Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

J-Street supporter redefines Judaism

The Daily News Egypt reproduces an article by Bernard Avishai, who teaches business at Hebrew University:

During the first night of the J Street conference, when delegates were just getting settled, a half dozen speakers — activists, rabbis and students — unexpectedly poured their hearts out. The 1,500 people in the hall, the speakers insisted, were not only gathered to represent the majority of American Jews who think US policy should put its weight behind bringing about a two-state solution. We were gathered also to redeem “Jewish values”. You heard a good deal of the phrase “Tikkun Olam”, the repair of the world, that night. And I confess to cringing at times. Was social improvement a peculiarly Jewish desire? Could Tikkun Olam, a kabalistic concept turned into a leftist cliché, cancel out the fact that the Occupation is advanced by zealots of Jewish law, or that rightist, neoconservative ideas are particularly strong (so polls show) among the quarter of American Jews who attend synagogue at least once a month?

So, Avishai has established that Tikkun Olam is a very misused concept that has nothing to do with what leftist Jews claim it means, and that committed Jews tend towards the political right. But J-Street is an avowedly Jewish group, and it is a bit hard to jive these facts together.

What is a good leftist Jew who hates the trappings of religion but wants to use it as a cover for his ideas to do?

Why, just as he redefines Tikkun Olam to fit his preconceived notions, he redefines Judaism itself!

The phrase “Jewish values”, you see, makes sense only to people who assume a world of free will. You have to believe that, generally, people have intellectual personality, individual sovereignty, and moral erudition — that more sacred than the Book is the right to interpret books. ...
So if Jews can be said to have stood for anything traditionally, was it not this allergy to dogma — this breaking of idols? Did we not see the democratic rights as, well, commanded? And, tragically, have not the land of Israel and Jewish military power themselves become idols for American Jews since 1967 — or at least for leaders who spoke for the “community”, while liberals remained aloof from its parochialism? Anyway, J Street says, “No more.”

See how easy it is? Just tell everyone who disagrees with you that they are not practicing Judaism, because you have changed Judaism from a religion and a belief system that has lasted quite well for a few thousand years into a squishy, sunny reflection of your own personality! Not only that, the Jews who did manage to hold on to the beliefs of their forefathers - Jews who hold on to the idea of living and dying for the land that they have cried over for millennia - are worshipping idols!

Voila, abracadabra, presto-change-o: J-Street is a new religion, and traditional Judaism is avoda zara!

EU to Israel: Put up that wall!

Isn't it interesting that the same people who keep telling Israel that the separation fence is as awful as the Berlin Wall are insisting that Jerusalem be cut in half...just like Berlin was?

Journalists admit self-censorship in Gaza

Al Quds quotes an Asharq Alawsat article saying that journalists in Gaza impose self-censorship for fear of arrest - or worse - by Hamas.

Over the two years of rule by the Islamic Movement, the freedom of the press is nonexistent in the Gaza Strip, according to journalists. Reham Abdel-Karim, Director of the Office of MBC in Gaza, told Asharq Alawsat, "There is no freedom ... Freedom here means to express the views of the governing party only."

Reham Abdel-Karim describes the press in Gaza as having become a mirror of the ruling party, and acting otherwise causes questioning.

"We received a lot of calls and threats. [Hamas] tried various means, including diplomacy and the threat of direct action."

He said, "I received an anonymous phone call threatening me with death if I covered events commemorating the death of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat," pointing out that the contacts are all-encompassing: "They contact us by name, one by one, and threatened us with death."

Sakher Abu El Oun, director of the Office of the Press in the French sector, said, "Yes, we fear, there are many stories we stay away from so as not to enter into a confrontation with« Hamas. My colleagues are also staying away, either ignoring the stories, or calling up foreign journalists to do the job."

This was confirmed by Reham Abdel-Karim, who said, "There is a large blackout and secrecy on many stories in Gaza. If we ask about specific incidents they say to us individually, directly or indirectly, that we cannot [report on them.]"

And why shouldn't Hamas use fear to force journalists to report only what they want reported? It works, and there are no consequences!

Minarets, Switzerland, and power of symbolism

The world is reacting strongly to the referendum where Swiss citizens voted to ban the construction of new minarets next to mosques. Most of the reactions are critical of the decision, and the Swiss government itself was against the ban.

This controversy is fascinating because it is almost entirely about symbolism, not anything concrete.

The purpose of a minaret is to have an elevated platform from which a muezzin makes a public call to prayer. Over the centuries they have become as distinctive a part of mosques as bell towers are for churches, but as with bell towers they are not necessary from a religious perspective.

There is a secondary purpose for a minaret, which not too many are mentioning: to ensure that the mosque is the tallest structure, and certainly the tallest religious structure, in the immediate area. Muslim countries often enforce laws that make it illegal for synagogues or churches to be built taller than mosques. Christian countries have historically enforced similar laws making it illegal for other religious structures to be taller than churches.

The third purpose for a minaret is simply because it is an architectural feature that has been associated with mosques in many strains of Islam for centuries, similar to domes. It is traditional, even if the call to prayer is not done in all cases.

In Switzerland, there are already laws to severely limit the Muslim adhan, the public call to prayer. The four existing minarets in Switzerland are not used for that purpose, from what I can tell. Therefore, in Switzerland, the minaret is a purely symbolic structure - and it is this symbolism that is causing the entire controversy.

Muslims will argue as to the symbolic value of minarets in the Western press, downplaying the secondary purpose and playing up the tertiary. Mosques can be built without minarets and this ban in no way limits their freedom of worship; on the surface, this Swiss ban is not about freedom of religion.

However, the opponents of the minarets are being equally deceptive in hiding their motivation. They pretend that the ban is to preserve the skylines of their towns, but in reality the movement to ban minarets is completely about the fear of Islam and Muslims. The initiative came from right-wing and ultra-conservative parties that are often associated with xenophobia. Their most famous poster against the minarets doesn't even try to hide their real anti-Muslim agenda, as the minarets are consciously drawn to evoke missiles and the woman wearing the abaya plays on fears of Muslims.

To them, the minaret is a sign of growing Islamic encroachment on their land, and Muslims are regarded as undesirable outsiders. The minaret is no less a symbol to them than it is to Muslims.

Without symbolism, the existence of minarets is no more offensive than their ban. In this case, each side's symbolism is the same: minarets partially represent Islamic dominance and the opponents fear that dominance.

Symbols are inherently irrational, but their power is undeniable. The media, trying hard to be rational, downplays the symbolism of both sides, and therefore the passion that this issue evokes is lost.

In the case of Switzerland, the ban clearly is discriminatory against a single religion. Unless the ban is extended to include church steeples or other largely symbolic tall structures it should be rescinded. On the other hand, individual mosques being built in Switzerland must go through the same zoning rules as other buildings, which take into account esthetics and local sensibilities, and which would make the construction of new minarets relatively rare anyway. By raising this local issue to a broad-brush national ban, Switzerland is showing that it is not immune to bigotry and that the famed Swiss neutrality is a myth.

Future martyr?

In the continuing series of reader-submitted photos of adorable Palestinian Arab children published daily at Firas Press comes this photo of Sidra Essam al-Harazin:

The burning Fatah logo and the use of the smaller, reverse image, along with the obligatory keffiyeh, is very evocative of Palestinian Arab martyr posters and martyr graphics published on terrorist websites.

Looks a little like Arafat, come to think of it.

Another "mysterious explosion" kills one near Haniyeh's home

Palestine Press Agency reports that a member of Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades was blown up, and three others injured, when a minibus exploded in Gaza City near the home of Ismail Haniyeh.

A doctor is speculating that it might have been an Israeli airstrike, but so far it appears to be another of those infamous "work accidents."

Islamic Jihad's Saraya.ps website does not yet have the story. I'll wait for the smoke to clear before adding it to the self-death count.

UPDATE: Smoke cleared enough for me. The explosion occurred in a Volkswagen, and the IDF denied any activity.

Dershowitz on Goldstone (video)

Here is Alan Dershowitz's critique of the Goldstone Report, delivered at Fordham University:

From Israelactivism.com

(I copied it and placed it on NMA-TV, hopefully that is OK.)

Benny Morris on Avi Shlaim

Benny Morris' book reviews are always fascinating, and his review of British historian Avi Shlaim's latest book of essays is no exception.

And he is merciless:

According to Shlaim, quoting Segev, David Lloyd George, Britain’s prime minister in 1917, pushed the declaration out of “ignorance and prejudice.” Lloyd George “despised the Jews, but he also feared them,” believing in their world-embracing “power and influence.” The people who sired the document “believed the Jews controlled the world,” says Shlaim, quoting Segev. Which is to say, the Balfour Declaration was primarily a product of anti-Semitism. Historians love paradoxes, even fictitious ones.
Shlaim fails completely to mention the relevance of philo-Semitism and philo-Zionism as a decisive factor in the issuance of the declaration. Indeed, it was probably the single most potent factor in the support of the key Cabinet ministers: Lloyd George, Arthur James Balfour himself, Lord Milner, Robert Cecil, and Jan Smuts. Brought up on the Bible and on a belief in the Jews’ contribution to Judeo-Christian civilization, these potentates believed that Christendom owed the Jews a debt--and that it must atone for two thousand years of persecution by restoring them to their land. As Balfour told the House of Lords in 1922:

It is in order that we may send a message to every land where the Jewish race has been scattered, a message that will tell them that Christendom is not oblivious of their faith, is not unmindful of the service they have rendered to the great religions of the world, and most of all to the religion that the majority of Your Lordships’ house profess, and that we desire to the best of our ability to give them that opportunity of developing ... those great gifts which hitherto they have been compelled to bring to fruition in countries that know not their language and belong not to their race? This is the ideal which I desire to see accomplished, that is the aim that lay at the root of the policy I am trying to defend; and though it be defensible indeed on every ground [he means imperial interests, and so on], that is the ground which chiefly moves me.
Shlaim would have it that Balfour, George, Milner, Smuts, and Cecil were all liars or dissemblers. I prefer to believe them.

Palestinian political aspirations, then and now, were “just,” according to Shlaim. He never applies the word to Zionist aspirations, before 1948 or after. Was Israel’s establishment “just,” and is its continued existence “just,” in light of the monumental “injustice” that it caused the Palestinians? Should the Jews never have established their state in Palestine? Shlaim implicitly leaves on the table the standard Palestinian argument that the Palestinians have had to pay for an injustice committed against the Jews by others. Nowhere in this book does Shlaim say a word about the Jewish people’s three-thousand-year-old connection to the Land of Israel--that this land was the Jewish people’s cradle; that they subsequently ruled it, on and off, for over a thousand years; and that for the next two millennia, after going into exile, they aspired and longed for repatriation. Nor does he mention that the Arabs, who had no connection to Palestine, in the seventh century conquered the land “unjustly” from the Byzantine Empire and “illegally” settled in it, forcibly converting it into an “Arab” land. If conquest does not grant rightful claim, then surely this should be true universally?
Nowhere does Shlaim tell us of the persecution, oppression, and occasional mass murder of Jews by Muslim Arabs over the centuries, starting with Muhammad’s destruction of the Jewish communities in Hijaz and ending with the pogroms in Aden and Morocco in 1947–1948. And nowhere does Shlaim point out that the Palestinian Arabs had an indirect hand in causing the death of European Jewry during the Holocaust, by driving the British, through anti-British and anti-Zionist violence, to shut the gates of Palestine, which was the only possible safe haven, after the United States and the Anglo-Saxon world had shut their gates to escaping European Jews. And, more directly, Palestinian (and other Arab) leaders contributed to the Holocaust by politically supporting Hitler and, in the case of Haj Amin al Husseini, actually working in Berlin for the Third Reich, peddling Nazi propaganda to the Arab world and raising troops for the Wehrmacht.

About Israel’s restrictions on the flow of goods into the Gaza Strip since the Hamas takeover, Shlaim observes that “the aim was to starve the people of Gaza into submission” and resulted in “a humanitarian catastrophe.” This is simply wild. Darfur is a humanitarian catastrophe. Somalia at times has been a humanitarian catastrophe. But Gaza? As far as I know, no Gazan has died of thirst or starvation. There are no African-style bloated bellies there. It is true that Israel has barred the importation of iron and steel and other materials needed for reconstructing houses destroyed or damaged in the December 2008–January 2009 campaign (and, in my view mistakenly, also barred the entry into Gaza of various other goods). But Israel argues, with solid logic, that Hamas would immediately use these materials to rebuild bunkers, munitions storage facilities, trenchworks, and the other institutions and instruments of its aggression.

Read the whole thing.

Thanks, Arab boycott!

From Ha'aretz:

Thanks to the Arab boycott of Israel, which partially included Dubai, few Israelis have been exposed to the country's financial crisis. Few Israelis export to Dubai, and it seems very few have business connections with the government's Dubai World development arm, which has asked for a six-month moratorium on interest payments on its $59 billion in debt.

"Anyone involved in the business world has known for six months that Dubai is tottering," said an Israeli businessman with interests around the globe. "It is no wonder that the world crisis has reached them. They have no oil and they live on international trade and debt. There are insane real estate projects there, including artificial islands and extremely exhibitionistic buildings. Luckily, Israelis did not succeed in creating significant business dealings with Dubai, so the relationship between a few tycoons and the Dubai investment fund will not impact the Israeli economy," he said.

"There were several attempts by Israeli construction companies to participate in their large real estate projects, but it is not clear what came of those contacts," said an Israeli businessman knowledgeable about Israeli activities in Dubai.

Israel exported to Dubai only indirectly via other countries, said Dan Catarivas, the director of the Division of Foreign Trade and International Relations of the Manufacturers Association. He said Israeli companies built small, portable desalinization plants there in cooperation with American firms. In addition, software companies tried to build Internet infrastructure through American and European firms, but had little success, said Catarivas. Israeli farmers also cooperate with Jordanian farmers to export fruits and vegetables to Dubai, he said.

The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange indices are up today.

(h/t Meryl Yourish)

Arab strategy, illustrated

This is a screenshot taken from a Flash ad in Palestine Today. Unfortunately, it didn't link anywhere so I cannot tell what organization sponsored it, but it shows very well that the strategy of destroying Israel in "stages," first decribed by the PLO in 1974, is alive and well.

That Jewish Lobby is really all-encompassing

From the Sunday Times (h/t Backspin):

FIGHTING out of New York, with an unbeaten professional record and the Star of David on his trunks, the opponent facing Amir Khan in the first defence of the Briton’s light-welterweight world title has a background and life story that the most shameless promoter or publicist might blush to concoct.
Dmitriy Salita is a throwback to the days when young Jews tried to fight their way out of poverty in the East End of London or the big-city slums of North America.

...Now he has arrived in Newcastle, ready for the opportunity of his life, buoyed by the good wishes of the New York fight crowd, the Jewish lobby and all those touched by his struggle and his quiet, serious demeanour.

So that's how Yuri Foreman managed to win his fight a couple of weeks ago!

Notable articles from you guys

A few articles that people recommended for me:

Alan Johnston returns to the Middle East for the first time after being kidnapped by Palestinian Arabs, and shows his impartiality by writing the BBC's umpteenth typical "evil settler" story. Plus, notice how BBC puts "'Biblical' land" in scare quotes, and captions a picture "Settlers say the land is part of ancient Israel." As if either fact is in dispute. (h/t TC)

Reb Akiva at Mystical Paths notices that 13% of Palestinian Arab men are employed working in "settlements", most in construction, and notes that a settlement freeze would devastate the West Bank economy. (My guess is that the percentages are higher today, and the 13% included Gaza so the impact on the West Bank would be even more severe than is being noted.) (via email)

Azure, which is a fantastic magazine, emailed me with a recent article about how Switzerland's vaunted neutrality is hardly neutral (welcoming Hamas and Ahmadinejad, shunning the Dalai Lama) and in fact borders on the immoral.

The Adelson Institute also emailed me with an article on Mubarak's Virtual Enemies, about how Egypt is trying to shut down many pro-democracy bloggers and other Internet activists.

Abbas and Chavez, BFF

In recent weeks, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has threatened war with Columbia, promised to personally fly on planes to "zap" clouds to make them rain, urged citizens to stop singing in the shower, said complimentary things about Idi Amin, Carlos the Jackal and Robert Mugabe, and had a warm reception with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad where he labeled Israel "a murderous arm of the Yankee empire."

In that context, his latest guest makes perfect sense:

President Mahmoud Abbas concluded his tour of Latin America in Venezuela on Friday, where he and President Hugo Chavez signed agreements to promote bilateral relations between Caracas and the Palestinians.

In a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinian people, Chavez offered Abbas an olive branch and a gold-plated reproduction of a sword belonging to Simon Bolivar, the 19th Century South American political leader who played a key role in the region’s independence from Spain.

Presenting Abbas with these gifts, the Venezuelan president proclaimed, "Venezuela is Palestine; Palestine is Venezuela, we have a common struggle."

"We [Venezuelans] should devote the entire force of our hearts and souls towards the creation of a Palestinian state," he said.

Both leaders have a lot in common - the willingness to sacrifice the well-being of their people for their own egos and misplaced priorities.

Today's lying PalArab "eyewitnesses"

From Ma'an:

Fifteen Israeli settlers from the Yitzhar settlement near Nablus attempted to set fire to a home in the village of Burin, Palestinian sources said Saturday.

Wearing white prayer shirts marking the Jewish Sabbath the group stormed the home of Ayman Attalla Safwan carrying flame excellents but were confronted by several villagers who tried to prevent their entry into the home, eyewitnesses described.

Not sure what "flame excellents" are but not only would religious Jews not carry implements to create a fire - they wouldn't carry anything at all on the Sabbath, outside of what is necessary for saving lives.

Just another example of the lies that Palestinian Arab "witnesses" routinely engage in.

"Peaceful" Nil'in protestors throw Molotov cocktails

From Ma'an:

Several people were injured after protesters launched an anti-wall rally in the West Bank village of Nil'in on Saturday, Palestinian and Israeli sources said.

In a statement, the Nil'in Youth Center said Israeli forces opened fire on locals and international activists with tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition.

The center also said Israeli soldiers were injured when youths threw stones and Molotov cocktails toward five military jeeps that crossed over the barrier and entered the village.

After that raid, two wounded children were evacuated to a hospital, demonstrators said. As many as three other Palestinians were hurt, but the nature of their injuries was not immediately clear.

Approached by Ma'an, an Israeli military spokeswoman denied that soldiers used live fire.

She confirmed that two soldiers were lightly injured, and that protesters used at least one Molotov. Protesters threw rocks and burned tires, as well, the official said.

Palestine Today calls this protest "peaceful."

These are the protests that Abbas hails as great examples of how the third Intifada should be waged.