Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: lumish

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Monday, November 09, 2020

Biden and the Taylor Force Act (Michael Lumish)

People are going to say that I am a broken record. They will say that almost nobody really cares about the Taylor Force Act. They will argue that it is ridiculous to think that a Biden administration will finance the murder of Jews in Israel, despite "pay-for-slay" or the "Martyrs Fund."

Of course, the great majority of people who make such claims will not have the slightest idea who Taylor Force was or what the Taylor Force Act is.

The Taylor Force Act (H.R. 1164) was passed by the 115th Congress. It was signed into law by the House of Representatives on December 5, 2017, and the US Senate on March 23, 2018.

Section 4, subsection A tells us that US tax dollars may go to the Palestinian Authority on condition that the PA takes "credible steps to end acts of violence against Israeli citizens and United States citizens that are perpetrated or materially assisted by individuals under their jurisdictional control, such as the March 2016 attack that killed former United States Army officer Taylor Force, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

What this means is that the US government is prohibited from handing over US cash dollars to the PA so long as it maintains the "Martyrs Fund." That is, so long as they insist upon paying off the murderers and attackers of random Jews or Americans in the streets of Israel, Mahmoud Abbas or the PA or the PLO will not receive a dime from the American taxpayer.

One would need to be an ethical homunculus to think that Americans have an obligation to pay-off the murderers of our brothers and sisters in Israel.

With Donald Trump, there was no question that we would not be forced to pay for the murder of Taylor Force, pictured below. He was a 29-year-old Army vet who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan before he was murdered, and his wife severely injured, in a PA-inspired slashing spree in the streets of Jaffa on March 9, 2016.

This puts a Joe Biden presidency in a very tough spot because Biden promises that he will give US tax dollars to the PA even as the PA vows to maintain the "Martyrs Fund."

Biden also claims that he will abide by the Taylor Force Act. That is good. That is what we need clarification on because a President Joe Biden simply cannot have it both ways.

He cannot keep his promise to Mahmoud Abbas if Abbas, as he swears to, maintains the Martyrs Fund.

And he cannot keep his promise to American Jews, and Americans, more generally, if he allows such payments to go through and thereby maintaining "pay-for-slay."

Thus, Biden is a cypher on this question. It remains a mystery because no one discusses it and he never gets asked about it.

But the reason that it is not discussed is because we, ourselves, are not discussing the question and we need to. This is not a secondary, minor issue. This is a question around whether or not the American taxpayer will be forced to finance the murder of Jews and Americans in Israel.

I have asked Hen Mazzig and Seth J. Frantzman, both of whom are Biden supporters, what they think of the "Taylor Force Question" and neither has so much as acknowledged it, from what I can tell.

On his website, Mazzig describes himself as an "Israeli writer, international speaker, social media activist and advocate." Frantzman tells us on his Facebook page that he is a "journalist, writer, photographer, PhD." We need pro-Jewish and pro-Israel supporters of Biden, such as these two guys, to ask the hard questions

Most importantly, Joe Biden needs to clarify his contradictory stance on the issue because I, for one, despise the idea that an American political party will force me to pay for the murder of my fellow Jews and Americans.

{Not my nickel, damn you.}

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Pay to Slay (Mike Lumish)

I still cannot get over the fact that any Democrat who comes into the White House will favor "pay-to-slay."

This is the policy wherein Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority (PA) literally pays-off random Arabs who kill Jews in Israel with foreign tax dollars. What is even more strange is that Democrats seem entirely oblivious to this practice. Trump cut funding to the Palestinian Authority. The PA, under previous American presidents, both Democratic and Republican, used American tax dollars to primarily line their own pockets and to pay Arabs to murder Jews in Israel. This is what is called "pay-to-slay."

And, yet, American Jews, in the minds of many, are supposed to think of themselves as holding dual-loyalty if we oppose paying Arabs to murder Jews in Israel? Ridiculous. How the Democratic Party maintains American Jewish loyalty is a mystery. Democrats would literally pay Arabs to murder Jews in Israel and we are supposed to smile and nod our pretty little heads?

It is grotesque and almost nobody ever discusses it.

The truth, of course, is that the Arabs in Israel have refused every single offer for a state of their own since the British Peel Commission of 1937. They said "no" in 1937. They said "no" in 1947. They said "no" three times in 1967. Arafat refused an Arab state in the heart of Israel, as did Mahmoud Abbas... a dictator in the fifteenth year of his four-year term.

And, nonetheless, the Democratic Party would turn over working-class American tax dollars to the Palestinian Authority, if not Hamas, who will use that money to incentivize the murder of Jews on historically Jewish land. And yet they still think that we are somehow unethical if we refuse to vote for their candidates.

The worst example of this antisemitic anti-Zionist trend within the Democratic Party is Bernie Sanders. Sanders is no friend to either the Jewish people or the Jewish state. He has surrounded himself by people who despise Jewish self-determination and self-defense. He has surrounded himself by people who oppose the Movement for Jewish Freedom which we call Zionism. His formal surrogates, such as Linda Sarsour, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar, among others, are uniformly antisemitic anti-Zionist. And he has specifically proposed funding Hamas at Israeli expense, despite the fact that former Hamas charters have called directly for the genocide of the Jews and current Hamas charter scalls directly for the elimination of the state of Israel. In the 2017 version we read:

Palestine is a land that was seized by a racist, anti-human and colonial Zionist project that was founded on a false promise (the Balfour Declaration), on recognition of a usurping entity and on imposing a fait accompli by force.

Palestine symbolises the resistance that shall continue until liberation is accomplished, until the return is fulfilled and until a fully sovereign state is established with Jerusalem as its capital.

Sanders surrogates in "the Squad" are not seeking social justice, nor are they merely criticizing Israeli policies. On the contrary, they actively undermine Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land within living memory of the Holocaust and three of the four do so from within the US Congress. One begins to wonder how much of Tlaib's energies go into supporting the people who voted her into Congress in Detroit versus her efforts to undermine Israel?

My major criticism of President Barack Obama's foreign policy concerning Israel is that he seemed so blithe in telling Jewish people where we may, or may not, be allowed to live within our ancestral homeland. He demanded "total settlement freeze." By this, he did not mean the building of no new "settlements" -- otherwise known as Jewish townships -- but no building even within existing Jewish townships in the parts of Israel that he particularly does not like.

He reminded me of nothing so much as a Medieval Italian prince dictating where Jews might be allowed to live within the Italian peninsula. But at least the Medieval Italian princes had the modesty to keep their demands within their own domains. Obama, on the other hand, took it upon himself to tell Jewish people where we could live on our own land and did so from the other side of the planet.

I was astonished at the time that so few American Jews seemed to mind seeing our brothers and sisters in Israel pushed around by an American President with shaky credentials regarding Israeli well-being. But that was then and this is now. If my major concern during the Obama years was the complacency with which American Jewish Democrats accepted the dictates of that President, my primary concern now is that the election of a Democrat to the White House in 2020 will resurrect US participation in "pay-to-slay."

If Biden wins the Presidency he would send working-class American tax-dollars to Ramallah or Gaza City, or both. Those governments will use a considerable amount of that money for the purpose of killing Jews on the land of the Jewish people.

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Sarah Tuttle-Singer's "Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered" : A Book Review (Mike Lumish)

Writing about Sarah Tuttle-Singer's work sometimes gets me into trouble. Perhaps that is why it is fun.

Her Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered: One Woman's Year in the Heart of the Christian, Muslim, Armenian, and Jewish Quarters of Old Jerusalem is a poignant and transgressive memoir. It is about love and hatred, happiness and pain and family. This book is very personal and Tuttle-Singer writes in a casual style about her life as a young woman who recently made aliyah. She attempts, layer by layer, to expose her feelings and her life from her journey as a blondie Jewish kid growing up around Los Angeles grappling with the fact that she watched her mother die from cancer.

It is a story of growing into adulthood in the Old City with two children, an absent ex-husband, a rapist, Arab stone-throwers, taxi-drivers with opinions, and the never-ending conflict before her eyes as she explores Jerusalem, sometimes by rooftop at midnight, as the new media editor for the Times of Israel.

Tuttle-Singer is (or was) torn by the fact that her son will shortly be called into the IDF. As a Californian Jew and Israeli who cares about the Jewish people, she is ripped between love and fear. I cannot begin to imagine what that must feel like. Tuttle-Singer knows that she is raising her children in a wild part of the world and shortly she will probably give up her young son to the Israeli military.

The value of Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered is that it is deeply personal. This book is not a political analysis, although it has definite political implications. It is not a history text, although history darkly hovers in the background. It is a memoir of a young Jewish woman learning about Israel and the Old City through exploration from childhood to adulthood. This is a painful story of a woman who has devoted herself to understanding what it means to be a Jew and to raise her children within Eretz Israel.

I have written about Sarah Tuttle-Singer before and although we are not friends, we are certainly not enemies. She is also despised by many who I know within the Jewish community, both Israeli and diaspora. Nonetheless, this is a book that should be read because it is honest, from the heart, and intelligent.

Naturally, this does not mean that I do not have my criticisms.

The virtue of Tuttle-Singer's writings is her appeal to basic human decency and her joy in social exploration. She is a hopeful "progressive" raising two children in Israel and what she wants more than anything is peace. Who doesn't? One of the difficulties with Tuttle-Singer's writings, however, is in the grey line between beautiful description and hyperbole. She is excellent at the former but often wanders into the latter, but that is a minor criticism. What she struggles with most is -- aside from her rape by the "Grey Man" in Jerusalem and the death of her mother -- is finding a balance within the never-ending conflict between Israeli Jews and Israeli Muslims.

The blood and the murder and the intifadas are always present in the background. Her fear for her own children is always there. Where she seems to find healing is in the gold between the cracks. Among the themes of this book this one struck me as central:

"Do you know what they do with broken objects in Japan?" my mom had asked me after my first heartbreak, when I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, my heart shattered into several jagged pieces. "They don't throw them away, sweet girl. They repair them. They melt gold and mend the everyday clay objects with the precious modern material."

This is precisely what Tuttle-Singer is endeavoring to do with her book. She wants very much to heal "the broken places" with "gold," i.e., with human decency and understanding because not only does it make it more beautiful, but stronger, as well.

What saddens me about Tuttle-Singer's writings, both in this book and in her Times of Israel column, is that there are reasons why she is not well-liked among many within the pro-Jewish / pro-Israel community. The primary reason is that she often seems to favor the Arabs over the Jews in terms of "the conflict." I do not doubt that she would take extreme exception with that characterization, but as a progressive defender of the underdog, it is natural as day. The problem is that there are about 400 million Arabs surrounding 7 million Jews who, for the most part, do not want those Jews in their midst.

Sarah does not seem to quite get that.

It, therefore, saddens me that she has earned the malice of many of my friends.

But I also understand why.

They see her as squishy and naive in the face of the enemies of the Jewish people and, thus, she is sometimes not trusted. Some even think of her as a traitor to her own people who has hurt some of our best friends, like Ryan Bellerose.

What I think is that she desperately wants peace -- for the sake of her own children and the Jewish people -- and is willing to bend far-over backward in her political thinking toward that effort. I find her writings to be intelligent, well-meaning, and a little naive, but, heck, she's the one who lives in Israel. I am still in California.

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Jews and anti-White Racism (Michael Lumish)

I recently published a Facebook tidbit titled, "The Grounding of Democratic Party Racism is the Progressive Left." There I suggest that the progressive-left is racist in three primary ways. These are anti-white racism, antisemitic anti-Zionism, and an imperial condescension toward those of non-European descent.

In response, Corinne Blackmer, a Professor of Biblical and American literature and gender studies at Southern Connecticut State University, pointed me to a 2019 article by Keith Payne published in Scientific American titled, "The Truth about Anti-White Discrimination."

The thesis is that anti-white racism is, itself, a racist delusion on the part of "white" people. Payne's conclusions are grounded in a piece published in Perspectives on Psychological Science by Michael Norton and Sam Sommers, titled "Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing."

Payne writes:

...a national survey reported that both blacks and whites believed that discrimination against blacks had declined over the past few decades, but whites believed that discrimination against whites was now more common than discrimination against blacks...

Whites tend to view increasing diversity as anti-white bias.

The implication is clear. The only reason that "whites" detect anti-white racism is out of their own sense of unearned privilege. It is not that there is any incessant cultural or academic tendency to berate "whites," but merely an irrational sense of weakness and vulnerability in the face of rising diversity and social justice in the United States.

The premise of Payne's argument rests on the undeniable fact of disparity of income between "white" people in the United States versus "black" people here. He claims that "the average black family earns about half as much as the average white family" and "that the unemployment rate for blacks is twice that for whites..."

Of course, none of this takes into account the fact that East-Asian Americans, Asian-Indian Americans, and American Jews, out-earn Americans of European descent. It seems hard to argue for "white privilege" in a society wherein those at the top of the economic hierarchy are not "white." Nonetheless, the disparagement of "white" people as essentially racist is obviously itself a racist notion and Jews are swept up in it.

Recently there has been considerable conversation around the notion of the "white Jew." The basic idea is that since Ashkenazim are "white" we enjoy "white privilege" and are, in fact, among the primary oppressors of "people of color." Democratic Party devotees of Louis Farrakhan even believe that Jews were the driving force behind that Atlantic Slave Trade and remain so to this day... as if that makes the slightest bit of sense.

The question then becomes, so what is the evidence for this political and cultural anti-white racism? I am not a sociologist and have not done independent research on the question. So we will have to make do with a few pieces of anecdotal evidence, and one scholarly study, that represents a tiny drop in the bucket if you decide to look into the matter further.

My favorite example is MTV's 2017 New Years Resolutions for White Guys. This one is fun because it is just so transparent in its contempt toward "white guys." Another interesting piece from the New York Times, written by Ekow N. Yankah, is titled, "Can My Children Be Friends With White People?" Can you begin to imagine a New York Times piece titled in all seriousness, "Can My Children Be Friends With Black People"? Yankah is not sure that his children can be friends with "white" people and this was published in The Times. Thankfully, Yankah tells us, "I have not given up on being friends with all white people."

And I have no doubt that "white" people -- whoever they may be, exactly -- appreciate that very much.

This one captured my attention shortly after the election of Donald Trump. This is a case wherein some young black kids tortured a mentally-handicapped white kid because Donald Trump won the 2016 election. The torturers made a point of calling the kid "white" as they stripped him naked into a bathtub and taped his mouth. The point, of course, is that he was tortured for being "white"... whatever that means, exactly. I feel reasonably certain that the people doing the torturing were not Republicans.

Finally, I want to point you to a piece written by Muneeb Hafiz, a PhD Candidate and Associate Lecturer at Lancaster University, UK, published in Critical Ethnic Studies by the University of Minnesota Press, titled "On Whiteness" (2018). Hafiz writes:

Whiteness “is on a toggle switch between ‘bland nothingness’ and ‘racist hatred,’” Professor Nell Painter tells us. It is a “metaphor for power” in James Baldwin’s vocabulary. According to Kehinde Andrews, Whiteness is “a process rooted in the social structure, one that induces a form of psychosis.” Whiteness, Achille Mbembe explains, “became the mark of a certain mode of Western presence in the world, a certain figure of brutality and cruelty, a singular form of predation with an unequaled capacity for the subjection and exploitation of foreign peoples.” A fantasy — no more real than Blackness, we should add — later transformed into a kind of common (non)sense, Whiteness “involves a constellation of objects of desire and public signs of privilege that relate to body and image, language and wealth.”

It is frankly astonishing that we can reify "whiteness" as a negative toxic epistemology in human history and not recognize this notion for the racism that it is. This does not only affect those of European descent. It represents racism towards Jews, as well.

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The Great Jewish "Whiteness" Thing (Michael Lumish)

The Great Jewish "Whiteness" Thing

Michael Lumish

Micha Mitch Danzig, Attorney,
former IDF, Middle East analyst

The question of Ashkenazi Jewish "whiteness" is receiving increased attention.

If to be "white" means anything it means to be of European descent. But in today's western-left political culture what it really means is "bad, racist, colonialist, imperialist, hater of all-things-good."

In other words, it means to be a contemptible person.

To be "white" no longer merely suggests ethnicity, but a toxic ontology (way of being) and a toxic epistemology (way of knowing.)

Ironically, this racist view of "whiteness" primarily derives from those who claim to be the ideological descendants of Martin Luther King, Jr. If King stood for anything, however, he stood for judging people according to character, not ethnicity and not gender. Those who despise "whiteness" assign this racial category to Ashkenazi Jews in order to spread that hatred onto one of the most persecuted peoples on the planet. This tendency among "progressives" is nothing if not illiberal.

It is, at least in part, for this reason, that many American Jews are walking away from the progressive-left and the Democratic Party.

In any case, in a July, 2017, piece, Micha Mitch Danzig writes:

The reality is that the entire notion of Ashkenazi Jews as “White people” is very new (from a historical perspective) and it is also completely detached from any historical context, including in America, where, as recently as the early 1960s there were still quotas on Jewish enrollment in some Ivy League schools. Ironically, since the origin of the European pseudoscientific racial classifications (dividing humanity as White, Black, and Yellow races); Jews in Europe (both Ashkenazi and Sephardi alike) were regularly persecuted on the basis of being “non-white.”

This is worth a read because the question of Jewish "whiteness" goes to the question of Jewish indigeneity within the Land of Israel.

And the fact of Jewish indigeneity goes to the very heart of the Movement for Jewish Freedom, which we affectionately call "Zionism."

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Kahane's Baby (Michael Lumish)

Kahane's Baby

Michael Lumish

In pondering the Tlaib / Omar Israel fiasco we learned that while the Democrats were throwing a fit because Netanyahu decided against allowing US Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilham Omer into the country, they seem to have forgotten that the US refused to issue a visa to Knesset member Michael Ben Ari in 2012 when he was part of the National Union coalition.

This, of course, smacks of hypocrisy.

Ben Ari -- a student of hard-right-wing rabbi and politician, Meir Kahane -- was denied a visa to the US on the grounds that he had been a member of Kach, Meir Kahane's now-defunct political party that was outlawed in Israel on the grounds of racism. At some point that same year he co-founded the Kahanist political party, Otzma Yehudit, which translates into English as "Jewish Power" or "Jewish Strength." (To an American ear, these have very distinct connotations. On their English-language Facebook page they go with "Jewish Strength.") Otzma Yehudit represents a break-away party from the National Union coalition of right-wing and nationalist political parties, Ben Ari's former political home and from which he first gained entrance into the Knesset in 2009.

"Progressive-left," you can be sure, this guy is not.

The Kahanists, after all, also gave us Baruch Goldstein who on February 25, 1994, entered the Cave of the Patriarchs in the heart of Hebron, wearing his army uniform, and opened fire on Arabs in worship, killing 29 people and wounding 125 others. The able-bodied survivors overcame him and beat him to death on the spot. Perhaps dragging Goldstein into this is a bit unfair to Ben Ari but the decision-makers in Washington, D.C. (with Joe Biden sitting in the Vice President's office) were not oblivious to the reputation of Kahanism from whatever political party it comes out of.

This got me wondering just how heinous is Otzma Yehudit? Among liberal and progressive-left American Jews anything that smacks of Kahane brings to mind racism and violence if not terrorism and Otzma Yehudit is ultimately Kahane's baby. It is for this reason that the United States outlawed Kahane's Jewish Defense League as a domestic terrorist organization. Most liberal and progressive-left American Jews are ashamed of Kahane.

I, therefore, decided to examine the political ideology of Otzma Yehudit in order to see what I could make of it from a personal political perspective. Before I proceed, however, I want it understood that none of my conclusions represent an endorsement of Meir Kahane and certainly not of Baruch Goldstein. All I am doing here is cross-referencing the Otzma Yehudit Wikipedia page with its English-language self-described platform (pdf) as hosted by the Jewish Community Relations Council located in the San Francisco Bay Area. The reason that I bother with Wikipedia is because, in truth, their description of the party's platform is concise and closely in line with Otzma Yehudit's stated principles.

Wikipedia describes Otzma Yehudit as follows:

The party is considered to be Religious Zionist, Kahanist, ultra-nationalist, anti-Arab, and far-right, and has also been described as racist, though the party disputes this.

The English-language self-described platform is very close to this, although they would never describe themselves as anti-Arab. Speaking strictly for myself -- as I intend to do throughout the rest of this exercise -- this does not sound like a very pleasant platform. As someone who grew up in a Reform Jewish household in both New York and Connecticut, such an ideology is entirely alien to my political sensibilities.

Wikipedia writes:

It calls for the annexation of the West Bank, and for complete Israeli rule between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The annexation of Judea and Samaria is not something that I have a problem with, in theory. The question is how to balance the demographic issue with the international reaction to such a move, which obviously would be considerable. There are ways of easing the demographic issue even under the circumstances of annexation. Thus, I do not necessarily have an issue with the party on this part of the platform. The devil, as always, is in the details.

The party is against the formation of a Palestinian state, and advocates for the cancellation of the Oslo accords, as well as for imposing Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount.

I tend to agree on all three counts. A Palestinian-Arab state directly in the heart of the Jewish homeland would be a disaster. It would simply continue the process of what I sometimes call The Long Arab-Muslim War against the Jews of the Middle East. It would be a giant launching-pad looking down from the hills upon Tel Aviv.

The Oslo accords are, of course, dead in the water. In truth it was a chimera, to begin with. The reason for this is because the Palestinian-Arab leadership never accepted any offer for statehood. From the Peel Commission of 1937 to the offers from Ehud Barack to Yassir Arafat and Ehud Olmert to Mahmoud Abbas the answer was always an unequivocal "no." One begins to think that a free and democratic and peaceful Palestinian-Arab state next to Israel is not exactly what they had in mind.

As for the Temple Mount, I sometimes feel bad for the reputation of Moshe Dayan. He was an excellent soldier and an icon of the Movement for Jewish Freedom which we call Zionism. But the Israelis should never have offered the Jordanian Waqf authority on the holiest site of Jewish heritage. Personally, I would like to see the Temple Mount democratized for worship among all faiths under Israeli sovereignty.

So, I am good with the platform on this, as well, although with the caveat that such a move would be exceedingly sensitive and could easily cause Israel much blood and trouble, both internationally and at home. Nonetheless, the status quo is unacceptable because it is entirely unjust to everyone other than Muslims.

The party also advocates for increased teaching of Jewish history in all elementary schools to "deepen Jewish identity in students".

I find it difficult to believe that anyone who cares about the well-being, and ongoing existence, of the Jewish people, could possibly have any problem with such a proposition.

The party is against "freezing construction of Jewish settlements, releasing terrorists, or negotiating with the PA".

As I do not necessarily oppose the annexation of Judea and Samaria, why would I oppose Jewish people living anywhere within the home of our forefathers?

Releasing terrorists, of course, is a wretched idea. It motivates Palestinian-Arab fighters to kidnap Jewish Israelis for the purpose of trading one or two of them for hundreds of terrorists who may go on to kill again.

As for the Palestinian Authority, I find it regrettable that Israel even feels the need to negotiate with those who would see the Jewish population either dead or gone. My inclination, as enemies of the Jewish people and the Jewish state, would be to make them persona non grata, but I also understand that such a thing is easier said than done and the European Union, the United Nations, and the Democratic Party would have ugly things to say, and do, concerning the matter.

The party advocates for the deportation of "Arab extremists".

I agree with this proposition, but it represents a slippery-slope. The definition of "Arab extremist" must be sharp and tight. Such a proposition could easily slide into an authoritarian position wherein Israel starts deporting people who may not deserve it. So, while I am in broad agreement, I would also keep a sharp eye for the abuse of such a policy. Here, again, the EU, the UN, and the Democratic Party would scream from the hillsides.

On 24 February 2019, party member Itamar Ben Gvir called for the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel who are not loyal to Israel.

I disagree with this entirely because it borders on the fascistic. The standard, in my opinion, should not be one of loyalty, but of actually promoting hatred or violence toward Israel or Jews.

The party advocates for what it calls "Jewish capitalism" as its economic system...

I do not know about "Jewish capitalism" but as a classical liberal who believes in regulatory capitalism, I agree.

The party also supports aiding the elderly and disabled.

Who could possibly disagree?

The party is also opposed to abortion.

I favor a woman's right to choose an abortion, within certain limitations around what is popularly known as "late-term" abortion. In the case of rape or the health of the mother, I would always stand with a woman's choice.

The party supports easing restrictions on the IDFs rules of engagement. The party is against price tag attacks.

I agree on both counts and the last thing that Israel needs is to employ soldiers afraid to fire their weaponry. There obviously needs to be rules of engagement, but none of us want to see Jewish soldiers dead or injured because they were paralyzed by concern over the court system.

Overall, I think the party has much to recommend for Israel and for itself.

However, there is a big distinction to be made between a party platform and the behavior of its members and leadership. I do not necessarily see much in the way of racism in the platform, but I am, nonetheless, distinctly uncomfortable with its association with Kahanism.

If I was an Israeli, one thing that might keep me from voting for them would be the matter of trust, but I would give them the opportunity to earn it.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

The Unbearable Lightness of Jewish Whiteness (Michael Lumish)

In reference to the piece by Vic Rosenthal, titled, "Are there 'Arab Jews?'”

He opposes the notion of "Arab Jews" on the basis of historical analysis and an appreciation for the ways that the language we use heavily influences the outcome of the discussion... as he has in the past with terms such as "West Bank", a phrase designed to rob the Jewish people of our heritage within our own historical homeland.

He also references the fact that:

"Some pro-Palestinian writers even suggest that Mizrahi Jews actually have a common interest with Palestinian Arabs, their “brown” brothers, to overthrow the hegemony of “white” Ashkenazi settler-colonialists."

The question of the "whiteness" of Ashkenazi Jews is hot at the moment. It suggests that the Ashkenazim are not ethnically Jewish, but merely Europeans who happen to practice Judaism.

It is an interesting question that I am only really beginning to grapple with.

The truth is that most Ashkenazim have a considerable amount of European blood, but most also have DNA characteristics that primarily go to the Levant and to the Land of Israel.

Arabs often like to call Ashkenazim "white" -- and thus European -- because it implies that we are interlopers in the land of their ancestry... this despite the fact that Arabs are indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula, not Judea and Samaria. This, in turn, justifies violence against our brothers and sisters in Israel.

However, the question of indigeneity does not rest solely upon genetics... although genetics count.

What counts more is if the land of the people represents the source of their culture. That is the defining characteristic of indigeneity. The Ashkenazim, like the Sephardim, are a Jewish colonized people, indigenous to the Land of Israel, who the Romans sent scattering to the winds after the Bar Kochba Rebellion (132 - 136 CE) Naturally, this meant that we took on many of the cultural elements -- such as language and food -- of the generally unfriendly European nations.

The ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews, such as my own, were forced out of Judea and over many centuries found themselves within the Pale of Settlement within eastern Europe where they faced the violent pogroms of those who most certainly did not consider us "white."

But as a people who were kicked out of our native homeland, stripped of our identity and language throughout the many centuries of the diaspora, we are now told by antisemitic anti-Zionists that Israel is no longer really Jewish or, at least. should not be. The Mizrahim may have a place as second-class citizens under Arab rule, but now "Palestine" is decisively Arab or, at least, should be. So go the fantastical midnight dreams of people like Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

As we saw in the news recently Tlaib even suggested that Palestinian-Arabs who attempt to murder Jews in Israel are "activists" while the Jews of Israel, seeking nothing more than to protect their children and their homeland, are dubbed "White Nationalists."

What is particularly troubling, however, are Ashkenazim in the diaspora who refer to themselves as "white." I, too, as an Ashkenazi born outside of New York in 1963 within a Reform community, also was raised to think of myself as "white." But the truth is, we are not. We may have some European ancestry, but we are most definitely not "white."

Furthermore, the word "white," when it comes to people, is not a biological term, but a political term.

In the centuries preceding the second half of the twentieth-century, in Europe and the United States, Jews were never considered on par with the good, actual "white" people. It was only when that word ceased to have positive connotations and, instead, emerged -- in the wake of the New Left -- as an epithet meaning "racist, colonial, oppressor" that -- Ta Da! -- the Jews suddenly became "white" in the eyes of the progressive-left. It is, at least in part for this reason, that all sorts of "progressive" groups, including much of the Democratic Party, consider Jewish-Israelis interlopers onto the land of the alleged "indigenous Arab population."

And it is, for this reason, that much of the western-left actually pays Palestinian-Arabs to murder Jews, including women and children, under Pay-to Slay. Many in the Democratic Party wish to continue this practice wherein US tax-payers pay out many millions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority who then use much of those funds to reward the murderers of Jews within the Jewish homeland.

In the meantime, the Jews of the Middle East (i.e., Jewish-Israelis) will defend themselves whether the Arabs or their Western paymasters like it or not.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Harry Lumish: May His Memory be a Blessing (Michael Lumish)

Harry Lumish: May His Memory be a Blessing

Michael Lumish

יהי זכרו לברכה

Hebrew Orphan Asylum,

373 Ralph Avenue, Brooklyn, New York

A few weeks ago my father, Harry Lumish, passed of natural causes just short of his 99th birthday.

The odds of a man born in 1920 and living to the age of 99 are about 200 to 1.

He arrived in this world in Medzhybizh, Ukraine -- the home of Baal Shem Tov and the Chasid Movement -- during a period of violent pogroms. I assume that many of those folks in Crown Heights are actually relatives of mine, but I do not know.

My grandfather, Beryl, fled with his immediate family, including my grandmother, Sarah, from Medzhybizh, because they were not fond of sword and rifle-wielding Kossacks. They were running for their lives. They sought legal access into the United States but were not obliged by the United States government. They were able, however, to relocate briefly to Argentina.

Shortly before the paperwork came through and my family received permission to legally migrate into the United States, my grandfather died and his daughter, my aunt Betty, was born in Argentina. Not long thereafter Sarah passed through Ellis Island with Harry and Betty in her arms on their way to Brooklyn. Before my grandmother got on her feet, they stayed at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of that borough. Family legend has it that Sarah actually scrubbed floors at that institution in the early-mid 1920s.

The rest of my father's side of the family who stayed in Medzhybizh were slaughtered by the Germans during World War II under Operation Barbarossa, which was the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Medzhybizh was simply on the road in one of the German routes to Russia. When the Nazis arrived they separated the Jews from the non-Jews of that small town and put both populations to road building. When that task was done they had the Jews dig ditches. When the ditches were dug they had the Jews line-up within those ditches.

I feel reasonably certain that you know what happened after that. That was when my family lost the great majority of my father's side.

His story, though, like that of many millions of other Americans, is a sort-of classic American truth. He and Sarah and Betty came through Ellis Island with nothing. My dad ran around Brooklyn as a child during the Depression. He described himself as a "wild kid" which is hard for me to grasp because the guy who raised me was a middle-class accountant and philatelist.

{And, I have to say, I have a great deal of affection for that mint Israeli stamp collection that he poured through over decades.}

Shortly before 7 December 1941, which Franklyn Roosevelt referred to as "a date which will live in infamy," he enrolled in St. John's College in New York. His intention was to become an accountant. Unfortunately, the world powers got in the way of that small personal endeavor and they dragged him off to the Central Pacific; Kwajalein, the Marshall Islands, Enewetak. He became a skinny twenty-year-old corporal with a rifle slung over his shoulder, sleeping in foxholes as Japanese snipers shot at United States soldiers from trees.

He lasted the duration of the American participation in the war, but he came through OK... otherwise I would not even be here.

Upon returning home to New York City, he met my mother, Rita, from the Bronx, finished his degree, built a family and moved into the suburbs while listening to Glenn Miller. He did it with practically nothing. What he had was the GI Bill of Rights which paid for the rest of his education.

And he had Glenn Miller which filled his soul.

This is for you, dad.

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The Hatred for Sarah Tuttle-Singer (Michael Lumish)

The Hatred for Sarah Tuttle-Singer

Michael Lumish

I like Sarah Tuttle-Singer, social media editor of the Times of Israel.

She is a Jewish California mom and Israeli living with her young kids in Jerusalem and writing and editing for that prominent venue. Her 2018 book is Jerusalem, Drawn and Quartered: One Woman’s Year in the Heart of the Christian, Muslim, Armenian, and Jewish Quarters of Old Jerusalem.

This is a young mother and writer under considerable heat for being too sympathetic to the Palestinian-Arabs in their efforts to snuff-out Jewish self-determination and self-defense on our historical homeland.

She has also been heavily accused of getting popular pro-Jewish / pro-Israel native American Métis writer and activist, Ryan Bellerose, fired from his position as an advocacy coordinator for B’nai Brith Canada. He was apparently too confrontational toward her on social media and too hostile toward the enemies of the Jewish people.

I referenced this tension in a recent piece entitled, The “Palestinian Narrative” and Sarah Tuttle-Singer.

The reason that I, nonetheless, like "STS" -- it is not everyone, by the way, that earns an acronym -- is because she stands at the crossroads between pro-Israel advocacy and pro-Palestinian advocacy and that makes her interesting "grist for the mill." This is particularly true given the fact of the fluid nature of contemporary social media in which everyone has a potential voice.

This does not mean that I agree with her overly-broad sympathies for the Palestinian-Arab enemies of the Jewish people. And it certainly does not mean that I take her side over that of Ryan Bellerose. It simply means that I recognize that she walks a tight line between those who wish to slaughter the Jewish people of Israel and the Israeli Jews who refuse to compromise on the matter.

It takes considerable guts to take that position while smiling for the camera.

The Fundamental Criticisms of Tuttle-Singer

Tuttle-Singer has become sufficiently controversial within the pro-Jewish / pro-Israel community that the malice towards her has spawned a mocking Facebook page called Sour Turtle Stinger. It describes itself as a "Place for sharing dank memes, stories and roasting of certain rare creature." The notion of "rare creature," in this case, suggests prima donna, but I cannot fairly speak to what was in the writer's head.

The primary reason that they tend to despise Tuttle-Singer is out of a sense that she gives far too much credence to the "Palestinian Narrative" and not nearly so much credence to the Jewish experience in that part of the world under thirteen centuries of Arab-Muslim imperial rule. She also generally gives equal moral justification to Palestinian-Arab hostility toward Jews as to Jewish measures of self-defense. Her writings suggest a moral equivalency between Jewish defenders and Arab aggressors. I would not put her on the same low level of, say, Gideon Levy or Amira Hass of Ha'aretz

However, she does not emphasize that the Jewish people in her part of the world live under siege, despite the fact that she lives in Jerusalem with her own children. She acknowledges it but is more concerned with Jewish wrong-doing than the never-ending Arab assault on the Jewish people.

I covered a bit of this in my previous piece wherein I suggested to Tuttle-Singer:

History as a field of knowledge resides at the crux of the Humanities and the Social Sciences and is, thus by necessity, interpretive.

This is why there is always a significant element of subjectivity within even the most scrupulously professional historical narratives. Nonetheless, for a narrative to be a historical narrative it must be grounded in something that closely resembles the truth of the past.

We do not simply get to make up our own “narratives” as the Palestinian-Arab leadership has done, and then insist that ahistorical nonsense be taken seriously.

Nonetheless, Tuttle-Singer seems to be among those political writers who believe that the "Palestinian Narrative" of Never-Ending Victimhood needs to be given equal consideration to actual Jewish history in consideration of the conflict.

She also believes that the Jews of the Middle East are "Occupying," with "the Big O," the very land of Jewish heritage and tends to be sympathetic toward Arab-Muslim push-back against Jewish self-determination and self-defense. She thus often harps on what she sees as Jewish opression toward others, while generally giving the Arabs a pass. Much of this was previously discussed in a thoughtful January 7, 2018, piece by Paula Stern entitled, The Truth According to Sarah Tuttle-Singer.

But, again, I like Sarah Tuttle-Singer. I have a great deal of sympathy for any public figure who must face malice and hatred in the cause of dearly held beliefs.

Speaking for myself, I can only aspire to earn such hatred.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Democrats and Jews (Michael Lumish)

The Democratic Party is sabotaging its Jewish constituency and, thereby, in some measure, punching itself in the face.

It has put American Jews -- who are traditionally among the most loyal Democrats -- into the position of having to choose between a political party and our own families... our own people.

In 2008, I was part of the 80 percent of the American Jewish population who voted for Barack Obama. In 2012, I was not part of the 70 percent who did so. The main reason that I refused to vote for Obama in his second run for office was because I deeply resented his insistence that he had every right to tell Jews where we may, or may not, be allowed to live on our own ancestral homeland.

Despite the fact that President Trump is more supportive toward Israel than any president since Harry Truman, recent polling data shows that only 6 percent of American Jews are likely to vote for him for the 2020 presidency. This is despite the fact that Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It is despite the fact that he is defunding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which literally teaches little "Palestinian" Arab kids to violently despise Jews. And it is despite the fact that Trump opposes Obama's "Iran deal" which assures a Persian bomb in what is now the short term.

My intention is not to make a broad argument for Donald Trump, nor is it to erect an argument for either the conservative movement or the Republican Party.

In fact, I am not mounting an argument at all. I am merely asking a question. It is this:

Why is it that of all the constituencies of the Democratic Party only the Jewish minority is thought to be morally obligated to sacrifice the well-being of their own children in deference to that party and in deference to progressive-left ideology?

The answer to that question has two interrelated parts.

The first is in the rise of democratic socialism on the coattails of Bernie Sanders. The second is in the rise of "intersectionality theory" within the universities and among the activists.

Democratic socialists such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Linda Sarsour are increasingly coming into prominence. These young up-and-comers tend to be friendly with the likes of racist Louis Farrakhan, much like some of their seniors in the party, and generally favor the hostile Arab majority against the Jewish minority in the Middle East.

They also tend to favor "intersectionality theory."

The fundamental idea behind "intersectionality" in practice is that the world is comprised of the oppressors and their oppressed. Thus the oppressed must join together in opposition to the oppressors who persecute them through "White Male Privilege" and cold, hard cash. They are presented as oppressed in a common fashion grounded in "white" imperial racism and various forms of gender-hate. It is for this reason that they connect Ferguson, Missouri to "Palestine" because they see their concerns about both as derived from the same malicious source... you.

Furthermore, intersectionality has created a loose hierarchy of oppression with Arab men, strangely enough, at the top. Arabs and Muslims and "people of color" and Gay people and transgender people and Black people are near the summit of the hierarchy. White women have actually dropped a few rungs in recent years, presumably due to their unfortunate association with white men.

The oppressors are generally understood to be white people, the wealthy, and "Zionists." Much of the American-left considers the Jewish people to be all three. I like to say that we have hit the politically-correct trifecta!

{Good for us.}

But this leaves those American Jews who care about their brothers and sisters in the State of Israel in a serious political dilemma. Those of you who are American Jewish Democrats or "progressives" are essentially being told that you need to choose between the Jewish people and the Democratic Party and the political ideology that drives it. On the campuses, if Jewish students dare to stand up for themselves and their people, they are shouted down as Nazis and shunned by many of their peers.

The irony is that those doing the yelling and screaming like to think of themselves as the ideological children of Martin Luther King, Jr. who's foremost message was that we should judge people as individuals, not as representatives of an ethnicity or gender. Thus what we are witnessing in the rise of progressive-left intersectionality is an ironic insistence that the Jewish people cease to defend themselves in Israel out of moral consideration for minority groups. And, furthermore, we are to do so based on a blatantly hypocritical political ideology that has given up its fundamental liberal core as represented by Martin Luther King, Jr.

So, why not vote Republican?

At least it may teach the Democrats not to take the Jews for granted.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.