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

Thursday, May 17, 2018

 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column



I attended a lecture on Monday by Moti Toledo, who participated in Operation Solomon, the 36-hour airlift of about 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel while Ethiopia was in the throes of revolution.

Religious people can be excused for believing that miracles occurred during the operation. An El Al 747 with all its seats removed set the world record for number of people on a commercial aircraft, carrying 1088 passengers (two or three of them were babies born on the flight to Israel). According to the secular Toledo, the runway at that time was not considered long enough for even a normally-loaded 747, and the plane struggled to get airborne before it ran out of runway. An unexpected gust of wind came along from precisely the right direction, just in time. Make of this what you will.

This was after several covert operations had brought thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, including the fascinating “Operation Brothers,” a Mossad-operated diving resort in Sudan (a country as hostile to Israel as any you can think of) which operated during 1981-5, and succeeded in rescuing some 12,000Jews.

The efforts to get the Ethiopian Jews to Israel began after then Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef wrote a letter to Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Supposedly, Begin then called the head of the Mossad, and told him “Bring me my brothers, the Jews of Ethiopia.”

Toledo said that the story of the Ethiopian Jews illustrates the connection between the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Israel is and will always be a place of refuge and a protector of Jews everywhere. I can’t think of another country that has this kind of relationship with its people (and I am using “people” in its tribal sense). Perhaps if there will be an independent Kurdistan, there could be one more.

He also mentioned that when he gave a presentation in Europe, a non-Jewish person said to him that they too wished they had a place of refuge, the way Jews did. It reminded me of what an African-American Muslim said to my wife and I when we were about to make aliyah in 1979: “I wish we knew where our home was.”

Israel today is experiencing what Ofir Haivry called a “demographic miracle.” Everyone knows that when economic well-being and educational level increase, fertility goes down. This is true in Europe, North America, East and Southwest Asia, and the Middle East, including Palestinian and Israeli Arabs. But not among Jewish Israelis, where each woman has an average of 3.1 children (and this number is rising, despite Israel’s economic success). Haivry notes that this is not mostly because of a high birthrate among Haredim, but because the majority of secular and non-Haredi observant Jews are having more children. I can attest to this anecdotally – the streets and parks here are full of Jewish children and pregnant women.

Haivry attributes this to the strong family orientation of Jewish Israelis. He writes,

Throughout Israeli society, the educational and moral welfare of children as well as the continuity of the family remains at the center of parents’ (and grandparents’) lives, not only emotionally but as a matter of almost day-to-day practice.

But this is only part of it – and I think it is a small part, because close family ties characterize many countries in which there is nevertheless an inverse correlation between development and birthrate. He continues – and here I think he hits the nail on its head:

This peculiarly strong culture draws sustenance from and in turn informs the equally strong sense of national solidarity. Thanks to that strongly shared national identity, Israeli Jews are unusually willing to make personal sacrifices when it comes to welcoming new Jewish immigrants into the state and into their homes—and also when it comes to stoically enduring protracted periods of violence and bloodshed perpetrated by intractable enemies. As traditional communities of origin have receded in importance elsewhere in the world, the shared sense of an Israeli nation-family underlies the habitual instinct of most Israeli Jews to regard other Jews, and especially those in Israel itself, primarily as family members rather than merely as fellow citizens.

In a word, the secret is Zionism.

This is precisely why Menachem Begin asked the Mossad to bring him his Ethiopian brothers. This is why, when my own son told me that his wife was going to have a fourth child, he said – only half-jokingly – “I did it for the demographic struggle of the Jewish people.”

Having children is a joy, especially when one gets older. But in the beginning it means that parents have to sacrifice some of their own well-being for the sake of the children. There are adventures that they will not have, and pleasures that they will have to forgo. In highly self-centered societies, people often prefer not to make such sacrifices. They choose travel, extended education or careers over children. If they do have children, they have them later in life, so they have fewer of them. 

This is why the highly developed native cultures of Europe, for example, are phasing themselves out of history with fertility rates far below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. And worries about their shrinking work force which must support an increasingly aged population have led them to welcome the immigration that will ultimately put an end to those cultures.

And this is why liberal Jews will soon be disappearing as a distinct group in American society: their affluence together with a lack of national feeling – which is also the reason they are attracted to anti-Israel politics – leads them to put their personal gratification before any Jewish consciousness that they may have. They have fewer children, and don’t see a downside to intermarriage.

This also applies to the bitter anti-Zionist Left in Israel, the ones that advise their (few) children to refuse to be serve in the IDF. But for this very reason – they too will be gone soon – I don’t see them as a major threat to Israel’s national consciousness.

Someone said to me at Toledo’s lecture that while the immigration of the Ethiopians was a big success, their absorption has been less so. I disagree. We are just beginning to see the first generation of Ethiopian Jews born in Israel, and they are Israeli in every way. The usual problems of immigrants – prejudice, crime, poverty – are fading away, and in another generation or two will be gone. Jews from Ethiopia are finding their places in our society, including having plenty of children of their own.

Today Israel is militarily the most powerful nation in the region – we’ve just demonstrated that to the Iranian regime – and an economic powerhouse, but we are also vulnerable due to our small size. Begin realized that we need more than military strength to survive – we need to care about each other and our nation.

And despite the sometimes deafening disagreements, we do.





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Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Kialo advertises itself as, “The only platform designed specifically for rational debates,” but based on its recent, sponsored tweet, it is anything but. Instead, Kialo is just one more vehicle for far-left Big Brothering ala Facebook. The tweet in question reads:

“Is it ok to physically modify yourself as a symbol of a religious bond? What if your parents do it while you're still an infant? Join the Kialo debate on banning infant male circumcision!”

Kialo pretends that it offers a way to have balanced debate “with clear, concise arguments from both sides. That makes it easy to weigh the pros and cons without all that editorial noise.”
But here we have a very leading few sentences in a sponsored tweet. Kialo is telling the Twitterverse what to think about circumcision. They are putting doubt in your minds just by asking the question of whether people have any right to “modify” themselves as a symbol of a religious bond.
And in fact, the question itself is antisemitic. The only people who “modify” themselves as a symbol of a religious bond are the Jews. Muslims circumcise for other reasons.
Notice, as well, that you don’t see anyone complaining about the lip-stretching or scarification practices of some African tribes, or the tooth-sharpening practice of the Mayans and Balinese. How about the neck-accentuation practices of some Thai women in which they wear up to 25 coils, each weighing four and a half pounds, beginning at age 5, to elongate their necks?


No. You don’t hear anyone complaining about any of that. But if you did, it would not be framed as "mutilation" but as diversity. Woe to anyone who dares to cringe or shudder at the nature of these practices, lest he be accused of closed-mindedness and prejudice.
Of course, if you really wanted to address religious mutilation, it would not be circumcision, with its proven health benefits, but female genital mutilation (FGM). Female genital mutilation is known to cause "recurrent infections, difficulty urinating and passing menstrual flow, chronic pain, the development of cysts, an inability to get pregnant, complications during childbirth, and fatal bleeding. There are no known health benefits."
Only when it comes to the Jews, it seems, do people think they are justified in saying we have no right to practice our religion. That our beliefs are wrong, our Torah is wrong, our God wrong. That our age old rite is "mutilation."
But here’s the thing: Jews are obligated to circumcise sons. Banning circumcision effectively bans Judaism. Think how it was in Soviet Russia, how Jews risked death to have their sons circumcised in secret, in the middle of the night. Think how the Romans outlawed Jewish rites like circumcision and how, when Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai criticized them, he and his son were forced into hiding for 13 years in order to evade certain execution. We did not risk death to arrive at the point where our religion and fate can still be debated by outsiders.
And yet, Kialo dares to ask, “What if your parents do it while you’re still an infant?”
With this question, Kialo is making a statement, telling the world to doubt the morality of something that Jews have done for thousands of years. And judging by the responses, Kialo’s implied message has been received, loud and clear.

How, by the way, is it even a debate if Kialo has prejudiced you from the get go? Take a look at the way the “debate” is framed. The question is: “should circumcision be banned” and it’s offered as a choice, pro or con.

But it’s natural for people to choose arguments in favor of things. People like to be positive. They like to be for, and not against things. This is why, for instance, the pro-abortion crowd frames its position as “pro-choice” while telling the world that anyone who disagrees with them is “anti-choice.” And so, given the choice of being pro or anti a ban on circumcision, people are going to take the bait, and choose pro.
Was there a choice about the wording? Of course. Instead framing the question in terms of a ban, Kialo might have written, for instance: “should circumcision be permitted?” and made that as a pro/con choice. It’s clear that the chosen phrasing employing the word "ban"was meant to prejudice participants against Jewish ritual. And at that point, we have to wonder: why should a basic Jewish practice be the subject of “debate?” Why should it even be discussed by people not Jewish?
Can anyone really tell us that we have no right to observe our religion, as mandated by God since Father Abraham was himself circumcised?
Kialo claims it makes it easy to weigh the pros and cons of an argument by giving you “clear, concise arguments from both sides. That makes it easy to weigh the pros and cons without all that editorial noise.”


But here we have a sponsored tweet, issued just as the right to circumcision for non-medical reasons is being debated in Iceland. And the sponsored tweet suggests that the practice of an ancient Jewish rite abrogates an infant’s human rights. How is that NOT editorial noise?
And of course, people responding to the tweet take the bait and run with it. Read the responses. The word “mutilation” crops up numerous times.
Editorial silence, or bias by selective omission, by the way, also provides a kind of “editorial noise” by filtering what it is readers are allowed to see and hear. if you click the link in the tweet, and read the backgrounder for the debate, one paragraph out of five is given over to a detailed explanation of why Muslims perform circumcision. There is, on the other hand, not one word, let alone a paragraph on the reasons Jews perform circumcision. This, though clearly the Muslim rite is based on the Jewish rite, the Jewish rite of circumcision having begun thousands of years before Mohammed was born, the Jewish people having been the first to practice this ritual.
So effectively, Kialo’s tweet tells you to question the Jewish practice of Brit Milah, the Jewish circumcision rite, but tells you absolutely nothing about why Jews perform this ritual. No one should be surprised. Bias by selective omission is a classic tactic of the left. What they keep you from hearing is just as important as what they whisper into your adorable little subconscious.
Which is why this, is utter garbage:
“With Kialo, you can easily visualize every aspect of a complex debate, so you can be more thoughtful about the issues that matter to you and the world.
“Empowering reason.
“Kialo.”
No wait: 

via GIPHY




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Monday, May 14, 2018



A few years back, I talked about a branch of philosophy called Pragmatism, the only major philosophical school of thought to cross from the US to Europe, in the context of this analysis of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.  Quoting (briefly) from that piece:
“by ‘pragmatic,’ I don’t just mean ‘practical.’  For according to the cornerstone principle of Pragmatism (the so-called ‘Pragmatist Maxim), reality itself is defined, and thus changeable, by human action in the real world.
… consider a canonical example of Pragmatic thinking: why a knife should be considered sharp.  According to the Pragmatist, the knife is sharp NOT because it possesses (or partakes in) some metaphysical form of “sharpness,” nor because the notion of sharpness can be measured empirically (through some combination of blade width and hardness, for example).  Rather, a knife is sharp because any rational person seeing one sitting next to a stick of butter would use the knife to cut the butter, rather than vice versa.  And an irrational person who tried to do the opposite would necessarily fail.”
While many aspects of reality are dictated by things beyond human agency (the existence of the sun and mortality, for example), not everything falls into this category.  As just mentioned “sharpness” might not be an actual thing without the act of human beings interacting with objects in the world.  Similarly, human political agency creates, rather than just describes, things and the meaning behind them. 
As a simple example, those of you who dislike manufactured pop music as much as I probably consider the Eurovision Song Contest (presuming you consider it at all) as a punchline or musical freak show.  And, as proud as I am of the Jewish state’s many, many accomplishments, the victory of a chicken-warbling circus act at Eurovision ’18 would normally not get onto my shortlist of Israeli gifts to the world. 
But once BDS got into the act, spreading their bile throughout the Interwebs in hope that they could rally the world to vote down Netta – Israel’s ultimately successful entrant into this year’s Eurovision contest – suddenly Eurovision became something it wasn’t before: a global political referendum on the Jewish state’s place in the world.
Keep in mind that this was not what Eurovision was created to be, nor were the performers – including Netta – interested in turning the event into a global vote for or against the their countries.  But by making votes against Netta a political act of condemnation, BDS simultaneously (if inadvertently) turned votes for her into a political act of support.
Moving onto a more serious example, think about the impending opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem.  Under normal circumstances, this would be an unremarkable event, one that should have occurred decades ago. 
For as long nations have established diplomatic ties, the location of embassies was not even a point of discussion.  If you want to establish diplomatic presence in the US, the UK or France, for example, your only option would be to build an embassy in Washington, London or Paris.  The same rule applies to every other state in the world, large and small: you build your embassy in the other guy’s capital.   
But because this normal situation was denied in one special case, the idea of opening or not opening an embassy in Jerusalem city became more and more politically significant with each passing year. 
If Israel’s foes had not raised this price sky high, building or moving an embassy in Jerusalem would be as un-newsworthy as every routine embassy opening in the world.  But this decades-long denial of Israel’s legitimate rights turned the final, reasonable, and appropriate acceptance of those rights into a new game-changing, Pragmatic reality.






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Don’t tell me to “stay safe”

Don’t. Just don’t. Sometimes kindly meant words are the worst.

On May 8th Trump pulled out of the disastrous Iran Deal. Almost immediately afterwards Israeli citizens were warned that there would likely be an attack from Iranians based in Syria and communities in the Golan were instructed to make sure their bomb shelters were open.

And they did attack, shooting 20 large missiles at Israel. Thankfully not a single one hit their target and instead the IAF wiped out much of the Iranian infrastructure in Syria in the largest operation in Syria in 40 years. The perfection of the military maneuver, brilliantly timed with the preceding diplomatic efforts was nothing short of stunning.

But I digress.

As soon as friends abroad heard about the instructions to open bomb shelters messages started pouring in saying “stay safe”, speaking of the threat Israelis face with missiles pointed at us.

Kind, caring people, genuinely concerned and yet very annoying.

It took me a while to figure out my reaction. Why should these well intended words grate on my nerves so much? Is it the word “safe” or possibly the word “stay”? One assumes that safety is possible in the reality we live in. The other assumes that we have been safe and can remain so. Both assumptions are completely disconnected from our reality.

I think that’s what aggravated me.

No one seems to understand the tightrope we walk. Either people see Israel as a completely normal country whose citizens live privileged lives or as a dangerous war zone of constant fear and horror. Neither is true. BOTH are true and that is a reality too complicated for most people to comprehend.

We don’t fit in the boxes that suite other people. We are a category unto ourselves.

Israelis live in the shadow of existential threat every single day. We raise kids and go on picnics with our families. We create beautiful art and world changing inventions that improve every aspect of life. We help people in trouble, all over the world, all the time WHILE our own lives are in danger.

We are happy and live life to the maximum - while people are constantly trying to murder us. This isn’t an expression of paranoia or an exaggeration. This is a simple statement of fact. In the same vein, the instruction to open bomb shelters was not a sign of a sudden escalation in danger, it was purely a logical precaution considering the immediacy of the danger that is sometimes a moment away and sometimes happening in the specific moment.

Israelis have been asking themselves when the next war will be since the last one ended.  We joke about it and hope that the war won’t ruin our vacation plans (wars seem to have a way of happening in the summer, though not always).

Israelis have been discussing the massive amounts of missiles Hezbollah has received from Iran since the 2006 war. Many people in the north of Israel are certain they heard signs of tunneling underneath their homes (Hamas learned about using tunnels for fighting from Hezbollah, not the other way around). The IDF has been discussing the possibility of evacuating towns in northern Israel when the war starts. It is understood that Hezbollah might succeed in infiltrating the country and taking over an entire town creating a hostage crisis and the necessity for urban battle inside our own country.

We are not talking about IF a war happens. The only question is WHEN it will happen.

Iran on our border just made things ten thousand times worse. Thanks to Obama / Kerry / Clinton foreign policy we actually ended up with ISIS, Al Qaeda off shoots AND Iran on our border.

Which threat would you prefer? Even with the threat of ISIS, Hezbollah has been the real danger but they are only a proxy of their master, Iran, a country controlled by ayatollahs whose religious belief dictates that they must wash the world in blood for their messiah to come. What better way to do this than to begin with Israel, the Nation who originally rejected their religion?  

Political adversaries can be reasoned with. Religious fanatics are a completely different story. Looking the other way when fanatics, hell bent on wiping another nation off the face of the earth races towards attaining the weapons that will enable them to achieve their goal is nothing short of evil.

Our Prime Minister has been explaining this to the world for years (take a look at this interview from 2006!). Now everyone is being forced to see how right he was all this time.


The possibilities of how horrible the next war could get are so shocking most people just blank out on the very real probabilities. We are talking about so many missiles being shot at once that our missile defense systems will not be able to protect the population, people being trapped in bomb shelters for heaven only knows how long (how does one prepare enough food, water, peace of mind to last that out?), a ground invasion, hostages and probably another front on our southern border with Hezbollah and Hamas attacking in tandem.

Our enemies will not win but the estimates of how many Israelis could die are staggering.

WE know these things when we go to sleep at night, when we get up the next morning trying to figure out how to produce clean water for people in India, cure cancer and save endangered species. We know these things when we laugh at jokes and celebrate winning the Eurovision.

We’re not safe so we can’t “stay safe.” Israel isn’t safe and frankly Jews anywhere else are not safe. Those who believe they are safe live in a comforting illusion that can pop in an instant, with disastrous results. We in Israel at least understand what we are facing… and yet we are not hunkered down in a corner, shaking with fear. THAT seems to be what the world cannot understand.

How is it possible that a nation could be so extraordinarily brave? (Remember - bravery is not the lack of fear, it is being afraid and doing what is necessary despite the fear.) 

How could a people so terribly abused be so gracious and bring so much benefit to others, including to their abusers? 

How could a people counter so much hate with so much love?

The dichotomy is so extreme it seems inhuman and thus impossible. That is why so many try so hard to “catch the Jew”, to discover some evil that Jews, particularly Israel is committing. The idea that Israel is just as bad as their worst (the Jew is the new Nazi syndrome) is more comforting than accepting and possibly (heaven forbid!) emulating the light of Israel.

Safety is a luxury we don’t have. We don’t expect anyone to provide us with safety. We’re not waiting to be rescued. What would be nice is if, at least, our friends and well-wishers truly understood the reality we live in.

We don’t do “safe”.  (Since when have Jews, in the history of the world, actually been safe?!). That’s not what we are here for.

We do love. We protect others. We lead by example. And when we have to do it alone, we do it alone.
Eventually, I believe, others will follow.

In the meantime, don’t tell me to “stay safe.”



  




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Thursday, May 10, 2018

 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

As everyone knows, US President Donald Trump has dumped the so-called “Iran deal” (JCPOA), and re-imposed strict economic sanctions on the Iranian regime.

I agree with PM Netanyahu that not only did the deal not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, it “[paved] Iran’s path to an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs.”

The deal limited the enrichment of uranium, at least at the sites that were known to the IAEA. It mandated the removal of some centrifuges from Iran’s facilities and the sealing of a nuclear reactor that could have produced Plutonium. But it did not prevent the regime from developing advanced centrifuges that will allow it to produce fissionable material much faster once we reach the deal’s “sunset” dates. It did not prevent it from continuing its development of nuclear warheads at military sites that are off-limits to IAEA inspectors. It did not prevent it from developing the missiles that will carry those warheads.

It did provide a diplomatic shield that protected the Iranian program from attack by Israel, which quite reasonably sees herself as a target – the regime itself told us so, more than once. It did offer sanctions relief that provided large amounts of money, which were used to finance the war in Syria, terrorism against Israel, and probably secret nuclear-related work. It also weakened existing UN resolutions against missile development.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, anything but a Trump supporter, said the deal “isn’t really an arms-control agreement; it’s just cover for American inaction, and for President Obama’s acute desire to leave the Middle East.” One might add that the Europeans also had a strong desire to see sanctions lifted so that they could jump into the Iranian market with both feet.

The deal, which wasn’t actually signed by either the US or the Iranian regime, was implemented by the Obama Administration against the wishes of the majority in Congress and the majority of the American people, as Bret Stephens, another non-Trump-supporter, notes. But it was ratified by the UN Security Council, which is how previous Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran not undertake missile development were weakened into one that merely called upon Iran to do so.

Supporters of continuing the deal argue that while it isn’t perfect, it at least slows Iran’s progress to an arsenal of deliverable nuclear weapons. They also suggest that ending the deal will cause Iran to be more aggressive in its nuclear program, ultimately leading to war (either with the US, Israel or both). 

In response, we need to consider the objectives of the Iranian regime in the region and in the world. If we take it at its word and by its actions, the revolutionary regime has truly grandiose goals: establishing a Shiite caliphate in the Middle East, removing all US influence from the region, ending America’s world leadership, and destroying Israel – which it sees as both an agent of the US and an unacceptable Jewish presence in what should be an all-Muslim region.

The JCPOA assisted Iran in accomplishing these goals. Although it may have slowed her nuclear program somewhat, it allowed  the regime to develop components of nuclear weapons without interference, so that when it is ready it can quickly “break out” before its opponents are able to confront it. In the long term, it guaranteed stability for Iran to carry out her plans.

It goes without saying that Israel and the Sunni Arab powers in the Middle East will not permit this to happen, and that if Iran continues its march toward its goals, regional war is unavoidable. What will happen with the US is less predictable, because it will depend on whether the US returns to appeasing the regime – that is, feeding the crocodile in order to be eaten last, as Churchill said – or continues Trump’s policy of starving it. Unlike the far-away USA, Iran’s regional neighbors don’t have the luxury of embracing appeasement. They will always be the ones it eats first.

I’ve argued that war between Iran and Israel is unlikely in the short term due to Israel’s deterrent strength, and the very astute David P. Goldman agrees with me. The long-term picture is cloudier, but it’s likely that continuing the JCPOA would have resulted in a gradually stronger and more militarily capable Iran that would ultimately be ready to challenge Israel. Its cancellation will weaken Iran economically and strategically, and disrupt her plan to make war on her own terms and at a time of her choosing.

Whether it will be enough to prevent war depends on the actions taken by all the anti-Iranian players: the US, Israel, and the Sunni Arabs. The pressure on Iran must be increased, and internal regime opponents strengthened. Countries like India and China that buy a lot of oil from Iran should be encouraged to find alternative sources. Russia’s anti-Western mischief will continue to be a problem, as well as European greed and shortsightedness. Finally, for Israel there is nothing more important than to continue to build up her deterrent capabilities – and also to continue to demonstrate them as aggressively as possible to Iran.

Iran is truly a rogue state, but in conventional military terms it is a relatively weak one. Today it can be deterred, and perhaps at some point its own people will be able to overthrow the regime. But thanks to Obama’s policy of feeding the Iranian crocodile, it has grown stronger and more dangerous in recent years.

Trump’s decision to end the policy of appeasement is the right one. This is a beast we cannot afford to feed.




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Wednesday, May 09, 2018


Hate speech has always been difficult to define. Facebook, caught with its fingers in the cookie jar of our private information, has decided that teaching us what hate speech means is sufficient penance. But penance or contrition isn’t something Mark Zuckerberg understands. Giving us at long last a glimpse into Facebook’s mysterious Community Standards is MZ’s way of saying, “Okay. We stole your information, so here’s what we’ll give you.”
As if this is a business exchange.
Which it most assuredly is not.
For years, private individuals have reported anti-Israel Facebook pages that threaten Jews with violence and death, and defame the Jewish people in coarse and disgusting ways. The response from Facebook support has always been: we reviewed your report and determined that this page/content does not violate our community standards.
But we were never told what those standards were.
As far as we were concerned, a page called Death to Israel, for instance, violates ALL standards of permitted speech and human decency, leading us to believe that Facebook’s Community Standards were no standards at all.
Even worse, when trolls would report pro-Israel advocacy pages, Facebook would accede to demands to censor the pages or close them down. It seems that Facebook had initiated a concerted effort to bolster anti-Israel voices while squelching those of the pro-Israel community. This repugnant policy smelled all the worse for the fact that Zuckerberg is Jewish, if in name, only.
After a while, we discovered a go-around: that if enough people reported those awful antisemitic hate pages, Facebook would usually take them down. But then they’d go right back up, a few days or weeks later. They thought that once we won, we’d stop paying attention and they could allow those pages to tiptoe right back in.
It is a disgusting, disheartening experience that mirrors the process by which trolls are able to keep pro-Israel advocates endlessly in jail.
Now Zuckerberg is at long last being called on the carpet to come clean. In a statement he issued prior to his testimony before the Senate Judicial Committee, the guy admitted he was only reassessing Facebook’s hate speech policies because the media was on him like white on rice.
“… it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake.”
In other words, it was a mistake only because he got CAUGHT.
One result of this was this release explaining, at long last, Facebook’s Community Standards. Here’s an excerpt from the section that defines hate speech:
We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disability or disease. We also provide some protections for immigration status. We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation. We separate attacks into three tiers of severity, as described below.
Sometimes people share content containing someone else’s hate speech for the purpose of raising awareness or educating others. Similarly, in some cases, words or terms that might otherwise violate our standards are used self-referentially or in an empowering way. When this is the case, we allow the content, but we expect people to clearly indicate their intent, which helps us better understand why they shared it. Where the intention is unclear, we may remove the content.
We allow humor and social commentary related to these topics. In addition, we believe that people are more responsible when they share this kind of commentary using their authentic identity.
While some welcomed this attempt to finally lay out for us what Facebook deems hate speech, this document did not at all explain why a page called Death to Israel is allowed to stand, while a page that expresses love for Israel, is not, the minute a troll reports it.
I tend to be courteous on public fora. I avoid coarse language, bias, and bigotry. To the best of my ability, I don’t use insulting language. This approach has served me well. I’ve been in Facebook jail exactly once, and that was years ago, for a comment I shouldn’t have made, calling out a woman for claiming to be a Jew when she had privately admitted to me she was not. I embarrassed her. And I got the equivalent of a Facebook slap on the hand when the woman reported my comment.
Imagine my surprise then, when one week ago, out of the blue, I go to Facebook and confronting me is this text:
This post goes against our community standards.
Only you can see this post because it goes against our standards on hate speech.
Under this was a comment I only vaguely remembered from some years ago. It was a reply on a thread and it read:
Seeing things through rose-colored glasses is also discrimination-an idea you’ve come to with no proof-a generalization about an entire people. You actually don’t know that most Arabs are not terrorists and neither do I. I don’t make generalizations one way or the other. Because it is wrong to do so when you don’t know it for a fact. It is misleading.
I am not frightened of Arabs because I see all of them as terrorists. I am not discriminating against them. I am frightened of Arabs because of Arab terror. It is prudent to be cautious, realistic, considering our reality.
At the bottom of the comment was a button reading: “continue.”
When I went to the next page, there was an explanation that I probably didn’t know enough about Facebook Community standards to realize that this was hate speech, so they were hiding the post, as a kind of first warning. Only I would be able to see it. That is if I wanted to. If I wanted to dig through years and years of hundreds of thousands of comments to find it.
Not that anyone else would be digging through hundreds of thousands of comments to find it either. Although clearly someone in a cubicle at Facebook is busily perusing my comment history, scouring it for something, anything, that would offend the unfathomable Facebook Community Standards.
I would like to say that this little lesson from Mark Z. illuminated everything I needed to know about hate speech. I’d like to say that I learned something about being polite on a public forum, about being a kind, moral, and loving person. But reviewing the comment deemed by the Facebook powers that be as “hate speech,” I’m left more confused and upset than ever.
What I wrote was not hate speech. It was the opposite of hate speech.
I don’t hate Arabs. I don’t love Arabs. I am cordial to Arabs in stores and in public places and count some Arabs among my friends. But I also fear Arabs.
Which is not the same as hate.
The other night, my husband and I drove to my son’s army base in an out of the way settlement, which had years ago suffered a brutal infiltration and terror attack. We didn’t know our way around and it was night. We waited until a Jewish resident was traveling the last several miles up the lonely highway to the settlement and tagged along behind.
At one point, two cars with PA licenses passed us, one on the right and on the left. My husband thought they were about to do a pincer movement to create a barrier on the road that would trap us, so they could attack us and the Jewish family car ahead of us. It was just a split second and then the Arabs in those cars appeared to reconsider and drove on, leaving us unscathed.
Did we imagine it? I honestly do not know. What I do know: we had to be ready. Things like this can and do happen in Israel. And it isn’t Jewish Israelis that do these things, but Arabs. Arabs like the men in these two cars. In the dark, we had very little information to go on.
In the back of our minds, we must always be cautious in our dealings with Arabs we don’t know. It’s not about hate. It’s because of actual things a significant number of Arabs have done to Jews in Israel.
I try to be fair. I try to be open in my dealings with all people, no matter their ethnic identity or color. I don’t hate any people as a group with the exception, for instance, of known terrorists. My fear on that road was a reasonable fear and it was not even a little bit powered by hatred.
With the lecture it gave me on the comment it hid, Facebook taught me exactly nothing about hate speech. What it did teach me is that Facebook is running around in circles to continue in its Big Brother ways—making arbitrary and thoughtless rulings on the limits of free speech.
What a shame to waste all that power and influence when Facebook arguably could have been a force for good.



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Monday, May 07, 2018


One of the things that makes debate over whether BDS is winning or losing so confusing is lack of common agreement regarding what constitutes success and failure.

For example, this year we saw more BDS votes in student government than in previous years, and more of those votes go in favor of the BDSers.  Needless to say, a movement like BDS which demands we treat everything (including defeat) as wins for them insists that more student government votes going their way constitutes unstoppable momentum for their cause.  And, from our side, it’s difficult to totally dismiss more student votes against Israel as irrelevant.

Yes, school administrations have held the line by condemning and insisting they will never act on the non-binding requests made by this year’s Student Senate.  And after two decades of effort, it is relevant to point out that all BDS has to show for itself are some toothless measures passed by transient student leaders through votes often taken behind the backs of constituents (meaning they cannot be said to represent campus opinion).

But this assumes that the goal of the BDS “movement” is to actually cause financial harm to the Jewish state.  While that may be an ultimate desire or dream, their main or current goals might be different, requiring us to tease these out before measuring success or failure (or selecting our own strategies and tactics to fight them).
The most obvious goal the boycotters are trying to achieve is to brand Israel as a racist, repressive state akin to South Africa (which, it should be noted, ended its Apartheid system years before most of today’s college students were born).   Given this, anything they can do to poison the minds of the young against the Jewish state represents furthering their actual goal.  So even if a student government vote does not go their way, the speeches they make and letters in school papers condemning Israel in harsh and unfair terms represent the actual political activity they are engaged in designed to further their real goal of making Israel seem so loathsome that its elimination should be seen as virtuous rather than horrifying.

Another goal was best labeled by William Jacobson at Legal insurrection who described BDS as a “Settler Colonial Ideology” which strives to colonize and dominate the entire Left end of the political spectrum and make anyone who considers themselves left of center subservient to their will. 

This goal has received a boost over the last year as anti-Trump “resistance,” coupled with the emergence of the ideology of intersectionality (which insists all progressive causes be linked), provided the most aggressive activists (which tend to be anti-Israel partisans) the opportunity to make demands on those with whom they join in “common cause.”

The scare quotes I just used around “common cause” was meant to illustrate that for a Settler Colonial Ideology like BDS, finding common cause is a one-way street.  This is why women and gay groups must sign onto the anti-Israel agenda to be considered intersectional partners in good standing, while those pushing the intersectional agenda will never mention – much less fight for – women and gays repressed throughout the Middle East (including in “Palestine”).

In many ways, ground-level successes – such as the aforementioned student government votes – are a result of the success the BDS colonial project over the last year.   And, as we have seen in the UK, the fully colonized anti-Israel/anti-Semitic Left can end up just one election away from obtaining genuine power.
So now that we know what the most important goals of the BDS project really are, how best to fight it?  Having our own goals clearly articulated is a first step, a subject I’ll discuss next. 






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Thursday, May 03, 2018

Si vis pacem, para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war) – Vegetius, c. 450 CE

I’ve said that I am expecting a hot war soon. But recent developments are changing my mind. The strategy of deterrence and interdiction seems to be working on our northern border, and firm resistance to Hamas’ attempts to overrun our southern one seems – so far – to be effective.

The attack on the T4 airbase in Syria on April 10, and the one on the weapons depot near Hama this week, both attributed to Israel, have sent a strong message to the Iranian regime that Israel is serious about not allowing an Iranian buildup in Syria. Although little is publicly known about these attacks, it seems that both offensive and defensive weapons were destroyed, and that in both cases there were casualties among Iranian personnel. 

Apparently, bunker-buster bombs were employed in the Hama raid, which should give pause to the Iranians, as well as Hezbollah and Hamas, all of whom make heavy use of underground facilities in light of the IDF’s air superiority. Iranian nuclear facilities are supposedly deep enough underground and heavily protected enough to survive Israel’s bombs; but how willing are they to test our capabilities in this area?

Syrian air defenses have also proved wanting, despite the downing of an Israeli F-16 in February, which was attributed to a “professional error” by the F-16’s crew. Russian antiaircraft systems were not activated against the Israeli planes. This may be because of agreements between Israel and Russia, but also possibly because the IAF possesses countermeasures effective against even the latest Russian systems – and the Russians would not like this fact to become widely known.

All of this means that Iranian leaders know that Israel will not hold back, and that she is capable of  doing great damage to whatever she chooses to attack.

The recent intelligence coup in which, somehow, at least a half-ton of documents relating to Iran’s nuclear program prior to the JCPOA (the “nuclear deal” with the P5+1) were removed from Tehran to Jerusalem also has deterrent implications. Although it has been said that there is little data there that was not already known (especially to spy agencies), there is specific information about individuals involved in the program and locations for development and testing of weapons. So in addition to the political effect – it publicly establishes that the Iranians lied about their prior programs in the JCPOA negotiations, and may provide US President Trump with a justification for exiting the deal – it improves Israel’s ability to target Iranian nuclear facilities and personnel. The regime definitely doesn’t want to lose these!

There is also increasing unrest among the Iranian population, which is suffering economic difficulties while the regime spends billions on its adventures in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. And here there are two possible effects: either a war with Israel would increase the dissatisfaction, or it would serve to unify the population behind the regime. My guess is that the population would be split, therefore increasing the tension and making things more difficult for the regime. 

If Trump does leave the deal and re-impose sanctions, the Iranian economy would receive another blow. On the other hand, if he succeeds in toughening the agreement in the areas of verification, missile development, and eliminating the “sunset clause,” then Israel’s strategic position is improved.

There is no doubt that Israel’s strategic team of Netanyahu, Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman, and Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkott, is competent. The IDF has learned the lessons of 2006 and will not be caught with inadequate intelligence and poor planning as it was then. Both the Iranians and Hezbollah understand this, despite their bragging.

Russia, which wants to keep Assad in power and maintain its bases in Syria, has at least so far showed no desire to interfere with Israel in its actions against Iran and Hezbollah. I speculate that a nuclear-armed Iran with missiles that can hit Moscow is not especially desirable to Vladimir Putin. Netanyahu’s diplomatic walk between the raindrops with Putin and Trump has been remarkable.

Hamas, which would possibly add its weight to a war against Iranian proxies, is not an existential threat. Its tunnels either have been or will shortly be neutralized. The IDF can strike very hard against its infrastructure, which it would probably do in the context of a wider war, in order to eliminate the necessity of fighting a protracted battle on another front. Hamas is aware of this.

But there is one factor which I think is more important to our deterrence than everything else put together, and that is the simple fact that the Trump Administration is not likely to try to stop us from defending ourselves. Compare Trump, Pence, Pompeo and Bolton to Obama, Biden, Kerry and Rice! I can’t think of a larger ideological and empathetic distance. 

This administration will not accept the propaganda of our enemies as truth, as Obama and Kerry did. It will not refuse to resupply us with Hellfire missiles or force our international airport to close, as Obama did in 2014. It will no longer be a given that Israel has only the shortest possible window to achieve an advantageous strategic position (I won’t even mention victory) before the “international community,” led by the US, forces a cease-fire.

Hezbollah understands that Israel will not shrink from employing its full firepower against rocket launchers embedded in the civilian population of southern Lebanon. And it also understands that Israel will receive support from the US if this becomes necessary.

In fact, not only does this administration help Israel deter her enemies, its uncompromising opposition deters Iran from pursuing its expansionist goals in the entire region. Of course, it must be prepared to make good on its threats, and that remains to be seen. But there is no doubt that the policy of appeasement followed by the Obama Administration had the opposite effect.

It’s ironic that criticism of the Trump Administration, particularly Pompeo and Bolton, refers to them as “warmongers,” when the practical impact of their strong stance against Iran is to make regional war less likely.

Taken together, the actions of both Israel and the US are tending to prevent war, or at least delay it until there is an administration in the US that is more like Obama’s than Trump’s. Who knows? Perhaps the Iranian momentum can be reversed, and by that time there will be a new regime there.

Si vis pacem, para bellum. It was true in 450 CE, and it’s true today.




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Wednesday, May 02, 2018


Hans Asperger, after whom Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) is named, is oft been depicted as a grandfatherly figure. The kindly white-haired Austrian pediatrician, it is thought, is the reason we’re as far as we are today in our understanding of AS. And there is immense gratitude for that.
The only problem with this fairytale is that it is a lie.
Here is the truth:
·         Hans Asperger rose to prominence by default after his more accomplished Jewish colleagues were expelled from the University of Vienna
·         Hans Asperger was not first to note the syndrome that bears his name
·         Hans Asperger likely lifted his early work on AS from two Jewish colleagues who were booted from the university and expelled from Austria, Georg Frankl and Anni Weiss
·         Hans Asperger actively participated in Hitler’s eugenics program, referring children with Asperger’s Syndrome to the Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna for euthanasia
Hans Asperger, in other words, sent children with Asperger’s Syndrome to die. The children he referred for euthanasia were murdered by starvation or lethal injection. The cause of death was listed as “pneumonia.”
Contrary to the benign figure he cut in circles affected by the subset of autism known as AS, Hans Asperger was a Nazi. Did he go along to get along? Did he find the work repugnant?
Edith Sheffer, author of a new book, Asperger’s Children: The origins of autism in Nazi Vienna, argues that Asperger was a willing participant in the murder of “defectives.” According to Sheffer, Asperger may have been attracted to the idea of a fascist collective as embodied by the Nazi concept of Volk: that of an Aryan people unsullied by those with “defects,” be they physical, psychological, or social.
There's also the fact that in 1938, these two things happened:
  1. · The Dean of the University of Vienna Medical School removed over half of its faculty, mostly Jewish doctors
  2. · Hans Asperger was promoted to become director of the Curative Education Clinic at the (very) young age of 28

What happened here? Was Asperger promoted because the Jews were gone? Or was he chosen for his ardent embrace of Nazi ideology?

Did Asperger, drunk with newfound power, simply fall in line with the Nazi killing machine, helping to eliminate all those who could not conform to the image of perfect Aryan? Or did he go along to get along: go along with murdering helpless children because he was afraid he’d otherwise be killed?

Did Hans Asperger experience a twinge of guilt as he sent children with AS to their deaths?
Does it matter?
An editorial in Molecular Autism argues that it matters a great deal. It matters that the story comes to our attention. And it matters that we know the truth.

This is about bioethics and accurate medical history, they say. The editors are unequivocal in stating their belief that Hans Asperger was a willing volunteer, “complicit with his Nazi superiors in targeting society’s most vulnerable people,” based on their review of an article by medical historian Herwig Czech, appearing in the same journal.[1] 
Simon Baron-Cohen*, Ami Klin, Steve Silberman, and Joseph D. Buxbaum, authors of this important editorial, write: “We take the unusual step of publishing this Editorial so as to explain our reasons for publishing this article. Two of us are Editors-in-Chief of Molecular Autism (SBC and JDB), one of us served as Action Editor during the long review process of this article (SBC), and two of us served as anonymous reviewers for this article, but have decided to forgo their anonymity (SS and AK).”
Hitler's letter authorizing the murder of the "incurably sick"
The four writers, all Jewish, take the bold step of owning history and making you own history, even when it is unpleasant, even when they might be accused of prejudicial treatment of the facts by dint of their religion.

They don’t CARE what you think. They will do what is right.
Respect!
In contrast, there is Sahil Singh Gujral, “the first openly autistic postgraduate in the UK to win the Wellcome Trust’s PhD studentship.” Speaking to the Guardian, Gujral compares these revelations regarding Asperger complicity in the Nazi eugenics program to Leo Kanner's views on the sterilization of the mentally disabled. But Gujral woefully misrepresents Kanner’s views.
Leo Kanner
Kanner advocated sterilization only for those who were incapable of caring for children. He didn’t for a moment believe that included all people with intellectual disabilities. “In my 20 years of psychiatric work with thousands of children and their parents,” said Kanner, “I have seen percentually at least as many 'intelligent’ adults unfit to rear their offspring as I have seen such 'feeble-minded' adults. I have--and many other have--come to the conclusion that, to a large extent independent of the I.Q., fitness for parenthood is determined by emotional involvements and relationships."
Jay Joseph[2] detailed an important debate between Kanner, a Jew, and Robert Foster Kennedy, chairman of the American Psychiatric Association. Foster Kennedy, advocated a U.S. euthanasia program patterned on the Nazi model that Hans Asperger served to implement. Kanner argued against such a program.

As they lined up for and against the murder of those with disabilities, these two men betrayed their ideological underpinnings. Foster Kennedy's views were likely informed by his academic milieu: he received an honorary degree in 1936 at the University of Heidelberg’s Nazi-sponsored 550-year jubilee celebration. Kanner's views were likely influenced by the fact that he was a Jew, part of a nation that values life.
It is worth reading in full, Joseph’s lengthy recounting of Kanner’s argument against euthanasia for the disabled. Kanner's Jewish humanity is on full display. A taste:
Kanner spoke of ‘the garbage collector’s assistant who has served our neighborhood for many years’. This was a ‘sober, conscientious, and industrious fellow, . . . deservedly respected by his employer, his co-workers and his spare time companions.’ Still, ‘with an I.Q. of 65, he is rated by us psychiatrists as feebleminded or mentally deficient' . . . 
Kanner discussed ways in which the ‘mentally deficient’ contribute to society:
“Sewage disposal, ditch digging, potato peeling, scrubbing of floors and other such occupations are as indispensable and essential to our way of living as science, literature and art. Cotton picking is an integral part of our textile industries. Oyster shucking is an important part of our seafood supply. Garbage collection is an essential part of our public hygiene measures. For all practical purposes, the garbage collector is as much of a public hygienist as is the laboratory bacteriologist. All such performances, often referred to snobbishly as ‘the dirty work’, are indeed real and necessary contributions to our culture, without which our culture would collapse within less than a month.”
Although Kanner agreed with Kennedy that ‘idiots and imbeciles cannot be trained in any kind of social usefulness’, he disagreed with Kennedy’s conclusion that, in Kanner’s words, ‘we are justified in passing the black bottle among them’ through the procedure some ‘dignify with the term euthanasia’. Kanner linked such ideas to reports of Nazi atrocities, and asked, ‘Shall we psychiatrists take our cue from the Nazi Gestapo?’
 . . . Kanner agreed with Kennedy and others that ‘sterilization is often a desirable procedure’ for ‘persons intellectually or emotionally unfit to rear children’. However, he objected to sterilization performed ‘solely on the basis of the I.Q.’
Kanner objected to sterilizing people on their basis of their IQ. And he certainly never advocated murdering people with Asperger’s Syndrome. Unlike Hans Asperger.
Propaganda poster for the Nazi eugenics program
Here’s an interesting factoid: some believe that Hans Asperger had Asperger’s Syndrome himself. He spoke of himself in the third person. He quoted himself. He was cold and distant, an introvert. 
And yet he was sending people just like himself to die of starvation or lethal injection.
No. There is no comparison between Hans Asperger, who sent children to starve to death, and Leo Kanner, who looked at people’s worth rather than at their ability to conform.
Propaganda for Nazi Germany's T-4 Euthanasia Program: "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too." from the Office of Racial Policy's Neues Volk.
Consumed by this story for several days, I cannot help but enumerate, in my mind, the wonderful people I know who have Asperger’s Syndrome. My brilliant cardiologist, for instance, or a certain young man who leads a local congregation with a voice like an angel.
What would have happened had these two been under Hans Asperger’s care in Vienna?
I think about this until my brain aches then think about it some more: the unfeeling banality of the particular evil of Hans Asperger, who marked for elimination the children he "championed."
I can see the children being marched into the bus that would take them to a place where they would be starved to death, or given a shot of something to steal the breath from their lungs, the sight from their eyes, the world around them.
Collection bus for killing patients. Hartheim Nazi killing center, bus with driver

The true story of Hans Asperger, Nazi, is an important story that must be told far and wide.
For if we do not, who will?
*Simon Baron-Cohen is a renowned autism researcher and expert, a cousin of Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who played, among other roles, Borat.


[1] Simon Baron-Cohen, Ami Klin, Steve Silberman, and Joseph D. Buxbaum, Did Hans Asperger actively assist the Nazi euthanasia program?, (Molecular Autism, 2018), https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-018-0209-5
[2] Jay Joseph, The 1942 ‘euthanasia’ debate in the American



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