Showing posts with label Opinion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Opinion. Show all posts

Thursday, February 02, 2017


 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Tuesday afternoon we started to hear that the IDF was preparing to remove the 40 families that live in the community of Amona, in the Binyamin region of Judea. Just now, a few moments ago, I heard on the radio that the evacuation (some prefer “expulsion”) is beginning. It doesn’t look like it will go smoothly.

To explain the situation in the fewest possible words, the community was built 20 years ago. A portion of it, about one half acre out of a total of 125 acres, is owned by Palestinian Arabs who were given title to the land by the King of Jordan, during the 19-year Jordanian occupation. About 15 more acres are registered in the names of Arabs who apparently do not exist.

The Supreme Court of Israel decided that the only acceptable remedy was to bulldoze the entire community. The Court did not accept the suggestion that the Arab “owners,” who had never utilized the land, could be paid compensation for it. The government developed a compromise that would have provided an alternative location nearby for some of the families, which the community agreed to. But this was stymied when additional Palestinians petitioned the court claiming to own that land. The residents were only told that the deal was off a few days ago.

The Palestinians have been assisted in their legal proceedings by the Israeli organization “Yesh Din.” Yesh Din received more than $4.6 million from foreign government bodies between 2012 and 2016. Foreign sources accounted for 93.5% of their total donations.  Yesh Din specializes in “lawfare” against Israel and the IDF.

This raises, yet again, a very fundamental question for the State of Israel. In a sentence, what are we?

Are we the nation-state of the Jewish people in its historical homeland, which derives its right to the land from both the biblical promise made to us by Hashem and the modern promise made by the international community in the Palestine Mandate, a right that we defended more than once by force of arms? Are we a Zionist state, in other words?

Or are we something else – a multinational state which exists at the pleasure of today’s post-nationalist, anti-Jewish international establishment? 

It would seem that the answer should be obvious, and it is to the great majority of Israeli Jews. But the state has not acted as though it believes in its own Zionist principles.

When the Jordanian occupation and its illegal annexation of land set aside for the Jewish people was ended in 1967, Israel did not annex Judea and Samaria, because its leadership was forced by its “friends” in Europe and the US to accept the idea of “land for peace.” Israel would give Judea and Samaria “back” to Jordan, for example, and Jordan would give us a peace treaty. 

The injustice inherent in this is obvious. Who gave Jordan the right to take that land in violation of international law and to ethnically cleanse it of Jews? How can we be asked to give something “back” that was ours in the first place? But this was our policy until King Hussein decided in 1988 that he didn’t want the hassle of trying to control the PLO, and transferred his “ownership” of the land to the PLO. And shortly thereafter, the Israeli government tried to continue the “land for peace” process with the PLO via the Oslo accords.

Israel never annexed the land it regained in 1967 (except for Jerusalem) and it even retained Jordanian law in Judea and Samaria. Because Israeli governments believed that some or all of the territory would ultimately be returned to Arab control, it treated it as occupied territory, despite the fact that, by the most reasonable interpretation of international law, for the first time since 1948 it was not under occupation.

24 years later and several wars and intifadas later, Israelis have finally come to realize that an exchange of land for peace won’t bring peace. Anyone with half a brain who looks at recent history (especially the results of the withdrawal from Gaza) and listens to what the Palestinians themselves say and do, understands that.

It’s often said that “surveys show that a majority of Israelis favor a 2-state solution.” That is correct, if the survey question is something like “Do you favor giving up the territories in return for peace and security?” The unfairness of this question is manifest if we rewrite it as follows: “If giving up the territories would bring peace and security, would you favor it?” 

Since giving up the territories would put a terrorist entity next door to Tel Aviv, and since the Arabs won’t even pretend to agree that they would give up their claims on Israel in return for the territories, and since the PLO is unstable and easily overthrown, the “if” clause of the conditional statement is certainly false. And virtually every Israeli knows this.

A religious Zionist also understands the importance to his or her spiritual life of the places mentioned in the tanach, like Hevron and many others. But even a secular Zionist appreciates the first words of the Declaration of Independence: 

ERETZ-ISRAEL was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

Virtually every Israeli knows this as well – except possibly much of our leadership and our legal establishment.

If the lessons of history, international law, and Zionist ideology (both religious and secular) were translated into action, the courts would find a way to legalize Amona and other communities that would also be fair to the Arabs. Ultimately, we would annex all of Eretz Israel.

Unfortunately, the government has yet to get clear of the “land for peace” mentality; and the legal establishment seems dedicated to beating us into the mold of the multinational, secular democratic state that former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak so much admired.

This needs to change. Fear of the international community is not a reason to deny our own birthright. Politicized institutions like the UN and the International Criminal Court have no moral authority, and no practical way to punish Israel. And there is absolutely no reason we must allow foreign agents like Yesh Din to continue to subvert our country.

In fact, now, while there is an American government that for the first time may itself be able to shake off the ideas of land for peace and the 2-state solution, is the perfect time for Israel to finally become the truly Zionist state that Jabotinsky, Begin and Ben-Gurion dreamed of.





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Wednesday, February 01, 2017


Moral panic. It's a term that was coined by Stanley Cohen in 1987 in his seminal work, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, and it perfectly describes the great uproar over Trump's immigration ban (not to mention his election). A moral panic, according to Cohen, is a random or intermittent event generating widespread concern that societal norms may be in peril. The moral panic is characterized by, “a condition, episode, person or group of persons [who] become defined as a threat to societal values and interests."

Now a moral panic doesn't just up and set itself on fire. It needs the media to light the match. The mass media, as Cohen explains, seizes on a potential episode of moral panic and styles things so as to exaggerate or amplify the facts. Soon enough, the event becomes a national issue (or as in the case of the immigration ban, international).

Cohen's theory goes that had the media stayed uninvolved, the issue at the center of the moral panic would have, of a certain, have remained a piddling local story, relevant only to those directly affected. The media's involvement is the sole catalyst for any moral panic, the only reason any issue (an immigration ban, Trump's election) can end up causing widespread fear and fascination.

So what you have with a moral panic is an event sensationalized by the media. The mass media then follows things up by putting out a call for action, a demand for some sort of punitive action, a response. This, Cohen calls, "control culture."

It is moral panic that drove the Women's March on Washington as a response to Trump's election. It is moral panic that motivated the protests at airports, and had synagogues issuing heartfelt statements of umbrage over the immigration ban. And it is the mass media that inflamed the masses and fomented these mass responses. It is the media controlling the culture.

It is upsetting to know that people are so easily maneuvered and exploited into making a hullabaloo over something simply because the media desires it so. To think that people allow themselves to serve as puppets, letting their strings be pulled this way and that in obeisance to someone else's agenda so far away out of sight that the common man doesn't even know it exists! But that is the way of all effective moral panics.

And of course, any moral panic worth its salt has a whole bunch of Jews clamoring for their outrage over the issue to be seen and heard. Like a fish, this Jewish response stinks from the head down, with rabbis culling comparisons to Jewish history as reason enough to organize and demonstrate. "We were refugees, too!" they cry, dignity and righteousness in their shrill collective voices.

Just like Cohen says, had the media not run with this, sensationalized it and demanded action, you would not now have rabbis up in arms and marching with signs. Without the media, the immigration ban would have been but a momentary blip on the screen, unnoticed, and unseen.

You know how I know this?

I know this because in 2005, 11,000 Jews were expelled from their homes in the Jewish State and there were no American rabbis protesting (save for the Modern Orthodox), no Conservative or Reform Jews holding signs or expressing indignation. These 11,000 of their Jewish brethren who were forcibly dragged out of their homes consisted of 8,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza and another 3,000 from Northern Samaria. They were expelled from their beautiful homes after a national referendum in the democratic State of Israel in which 65% of the Israeli people voted against the plan.
By Israel Defense Forces (The Evacuation of Neve Dekalim) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The effects of this expulsion reverberate until today. There remains a few hundred people who UNTIL NOW have no permanent housing solution. In the wake of the expulsion, families fell apart at the seams, with divorce rampant among the expellees. Heads of households had heart attacks and died, children lost their faith in God. It's documented.
By Israel Defense Forces (The Evacuation of Bedolach) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons 
Worst of all, rather than bring peace, the Expulsion, A/K/A "Disengagement" brought tens of thousands of missiles raining down on Israel from the very territory it ceded, from the place where those who were expelled had built beautiful homes and  businesses and schools and synagogues. The Arabs, instead of building homes and schools in the "gift" we gave them, built a terrorist enclave using what we gave them to target and kill us.
By Israel Defense Forces (The Evacuation of Shirat Hayam) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
But the Washington Post, CNN, and the New York Times, don't see the expulsion and subsequent homelessness, loss of income, and unemployment of 11,000 Jews in the same light as 90,000 people who have had their plans postponed for 120 days. And they don't care about the tens of thousands of missiles shot at us from the territory we gave them, from which we uprooted 11,000 Jewish people against their will, only 60 years after we were uprooted from Europe in the West, and Arab countries in the East.
By Israel Defense Forces (The Evacuation of Ganei Tal) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The Expulsion isn't on the media's list of moral panic material.

Because Jews.

And so, no rabbis (other than the settler-loving Modern Orthodox) marched on behalf of the 11,000 Jews forcibly taken from their homes and left homeless with nothing. No indignation was expressed at the pulpit. No marches took place. No signs were held. No aid extended.
By Israel Defense Forces (The Evacuation of Kfar Hayam) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
No interviews appeared. It wasn't seen as a Jewish cause. No parallels in Jewish history were found. 

No rabbis issued heartfelt words about Jews expelled from Speyer, Germany, or Spain, or England.
A street in the Judengasse in Speyer, Germany. (Wikimedia Commons)
There was no moral panic. Because no media. And so the Expulsion, known so mildly when it is spoken of at all as "Disengagement" remained and remains a local blip. A painful Israeli problem that doesn't touch the Jews in New York or Boston or Washington, outside of the Modern Orthodox that is, that last bastion, the final vestige of caring for Jews who live in places Arabs covet.

It is like science fiction to me, these puppets of the media, JINO's who cannot generate their own umbrage but can only be lit up by an outside force possessing interests completely at odds with Jewish philosophy. Trump's immigration ban may be awkwardly implemented and a serious inconvenience to 90,000, some of them leaving a war zone, but it is temporary, whereas the expulsion from Gaza was forever.

And still, you don't hear a peep. No Reform rabbi mentions them in a Rosh Hashana sermon. No Conservative congregation sends them things, the expellees. No one says boo. It's not even in their consciousness. They'd sooner have an empty seat at the Seder table for Harvey Milk than Anita Tucker, whose only crime was making the desert bloom with celery. (Dollars to donuts they've heard of him, but not of her.)
By Harvey Milk in 1978 at Mayor Moscone's Desk.jpg: Daniel Nicoletta derivative work: Hekerui (Harvey Milk in 1978 at Mayor Moscone's Desk.jpg) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Anita Tucker
All of this is especially relevant and ironic today, considering what is happening right now in Amona, as I write this blog piece. Israel expels 42 families from their homes because some "human rights" organization makes a claim their homes are built on private land, though no deed must be provided as proof, and though there is actually no proof that the homes were ever owned by Arabs. Flawed law is the only reason for this expulsion as no Arabs lost their homes as a result of the construction of these Jewish homes. No one lost property, no one was hurt.

Israel expels 42 families from Amona over a contrived legal technicality, but oh the irony, takes in 100 Syrian babies. And the mass media? Silent. Not on its agenda, so not on its clipboard of moral panic material. And so the Jews of America say nothing. Do nothing. Care nothing at all about the pain of these 42 families with nowhere to go, Jews like them.


They scorn their own—Jews—in favor of a moral panic about Arab refugees, typically the enemy of their people (as they are in Gaza, the place we gave them, and the reason for the expulsion of 11,000 innocent Jewish people against their will and the will of the people of Israel).

Such is the power of the media's hold over these empty-headed Jews. They have no brains of their own. They have no impetus to do a thing, unless the media tells them to do it.

It is sick and sad and scary and did I say sick?

Because it makes me want to vomit.

Because if you are susceptible to being drawn into a moral panic, but fail to be moved by the expulsion of the 11,000 Jews of Israel and their plight, then you are no longer human, let alone Jewish. Because Jews should only be accountable to their maker, and not to the media.

American Jewry, it is certain, is in extremis.



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Tuesday, January 31, 2017




It is 1967. What would become known as the Six Day War has begun and Menachem Begin, invited by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol to join an expanded emergency cabinet, has an idea.

There is a meeting in the basement shelter of the Knesset and the news is announced that Jordan has decided to join Egypt and Syria in battle. Begin and Labor Minister Yigal Allon suggest that the reaction to Jordan's shelling of Israel should be the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem, lost in the 1948 War following a UN ceasefire. Begin urges quick action before a similar ceasefire again leave the city divided.

Moshe Dayan opposes the idea based on the human cost of expected house-to-house fighting in addition to the potential damage to Christian and Muslim holy places -- leading to a world-wide outcry against Israel and opposition to Israeli control over Christian and Muslim holy places. Instead, Dayan suggests it would be enough to just surround the Old City and wait for it to fall.

Allon responds that the Jordanian lines were crumbling and Israel could go in. More to the point, it is essential for there to be a Jewish presence both deep within the Old City and on the Temple Mount itself.

In the end, a 4am news report from the BBC that the UN is planning to declare a ceasefire leads to another meeting where it is agreed to recapture the Old City. [Source: The Prime Minsters, by Yehuda Avner, p157-9]

The rest is history.

---

The issues then have not changed over the years when discussing the step of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Israeli reaction has.

The question of Congressional legislation to move the embassy came up during the 1984 presidential campaign. Democrats Walter Mondale and Gary Hart both came out in favor of the bill introduced by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynnihan, while President Reagen threatened to veto such a bill.

The response of an Israeli Foreign Ministry official at the time was less warm: "I'm very leery of trying to tread on a Congressional debate and an argument between the President and Congress, a constitutional problem of who runs foreign policy."

A decade later, in May 1995, news about what would become enacted that November as the Jerusalem Embassy Act, did not excite Israelis either. Prime Minister Rabin, suggested the Likud was behind it with the aim of "torpedoing" peace negotiations. Foreign Minister Peres tried to distance Israel from the bill, saying there was "no need for our involvement."

Fast-forward to today. During his presidential campaign, Trump made a point of talking about moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

And now he is the President.

Again, it is not so simple.

Moshe Feiglin, founder and chairman of the Zehut party, was interviewed the day after the elections -- and he predicted that once moving the embassy became a very real possibility, Netanyahu would not be any more enthusiastic or outspoken than past Israeli officials. See the video below, starting at 1:03:




Events seem to justify Feiglin's pessimism.

This past Friday, Marc Zell, chairman of Republicans overseas Israel indicated that the Israeli government did in fact have cold feet:

He followed up on his criticism the following day:

Zell even went so far as to imply that once Israel indicated its approval, plans for the embassy move could proceed right away



But when Haaretz published an interview with him the same day:
The co-chair of the Republicans Overseas organization in Israel, Marc Zell, says that recent foot-dragging by Donald Trump's White House on moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, is happening at Israel’s request.

Zell told Haaretz, citing both Israeli and U.S. sources, that “Trump has been unequivocally in favor of moving the embassy and remains so” but “he is proceeding cautiously because of concerns raised by Israeli officials.”
...Zell used Twitter again -- this time to walk back what he said:
For his part, Netanyahu came out out Sunday with an apparent response to Zell:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced support on Sunday for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem but mentioned no time frame, after a Republican activist accused Israel of pressing the Trump administration to delay the pledged step.
Even in welcoming the idea, Netanyahu appears cautious.

Now as in 1967, a mix of of the threat of Arab violence and world disapproval appears to be the issue.

Back then, there was no time to delay, as the threat of a missed opportunity was very real. Then again, who today is as blunt and influencial as Menachem Begin?

The question is how much time does Israel really have to take Trump up on his offer, before he too decides to put the offer on the back burner or take it off the table altogether.

After all, at heart -- Trump is a businessman.





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Sunday, January 29, 2017


Women's March poster (2017)
Future historians may find the recent "Women's March" interesting for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is that it nicely illustrates the tensions between the ideals of multiculturalism and universal human rights within contemporary western-left ideology.

Whatever else the march may have accomplished, however, it definitely propelled Linda Sarsour into the political night sky.

Sarsour is a Palestinian-American, pro-Sharia, Obama advisor, feminist, activist who also participated in the Standing Rock protests.

While she has a fascinating resume, the problem is that Sharia is a Muslim Supremacist judicial system and is, therefore, fundamentally incompatible with the Constitution of the United States.

It is out of this tension within the Left that the central ideals of multiculturalism (as represented by mass Muslim immigration into the West) and universal human rights (as represented by the right of women not to be stoned to death for the crime of being raped) are locked in a largely unspoken death-struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party and the progressive-movement.

The resolution of this contradiction between Islam and western political values will loom large in determining the lives of coming generations.


The Progressive-Left and the Multicultural Dilemma

It was out of the multicultural ideal that Angela Merkel and the European Union opened the doors of Western Europe to mass Muslim immigration in what is perhaps the most audacious social experiment in world history.

Much like the unwarranted optimism by westerners concerning the "Arab Spring" before it, many Europeans looked forward to the cultural enrichment of Europe by Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa. The horror of the Syrian civil war strained the heart-muscles of many westerners who wished to help a population devastated by widespread violence and civil strife. Meanwhile western politicians promoted the idea that Europe needed an influx of young workers for economic reasons, anyway.

In the progressive-left imagination, however, this multicultural ideal slips at the thought of Muslim rape gangs in Britain and the horrendous treatment of women under Sharia Law.

It staggers upon recognition that Islam, whatever else it may be, is a theological-political philosophy that, from the time of Muhammad until today, seeks to expand its territorial boundaries with no interest whatsoever in women's rights.

It should also be noted that beyond the liberal West (with the funny exception of Antarctica) there were no women's marches anywhere. There was a considerable dearth of women marching in Riyadh and Teheran and Mogadishu.

For some reason the women of the Middle East did not care to join their western counterparts in women's solidarity.

There were no pink "pussy hats" in the streets of Karbala or Kandahar or Ramallah.

Nonetheless, one can easily imagine how the authorities in those places would have reacted had there been... or is that a racist assumption?

Meanwhile, American Jewry is going through a dark night of the soul as it awakens to the fact that not only are progressives and Democrats increasingly hostile toward Israel, with only 33 percent of Democrats supportive of the Jewish state, but that they could not care less that young Islamists are driving Jews out of Europe.


Western Jews and the Multicultural Dilemma

If the Obama administration has taught Jews anything it is that the progressive-left and the Democratic Party have considerable empathy for Islamists. The source of that empathy is what philosopher Pascal Bruckner referred to as The Tyranny of Guilt. It is the growing sense - refined and promoted at the universities and within progressive-left circles - that Europeans owe a blood-debt to the rest of the world.

Related to this notion is the idea that the ongoing Arab-Muslim war against the Jews of the Middle East is a righteous struggle against western imperialism.

The slowly-dawning realization among progressive-left Jewry that their own political movement has turned against them is causing consternation and conflict within the community.

The Women's March froze out many progressive-left Jewish women because Linda Sarsour is a pro-Sharia anti-Zionist and the poster above reflects that. The chilling message is that Sharia, as represented by the hijab, is "as American as apple pie" and only feared by hard-right, racist, sexist "deplorables" of the sort despised by Hillary Clinton and that voted for Donald Trump. The flag as a hijab is meant to emphasize the compatibility of Sharia with American sensibilities, as the bright red lipstick suggests a nod toward western sexual-aesthetic mores.

While Sarsour claimed to stand for freedom at both Standing Rock and the post-inaugural streets of Washington D.C., and is unquestionably receiving more attention now than at any time in her White House-visiting past, she also argues that Sharia Law is a good thing that "We The People" should embrace.

Interest free loans and credit cards sounds terrific.

Who, outside of bankers, wouldn't want to see interest free loans and credit cards? Of course, she fails to reference the little Koranic details, such as the practice of public head-chopping, that remains so popular throughout much of the Islamic world.

The core of Sharia, beyond its generous money-lending practices and public brutality, is second and third-class non-citizenship for dhimmis within an Islamic theocracy. Of course, "protected" or dhimmi status is offered only to "people of the book" which includes Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians.

Everyone else caught within traditional Sharia-dominated societies received the choice of enslavement or death.

The highly-respected and recently deceased Professor Martin Gilbert reminds us that for Jews and Christians under Sharia in the Middle East:
There could be no building of new synagogues or churches.  Dhimmis could not ride horses, but only donkeys; they could not use saddles, but only ride sidesaddle.  Further, they could not employ a Muslim. Jews and Christians alike had to wear special hats, cloaks and shoes to mark them out from Muslims.  They were even obliged to carry signs on their clothing or to wear types and colors of clothing that would indicate they were not Muslims, while at the same time avoid clothing that had any association with Mohammed and Islam. Most notably, green clothing was forbidden...

Other aspects of dhimmi existence were that Jews - and also Christians - were not to be given Muslim names, were not to prevent anyone from converting to Islam, and were not to be allowed tombs that were higher than those of Muslims.  Men could enter public bathhouses only when they wore a special sign around their neck distinguishing them from Muslims, while women could not bathe with Muslim women and had to use separate bathhouses instead.  Sexual relations with a Muslim woman were forbidden, as was cursing the Prophet in public - an offense punishable by death.

Under dhimmi rules as they evolved, neither Jews nor Christians could carry guns, build new places of worship or repair old ones without permission,or build any place of worship that was higher than a mosque.  A non-Muslim could not inherit anything from a Muslim.  A non-Muslim man could not marry a Muslim woman, although a Muslim man could marry a Christian or a Jewish woman.

Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2010) 32 - 33.

Ideological Square Pegs


The western-left, including the Democratic party, desperately wants to see a harmonious integration of Muslims from the Middle East and Africa into North America, Europe, and Australia.

They do so out of a moral imperative grounded in multiculturalism and universal human rights.

Thus pro-Israel Jewish progressives throughout the western world look at one another with their palms in the air saying, "What the hell do we do now?"

And this, it must be understood, points directly to a central problem not only between the Jewish and the western-left, but between the western-left and its own ideals.

You cannot stand for social justice if you give a pass to slavery throughout much of the Muslim world. You do not stand for social justice if you allow, without complaint, the hundreds of millions of Arab and Muslim women treated as chattel according to Sharia Law or to the genocidal Jew hatred that infuses between 75 and 95 percent of the Arab-Muslim Middle East.

Yet, at the same time progressives look upon the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors as something akin to Nazis if we don't do backflips at the thought of a mass Arab-Muslim influx into the United States.

Left, right, or center, the western Jewish community does not care about the skin color of immigrants.

We do not care about what particular patch of Earth that they happen to come from.

What we do care about is the transmission of Koranically-based hatred for the infidel onto the lands of our families because we've been down this road before.

If this makes us racist then it is equivalent to Jewish "racism" toward Nazis during World War II.

The problem is not Arabs or Africans or any other ethnic group. The problem is not even most Muslims who want nothing more than to raise their families and earn a living in peace.

The problem is Islam in its political aspect and that is precisely what the Left cannot bring itself to face.


Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.









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Friday, January 27, 2017





Numbers, in and of themselves are innocuous, it is the actions of people that imbue them with meaning.

The teenager wasn’t asked when the Nazis tattooed a number on his arm. A decision made by men declared that men, women and children could be catalogued, used and discarded. Numbers labeled them as less than human.

Unlike so many others beside him, by some miracle (or many small ones) the teenager survived Auschwitz. He moved to America, got married and had a family. Over the years, throughout all his activities, no matter what he accomplished, Gerhard Maschkowski always carried with him the reminder that once he was less than human: the number that branded him a Jew.

71 years after liberation from Auschwitz the numbers on Gerhard’s arm have faded, less clear but always there. Time has not, cannot, erase the numbers from his arm or the memories that accompany them.

Sometimes numbers are a lot more than just numbers.

Sometimes the contrast between one set of numbers and another is nothing short of breathtaking.

Militaries worldwide issue their soldiers identification tags: “dog tags.” Each army decides to put different pieces of information on the tag. IDF tags have the soldier’s first and last name and their military identification number which, interestingly, is different from the civilian social security number issued to all Israeli citizens.

Now try to imagine yourself in Gerhard Maschkowski’s shoes. After being transformed into nothing but a number, what would it be like to hold in your hand dog tags given to a different Maschkowski? A Maschkowski, young and tall and strong. A Maschkowski born in the land of the Israel, who has now joined the Israel Defense Forces.

Here the number is added to the name, it does not come instead of the name.

Here the number is a badge of freedom, not a mark of freedom stripped away.
The young Gerhard had no one to defend him and no tools to defend himself. Now Maschkowski’s can defend themselves and other Jews as well.

The IDF means that never again will Jews remain defenseless against those that wish to exterminate us. Never again will it be necessary to count on the mercy of another for our protection. History has taught us that there is no one else that can be relied on. We must save ourselves. The ability to do so is the freedom of Israel.

Just ask Gerhard. He knows.




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Thursday, January 26, 2017


 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Like many American Jews, I was born in Brooklyn, NY. As a young man I was interested in electronics and radio, which got me a job as a broadcast engineer that, along with scholarships, paid for my college education. But I had my heart set on an academic career and studied philosophy, specializing in logic. I ultimately decided that I did not want to be a teacher and would be a bad one, but before that I experienced the strange world of the academy. 

My time as a graduate student in Pittsburgh and a college teacher in California straddled the great revolution in higher education that took place in the late 1960s – the period of grade inflation and politicization, and the introduction of race and gender studies as academic disciplines. The experience was invaluable in understanding the nature of political correctness and other academy-birthed neuroses that are endemic in American culture today.

I found myself interested in computers, and little by little moved away from the academic world. This was still the day of massive mainframes, before personal computers and the Internet. I liked programming in assembly language, as close to the metal as I could get. It was a good fit for a person with a logical mind who was not especially good at dealing with humans (Mr. Spock would understand). It was an honest way to make a living, too.

The important part of my life started in 1979, when my wife and three children and I made aliyah. I had the honor of being drafted for reserve duty in the IDF, which – after I explained all my experience and technical skills, basically said “here is an M16, go guard things for 6 weeks every year.” We lived on two kibbutzim – one of them a leftist kibbutz of the Hashomer Hatzair movement at which I learned something about carpentry, tractor repair, and unfortunately totalitarianism. The other was a somewhat more reasonable place politically, but kibbutz living didn’t agree with me and after nine years we returned to our home town, Fresno, California. We almost immediately began to compensate for being yordim (leaving the country) by becoming passionate supporters of Israel from the Diaspora.

I started blogging more than ten years ago, because I was frustrated at my inability to get people to listen to me. The local newspaper would publish a 200-word letter from me every few weeks, and – very rarely – a longer piece. But they wanted stuff of local interest, not political articles about Israel. I sent emails to the members of the Jewish community about matters that I thought should be of concern to them, but the reaction ranged from amusement to irritation to anger. Everyone, from editors to synagogue board members to university officials (they had, and continue to have, regular bash-Israel programs) got really tired of me.

My wife and I and some of our friends counter-demonstrated at every anti-Israel demonstration and program at the university, with signs and leaflets. In 2002, I had a somewhat surreal struggle with the management of the public radio station about my offer to buy a “day sponsorship” which would include several announcements “in remembrance of the 526 (and counting) Israeli men, women, and children who were murdered by Palestinian terrorists since September 2000.” 

They did not take my money. “How do we know it’s true?” they said. So I gave them names and dates. “Too political,” they said. So I gave them examples of other sponsorships that they did accept, such as one “...in honor of the Stonewall riots, the beginning of the Gay and Lesbian civil rights movement.” “That’s different,” they said. We went round and round for a while until they stopped talking to me.

Toward the end of 2006, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study report came out, in which Ben Rhodes, a committee staffer who would later become one of Barack Obama’s close confidants on Middle East policy, argued that the way to rescue the US from the quagmire of Iraq was to appease Iran and Syria (there was still a Syria then) by letting them have their way with Israel. Give Syria the Golan – and by all means establish a Palestinian state as quickly as possible, because ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (as if a Palestinian state would end it!) will solve all the region’s problems. Not.

I was invited by a local TV station to be on a panel “to discuss the report.” It turned out that the other guy was a member of a “peace” group who was opposed to how America was blowing all its money bombing Iraq while people were hungry at home; and they wanted me to be the hawk who was in favor of America blowing all its money by bombing the crap out of Iraqi kids. When I mentioned the report and Israel, everyone looked at me blankly (in general, the TV reporters were astonishingly ignorant. Apparently the newspaper people were the ones that did well in their Journalism classes at Fresno State, and the rest went into TV). 

Unable to keep my thoughts to myself (and my long-suffering wife), I began a blog called FresnoZionism.org. I used “.org” because my idea was that I would start a Zionist organization that would fight back against the constant flow of anti-Israel propaganda coming from activists at the university, from the local Pacifica radio station, from NPR, and from the various left-wing and “peace” groups. I inaugurated my blog with a post about the Iraq Study Report.

I am not much of an organizer, it turns out, and the Zionist group did not come into existence (although in one of my letters to the university president, which he didn’t answer, I claimed to be the president of it).

Two out of three of my children went back to Israel at age 19 to serve in the army (the oldest served before we left), and as often happens, met their spouses and stayed. Now they each have  four children of their own. As soon as my wife and I sold our business and retired in 2014, we joined them. It was a relief to be able to stop trying to make Zionists out of our Jewish friends, many of whom are far more dedicated to liberal causes than to Jewish ones.

When I got back to Israel, I started a new blog, AbuYehuda.com. Sometimes I write philosophical or historical essays about Zionism, and sometimes I write indignantly about the latest example of hypocrisy by liberal American Jews (from whom I have finally come to expect absolutely nothing). Sometimes I write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how there is no possible diplomatic solution to it. Sometimes I write about the subhuman cruelty of Arab terrorists, and sometimes I speculate about the coming war with Iran and Hezbollah (we’ll win it, at great cost). During the past 8 years I wrote a great deal about Barack Hussein Obama, whose deep animus against the Jewish state will (I think) only begin to fully become clear to us in the future.

Sometimes I write about American culture or politics, although that is becoming less frequent as I am no longer a first-hand observer. It is also true that the extreme anger and irrationality that are coming to characterize them are hard to understand. The recent election and the reactions to it are beyond anything in my experience. Some of my old friends are truly angry with me for seeing Trump as an improvement over Obama (despite everything wrong with him, I still think he is).

Every day I am more and more convinced that a Jewish state – not some kind of state of its citizens, but a state that is truly an expression of the national feelings of the Jewish people – is essential for the survival of that people. This is something that most American Jews don’t understand, and which is anathema to the Left in this country, which would like to make Israel a tiny version of the US or perhaps Sweden. Perhaps they don’t understand that their success would mean the end of the Jewish people. Or perhaps they do, and consider that desirable.

I’ve done many jobs in my life, in electronics, broadcasting, teaching, software, carpentry, tractor mechanics, industrial maintenance and more. Some have paid more or been more interesting than others. But probably the most important job that I’ve had is what I am doing with my writing today: defending the concept of the sovereign, Jewish state of Israel.





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Wednesday, January 25, 2017



It's that time of the week again where a topic must be chosen for this week's column. There's some great material this week, but each topic has its weaknesses and pitfalls. There is, for instance, the matter of the $221m that Obama gave the Palestinian Authority as his final eff you to the Jews the morning he left office, the last act before Trump became president. It's money that will be used to pay pensions to the families of both jailed and dead terrorists, people who killed Jews. Indeed it is money that will be used to buy the weapons that will be used to kill Jews.
We know that, because hey. It's going to the PA (and that rhymes).

He knew that, Obama. He approves of that. He circumvented Congress to help underwrite that, Obama.


Yeah. I could probably find a few hundred more (steaming, seething) words to say about that. But then I'd have to give up on writing about the suspicious and possibly titillating behavior of  Sonja Maria Jetter, an activist with Women Wage Peace. (Is this organization really about peace? Or is it just one more antisemitic organization posturing on the order of J-Street or Jewish Voice for Peace, claiming to want what's best for Israel while giving an assist to the murderers of Jewish Israelis?)


It is Sonja Maria Jetter, you see, who confides to near strangers in lurid detail the story of an orthodox rabbi sexually assaulting her, but refuses to name him. Meantime, she is quite happy to pound the flesh with Mahmoud Abbas for a photo opp. That would be Abbas the mastermind behind the Munich Massacre, a man whose doctoral dissertation was a study in Holocaust denial, a man who incites his people to murder Jews on a daily basis.



Ah yes, the story of Sonja and Women Wage Peace might titillate a few readers, while sending a few others to toss their cookies.  

Alas it's a weak story. I can't actually prove that Women Wage Peace is antisemitic or that Sonja has it in for the Jews even if she's one herself. There's just the lingering stench of that ugly, detailed, lewd story, with no name attached hence lacking all credibility, plus the photo of the handshake with Abu Mazen. It's like Potter Stewart and porn. You know it when you see it. But write about it? Not much to say.

And of course, if I write about Sonja Maria Jetter and Women Wage Peace, I won't get to the story about the Women's March on Washington, all those Jewish women marching for free tampons and abortions, when their beloved Obama just slipped the PA $221m to kill the Jews. All those women who closed their eyes as Obama did nothing about rebels in Iran, the Yazidi women, Syria. All those women who are wearing pink hats and dressing up like vaginas. . .



but who won't say boo about Bill Clinton.

Meanwhile, if I write about the pink-hatted women and their non-violent protests . . .


. . . then I won't get to write about Ivanka and Jared riding in a car; going into a church; the matter of his bare head; her bare head (and arms); and the fact that they call themselves orthodox. But everyone and his dog is writing about that. And anyway, who wants to walk into a minefield? You just know you're going to get attacked if you write about that. People will say you're judging them. People will say it's not being nice to the stranger, the convert. 

People will say that if we criticize them, they might leave the faith altogether—better we should be warm and embracing. Others will quote Halacha until their faces turn blue, while me? All I have is my common sense. I'm no rabbi. But if I didn't know a thing about Ivanka and Jared and ran into them at a party, what would tell me they are Jewish, let alone orthodox?



But if I were to say that, then readers would jump down my throat telling me that orthodox isn't a look. That there are all sorts of ways to be orthodox. And I'll be left looking rigid and unkind and judgmental when all I want to say is:

"You had a chance. You could have been this wonderful example for your people. You could have been orthodox out loud and proud, not just by giving lip service to hanging out with your family on Shabbos but by wearing the trappings of orthodoxy, you know, the fringes, the skullcap, the um, sleeves."

But if I say that, then people will say, but a rabbi said it was pikuach nefesh, saving a life, for them to ride in a car. A rabbi said they are karov l'malchut close to the kingdom, and therefore they must do what they must do to fit in so they can ultimately help their people in ways we cannot foretell.

And then I'll be left saying, "Okay, okay, but just think what an opportunity they had. What if they hadn't asked a question and had just stayed home, or slept over somewhere close by, or had the ball postponed until after Shabbos. Would it really not have been well received? Would they really have jeopardized something by doing so? And would the negative impact of that really have been greater. Would they really have been putting their lives in danger? Our lives in danger here in Israel?"

But you know: who wants to walk into a minefield, be called judgmental, blind, unkind to converts, ignorant of Halacha, intolerant, and so forth and so on.

So I'm not really sure what to write about this week. So many stories, so little time.


Maybe I should just pack it in and call it a day.


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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 14 years and 30,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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