Thursday, May 23, 2019

Tel Aviv Is The Place To Be For Partyi- I Mean For Monitoring Human Rights (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory. 


Check out their Facebook page.


Tel Aviv Is The Place To Be For Partyi- I Mean For Monitoring Human Rights

By Dominic Lord, human rights activist
activistTel Aviv, May 23 - We activists take our role seriously: forming alliances, raising awareness, generating political pressure, and partying till all hours in this fabulous city. This is where the human rights action is, where Israeli public figures can be held accountable; where journalists frequent, facilitating attention to key human rights issues; where there isn't really any major problem, but damn, is the night life amazing. It's a key location in the human rights realm.

Most people don't realize the centrality of geography as a factor in the human rights arena. Often we rely on volunteers and low-level staff in the field for data and for basic monitoring activities, and yes, such personnel perform valuable functions, but not everything we must accomplish can be accomplished in remote villages in Chad or Syrian towns facing bombardment and disease. Somebody has to undertake the serious work of living and working in Tel Aviv - some choose Jerusalem, for similar reasons - because those restaurants and night clubs are not going to visit themselves. Also, it's dangerous in sub-Saharan Africa.

Human rights workers embrace the challenges of this avenue of endeavor, formidable as they may be; difficulty inheres in all significant paths to achievement. Thus the fierce competition among UN, Red Cross, and other organizations' personnel for postings to Israel, where everyone knows Palestinian rights require ever-increasing protection, and where it's possible to eat at a different world-class restaurant every night and not have the same cuisine twice in six months. Plus we don't get shot at. Also, we have buddy-buddy relationships, not to mention romances, with journalists who share our assumptions about Israeli oppression and Palestinian victimhood and lack of moral or political agency, so this dynamic gets reinforced all the time.

That's a crucial piece of the puzzle, because if the human rights community ever admitted Israel didn't need the disproportionate attention we give the place, we'd lose our pretext to keep coming back here. And that would be a human rights tragedy. I've done work in Darfur, Central America, Southeast Asia, the Balkans, and even passed through some Arab states on my way, so I've been around, and I know which zones require the most urgent attention. Yes, people are being massacred, kidnapped, enslaved, tortured, and raped in those other places, but Jews are building homes here. Priorities.

Also, you can't expect those of us who are openly gay to actually spend time in the Palestinian territories. That would be suicide, and then who would do the crucial work of telling the world how barbaric Israelis are?

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05/23 Links Pt1: Greenblatt Tells UN: Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad Are to Blame for Gaza Suffering; Fatah renews blood libel; Pompeo: We Are Bolstering Israel's Security and Fighting Anti-Semitism

From Ian:
Greenblatt Tells UN: Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad Are to Blame for Gaza Suffering
U.S. Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt told the UN Security Council on Wednesday: "It is simply unacceptable that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to target Israeli communities, including hospitals and schools, in a cynical attempt to extract concessions from Israel. It is simply unacceptable that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to use civilians in Gaza, including children, as human shields. It is simply unacceptable that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to siphon the scarce resources of the people of Gaza to build their terror arsenal, while preventing donor aid from reaching the people."

"There will be no end to this suffering until all of us, together, say in public...Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are to blame for the suffering of the people of Gaza. Nothing can be meaningfully fixed until they renounce terror and cease their acts of violence and their vow to destroy Israel."
Remarks at a UN Security Council Briefing on the Middle East





PMW: Fatah renews blood libel, Fatah in Lebanon published a cartoon depicting an antisemitic child-killing libel.
Starting in the Middle Ages, Jews have been accused of murdering children for ritual purposes, of poisoning wells, and more. Palestinians regularly renew the child-killing libel, claiming Israel deliberately murders Palestinian children.

Here is a new example from Abbas' Fatah Movement in Lebanon:
[Falestinona, website of Fatah’s Information and Culture Commission in Lebanon, May 6, 2019]

In the cartoon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is shown with a bloody hand, smiling over a presumably dead Palestinian infant from Gaza that has blood dripping from it. Netanyahu murdered the baby, leaving it for the Palestinian Muslim family (symbolized by the man's crescent head) for the month of Ramadan.

Marc Lamont Hill reveals he studies some Jews “for a living” (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill recently made an astonishing claim when he declared: “I literally study Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living.” Perhaps Professor Hill doesn’t earn his living at Temple University, because the subjects (media and education) he teaches there seem to have absolutely nothing to do with the study of Yemeni and Moroccan Jews. I was also unable to find any scholarly study of the history of Yemeni and Moroccan Jews authored by Hill.

But while Hill’s claim looks very much like a pathetic attempt to assert academic expertise, it’s noteworthy that he was apparently trying to create an aura of authority for a project he has been working on. As Hill announced: “I finished a film that devotes 20% to Mizrahis [i.e. Middle Eastern Jews]. And I talk about them regularly.”

The film Hill referred to is apparently “Black in the Holy Land”, and you can watch the trailer on YouTube – but before you do so, you should read an EoZ post from last February. Amazingly enough, the trailer for Hill’s “documentary” starts off with convicted terrorist Ali Jiddah, who “planted four hand grenades on Strauss Street in downtown Jerusalem in 1968. The blasts injured nine Israelis.”

Jiddah served 17 years in prison and was released in a prisoner swap. Since then, he has devoted himself to demonizing Israel, and as he told the Times of Israel a few years ago: “I am satisfied, and I am convinced that the work I am doing today is more effective than the bomb I planted in 1968.”


While the film is apparently not yet released, it’s clear what to expect: if your trailer prominently features a convicted terrorist who hopes to achieve with words what he previously tried to achieve with bombs, you really give your game away.

So it was hardly surprising that Marc Lamont Hill wasn’t pleased when well-known Israeli activist and writer Hen Mazzig recently wrote an excellent article that was published in the Los Angeles Times under the title “No, Israel isn’t a country of privileged and powerful white Europeans.”

If you missed the heated exchange that developed between Hen and Hill on social media, you can catch up by reading a Jerusalem Post report about it. Hill’s criticism of Hen’s widely read article included the preposterous claim that “the 20th century identity category of ‘Mizrahi’ [i.e. Middle Eastern Jews]” was created “as a means of detaching them from Palestinian identity.” According to Marc Lamont Hill, those who are now considered Mizrahi should apparently be called “Palestinian Jews” and we should all remember that they “lived peacefully with other Palestinians.”

Well, if Professor Hill studies “Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living,” he presumably knows that they cannot really be described as “Palestinian Jews.” Those Jews who lived among “other Palestinians” – meaning presumably the non-Jews in the area that the Romans designated as “Palestine” – had to endure the fate of an oppressed minority ruled by their conquerors. And if we want to consider the barely century-old history since the local Arabs actually started to consider themselves as Palestinians, we find that the Palestinian leader of the time was the man who started his career by instigating murderous pogroms, and who later became notorious as “Hitler’s mufti.” Incidentally, the mufti was an early proponent of boycotts and would arguably deserve to be honored as the father of BDS. Under his leadership, “‘Filasteen Arduna wa’al yahud Kilabuna’ (Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs)” and “‘Itbach al Yahud’ (slaughter the Jews)” were the first rallying cries of Palestinian nationalism in 1920.

For the narrative that undergirds Marc Lamont Hill’s vile anti-Israel activism, this history has to be ignored. It’s no less obscene than Rashida Tlaib’s recent attempt to rewrite history by claiming that the Palestinians somehow provided a “a safe haven” to Jews. But at least Tlaib doesn’t claim to be “one of the leading intellectual voices” in the US, and she doesn’t claim to “literally study Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living.” As it happens, my dearest friends include both a Yemeni and a Moroccan Jew, and if Marc Lamont Hill ‘studied’ them, he could learn a lot.

But as it is, we can anticipate that Hill’s forthcoming “documentary” will document first and foremost why Hill has fans both among supposedly “progressive” anti-Israel activists and virulent Jew-haters like Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and David Duke.

________________________________
[EoZ]: This article inspired me to look at some previous posts of mine about the history of how Jews lived in Morocco and Yemen. I tweeted this today:

Absurdly, @MarcLamontHill says "I literally study Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living" and he says they lived peacefully among Muslims.
Ali Bey al Abbasi was the pen name of a traveler who described the lives of Jews in Morocco in 1805 quite differently.
There are plenty of examples of contemporaneous studies of Jews in Morocco describing how they were humiliated, daily, by Muslims there.

And Morocco was one of the best places for Jews to live!
Here you can see several attacks against Jews in Yemen between 1908 and 1913.

Marc Lamont Hill is not a scholar. He wants to whitewash history, ,not describe it. 

This shows that his antipathy isn't against Zionists - but Jews.



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  • Thursday, May 23, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon

NYU PhD graduate rails against Israel in his graduation speech - to applause. @NYUniversity is now a hotbed of hate.

Steven William Thrasher spoke at the NYU Doctoral Convocation a few days ago as a class representative. In his speech, he thanked anti-Israel groups and literally screamed his hate for Israel - to major applause.


 I am so proud, so proud of NYU’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and of Jewish Voice for Peace, and of GSOC, and of the NYU student government, and of my colleagues in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis for supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against the apartheid state government in Israel — because this is what we are called to do. This is our NYU legacy — that we are connected in radical love, and we have a duty and a privilege in this position to protect not the most popular amongst us, but the most vulnerable amongst us on every campus where we serve in every community where we live, in every place that we work.

This is our duty and we must stand together to vanquish racism and Islamophobia and antisemitism and injustice and attacks on women and attacks on abortion rights in Tel Aviv, in Shanghai, in Abu Dhabi, in New York City, in Atlanta, in Washington, in Los Angeles, in San Francisco and everywhere in the world. 
He is going to teach journalism at Northwestern University starting next month.

It is difficult to think of someone less qualified to be a journalist.

NYU has a major problem. Here is a thread from Melissa Weiss that shows just how bad it has been in just this past school year.
__________________________

An incoming college freshman, whose great-grandfather founded @nyuniversity’s music dept and was a professor there for many years, withdrew her acceptance to the university. There will be more like her until NYU shuts down rampant anti-Semitism on campus.
What led to a young Jewish woman walking away from an education at such a prestigious institution as NYU, you ask? A thread on anti-Semitism at NYU... 
Last year, members of NYU Students for Justice in Palestine burned an Israel flag during a celebration for Israel’s Independence Day.
That same semester, more than 50 NYU student groups aligned themselves with the group that burned the flag and endorsed the BDS movement.
Emboldened by the relative inaction by the university, in December 2018 SJP pushes a resolution to end NYU’s Tel Aviv study abroad program.
Just days after this resolution passes, the Hillel building at NYU is forced to closed for security reasons following the discovery of anti-Semitic, threatening posts from an NYU student. The posts including the terms “nyjews” and “zionist kkkunts.”
In March 2019, half a dozen NYU departments cosponsor an on-campus event featuring Linda Sarsour. The event is held while many Jewish students are out of town for a conference and unable to defend against Sarsour’s blatant lies. apa.nyu.edu/event/skirball… 
On May 2, as Jews around the world (and on NYU’s campus) commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, NYU’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis ends its relationship with NYU Tel Aviv.
Also earlier this month, Students for Justice in Palestine, an organized that less than a year ago burned an Israeli flag and saw its members arrested, received NYU’s Presidential Service Award.
When President Hamilton received pushback re: SJP receiving the award, his choice was:

A. To revoke the award
B. To allow SJP to receive the award

Hamilton chose B and himself did not attend the awards ceremony. Not quite a profile in courage.
And there you have it, my friends. The decision to turn down an acceptance to a prestigious university is a personal and difficult one. But it’s reflective of the increasingly anti-Semitic climate that NYU has done relatively little to stop over the last year. 

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  • Thursday, May 23, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon

Is the EU going to investigate Palestinian textbooks? it tells Arab media something different than it tells the Europeans

Last week I reported on an answer that the EU provided to a question about Palestinian textbooks:

It can be confirmed that an academic study on Palestinian school text books is planned. Necessary funds have been reserved in the 2019 budget.

The study shall be carried out by an independent and internationally recognised research institute. Terms of Reference for the study are currently being prepared with a view to identifying possible incitement to hatred and violence and any possible lack of compliance with Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) standards of peace and tolerance in education.

The study shall provide for a comprehensive analysis of the current Palestinian text books. The work on the study is indicatively scheduled to start in spring 2019.

Incitement to violence is fundamentally incompatible with advancing a peaceful two-state solution and is greatly exacerbating mistrust between the communities, as already pointed out in the report of the Middle East Quartet of 1 July 2016(1). The EU has therefore repeatedly discussed this issue with the two parties.
Arab news site Ma'an, however, received what seems like a different answer from the EU:
The European Union has said that it has not initiated any study on the content of the Palestinian curriculum and that the allegations of incitement to violence in Israel and Palestine are discussed regularly with the parties.

Asharq al-Awsat also seemed to get mixed messages, where they report that the EU says that it is not initiating any study about the Palestinian curricula. In the next sentence the EU office in Jerusalem is quoted as saying that “there is an intention to conduct an academic study that is meant to provide an objective and comprehensive study of the current Palestinian school books”. Then the statement goes on to say: “This proposed independent academic study of Palestinian school books – in case it is conducted – will assist in examining the Palestinian school books in line with international criteria, for example the criteria of UNESCO about peace and tolerance and non-violence in education."

The headline in Asharq al-Awsat says that the EU will "review" the textbooks, not "investigate" them.

When speaking to the Europeans, it is a plan, with funding and a schedule. To Arabs, it is merely a possibility being discussed that might not even happen.

Which is the truth? Given the support for terror in the newest schoolbooks, which have probably been funded by the EU, this is a very important question.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)





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Wednesday, May 22, 2019

05/22 Links Pt2: Marc Lamont Hill slams Mizrahi Jews as “identity category” of Palestinians; Poll: 73% of American Jews feel ‘less secure’ than 2 years ago; Germans Get It, Why Don’t Pro-BDS Democrats?

From Ian:
Marc Lamont Hill slams Mizrahi Jews as “identity category” of Palestinians
In a Facebook post on May 20 slamming Hen Mazzig’s article in The LA Times, American academic and activist Marc Lamont Hill described Mizrahi Jews as an “identity category” that had been detached “from Palestinian identity.” CNN severed ties with Hill last year after anti-Israel comments.

Hill’s latest excoriation of Israel, posted to his 90,000 followers, followed Mazzig’s argument that Israel is not a country of “privileged and powerful white Europeans.” Mazzig sought to emphasize the role of Mizrahi Jews in Israeli history and condemned the tendency of critics to define Israelis as Ashkenazi Jews alone. Hill responded that Mazzig ignores “the racial and political project that transformed Palestinian Jews (who lived peacefully with other Palestinians) into the 20th century identity category of ‘Mizrahi’ as a means of detaching them from Palestinian identity.”

Mazzig posted a screenshot of another exchange with Hill in which Hill wrote that “I literally study Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living.”

Jimena, an organization that describes itself as committed to achieving universal recognition to the heritage and history of 850,000 indigenous Jewish refugees from Arab countries, said Hill was trying to speaking over the voices of Mizrahi Jews.

“Because he ‘studies us’ for a living," Jimena wrote on Twitter. "Nothing new here, yet another non-representative ‘social justice’ activist who erases Mizrahi voices to assert an anti-Israel agenda.”




The dispute between Mazzig and Hill comes at a sensitive time in the US where there is an increasingly active anti-Israel narrative that has attempted to label Israel a “white supremacist” country. Activist Shaun King wrote in June last year that “white supremacists” in Afula in Israel were surrounding an Arab home because “they want the neighborhood to be for white Jews only.” These comments come at a time in the US when Jews are also being attacked as “white Jews.” Women’s March leaders last year were accused of claiming that Jews “uphold white supremacy.” It is part of a wider agenda to label Jews as a different minority from the rest of American minority groups who are part of the intersectional social justice agenda. For instance, Jews have been told that discrimination against them is not systemic, while Islamophobia is.
What is Terrorism and Why Does its Definition Matter?
What is “terrorism”?

We’re used to hearing the media describe well recognized terror organizations with euphemisms like, militants, extremists, or sometimes even obscenely activists. One might reasonably come to believe that terrorism has no definition at all, or that it’s all a matter of subjective opinion. After all, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” right?

Wrong.

In truth, terrorism can be clearly defined, nations do clearly designate terror organizations as a matter of policy, and the “freedom fighter” quote doesn’t mean what you think.

Words have power, and when journalists use deceptive, vague or inappropriate words, they unfortunately prejudice readers. That’s why misleading terminology is a form of media bias.

Related reading: Defining Bias: Misleading Terminology
Terrorists or freedom fighters?

After the attacks of 9/11, Stephen Jukes, then Reuters’ global news editor, sent a memo instructing the wire service staff not to use the word terror. His explanation became a catch-phrase for the news industry’s moral ambiguity:
We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist.

The Jukes quote is now famous. Less well known is that David Schlesinger, Reuters’ global managing editor later explained the real reasoning behind the decision: after a local newspaper named CanWest used a Reuters article, but added the word “terrorist.” Schlesinger objected to the modification, saying that such changes could lead to “confusion” about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations.

NGO Monitor: WHO Singles Out Israel As Violator of Health Rights At Annual Meeting
The annual assembly of the UN’s World Health Organization today voted 96 to 11 for a resolution, co-sponsored by the Arab bloc and the Palestinian delegation, that singled out Israel over “Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.”

Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, condemned the delegates’ abuse of the UN body as a forum to target Israel.

“Out of 21 items on the meeting’s Agenda, only one—Item No. 14 against Israel—focused on a specific country. There was no agenda item or resolution on any other country, including Syria, where hospitals and medical infrastructure have suffered devastating bombings by Syrian and Russian forces; Yemen, where 19.7 million people lack access to health care service due to the current crisis; or Venezuela, where the health system has collapsed, causing millions to flee the country,” said Neuer.

“Today’s resolution is a fantastic lie. The UN reached new heights of absurdity by enacting a resolution which accuses Israel of violating the health rights of Syrians in the Golan, even as in reality Israeli hospitals provide life-saving treatment to Syrians fleeing to the Golan from the Assad regime’s barbaric attacks,” he said.

“Shame on France, Belgium and Sweden for encouraging this hijacking of the annual world health assembly, and diverting precious time, money, and resources from global health priorities, in order to wage a political prosecution of Israel, especially when, in reality, anyone who has ever walked into an Israeli hospital or clinic knows that they are providing world-class health care to thousands of Palestinian Arabs—including last week to Palestinian leader Jibril Rajoub—as well as to Syrians fleeing Assad,” Neuer added.

The vote was 96 to 11 on the resolution, with 21 abstentions and 56 absent.

Antisemitism: Spell it Without the Hyphen, Please (Judean Rose)

Wilhelm Marr 1819-1904
Antisemitism should be spelled without the hyphen. It’s something I’ve known for years, even if auto-correct just won’t get the message. Neither will the media, of course, or even most dictionaries.
“What’s the difference?” you might well ask. “It’s just a little mark on the page. Meaningless.”
Ah, but it’s not.
The concept of “antisemitism” (without the dash, thank you) and the term, were introduced by Wilhelm Marr when he founded the Die Antisemitenliga, the League of Antisemites, in 1879. Materials put out by the league often employed the word “antisemitism.” The league, in fact, was the first popular political movement based solely on anti-Jewish sentiment. Marr’s famous and oft-reprinted tract, The Victory of Judaism Over Germandom, made the claim that “the Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness have overpowered the world.”
Statutes of the Antisemitism League flanked by two of Marr's antisemitic tracts
Marr wore the title “antisemite” as a badge of honor. From the perspective of Marr and his colleagues, to be an antisemite was to be “woke.” But then, politics with a specifically anti-Jewish flavor and focus were big all over Europe in the years leading up to the 20th century.
The word “antisemitism” had its roots in an 18th-century treatise on languages which analyzed the differences between Aryan and Semitic languages. The terminology that was used led to the false assumption that there were racial groups corresponding to these two groups of languages. The minds of the time made a leap so that “Jew” became synonymous with “semite” in the lexicon of the day.
The interesting thing here is that there was already the perfectly good expression Judenhass, or “Jew hate,” in the popular lexicon. But Marr wanted to make his hatred about race, rather than religion. The new term he coined avoided altogether the question of religion. “Antisemitism” also sounded more scientific, more intellectual, therefore more credible and more acceptable. Also, people just liked it. So the word “antisemitismus” spread like wildfire as a new way to speak about hating the Jews.
But the thing is, there’s no such thing as a “semite” or even a “semitic” people. The terms were invented by some historians in the 1770s to refer to people who speak Semitic languages But in truth, there are only Semitic languages. There is no race or people that are “semites.”
In other words, when you spell the word with a hyphen, the word makes no sense. Because you can’t be against something that doesn’t exist. And there’s no such thing as a semite.
The other problem is that people say that Arabs are semites, too, therefore Arabs can’t be antisemites, because they can’t be against themselves.
Except there’s no such thing as a semite.
The term antisemite, you see, is standalone. It only means “someone who hates Jews.” And that is all it was ever intended to mean.
Antisemitism, as a term, is based on racist claptrap. The word was lifted from the field of linguistics to give weight to the idea of hating the Jews (and only the Jews) as a race (which they aren’t). The pseudoscientific sound of the term gave it loft and validity. Which is stupid.
To be clear: Jews aren’t semites. Neither are Arabs.
Antisemites hate Jews, not Arabs.
So when you use the hyphen you’re unwittingly espousing turn of the century European racism. You’re also ignorant of history. If Marr had meant to include Arabs he would have spelled the word he invented with a hyphen to include them.
Historians, at least those who care about academic rigor, are careful to spell the word without the hyphen. But the media continues to hyphenate the word. And spell-check and the auto-correct function of Word just won’t get the message. Historian Shmuel Almog, in fact, wrote about the problem with the hyphen all the way back in 1989:
“So the hyphen, or rather its omission, conveys a message; if you hyphenate your 'anti-Semitism', you attach some credence to the very foundation on which the whole thing rests. Strike out the hyphen and you will treat antisemitism for what it really is—a generic name for modern Jew-hatred which now embraces this phenomenon as a whole, past, present and—I am afraid—future as well.”
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  • Wednesday, May 22, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon

The Moral Bankruptcy of Reform’s Religious Action Center (Vic Rosenthal)


 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC) is the “social justice” arm of the American Reform movement (it has a parallel organization here in Israel, the IRAC). Although it claims to be “completely non-partisan,” if you look at the issues that the RAC is interested in, you will find that they are exactly the same ones that occupy the progressive wing of the Democratic party: immigration, minimum wage, climate change, LGBTQ rights, the 2-state solution, abortion, gun control, separation of church and state, antisemitism (from the Right) and of course “Islamophobia.”

This is not news. The Reform movement was created in 19th century Germany in the hope of easing the acceptance of Jews into the larger society. The promise of emancipation made in the early part of the century had not been fulfilled, and Jews were still severely discriminated against unless they converted to Christianity. So the reformers changed or eliminated practices that made Jews stand out, including distinctive clothing, religious services on Saturday, kashrut, and more. But the intention was not to assimilate but rather to prevent assimilation. The hope was that German society would then become more tolerant and grant Reform Jews the same rights as their Christian neighbors, while allowing them to remain Jewish.

As the movement developed over the years in America, the focus became different. American Jews in the 19th century did not face the same kind of pressure as European Jews. In America the problem was a lack of Jewish knowledge and education. The foundrs of the movement were formerly traditionally observant, knew how to pray in Hebrew, and had a many scholars among them. Most Eastern European immigrants to the US around the turn of the 20th century brought some traditional background with them from Europe. But many members of the post-WWII generation of American Jews, busy becoming Americans – although still very conscious of being Jews – did not have the tools to be traditionally observant. The Reform movement was a good fit for them.

But by the 1960s, it became clear that something had been taken out of the Judaism they were practicing. When the ritual went away, so did the spirituality. There were numerous Jews who turned to Eastern religions like Buddhism in search of something transcending the mundane. At the same time, many Jewish liberals were active in the civil rights movement, and some even became involved in more radical political activity.  The idea developed that some of the political fervor could be brought into the temples, to fill the vacuum. After all, there are “social” commandments and a prophetic tradition in Judaism which can be emphasized to compensate for the de-emphasis of the “ritual” commandments. And so what has come to be called “tikkun olam Judaism” arrived, whose basic ethical principles coincided more or less with those of liberal Protestantism and secular humanism, and in which “social action” replaced Jewish ritual.

At the same time, Reform Judaism became more accessible to non-Jews. Reform Judaism accepted a child as Jewish if either the mother or father were Jewish, as long as the child received a certain amount of (Reform) Jewish education. Conversion classes were offered to non-Jewish spouses or others who wanted to become Jews; the students learned some Jewish history (from the Reform perspective), they learned about observing the major holidays, and a few Hebrew songs – and it was explained to them that Judaism had moved beyond old-fashioned ritual, and was now concerned primarily with moral issues. Since most of these converts were already liberals, they felt very comfortable with the tikkun olam Judaism that they were taught.

The removal of the differences between Jews and non-Jews caused by the de-emphasis of ritual commandments helped accelerate the amount of intermarriage in the Reform world, so that today something like 50% of married Reform Jews have a non-Jewish spouse (among all non-Orthodox Jews, including those who are secular, the rate is close to 70%).

In part because of the universalist, anti-nationalist strain in the secular humanistic ethics of tikkun olam Judaism, and perhaps also because of the increasing number of converts and non-Jews (spouses that chose not to convert) in the Reform population, there is a weaker connection to the Jewish people as a whole. If you ask an orthodox Jew what the primary attributes of his identity are, he will almost always say that the highest priority is that he is a Jew. An American Reform Jew might be almost as likely to place something else first, like their American identity, their political creed, or even their profession.

The feeling of peoplehood is considered atavistic among liberals, including Jewish liberals. Sometimes they place themselves so far above it, that they actively disdain those Jews that do have a strong connection to their people, either through traditional observance or Zionism.

So it was not surprising to me to read that the RAC had invited to speak at its recent “Consultation on Conscience” a man who had been an active antisemite, an enemy of the Jewish people, someone who had actually incited violenceagainst Jews on more than one occasion, Al Sharpton.

Sharpton has never admitted that he did more than “say cheap things to get cheap applause,” but the three-day long Crown Heights riot that he inflamed in 1991 was arguably the closest thing to a pogrom America has ever seen.

Sharpton, styles himself a version of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but he does not deserve to have his name mentioned in the same sentence as the nonviolent civil rights leader. And yet, because he represents himself as a spokesman for one of the “oppressed” groups that progressive Democrats see as part of their coalition, they are able to ignore the anti-Jewish acts for which he never apologized.  This is because they identify more closely with the progressive movement – although this movement rejects them as “white” and takes the side of the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel – than they do with the Orthodox Jews of Chabad, who were the victims of the Crown Heights riot.

Indeed, after expressions of outrage from Orthodox rabbis and relatives of Yankel Rosenbaum, the Chabad student that was stabbed to death during the Crown Heights riots, RAC clearly expressed its solidarity with progressivism against the Jewish people. In the words of Rabbi Jonah Pesner, RAC director:
That there are members of our Crown Heights family and our Chabad family that are in pain over this actually creates a lot of pain for us, and we’re sorry about that...

At this moment — when children are being separated from their parents at the border, and Jews are being murdered in the synagogues, and people of color are being gunned down in their churches, and people in mosques are being firebombed — we need to stand together, and Reverend Sharpton has stood with us these past couple of years.

Pesner hit all the progressive notes, including the obligatory swipe at President Trump’s immigration policy and the nod to the must-mention issue of “Islamophobia.”

But for his Jewish brothers in Chabad, whose blood has never been avenged (the stabber of Rosenbaum was acquitted of murder in a series of trials reminiscent of those that acquitted murderers of civil rights workers in the South, and ultimately spent 10 years in jail on federal civil rights charges), Pesner only has these words: “Sorry about that.”

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2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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