incoming president of the Union for Reform Judaism, is a board member? The URJ has said that Rabbi Jacobs will step down from his outside board positions for the first years of his presidency,  “in order to focus his energies on the task ahead of him.”

What he should do is resign from the NIF altogether, insofar as that organization is hurting, not helping, the state.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Adalah, NIF, Rabbi Richard Jacobs, URJ