“I have to believe!” Self-Delusion and the Two-State Solution (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

It comes up every time someone wistful about peace discusses the two-state solution. “I have to believe” or “I must believe” they say in regard to two states for two peoples. When I hear another robotic pronouncement insisting they must or have to believe in the two-state solution, or peace itself, I always think, “Why must you believe? Why do you have to believe something so obviously false?”

There won’t be a two-state solution, because none of the actual players want this. The Arabs don’t want a two-state solution and neither do the Jews. By the end of October 2023, in fact, support for the two-state solution had dipped to 28.6% of Israeli Jews, while 24% of the Arabs Palestinians supported a two-state solution, down from 59% in 2012. By now, that support—on both sides—will surely have dropped even further.

That’s because two states for two peoples doesn’t solve anything. It is only a nonstarter idea imposed by people who live outside the arena where this longstanding war against the Jews is taking place. The Arabs don’t want two states. They want one state, Judenrein. The Jews don’t want two states, because why should they be required to give up sovereign Jewish territory at all, let alone to those who plague them? That would not be a “solution” but a form of capitulation and subsequent suicide.

Despite the polls and the nonsensical nature of the two-state solution concept itself, liberals continue to proclaim that they “have to” or “must” believe that peace is possible, and that only two states for two people can get us there.

Take the recent hour-long podcast “’I Was Wrong About Antisemitism.’ Sheryl Sandberg on Waking Up,” on Honestly with Bari Weiss. I found myself enthralled, listening to the conversation between these two liberal, intelligent Jewish women, as they discussed Sandberg’s documentary, Screams Before Silence, October 7, Judaism, antisemitism, and politics. The two women had clearly both undergone a sort of culture shock to witness their colleagues’ indifference to the plight of Israeli victims of sexual abuse. It was worse for them still, to hear allowances and excuses made for rapists, in the case where the raped are Jews:

No matter what you believe, we have to stand united against clear use of sexual violence, and then people were still not believing it so I helped organize a conference at the UN where we brought these witnesses who stood there and cried and said “Here's what I saw, what I saw with my own eyes,” and then I took those same witnesses to parliaments in Europe where I certainly think they need to do this, and then we still were having some denial and a whole bunch of silence and some people speaking out, “It's never so black and white.”

Sandberg had worked hard for women’s causes over the years, but now that Jews were the victims, all the women she’d supported and believed were turning their backs, and worse. Some of them were blaming the victims. The general consensus? Believe all women, except when they are Jews. It was a painful revelation for Sandberg. And it woke up something in her Jewish—and liberal—consciousness.

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A post shared by Sheryl Sandberg (@sherylsandberg)

But that consciousness, thus far, only goes so far. Bless Sheryl Sandberg, truly, for documenting sexual violence on and in the wake of October 7. You can see that something changed for Sandberg in the days and months after the massacre, that drove her to do the film. And still, and perhaps all the more so, she “has to believe” in a two-state solution—stubbornly persists in believing what will never be (emphasis added):

What I would say is I think it's made me realize how much harder it's going to be to get to the solution that I still have to believe in. I don't think there's another solution other than two states, but it has to be two states run by people who want their neighbors to live in peace and prosperity.

It flies in the face of all Sandberg has faced and learned since October 7, and yet she persists in forcing herself to maintain hope in a lie, a false dynamic. Why? How does it serve her? 

 

But Sandberg is not unique in insisting on believing something that in reality is a nonsense idea. Ehud Olmert, who served as Israel’s prime minister from 2006-2009, and who served 16 months of a 27-month prison sentence on corruption charges besides, also feels compelled to believe a fictional fairytale is true, or so he says. Rolf Dobelli, founder of WORLD.MINDS interviewed Olmert in 2023 for Politico, and brought up the subject of the two-state solution (emphasis added):

Dobelli: You’ve been a proponent of the two-state solution for a long time. Do you think the time has arrived to finally implement it?

Olmert: First of all, I think that it is the only real political solution for this lifelong conflict between Israel and Palestinian states. There is no other. Therefore, I have to believe that this is possible.

Olmert did more than pay lip service to the insane idea of a two-state solution. In 2008, he promised to give the Arabs up to 94 percent of the land they wanted for a state of their own. Naturally, the Arabs spurned Olmert’s attempts to woo them with land. For the Arabs it’s all or nothing. One state for one people, and they don’t mean Jews.

It doesn’t seem to matter how smart you are, or highly placed. People have this need to believe in what will never, and can never be, two states for two people living side by side in peace.

Take Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State at the time of Olmert’s temerarious 2008 offer. In 2011, looking back at that time, she wrote: “The conditions were almost ripe for a deal on our watch, but not quite. Still, I have to believe that sooner or later, there will be a two-state solution. There is no peaceful alternative.”

It wasn’t the first time Rice had said this. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript of a meeting she had with President Mahmoud Abbas in 2005 (emphasis added):

Remarks With Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas After Their Meeting

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
The Muqata
Ramallah
February 7, 2005

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I would just note that in the Palestinian national elections, President Abbas got numbers that would have made any American president extremely happy. It was a very strong vote for his program of a peaceful resolution to the conflict, of peace with the neighbor Israel, of democratic reform and of reconstruction and development to improve the lives of the Palestinian people. I have to believe that what the Palestinian people were responding to is the opportunity to have their children grow up in an environment of peace and opportunity and that is what the president won his election on. We are going to be supportive partners for him and for his leadership as they try and realize that vision for the Palestinian people.

Tom Phillips, British ambassador to Israel from 2006-2010, also pled to believe in a falsehood, in an undated article appearing in The JC:

“If you look at the Palestinian story and the depth of their sense of victimhood — ‘we lost our homes, we have a right of return’ — they must compromise as well. Each side must compromise on an issue that touches its identity. That is going to require great leadership on both sides. I have to believe there is the leadership to do that,” said the ambassador.

But why? Why does anyone “have to believe” there is Arab leadership with the will to make peace, when no such leadership exists?

On October 24, 2023, Jake Tapper of CNN, interviewed Roy Yellin, director of public outreach of the fifth column anti-Israel organization B’Tselem. Yellin too, is delusional, forcing himself to believe what can never be. It’s almost like he’s trying to persuade himself (emphasis added):

I have to believe that in order to stay here. And I do believe that, the only option is to find a way to live with Palestinians, as equal. That I do believe that only we provide people on the other side with full, complete human rights, future, equality, democratic norms. Only like that we can live together.

Academics, too—people you’d expect to be at least slightly intelligent—spout the mantra, resolved to believe a whopper. Here is Janet Freedman of the Brandeis University Women’s Research Center, writing on Feminism and Zionism in 2017 (emphasis added):

I have found that when I offer my definition of Zionism – the right of Israel to exist as a state – those with whom I am speaking usually agree with me. Yet in recent times, there are those who do not, and as eager as I am to embrace coalition politics on a wide range of issues, if a person or group does not support this basic assumption, I will seek others with whom to work toward a resolution of the serious, but, I must believe, still resolvable Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

In seemingly every sphere of society, you can find people pledged to believe something that is not true. Jared Stein, for example, a senior account executive with Customer.io, a "customer engagement platform for tech-savvy marketers" wrote a kumbaya-style essay for LinkedIn about how he chooses to perceive the post-October 7 anti-Israel protesters (emphasis added):

I have to believe that the people marching across the world want the same thing that I do for Israelis and Palestinians - self-determination. Security. Peace. We're all on the same team and should be marching together.

 Just try it Bub, and see what happens. Presumably with a name like “Jared Stein,” you won’t last very long—and probably not long enough to realize the extent to which you are self-deluded.

Tova Leigh is a mommy blogger. Or at least she was until she turned 40. That’s when she released her first book, ‘F*cked at 40: Life Beyond Suburbia, Monogamy and Stretch Marks’ in which “Tova takes the reader on her journey of rediscovering who she is after motherhood and beyond the norms society forces upon women, whilst encouraging them to break free and just be themselves.”

Leigh, too, has fallen sway to the demented self-assertion that she really should believe something stupid and untrue (emphasis added):

There is distrust between these two people that runs so deep that sometimes I wonder if it will ever be bridged. 

But I want to believe that the people who are ripping down posters of kidnapped babies or chanting "gas the Jews" do not represent the majority of Palastinians, just like I'd like to believe that the people chanting "make Gaza a cemetery" do not represent the majority of Israelis.

Why? Because I would rather believe that more people are good than bad, otherwise I can't function in this world. 

Tova? Methinks thou dost profess too much. 

But at least Tova Leigh is honest. She simply can’t handle the truth—her brain can’t take it in. Leigh needs to believe a lie in order to function.

There seems to be a lot of that going around. Even or especially now, when the two-state solution has never been less desired by the relevant parties, and has never been so far away. People need to and must believe what they don’t really believe, or they wouldn’t be working so hard to persuade themselves. But it takes more than a will to believe to generate any real hope for the future, or the promise of a better, more peaceful life for Arabs and Jews.

Belief, manufactured or otherwise, won’t cure the Arabs of the enmity they have for the Jews. Two states, ten states, one hundred states won’t slake the Arab lust for Jewish blood. In the end, peace can only come when we acknowledge evil, look it squarely in the face, and banish it from the world. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Demolitions of thousands of Arab family homes aren't reported on @CNN or the @NYTimes

From The New Arab, May 26:

Residents in the Egyptian town of Al-Arish have expressed anger over security forces demolishing their homes to make way for a new port in the Suez Canal.

In videos shared by activists online, men, women and children can be seen visibly distressed while protesting against the destruction of their homes in the city's Al-Mina district.

The Sinai Foundation for Human Rights NGO said that Egyptian security forces launched a campaign to demolish homes in Arish in March this year despite residents' protests, according to Al-Jazeera Mubasher.

The group's director, Ahmed Salem, also stated that at least 20,000 people are impacted by the ongoing home demolitions.

Many residents who gave up their homes had complained that they were not adequately compensated despite promises, while others were at risk of homelessness due to insufficient funds to rent other properties, the NGO added.

Additionally, many handed over ownership of their homes due to pressure from security forces, while a number of homes were destroyed before compensation was even offered, leaving many homeless.

It is truly a shame that these people don't have the fortune of having their homes bulldozed by Israel. If they had, there would be crowds of reporters, dozens of NGOs interviewing them, and UN resolutions condemning the destruction.

But their homes are being destroyed by Egypt, so the world doesn't really care.

Egypt has been  destroying thousands of homes for years - and given lots of different reasons. 

These are said to be so Egypt can build new ports. In 2022, the reason was for Egypt to build new shopping malls and entertainment centers. From 2013-2021 the official reason was for security in the North Sinai. 

No one is questioning those reasons. After all.....the Egyptian government isn't Jewish.

(h/t Andrew)

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Is Amanpour Reluctant To Retract The "Shootout" Because It's Not The First Time She's Had To Apologize? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Why haven't CNN and Christiane Amanpour apologized for their obvious misstatement of fact from May 11?

A mother and her 2 daughters were gunned down by Palestinian terrorists on April 7. Even granted the squeamishness of the media when it comes to calling out Palestinian terrorism by name, Amanpour's report was outright shocking when she referred to the attack on unarmed women as a "shootout" --

 pic.twitter.com/PQUPTfHx5R

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 11, 2023

This takes blaming both sides to a whole new level.

And it is even more cringe-worthy considering the pat on the back that Amanpour gave herself in 2016:

I learned that as a journalist I could not be morally equivalent and nor could I present false factual equivalence. I insist on being truthful, not neutral.

Truthful, not neutral. pic.twitter.com/gJgNwFyvWf

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) October 13, 2016

The odd thing is that despite this boast, Amanpour did in fact publicly apologize for her bias in November 2020, after she used a reference to the Holocaust to attack Donald Trump. She started off with a reference to the anniversary of Kristallnacht:

It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity and, in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and proof.

After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth.

But, in this case, the reaction against Amanpour's outrageous comparison led to a public retraction: 

 We can only hope that the pressure applied again by these organizations and by the Israeli government will again produce an apology by Amanpour.

Why is it taking so long, especially considering the obvious inaccuracy in calling the murder of unarmed women a shootout?

One reason might be that CNN themselves compounded the error and face the possibility of having to retract a second biased report on the cable network.

On April 10, CNN correspondent Frederik Pleitgen described the attack during Isa Soares Tonight in an even more convoluted way :

But earlier in the West Bank, there was a shooting incident where a car received a bullet shot, or gunshots, with the family in it. It was a mother and her two daughters, and the two daughters were killed in that crash. [emphasis added]

Journalism at CNN has deteriorated so badly that beyond blaming guns instead of the terrorists who fire them, now the bullets are blamed. Or perhaps the car that "received" the bullets is at fault? Then the death of the mother and her 2 daughters is blamed on the crash, despite the fact that the terrorists fired into the car after the crash in order to make sure their victims were dead. And of course, there is no mention of Palestinian terrorists.

Still, this would be a good opportunity for CNN to follow through on their declared goal to be less partisan, as reported in June of last year:

CNN's new boss, Chris Licht, is evaluating whether personalities and programming that grew polarizing during the Trump era can adapt to the network's new priority to be less partisan...

Details: Licht wants to give personalities that may appear polarizing a chance to prove they're willing to uphold the network's values so that they don't tarnish CNN's journalism brand.

 Of course, Licht has in mind drawing Republicans back to the network. He is not overly concerned with how Israel views CNN. But if the pressure on CNN to fix an undeniable error can be maintained, CNN may see it to its advantage to have Amanpour apologize.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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.@UNRWA makes up a new international law to @CNN @NicRobertsonCNN @VascoCNN

Since the Jenin "massacre" story started fading from the headlines, CNN has a story about the family whose apartment was used by the IDF as a firing position against the group of Jenin terrorists planning a major attack.

No doubt the family was severely affected by being invaded by IDF troops. But the story says this:

Representatives of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) visited Jenin in the days after the incident and spoke to al-Hayja and his family. "Their children were noticeably traumatized," Adam Bouloukos, director of UNRWA Affairs in the West Bank told CNN. "This kind of invasion violates not only international law but common decency."

The UNRWA official is lying about international law and, as usual, the media doesn't bother to fact check.

The main relevant section of the Fourth Geneva Conventions, Article 53, says:

Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.    

The ICRC commentary to Article 53 says:

 The occupying forces may ...undertake the total or partial destruction of certain private or public property in the occupied territory when imperative military requirements so demand.

Furthermore, it will be for the Occupying Power to judge the importance of such military requirements. It is therefore to be feared that bad faith in the application of the reservation may render the proposed safeguard valueless; for unscrupulous recourse to the clause concerning military necessity would allow the Occupying Power to circumvent the prohibition set forth in the Convention. The Occupying Power must therefore try to interpret the clause in a reasonable manner: whenever it is felt essential to resort to destruction, the occupying authorities must try to keep a sense of proportion in comparing the military advantages to be gained with the damage done. 

Israel's right to attack military targets under international law is undisputed. It must minimize damage to civilian property as much as possible while protecting its own troops. And, in this case, it did: the only alternative would have been to bomb the targeted building from the air, which would have killed far more civilians. 

What about the IDF forcing the family who lived there to stay sheltered in one room while the bullets were flying? At first glance, it appears to be a violation of Article 31 of the Conventions:

No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties.

The ICRC commentary shows that it is not a blanket prohibition, because otherwise it contradicts other articles of the Convention:

[T]here is no question of absolute prohibition, as might be thought at first sight. The prohibition only applies in so far as the other provisions of the Convention do not implicitly or explicitly authorize a resort to coercion. Thus, Article 31 is subject to the unspoken reservation that force is permitted whenever it is necessary to use it in the application of measures taken under the Convention. ....Thus, a party to the conflict would be entitled to use coercion with regard to protected persons in order to compel respect for his right to requisition services Articles 40 , 51 ), to ensure the supply of foodstuffs, etc. to which he is entitled (Article 55, para. 2 , Article 57 ), to carry out the necessary evacuation measures (Article 49, para. 2 ), to remove public officials in occupied territories from their posts (Article 54, para. 2 ) and in regard to everything connected with internment (Articles 79 et sqq.).

Occupying powers can force civilians to do far more than stay in one place for several hours if needed for military purposes. And whie most articles about the Jenin operation try to airbrush the facts, no one has seriously argued that there was no military necessity behind it. 

CNN has every right to report on how Palestinians feel about their homes being invaded. But it does not have the right to report that Israel violated international law in doing so when it didn't.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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11/24 Links Pt1: Jerusalem Bombings Don't Mark Beginning of 3rd Intifada; Learn from the Druze and get results; Ending Jew-bashing at the UN; BBC pundit calls Jerusalem bombing 'Palestinian World Cup'

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Terror is still here, Israel needs secure government to stop it - editorial

Attacks that are carried out by lone attackers are usually more difficult to thwart. They can be perpetrated by people who wake up one morning and decide to try and kill some Jews without any prior warning. An attack like the one that took place on Wednesday is something else.

This was an attack that required the involvement of a number of people – to assemble the bombs and obtain the necessary ingredients, smuggle the bombs into Israel and plant them next to their targets.

This is already what is called “terrorist infrastructure,” the kind that likely is affiliated with a known organization, which should have been on the Israeli intelligence community’s watch list.

What this also shows is the need to focus now on establishing a government. The sooner there is a stable government in Jerusalem the sooner Israel will be able to create a clear strategy for how to stop the terrorist wave that is not going away. Fights about ministries and portfolios

Fights about ministries and portfolios might interest the politicians who are supposed to occupy those offices, but they are not of real interest to Israelis, who want to see safe streets and to know that their children – like Shechopek – are safe when they stand at a bus stop waiting to go to school.

Comments like the one made by an Army Radio reporter on Wednesday – that the attack was connected to the pending appointment of Itamar Ben-Gvir as the next public security minister – do not do any good. Neither are appearances at the scene soon after the crime by Ben-Gvir, who promised as presumptive internal security minister to wield an iron fist against terrorism.

After 75 years of statehood that has been marred by wars and terrorist attacks, we do not need to look for excuses for why Arab terrorists want to try and kill Israeli Jews. This has been part of the Israeli story since it was created as an independent state and will, sadly, likely continue as long as some of our neighbors refuse to come to terms with our existence here.

There was terrorism when there were left-wing governments in power and there was terrorism when there were right-wing governments. Israelis have not forgotten, for example, how Benjamin Netanyahu promised to topple Hamas in the Gaza Strip during an election campaign in 2009 and how through 12 consecutive years as prime minister he refrained from ordering the IDF to do so.

Netanyahu was quick to respond to Wednesday’s attack, saying his administration would once again make the country safe. What Israelis need right now is security, not boasting of how the incoming government is going to do things differently. Let’s hope they can put their actions where their mouths are.

David Singer: Ending Jew-bashing at the UN

The United Nations favourite sport – Jew bashing - was on full display this past week at the 77th Session of the United Nations Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) - which approved six draft resolutions - all highly critical of Israel.

One of these draft resolutions - approved by 98 voting in favour to 17 against, with 52 abstentions - was titled “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” (document A/C.4/77/L.12/Rev.1).

By its terms, the UN General Assembly would demand that Israel cease:
all measures that violate the human rights of the Palestinian people, including the killing and injuring of civilians,
the arbitrary detention and imprisonment of civilians,
the forced displacement of civilians
the transfer of its own population into the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”
and that:
“the General Assembly should request the International Court of Justice to render urgently an advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967”.

Vituperative verbal attacks on the Jewish State made by Bangladesh, Venezuela, South Africa, Iran, Libya, Niger, Türkiye, Algeria, Brunei Darussalam, Namibia, Indonesia, Kuwait, Japan, Qatar, Lebanon, Sudan, Malaysia and Yemen, all bastions of civil liberties, ensured Jew-bashing would continue at the United Nations whilst the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict remains unresolved.

It is unacceptable for the ICJ to deliver opinion on Israel, West Bank

THE HISTORICAL, political and legal issues are extremely complex. An Israeli take on them was set out in convincing detail in a recent study by Professor Abraham Sion, which he called, “To whom was the promised land promised?” Sion is a former deputy state attorney of Israel and is a professor emeritus of law at Ariel University. If the world were governed by reason, logic and conscientious adherence to the rule of law, Sion’s book would be a game changer.

He submitted the entire legal process leading to the establishment of Israel to meticulous forensic examination and he demonstrates beyond any doubt that judicial rulings from the UN, the EU, the ICJ and elsewhere have often been at odds with a scrupulous interpretation of their legal basis. Over the past few decades, international bodies have reached a consensus that the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem are Palestinian territories, and that Israeli towns and cities in Judea and Samaria are illegal. Sion uncovers the solid legal building blocks that have been ignored or overlooked and that prove different.

In short, he demonstrates with chapter and verse that the almost universally accepted consensus on Israel’s legal position regarding the West Bank, settlements and Jerusalem is legally flawed.

In undertaking his scrupulous legal analysis, Sion’s original purpose was to ascertain who owned the legal right to the territory of Mandatory Palestine under international law. He identified the two competitors as the Arab nation on the one hand and the Jewish people on the other. Concerned solely with the legal position and not with political or related issues, he set out to establish the legal rights under the international law of both parties.

Sion demonstrates that in concluding that Israel is illegally occupying territory, international bodies never refer to the treaties that shaped the legal structure of the Middle East. He shows that the rights derived from those binding international commitments were still valid when Israel occupied the West Bank.

Sion is not alone in reaching conclusions like these, but of course, they have never been tested openly in any international judicial forum. If in due course the UN General Assembly asks the ICJ for an opinion, how could the court possibly render a valid legal determination without having the issues raised by Sion and many others argued before it?

On the very day that the UN committee voted to appeal to the ICJ for an opinion – November 11 – the ICJ began public hearings in The Hague in a long-running dispute between Venezuela and the former British colony of Guyana on the issue of the border between them. Each party is presenting its case to the court in preliminary hearings scheduled to last until November 22. The proceedings are not only open to the public but they are being videoed and publicized widely on social media.

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11/14 Links Pt2: Israel Deserves Better than the NYTs Prophet of Doom; Chappelle and normalizing black antisemitism; CNN Producer Tweeted ‘#TeamHitler,’ Hamas Terrorists ‘Freedom Fighters’

From Ian:

Braving bigotry and enemy fire, Jews served the Union valiantly during the Civil War

Sgt. Leopold Karpeles had a dangerous job. Serving in the 57th Massachusetts Infantry’s E Company during the American Civil War, he was a color bearer, which meant carrying a flag that identified his unit’s position — a necessary role, but one that invariably drew attention from the enemy. In May 1864, his actions won him the Medal of Honor — a decoration created during the conflict. His citation credited him with encouraging fleeing men to reform ranks and drive back the Confederates during the Battle of the Wilderness in northern Virginia.

Karpeles’s story was one of the more prominent accounts of Jews in the US Army during the Civil War. A new book, “Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army,” by Adam D. Mendelsohn, director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town, explores the wider narrative around Jews serving in America’s bloodiest conflict. Its release is scheduled for November 15, just a few days after Veterans Day.

“Individual cases obviously gave life and color,” Mendelsohn told The Times of Israel, including when it came to “their decision to enlist, their experience in the army — which was not an easy one, particularly for Jews.”

On the battlefield, there was deadly combat and fear, including the terror Karpeles experienced in Virginia. Jews in uniform also faced ignorance, antisemitism or both from fellow servicemembers and higher-ups. Notoriously, in General Orders No. 11, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews as a class from the war department he commanded in the American South in December 1862.

“Clearly, in the senior ranks of the army, we see in [William T.] Sherman, Grant, [Benjamin] Butler, others, echoing views current in American society at the time of Jewish speculators and shirkers, profiting at the expense of the Union,” Mendelsohn said. “All these things ultimately came to a head in Grant’s order.”

Yet there were also interfaith friendships formed through mutual dependence during wartime.

“What I sensed in the data was the nature of comradeship,” Mendelsohn said. “Serving alongside each other, the experience of fighting together, does bring down the barriers.”

After the war, many Jews joined a nationwide veterans movement called the Grand Army of the Republic, with some even taking leadership roles. While the book states that Jewish veterans were largely unrecognized immediately after the war out of a national desire to move on, this changed several decades later. In the 1890s, the Hebrew Union Veterans Association was established amid a wave of antisemitism sweeping the nation.

The antisemitic history of the Union Army and the US civil war - opinion

The contractor, smuggler, speculator and shirker, however, were more than just figures of scorn. Jews and other “shoddy aristocrats” came to be seen as the creators and beneficiaries of the new economic and social order produced by the war. This “shoddy aristocracy” — whose morals and manners marked them as undesirable, whose profits were ill gained, and whose power derived from money alone — was imagined to lord it over a new and unjust social heap summoned into being by the chaos and disruption of war.

Even as the heated rhetoric of the war years receded after 1865, these ideas remained primed for action. They were returned to service in the Gilded Age.

It was no coincidence that the episode traditionally identified as initiating modern antisemitism in America — the exclusion of Joseph Seligman by Henry Hilton from the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs on May 31, 1877 — had at its center a man who had made a fortune as a contractor and banker during the Civil War. Seligman, a friend of President Grant, was viewed as an exemplar of the new capitalism that was remaking America.

Henry Hilton slandered Seligman as “shoddy—false—squeezing—unmanly,” a social climber who “has to push himself upon the polite.” Hilton drew upon themes familiar from wartime antisemitism: the Jew as speculator who trafficked in credit and debt; the Jew as obsequious ingratiator who attached himself to the powerful; the Jew as profiteer who advanced by improper means; the Jew as vulgarian who flaunted his (and her) obscene wealth and did not know his (or her) place; and the Jew as overlord whose money allowed him (or her) to displace others. In short, the “Seligman Jew” was the “shoddy aristocrat” by another name.

In an age of inequality and excess, the antisemite imagined the Jew as embodying all that was wrong with American capitalism. And during an age of mass immigration from Romania and the Russian Empire, they soon added another theme familiar from General Butler’s wartime diatribe: The Jew could not be trusted to become fully American.

Sadly, even as Louis Gratz, Max Glass and many other Jewish soldiers became American by serving in the Union army, the Civil War produced a range of pernicious ideas about Jews that have proven remarkably durable. We have escaped the everyday torments that afflicted Max Glass, but are still haunted in the present by the fantasies of Benjamin Butler and Henry Hilton.

A review of 'Woke Antisemitism', by David Bernstein

The American linguist and political commentator John McWhorter coined the term Woke Racism to refer to the latest wave of elite, radical, ‘anti-racist’ campaigners who posit that racism is so deeply embedded in the fabric of American life that it’s impervious to traditional civil rights and anti-racist legislation.

In order to level the playing field, liberal democratic systems of government – which aren’t up to the Utopian task of achieving perfect racial parity – must be radically re-constituted to allow for what Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How To Be An Anti-Racist”, refers to un-ironically as “anti-racist discrimination” against groups who are ‘disproportionately successful’.

The only thing that matters to such campaigners is the racial disparity in economic and social outcomes, which is viewed as sufficient evidence to demonstrate racism. Not only are all other possible factors for unequal results ignored, but it’s considered racist to even consider other explanations.

Thus, “privileged” whites and those labeled as “white adjacent” must accept a future where they will face ‘progressive bigotry’ until there’s complete racial parity in all areas of life.

Though the proponents of this Woke Racism typically focus only on the Black-White paradigm, the question of where Jews (and other successful, yet historically disadvantaged minorities) stand within this racial binary is rarely prominent within the public discourse.

Jason D. Greenblatt: Israel Deserves Better than the New York Times' Prophet of Doom

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote last week that in the new Israeli government coalition, Benjamin Netanyahu will soon preside over a parade of right-wing horribles whose very existence dooms Israel itself. Friedman then makes a giant leap of logic to suggest that if Jews in America share his distaste for two members of the new Israeli government, they will turn their backs on Israel once and for all. Apparently, these days, members of the Israeli government must pass muster not just with Israeli voters but also with newspaper columnists like Friedman - when in fact Israel, like the U.S., gets to choose its own leaders through free and fair elections.

Friedman claims that Arab countries entered the Abraham Accords only because "they wanted to trade with Israel." First, there's nothing wrong with that. And second, the Arab nations made peace with Israel because they're tired of pointless, expensive hostilities and because they recognize a common enemy in Iran. Friedman ought to have more respect for the courageous Arab governments that normalized their relations with Israel, and for those who may have quietly supported it from behind closed doors.

I abhor Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' anti-American comments, his payments to Palestinians to reward them for harming and murdering Israelis, and his comments about the Holocaust - yet I would still work with Palestinians and their leaders to try to improve their lives and seek peace between them and Israel. We don't burn everything down just because we disagree, however strongly, with the views of some of those in power.

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10/26 Links Pt2: After West Jerusalem shift, will Australian Labor also turn on Israel at the UN?; Will canceling Kanye West turn the tide on anti-Semitism?; What Explains Ireland's Extreme Antisemitism?

From Ian:

Dave Sharma: After West Jerusalem shift, will Labor also turn on Israel at the UN?

The government’s signalling that it no longer considers Israel to be sovereign over West Jerusalem leads to some odd conclusions.

Far from advancing the cause of peace, which Labor professes to support, this reversal only sets peace back. The only states and entities that assert Israel has no claim to West Jerusalem are the same ones that assert Israel has no entitlement to a sovereign state whatsoever: Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is very odd company for the Labor government to be keeping.

Will Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong now refuse to meet Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as countless of their Labor predecessors have done, and as the UAE Foreign Minister did just in September? If Labor considers West Jerusalem to now be disputed territory, this is the only feasible conclusion.

Of equal importance, does this presage a larger shift in Labor’s attitude towards Israel in international forums?

The Howard government in 2004 altered Australia’s voting position on a number of annual, one-sided UN General Assembly Resolutions that single out Israel as the obstacle to peace, whilst remaining silent on the obligations of other parties. Under the Rudd/Gillard governments, many of these positions were reversed, before being reversed again under subsequent Coalition governments. It appears likely that the Albanese government will once again shift these votes.

The bigger question though is whether the government will follow through on the commitment in the ALP’s official platform to unilaterally recognise a state of Palestine, absent the usual criteria for statehood. In 2021, in a motion introduced by Wong, Labor’s national conference adopted this as official policy.

If the Albanese government goes through with this, it would separate Australia from some of its closest allies and partners, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand, France, Germany and Canada.

A profound shift such as this would not make the emergence of a future Palestinian state any more likely. But it would break a strong Labor tradition of support for the state of Israel, and harm one of Australia’s closest and most valuable relationships in the Middle East.

Foreign policy should proceed on the basis of established facts and national interests. Labor’s approach risks ignoring both.

Sky News corrects claim that Australia 'recognised Tel Aviv' as capital

We tweeted several Sky News [UK] editors and journalsts before one responded, upholding our complaint regarding an Oct. 19 Sky News article, written by Amarachi Orie, falsely claiming that Australia recognised Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital. The article in question focused on news that officials in Canberra had rescinded the previous government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

However, the country’s decision to no longer recognise Jerusalem didn’t mean that it therefore recognised Tel Aviv as the capital – as the official government statement on the matter from the foreign ministry shows.

David Collier: What Explains Ireland's Extreme Antisemitism?

Collier said there are different causes behind the virulent anti-Zionist/anti-Israel atmosphere in Ireland. The first is the "distinct anticolonial strand going through the whole of Irish politics" which is evident in the rise of Sinn Fein, "historically the Republican Independence Movement" political party. Many Irish people, who "hate England," mistakenly believe "Britain gave the Jews Israel" and are convinced that the Jewish State epitomizes "settler colonialism." Ironically, as Israel was being established post-1945, the Zionists fought to oust the British from its mandate in Palestine.

The second cause of rampant antisemitism in Ireland is found in the country's "strand" of "classic antisemitism," now seen coming from both the "far left and the far right." Collier pointed out that even though the Irish were "officially independent" during World War II, "many of the Irish Republicans sided with the Nazis." The third cause of Irish antisemitism is rooted in the second — particular "ideologies within Christianity", which are "very strong in the Irish Catholic Church." The church is replete with belief in "replacement ideology, supersessionism, or the idea ... the Christians are the new Jews."

That the Jews have returned to their ancient homeland in Israel creates a "major ideological problem" for the Catholic Church, driving it to align with the Palestinians. Collier said that Christian charities will donate to anti-Israel non-governmental organizations (NGO's), some of which are affiliated with Palestinian terrorist groups. He said an exception in Ireland to the widespread antisemitism is that Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and whose predominantly Protestant citizens identify with the British, tend to be pro-Israel.

The fourth and final issue driving Irish antisemitism, Collier said, is attributable to "Islamist extremism." Whereas the U.S. and England experienced Islamist attacks after mistakenly, over the past three decades, "placing the bar for extremism far ... too high," he said Europe is "paying a deep price for it now." In Ireland, which has not experienced a large influx of Muslim migration, the antisemites there share the same "anti-colonial, anti-imperial" messages with Islamists, whom "they've accepted ... wholesale." The Islamists, essentially, are "coming in speaking the same anti-colonial, anti-imperial messaging, that the Irish do." Collier said, "anti-Zionist rhetoric," unabashedly rife on Irish streets, also creates a "hostile environment" for Jewish students on campuses. He said there are mosques preaching hate, Irish universities with Islamist academics, and the local church, all in league "bashing the state of Israel."

Collier believes that Sinn Fein's growing popularity will be accompanied by an "escalation" of antisemitism in Ireland, which he tracks through social media. He is dismayed at the trends because he said Hitler and the Holocaust "didn't just happen." Rather, their emergence can be traced back to "European antisemitism and beyond it, Christian antisemitism."

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