Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 25, 2013

A topical Haggadah 'vort'

From YU's Pesach-to-Go compilation of divrei-Torah, with Rabbi Michael Taubes discussing some of the insights of Rav Soloveitchik on the Haggadah:

[If the Holy One had not taken our ancestors out of Egypt, we, our children and our grandchildren] משועבדים היינו -..would still be enslaved [to Pharaoh in Egypt]

The Ba’al HaHaggadah [author of the Haggdah] states that had G-d not taken us out of Egypt, we and all of our descendants would have remained “meshubadim,” “enslaved” to Pharaoh. Is it not possible, however, that somewhere along the line, one of the Pharaohs might have released the Jewish slaves on his own, as indeed happened on other occasions in history in other places?

The answer is that had that happened, we might indeed have been politically free as a nation, but we would have owed a constant debt of gratitude to whichever Pharaoh it would have been who set us free. In that sense, we would never be able to become completely independent. This explains why the word used here is “meshubadim,” “enslaved,” and not “avadim,” “slaves”—we indeed would not have been slaves, but we would have been enslaved, in the sense of indebted, to Pharaoh.

This is my problem with US policy on Israel.

Certainly, the President said all the right things on his trip last week. Certainly, the US has increased its spending on helping Israel defend itself. But there are always strings attached; in this case the idea that Iron Dome and Patriot missile batteries and other defense systems will help Israel decide not to be pro-active in eliminating threats to her security.

Not to blame the US - it is acting in its self-interest, as any nation should. And the carrot is much more tasty than the stick. But there is an element of gratitude and reciprocity that Jews in general are meticulous in offering.

If US generosity results in a foreign threat getting stronger over time, then it is not a gift at all. It might end up a time-bomb.

By the way, Jewish appreciation for good done to them by others, hakorat hatov, is in stark contrast to the Arabs, who feel that any Western money that comes their way is an entitlement - and never enough. For just one of many examples, see my previous post.

Egyptian cleric says US aid to Egypt is a "jizya" tax

From MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian cleric Dr. Khaled Said, which aired on Al-Hafez TV (via the Internet) on March 17, 2013.

Khaled Said: If the revolution declares a framework for dealing with the West and America – they will accept it, kiss our hands, and double the aid they give us. We consider this aid to be jizya [poll tax], not regular aid.

Interviewer: Is this the rhetoric of the revolution?

Khaled Said: It certainly is.

Interviewer: The aid the Americans give us is the jizya tax they have to pay?

Khaled Said: Yes, it is. They pay it for the right of passage through our airspace and territorial waters.

Interviewer: They pay to keep us quiet?

Khaled Said: They pay so that we will let them be.

Interviewer: Is that a fatwa?

Khaled Said: Indeed. The aid constitutes jizya.

[…]

We must strive to realize the goals of the revolution, and to establish a sovereign, Arab Islamic state in Egypt. Then this state will impose payment of aid upon America as jizya, in exchange for allowing it to realize its interests – the ones that we approve, get it?

They must pay reparations for destroying our country and the Islamic nation – them and others in the West – so that we will agree to cooperate with them.

Interviewer: But this is not what jizya means.

Khaled Said: Nevertheless, I call it jizya.

This mentality explains why Arabs are so upset when the US puts even the lightest restrictions on aid - they don't consider it aid; they consider it reparations.

It is unclear who caved during the USAID kerfuffle in 2011, where Egyptian media reported that they formally reject USAID money because of its restrictions. USAID is still giving money to many specific Egyptian projects, that generally are pro-democracy and pro-freedom.

Today's photos of storming extremists doing Talmudic rituals!

Hamas' Al Qasssam Brigades breathlessly tweeted:

(#Photos) #Israeli settlers storm Al #Aqsa mosque under the protection of security guards.#ApartheidIsrael twitter.com/AlqassamBrigad…
— Alqassam Brigades (@AlqassamBrigade) March 25, 2013

I found some other photos of the event, at a Qudsmedia,where it mentions that "the settlers, accompanied by a number of 'rabbis' walk in the path around the Aqsa, trying to perform some Talmudic rituals."

Anti-Israel idiots in the West, who never look at the photos, read these press releases and think that Jews are actually storming the Al Aqsa Mosque every day.

Qudsmedia adds:

The Al-Aqsa Foundation had warned in recent days that the al-Aqsa mosque may be exposed to a wave of collective raids by the occupation and its army on the occasion of the so-called "Holiday of Passover", and it asserted the need to intensify daily presence early in the al-Aqsa mosque because the human tide of worshipers is the maximum protective shield and inviolable.

"Anonymous" claims to have hacked Mossad. Um, not quite.

From Databreaches.net:

When HackRead reported, #OpIsrael: Mossad Website breached, Personal Details of over 30,000 Agents Leaked by Anonymous, my first thought was that I wished they didn’t just uncritically repeat claims.

Did they examine the database/spread sheets before repeating tweets and claims? I did a random check of the database, and frankly, I find it extremely unlikely that the hackers obtained any information on Mossad agents, much less all their agents as well as government officials and politicians.

The data seem to include the names, addresses, phone and fax numbers, ID numbers, and email addresses of approximately 35,000 individuals. Some of the individuals in the database have multiple entries. Many seem to be merchants or others with no connection to the government at all.

Maybe some of the data are from people applying to become part of Mossad, but even that is a stretch when you start Googling some of the individuals in the database.

Think what you want of Mossad’s actions, but they are not stupid. They’ve known that they are targets, and not just by Anonymous or hacker groups. Covert operatives’ names and contact details thrown into a large database connected to the Internet? Highly unlikely. So unless someone has some proof that this database really has data on Mossad agents, I remain skeptical, to say the least.

Times of Israel adds:

In an unsettling announcement, the hacker group known as Anonymous and affiliates proclaimed over the weekend that they had broken into the Mossad’s servers and stolen the names and personal details of top IDF officials, politicians and, especially, Mossad agents. But those claims are inflated, to say the least, according to

“Whatever they stole, it probably wasn’t secure details of top Israeli brass, either from the army or the Mossad,” Pavel told The Times of Israel.

Reports on several hacker websites said that Anonymous, along with the Turkish group The Red Hack and the Arab group Sector404, both of which are allied with Anonymous, managed to break into the Mossad’s public website and steal several Excel spreadsheets containing the details of over 34,000 “Mossad agents.” The files list names of the alleged agents, email addresses (private and work), home addresses and other identification information. The hack is just the first of a major new front in Anonymous’ ongoing #OpIsrael campaign, which aims to destroy Israel’s cyber-presence.

But whatever it was that the hackers thought they got, it wasn’t a list of Mossad agents, said Pavel. “There is no doubt that they got some identification information about Israelis, but the claims that they hacked the Mossad site and got a list of Mossad agents is most likely psychological warfare, and not a hack into an important database,” said Pavel.

Pavel downloaded and analyzed the files (they were posted for all to see on hacker sites), and found that the information didn’t match what one would expect to find in the personal dossier of spies. “Many of the records in those files appear two, three, and even five times, with the identical information repeated,” said Pavel.

In addition, said Pavel, “there are many records that list the names of businesses associated with the individual, including shoe manufacturers, food companies, auto supply stores, high schools, municipalities, synagogues, and even NGOs,” many of which work with Palestinians.

Besides all that, Pavel added, a good chunk of the names list home or business addresses in Arab communities in Israel, including Taybeh, Umm al-Fahm, Kafr Kassem, and others. “Whatever you want to say about any of the other inconsistencies, it’s extremely unlikely that thousands of Israeli Arabs are also Mossad agents,” he said.

I looked at the list of names and emails as well. It looks like several different low-level breaches stuck together, but it looks nothing like what a Mossad list would look like.

When you are a hacker and you pre-announce that you will hack into a high-profile target, your failure means that you will lie to try to maintain your reputation.

Pesach Shop video (Six13)

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Islamic Movement built many illegal buildings in the Negev - last week

PLS48.net has a large photo essay of Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of Israel's Islamic Movement who regularly tried to incite terrorism against Jews, being shown brand new buildings in the Negev and elsewhere in just in the past few days.

Most, if not all, of these buildings are illegal.

Apparently, the Islamists are trying to take advantage of Passover vacations by Israeli officials to put "facts on the ground" - especially mosques and schools.

Salah makes it clear that his intention is to cause the Muslim community to surround the Jews in Israel. He said:

When we build these mosques, we are demonstrating the fact that Allah wants the existence of these villages. Right on these places, by Allah, will continue to be strong. The injustice of the occupation is a disgrace to Allah. These mosques will become central to uniting the people of the Negev, with no exceptions, and bring the union between the Negev residents to those of the Galilee, the Triangle and the cities of humiliation, all uniting under the protection of Allah the Great....We are here to fulfill an ancient national commitment. Say to our brothers in the Negev we are with them in one body and one heart, with our money and our blood. We are brothers in this country, and we share common concerns. We came here to build houses and mosques to prove we were here on our land, and we live here in honor of Allah.

Mida magazine notes that this is an annual event, always happening around the time that Israeli inspectors are on Passover vacation.

I discussed the issue of illegal Bedouin Negev villages in this video I made last month.

For some reason, some illegal settlements don't get people too upset.

It only takes two words to see how imbecilic Max Blumenthal is

Max Blumenthal has been thoroughly discredited as a journalist and even as a reliable source of any facts many times before, just on this blog. It is utterly inconceivable that any serious news organization would consider him a serious writer when his hate completely overwhelms his ability to absorb basic facts.

As I noted earlier today, the winner of Israel's version of The Voice was an Arab Christian woman, Lina Makhoul.

Blumenthal's reaction on Twitter? "Tokenism works!"

Think about that for a second. Blumenthal is utterly convinced that the Israeli Jewish public is deeply racist against Arabs. Yet when they vote for a singing competition, they have no compunction voting for an Arab that they supposedly hate.

Blumenthal's explanation? That, while safely anonymous in their homes, the Israeli public decided en masse to vote for the Arab singer, not because she was the most talented but because they wanted a token Arab to win, so that people like him wouldn't consider them racist!

And, of course, their ruse failed, because Blumenthal is so smart as to know how the evil Israeli racist mind works, and he knows that they knew that they were only covering up for their racism by voting for the one singer they really despised!

Not only in the final round, but in all of the rounds beforehand!

Blumenthal doesn't just ignore Occam's Razor, he twists it into a Möbius strip in his ridiculous lie.

It is important to note that anti-Arab racism does exist in Israel. Even Makhoul noted that she heard some racist comments while she was in the competition. Yet racism exists everywhere. People who actually care about racism would celebrate Makhoul's victory; but haters like Max are upset, because it disproves their own justification for their own irrational, sickening hate.

Make no mistake: the insane misoziony that people like Blumenthal exhibit - the irrational, crazed hate of everything Israeli - is no less reprehensible than the racism some of them pretend to care so much about.

Sunday Links

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Advancing ‘leftist’ agenda, online mag +972 serves to strengthen Israel haters

For one Israeli, however, the news could not have been better. Noa Shaindlinger, who frequently appears in +972 magazine, wrote on her Facebook page, “We may have some good news later this morning (hint: IOF accident with casualties).” When a fellow activist criticized her joy over the pilots’ deaths, Shaindlinger shot back, “I will worry about nonsense like my ‘humanity’ afterwards, when the struggle will end successfully. Till then, I will be happy when my enemies fall.” Shaindlinger’s “enemies” are Israeli soldiers.

Riding the tiger
If Europe's leaders gambled that appeasement would buy them a measure of protection from the wrath of Hezbollah they may have tragically miscalculated

Detumescent Europeans have made a virtue of lowering their defences and exposing their vulnerabilities. But if they gambled that weakness would buy them friends and that appeasement would buy them a measure of protection from the wrath of Hezbollah they may have tragically miscalculated. For when European weakness confronts rampant Islamism, the consequence is likely to be bloody and painful.
Riding the tiger was the easy part; trying to dismount will be a far more perilous business.

IDF fires missile into Syria after more cross-border shooting
Syrian outpost completely destroyed, leaving two wounded; defense minister warns of no-tolerance approach to attacks

IDF soldiers on Sunday morning fired a Tammuz missile at a Syrian army position in Tel Fares, from which shots were fired both that day and the previous day across the border into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. The missile destroyed the Syrian post and reportedly wounded two gunmen there.

IDF Soldiers Foil Infiltration in Beit El

IDF troops arrested two Palestinian Authority Arabs as they were approaching the town of Beit El in the Binyamin region.

Erdogan backtracks on understandings with Netanyahu

Day after Israeli PM’s apology phone call, Turkish leader says it’s not yet time to drop case against 4 IDF generals over Marmara deaths, won’t send new envoy yet, will visit Gaza

IDF commandos disappointed by apology to Turkey

‘I don’t feel we did anything wrong,’ says one soldier who took part in the flotilla raid; another blames government for abandoning fighters

MK Chetboun: Apology a Knife in Soldiers' Backs

Bayit Yehudi MK says Turkey apology sends a message to soldiers: "We don't have your backs."

Israel Expels Three Foreign Leftist Rioters

Israel expelled three foreign leftist activists who, along with Israeli leftists and PA Arabs, rioted near the Cave of the Patriarchs.

Honest Reporting Canada: CBC Falsely Claims Israelis Vandalized Obama Posters in Jerusalem

In actuality, these posters were defaced by Palestinians in Ramallah in the West Bank and were not defaced by Israelis in Jerusalem as CBC has falsely reported. The Times of Israel confirms the veracity on this matter showing what appears to be these exact posters existing in Ramallah in the West Bank:

CIF Watch: Guardian Mid-East editor legitimizes the political pornography of Ali Abunimah

Palestinians, however, observed Black, were not impressed. He noted that some Palestinians complained that Obama’s speech lacked depth or substance, before citing a critique by Ali Abunimah, the American born, Ivy League educated son of a Jordanian diplomat who founded ‘Electronic Intifada’ (EI) – and who, from his home in Chicago, engages in hate-filled ”commentary” about the Jewish state with abandon.

Egytian Muslims Accuse Priest of Using Black Magic on Muslim Girl

Hundreds of Muslims marched for the second day through the street of the Egyptian town of El-Wasta, 90 kilometers south of Cairo in Beni Suef Province, to protest the disappearance of a young Muslim girl, Rania Shazli, and accuse the priest of St. George's Church in Wasta of using black magic to lure her to Christianity.

Fierce clashes in Tripoli as Lebanon teeters

Fighters armed with automatic weapons, mortars and rocket propelled grenades clashed in the Lebanese city of Tripoli Saturday, as the army readied to quash spillover violence from neighboring Syria.
The fierce fighting in the city came a day after Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati stepped down over political infighting.

Scottish council boycotts 'apartheid Israel'

One of Scotland's smallest councils has taken the decision to boycott Israel, comparing the country to South Africa during its apartheid period, reports the Jewish Chronicle.

Wiesel joins judging panel for ‘Jewish Nobel’
Planned $1 million prize to go to Jewish professional who serves as role model for community

Peace prize laureate Elie Wiesel joined the judging panel for a $1 million award that has been called the “Jewish Nobel,” organizers announced Sunday.
The Genesis Prize is planned to be given annually to a professional who acts as a role model to Jews in their community. The first prize will be awarded in 2014.

The Israeli Palestinian Conflict: 10 Myths Preventing Peace

The resurgence of Hungarian antisemitism (Time)

From Time:

Budapest has Central Europe's largest population of Jews, an estimated 100,000, with dozens of synagogues, prayer houses, art galleries, wine bars and community centers. Yet thanks to a declining economy and growing anti-Semitism, more and more Jews are either leaving Hungary or considering it. The number of those who have actually emigrated is still relatively small--an estimated 1,000 over the past year, according to the Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary, known as Mazsihisz--but in Facebook forums, at synagogues and over casual dinners at Jewish bistros, the question looms large. "You look around at your friends," says Dani, a 36-year-old architect who requested that his last name not be used, "and they're all asking, Is it time to go?"

They have reason to wonder. In June, Budapest's retired chief rabbi, Jozsef Schweitzer, was accosted by a man who said he "hates all Jews." In October two men attacked Jewish leader Andras Kerenyi, kicking him in the stomach and shouting obscenities at him. When Kerenyi's assailants were arrested, an online radio station praised the attack, calling it "a response to general Jewish terrorism." In December, Balazs Lenhardt, an independent Member of Parliament, burned an Israeli flag in front of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry during an anti-Zionist protest--one in which participants shouted, "To Auschwitz with you all." In the past several months, Jewish cemeteries have been vandalized, Holocaust monuments have been damaged, and swastikas have been painted on synagogue walls. On March 14, professors at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest found stickers affixed to their office door that read, "Jews! The university belongs to us, not you! Regards, the Hungarian students."

Isolated anti-Jewish events occur occasionally throughout Europe, but the frequency of these incidents in Hungary has accompanied a measurable darkening of public opinion. Andras Kovacs, a sociologist at Budapest's Central European University, found that from 1992 to 2006, levels of anti-Semitism in Hungary remained relatively stable. About 10% of adults qualified as fervent anti-Semites, another 15% had some anti-Semitic feelings, and 60% of the population was not anti-Semitic at all. But beginning in 2006, when Hungary's economy began to deteriorate and far-right parties began to rise, the intolerance started to intensify. By 2010 the percentage of those who qualified as fervent anti-Semites had risen to as high as 20%, and the percentage who said they held no anti-Jewish feelings had dropped to 50%.

...The standard bearer of the radical right is Jobbik, or the Movement for a Better Hungary. The party won 16.7% of the vote in the 2010 national election, making it the third largest in Hungary. Though its strong showing was widely attributed to its anti-Roma platform, Jobbik's members have made no secret of their anti-Jewish feelings. In one notorious incident in November, Jobbik MP Marton Gyongyosi--who has said he is concerned that Hungarian foreign policy unduly favors Israel--called for a survey of "how many people of Jewish origin there are in Hungary and in government who may represent a risk to national security."

As outrage grew over his call for what the media quickly deemed a "list"--a term especially radioactive in a country where community lists were used during World War II to deport Jews to concentration camps--Gyongyosi backtracked, claiming that he had meant that only dual-nationality Hungarian Israelis in government should be identified. Yet in an interview with TIME in early February, he characterized a 2007 speech by Shimon Peres--in which the Israeli President noted that empires today could be founded "without settling colonies" and jokingly remarked that his fellow citizens were "buying up Manhattan, Hungary, Romania and Poland"--as evidence of Israel's nefarious intentions. "[Peres] said that what you need to subjugate another people and colonize them is money and business," said Gyongyosi. "It's not conspiracy theory to say, I live in this country and I look around me and I see this kind of colonization."

...At the national level, Fidesz has taken serious steps to combat anti-Semitism," says Feldmajer. "But at the local level, the municipal level, there's often collaboration between Jobbik and Fidesz." Feldmajer claims there are "anti-Semitic voices within Fidesz" that are sometimes indistinguishable from those within Jobbik. One of the most inflammatory of those voices is Zsolt Bayer, a virulently anti-Roma tabloid journalist who was one of the ruling party's founders. After Andras Schiff, the famous London-based Hungarian pianist, wrote a letter to the Washington Post saying he would not return to Hungary because of its current political situation, Bayer wrote a newspaper column in which he referred to Schiff and a pair of foreign Jewish critics of the Hungarian government as "a stinking excrement called something like Cohen from somewhere in England." Bayer, who remains close to Fidesz leaders, maintains that he was criticizing them for their political beliefs, not their religion.

...And yet even people like Vero-Ban, who is married to Rabbi Tamas Vero and loves Budapest, is wondering whether it is time to leave. About two years ago, her husband took their two young daughters out shopping. As he knelt on the floor to help his girls try on shoes, a passerby spied the rabbi's kippah and began shouting slurs at him while onlookers did nothing. If the family hasn't emigrated yet, it's because Vero feels a responsibility to his community. Still, the question figured prominently in the rabbi's Rosh Hashanah sermon last year. "I wonder if we are brave enough to face the unknown now," Vero said. "Or if, in a few centuries, our descendants will ask, Why did the Jews not return to the Holy Land in the 21st century? Did they not learn from history?"

The number of Hungarian Jews who have immigrated to Israel is small--170 last year--and many leave for economic reasons as well as political. Unemployment is 11.2% in Hungary, and in 2012, its GDP contracted by 1.7%. But even those who can easily find a job are wondering where their line in the sand should be. Not long ago, Dani the architect and his wife Eszter were on a crowded city bus with a man who was yelling into his cell phone about a "'dirty Jew who wouldn't give me back my money.' The first time you hear something like that, you're really shocked," Eszter recalls. "The second time, you're just shocked. And the third time, it starts to seem normal." The two have seriously considered leaving--Dani has sent out his portfolio to a number of foreign companies--but so far, the desire to remain close to their family has kept them in Hungary. "I still believe those things can't happen again," Dani says, referring to the Holocaust. "But maybe we're kidding ourselves. You know the saying about how you cook a frog not by dropping him in boiling water--he jumps out--but by putting him in cold water and slowly turning up the heat? Maybe we're the frogs."

A Christian Arab from Acre on Saturday became the first Arab contestant to win the popular television talent show “The Voice.”

Lina Mahoul, 19, beat out Ophir Ben Shitrit, an Orthodox girl from Ashdod, to win the second season of the series.

Mahoul sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in the final episode of the program to clinch the win.

Saudi mufti declares jihad against - Twitter!

From Al Arabiya:

Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti has criticized the social media website Twitter as a “council of clowns” and a place for those who “unleash unjust, incorrect and wrong tweets.”

Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz al-Sheikh made the statements during a speech to Saudi Arabia’s senior religious scholars on Friday, the Saudi-based al-Watan newspaper reported Saturday.

The Grand Mufti argued that most of young people are wasting their time on chatting and using the internet, especially Twitter.

Saudi Arabia has three million Twitter users, more than any country in the Middle East, with a growth rate of 300 percent year-on-year, according to a report by the Social Clinic, a Jeddah-based social media consultancy.

Who's the clown?

Last week I reported on the "Marmara 2" land convoy that was stuck at the Tunisia/Libyan border because some members had visa problems.

After losing a week, it looks like the convoy has made it to Egypt - but it has been delayed there for five days as well.

Moreover, reports say that the border police at the Salloum crossing between Libya and Egypt have been threatening and insulting the convoy's leaders, telling them to go back to Libya.

The Islamic world isn't welcoming this effort to supposedly give aid to Gaza.

Followup on South Africa hatefest at piano concert

The South Africa Jewish Report has an article by Yossi Reshef, the Israeli-born pianist whose concert was shut down by haters at Wits University earlier this month:

The sight before me on the evening of March 12, 2013 was one I will never forget. As I was trying to overcome the sound of noise, singing and vuvuzelas coming from the outside with Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Tempest” Sonata, I was already feeling quite ill from stress.

The moment the perpetrators broke in [to the hall] was somewhat of a relief; at that moment I could stop this fight knowing they had beaten me. Never before as an artist did I ever feel that I needed to fight evil and ignorance but here I was forced to confront a moment in my life where I had to face ugliness and chaos. The music stopped, chaos prevailed.

A classical pianist schedules performances months (sometimes years) in advance. This tour was planned a long time ago after months of hard work and preparation on both my side and that of the organisers.

The Israeli Embassy took no active part, but assistance was offered by Tararam, the South African/Israel Culture Fund, solely with my airfares. Anyone who knows the cost of coming to South Africa and the relatively low fees paid, would understand my gratitude when offered this assistance.

I also felt that it was important for me and for the organisers to show another side of Israel - that of culture - which is not often portrayed in the media. I was warned that there might be protests, but at no point was an “Israel Apartheid Week” (a ridiculous idea in itself, as Israel is one of the world’s finest
democracies) mentioned.

At no point was I ever asked by anyone to postpone or cancel my performances. This fact alone proves that my concerts were a mere platform on which this organised act of violence could occur.

I am a musician, not a politician. I am an Israeli (and a very proud one), but does this make me a representative of my country’s policies? The fact that in many places it is mentioned that I live in Germany (and I am very happily making music there) seems to have no relevance. Had I been living in Tel Aviv, would
that have justified any of these protests?

It is also quite obvious that the perpetrators are fully unaware of my activities which support dialogue and the peace process in the Middle East, among them my eight-year coaching of Israeli and Arab students (Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian and so on) in the “Playing for Peace” project organised by the Apple Hill Chamber Centre in New Hampshire, USA and my concerts with an Egyptian pianist as part of the European Mozart Academy.

However, this clearly made no difference to those bent on disrupting my performances simply because I originate from Israel.

My mission as I see it, is to deal with beauty. I spend most of my waking hours trying to decipher the meaning and content of the great masterpieces, their technical solutions, and their metaphysical realm.

Interrupting with the sound of vuvuzelas at the very end of a Beethoven sonata, one of humanity’s greatest treasures, is no less than a clash of cultures. The violence and hatred seen in the perpetrators’ eyes is something I will never forget.

I feel more hurt for the many people who came to the concert than for myself. An artist can earn no greater honour than the people who display their gratitude by coming to listen to him.

And for this, in fact I am thankful.

I am thankful for all the support I received during this tour, and I want to return to this beautiful country once again to play my music.

On my concert in Stellenbosch, three days later, heavy security was put outside the hall. The demonstrators were already confronted by some of the concert-goers and the concert took place without interruption. I feel there is still hope.

There are also come details on what happened outside the Wits concert:

I have never felt so ashamed to be a Witsie tonight. The artist/pianist who lives in Berlin and carries an Israeli passport, came to Wits as one of (the Department of Music’s) scheduled concerts to give a performance in the Atrium.

Our concert organiser, Prof Malcolm Nay, acted in good faith and was assured by the acting dean, that if there were to be protests, (and it was likely that there would be), the mob would be kept behind a barrier away from the guests and audience who had paid to come and hear an international pianist of repute.

Guests and the audience arriving for the concert, were manhandled, shoved by the student protesters and utterly traumatised - some were in tears and shaking.

What values do we espouse at Wits? We talk glibly about freedom to express oneself. A protest does not mean freedom to smash windows to get into the basement, nor does it mean breaking the door to the Atrium, so that a mob can break through into the hall where a civilised classical music concert was in progress.

The music department was assured that the public and the students at the concert would be protected. A group of wellmeaning but utterly helpless security guards could not control the mob.

Our music students were traumatised by the swearing, threats and intimidations in the Atrium when the mob burst in screaming and with vuvuzelas and went berserk.

Is this the kind of freedom for which Wits stands? Is this the kind of message that Wits sends out to the public - that if we don’t like something we are entitled to disrupt and destroy it? Of course the concert had to stop. This was not a political rally - it was a concert.

As much as the students had a right to a peaceful protest, so did the concert have a right to take place.

(h/t Israel Muse)

Analysis of the apology (Zvi) (update)

From Zvi:

Erdogan is a repulsive anti-Semite, and apologizing to him because soldiers defended their own lives against violent rioters masquerading as "activists" angers me.

But I don't think that Netanyahu would have done this for no reason, or just because he was pleased by Obama's visit.

The following is speculation.

I notice that the "reconciliation" happened very late in the visit, but that it was far from spontaneous; the diplomatic push began 2 weeks ago, purportedly triggered by a letter that 89 senators sent to Erdogan after his recent anti-Semitic rant:

On March 12, 89 members of the U.S. Congress wrote a letter to Erdoğan and asked him to retract his words on Zionism, which he did not; he said he stood behind what he said but he had been misunderstood.

It seems that letter triggered the U.S. move, since the White House wanted to see its two main allies in the region work together once again as they did until the “one minute” incident in Davos in 2009.

Additional steps were taken in the background.

Turkey's foreign minister said:

I spoke with Kerry six times over the last week. We talked about the negotiations on the texts [of the apology]," he said. Davutoğlu noted that during the last week Turkey had only been in contact with U.S. officials, who mediated the final agreement before U.S. President Barack Obama's Israel visit. "We agreed that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu would call the Turkish prime minister accompanied by President Obama. Each word of the agreement has been studied. We worked on it until the morning and at noon we got a clearer picture."

Erdogan appears to have sought the approval of Hamas and Fatah before he accepted the call - which speaks volumes. Turks may well ask who is the final arbiter of Turkish foreign policy. But I won't go off on that tangent. Hurriyet:

Davutoğlu also said that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called both the Hamas prime minister of Gaza and the leader of the Palestinian Authority to get their approval before accepting Israel's formal apology for the Mavi Marmara raid. He explained that the conversations took place moments before Netanyahu's call. He added that Erdoğan also called Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati. "The tripartite meeting started afterward. Netanyahu began, then passed the phone to Obama. [Other sources say that it was the other way around - Zvi] I did not count the minutes, but the call lasted between 20 and 30 minutes," Davutoğlu said.

The "reconciliation" was evidently an important objective of the visit, but this has not really been acknowledged. For most of the visit, the press babbled on about the Palestinians and all but ignored Israel-Turkish relations. Even afterward, Obama almost seems to be deemphasizing the Israeli-Turkish meeting, though he is clearly pleased with it.

Which leaves me thinking about Syria, and about Iran.

In Jordan, after leaving Israel, Obama said, "I am very concerned about Syria becoming an enclave for extremism because extremists thrive in chaos, they thrive in failed states, they thrive in power vacuums."

The situation in Syria is going critical. Israel, Jordan and Turkey are Syria's neighbors. Chemical weapons are being used by the regime, and maybe by some of the rebel groups. Did Obama tell Netanyahu that a new phase has arrived, and that the only way to prevent the spread of chemical weapons among al-Nusra (closely aligned with al Qaeda in Iraq), and throughout the failed Syrian state and the region, is for Israel to work together very closely with Turkey, at the highest levels? I don't know.

Netanyahu has always been a pragmatist. He has never been the strongest-willed leader, but he does try hard to save Israeli lives. I can easily imagine him agreeing to the lesser of two evils - a formula that includes an apology for any mistakes made, as long as the soldiers are protected from revenge harassment by the Turkish state - if it might achieve something that is far more important. I can easily imagine that with really solid US guarantees, he would have been willing to pick his battles and set aside the fight with Erdogan in order to save thousands of Israeli lives.

In Jordan, Obama also indicated that he would ask Congress to provide more budget support for the kingdom, which currently houses 460,000 Syrian refugees. This is consistent with a deep concern in Washington about the civil war raging in Syria, especially if one expects the situation to grow much worse before it improves.

After meeting with the Jordanians, John Kerry will return to Israel. But he won't return to Ramallah. The president's conversation with King Abdullah concerns Syria at least as much as it concerns the Palestinians, and probably much more.

At the same time, Turkey is reaching out to the Kurds, and Abdullah Ocalan has responded.

Things are shifting in the region, some of them below the radar, and I think that meltdown of Syria lies very close to the center.

And then there is Iran.

Turkey's subsequent behavior will tell us a lot about the strategic importance of this "reconciliation." If Erdogan demonstrably ends his attacks on Israel and actively promotes cooperation, then that will tell me that Turkey views reconciliation as strategically vital. If not, then Erdogan's regime views all of this as a "political football," all speculation aside.

Bülent Yildirim of the IHH claims that the trials of the Israeli soldiers in the ICC will go ahead; but this is apparently incorrect.

Sometimes, when the risk of fire is high, you need to establish firebreaks that can prevent a conflagration from getting out of control. Obama and Netanyahu both know this. Erdogan may be thinking along the same lines.

UPDATE: See also The Daily Beast. And Foreign Affairs.