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On Halloween, the Torah teaches some tricky tales | j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California

Who knew there were witches in the Bible? (Truth is, there are even more in the Talmud!)

On Halloween, the Torah teaches some tricky tales | j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California

Cantor Rebecca Robins and Zerek Schwartz Tie the Knot!

 Rebecca and Zerek at the rehearsal dinner, held at the "The Post Office" in Babylon, NY. Zerek's father, buddy, assembled a video presentation featuring pictures from the bride and groom's childhood.









Just a few minutes before the ceremony, the radiant bride prepares.

The Hora was danced, and danced, and danced. It was followed by more dancing. And did I mentioned the dancing? And there was food, notable for both its quality and quantity. But no one gained a pound.... because of all that dancing. 

Along with the bride, is Rabbi Amy Schwartzman, who co-officiated the wedding with me. 

Now that is a happy couple!

Leonard Cohen and Sonny Rollins - Who by Fire (Some post Yom Kippur culture)

And Who by Fire Jazz Live Ensemble

HIgh Holy Day Sermons 5771 - 2010

A number of people have asked for links to the sermons from these past High Holy Days:

Broken Hearts, Broken Tablets and Us

The Perils of Being Perpetually Connected

Guard the Stranger for You Were Strangers in the Land of Egypt

 I hope that 5771 is a year of health and fulfillment for you and yours.


Rabbi David B. Cohen

Laqncet Medical Journal Proves to be Anti-Israel

Lancet Editor "Responds" to HR Critique The medical journal fails to address HR's legitimate concerns, instead proving them outright in a one-sided letter to The Guardian.

In July, HonestReporting took apart The Lancet medical journal's collection of articles supposedly examining the state of the Palestinian healthcare system. Our research into the background of a number of contributors to The Lancet's articles revealed some disturbing information and called into question the credibility of the content, particularly as most of those authors identified were active supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

We demonstrated a politicized anti-Israel agenda in The Lancet. Yet, instead of addressing our very legitimate criticism, the journal's editor Richard Horton responded in The Lancet's July 31 edition (available on The Lancet's Facebook page):

The Lancet is grateful to our colleagues at HonestReporting for providing further international coverage of the research we published recently online, which drew attention to the health predicaments of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and internal political fracture. With the help of HonestReporting, we have been able to reach a large, new, and largely unaware audience.

We believe that the "large, new, and largely unaware audience" are more likely to be readers who have now been made aware of The Lancet's anti-Israel bias and abandonment of scientific and medical norms. We also received many communications from medical professionals who expressed their deep concern at The Lancet's agenda.

But we shouldn't be surprised. Richard Horton only this week exposed his personal animosity towards Israel in a letter to The Guardian on 24 August in response to an op-ed by Israel's Ambassador to the UK, Ron Prosor. Some selected excerpts (emphasis added):

Gaza is not a terrorist enclave. It is a vigorous community of 1.4 million people struggling to exist under what the UN still considers to be occupation by Israel. Operation Cast Lead did not target "terrorist infrastructure". On a visit to Gaza that I made in March this year, with colleagues from the UK, I witnessed the results of indiscriminate bombing of residential communities across the Strip, as well as the results of civilian casualties. ...

Gaza is not "a golden opportunity tragically missed". The people of Gaza are experiencing continued declines in child health, unchecked burdens of chronic disease, shortages of life-saving medical supplies and equipment, and the dramatic erosion of mental health. These unprecedented hardships are a direct consequence of Israel's disregard for the health and security of people who they, as occupiers, have a legal duty to protect. ...

In the classrooms I visited, there was no incitement against Israel. Instead, there was pride in being Palestinian, a plea for the facts of their lives to be told against the propaganda that Prosor repeats.

On one issue, Mr Prosor and I agree. Many Israelis are sceptical and do fear for their futures. But this is largely because it suits politicians to manufacture the scepticism and fear that destroy hopes for peace and justice. If the full truth about the health of people living in the occupied Palestinian territory was more widely known, the international community would no longer tolerate Israel's apparent indifference.

Much like his journal, Horton

• Ignores Hamas terrorism and violence against its own people as well as Israelis, preferring to believe that the legitimate fear of missiles and mortars from Gaza is the manufactured product of politicians dealing in fear.
• Claims Israel still occupies Gaza despite leaving the territory in 2005.
• Blames the situation in Gaza solely on Israel, placing no responsibility whatsoever on Palestinian actions.

Richard Horton has clinically demonstrated and confirmed that The Lancet is not publishing anti-Israel articles out of naivety but is being guided in a politicized direction from the very top.

We'd also like to thank Richard Horton for bringing HonestReporting's work to the attention of the medical community - a large, new, and largely unaware audience who will hopefully now see through The Lancet's insidious agenda.

 

HonestReporting. com

It’s time to stop demonizing Israel

The flood of hypocrisy and bad faith that seems to have just been waiting across the media worldwide for the Mavi Marmara is by no means acceptable. By Bernard-Henri Lévy

Of course, my position hasn’t changed. As I said the day it happened, during a fierce debate in Tel Aviv with one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ministers, I continue to find the manner in which the assault against the Mavi Marmara and its flotilla was effected off the Gaza coast to be “stupid.”
Bernard Henri-Levy

French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy

If I’d had any remaining doubt, the inspection of the seventh boat − carried out without a trace of violence Saturday morning − would have convinced me there were other ways Israel could have operated to have kept the tactical and PR trap set by the provocateurs of Free Gaza from snapping shut, and with blood spilled.

That said and repeated, the flood of hypocrisy, bad faith and, ultimately, disinformation that seems to have just been waiting for this pretext to flow into the breach and sweep across the media worldwide − as is the case every time the Jewish state slips up and commits an error − is by no means acceptable.

The catchphrase being trotted out ad nauseum refers to the blockade imposed “by Israel.” The most elementary honesty, however, requires one to make clear that this blockade has been undertaken by both Israel and Egypt, conjointly, along the borders of the two countries that share frontiers with Gaza, and with the thinly disguised blessing of all the moderate Arab regimes. Saying the blockade has been imposed by Israel alone can only be described as disinformation. The moderate Arab regimes, of course, are only too happy to have someone else contain the influence of this armed extension, this advanced base and, perhaps one day, this aircraft-carrier of Iran in the region.

The very idea of a “total and merciless” blockade ‏(Laurent Joffrin’s June 5 editorial in the French daily Liberation‏) “taking hostage the humanity [of Gaza]” ‏(former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin in Le Monde on the same date‏) also constitutes disinformation. We mustn’t tire of reminding others: the blockade concerns only arms and the material needed to manufacture them. It does not prevent the daily arrival, via Israel, of between 100 and 120 trucks laden with foodstuffs, medical supplies and humanitarian goods of every kind. Humanity is not “in danger” in Gaza, and it is a lie to state that people are “dying of hunger” in the streets of Gaza City.

It is debatable whether or not a military blockade is the right course of action to weaken and, one day, bring down the fascislamist government of Ismail Haniyeh. But it is an indisputable fact that the Israelis who man the checkpoints between the territories night and day are the first to make the elementary but essential distinction between the regime ‏(that they seek to isolate‏) and the population ‏(which they are careful not to confuse with the regime, and in particular not to penalize as, once again, aid has never stopped passing into Gaza‏).

Disinformation: the utter silence, throughout the world, about Hamas’ incredible attitude now that the flotilla has carried out its symbolic duty − to trap the Jewish state and relaunch, as never before, the process of demonization. In other words, now that the Israelis have carried out their inspection and brought the aid cargo to those for whom it was supposedly intended, Hamas’ attitude in blocking that aid at Kerem Shalom checkpoint, allowing it to slowly rot, is met with silence.

To hell with any merchandise that has passed through the hands of Jewish customs! Chuck out the “toys” that brought tears to the eyes of good European souls, but became impure after spending too many long hours in the Israeli port of Ashdod! Gaza’s children have been used as nothing more than a human shield for the Islamist gang who took power by force three years ago, or cannon fodder or media vignettes. The children’s games or their wishes are the last thing anyone in the Strip worries about, but who says so? Who shows the slightest indignation?

Liberation recently ran an awful headline − “Israel, Pirate State” − which, if words still mean anything, can only contribute to the delegitimization of the Jewish state. Who will dare explain that, if there is a hostage-taker in Gaza, one who coldly and unscrupulously takes advantage of people’s suffering and, in particular, that of the children − in sum, a pirate − it is not Israel but Hamas?

Laughable, but given the strategic context, catastrophic disinformation was clearly seen in the speech given in Konya, in central Turkey, by a prime minister who throws in prison anyone who dares to evoke the genocide of the Armenians in public, but who has the nerve, there, before thousands of fired-up demonstrators yelling anti-Semitic slogans, to denounce Israeli “state terrorism.” Still more disinformation: the lament of the useful idiots who, before Israel did, fell into the clutches of these strange “humanitarians” who, in the case of the Turkish IHH, are Jihad enthusiasts, anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish apocalyptical fanatics, both men and women − some of whom, just days before the incident, expressed their wish to “die as martyrs.” ‏(The Guardian, June 3; Al Aqsa TV, May 30‏).

How can a writer of the calibre of Sweden’s Henning Mankell allow himself to be taken advantage of this way? When he tells us he is thinking of forbidding the translation of his books into Hebrew, how can he really forget the sacrosanct distinction between a stupid or wrong-headed government and the masses of those who do not identify with it? How can a chain of cinemas ‏(Utopia‏) in France decide to cancel the release of a film, “A Cinq heures de Paris,” in the same way, simply because its writer, Leonid Prudovsky, is an Israeli citizen?

Finally, the battalions of Tartuffes who regret that Israel is declining the demand for an international inquiry are disinformers as well. The truth is, once again, much simpler and more logical: What Israel is refusing is an inquiry requested by the UN Human Rights Council, where those great democrats − the Cubans, Pakistanis and Iranians − reign. What Israel does not want is a procedure of the kind that resulted in the famous Goldstone report, commissioned after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. The five judges on that sympathetic commission − four of whom had never made a secret of their militant anti-Zionism − wrapped up 575 pages of interviews of Palestinian fighters and civilians, conducted under the watchful eye of Hamas political commissioners ‏(an absolute and unprecedented heresy in this kind of work‏), in a matter of mere days.

Such a botched inquiry would amount to a masquerade of international justice, something Israel simply cannot stand for. Its conclusions would be known in advance and would only serve to haul, as usual and perfectly unilaterally, the region’s sole and unique democracy into the defendants’ dock.

One last word. For a man like me, someone who takes pride in having helped to conceive, with others, this kind of symbolic action ‏(the boat for Vietnam; the march for the survival of Cambodia in 1979; various and sundry anti-totalitarian boycotts and, more recently, the deliberate violation of the Sudan border to break the blockade hiding the perpetration of massacres in Darfur‏) − in other words, for a militant of humanitarian interference and all the media fuss that goes with it, this pathetic saga has something of a caricature to it, a gloomy grimace of destiny.

But this is all the more reason not to give in. All the more reason to reject this confusing of genres, this inversion of values. All the more reason to resist this hijacking of meaning, that places the very spirit of a policy conceived to counter the intent of barbarians at their service.

Destitution of the anti-totalitarian dialectic, its imitations and its reversals. Confusion of an era when we combat democracies as if they were dictatorships or fascist states. This maelstrom of hatred and madness is about Israel. But it also concerns, as we should be well aware, some of the most precious things established in the movement of ideas in the last 30 years, especially on the left, and these are thus imperiled. A word to the wise is sufficient.

Translated from the French by Janet Lizop.

Loving Israel is in the Details

A friend, Rabbi Paul Kipnes, sent this along.
 by Joel Chasnoff

NEW YORK (JTA) -- In honor of Israel’s 62nd birthday, I’ll forgo the expected Op-Ed about Israeli government corruption, the Bibi-Obama drama, or the Israeli Rabbinate’s stranglehold on marriage and divorce.

Instead, I offer this love letter to Israel: "Top 10 tiny details about Israel that make it the most wonderful country on earth."

10. Egged Bus #394: The midnight ride from Tel Aviv to Eilat. The trip begins in the gray-stucco slums of south Tel Aviv. Two hours later, you’re rolling through the desert beneath a blanket of stars. You crack open the window. The desert smells dry and ancient, like an attic. At dawn, you pull into Eilat as the city comes to life.

9. The way Israelis refuse to cross the street on a red light. Drivers blare their horns the instant the light turns green. Yet pedestrians refuse to cross the street until the sign turns green. I’ve witnessed this phenomenon at 3:00 a.m., the streets bare and not a car in sight.

8. The Jewish soul of even the most secular Israelis. I served in the Israeli Army with kibbutz kids who were so anti-religious that they never even had a bar-mitzvah. But on Friday nights, as the brigade sung the Sabbath Kiddush en masse, I could see my secular comrades mouthing the words.

7. Flush handles on Israeli toilets. Almost all Israeli toilets, both public and in homes, have two flush handles -- one for “light” loads, and one for heavy ones. This saves Israel’s most precious natural resource: water. And it’s genius.

6. Drop-dead gorgeous Israeli soldiers. The men are hunky, the women beautiful. Try not to drool as you watch them strut down Ben Yehudah Street in their olive-green uniforms, M-16s slung across their backs. It’s not so much their physical beauty that charms us as what they embody: Jewish power.

5. Shuk Ha-Carmel on Friday afternoons. So many things about Israel drive me mad. The bureaucracy is crippling. Government offices operate when they want, for as long (or short) as they want, usually something like 8 a.m. until noon Mondays, Wednesdays and every other Thursday. Each week, another group goes on strike -- schoolteachers, garbage men, postal workers, phone operators, cable guys, bus drivers, doctors, nurses, paramedics, airport baggage guys, and the old men in blue jumpsuits who walk the streets of Tel Aviv stabbing pieces of trash with meter-long spears have all struck in the past year -- so the country never runs at full power.

The Knesset, Israel’s 15-party parliament, is trapped in a state of perpetual gridlock. And yet, when I step into the Carmel Market and hear the shopkeepers barking their wares, smell the mixture of frying lamb, goat cheese, and human sweat, and watch the people line up to buy flowers for Shabbat, I remember why I love Israel so much. It’s the excitement of the place, but also the Middle Easterness of it -- the barking, the bargaining, the haggling that’s at once friendly and brutal. At pushcarts and stalls, middle-aged men with gold chains and raspy cigarette voices sell mangoes, lemons, whole and quarter chickens, cow lungs, cow tongues, cow testicles, sheep brains, 50-plus varieties of fish, calculators, knockoff Nikes, carnations, sponges, girdles, batteries, and men’s and ladies’ underwear.

Friday afternoons, with only a couple of hours until sundown, the peddlers shout their last-minute pre-Sabbath bargains: “Tangerines, 1 shekel, 1 shekel!” “Pita, hummus, chickpeas-- yallah! Shabbat, Shabbat!” Whenever I walk through the souk, I think about all those American diplomats who call Israel the America of the Middle East. If those diplomats really want to understand Israel, they should leave their fancy Jerusalem hotels and take a stroll through the Carmel Market.

4. Chocolate milk in a sack. Half a liter of Kibbutz Yotvateh chocolate milk sealed in a palm-sized plastic bag that you rip open with your teeth and then squeeze, causing the milk to shoot into your mouth in a way that makes you feel like you’re drinking straight from the udder of a chocolate cow. Need I say more?

3. The incredible bond between Israelis. Maybe it’s a remnant of shtetl life in Europe, or perhaps it has something to do with living so close to your enemy. Whatever the reason, Israelis act as if everyone is everyone else’s next-door neighbor. The first time I experienced this unique bond was the week I arrived in Israel to begin my army service. I was driving to Tel Aviv in a rental car when a guy pulled up next to me at a stoplight and beeped his horn. “Hey, achi!” he called. “My girlfriend’s thirsty. You got water?” Beside me, on the passenger seat, was a bottle of water. But it was half empty.

I held up the bottle. “It’s already open,” I said.

“No problem,” he replied, and stuck out his hand.

A week later, I was at my girlfriend, Dorit’s, family’s apartment with her parents. It was dinnertime and we had ordered pizza. Finally, after two hours, the pizza guy showed up on his motor scooter. He was disheveled and sopped with sweat. “I got lost,” he whimpered.

“So come inside! Sit!” said Dorit’s mother, Tzionah. “Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee,” said the pizza guy. “Milk and two sugars.”

While Tzionah made the coffee, Dorit’s father, Menashe, opened the pizza box. “Please take.” He offered a slice. The pizza guy waved him off. “Nu! You’re offending me!” said Menashe. “What’s your name?"

“Oren,” said the delivery guy.

“Oren. I insist. Eat.”

And I’ll be damned if Oren the pizza guy didn’t sit down at the kitchen table and eat the pizza he’d just delivered. As we ate, I thought about all those porno movies where the lonely housewife invites the pizza boy inside and seduces him on the kitchen table. In the Israeli version of the story, the pizza boy doesn’t make love to the housewife. Instead, he sits down with the family and eats pizza.

2. Dropping off a passenger at Ben-Gurion Airport. You pull up to the Departure door, hug your loved ones goodbye, and watch them walk into the terminal. Then you inhale a breath of sweet Israeli air, look up at the cloudless Tel Aviv sky, and think, “They have to leave...but I get to stay in Israel.”

1. ____________________________________________ . I leave this one up to you. What do you love most about Israel? E-mail me joel@joelchasnoff.com and I’ll post your responses on the blog page of my Web site.

(Joel Chasnoff is a stand-up comedian and the author of "The 188th Crybaby Brigade: A Skinny Kid From Chicago Fights Hezbollah," about his year as a combat soldier in the Israeli army. View photographs from his army service and meet the characters from Joel’s book at www.joelchasnoff.com.)

Words from the Rabbi of Beit Warszaw

I just received this post from Rabbi Denise Eger, a rabbinical school classmate - well worth a read.

On Monday I wrote about the death of the Polish President and many Polish government leaders in the tragic plane crash over last weekend.
On Tuesday I visited the Polish Consul General here in Los Angeles with several other rabbis to bring condolences on behalf of the Jewish Community and The Southern California Board of Rabbis.  They were extremely touched. The Consul Genral is Ambassador Joanna Kozińska – Frybes. You could see on her face the visible toll that this has taken.  She has been in the foreign service of Poland for many years and was an Ambassador to Mexico for the Polish government and lost many friends on that plane.  She personally knew more than half of those who perished.  We visited for 30 minutes talking about the impact this will have on the country.  We spoke about the revival of Jewish life in Poland.  More than 2/3 of American Jews have some tie to Poland in their ancestry.  We spoke together of the changed nature of Poland in the last 20 years and the strong ties between Poland and Israel.
She was grateful for our visit. And we signed the condolence book in the special room they have set up to pay tribute to those who perished.
On Monday  I also wrote about the rebirth of Jewish life including the Reform synagogue in Warsaw-Beit Warszaw.  Here is a message from the rabbi, Burt Schuman about the tragedy. So you can understand first hand the impact on the nation and the Jewish community.

RABBI BURT E. SCHUMAN
April 11, 2020 27
Nisan 5770
Dear Friends,
I have been deeply moved by the expressions of concern and support I have received for the people of Poland at this time of cataclysmic national tragedy. Not only did we lose President Kaczynski and his wife on that fateful plane crash yesterday over Smolensk yesterday morning, but much of Poland’s political, economic, military, and diplomatic and religious leadership, including the chiefs of all branches of the military, the presidential chaplain and army chaplain, the deputy foreign minister and other foreign ministry staff, the president of the National Bank, the head of the National Security office, leaders of the Institute for National Memory, the head of the Olympic Committee, the civil rights commissioner, officials of the Ministry of Culture, the Deputy Speaker of the parliament, several presidential aides and former three members of parliament. In addition, the leaders of veterans’ groups, the last President of the Polish Government in Exile and several heroes of the Polish resistance also perished in that flight. Many of these individuals were people that I either I had met and conversed with or had seen at official functions, adding to my own personal sense of shock and grief. The context and timing of their deaths has added to our collective pain. First, these leaders were en route to the Katyn forest at the invitation of the Russian government to observe the 70th anniversary of the hideous massacre of tens of thousands of Polish officers, among them approximately 900 Jewish officers and military chaplains by Stalin’s secret police. Second this comes at a time when Jews in Poland and around the world are about to observe Yom Ha Shoah, and thousands of people are preparing to go on the March of the Living. As Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has eloquently stated this is the greatest tragedy t o befall post-war Poland. Historians might agree or disagree, but one can state unequivocally that is the greatest tragedy to befall this nation since the restoration of democracy 20 years ago. Many in our community lost close personal friends. Moreover, the Jews of Poland have lost a great friend and advocate in President Kaczynski’s who not only spoke often and eloquently about the Jewish contribution to Polish history, on many occasions, including commemorations at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial and this past summer at the 65thanniversary of the liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto this past summer, but also hosted regular events at the Presidential Palace such as his famous dialogue with Israeli President Shimon Peres, and his annual Chanukah lighting ceremony. Moreover, he demonstrated that support in deeds as well as words as in his financial support for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and his visit to Israel on the heels of the Second Lebanon War. We in Poland’s Progressive Jewish Community join our sisters and brothers throughout the world not only our fellow-Jews but people of every religion, nationality and culture in praying for and with the people of Poland in this time of national tragedy.
L’Shalom,
RABBI BURT E. SCHUMAN

Take Me Out To The Ballgame...

Monday afternoon was everything baseball's opening day should be: sunny, almost seventy degrees; throngs filling Miller Park to capacity; the hometown Brewers in crisp white uniforms, heroic, lithe and testosterone laden.

The world of the fan is a swirl of pungent aromas. It begins with forty five thousand eight hundred and eight people in close proximity, many sweating beer. Add to that a variety of high notes: popcorn over here, pizza over there, bratwurst all around, and beer, beer and more beer. The sweet and sour mix signals spring's arrival.

While one can anticipate the stadium's "surround-smell environment," a winning game is less predictable. Alas, the boys of spring were inconsistent, leaving multiple runners on base at innings' end. As Abba Eban once quipped (not about the Brewers) "they never miss(ed) an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

Yet, the magic of opening day trumps the final score. Who cares who won? The season has just begun; there will be another one hundred and sixty one opportunities to win. What's more, baseball infuses the coming months with the possibility of existential redemption. As Roger Angell wrote in Once More Around the Park:

"Baseball is the writer's game, and its train of thought, we come to sense, is a shuttle, carrying us constantly forward to the next pitch or inning, or the sudden double into the left-field corner, but we keep hold of the other half of our [train] ticket, for the return trip on the same line. We anticipate happily, and, coming home, reenter an old landscape brightened with fresh colors. Baseball games and plays and mannerisms-the angle of a cap-fade stubbornly and come to mind unbidden, putting us back in some particular park on that special October afternoon or June evening. The players are as young as ever, and we, perhaps not entirely old."

 -Rabbi David Cohen

Why Is This Contra Temps Different Than All Other Contra Temps?

Will Barack Obama Ignite The Third Intifada? By Daniel Gordis - www.danielgordis.org

 As I was departing the United States following a brief visit last week, the news being broadcast in the airport was preoccupied with Prime Minister Binyamin’s Netanyahu’s recent and apparently inadvertent snub of Vice President Joe Biden. Some 11 hours later, when I’d landed in Tel Aviv and was listening to the radio in the taxi on the way to Jerusalem, the news was of rioting in Jerusalem, the numbers of police officers injured, and the number of protesters detained during Hamas’s “Day of Rage.” On the American news, Hillary Clinton was calling for more than an apology, demanding “concrete steps” towards peace on Israel’s part. And in Israel, the fluent-Hebrew-speaking Arab protester interviewed on the radio was calling for armed resistance to Israel’s “assault on Jerusalem,” insisting that the time for a third intifada had now arrived.
The radical difference between the broadcasts is an apt metaphor for the wholly different ways in which the current crisis in Israeli-American relations is perceived on the two sides of the ocean. The Americans are quite right to be incensed at the way Biden was treated. Whether Netanyahu was sandbagged by Interior Minister Eli Yishai, or whether this was simply another example of Israeli bureaucratic incompetence is not yet entirely clear. But it should never have happened.
Having said that, however, it is also clear that in the context of a generally positive relationship, Israel’s insult to Biden would have been unfortunate, but it would have blown over almost immediately. The snub has had such massive repercussions because the relationship between the American and Israeli administrations is frayed, and wholly devoid of trust. The important question is why that is the case.
WHILE ISRAEL has obviously made some serious gaffes since Obama entered office, the real cause for this nadir in Washington-Jerusalem relations is the fact that Barack Obama seems to have little comprehension of the region on which he seeks to impose peace. The president’s ignorance of the world in which he is operating is apparent on at least three levels. He seems unaware of how profoundly troubled Israelis are by his indiscriminate use of the word “settlement,” he appears to have little comprehension of the history of Palestinian recalcitrance, and he has apparently learned little from decades of American involvement in the Middle East peace process.
First, there is the issue of the word “settlements.” To the Israeli ear, anyone who would use the same noun for both a small city with tens of thousands of inhabitants and for a tiny hilltop outpost consisting of a trailer and a portable generator simply does not understand the terrain. Gilo, to Israelis, is not a settlement. It is a huge neighborhood of Jerusalem, a part of the capital city. When Obama called Gilo a settlement after Israel announced new housing units there in November, Israelis drew the conclusion that the president of the United States is wholly out of his element.
Similarly, Obama’s demands for an absolute freeze on settlement construction strike Israelis as either foolish or unfair. Why, they ask, did all construction have to cease? Israelis who had planned to add a bedroom to their home for recently married children, who had already poured a foundation and ripped out the back wall of their home, were now told that nothing could proceed. When the president, who does not seem to know a city from an outpost, insists that houses remain open to the elements during the cold Israeli winter because of his desire to appease the very Palestinians who have never been serious about peace efforts, he does not win friends.
Nor, Israelis have noted, did Obama demand any similarly concrete concessions from the Palestinians or their puppet-president. That, too, has served Obama poorly in this country. And despite all this, Israelis believe the world has forgotten, Netanyahu acceded to Obama’s demands for a freeze, at no small political cost.
Thus, when the Americans decided to make the undeniably ill-timed announcement of the Ramat Shlomo housing plans into a cause célèbre, Israelis were hard-pressed to feel contrite about anything beyond the personal hurt caused to Biden. Ramat Shlomo is an enormous neighborhood that is already home to some 20,000 people, and which is situated between the even larger neighborhoods of Ramot and Sanhedria. Ramat Shlomo is Jerusalem, period. Building there may be wise or unwise for a whole array of reasons, but for the Americans to seize on this as a “settlement construction” issue only further confirmed Israeli suspicions that Obama couldn’t locate the neighborhood on a map.
THE SECOND major element that Obama appears not to understand is that the Palestinians’ current refusal to conduct face-to-face negotiations has a long history; their recalcitrance has nothing at all to do with the settlements. The settlements, like the refugee problem (on which Israel will never compromise), and the division of Jerusalem (where some accommodation will almost certainly be forced on Israel), will be addressed when the Israelis and Palestinians sit down for face-to-face negotiations.
But Abbas has agreed only to mediated talks because he is unwilling to countenance the concessions that direct talks might ultimately require of him. The Palestinians have balked at every attempt to sign a substantive agreement with Israel. There remains virtually no Israeli political Left, not because of the Israeli Right, but because Yasser Arafat unleashed the Second Intifada when Ehud Barak called his bluff and offered him just about everything he could have expected, proving beyond any doubt that the Palestinian leadership had no interest in “land for peace.”
For the Obama administration to suggest that the Palestinians cannot negotiate now because of settlement construction strikes Israelis as either hopelessly naïve, or worse, fundamentally hostile to the Jewish state.
And finally, despite his appreciable intellectual capacities, Barack Obama seems to have no appreciation of what America can and cannot do in the Middle East. He believes so deeply in the power of his own rhetoric that he imagines that he can evoke the passions of Grant Park on Election Day, or the Washington Mall on Inauguration Day, in a Muslim world that has disdain for the very democratic values that brought him to power. This is hubris at its most dangerous. Obama’s Cairo speech was rhetorically brilliant, but the president has been snubbed. Iran has yet to grasp Obama’s outstretched hand, and instead, proceeds apace in its quest for a nuclear weapon. The Palestinians have not budged. Yet Obama continues to believe that his eloquence will win the day.
Does Obama really not understand that this conflict has a long and consistent history? The Arabs rejected the UN Partition Plan in 1947, and refused a treaty at the end of Israel’s War of Independence in 1949. After their defeat in June 1967, they gathered in Khartoum and declared “no peace, no recognition and no negotiations.” Arafat said “no” at Camp David in 2000, and Abbas continues in that tradition. Why the American administration cannot or will not acknowledge that is one of the great wonders of this most recent train wreck.
WITH HIS laser focus on the settlements, Obama is ignoring the fact that Abbas wouldn’t negotiate even if not a single settlement existed. In so doing, Obama has not only not moved the process forward, but he has afforded Abbas a refuge from responsibility, and he has given those who would like to ignite a third intifada an empty but symbolically powerful excuse for doing just that. A third intifada remains unlikely at present (though, it’s worth noting, the IAF attacked Gaza targets this week and the IDF killed a Palestinian teenager during a scuffle – precisely the sort of innocuous events that could one day be seen as the first events of the third intifada), but should it happen, it will be, first and foremost, the product of Washington’s naïveté.
Obama would be well-served to recognize that the history of this region is clear. Peace emerges when the two primary sides do the work themselves, with the United States entering late in the process to iron out stubborn details. Sadat went to Jerusalem without American urging, and though Jimmy Carter ultimately brought the two sides together to conclude the deal, the bulk of the work had been done by Sadat and Begin long before Carter entered the picture. The Nobel Committee, which once exercised much more subtle judgment, essentially acknowledged that fact by having Sadat and Begin split the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize, without including Carter.
The same was true with Rabin and Hussein, who worked on the Israeli-Jordanian peace deal. Clinton orchestrated the ceremony; but the principals had done most of the work without him.
And history suggests that only Israeli right-wingers can forge a deal. Israelis do not trust the Left to be security-conscious, and a left-wing government always has a right-wing flank blocking it. Obama may bristle at Netanyahu’s hawkish rhetoric, but the more Obama weakens this prime minister, the less likely a deal will become. The US cannot wish democracy on Iraq, or peace on the Middle East. There will be a settlement of this conflict when the Palestinians are ready, not when Barack Obama decides to impose one.
SO, WHERE do we go from here? To begin to pull out of the present nose-dive, each of the parties will need to shift gears.
The Palestinians have to decide if they will take risks for peace, and if they can elect a president who is more than a figurehead. Last week’s “Day of Rage,” it should be noted, was called by Hamas – yet it unfolded not in Hamas’ Gaza, but in Fatah’s Jerusalem. Fatah needs a genuine leader, perhaps someone like Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who is now saying that the Palestinians should first build the trappings of statehood, and only then declare independence down the road. It is no surprise that Shimon Peres recently compared Fayyad to David Ben-Gurion, the creator of the modern State of Israel.
The Israelis need to learn to play in the major leagues. When the American vice president visits, you need to have your act together. If Israeli leaders continue to act as if they run a banana republic, they will deservedly be so treated. But much more significantly, Netanyahu needs to apprise Israelis of his vision. Does he favor a two-state solution? What are his plans for Jerusalem? For the settlements? Let him tell us, and then we can decide. If we approve, he’ll stay in office. And if we don’t, he’ll be gone. But we deserve to know what our prime minister has in mind.
In some respects, though, Barack Obama has the hardest job, at least in the short term. When he took office, there was no love lost between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and Gaza was still smoldering from the recently concluded Operation Cast Lead. But there was reasonable quiet on the West Bank and in Jerusalem, and a renewed Intifada was nowhere on our radar screen. Obama’s blunderings have now restored the region’s previous tinderbox qualities.
The president needs to back down from his relentless and fruitless focus on settlements, and concentrate more on what he doesn’t yet know than on the power of his rhetoric. Should another intifada erupt, it will have had its seeds in a Washington more interested in the magic of its words than in the painful lessons of a century of history.

The Gaza War - Goldstone Report - An Israeli Defense

 A colleague from Los Angeles, Rabbi John Rosove, writes a response to the UN Goldstone Report on Gaza. Rosove writes that he is a supporter of Israel who identifies with the left side of the political spectrum. His thoughts are worthy of consideration. Rabbi David Cohen

The Gaza War - Goldstone Report - An Israeli Defense
by Rabbi John Rosove

Friends of Israel:
I have watched with deep concern for Israel's good name and the truth how the world is reacting to Israel relative to its Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and post-Goldstone Report. To that end, based on a variety of sources I have written a response to charges that Israel has committed crimes against the Palestinian people (below).
I begin with a disclaimer - I have always considered myself in sympathy with the Israeli moderate and left wings vis a vis the rights of Palestinians. I still do, but I also recognize that despite my own ideals and hopes for Israel's future as part of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, that I have less and less faith that this is possible in our generation because I believe that all the Palestinian leadership in all parties including Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and so forth, are still ascribing to the one-state solution - the destruction of Israel and the replacement of a Palestinian State. This does not mean that the Palestinian people are all for this - for I believe that most want to live in peace and can accept a Jewish State of Israel. However, in the Arab and Muslim world, there are two kinds of government - Islamic fundamentalist and secular dictatorships - and the will of the people is always subverted.
One more important point: I pray that the Israeli government appoints an independent commission headed up by someone such as former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak to investigate and give a report on all accusations leveled against Israel in the Goldstone Report. As a democracy and a Jewish State, the Jewish people deserve nothing less. Israel's judiciary is certainly capable of telling the truth about what happened during the war, and about elucidating as clearly as possible Israel's innocence and possible culpability.
I have tried to be as factual as possible in the following. Please feel free to distribute it to whomever you wish - but please identify its author. I claim no originality below, but I do take responsibility for the over-all choice of information and the perspective.
Sincerely,

Rabbi John Rosove
Temple Israel of Hollywood
President - PSW Region of the Reform Zionists of America (for identification purposes only)
Los Angeles, CA

The Gaza War - Goldstone Report - An Israeli Defense
by Rabbi John Rosove

Is Israel being unfairly maligned because it initiated the Gaza War in 2008?

Answer: It is important to note as background that between 2001 and 2009, Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists launched 12,000 katyusha rockets and mortars from Gaza at uncontested southern Israeli settlements in an ongoing barrage that caused a number of deaths, injuries and general terror. These rockets were sent as far north as Ashkelon and Ashdod. By 2009, nearly one million Israelis came under the reach of Hamas rockets launched from Gaza. After Israeli unilateral withdrew from Gaza in 2005 there was a 500% increase in rocket fire the following year, in 2006, despite the fact that there was no longer a territorial conflict in that region.

Israel chose not to respond in a forceful military action for years because of the risks such an action would pose to innocent Palestinian civilian life among whom the terrorists deliberately embedded themselves, and because Israel feared that many Israeli soldiers would become casualties.

Every-day life for innocent Israelis living in the south had become intolerable. The population in Sderot shrunk from 29,000 to 10,000. Children slept most nights in shelters and developed Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome with symptoms including high anxiety and bed-wetting. Those who could leave left their homes and moved to safer ground. Unemployment was very high. Israeli citizens living in those southern settlements couldn’t decide whom they hated more, Hamas or the Israeli government for not protecting them.

Israeli leaders worried that should Hamas attain even more deadly and sophisticated missiles from its sponsor state Iran, that it was only a matter of time that Tel Aviv, Beersheba and other major Israeli cities would become targets. When that time came (and it was judged to be sooner rather than later) millions of Israeli civilians would be in danger of deadly attack.

The Need for Israel to Act
December 2008

With all this in mind, Israel finally decided that it could wait no longer and needed to act decisively (even at the risk of Israeli and innocent civilian Palestinian casualties) to eliminate the threat of Hamas. And so, on December 27, 2008 Israel launched a war with the goal of ending the rocket barrage and destroying Hamas’ military capability. Israel’s targets were Hamas weapons stockpiles, launch sites and tunnels used to move contraband into Gaza from Egypt.

Israel Fights Unconventional War

No other nation in the world would have shown as much restraint as Israel has faced with identical threats to its people and territory. Israel did attack schools, clinics and mosques, however it did so because those selected targets were being used as launching areas for rockets and as rocket stockpiles. However, first Israel dropped thousands of leaflets giving residents nearby warning, made thousands of phone calls to homes in neighborhoods where these attacks were launched, and sent thousands of text messages of warning to Palestinian residents. In spite of Israel’s unprecedented efforts to warn civilians she has been forcefully condemned all over the world and been accused unfairly of “disproportionately” attacking sites in Gaza and even deliberately attacking civilians.

Colonel Richard Kemp, who led British forces in Afghanistan, studied Israel’s tactics in Gaza and, in testimony before the United Nations Human Rights Council (that would eventually condemn both Israel’s tactics and motives in its response to the Goldstone Report) said “During Operation Cast Lead, the Israel army did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.”

Efforts to Contain Hamas’ Military Threat against Israel before going to War

Ever since Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005 uprooting Israeli settlers, the Jewish State enforced a strict naval blockade to prevent shipments of armaments coming from Iran and being brought into Gaza by sea. A security fence between Israel and Gaza successfully prevented suicide bombers from entering Israel from Gaza. In spite of the threat to Israel, the Jewish State has regularly opened the borders to permit food and medical supplies into Gaza, and even did so during the fighting itself.

Israel had to choose between three options in confronting the Gaza rockets. It could attack the whole area indiscriminately, as the Russian Army did in Chechnya. It could simply give up and take no steps to protect its own civilians which, in the Israeli case would have amounted to giving Hamas a license to kill, or to do as much as possible to separate the civilians from the military targets and minimize casualties to the greatest possible extent. Hamas sought to merge them, using civilians as human shields. Israel chose the last option.

Hamas Military Strategy

As a matter of policy, Hamas fired its rockets from the rooftops of private homes that it commandeered as launch sites from unwilling owners. Hamas has consistently used the Palestinians as human “shields” and launch missiles from schools, hospitals, and mosques presuming that Israel would never fire back at those targets out of its concern for the safety of innocent Palestinian lives. As a tactic and policy directive, Hamas fighters intimidated residents whose homes were being used for storage and launching of rockets to not speak out to the press. Indeed, as noted above, Israel resisted doing so for years until it concluded that it had no choice but to fight back.

Israel’s Concerns about Morality in War
relative to the Gaza War against Hamas

(The following is taken from a news brief – “Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs” – Volume 9, No. 18 – February 4, 2010 by Professor Asa Kasher, the Laura Schwarz-Kipp Professor Emeritus of Professional Ethics and Philosophy of Practice, and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Asa is the Co author of the Israel Defense Forces Code of Ethics, “The Spirit of the IDF: Values and Basic Principles, “ 1994.)

Conventional warfare between two clearly identified armies of separate nation states is essentially different from battling an entity that is not clearly identifiable, that embeds itself in civilian neighborhoods, wears civilian clothing, and attacks both its opponent’s military forces as guerilla forces and as terrorist actions deliberately targeting civilian communities. Israel has been forced to fight both kinds of enemies. In Israel’s early history (relative to wars Israel fought in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973) the IDF fought organized armies of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and other units from Arab nations (including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc.). However, in recent years, the IDF has fought non-state terror organizations most recently in Lebanon against Hezbollah, in the West Bank against Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and other terrorist organizations, and in Gaza against Hamas terrorists.

Since the founding of the State of Israel, the morality of warfare is of utmost concern in the IDF and is emphasized in the IDF’s training of soldiers. Even so, Israel has been unfairly and preposterously charged with war crimes (i.e. genocide) and deliberate, pre-meditated, indiscriminate, and disproportionate assault upon civilians.

What is the truth about what Israel has done in its self-defense, and about the moral standards to which Israel holds the IDF and its solders when fighting both conventional and non-conventional war? The following points are important in seeking to understand the unique situation in which Israel finds itself vis a vis its enemies:

Israelis have fought against established national armies in wars between 1948 and 1973, and against terrorist organizations since. Conventional fighting against established armies and the ethical rules that govern such warfare are necessarily very different than those when the enemy is a terrorist organization fighting from within civilian populations.
The IDF Ethics document mandates a number of actions that Israel must take before deciding to go to war. These include the requirement that non-combatants must be warned that they are residents of a neighborhood where it is dangerous to stay should fighting begin. In Gaza, the IDF employed a variety of unprecedented efforts meant to minimize injury to non-combatants, including the massive distribution of warning leaflets, thousands of phone calls, and non-lethal warning fire to encourage civilians to leave the area.
No army in the world will endanger its soldiers in order to avoid hitting the warned neighbors when seeking out an enemy in such civilian populated areas. In such wars Israel justifiably favors the lives of its own soldiers (as does every nation in similar circumstances) over the lives of the well-warned neighbors in a terrorist embedded area, especially when Israel is operating in a territory that Israel herself does not effectively control (this is different than if fighting occurred in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem where Israel is in control). In such territories not under Israeli control Israel believes it does not bear the moral responsibility for properly separating between dangerous individuals and harmless ones (note: nor would any other country in the world).
Israel does not consider proportionality in numerical terms, but rather in the context of assessing existing threats and the measures that must be taken in order to avert those threats. Proportionality, therefore, is considered justifiable even when considering the tragic death of innocents if significant military advantage is gained as a result.
Three considerations Israel weighs before going to war:
1. Israel assesses whether a war is “just” before launching a campaign. She did so on December 27, 2008 after sustaining eight years of rocket attacks (i.e. 12,000 rockets launched against civilians in southern Israel from Hamas and others in Gaza).
2. Israel follows the principle of “last resort” which dictates that if a dispute can be solved without resort to military force and the inflicting of casualties, then the parties are obligated to do so. In other words, military force is justified only if all other alternatives have been exhausted. Relative to the Gaza war, Israel waited eight years and after 12,000 rockets were deliberately and incessantly fired upon uncontested Israeli civilian territory before launching a large-scale military response.
3. The third is the “probability of victory principle” that affirms that a military operation may be launched only if it has a reasonable chance of successfully achieving its aims. Such operations cannot be initiated as a symbolic gesture of bravery, if there is no chance of victory, or even if the gesture is for the purpose of restoring deterrence. The victory must be to eliminate a military threat and improve the security situation for Israel’s citizens.

Moral Standards of the IDF: The following are principles that Israeli soldiers are taught during training and expected to uphold:
1. The value of protecting the human dignity of every human being, even the most vile terrorist;
2. The sanctity of human life of Israel’s troops, Israel’s citizens, and others;
3. Tohar haneshek – Purity of arms --- i.e. purity of the usage of arms. Soldiers may use force only for accomplishing their mission, and nothing more. Anything beyond what is absolutely necessary is deemed immoral;
4. The minimizing of causalities, both of Israeli soldiers and non-combatants. In non-conventional fighting in which one side are terrorists that hide in civilian neighborhoods, Israel can only target those who are directly involved in the fighting against her, thereby justifying targeted killing when it is necessary to stop operations against the citizens of Israel. This is not a form of deterrence, which would be impermissible. Rather, it is for the purpose of eliminating a significant threat to Israeli lives. Deterrence is only a byproduct of an action.
5. The warning of non-combatants – In the Gaza war Israel distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets, made 150,000 warning phone calls, and used non-lethal warning fire in unprecedented numbers to warn civilians to leave their homes and neighborhoods when a legitimate military target was identified.
6. In cases when civilians never leave their homes because they are old, sick, caring for relatives, afraid that their homes will be looted, or because they claim they have no place to go, Israel feels it cannot be responsible for the protection of such civilians in areas not under its control, and that no army in the world would endanger its own soldiers to avoid hitting well-warned neighbors of an enemy or terrorist.

Answering Charges that Israel Targets Civilians

Israel has never deliberately targeted innocent civilians despite charges to the contrary in the United Nations and in the Goldstone Report (2009). Israel’s concern for innocent life is part of the culture of the Israel Defense Forces, part of an honor code developed since the establishment of the Jewish State called Tohar haneshek (lit. “purity of arms” – see above). Yes, mistakes have been made as they are always made in war, and individual Israeli soldiers have been guilty of excess, bad judgment and even criminality from time to time. In such cases Israel does indeed investigate, charges and tries guilty individuals of criminality and negligence. The claim in the Goldstone Report that Israel deliberately targeted civilians was based on non-corroborated Palestinian testimony. Israel’s justification for initiating the war was self-defense and the IDF’s stated goal was to destroy Hamas’ military capability after years of attacks on Israeli civilian populations. There are no quotes of Israel’s Prime Minister, Defense Minister, or Chief of Staff that would suggest otherwise, despite the UN Gaza Report’s statement to the contrary where it asserts that “statements by political and military leaders prior to and during the military operations in Gaza leave little doubt that disproportional destruction and violence against civilians were part of a deliberate policy.” No objective observer or reader of the record could come to this conclusion, suggesting that the report is blatantly politically biased.

IDF Internal Investigation of its Conduct of the Gaza War

The Israeli government published a reply (February, 2010) to the UNHRC report of its conduct of the War. The IDF undertook 150 probes of which 36 resulted in criminal prosecutions – 19 involved shooting toward civilians, and 17 involved using civilians as human shields, mistreating detainees and theft. The IDF investigation concluded the following:

The IDF disciplined a brigadier-general and a colonel for exceeding their authority, because they employed white phosphorus shells in a comparatively confined area where civilians could be jeopardized. Three innocent people were wounded. White phosphorus is used to illumine dark areas and create a cloud shield, but it also causes skin to burn.
Israel did not purposefully bomb wells in Jabalya to deprive the people there of fresh drinking water. In fact, the wells were situated within a Hamas compound.
Israel did not deliberately attack the wastewater treatment plant in Gaza City. But there is a good chance the plant was damaged by Hamas to hamper the movement of IDF soldiers.
Israel did not blow up the Bader flour factory to create a bread shortage in Gaza. But the site was a strategic high point in a Hamas-fortified zone. It was not the IDF that set the plant ablaze.
The destroyed Abu Askar family house was used to store Grad rockets. The family was telephoned and urged to leave before the house was shelled.

Beyond these, the war has left a serious humanitarian crisis including a lack of adequate clean water, open sewers, destroyed homes and buildings, and massive injuries. Were Gaza in Israeli territory responsibility for reconstruction and aid would be Israel’s alone. Though few other armies in the world would worry about the destruction left in the wake of a war in some other nation’s territory, it is a Jewish responsibility to do precisely that. To that end, Israel has consistently opened the the gates to Gaza to allow truck convoys to deliver food and medicine. However, this is not enough to address the serious difficulties left following the war. Many continue to blame Israel for these problems and claim that she is not only criminally responsible, but morally responsible. In fairness, given the circumstances that led to the war and Hamas’ abject refusal and inability to put the lives of its citizens first, the larger blame must be placed at the feet of Hamas who have governed Gaza with a strong hand since it conducted a coup against the democratically elected government of the Palestinian Authority in 2006. Since then it has squandered the years to help adequately build Gaza and alleviate suffering that had been part and parcel of Gazan life for decades.



Efforts to Create Moral Equivalence

One significant difference between Israel and Hamas is that as a matter of policy Hamas deliberately attacks civilians and Israel does not. Yes, critics of Israel often create a straw dog and charge that the two forces are morally equivalent in intent, but this is not the case.

Evidence of International Moral Hypocrisy
Unfair Excessive Criticism of Israel

Most estimates confirm that 1338 Palestinians were killed in a month of fighting in Gaza, of which Israel is fairly certain that a third were civilian causalities and two thirds were Hamas terrorists and members of other extremist Palestinian groups. A review of the actual members of the Hamas police force against which Israel fought during the war shows that no less than 91% of the fatalities among the Palestinian police (313 out of 343) were members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam military wing of Hamas or other terrorist groups. One of these policemen was responsible for the murder of three U.S. security men in northern Gaza in 2003.

This relatively small number of deaths compares with thousands that the United States killed in Faluja, Iraq in 2008 in far less time (During this operation, about 6000 Iraqis including 1200-2000 insurgents were killed. Of the city’s 50,000 buildings, some 10,000 were destroyed, including 60 mosques. In the mid-1980s 10,000 people killed by Syrian President Hafez el Assad the Syrian city of Hama, and King Hussein of Jordan killed 10,000 Palestinians in September, 1970 in what came to be known as “Black September.” Compare the death of innocents in Gaza as well to the thousands of murders taking place in Ghana, Afghanistan, Sudan, and many other places in the world today, and then consider how much United Nations attention has been directed at Israel while none is directed at places where far more serious and egregious human rights violations have and are occuring.

The disproportionate cry of “criminality” against the State of Israel when no such cry of protest is made by other nations to far greater death tolls suggests that there is a fundamental antipathy towards Israel by many nations and groups and little willingness to take on well-known brutal dictatorships in the Muslim world by the UNHRC.

No nation, including the United States, takes as much care to protect innocent civilians as does Israel – yet, she is condemned when fighting a war of self-defense. European governments, many of which are influenced by a very small but growing Muslim population (currently 5%) is an ill omen.

In response to the question above – any reasonable person would have to conclude that, yes, Israel is being unfairly maligned by its critics. It is interesting to note that there was a strange silence during the Gaza War from the leaders of moderate Arab nations. Hamas is not popular among these nations because of its Muslim extremism and links with Iran. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt were said to secretly hope that Israel would change the balance of power in the Palestinian areas and buttress the more moderate Fatah in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Ironically, despite the widespread destruction in Gaza provoked over a period of years, Hamas has grown in popularity politically than ever before.


The Goldstone Report

The Goldstone Report (with the participation and cooperation only of Hamas – Israel refused to work with any UN Agency because of its mistrust of past UN actions towards Israel) accused both Hamas and Israel of having committed war crimes. The UNHRC then went one step further. It took the Goldstone Report and crafted a resolution in the General Assembly that condemned only Israel as guilty of war crimes, making no mention of Hamas having fired 12,000 missiles on civilian targets in southern Israel or embedding itself in civilian neighborhoods, mosques, schools, hospitals and clinics. Nor did the UNHRC account for a new kind of warfare, not between armies, but between one nation (Israel acting in self defense against terrorist attacks on its civilians over a period of years) and Hamas which used civilians as human shields as it aggressively fired missiles into uncontested Israeli territory. One member of the commission, Professor Christine Chinkin, charged as a co-signer to a published letter in the London Times on January 11, 2009, before she joined the mission and only a week after the war began, when judgments would have been completely premature, that “Israel’s actions amounted to aggression and not self-defense.”

The Goldstone Report alleges that Israel deliberately attacked non-combatants as a matter of policy.

Comparing Israel to Nazi Germany

The comparison has been made by haters of Israel that Israel has acted in Gaza as the Nazis had acted towards the Jews during the Holocaust. This obscene effort to attach moral equivalency to Israel’s legitimate actions of self-defense completely disregards the question of scale and intent – genocidal murder by the Nazis on the one hand and self-defense while making every effort to avoid civilian casualties by Israel on the other. Leading international military experts have said that never in the history of warfare has one nation, Israel, gone to such lengths to avoid civilian deaths. One must conclude that anyone who makes such a comparison is operating from a position of hatred and anti-Semitism, not legitimate critique.

The Long-Term Effects of the Gaza Report

The UN Human Rights Commission’s report condemning Israel’s action in Gaza with no condemnation of Hamas’ years of attacks on Israeli civilians and Hamas using its own Palestinian civilians as human shields was a victory of Hamas and its international terrorist strategy, which can be seen in its reaction to the report. Musa Abu Marzuk, the second-in-command of Hamas, said in an interview with Al Arabiya in October, 2009 following the UN Human Rights Council endorsement of the report: “The report acquits Hamas almost entirely.” The Report calls for an escrow account to be established for compensating Palestinian victims, and for Israel to contribute to that account. But no similar measure of remuneration is proposed for Israel’s victims. The report calls on state parties to the Geneva Conventions to open investigations of Israelis for war-crimes, that could lead to more politicized complaints against Israeli officers in Europe, while Hamas commanders are not criticized. It is to be remembered that both the US Government and the European Union have deemed Hamas an international terrorist organization.

A Down Home Texas Hanukkah.... And Shabbat Shalom to All of You!

What Goes Around Comes Around...

Several Observations:

Supreme Court justice Sam Alito could be seen mouthing the words "not true" as Obama excoriated the court for its decision in in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, but why is he surprised? Confirmed as a self described "non-activist" judge during his confirmation hearings, Alito was part of the five to four majority that overturned a hundred years of settled law on campaign finance law, opening the door to unlimited corporate spending in elections. In what world could this be a good idea? In truth, the door was cracked open some years ago (Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976) when the Supremes affirmed that writing a check is the same as political speech, which seems a dubious proposition, at best. This latest ruling should have us all worried about further perversions of the political process.


Sarkozy, the Burka, and Jewish History...
This week in France brought legislation aimed to outlaw the wearing of the Muslim full-body veil called the "Burka" for any woman wanting to access public services, e.g. at a gov't office, or a school, or a hospital, etc. I was struck by a historical irony. France is the very place where Jews were first offered the possibility of being citizens of a modern nation state. The year was 1793, the person making the offer was Napoleon, and the Jewish notables he had assembled were only to happy to accede to his demands: be a Jew at home and a Frenchman in the street. As long as Jews were willing to shed their distinctive rituals and habits, and swear never to become a fifth column with France, they were to be welcomed with open arms.

The values of "liberte, egalite, fraternite," still inform social discourse in France. Sarkozy is playing the same role defined by Napoleon: telling the newcomers that they are welcome as long as they are willing to "look like us."

While generations of our forebears made similar moves to shed
the distinctive clothing and culture of European Jewry when they President Sarkozy Napoleon Bonaparte
arrived at these shores, the ethos has changed markedly. Today,
most American Jews would identify attempts to outlaw the Burka as repressive and discriminatory. In France, however, they are following the script written two hundred years ago.