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

Tuesday, May 01, 2018



16 killed, thousands injured, Israeli snipers line the border,read the brief notification on my phone, and on that of millions of other conscious global citizens relying on the mainstream media for political and global knowledge. I, along with the pro-Israel community, cringed at each of the countless buzzing notifications informing the world of the events transpiring at the Gaza-Israel border in the recent weeks. We have a far greater depth of knowledge about the complexity of the conflict than the larger populace, who generally take less of a keen interest in the specifics of the conflict, and we know for certain that such a headline doesn't nearly encapsulate the Israeli narrative of the scene in Gaza. It fails to acknowledge that at least 80% of those dead are known associates with terror group, that the snipers exercised tremendous caution with live rounds of ammunition, opting for rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the violent demonstrations. And we know that Hamas leaders cowered behind the crowds of civilians thrust towards the border and that they monetarily incentivized the crowds to breach the border fence.

But who cares? What difference does it make what we know? We each only count for one person in a general election, each of us one pro-Israel voice in a sea of voters under the impression--established and reinforced by the headlines on their devices and in the papers--that Israel fires indiscriminately into a crowd of peaceful protesters.

And the misinformation and lack of perspective and adequate figures relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict truly comprises much of Israels public relations nightmare. With the concept of a news cycle over a period of time being rendered obsolete by the instantaneousness of todays news, consumers absorb as much information as possible in as little time as possible. Per the Washington Post and the American Press Institute, roughly six in 10 people acknowledge that they have done nothing more than read news headlines in the past week. And, in truth, that number is almost certainly higher than that, since plenty of people won't want to admit to just being headline-gazers but, in fact, are.And according to Forbes, 59% of the articles shared via social media sites are not first read by the sharer.Similarly, Twitter has a CTR (click through rate) average across all of its users of 1.64%, meaning that less than one in fifty people elect to digest the information beyond the headline of the article. Media is an omnipresent force in society--particularly those news outlets with the clout and acclaim to sway public opinion on any given issue, where even a single sentence presented (like the lede of an article) can have a profound impact in its connotations and specific phrasing.

In the immediacy of the technological age in which we live, with notifications popping up by the minute, and the needed brevity of the headline/lede to maintain reader-attentiveness while conveying a hasty picture of the situation, lots can be lost in translation. This sizeable fault in the media is much less prevalent with other major global disputes, like the American-North Korean tensions: Its common knowledge that North Korea is bad and communist, while America is better and democratic, to put the matter simply. So when CNN reports that Kim Jong-Un has just tested the latest intercontinental ballistic missile, and it is capable of reaching Alaska, I immediately understand the danger posed and am not ambivalent when siding against North Korea.

But for issues not so black-and-white such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a simple headline can easily give off the wrong idea and formulate an opinion one way or the other, even if its not sufficiently substantiated, as is frequently the case.


As mentioned, headlines regarding events playing out in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict notoriously hold an anti-Israel slant--unintentionally or otherwise. Coupled with readers (or not readers, should I say) not bothering clicking on and considering the factual evidence, but instead relying on headlines, the already-harbored anti-Israel sentiment by tech-savvy, short-attention-spanned millennials and young voters can only trend upwards, shunning the facts in favor of convenience. 



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Monday, April 30, 2018



The price even a non-intentional embrace of anti-Israel propaganda places on the believer was brought home to me during a recent conversation with a good friend, whose opinion I respect on all matters, who was aghast at the bloodletting at the Gaza border over the last month.

Interestingly, she was willing to accept that the thousands of rockets shot from Gaza into Israel over the last decade constitutes acts of war, and was even willing to believe that Hamas was responsible for civilian casualties on its own side if it placed its rockets in civilian locations. And, with a little cross-examination, she was ready to give up her original assertion that the tunnels Hamas has been digging incessantly into Israel were not a means of civilian resupply, but rather tools of war.

But neither of these understandings could budge her from the opinion that Israel’s use of live fire to protect its border with Gaza was appropriate or legitimate. “You don’t shoot people,” she kept coming back to. In other words, she believes that the IDF has the right and responsibility to arrest, detain and do whatever other non-lethal things it could to protect the people it defends from harm, but that shooting should be a last resort to be applied only when actual lives are in danger.

Now keep in mind that my interlocutor is a decent and moral person, as well as being highly intelligent. But as we went through a series of logic-based arguments regarding the difference between war and crime fighting, the fact that a majority of those killed were jihadi fighters, or nature of the Hamas regime and its primary role in creating Gaza’s misery, I was clearly unable to shake her of the belief that undergirded her primary response to current events: that you shouldn’t shoot people if you don’t have to.

And you know what? She’s right! In the ordinary course of life, and even in policing and warfare, you shouldn’t shoot people if other effective choices are available. But given that non-shooting options, like the construction of a separation barrier in the West Bank (which all but eliminated casualties from both terror and the fight against it) has become Exhibit A for the Israel = Apartheid propaganda slur, it’s not at all clear that promises to judge Israel less harshly if it does something to defend itself other than what it’s doing right now will ever be kept.

Getting back to Gaza, it continues to surprise me just how many false things one must believe to accept the anti-Israel narrative. For instance, images and video that incontestably show the violent nature of the Hamas-inspired marches is on display for all to see. But this must be put aside in order to declare the marches and the marchers “peaceful,” or non-violence must be redefined to make room for Molotov cocktails, incendiaries, swastikas, and the occasional live ammunition.

One must also believe that even if rocket fire and the digging of infiltration tunnels – the primary activity of those who govern Gaza – might be warlike, this new tactic (charging the border week after week) is peaceful.

And I won’t even mention the things that didn’t come up in our conversation, such as Hamas’ attitude and behavior towards women, gays and religious minorities (never mind its medieval beliefs about Jews), things that should appall anyone who believes in the rights of such groups to not suffer humiliation, torture and death – not to mention the rights of the individual to live as he or she likes.
In trying to understand how good and smart people can believe bad and stupid things, I keep coming back to the concept of ruthlessness. While you can see a description of the phenomena here, and a much longer one in this series, it is easiest to sum up the concept with its most vivid example.

After World War I, the loss of a generation left the nations of Europe exhausted, demoralized and ready to consider any alternative superior to war. In theory, this laid the groundwork for finding new ways to settle disputes other than armed conflict. But, in one of history’s typical ironies, it also meant anyone ready to trigger another war would have enormous leverage over those who wanted to avoid war at all cost.

Thus, Adolf Hitler’s choice to threaten to reignite the continent if his territorial demands were not meant was not the act of a crazy monster, but rather the rational calculation of a ruthless actor who was ready to do every day what others could not even contemplate.

Today, when war is even more destructive and attitudes towards it even more hostile, most people can’t contemplate that this beast called ruthlessness still drives the decision making of political actors. Accepting that Israel’s enemies deliberately put their own civilians at risk in order to either kill or malign Jews and maintain power means accepting that ruthless actors are still doing things that decent people have trouble even imagining.

And one way of not thinking about something that puts your whole world view in jeopardy (especially a world view which hopes for an end to armed conflict altogether) is to strip away the dark corners of reality, replacing difficult moral choices – especially those that arise when faced with a ruthless foe – with comforting bromides, like “shooting people is bad.”







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Thursday, April 26, 2018

 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

A hot potato today in Israel’s Knesset is the so-called chok hahitgabrut (literally, “the overriding law”) which would provide a way for the Knesset to pass a law over the objections of the Supreme Court. Various versions of such a law have been considered, which require larger or smaller majorities in the Knesset to override a Court decision to throw out a law. Another approach would be to require more than a simple majority of justices of the Court in order to reject a law passed by the Knesset. The precise form the law might take is still up in the air.

The issue that is presently driving the controversy is a series of Court decisions that have made it impossible for the government to deport any of the 38,000 African migrants that entered the country illegally since the early 2000s. Those who want such a law say that the unelected Court rides roughshod over the views of the majority of the citizens, which are expressed by the votes of their representatives in the Knesset. That’s undemocratic, they say. Opponents argue that in a liberal democracy it is necessary to protect minority rights, which is what the Court has done.

Critics of the Court have been complaining for a long time that it is biased leftward, and that it sticks its nose where it shouldn’t, like the proposed deal regulating the concession for the natural gas recently discovered off Israel’s shores; or the ownership of property in Judea and Samaria, decisions that forced the demolition of communities and the removal of people from their homes.

But the intricacies of the gas deal were understood by only a small percentage of Israelis, and the inhabitants of the razed settlement of Amona did not find a lot of empathy in the general population, many of whom thought of them as extremists. The migrant question, on the other hand, resonates more broadly. It pits the residents of South Tel Aviv – who say that the migrants who are concentrated in their neighborhoods have brought crime, dirt and fear to them – against a coalition of organizations that claim to be defending the human rights of the migrants. In fact, many of these groups are funded by unfriendly foreign governments, or groups with a political motive to embarrass our government (e.g., the Israel Religious Action Center).

A balance between the powers of the various branches of government is important to protect minority and majority rights. A comparison with the Supreme Court in the US will be helpful in understanding just how unbalanced the situation in Israel is.

The American court only has appellate jurisdiction, which means that it can only rule on cases that have been appealed from lower courts. It can decline to hear a case, but it does not have original jurisdiction in which it can take up a case that has not already been heard by a lower court, except in special circumstances (such as one state suing another). The Israeli court is the highest appellate court, but it also acts as the High Court of Justice – bagatz – which can rule on anything done by any branch of government, including the army, municipalities, and – importantly – laws passed by the Knesset, whether or not they have been ruled on by a lower court.

The American legal system includes a doctrine of standing, which means in particular that a person can’t challenge a law or government action unless they can convince a judge that they could be directly injured by it, or that they would be prevented from exercising their legitimate rights by threat of legal sanction. But in Israel, anyone can petition the Supreme Court if he believes a law or government action is illegal or not in the public interest. As a result, anyone can paralyze the government by paying a couple of thousand shekels to file a petition. For example, several foreign-funded NGOs have recently petitioned the Supreme Court to force the IDF to stop using snipers to defend the border fence with Gaza.

In America, some matters are considered political and not legal, and are therefore not taken up by the courts (they are considered not justiciable). Two such areas are foreign policy and impeachment. In Israel, the limitations on justiciability are much weaker.

American Supreme Court justices, including the Chief Justice, are appointed by the President and then confirmed by the Senate, after which they serve for life unless they are impeached, resign or retire. Interestingly, there are no constitutional requirements for a justice to have judicial experience, or even a law degree! 

In Israel, the justices are appointed by a committee which includes members of the Bar Association and sitting Justices, as well as the Justice Minister and representatives of the government and opposition Knesset factions. There is a mandatory retirement age of 70, which in practice means that Israeli justices tend to serve for shorter terms than American ones. There are specific qualifications of legal experience. The President of the Court is the most senior of the Justices.

The method of appointment of justices in Israel tends to make the Court reflect the views of the legal establishment, which critics say is biased toward the left end of the spectrum. It tends to prioritize what it perceives as the rights of individuals over the needs of the state, and Israel’s democratic character over its Jewish one.

An associated issue is the Attorney General. In the US, the Attorney General is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and serves as the government’s lawyer. He or she is required to defend the government in the courts, including the Supreme Court, and on several occasions attorneys general have been fired by the President for refusing to do so.

In Israel, the Attorney General is appointed by the Justice Minister from a list of candidates drawn up by a commission whose majority also represents the legal establishment. The Attorney General can prevent the government from taking an action by saying that he or she believes it to be illegal, and will not defend it before the Supreme Court. The authority of the Attorney General is, like many things in Israel, unclear.

One example of the possible conflicts involving the Supreme Court, the Attorney General and the government, is the legal peril faced by PM Netanyahu. The police have recommended that he be indicted in several corruption cases, and it is up to the Attorney General to decide whether to indict him. The law is not clear whether an indicted PM is required to resign his position, although the Attorney General has expressed the opinion that if indicted, he should resign. But supposing he is indicted, Netanyahu could refuse to quit. Then the Supreme Court would undoubtedly take up the question, and the Attorney General likely would not defend him before it!

There is also the Nation-State Law which has been debated for several years now. It is intended to explicate the sense in which Israel is not only a democratic state, but the state of the Jewish people. Various versions of the bill did not get off the ground because the Attorney General said that they were not “constitutional” (Israel doesn’t have a constitution, but it has Basic Lawswhich serve some of the purposes of a constitution). Even if the Attorney General doesn’t object, the Supreme Court is expected to be very tough on any non-vacuous Nation-State Law. A former President of the Court who inspired the activist judicial philosophy that characterizes it today, Aharon Barak, famously opined that the meaning of the phrase “Jewish State” should be “identical to the democratic nature of the state.” In other words, a Nation-State Law would have to be so trivial as to be meaningless.

A version of the law that will permit the Knesset to override the Supreme Court  will be voted on by government ministers this Sunday, after which it will be submitted to the Knesset. The Opposition, which has come to depend on the Court to make up for its lack of seats in the elected Knesset, is pushing very hard against it.

The deportation of illegal migrants, the Nation-State Law, and numerous other important issues depend on the ability to take control of the state away from the legal establishment and return it to the elected government. Israelis voted for a right-wing government – they should be able to get right-wing policies. This is a bill that needs to pass.




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I’ve heard that people who are bipolar often go off their medication because, although the lows of depression are difficult and sometimes even dangerous, the highs they experience are so thrilling, they don’t want to give them up for the sake of being normal. The highs open the door to genius, to creativity, to the sublime.

And it is impossible to attain the high, without also experiencing the low.

The Israeli experience is something like this. I hesitate to compare my beloved country to a disorder but like the bipolar person, our “normal” isn’t normal.

Everyday life in Israel is about as normal as casually making sandwiches for the kids while walking on a tightrope, with no safety net, over a sea of blood-thirsty sharks. We do make fabulous sandwiches - as well as self-driving cars, solutions for world water shortages and cures for cancers – with a smile and full of joy for life – on the tightrope, over the sharks.

Some days are more intense than others. Probably (unless there is a war), the most intense day of the year is the day of Yom Hazikaron, IDF Memorial Day, which at night becomes Israel’s Independence Day.
On Yom Hazikaron my family attends the ceremony held at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa. The children of the school attend as well as many of the school’s alumni. There is something special about generations of alumni coming together, on this important day.

The Reali was founded 1913. The State of Israel had not yet been formally re-established but this did not stop the Jewish community in Palestine (Eretz Yisrael) from building institutions of education for the next generations, the new Jews who would be free in their homeland and be educated in Hebrew, the language of their ancestors.

The ceremony at the Reali is probably the most impressive and moving Yom Hazikaron ceremony in the country. Israelis are notoriously bad at ceremonies. Pomp and circumstance is a foreign concept, there is something about focusing on the way things look (rather than their content) that goes against Israeli nature.
The Reali ceremony is simple, yet profound. The 9-12th graders of the school march on the field with the flags of the school and the military academy (also managed by the Reali). The visual impression this creates is of seeing the present and the future at the same time – the students dressed in civilian clothes will soon graduate and join the IDF (and look like the students from the military academy marching alongside them). A group of teachers and distinguished alumni also march on the field.

A few songs are sung. They are never songs about war, always songs of grief, sadness at innocence lost and hope for the future. Yom Hazikaron songs are never about the enemy. The Yizkor and Kaddish prayers are said.

The bulk of the ceremony consists of the names of every single Reali student killed in Israel’s wars or by acts of terrorism. This year they read 302 names.



Think about that. In 105 years 302 people were killed from this school alone.

During the ceremony I sat behind a family. Grandparents, a mother and her daughter, a daughter of the grandparents.

The principle of the school explained that this year, classmates of Dudi Zohar were marching on the field in his memory. The grandmother’s head sunk down on her daughter’s shoulder. The little girl turned around and I saw that her face was streaked with tears. Dudi’s family. His is the 302nd name on the list.    
When it came time to say the prayer for the dead, Dudi’s 14 year old son read the kaddish. I don’t know if there was a dry eye in the audience, mine certainly weren’t.  

After the ceremony in the school was over, we went to the ceremony in Haifa’s military cemetery. The IDF prepares the cemeteries throughout the country for the thousands of families they know will arrive. Each grave has flowers laid on it, a flag and a soldier (the rank or higher than that of the person killed) to stand as an honor guard. Stools are brought to every grave so that families can have a place to sit should they feel the need to do so and water bottles are brought for everyone attending the ceremonies. Of course, politicians and dignitaries attend the ceremonies in their communities.

The ceremony ended with Hatikvah, as all ceremonies do. As I stood and sang, I watched a woman approximately my age standing in front of a grave, singing. The ceremony was taking place behind her but she had come for personal reasons, not to be part of the community. Whose grave was she facing? Her husband? Her brother? A friend?

Watching her, I choked on the words of our national anthem: “To be a free people, in our own land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.” The price of our freedom was lying in the grave, at her feet – and yet she sang. As did everyone all around me.
That evening we watched the official Yom Haatzmaut ceremony on tv. Wow! It was like watching a mini-opening ceremony for the Olympics – a sweeping depiction of Jewish history from the beginning of our people, yearning for Zion in exile and the rebirth of our nation.

At night we went out to the Independence Day street party. Every municipality sets up enormous parties with the best Israeli performers, music, dancing and fireworks. There was a party right by my house but we chose to go to one in a suburb of Haifa because of the artists who were scheduled to perform there.
Omer Adam is perhaps the most popular Israeli singer today. When ticket sales for his concerts open, the lines crash. Within a few minutes all the tickets are sold out. On Yom Haatzmaut we walked down the street to the stage and there he was.



There he is! There he is!!! The street was packed, people were hanging out the windows and standing on the porches of nearby buildings. Everyone pulled out their cameras. Everyone was smiling and singing. What a way to end the day.

What other way is there? We mourn death and celebrate life, we celebrate life in gratitude and appreciation for those who made it possible for us to live.

In Israel, the equation is very clear.


We didn’t ask to live with the sharks swimming below us. Every time one of us falls, we all fall. The pain is devastating… there really are no words to describe it. At the same time, if we must walk the tightrope, why not dance across it? What could be more glorious?




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Wednesday, April 25, 2018


According to journalist Yanki Farber, Christian missionary Hananya Naftali has just been appointed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new deputy media advisor. This presumably means that Naftali will be managing or directing the prime minister’s social media accounts. As the Israeli PM has a significant online presence, this would seem to be a position of some consequence.



I’ve been aware of Naftali since at least 2015. Naftali previously served in the IDF Armored Corps, and used the close quarters of a tank to spread the word of Jesus (Y”Sh) to Jewish soldiers. He also made pro-Israel videos while wearing his IDF uniform. No one seemed to question his intent. People kept sending me his videos. “Isn’t he wonderful?” they’d gush.

As his social media presence grew, some pro-Israel organizations shared Hananya Naftali’s videos in support of Israel and wrote articles about him, too. In each video and article, I recognized certain code words suggesting Naftali’s true motive was to gain the trust of the Jewish people for the purpose of drawing them away from Judaism and persuading them to become Christians.

Because Naftali was a social media star whose videos were shared by pro-Israel organizations, in some ways, he was untouchable. I couldn’t write to expose him because it would be smearing pro-Israel organizations. It would be undiplomatic.

Writing to the pro-Israel organizations seemed to get me nowhere. I got the brush-off: “Nah. He’s not a missionary,” they swore.

But he was. Is.

The only thing I lacked was a big ole smoking gun, where Naftali would actually come right out and say: “I’m all about converting the Jews.”

In June 2017, I interviewed my friend Shannon Nuszen, a blogger at Jewish Israel. As a former Christian missionary (now Orthodox Jew), Shannon knew the lingo. She’d been following Naftali’s antics for some time. With Shannon’s help, I laid out my case that Naftali’s seeming support for Israel in his popular videos serves as cover for his missionary work.

But we still hoped for that smoking gun, Shannon and I.
Some months later, Aussie Dave of Israellycool found it: the smoking gun we’d been seeking. A video in which Naftali came right out and said that, “God put him in the army precisely to share Jesus with Jews, to be ‘a light among Jews.’”
The video also had Naftali saying, “It is not easy to be the light in the dark,” which Aussie Dave credibly suggests is the missionary’s way of implying that “the dark” is Jewish belief.
You cannot see the video anymore, since Naftali took steps to remove the video from circulation after the blog came out. (Apparently. Because when I went to see it at Israellycool, it was marked “unavailable.”) SEE UPDATE, at bottom for the video.
But it was out there long enough to document. And I thank Aussie Dave for exposing the little creep. We did not survive the Holocaust and create the State of Israel in order to let some sneaky dweeb kill our connection to our Jewishness; our connection to God and His Holy Torah.
On the other hand, people are STILL NOW sending me Naftali’s videos. Each time, I explain it to them: He’s a MISSIONARY.
Some believe me, some don’t.
And now I discover that Bibi has hired this missionary to handle his social media. Think of it! The prime minister of the Jewish State becomes the vessel through which a Christian missionary, Hananya Naftali, gets easy access to millions of Jewish Israelis with his message about Jesus (Y”Sh). Appointing Naftali to a position of influence, moreover, tends to whitewash his missionary activities, gives him an imprimatur: makes him seem clean. I can just hear people saying, "He can't be a missionary if the prime minister of Israel hired him!"

As I was writing this piece, in fact, my attention was drawn to this article in the Jerusalem Post, which suggests that Naftali's missionary work is a figment of the imagination, and that the "accusations" are merely a part of his "colorful past."
It’s unconscionable.

So I did what I could. I wrote to Bibi and explained the situation to him. I tweeted to him. But the thought occurs that considering Naftali being Bibi’s deputy new media advisor and all, it may be Naftali who intercepts and reads my tweets and emails.
I have not yet had a reply from the prime minister or his deputy, the missionary Hananya Naftali. If I do, I will update this space.

Don't hold your breath.

UPDATE: Jewish Israel informs me that there are still two extant copies of the smoking gun video that was found by Aussie Dave at Israellycool in which Naftali says he is in the army to share Jesus with the Jews at 46 seconds in, see the clip at https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=93a_1511190545




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Monday, April 23, 2018



The boycotters have been wetting themselves over last week’s “victory” getting 50 student groups at New York University (NYU) to jointly pledge a boycott of not just Israel, but campus groups (i.e., organizations created and run by other NYU students) and off-campus groups (such as Birthright, StandWithUs and the ADL) that support the Jewish state.

While the effort to get student organizations to join together to ostracize Israel supporters was one major goal of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) who drove the NYU measures, the pledge also helped SJP achieve another vital goal: rulership over left-leaning politics within a university.

As I’ve noted before, the intersectional pecking order tends to lead to domination by the ruthless.  Allegedly, the intersectional construct assumes every injustice is linked with every other, requiring all oppressed groups to join together in solidarity.  Such solidarity tends to be a one-way street, however, which is why alleged Israel “oppression” is on the intersectional-left’s agenda while the murder of woman and gays throughout the rest of the Middle East will never be.

The initial response to the NYU outrage has been the usual supportive (if tepid) criticism of the boycott by school administrators, coupled with sorrow-and-regret statements by local students and Jewish leaders on and off campus.  What is missing is outrage, and an agenda fueled by the outrage that should accompany this level of injustice.

As long-time readers know, I tend to council caution in turning to authority figures (especially government) when dealing with BDS-related issues that could be solved by on-the-ground activists, including student activists.  But the organization of dozens of campus groups to attack their Jewish schoolmates reeks of such overreach that it demands a response beyond what even the most capable campus groups can generate.
With that in mind, here are a few steps that would have a high impact on the situation at NYU:

1.       Alumni donors who care about Israel or just care about the toxic atmosphere at their alma mater should contact the school and alert them that their donations are on hold until the school gets its house in order.  Efforts to stem the flow of donor dollars to the school should extend to campaigns within the donor community to get others to pledge to not give to NYU while the campus is ruled by mobs engaging in illegal discrimination.

2.       Speaking of illegal discrimination, legal support groups should immediately contact city, state and national bodies mandated to battle discrimination and provide whatever is needed for them to open investigations into whether anti-discrimination law is being violated at NYU.

3.       Such investigations – which can be supplemented by private civil and criminal lawsuits – should target not just the school, but the campus groups and individual members of those groups to make sure everyone who might be involved with illegal discrimination is required to live with the consequences of their choices (rather than force others – like school administrators – to take the brunt of consequences for irresponsible student behavior).

4.       While I’m not sure how student groups are funded at NYU, on most campuses this is done through a mandated student fee that bodies within student government get to distribute.  But if it turns out that funds are being used to support student groups actively discriminating against other students, that means fees students are forced to pay are being used to fund potentially illegal activity.  Given this, there may be legal grounds to halting such funding immediately (or during the next academic year), or replacing mandated fees with a voluntary opt-in (vs. opt-out) alternative.

5.       During the outrage that would ensure if any or all of these suggestions are put into place, our side should refrain from talking about (or even mentioning) the Middle East.  Rather, all of our talking points should focus on “illegal discrimination,” using the phrase as incessantly as our opponents use “Apartheid.”

These are certainly harsh measures likely to make the atmosphere on campus even more toxic.  But right now, the only people being targeted are Jewish students leaving the Israel haters free to spew their poisons without consequence. 

School administrators tend to make decisions based on who will cause them the most vs. the least trouble, which is why they are not likely to come down hard on 50 campus groups who could take over their offices, especially if the countervailing threat comes from a Jewish community writing them tearful letters about feeling unsafe.  But visits by civil rights lawyers from the city and state of New York, as well as the Federal Department of Education (especially one run by Ken Marcus) would definitely change leadership calculus, hopefully causing them to take the reins of the school they allegedly lead.

As noted before, legal responses should be limited to just those situations where political options have been blocked or are impossible.  But if one chooses to go down the legal route, such a response should be overwhelming, even (dare I say it) disproportionate, in order to let the world know that an assault on Jews is no longer cost free.






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By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

As long as the Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff focused on bashing Israel, his fans could see nothing wrong with his participation in the “International Holocaust Cartoon Competition” organized by an Iranian newspaper in 2006. Latuff won the second prize with one of the countless images he produced on the antisemitic theme presenting Israel as today’s Nazi Germany, while the Palestinians appear as victims suffering like the Jews under the Nazis.

But the down-with-Israel camp that never had a problem with antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism is no longer one big happy family united in hate for the world’s only Jewish state. The horrors committed in Syria by Assad and his allies Iran and Russia have convinced some people that Assad’s ardent hatred of Israel isn’t quite enough to embrace him – though there are still many veteran Israel-haters like Max Blumenthal and his ilk who remain ardent defenders of Assad’s regime.

I wrote already in fall 2016 about the backlash against Blumenthal’s determined efforts to make butcher Assad and his allies look good; at around the same time, Blumenthal’s good friend and fellow-Israel-hater Rania Khalek also lost some of her erstwhile fans over her eagerness to embark on a career as an Assad apologist.

Now it seems that Holocaust cartoon competition winner Carlos Latuff has managed to alienate a few of his fans with a cartoon that smears Syria’s famous White Helmets – a volunteer rescue group that tries to help civilian war victims – as Islamist terrorists.




And just like with Max Blumenthal, erstwhile fans of Latuff are now disappointed that he “even glorified the Russian invasion and bombing of Syrian civilians as some fight against terrorism and imperialism.”




It’s welcome news that more people seem to realize that “Carlos Latuff is a fascist and a smear merchant. He is motivated by hate and resentment. He has no regard for truth or justice. If you use his crude and racist cartoons, you do your cause a great disservice.”

Arguably though, it’s a bit late to come to this conclusion more than ten years after Latuff got a prize at Iran’s “International Holocaust Cartoon Competition.”

And in any case, it seems that most so-called “pro-Palestinian” activists remain ardent fans of Latuff’s vile output.

The notorious “hate site” Mondoweiss features his cartoons regularly; one good example of Latuff’s  endless recycling of the antisemitic meme presenting Israel as today’s Nazi Germany and the Palestinians as the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s is a cartoon Mondoweiss published last October “to celebrate the IDF’s 70th birthday.”



Here are some additional examples of Latuff’s largely undiminished popularity among those who think the slaughter that has been going on in Syria for years should not distract anyone from the urgent task of demonizing the world’s only Jewish state.









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I recently applied for a grant to promote Holocaust education at local middle schools through field trips, a unit of Holocaust studies, and survivor testimonies. My grant application was rejected, which wasnt completely surprising given the volume and quality of competing applications.  But I was taken aback by the verbal feedback I received from the grants benefactor who told me something along the lines of this: The Holocaust was a terrible thing, and it should be remembered, but its significance is not as meaningful today. Your project is not something we can turn into an annual occurrence.

How could someone minimize the relevance of the Holocaust and trivialize its intergenerational impact?  I was stunned. I began researching the Holocaust education implemented by my school and other schools.  In a private school with a significant Jewish student population, I expected a robust layering of Holocaust studies across grade levels.  Instead, I found one unit on Anne Frank in middle school and an overview of the Holocaust in the European history elective.  This lackluster effort to incorporate Holocaust education into the regular curriculum nor any special programming on important dates left me wondering about students exposure to genocide studies and the specific case study of the Holocaust.

Maybe its my personal observations and bias clouding my objectivity, but I imagine that my school is indicative of a much greater trend. Per a [2005 report by the Education Commission of the States](http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/62/34/6234.pdf), Holocaust education is mandated in some form by only seventeen states. Alabama, California, Georgia, Mississippi. Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia have created commissions and task forces on the Holocaust. California Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Washington State have passed laws requiring or encouraging that education of the Holocaust be part of the curriculum. The prescribed commissions and task forces are the sole bodies responsible for implementation. Many of the members of the task forces are volunteers.

The report also states that eight states have statutes that specifically require or encourage instruction of the Holocaust be part of the state education curriculum. Each state has curricula and learning standards for each grade level, with the task of curricula development delegated to educators, policymakers, and higher education content experts. Yet only the state of New York enforces its policies by -- wait for it -- reserving the right to withhold public funds appropriated to schools that do not meet the curriculum requirements.

Without any proactive enforcement, what good can these policies produce? What sizeable impact can be had? Theres wiggle room for teachers and educators to eschew Holocaust education, not necessarily out of malintent, but for convenience or pressure to cover major units of studies. The rationale is understandable, sacrifice this effectively optional state encouragement for the more typical school curriculum, in preparation for State tests or other components of compulsive education. And this is assuming that teachers at the school level are even made aware of the requirements by their supervisors...

There is certainly visible variation in the productivity of the respective state commissions -- New Jerseys commission coordinates hundreds of programs annually for tens of thousands of students in grades K-12, per their [2016 report](http://www.nj.gov/education/holocaust/centers/2016gov.pdf). But as a broad statement, the legislation around mandated Holocaust studies and implementation are feeble. Sometimes, encouragement is not sufficient to motivate action. The Holocaust is irrefutably one of the most significant tragedies and genocides in history and the legislation passed and rhetoric by states reflects this basic understanding. But when it comes to remembrance through education, it seems that bureaucracy impedes effective and authentic implementation.

My personal Holocaust education has included my familys visit to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NYC, hearing from survivors, reading testimonies, reading Night by Elie Wiesel and commemorating the Shoah annually. The Shoah means more to me than a chapter (or page) in a history textbook, and I hope for Jews and non-Jews across the nation to share this sentiment. But as of now, it appears that the majority of my generation of activists, entrepreneurs, and intrepid thinkers may be losing an essential component of American and global history.








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Thursday, April 19, 2018

 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Independence Day in Israel is a lot like Independence day in America. There are barbecues, fireworks, weekend camping trips, street fairs, concerts of patriotic music and boring speeches by government officials. Both nations gained independence from the British Empire, and neither felt warm enough toward their former imperial rulers to join the Commonwealth. 

But there are significant differences. Possibly because the nation is young enough that there are still people around who remember when the state did not exist and who remember the price that was paid to create it, there is still a feeling – at least, in some quarters – that independence is not a normal condition. For thousands of years there was no sovereign Jewish state, and the Jewish people were the paradigm case of the outsiders living, with various degrees of toleration, in other people’s countries. That changed suddenly on May 14, 1948, the 5th of Iyar on the Jewish calendar. 

America had her Tories who would have preferred to remain colonies of Great Britain (including the son of Benjamin Franklin, who had been the Royal Governor of New Jersey), but I suspect that after some 242 years, very few Americans continue to believe that the US should return to colonial status. Israel had (and still has) her anti-Zionists: those who oppose a Jewish state for religious reasons, and those who oppose it for various political reasons. I doubt this will change even when the state reaches (with God’s help) its 242nd birthday.

Some Americans complain that many of their countrymen (and women) don’t appreciate the sacrifices required to create and maintain an independent nation. This is less of a problem in Israel, whose people are under constant threat, both individually and collectively, by the enemies of the state and the Jewish people. Israel’s memorial day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism (yom hazikaron) takes place the day before Independence Day. When the siren sounds to mark the beginning of yom hazikaron, almost all Israelis stop what they are doing and stand at attention for the duration of the siren. Autos stop in the middle of the highways , and their drivers get out and stand beside them. I admit that no matter how many times I’ve experienced this, it’s always emotionally powerful. Except for the siren (and perhaps a few barking dogs) there is absolute silence; and it happens at the same precise moment all over the country.

I said “almost all Israelis” because there are some Arab citizens, some Haredim, and even a few extreme leftists who oppose the Jewish state and make a point of showing their contempt for it and for the soldiers who died for it. If I could afford to, I would happily buy them all one-way tickets to the Arab or Diaspora countries that they appear to yearn for.

When America gained independence, its population was composed of Europeans mostly of British descent, African slaves and Native Americans. It was some time before the “non-white” inhabitants achieved equal rights. Israel also had a minority population made up of Arabs who, while citizens from the start, were under military rule until 1966. Since independence, both countries absorbed immigrants from numerous cultures, although almost all of those absorbed by Israel were Jewish.

Some Arab citizens of Israel see themselves as Israelis, while others embrace their “Palestinian” identity and reject “Israeli-ness.” Most Jews feel that they are part of a Jewish people that encompasses Jews of different national origins. The divisions between Jews of European and Middle Eastern or North African origin are becoming less important as time and intermarriage blur them. Russians, Ethiopians and others are also blending into the Jewish population.

In America until recently the concept of the “melting pot” which would turn immigrants (but never African Americans!) into members of a homogeneous American People was popular, and immigrants aspired to assimilate into “American” culture. More recently, many immigrant groups strongly reject the melting pot, and insist on maintaining their original cultures. I don’t believe this tendency is strong among non-Haredi Israeli immigrants, who do appear to be assimilating to “Israeli” culture. There are various reasons for this: army service, shared stresses (terrorism, bureaucracy, etc.) and the comparative openness of Israeli society. In Israel, at least among the Jewish population, it seems that identity politics is declining; while in America, it is gaining importance.

American society seems – from my admittedly distant vantage point – to be more divided than ever in my memory. The delivery of health care and other social services appears to be worse than I can remember, the primary, secondary, and higher educational systems are failing in their purposes, and the long-term decrease in violent crime seems to be ending. There are many other troubling social indicators. Time will tell if the decline that I perceive is real, and if so, if it will be overcome.

70 years after independence, Israeli society has overall never been better off economically, although the high price of housing is a problem. There are still pockets of deep poverty. The benefits of the success of the high-tech sector and the natural gas discoveries have not filtered down to the lower rungs of the ladder. Politically there is the ongoing struggle between the right-of-center majority and the left-of-center establishment that includes the Supreme Court, the media, academic class, the arts, and so forth. There is growing conflict between Haredi extremists and everyone else. But on balance it is a happy, optimistic society. One indication is the high birthrate, over three children per woman for the Jewish and Arab sectors.

Despite this, there is a cloud over our optimism, which is the almost certainty of war with Iran and its proxies in the near future. Israel is not expansionist and does not desire war. We have absolutely nothing against the Iranian people, but unfortunately their radical regime has an obsession with destroying our state and ourselves.

We’ll prevail. It will be terrible for us, but more terrible for our enemies. Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel was not reconstituted after thousands of years to be lost after only 70.

There are flags everywhere, hanging from windowsills, on cars, on both of the antennas on our roof. Our bank is giving out free flags, made in Israel by handicapped people.

Happy Independence Day!




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