Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 21, 2011

Iranian missile expert killed in explosion had helped Hezbollah

From AP:

A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander killed in an explosion at an ammunition depot last week was testing an intercontinental missile when the blast occurred, his brother was quoted by a government newspaper as saying Saturday. Hours later, he reportedly denied the comments.

The conflicting accounts reflect the extreme sensitivity in Iran about the explosion, which killed at least 21 people, including Gen. Hasan Tehrani Moghaddam, who was in charge of the country's missile program. Iran said an accident caused the powerful explosion Nov. 12, strongly rejecting Western suspicions that Israeli sabotage touched off the powerful explosion as a pre-emptive strike against weapons that could potentially hit the Jewish state.

Moghaddam's brother Mohammad — himself a Guard officer — was quoted by the government-run Iran newspaper as saying the blast occurred during testing of the long-range missile. He did not dispute that the explosion was accidental.

"He lost his life while doing a final test of the missile," Moghaddam said. "The project was in the final testing phase. It was related to an intercontinental ballistic missile. ... It was a completely high-tech, confidential process."

These key quotes were left out of the text printed by the newspaper. They appeared on the paper's website early Saturday, but were deleted later in the day.

About the same time, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported that Moghaddam had denied making the comments and said the government-run newspaper ran quotes that weren't his.

"Materials about intercontinental and ballistic missile are creations of themselves (paper). I'm sending a letter to Iran newspaper denying the quotes," he was quoted as saying by the news agency, which is considered close to the Revolutionary Guard.

The jury is still out as to whether the explosion was accidental or an act of sabotage; I've seen compelling arguments from observers I respect both ways.

However, this next part is being overlooked:

In the interview, Mohammed Tehrani Moghaddam said that his brother had set up missile batteries for Lebanon's Hezbollah, which is strongly backed by Iran although Tehran denies it arms the group. Hezbollah, also closely allied to Syria, fired rockets deep inside Israel during a conflict in 2006. This quote was also removed from the newspaper's website.

Further implicating Iran in terrorist activities, as these rockets were aimed and shot at civilians.

Palestinian Arabs - for Syria

While SANA, Syria's news agency, is pretty much nothing but propaganda, this story seems to be true although heavily spun:

Palestinian figures and a crowd of the people of the occupied Syrian Golan on Saturday held a meeting of solidarity with Syria at the People's House in Bqa'ata village in the occupied Golan. The meeting was titled 'No to Arab League Decisions, Yes to the Resistant Syria'.

Archbishop Atallah Hanna of the Sebaste Roman Orthodox Church regretted it has started to become clear that there are Arab sides involved in conspiring against Syria, noting these countries are working at the behest of the U.S.A to implement colonialist projects not in the interest of the Arab nation and peoples.

Sheikh Naser Darawsheh, Imam of al-Abiyad Mosque in al-Nasserieh city in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1948, said that Syria will not be harmed by the conspiracies hatched against it, stressing that the Palestinian people wholeheartedly stand by Syria.

Saeed Naffa', head of the Arab Communication Committee, criticized the Arab League's decision on suspending Syria's membership, affirming that Syria will overcome the crisis it is going through.

In the occupied Jerusalem, dozens of Palestinians staged a sit-in in front of the U.S. Consulate to express condemnation of the U.S. hostile policy towards Syria and rejection of the Arab League decisions against it.

The socialist Palestinian Arab parties like the PFLP seem to be supporting Syria quite heavily. Hamas and Fatah have been much more careful, worried that they might (as in so many times in the past) back the wrong horse.

Iranian conservatives shutter newspaper (updated)

From Al Arabiya:

Iranian authorities shut down a reformist newspaper on Sunday after it published a scathing attack by an aide to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the president’s rival conservatives, the latest sign of a split in the highest echelons of the Islamic Republic.

Tehran’s prosecutor's office ordered the daily Etemad to close for two months for “disseminating lies and insults to officials in the establishment,” according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

One of the main reasons for the ban was an interview with Ahmadinejad’s media adviser Ali Akbar Javanfekr, Fars quoted Etemad manager Elias Hazrati as saying.

In the interview Javanfekr hit back at critics who accuse Ahmadinejad of being in the thrall of a “deviant” circle seeking to undermine the Islamic clergy, saying they had “poisoned” politics and implying many were corrupt.

“What have we ‘deviated’ from? Yes, we have deviated from those friends, from their beliefs, behavior and interpretations,” Javanfekr told Saturday’s Etemad. “If they meant the deviant current is a deviation from their beliefs, we confirm it.”

The counter-attack, published verbatim over three pages in Etemad, signaled the determination of Ahmadinejad’s camp to fight back as Iran gears up for parliamentary elections in March.

With the opposition “Green” movement crushed after protesting Ahmadinejad’s 2009 re-election, the battle for power in Iran is now between rival conservatives ̶ the traditional religious hardliners and the more populist Ahmadinejad camp.

In the crazy world of Iranian politics, Ahmadinejad is regarded as a populist reformist!

UPDATE: Iranian police are trying to arrest Javafekr.

Egyptian feminism, Salafi-style

Translating Jihad brings us an article from Donia Al Watan:

Female Salafi Candidate for Egyptian Parliament: "Women Are Deficient in Intelligence and Religion, and It Is Not Permissible for Them to Be in Authority"

A female salafi candidate for Egyptian Parliament, Muna Salah, said to al-Sharq al-Awsat that women are deficient in intelligence and religion, and it is not permissible for them to be in authority or to occupy the office of the presidency. She defended her candidacy for the People's Council, saying that acting as a representative in the Council only partial authority and not complete authority, such as the presidency of the republic. She added that she seeks to apply the Islamic shari'a, including cutting off the hands of thieves, preventing the mingling of men and women, and specifying black clothes for women and white clothes for men.

While just one of thousands of candidates in the upcoming parliamentary elections, Muna Salah--president of the Manabir al-Noor Charity Association in Egypt--continues to provoke controversy. She is one of two veiled candidates in the parliamentary elections scheduled to take place in two weeks.

There's other stuff in the article. For example, even though Muna sent her daughter to a mixed non-religious school, she would want to introduce legislation to keep all schools separated between boys and girls.

But you've got to admit, she looks really hot.

(h/t jzaik)

First Gaza smuggling tunnel was dug 10 years before "blockade"

Palestine Press Agency has a long article about the tunnel trade between Gaza and Egypt based on an Egyptian report.

Some parts of interest:

Relieving the siege of Gaza is not the reason for creating the idea of tunnels "but profit only and nothing else" says Abumahmod, owner of a tunnel that collapsed for no apparent reason. He said that the proof is that drilling of the first tunnel was in in 1994 by one of the most famous families in Rafah, a Palestinian family, "in order to smuggle goods across the border as it happens on the borders between many countries in the world."

Abusaúb says sources of goods that enter Palestine are between three countries, namely China, South Korea and Turkey, as well as Egyptian goods. Palestinian merchants travel to those countries, and transfer the goods to Egypt to then be transferred into Gaza through tunnels...

[Another] revealed that the tunnels are used to transport all goods, regular and non regular, including forbidden items such as drugs and weapons, and noted that some tunnel owners recently had started transporting Israeli goods to be sold in Egypt through the tunnels, "as some Egyptians prefer." Many of the Gazans who sell them boast about Israeli products in their shops.

Sweden funds anti-Israel brochure

From YNet:

Sweden has funded the publication of an anti-Israel booklet titled "Colonialism and Apartheid – the Israeli occupation in Palestine," Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sunday.

According to the report, the Swedish government transferred NIS 390,000 (roughly $104,600), under the guise of humanitarian aid, to a Swedish-Palestinian solidarity group for the creation of the ornate 40-page booklet.

The brochure's authors accuse Israel of racist legislation, ethnic cleansing, racial segregation, establishing an Apartheid regime in the territories, and bombing Palestinian civilian homes. Furthermore, the brochure calls for a boycott of the Jewish state.

The PDF of the brochure (Swedish) can be seen here. (It is 32 pages long, not 40.)

Anyone want to offer me $100,000 to write a 32 page booklet with lots of photos? I could deliver it in a month. If I make twelve of them a year I'd clear over a million dollars. And it could be a tax write-off!

And they say the pro-Israel side has money...

By the way, the same anti-Israel organization offers lots of anti-Israel materials for Swedish schools, and sends material to every secondary school in Sweden to use.

(h/t Tundra Tabloids)

Also, see NGO Monitor for more details.

Ancient church in Turkey converted to mosque

From AsiaNews.it:

The specter of Aghia Sophia continues to plague the Islamic world of Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. Not the most famous symbol of the church of Constantinople, but another church, Aghia Sophia in Nicaea (now Izmit), which predates the Constantinople church, having been built in the fourth century. It passed into history in 787 AD, when it was the last church to host a united Christendom drawn to discuss the iconoclastic question, in a truly ecumenical synod, before the fatal schism of 1024.

This Christian church, the Aghia Sophia in Nicaea (Izmit), was transformed into a mosque in 1331 by Orhan Gazi who led the Ottomans and which was later made a museum in 1920, has returned once again to being a mosque.

All that was needed was a directive from the Directorate General for Religious Affairs led by Mehmet Gormez, appointed by Erdogan instead of Ali Bardakoglu, the man behind the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Turkey, since retired. The move has elicited several considerations in Turkey and abroad in a period in which much importance and emphasis is placed on religious freedom.

According to this article, fFrescoes of the Virgin Mary and the Apostles are still preserved on Church’s walls. How long will that last?

Here is video from Hurriyet showing Muslim worshipers in the ancient shrine.

(h/t Dan)

"Israelis turn Holy Land into economic miracle"

Here's a great article from the Times (South Africa) a week ago that slipped under the radar:

JUST 20% of Israel is arable. Yet, since its independence in May 1948, the country's agricultural output has increased 16-fold, many times the rate of population growth. This is down to a lot of perspiration and, more importantly, a large dollop of innovation and cooperation.

This is nothing new. Close to the Desert Plant Research Station in Be'er Sheva is a farm cultivated by the Nabateans, the earliest desert farmers. Using sophisticated terracing, every drop of runoff water was collected and diverted to the fields and orchards.

Fast-forward 2000 years, and today Israel produces over two-thirds of its food requirements. Agriculture exports are worth more than $2-billion, more than half of which is fresh produce.

No one needs reminding that Israel's external image is dominated by pictures of conflict and perceptions of injustice. Lost in this portrayal is how smart Israel has been in developing its economy.

In agriculture, for example, it has used technology to reduce water usage and increase output, and higher-yield crops to increase both volumes and financial sales values. Drip and direct-feed computerised irrigation systems are the norm.

It's a far cry from 1948, when no one gave the newly independent Jewish state much of a chance.

Despite rapid population growth (now over 7.5 million), Israelis enjoy a per-capita income today of $29600, putting them in the top 30 world-wide, between Spain and Italy.

Although it depends on imports for nearly all of its raw materials, from oil to diamonds, Israel has become a global industrial hub. It is a world leader in diamond polishing and cutting, processed foods, electronic and medical equipment, and, more recently, software, semi-conductors and telecommunications. After the US, it has more companies listed on the Nasdaq than any other country.

There is no single explanation for Israel's success, although high on the list is surely its commitment to research and development. Its detractors, however, routinely cite US assistance as the main reason for its success. Much of the $3-billion it receives annually from Washington is spent on military kit, rather than development.

That said, there can be no doubt that the military dimension has proved vital in Israel's overall development picture, especially in so far as the mindset it engendered of robust accountability across society, long-term thinking and a problem-solving ethos.

To translate ideas into business ventures, Israel has fostered a system that encourages and caters for entrepreneurship. It has established a "cluster" of universities in close proximity to large and small companies, creating a virtuous space for suppliers, talent and capital. The government provides $450-million in annual grants to 1200 worthy projects from 2000 applications.

Like everything else in the Holy Land, assessing why Israel has done so well in economic terms - and certainly by comparison to its neighbours - is shaped by one's view of the region's politics, ancient and contemporary.

Many have incentives to play down Israel's achievements and use it as both a scapegoat and a whipping boy for the failings of others. And with nearly half the West Bank's and 80% of Gaza's population under the poverty line, the conditions don't only exist for deprivation, unemployment and radicalisation, but grist for Israel's opponents.

Israel still faces serious economic challenges, not least the over-concentration of wealth in the hands of a few "tycoons", the 15 or so families that control conglomerates dominating the economy.

Nevertheless, Israel's example of "performance through adversity" contains numerous lessons for developing countries that shouldn't be ignored. Contrary to the highly politicised caricatures of Israel as a US protectorate milking the Holocaust for all it is worth, nearly all its achievements stem from the firm conviction that their fate is not someone else's responsibility.

Developing countries would do well to emulate, rather than bash, Israel.

The full paper is here (h/t Brad)

Full text: Kissinger called American Jews "self-serving...bastards" (UPDATED)

AP has picked up on YNet's story late last week about newly-released State Department historical documents where Henry Kissinger complained about the Jewish community who were trying to help get Soviet Jews released.

Here is the entire section of the released document that deals with this. Besides Kissinger's remarks, it is interesting to anyone who wants to know more about the history of American involvement in the Soviet Jewry issue.

On August 30, 1972, Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Haig wrote Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Kissinger: “Earlier yesterday, I had talked to Len Garment, Special Consultant to the President on Minorities and the Arts, about the problem of Soviet Jewry which is apparently growing and which McGovern hopes to exploit. This was complicated yesterday by a letter sent out of the Soviet Union by a group of Soviet Jewish leaders, a copy of which was furnished to McGovern.” Referring to Senator George McGovern, the Democratic candidate for President, Haig wrote that he understood that “McGovern will try to exploit the letter.” Haig had asked Garment to contact Senator Jacob Javits (R–NY) to discuss the matter. Haig informed Kissinger: “I insisted to Garment yesterday and again late last night to tell Javits to reaffirm strongly his conviction that the President and the White House are very concerned about the plight of the Soviet Jews, to reassure him that this matter was discussed during the summit and on his own to urge the Jewish leaders to understand that quiet diplomacy has accomplished far more than an extensive trumpeting so far. Javits, of course, can go much farther on this issue that can any White House official and especially the President.” (National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 995, Alexander M. Haig Chronological Files)

On August 31, Haig forwarded Kissinger the text of a letter from Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, received that day, in which she asked President Nixon to send “a direct confidential message to the people in the Kremlin expressing your reaction to the outrage” of the Soviet exit fees for emigrants. Haig wrote Kissinger in a covering memorandum: “Now that the Prime Minister has formally raised this issue in a direct communication with the President, we will have to consider very carefully the best means by which to proceed. Sometimes our Jewish friends know just what not to do at the right moment.” (Ibid.)

On September 6, Garment phoned Kissinger regarding the Soviet exit fee issue. He told Kissinger that “the Russian issue is flooding my desk and phone at this point and I need some guidance.” The relevant portion of the transcript of their telephone conversation continues as follows:

“K[issinger]: Is there a more self-serving group of people than the Jewish community?
“G[arment]: None in the world.
“K: I have not seen it. What the hell do they think they are accomplishing?
“G: Well, I don’t know.
“K: You can’t even tell the bastards anything in confidence because they’ll leak it to all their
“G: Right. Very briefly, what seems to be coming through just dozens of conversations is basically this, and there are political as well as some other dangers involved—that the intellectuals and Jewish community in the Soviet Union are just saying that in a sense they will have their position compromised by the Soviets through a trick of timing and that the Russians feel secure until November in going ahead with the attacks because of the concern on our part of . . .
“K: They’re dead wrong. After November they’re even safer.
“G: That may well be. I think then in any event . . .
“K: You can say—well, what we are doing, we’ve talked in a low key way to Dobrynin. Next week, we’ll call him into the State Department. If the Jewish community doesn’t mind, after I’ve been in the Soviet Union and have done some national business, so we’ll do it on Wednesday [September 13] or Thursday [September 14] next week. Don’t tell them that.
“G: No, I won’t tell them anything.
“K: But next Thursday, we’ll call them in.
“G: And defer any meetings between any of our people and the Jewish groups until after Wednesday.
“K: That’s right. After Wednesday you’ll be able to say that the issue has been raised both with Dobrynin and with the Minister.

“G: I think between now and November a certain amount of theater is needed to keep the lid on. That’s basically what seems to come through to me. After that I just don’t know; there are various people that are talking about forming committees to raise the money and doing a variety of things.
“K: They ought to remember what this Administration has done . . .
“G: Yes, all of that can be pointed out, but nevertheless, here they are subject to presses [pressures?] of this sort and I’m simply asking.
“K: No, no, you’ve been great on it.
“G: Well, I’m doing a job and all I want to know is how to handle it.
“K: Our game plan is that we cannot possibly make a formal protest while I’m on the way to Russia.
“G: Right. I understand that.” (Ibid., Kissinger Telephone Conversations (Telcons), Box 14, Chronological File)

Secretary of Commerce Peterson also raised the issue of Jewish emigration with Kissinger during a telephone conversation on September 7. He told Kissinger that he had heard “from three different sources that there’s a strong movement on the Hill to tie the Soviet Jewry issue with anything that has anything to do with the Soviet Union.” The relevant portion of the transcript of their telephone conversation continues as follows:

“K[issinger]: But that won’t be effective until after the election.
“P[eterson]: Well there’s strong pressure in this one group that I met with that’s been confirmed since then to submit MFN legislation, but to tie the issue to that and then to use the submission of the bill to get extremely vocal about it. Javits and a number of others are very active on it.
“K: Yeah, but they’ll subside after the election.
“P: Yeah, now I don’t know how much it hurts you, however, to do it prior to the election because that’s what they’re going to do. Okay, I just wanted you to know about it.
“K: No, I didn’t know about it; it will hurt me but . . . It will hurt, but what can we do? There’s no sense; you can’t make a deal with Javits on things like this. Don’t you think?
“P: Well, you know him much better than I do. I don’t know what he’d . . . he’s got great respect for you. I don’t know. I’ll tell you what I can do if we can be helpful. I can find out who the Senators and Congressmen are beside him, and if in your absence, you want anybody to try to pacify them so they don’t get out on the floor and create problems for you while you’re over there, that might help. Or I can drop it, whatever you wish.
“K: No, if you could find out in a way that doesn’t draw too much attention to it, that would be very helpful.
“P: All right, you’ll get it in the morning.” (Ibid.)

It the Jewish community's noisiness about the Soviet Jews - mass rallies on the White House lawn, recruiting senators to the cause, and especially the Jackson-Vanik amendment - that pressured the Kremlin to allow millions of them to leave, not the "quiet diplomacy" that Kissinger advocated.

UPDATE: Alex points me to an NYT article from last year on newly released Nixon tapes:

An indication of Nixon’s complex relationship with Jews came the afternoon Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, came to visit on March 1, 1973. The tapes capture Meir offering warm and effusive thanks to Nixon for the way he had treated her and Israel.

But moments after she left, Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were brutally dismissive in response to requests that the United States press the Soviet Union to permit Jews to emigrate and escape persecution there.

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.”

In his discussion with Ms. Woods, Nixon laid down clear rules about who would be permitted to attend the state dinner for Meir — he called it “the Jewish dinner” — after learning that the White House was being besieged with requests to attend.

“I don’t want any Jew at that dinner who didn’t support us in that campaign,” he said. “Is that clear? No Jew who did not support us.”

Nixon listed many of his top Jewish advisers — among them, Mr. Kissinger and William Safire, who went on to become a columnist at The New York Times — and argued that they shared a common trait, of needing to compensate for an inferiority complex.

“What it is, is it’s the insecurity,” he said. “It’s the latent insecurity. Most Jewish people are insecure. And that’s why they have to prove things.”

Nixon also strongly hinted that his reluctance to even consider amnesty for young Americans who went to Canada to avoid being drafted during the Vietnam War was because, he told Mr. Colson, so many of them were Jewish.

“I didn’t notice many Jewish names coming back from Vietnam on any of those lists; I don’t know how the hell they avoid it,” he said, adding: “If you look at the Canadian-Swedish contingent, they were very disproportionately Jewish. The deserters.”

(h/t Alec)

The Palestinian Arabs' reckless disregard for Jewish heritage

In the light of UNESCO's acceptance of "Palestine" as a full member, David M. Weinberg in Israel HaYom documents how the Palestinian Arabs have not only been endangering any trace of Jewish history and culture in areas they control, but often actively destroy it:

Jewish synagogues and holy sites in Jericho, Nablus and Gush Katif were torched to the ground while Palestinian police looked on.

In 1996, Palestinian mobs assaulted Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, and Palestinian policemen on the scene shot and wounded the Israeli soldiers guarding the tomb. Ever since, the site has been sheathed in high concrete barriers, turning it into a Fort Knox-like encampment. Then a Palestinian mob led by Palestinian policemen assaulted Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, torched the synagogue inside, and opened fire on Israeli troops at the site, killing six Israeli soldiers.

In 2000, Palestinian mobs once again attacked. They killed one Israeli soldier and destroyed the building. Palestinian forces again took part. The Shalom Al Yisrael synagogue in Jericho with its unique Byzantine-era mosaic floor was also torched. Today, Israelis have only sporadic access to the site.

Detail of mosaic at Gaza synagogue

As for Gush Katif, the wild Palestinian mob destruction of all the synagogues there is just too fresh and painful a wound to talk about ...

Under Palestinian rule, Tulul Abu el Alayiq, near Wadi Qelt and Jericho, has been left to decay. This is an important archaeological site where Hasmonian kings and Herod built their winter palaces. The nearby Naaran synagogue -- perhaps the earliest synagogue in Israel -- is threatened by Palestinian real estate developers who are building practically atop the site. Israeli archaeologists who have managed to visit there say that the Palestinian Authority has let the place rot.

The authority has also allowed villagers to encroach upon the important synagogue remains in Eshtemoa in the southern Mount Hebron area. Neither Israeli archaeologists nor Israeli worshippers and tourists have access to the site (which is located in Area B), despite the fact that the Oslo Accords supposedly guaranteed this.

Mosaic at Na'aran synagogue

It is important to note that these three sites are specified by name in the appendices to the Oslo Accords, and defined as historical and religious sites which the Palestinian Authority is supposed to preserve, and to which they are supposed to provide access for Israelis.

The greatest crime of all -- an antiquities crime of historic proportions -- has been committed over recent years by the Palestinian Wakf on the Temple Mount. In 1999, the Wakf dug out hundreds of truckloads of dirt from caverns known as Solomon’s Stables beneath the upper plaza (more than 1,600 square meters in area and 15 meters deep) without any archaeological supervision or records. Thousands of tons of earth rich in archaeological remains, from all periods of the Temple Mount, were haphazardly dumped into the Kidron Valley and the city garbage dump at El-Azaria. The Wakf also destroyed stonework done by Jewish artisans 2,000 years ago in the underground “double passageway.”

Thousands of years of layered history -- Jewish history, of course -- were gouged out the ground with heavy machinery and shoveled out of sight. UNESCO didn’t even burp.

Israeli archaeological students are still sifting through this precious rubble, and have found numerous antiquities from the First and Second Temple periods, including stone weights for weighing silver, and a First Temple period bulla (seal impression) containing ancient Hebrew writing which may have belonged to a well-known family of priests mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah. Other findings are from the late period of the Kings of Judea (7th and 8th centuries BCE), including about 1,000 ancient coins, jewelry made of various materials, stone and glass squares from floor and wall mosaics, and many other items.

He also documents some destruction of Christian historic and religious sites.

UNESCO is silent, of course.

(h/t Ian)

The Forward's jihad against Touro College and JOU

Naomi Zeveloff at The Jewish Daily Forward wrote an article entitled "Is Jerusalem Online U. a Real College"?

The article is trying to create a controversy about how an Israel education and advocacy website has had some of its materials used by Touro College for a small number of students to gain credit.

The headline itself is proof of how little interest the Forward has in telling the truth, because buried in the eighth paragraph the founder of JOU says quite clearly that the website is an education portal, not a university.

Zeveloff's ire seems to be that JOU "boasts an explicitly pro-Israel mission that seems distinctly at odds with academic principles."

Only two classes from JOU can gain credits at Touro, and only one of them, "Israel Inside/Out", is what is making Zeveloff so upset - so much so that she has a follow-up article where she attempts to marshal academic experts to agree with her that such a class should be considered problematic.

I have not taken the course myself, but the list of people giving lectures - while they may be biased - hardly exhibits the fluff that Zeveloff implies. They include Sir Martin Gilbert, Professor Bernard Lewis and Dr. Daniel Pipes, Professor Alan Dershowitz, and Bassem Eid, the executive director for The Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group along with others who are without a doubt staunchly pro-Israel like Caroline Glick.

It seems that being angry at a single course in a college that offers hundreds of courses - and the implication that somehow because of that course one should question the academic strength of the entire college - shows far more about the reporter than it does about Touro.

For example, one person that Zeveloff quotes in each of the two articles is Zachary Lockman, NYU professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, who said that the syllabus for this course strikes him as "tendentious."

Perhaps. But a quick look at NYU's Middle East courses* reveals one called The Emergence of the Modern Middle East, taught this term by Nahid Mozaffari. In that course, only one book is recommended that discusses Israel specifically - and that book is "A History of Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples" by Ilan Pappe. In the introduction to that very book Pappe writes:

My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the "truth" when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers.

Which means that according to NYU, the only book worth reading in this course that talks about Israel is written by a pseudo-historian who freely admits that he is not interested in even the pretense of bias and who is against the very idea of Israel.

To me, the idea that a course on Israel in a Jewish school is biased towards Israel, where the contents and goals of the course are open for everyone to see, is far less offensive than the idea that students at a multi-cultural school are force-fed a biased version of history in their courses under the guise of being fair and balanced.

And this is only a tiny example. Who can expect that Joseph Massad's classes at Columbia have anything good to say about Israel, when he states ad nauseum that Israel is racist and colonialist? Indeed, Columbia's new Center for Palestine Studies is apparently a way to bash Israel under the guise of academia.

JOU, on the other hand, does not try to hide its agenda. Zeveloff spends quite a bit of time finding nefarious-sounding connections between JOU and Aish HaTorah and other pro-Israel organizations and funders, all in an attempt to give the reader the impression that something is really rotten there, without quite finding anything substantial.

I am not saying that "Israel: Inside/Out" is a fantastic college course, or that it represents the pinnacle of academic standards. But in a world when students at even Ivy League schools can find dozens of classes that teach nothing and hand out A's as if they were candy, it hardly seems controversial that a Jewish college gives credit for a pro-Israel course.

I would argue that Zeveloff is far guiltier posing as an objective journalist while writing these two hit pieces than Touro or JOU are in openly offering a single for-credit course that is biased towards Israel.

(Disclaimer: I have done some graphics work for JOU, including this poster for an educational initiative they have for Jewish high school students. And one more disclaimer: A long, long time ago, under a different name, I wrote a funny article that ended up being used as source material in at least one college course.)

*UPDATE: A reader who has taken the NYU class I mentioned says that Dr. Mozaffari's class at NYU also uses Efraim Karsh's Palestine Betrayed as required reading, even though it is not mentioned in the syllabus. He also says that she was very welcoming of student input into potential bias and works hard to give as fair a portrayal as possible. I am very glad to hear it.

Barak: During Camp David there was 4x the building activity of today

An interesting part of the Charlie Rose interview with Ehud Barak, at about the 25 minute mark of the video.

EHUD BARAK: ...When the Palestinians tell you the Israelis are building in the settlement, it`s propaganda.
CHARLIE ROSE: Wait, wait, wait. Propaganda -- they`re not building in the settlement?
EHUD BARAK: No, we build but we built a building -- we have the --
CHARLIE ROSE: Are you building in East Jerusalem?
EHUD BARAK: Of course. That`s our capital, we build. We do not build in the -- within the Palestinians suburbs. We build in empty areas or Jewish neighborhoods.
But let me tell you honestly, when I was sitting with Clinton and Arafat in relative (ph) negotiations --
CHARLIE ROSE: Camp David.
EHUD BARAK: -- that failed because of (INAUDIBLE), we were building in four times the pace at which we are building now. And when Olmert came so close with some cigarettes and some maps on the table with Abu Mazen, the same Abu Mazen, not Arafat -- to reach an agreement, we were building about twice [the pace]--
(CROSSTALK)
CHARLIE ROSE: Ok. But wait a minute. This is a very important point. Stop, this is a very important point. You`re saying that on the issue of settlement they were prepared to negotiate an agreement and essentially had an agreement that seemed to settle most of the issues and there were settlements being built at that moment and they were not an impediment to an agreement.
EHUD BARAK: Yeah, yeah. I'm saying it. And the reality is that you know after 44 years, the whole Jewish settlement in the whole West Bank together doesn`t cover even 2 percent of the area. If we take 10 percent we have a good settlement bloc. It`s not a problem.
CHARLIE ROSE: But it is a problem and the Palestinians --
EHUD BARAK: No. It became a problem because some without thinking far- sightedly enough, some leaders donated the formula that not a single brick should be put. That`s a little bit too far and the Palestinians immediately adopted this as the standard. They say we are not ready to be less Palestinian than some world leaders.

Hmmm, who could he be referring to?

(h/t Russell)

PalArabs admit using UNESCO for political goals

From Ma'an:

UNESCO could help restore the Palestinian Authority's cultural presence in Jerusalem, the president of the Palestinian Committee for Education Culture and Science, Yahya Yakhlaf, said last week in Ramallah.

Yakhlaf, who used to be Minister of Culture and is a well known Palestinian novelist, stressed that Palestinian ambitions within UNESCO would remain merely cultural. "But we can achieve political goals through cultural means," he added.

"In the next months we will register more than 20 Palestinian sites as our national heritage," Ismail Tellawi, secretary general of the Palestinian UNESCO-Commission, said in his Ramallah office.

One of the sites Palestinians will try to register is the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs, where Abraham is believed to be buried.

How many of these sites will not also be important Jewish historical sites?

If you doubt that the "Palestinian Committee for Education Culture and Science" (which is part of the PA government) is political, note that one of their stated goals is "To do best efforts at international, Arab and Islamic levels to emphasize the Palestinian refugees rights to education, to preserve their Palestinian national identity, to enhance their human right to return back to their homeland in accordance with the resolutions of the inter national legality."

In other words, to destroy Israel.

But, it is a cultural thing.

Chayei Sarah open thread

There will be many tents pitched in the streets of a famous city today.

But I am not talking about wannabe anarchists in Zuccotti Park in New York, or even people asking for social justice in Tel Aviv. I'm talking about Hebron.

This Shabbat the Torah portion is Chayei Sarah, which starts off with Abraham buying the burial plot for his beloved wife Sarah - in Hebron, in the spot that is now called the Cave of the Patriarchs.

Because of this biblical connection to the city, every year tens of thousands of Jews cram into every available space in Hebron and Kiryat Arba. A great description of the annual event can be seen here:

Well over six months prior to this Sabbath we begin receiving phone calls and emails requesting places to sleep and eat on this auspicious day. Dozens of tents are pitched outside Me’arat Hamachpela, the Cave of the Patriarchs, and Matriarchs. Public buildings are transformed into dormitories, with separate facilities for men and women. It’s the only time of the year when my living room is wall-to-wall people sleeping on the floor.

One year, on Saturday night, a young woman walked into our kitchen to thank my wife. She asked what for. The woman said she had slept in one of our rooms. We had no idea she was there, or where she slept, because the room was already packed.

A huge tent is constructed outside the Avraham Avinu neighborhood, providing meals thousands of guests. Literally every nook and cranny in Hebron is utilized, with people sleeping and eating wherever they can find a few free meters.

All hours of the day and night the streets are full of people walking to and from the various neighborhoods in Hebron. Saturday afternoon, multitudes tour the city, visiting the Hebron Heritage Museum at Beit Hadassah, the tomb of Jesse and Ruth in Tel Rumeida, and the Avraham Avinu synagogue in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood. Special Casba tours are also included in the day’s agenda.

The heart of the day’s events takes place at Me’arat Hamachpela. On Friday night, literally thousands of people gather at this holy site, inside and out, to offer joyous Sabbath prayers. Singing and dancing during a huge “Carlebach minyan,” conducted in the Machpela courtyard, is unbelievably uplifting.

Here's a video from last year's festivities (a shot of the tents starts at 1:21):

I wish all the visitors to Hebron, and all my readers, a Shabbat Shalom.

(h/t Daled Amos via G+)

Christian Biblical ethicists claim God didn't promise Israel to Jews (updated)

In September, David P. Gushee and Glen H. Stassen, two Christian ethicists, wrote "An Open Letter to America's Christian Zionists." The main point of this letter was to dispute the biblical idea that God gave Israel to Jews alone:

Not to put too fine a point on it, we wish to claim here that the prevailing version of American Christian Zionism—that is, your belief system—underwrites theft of Palestinian land and oppression of Palestinian people, helps create the conditions for an explosion of violence, and pushes US policy in a destructive direction that violates our nation’s commitment to universal human rights. In all of these, American Christian Zionism as it currently stands is sinful and produces sin. We write as evangelical Christians committed lifelong to Israel's security, and we are seriously worried about your support for policies that violate biblical warnings about injustice and may lead to the outcome you most fear—serious harm to or even destruction of Israel.

We write as evangelicals to you, our fellow evangelicals. On the shared basis of biblical authority, we ask you to reconsider your interpretation of Scripture, for the sake of God, humanity, the United States, and, yes, Israel itself, the Land and People we both love.

We acknowledge that your evangelical-fundamentalist American Christian Zionism (henceforth simply “Christian Zionism”) is a product of a Christian community that loves and reads the Bible. This is on its face a good thing--for there appear to be fewer and fewer American Christians whose love of the Bible and whose devotion to reading it can be taken for granted. We commend your love for the scriptures.

Both now and in the past, whenever Christian Zionism emerges its essential origin is simply Christian reading of the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians call the Old Testament. Our love of the Bible takes Christians into the pages of the Old Testament; there we cannot help but discover the centrality of a Promised Land for the Jewish people. The trajectory of the canonical Old Testament moves inexorably toward and away from the Promised Land—the patriarchal narratives in which a people and land are promised despite humble origins; enslavement in Egypt; the miraculous Exodus and grim wilderness wanderings under Moses; the conquest of the Promised Land; the establishment, split, and eventual conquest of Israel as a political entity; the Babylonian exile and dispersion of the Jewish people; and a partial return to the land, at which point the OT historical narrative ends.
...

We suggest to you that contemporary Christian Zionism is well-intentioned but needs correction at some very important points. This requires some careful biblical and theological work—from within the basic framework of evangelical Christianity. This means that the relevant scriptural texts need to be studied in detail, and that Christian theology needs to do its proper work with those texts.

For example, we suggest that Christian Zionists who move from a generalized love of Israel to a specific claim that the contemporary state of Israel has divine title to the entire Holy Land, need to take more seriously the complexity of what the Bible actually says about God’s promises to Abraham.

Genesis 15:18 reads: “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” The next verse goes on to name the various peoples to whom the land belonged at the time.

The territory denoted by the space between these two rivers includes modern-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, half of Iraq, half of Egypt, parts of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the modern state of Israel, as well as the occupied Palestinian territories.

A literal reading of the text that assumes that the descendants of Abram are only the Jewish people faces a problem here. Either God is not very good at keeping his promises, or God’s plan is for contemporary Israel ultimately to conquer all of these other countries and occupy their land. That would result in an Israel ruled by its 90% majority Arabs, or an Israel attempting to subjugate that 90% by force.

But the promise looks very different if we take seriously all of the offspring of Abraham. Genesis 15:4-5 has God taking Abram outside and telling him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of the heavens. Genesis 17:4, probably the pivotal text, has God saying to Abraham: “This is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.” Many nations, a multitude of nations; many offspring, many kings—read Genesis 17 again and see the plural nouns here.

Close readers of Scripture will know that in fact Abraham did become the father of many nations. With Sarah he became the father of Isaac and the ancestor of all in his line, via Jacob and Esau. With Hagar he became the father of Ishmael and all in his line. And with the long-forgotten Keturah (Gen. 25:1) he became the father of Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. The Old Testament clearly positions Abraham as the father/ancestor of not only the Jewish people but of a vast number of other peoples, all scattered through the territories promised in Genesis 15. Abraham becomes the father of dozens of peoples, exactly as the Bible says! It is certainly true that the Old Testament primarily tells the story of the line of Isaac and therefore of what became the Jewish people, but that cannot cancel the significance of the promises to Abraham and the many peoples credited to him in Genesis.

...Perhaps you will respond by saying that God promises the land of Canaan specifically to the Jewish people. You might cite here Genesis 17:8: “I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding.” This interpretation would require restricting the “offspring” in question to Abraham’s offspring through Sarah via Isaac and then on to Jacob and excluding Esau. But the promise to possess the land includes the offspring of Isaac, and the offspring of Isaac includes Esau, with his five Edomite sons and their offspring, as Genesis 36 states, and that includes multitudes of Canaanites, not only Jews. It would also require the assumption that we know what Gen. 17 means territorially with the term “Canaan” and that it corresponds with the Zionist’s version of the proper boundaries of the modern state of Israel.

In a later letter, published November 12, the same two wrote:

The responses that disagreed did not discuss the biblical passages, but shifted the topic to the politics of the present government of Israel and the West Bank, and Hamas, and whether Israel forced Palestinians out of their homes or not.

These are important topics, but we are hoping for biblical discussion.

What we are asking is whether our readers see Genesis 15 and 17 saying that Abraham is the father of many nations, with descendants as many as the stars of the universe. And whether the territory includes all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates, which of course includes many nations, most all Arab. We believe ours is the plain, literal reading. No one has explained a different reading in response.

I have no idea why no Christian Zionist took it upon themselves to answer this letter within the worldview of Christian theology. Honestly, if it is true, it is a bit disappointing.

So, even though I am not a Christian nor a Jewish Biblical scholar by any means, I would like to make a point.

It seems strange that the authors' arguments that God's promises apply to all of Abraham's descendants do not take into account later declarations by God.

For example, God explicitly told Jacob in Genesis 28:13 that "I am the LORD, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac. The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed."

This happened at Bet El (Bethel). One can argue about the size of the land promised by God at that point, but one cannot argue that the promise was made to anyone but the Jewish people. And Bet El is on the "wrong" side of the Green Line. Would the authors admit that, Biblically, this must remain a part of Israel?

More explicitly, in Exodus 23, God tells the Israelites:

But if thou shalt indeed hearken unto his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. For Mine angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Canaanite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; and I will cut them off. ...And I will set thy border from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness unto the River; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee.

And in Deuteronomy chapter 1:

The LORD our God spoke unto us in Horeb, saying: 'Ye have dwelt long enough in this mountain; turn you, and take your journey, and go to the hill-country of the Amorites and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the Arabah, in the hill-country, and in the Lowland, and in the South, and by the sea-shore; the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD swore unto your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.'

The straight translations of these passages are somewhat contradictory and without further study I imagine it is difficult for Christians to know how to reconcile them. But it is extraordinarily dishonest to interpret only one of God's promises to Abraham and his children in a vacuum without even considering the more explicit promises He made later to Jacob, Moses and the children of Israel. Is it not the same God who made all of these promises? Are not all of them of equal weight? If so, then the issue is not interpreting one of them, but reconciling and interpreting all of them together.

Beyond that, it seems to me that the entire Biblical narrative would be problematic if most of the peoples who were God's covenental partners simply disappeared from the story or played only bit parts. If the children of Israel were not the main intended recipients of God's promises, then why would the Bible spend so much time only dealing with them and all but ignoring the Ishmaelites and the Edomites?

The writers make other arguments about whether today's Jews should still be considered to be within the same covenant, but that is a much bigger topic. And before I spend time on that, I would love to know how they interpret and reconcile the many other Biblical verses tying the Land of Israel with, specifically, the Jews.

(Parenthetically, I think it is not clear at all that you can consider Esau's progeny to be "Canaanites." While Gen. 38 says they lived in Canaan, the Canaanites were presumably the descendants of Canaan, Noah's grandson through Ham. Which means, ironically, that Canaanites are not Semites, but rather "Hamites." So don't accuse me of anti-Semitism :) )

I am afraid that this might turn into a very big theological thread, and I am not really comfortable with that here; Christian theology is not a topic that belongs on this blog. Hopefully it will spark discussion among Christians that will take place elsewhere.

UPDATE: My Right Word dug a bit deeper here.

I looked a little more at this today, and saw that even the source text in Genesis 15 that the authors find so problematic makes it very clear that God is only speaking about the Children of Israel!

Genesis 15:4, which they even quote, says:

And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying: 'This man shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.'

Indeed, the Hebrew shows that God is speaking only in the singular, meaning only one of Abraham's children would be considered his heir.

But even more so, look at Genesis 15:13-14, where God says:

Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance.

This is an obvious reference only to the children of Israel in Egypt, using the same word as the subject "thy seed: זַרְעֲךָ " that is used throughout the entire promise!

It seems highly unlikely that Stassen and Gushee did not notice this text. This makes their entire essay seem, to put it charitably, very suspect as to their motivation.