Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Hamas member killed in family dispute; he's STILL a martyr

The al-Qassam Brigades announced Asalih Alian, 23, was killed by gunfire in a family dispute in the Maan area east of Khan Younis in Gaza last night.

Even though he was not killed doing anything remotely jihadist, Hamas still considers him a "shahid," or martyr.

Maybe because they didn't want to waste all of his martyrdom photos that he posed for, hoping for a much more glorious death at the hands of the Zionists.

The failed jihadist was married and had a two month old child, who will now lack a strong terrorist role model for a father. This is one of the tragedies of Gaza.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

On this 68^th anniversary of the independence of the modern Jewish nation-state, my thoughts naturally turn to the question of how long we will be able to keep that independence, purchased at such great cost.

It’s not an issue that occupies citizens of most other states to the same degree. Although the US has major problems in several areas, I don’t hear Americans talking about losing their independence. They settled that back in the 18^th century.

For us, it is never settled, despite international law and despite our successful defense of our homeland. Most of the world does not think that the Jewish people should have an independent state, in many cases because they don’t agree that there is a Jewish people (on the other hand, a ‘Palestinian’ people makes sense to them, or at least they pretend it does).

There is more than one way a sovereign nation can lose its independence. It can be conquered in war, as happened to Carthage in the 2^nd century BCE, its people killed, enslaved or dispersed, its wealth carried off and its land sown with salt. It can be invaded and then made into a colony or satellite, its people allowed to live but without self-determination, as happened to the Eastern European satellites of the Soviet Union after WWII. And it can allow its decisions to be influenced by a more powerful state or states, little by little giving up its independent volition to economic and political pressure, until it finds itself so dependent on its ‘patron’ that it has lost the ability to control its destiny.

Israel is threatened militarily today primarily by Iran and its proxies. It would be wrong to minimize the direct threat to our existence that they represent, and our government and the IDF do take it seriously and prepare for conflict.

But we are also at risk of a ‘soft conquest’ by another enemy, this one an alliance of supposedly friendly nations, led by one massively powerful country that is considered our greatest friend and supporter. And our leaders seem blind to this danger.

How does a soft conquest work? Here are some of the tactics:

1.       Create economic dependence by damaging the target’s relationships with rival partners.

2.       Create military dependence either directly by ‘protecting’ the target or indirectly by locking it in to you as a sole supplier of arms, ammunition or spare parts.

3.       Strengthen its enemies and weaken the target’s own self-defense abilities so that it will have to depend upon you when threatened.

4.       Take advantage of conflicts the target is involved in to demand further concessions that will weaken it. Prevent it from decisively defeating its enemies.

5.       Support politicians in the target who are friendly to you financially, and hint that if they come to power the relationship between the countries will improve. Attack less compliant politicians in the media, blame them for problems, and suggest that unless they are replaced you will lose patience and downgrade the relationship. Influence local elections.

6.       Support organizations working to destabilize the target and create internal and external conflict. The more problems it has, the more easily you can replace its government with a puppet regime; until then, the more leverage you will have with the existing government.

7.       Influence other nations to withdraw support from the target to increase their dependence on you.

8.       Work to weaken popular support for the target in your own country, so that when you apply pressure or withdraw support from the target, objections will be minimized.

9.       Support enemies of the target in your own country. They will do much of the work for you.

Does this sound familiar? It should, since every one of these tactics is or has been employed against Israel by the Obama Administration and its European allies.

Israel’s addiction to US aid is dangerous to our independence. One of the interesting things about our army is that it has perhaps the least hawkish General Staff in the world. Army brass have recently called for turning over security control in parts of Judea/Samaria to the PA and for increased aid to Gaza. In 2012, PM Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak wanted to launch an attack on the Iranian nuclear program, something the US was dead set against. The top generals were opposed. They may or may not have had good arguments, but I’m sure they were aware that going against the US might get the IDF’s budget brutally slashed. It is not surprising that they often tend to agree with the American point of view.

The US attempts to control Israeli military strategy with its aid. Money is available (at least it has been until now) for defensive weapons like Iron Dome, but not for the bunker busters or tanker aircraft that would enable an attack on Iran. The F-35 fighter aircraft presents a whole collection of problems, with performance and range issues, software/hardware bugs and dependence on US-based computer system. There are concerns that its non-transparent software might hide a backdoor that would allow the US to keep track of what Israel does with the planes or even force the abortion of a mission that the US didn’t like. Israel would prefer to buy more F-15s, but the Pentagon is saying that it is the F-35 or nothing.

I rarely hear mainstream Israeli politicians, either in the government or the opposition, taking the position that our dependence on the US is a bad thing or that the US is not wholeheartedly supportive of Israel. The opposition, in fact, generally claims that insofar as the relationship is less than perfect, it is the government’s fault for being insufficiently compliant on issues like settlements. And the government says that things have never been better, even while the US president’s spokesperson calls our PM “a chickenshit.”

Perhaps in private they understand the situation better, perhaps not. But the correct assessment must be that while Iran and Hezbollah pose a direct military threat, the US administration and Europe are also dangerous, even though their hostility is not expressed in the form of missiles aimed at us.

If this sounds like exaggeration to you, consider the effects on Israel of the release of billions of dollars to Iran, the inability to enforce the limitations on Iran’s nuclear program, and the acquiescence by the administration to almost any Iranian behavior in order to keep them from abrogating the entire (unsigned) deal. Are the Western powers’ actions more or less dangerous to Israel than Hamas?

The American people, by and large, are our friends. But this administration is decidedly not on our side, and we don’t know what the American political future will bring.

We can’t entirely prevent diplomatic pressure and attempts at subversion from our ‘friends’, and we can’t stop them from empowering our overt enemies. But we can reduce their leverage on us by maximizing our independence.

If defense against Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah is our top priority, then independence must also be near the top. We are investing 160 million shekels in a system to detect Hamas tunnels, but how much are we investing to become independent from US military assistance?

It’s always a temptation to put off dealing with long-term, complicated problems when you are facing immediate dangers. Try telling a combat soldier that if he doesn’t stop smoking, he’ll ultimately die from it. But Israel’s addiction to US aid can also be fatal in the long run.

Time for us to kick the habit.

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05/12 Links Pt1: Israel's First Independence Day; Fatah Celebrates 36th Anniversary Of Deadly Attack In Hebron

From Ian:

Israelis and their Independence Day barbecue, a symbol of nationhood and affluence

At 5:30 a.m. on Thursday morning, Israel’s 68th Independence Day, Yuval Iluz staked a claim on a square of picnic ground in the Charuvit Forest in the Judean foothills, surrounding his ad-hoc homestead with blue-and-white Israeli flag bunting, laying out woven beach mats for the “relaxation corner,” setting up a large, multi-level gas grill and blowing up a bouncy castle for the kids.
“I took on the responsibility of organizing it myself this year,” said Iluz, who owns an air conditioning company and has the equipment necessary for schlepping and setting up a three-meter-high (10-foot-high) bouncy castle to a national park located 22 kilometers (13 miles) from his home.
Iluz’s parents, three siblings and their families, some 25 people in all, will gather for the barbecue, and though they could easily gather in one of their backyards, or his, with its own pool, they choose to join the rest of the Israeli nation on Thursday, bringing along everything but the proverbial kitchen sink.
“We deliberately go to the national parks,” said Iluz, 45, who lives in Moshav Arugot, where he and his siblings were born and raised. “It has more of the atmosphere of a holiday, of being with the Israeli nation.”

Israel's First Independence Day

What was it like to experience Israel's independence day in 1948? Take from Israelis who were there: The incredible story of rising from the ashes of oppression and exile to the re-birth of the Jewish state.

Proud to be a Zionist (5776 edition)

I wrote the original essay around 2002 and I have been modifying it since then. Here is this year's version:

Every year, the State of Israel seems to be up against yet another unsolvable crisis. These have ranged from wars to suicide bombings to terror rockets to facing the prospect of nuclear-armed enemies. Over the past year she has faced multiple threats: A spate of stabbing and car ramming attacks that have been fueled by open incitement by the Palestinian Authority, Israel's greatest ally America working to allow a nation that threatens Israel daily to build nuclear weapons in less than 15 years, people who pretend to be "pro-Israel" and yet who spend every waking hour working to weaken her, and more efforts at all political levels to delegitimize Israel as a nation.

Yet, here she is, 68 years old and more beautiful than she was at birth.

Yes, I am a Zionist and I am proud of it.

I know that Israel has the absolute right to exist in peace and security, just like - and arguably more than - any other country.

I am proud of how the IDF conducts itself during its war on Palestinian terror. There is no other country on the planet, save the US, that would try to minimize civilian casualties in such a situation where innocent Israelis are being threatened, shot at, mortared, rocketed, stabbed and murdered in cold blood. At times there are discussions whether the IDF's moral standards are too high and end up being counterproductive - and what other army could one even have that conversation about?

I am also proud that Israel investigates any mistakes that happen on the battlefield and keeps trying to improve its methods to maximize damage to the terrorists while minimizing damage to the people that the enemy is hiding behind. This is not done because of pressure from "human rights" organizations - it is done because it is the right thing to do. Even when everyone knows that the world will accuse it of "war crimes," the IDF retains incredibly high moral standards, which can be easily proven for anyone who wants to investigate the situation impartially. (People willing to do that are, regrettably, few and far between.) It would be so easy for Israelis to say that since the world will accuse them of atrocities anyway, then why bother with holding to such standards - but young Israeli soldiers do, day in and day out. The rare exceptions prove the rule.

I am proud that Israel remains a true democracy, with a free press and vigorous opposition parties, while in a constant war footing.

I am proud of how Israel responds to seemingly intractable problems. In the early days of the intifada there seemed to be no solution - but the IDF found one, managing to bring deadly suicide attacks from 60 in 2002 down to practically none today. The most recent spate of religiously motivated attacks, prompted by words by the PA president himself, has largely died down because of Israeli defensive actions.

The enemy has not stopped trying, and if Israel hadn't acted decisively things would look like Iraq or Afghanistan today. For every "successful" attack (if you can use such a term) there have been many failed attempts, and these are truly miraculous.

There is a right and a wrong in this conflict, and I am proud that Israel is in the right.

Jews know something about being singled out, about being judged with double standards. We have been attacked for being too rich and too poor, too successful and too needy, too capitalist and too socialist, too religious and too secular, too insular and too integrated. These same wildly inconsistent attacks are now targeting the Jewish state. Israel will survive and thrive, just as Jews themselves have, despite these attacks.

And the best survival technique is success.

Israel has succeeded and continues to succeed in its many accomplishments in building up a desert wasteland into a thriving and vibrant modern country, with its many scientific achievements, incredible leadership in high-tech and the environment, world class universities and culture. Practically every computer and mobile phone being built today includes technology and innovations from a single small Middle Eastern country. A tiny nation, under constant siege, with almost no natural resources besides breathtaking beauty, has used its brains - and strength - to build a modern success story. In a short period of time Israel made itself into a strong yet open nation that its neighbors can only dream of becoming.

And they are indeed starting to dream. The internal struggles throughout the Arab world are, in many ways, a subconscious cry from Israel's neighbors to be more like the Jewish state. Despite the constant incitement against Israel in their media, ordinary Arabs know that Israel treats its minorities with more respect, and gives them more civil rights, than Arab nations give their own Arab citizens. One of the many ironies that is emerging is that both the most populous and the richest Arab nations are now openly on Israel's side on many matters, and the charge by their critics that they are "Zionist" - which used to be anathema - has lost its sting.

Zionists have every reason to be proud of the incredible achievements of the Jewish national movement.

The word "Zionist" is not an epithet - it is a compliment.

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UN "FAO Goodwill Ambassador," a Lebanese singing star, is an antisemite

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization is dedicated to defeating world hunger. Over the years it has been criticized for being a bloated bureaucracy that was inefficient or even counterproductive, and it is in the fourth year of a large restructuring program.

To publicize its message, it has recruited famous stars from the acting, music and sports worlds to be "goodwill ambassadors" to spread its message about the importance of fighting hunger. Celebrities like Susan Sarandon, Raul, Pierre Cardin, Celine Dion and a few dozen others have been so designated.

One of these goodwill ambassadors is Lebanese singing superstar Majida El Roumi. Here is a poster for an upcoming concert at the Pyramids on May 20. Her YouTube videos have millions of views.

This UN FAO ambassador is also an antisemite.

Al Nilin reports on a press conference El Roumi had this week.

Majida responded to questions by the attendees of the conference without equivocation. She spoke about the Arab world conditions in which we live and discussed their causes. One is the idea of breaking up the Arab world and to realize the dream of "Greater Israel" from the Nile to the Euphrates. She said, "When I was fifteen years old, I read "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and what is happening today is mentioned in detail in those protocols. Any Arab who sees what is happening today in the Arab world, everything we see and we are seeing today, are mentioned in the book of protocols, which calls for destabilization of the Arab world to start, and it is not limited to the Arab world. What happened in the French capital of Paris and Brussels recently is a Zionist plot with the complicity of Arab and international worlds."

In this video of the same press conference, starting at 10 seconds, Majida says, "International Zionism behind the fragmentation of the Arab world, they have something in their minds called the world government, all of us were created on this land to serve them."

In 2014 she already had told the media that she had read the Protocols at the urging of her father, himself a famous musician, to understand history.

Given that another UN agency employs a singing star who openly supports attacking Jews, this is perhaps not nearly as startling as it should be. But the FAO should be asked why they want to be linked with an open Jew-hater.

(h/t Shawarma News)

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The "US Campaign to End the Occupation" started something new:

Tell Congress to Support Palestinian Children's Rights!

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Israel had held an average of 201 Palestinian children in custody each month since 2011. By the end of February 2016, there were 440 Palestinian children in the Israeli prison system, which means that the number of Palestinian child detainees have skyrocketed. This is a dire situation.

There is an urgent need for bold US leadership on this issue and we now have a rare chance to support an initiative to make this happen. Representative Betty McCollum (MN-04) has initiated a letter to President Obama urging him to appoint a Special Envoy for Palestinian Children.

Urge your Representative to sign on to this letter asking for a Special Envoy for Palestinian Children today!

The number of child detainees has indeed skyrocketed. From 178 in August to at least 438 in February.

Could it be because so many decided that they want to stab Jews to death in that timeframe?

No, that is not to be mentioned.

But Betty McCollum's letter does mention it in passing, if only to find a few more like-minded members of Congress who do not want to betray themselves as being so obviously anti-Israel. It is highly disingenuous, giving lip service to the idea that children are being recruited by terror groups but not saying that they should be protected from that. Not a single word about incitement. She mentions the 12-year old girl who was detained without mentioning that she intended to stab Jews.

The sole purpose of the suggested "Special Envoy to Palestinian Children" isn't to help children but to demonize Israel; if McCollum cared about children then she would try to protect them from the child abuse that causes them to consider stabbers to be heroes.

The "Campaign to End the Occupation" doesn't even pretend. It simply wants to find any means it can to pressure Israel, and Palestinian children are perfect pawns for that purpose.

Luckily, the vast majority of Congress knows that this is a scam. The "Campaign" says that last year McCollum got 18 representatives to sign on to that anti-Israel letter - which is about 4% of the members of Congress.

Palestinian children indeed deserve to be protected - protected from a sick society that encourages them to kill themselves in the attempt to hurt Jews.

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A forgotten Israeli diplomat's praise of his country from 1955

I could not find any mention of Yehudah Gaulan, consul general of Israel to Canada in the 1950s.

But I can help immortalize him. A minor speech he made to the local Rotary Club is still very relevant, and it is a shame that Israeli diplomats are not nearly as keen to invoke Biblical history as easily as Gaulan did.

From the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, January 28, 1955:

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05/11 Links Pt2: Uni of London event calls for the Jewish state’s demise; Capt. America, the UN and the Temple Mount

From Ian:

Daphne Anson: Marvellous Melanie on British Leftist Antisemitism

Nobody tells it better than Ms Melanie Phillips. A must-watch (or listen-to) video.
Nearly an hour's worth of footage, but this wonderful woman is worth every minute.
To quote the uploader:
British Columnist for The Times, Melanie Phillips, critiques attempts
by the Left to equate Antisemitism with Islamophobia, distorting the
truth about Islamism in the process. JBS exclusive coverage of an
ISGAP program from the ISGAP Center in NYC.
Islamophobia vs Antisemitism

Speakers at University of London event call for the Jewish state’s demise

Just when you think you have heard it all along comes Tariq Ali to lecture Israelis on how the end of the Jewish state will benefit not only Palestinians but Israelis as well.
For Ali the main problem in Europe isn’t anti-Semitism but Islamophobia. He admitted there was some anti-Semitism in the Arab world but it was only brought about by reaction to Israel and that once Israel has disappeared antisemitism will disappear.
Ali was speaking last night at the University of London’s Student Union in front of an audience of 300 alongside anti-Israel author John Rose, Weyman Bennett of Unite Against Fascism, Lindsey German of Stop the War Coalition, Arthur Goodman of Jews for Justice for Palestinians and “As a Jew” activist Walter Wolfgang .
The main message of the evening was that antisemitism is being used merely to attack Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and to silence all criticism of Israel (aka the Livingstone formulation). Both John Rose and Ali then went on to explicitly call for the demise of Israel.
On entering we were handed an unsigned leaflet headed “Labour Jews Assert” which stated that “Some people…are wielding ‘antisemitism’ allegations as a stick to beat the Corbyn leadership”. Luckily, Jonathan Hoffman was on hand to circulate printed copies of the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism. EUMC shows that what these people claim isn’t antisemitism actually is!

Superb Jonathan Hoffman @ULU Malet street 9/5/16

The superb Jonathan Hoffman took to the microphone during the Q&A to articulate Israel’s case under immense pressure.
Last night there was no mention of Hamas and Hezbollah and their genocidal intent to destroy Israel and every Jewish person worldwide. Neither was it mentioned that Hezbollah flags are openly on display at Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop The War Campaign protests in London and that the Holocaust is flagrantly traduced.
This tells you ALL you need to know about PSC and STWC types however “anti-racist” they try to claim they are.

From the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - Nidal Division webpage:

Medical sources announced the death of a young man from Khan Yunis who succumbed to injuries he suffered from a Zionist missile in 2003.

The sources said that Shadi Abu Shakra died in Barzilai Zionist hospital Wednesday morning after a long battle with injury. He had been receiving treatment in Israeli hospitals during multiple periods. Abu Shakra, who belongs to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was wounded by shrapnel from a rocket during an incursion by the Zionist occupation forces in the Khan Younis area in the southern Gaza Strip in 2003.

A terrorist from Gaza has been spending time, on and off, in an Israeli hospital for well over a decade.

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Syrian Lives Aren't As Important As My Legacy By Barack Obama (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Syrian Lives Aren't As Important As My Legacy

By Barack Obama

Recent reports about Ben Rhodes, my foreign policy guru, and his alleged overselling of the Iran Deal have raised quite a few questions about my Middle East policy. To lay those questions to rest, let me be clear: the deal is about my legacy, and appeasing Iran as much as necessary to reach a deal - any deal at all - was a key element in that, no matter how many Syrians, Iraqis, and Yemenis have to die as a result. Syrian lives just aren't as important as my legacy.

It is crucial that we realize how central that point is to my foreign policy doctrine. Getting in the way of Iran's ambitions in Syria, or elsewhere in the region, would prompt them to walk away from the deal, and there goes my legacy. The same principle applies in terms of the deal itself, from verification mechanisms to what is and is not allowed to be made public. The fact of a deal was the goal, not its effectiveness, scope, or sustainability. Whether or not the Syrian people understand that is secondary, because when push comes to shove, they don't matter.

Not that the Syrians, Iraqis, and Yemenis - and many other peoples affected by Iran's proxies - are in a class by themselves. Other people and principles also fall away in the face my drive for a legacy as peacemaker: Israelis, the truth, the integrity of my administration's relationship with the press, and so on. So they're in good company, and shouldn't feel so bad.

American lives, too, have to be subordinated to the Iran Deal. I don't just mean the US Navy personnel taken hostage last year. Iran's Shiite proxy militias in Iraq had a hand in attacks on our troops in Iraq, to the tune of hundreds of US servicemen killed or wounded. But demanding redress, or penalizing Iran in any way, let alone asking for an apology, would short-circuit the deal. The same goes for enforcing sanctions, restricting Iran's access to the US banking system, and speaking out against the regime's egregious violations of human rights and support for international terrorism. Those things all had to be shunted aside, because I have a legacy to create.

Seriously, what are a few hundred thousand Syrian lives in the grand scheme of things, compared to my legacy?

This must be what the committee had in mind when it awarded me that Nobel Peace Prize.

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05/11 Links Pt1: Col.Kemp: The meaning of true independence; PA PM: We follow Nazi Mufti's path

From Ian:

Isi Leibler: On celebrating Independence Day

Last week, we commemorated the genocidal murder of 6 million Jews -- the most barbaric episode in the Jewish people's 2,000 years of exile, which was interspersed with discrimination, persecution, expulsion and pogroms.
Today, the nation mourns those who sacrificed their lives in the course of the creation and ongoing defense of our Jewish state. Against this somber backdrop, tomorrow we will celebrate the 68th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel. This period naturally stirs mixed feelings.
Our prayers for peace with our neighbors and our desperate hope that our children and grandchildren will not have to fight wars, remain but a dream with no respite on the horizon.
Moreover, anyone who believed that after Auschwitz, anti-Semitism would become extinct has been dismayed to witness the upsurge in mankind’s most enduring hatred. Prior to the creation of the State of Israel, anti-Semites accused Jews of being the source of all the evils confronting mankind. Today, hatred for Jews as individuals has been replaced by global hatred toward the Jewish state, which is widely perceived as the prime source of global instability, the greatest threat to peace and one of the most oppressive countries in the world. This warped view is being promoted at a time when barbarism has returned to the region, with millions being killed, displaced and denied human rights.
Moreover, even Western countries -- especially Europe, whose soil was soaked with Jewish blood during the Holocaust -- are once again standing idly by, or even formally supporting efforts to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state. In some ways it feels like deja vu of the world’s indifference to the Nazi extermination of the Jewish people.

JPost Editorial: Amazing era

As we prepare to make the abrupt annual shift from memorializing our fallen soldiers to celebrating the independence of the nation for which they gave their lives, it is worthwhile to take a deep breath and acknowledge what an amazing era we live in.
“As Israel turns 68, half of world Jewry calls it home,” was this paper’s lead headline Tuesday.
Consider how many truly miraculous facts are packed into that short statement: Not only does a Jewish state exist on the same sliver of land in the Middle East where the story of the Jewish people began four millennia ago, but this state at the age of 68 is thriving to such an extent that it has managed to attract the majority of Jews throughout the world.
Today, not just refugees seeking shelter from anti-Semitic regimes or crushing poverty make their homes in the Jewish state (although they do as well, as evidenced from the recent rise in immigration to Israel from Ukraine or the arrival of Falash Mura). Contemporary Israel competes with the most advanced Western states in quality of living and opportunities for professional growth, and it is a place for Jews of all types and affiliations to make a home for themselves without feeling self-conscious about their Jewishness.

Yom Ha’atzmaut 2016 – Sixty-eight years of being ‘a free people in our land’

Col. Richard Kemp: The meaning of true independence

"What kind of talk is this, 'punishing Israel?' Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we 14-year-olds who, if we misbehave, get our wrists slapped? Let me tell you whom this Cabinet comprises. It is composed of people whose lives were marked by resistance, fighting and suffering."
These were the words of Prime Minister Menachem Begin delivered to the U.S. President Ronald Reagan in December 1981. Begin, one of the greatest leaders and fighters of our times, knew the meaning of true independence.
He knew that it was not about firecrackers, dancing in the streets or lighting flames. It was about standing up for yourself and submitting to no man. Declaring to the world, "this is where we stand."
Israel’s independence was bought at a high price in Jewish blood, fighting first against the might of the British Empire and then against five powerful Arab armies which sought its destruction.
For 68 years Israelis have fought again and again to defend their independence against enemies who would subjugate their country. No other nation has struggled so long and so hard, surrounded by such unyielding hostility.

An excellent response to academic boycotts of Israel

Here are some excerpts from a paper by Russell Berman that was delivered at the Annual Convention of the American Philosophical Association in March.

Academic Boycotts and Professional Responsibility

I was invited to speak on this panel, having been reassured that it would be devoted to academic boycotts in general, but I cannot say that I was surprised to discover that half of the titles here advocate one and only one boycott target. I will therefore make some remarks concerning academic boycotts in general, to which I object on principle, but also comment on the campaign against Israeli universities in particular. I expect that we will hear boycott proponents denounce the apartheid character of Israeli society or policies of genocide and other such mythologies that the boycott movement has disseminated and which the APA may eventually be asked to endorse. But let’s leave the propaganda for the discussion section.

I am not an APA member; I did however serve as 2011 president of the Modern Language Association, where I have been engaged on the boycott question. I am concerned that the adoption of extremist political positions by scholarly associations only tarnishes the reputation of the associations, and by extension the humanities more broadly, while having negligible impact on the political problems they purport to address. You should know in any case that the MLA has not adopted any resolution supporting the anti-Israel boycott; on the contrary, in 2001 the membership ratified a resolution condemning boycotts of scholars. More recently, the American Historical Association rejected a proposal to endorse the anti-Israel boycott in January, due largely to the perception that the claims made by boycott proponents do not meet the evidentiary standards that professional historians bring to bear to understand complex situations. It does not behoove a scholarly organization to reduce genuine complexities to simplistic misrepresentations. To date, only very small and marginal associations have adopted the boycott.

Obviously if a boycott resolution were to come forward in the APA, it would be up to APA members to evaluate it on its merits, but they would also be deciding whether they intend to cast their lot with the prestigious American Historical Association, with its anti-boycott stance, or the marginal American Studies Association, which, under dubious procedural circumstances, voted to support the boycott and has paid a high reputational price.

What is primarily at stake this afternoon is not a debate over the policies of the Israeli government—in which case the panel should include a very different set of scholars, bona fide policy experts and the like—but rather the appropriateness of academic boycotts in general and the character of the boycott campaign against Israel in particular.

At the outset, one has to concede that boycott adoption is self-evidently inconsistent with the mission of most professional associations of scholars. It is certainly inconsistent with the mission of the APA in particular, which is stated as:

The American Philosophical Association promotes the discipline and profession of philosophy, both within the academy and in the public arena. The APA supports the professional development of philosophers at all levels and works to foster greater understanding and appreciation of the value of philosophical inquiry.

Your mission statement nowhere suggests the propriety of boycotts. On the contrary, membership in the APA is predicated on the assumption of the validity of this announced mission, which involves the promotion of philosophy as a discipline and profession, not wide-ranging political advocacy or the prohibition on scholarly engagement required by a boycott. Participation in an academic boycott would therefore be inconsistent with this mission, and if the APA were to institutionalize a boycott, it would be effectively engaging in a breach of contract with its members (one likely effect of which would be the departure of some members, in the wake of the association’s endorsing a one-sided position in a complex political debate).

The second sentence of the APA mission deserves repeated attention: “The APA supports the professional development of philosophers at all levels and works to foster greater understanding and appreciation of the value of philosophical inquiry.” An academic boycott is inconsistent with these promises. If a boycott has any meaning at all, it would stand in the way of some professional development, and it would in no way “foster greater understanding . . . of philosophical inquiry.” Members who had joined the association on the assumption that the mission of the APA is to promote philosophical inquiry would be surprised to find the APA committing itself—and surely some association resources—toward a political advocacy that does not promote philosophical inquiry, and moreover an advocacy with which presumably some members disagree.

Now I expect to hear boycott proponents argue the opposite, i.e., that political action against Israel is actually consistent with the APA mission to promote the discipline and the profession of philosophy. I disagree with that assertion, but let us consider the implications of the claim. If anti-Israel activism is not merely a distinct political position, external to academic philosophy, but in fact “promotes the discipline and profession of philosophy,” as defined by the mission statement, then it follows that such activism should not only be pursued by the APA but it should therefore also become a recognized criterion for other pertinent academic processes, in particular hiring, promotion, and curriculum design. In other words by defining political activism, especially anti-Israel activism, as consistent with the APA mission of pursuing professional philosophy, the APA would legitimate political activism as consistent as well with the mission of individual departments of Philosophy. It would then follow that anti-Israel activism should become a litmus test for departmental appointments and promotions; indeed such a redefined understanding of professionalism in your discipline would imply the expectation that you include on your c.v. a clear indication of your judgment on the Arab–Israeli conflict. However at that point at the latest, you will have replaced professional responsibility to the discipline with idiosyncratic political allegiances to particular values. Are you really prepared to hire the weaker candidate because they have the preferred political loyalties? And why is that not a de facto loyalty oath, a McCarthyism of the left? Boycotting will turn into blacklisting very quickly. To discount this dystopic outcome, the burden of argument is on the boycott proponents to explain why politicizing the APA will not politicize departments: unless of course their agenda is in fact to politicize the departments and to subject all philosophy hires to political criteria, in which case they should defend that position candidly.

in debates over the boycott elsewhere (I draw especially on the MLA discussions) one typically encounters a mendacity on the part of boycott proponents who claim that boycott adoption would have minimal or even no impact on scholarship and would not harm any individual scholar.

This minimization of the boycott consequences reflects a recognizable rhetorical strategy. Boycott proponents aspire to the public relations coup of being able to make the seemingly radical claim that a scholarly association is engaged in a boycott of Israel, while however having previously reassured centrist colleagues that the boycott would obligate them to nothing in order to win their votes. This discrepancy between an internal rhetoric of moderation and an external language of radicalism is nothing else than a mechanism of political manipulation. The boycott movement does not aim at pursuing the mission of the association: it intends to instrumentalize the association for its own political purposes that have nothing to do with the association goals.

Yet the incompatibility of the radical goal and the real conditions of a professional association can also expose the genuine opportunism of the boycott movement. For example, once the American Studies Association adopted its boycott, it faced a situation in which its convention hotels were threatened with a lawsuit concerning potential discrimination on the basis of national origin—if Israeli scholars were not allowed to attend. The result: the ASA quickly retreated and defined its boycott downward, with its leadership frantically asserting that no Israeli, not even Benjamin Netanyahu, would be prohibited from attending the conference. At that point at the latest, the ASA’s grand political gesture made it look ridiculous—a boycott with no teeth—only amplifying the reputational damage it had incurred by adopting the boycott in the first place: you may recall that some two hundred university presidents denounced the boycott adoption.

The suggestion that a scholarly association can adopt a boycott without obligating itself to take any real step, a Potemkin boycott so to speak, only leads to hypocrisy and public embarrassment, but if the boycott does have obligatory consequences, they turn out to be incompatible with the goals of scholarship, let alone the legal conditions, i.e., anti-discrimination statutes, under which professional associations operate.

Are we left then with a boycott that excludes no one? In what sense then is it a boycott? One answer from the boycott proponents is the difficult distinction that they are only pursuing an institutional boycott, not a boycott of individuals. For Judith Butler, a prominent boycott advocate, this means that individual Israelis are welcome to attend conferences, but they should not be allowed to use departmental funds to pay their way. It is unclear exactly how Butler intends to monitor reimbursement processes in order to maintain her boycott agenda. Indeed, under scrutiny the distinction between institutional and individual boycotts becomes untenable. For all of us as scholars, our accomplishments result significantly from our institutional affiliations—our teachers, our students, our libraries, our desks and computers. The notion that one can boycott institutions and not harm individuals is not tenable.

The additional suggestion, by some boycott supporters, that one can conduct boycotts and not harm academic freedom is equally problematic. As I have argued, a boycott will impede the free exchange of ideas and is therefore incompatible with value-free scholarship and professional responsibility. On this point, boycott supporter Omar Barghouti is unique in his honesty when he states candidly that a political responsibility “supersedes other considerations about whether such acts of resistance may directly or indirectly injure academic freedom.”[1] At least there is no pretense here that academic freedom will not be hurt; on the contrary, Barghouti concedes that the boycott may very well impinge on academic freedom, but he mounts an ends-justify-the-means argument, based on the assumption of an indisputable priority of political commitment as the grounds for allowing or disallowing forms of academic exchange. He clearly relegates academic freedom to a secondary status. As a private individual and activist he is free to do so. It would be a quite different matter, however, to see a major scholarly association, like the APA, voluntarily diminish the value of academic freedom. That would be a dangerous outcome indeed.

The extent to which the boycott movement threatens to have repressive consequences on American campuses—where academic freedom is already under pressure from other sources—becomes particularly clear if one looks at the official guide to the boycott movement, the documents of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). No matter how proponents may try to sugarcoat the academic genteelness of the boycott in the context of discussions within professional associations—that is the rhetorical minimization of which I just spoke—the PACBI documentation lets the cat out of the bag, demonstrating beyond any doubt the genuine radicalness and extremism of the boycott program. At stake is much more than some merely symbolic and ultimately inconsequential refusal to cooperate with Israeli institutions. PACBI goes much further in its implications for the conduct of scholarship in the United States. If the APA were to adopt the boycott as defined by PACBI, it would prohibit you from, for example, serving as an external reviewer on dissertations, including those by Palestinian students at Israeli universities. PACBI also endorses what it calls “common sense boycotts,” to protest and disrupt campus addresses by proponents of political positions with which it disagrees. Frankly you would not be allowed to invite me to speak at this panel. Free speech is already endangered on U.S. campuses, a sorry development to which the APA should not lend its prestige.

PACBI furthermore explicitly forbids the organization of events designed to stage dialogues between Israelis and Palestinians. Precisely the sort of exchange of ideas that might yield new insights in the conflict is not allowed. These are denounced as “normalization projects.”[2] So should the APA eventually face an opportunity to vote on a boycott, by all means understand that doing so is explicitly defined as a vote against dialogue. You would then have to explain how proscription of dialogue promotes “the discipline and profession of philosophy,” which is, again, how the APA describes its own mission.

How exactly will less philosophy make the Middle East better? This is the question implied by Hyslop’s trenchant reflection on the South Africa experience: “If we do believe that scholarship is more than a job, that ideas do make a difference in human affairs, that the clash of ideas is essential to change, then it is difficult for me to understand how stemming the flow of people and ideas assists us toward a better world.”[5] Difficult indeed, unless one recognizes that what underpins the boycott movement as an expression of contemporary radicalism is not only an interest in the Middle East but also an antagonism toward ideas and thought. The strategy of constraining academic speech with regard to Israel/Palestine is ultimately indistinguishable from the proliferation of speech codes on campuses, the retraction of invitations to controversial speakers, and the troubling development of a university culture where critical thought is subject to trigger warnings. That is why the boycott is part of much larger problems in the contemporary academy to which the APA should not contribute.

The boycott movement, with its obsession with Israel, consistently displays a claustrophobically narrow tunnel vision, unable to look at the wider conflagration. Philosophers should have broader horizons.

And different philosophers may come to different conclusions about a complex political topic. The strength of the APA, the professional association of philosophers, rests on its capacity to maintain an institutional neutrality and to provide fora in which a range of issues can be debated among professionals in the pursuit of knowledge. Should it instead decide to mandate political opinion by imposing temporarily majority views on the minority, it will only stifle dissent, cause some members to depart, endorse repressive practices throughout the profession, and impoverish its own capacity to pursue its announced responsibility of “foster[ing] greater understanding and appreciation of the value of philosophical inquiry.”

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From MIT:

This talk examines the relation between Islamophobia as the dominant form of racism today and the ecological crisis. It looks at the three common ways in which the two phenomena are seen to be linked: as an entanglement of two crises, metaphorically related with one being a source of imagery for the other and both originating in colonial forms of capitalist accumulation. The talk proposes a fourth way of linking the two: an argument that they are both emanating from a similar mode of being, or enmeshment, in the world, what is referred to as ‘generalised domestication.’

Ghassan Hage is Future Generation Professor in the School of Philosophy, Anthropology and Social Inquiry, University of Melbourne.

Intersectionality means that everything you fashionably hate is related to each other. And we have ersatz professors who can enumerate four different ways for each relationship!

Incidentally, Hage is a Maronite Christian, not a Muslim.

And not surprisingly this liberal "academic" supports boycotting academics, but only if they have committed the cardinal crime of living in Israel.

And while Hage seems to freely admit that he hates Israel with a passion, he writes papers about how emotional involvement is in conflict with academic imperatives. And he apparently decided that maintaining objectivity, or even pretending to, is very important any more.

I found this anecdote of his interesting:

As with all academic frauds, Hage uses lots of big words and makes little sense. They seem to enjoy building edifices of self-supporting logic that have nothing to do with reality, but once the structure is built they can examine their make-believe worlds and pretend that this is research.

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Even the NYT crossword is anti-Israel

New York Times Crossword Puzzle, May 10 2016, clue for 43 Down: Biblical city of Palestine

Samaria, the city, was the capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel from the 9th century BCE. It was never a city in "Palestine," and in fact the phrase "Biblical Palestine" is essentially an oxymoron. (One can find found a couple of examples of that phrase in pre-1948 books but they were using Palestine as a shortcut to refer to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Here's an example:)

But nowadays to refer to a Biblical-era town as being in "Palestine" is not accurate. You can refer to Biblical Judea or Biblical Israel or Biblical Moab or Biblical Hauran, but not Biblical Palestine; it simply makes no sense since Biblical events (at least in the Jewish Bible) predated anyone calling the area "Palestine."

No one says "Biblical Jordan."Abraham may have been born in present-day Iraq but the term "Biblical Iraq" would be nonsense. "Biblical Palestine" is just as bizarre and on some level it is a (possibly subconscious) attempt to sever the ties between Jews and their ancient homeland.

(h/t Harris)

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05/10 Links Pt2: Sacrifice and independence; The Improbable Happiness of Israelis

From Ian:

IDF officer seriously hurt by bomb at West Bank checkpoint

An IDF officer was seriously injured Tuesday night when an explosive device detonated near him at a West Bank checkpoint outside of the Palestinian village of Hizme, north of Jerusalem.
According to an initial investigation at the scene, the army believes the improvised explosive device had been planted earlier along the road and detonated as the troops approached, the IDF said in a statement.
Circumstances surrounding the incident, including the possibility that additional IEDs had been planted in the area, are currently under investigation, an IDF spokesperson said Tuesday night. Palestinian reports said soldiers were descending on homes and businesses in the area in an effort to apprehend suspects.
The explosive device detonated near the man’s face, seriously wounding him. He was taken to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem neighborhood and rushed into an operating room for treatment.

WSJ Op-Ed: Israelis are Happy

In an Op-Ed published May 10, 2016, Avinoam Bar-Yosef details “The Improbable Happiness of Israelis”:
The World Happiness Report 2016 Update ranks Israel (Jews and Arabs) 11th of 158 countries evaluated for the United Nations. Israel also shines as No. 5 of the 36 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries on the OECD’s Life Satisfaction Index—ahead of the U.S., the U.K. and France.
And it isn’t just Jews. Go to any beach or shopping mall and—despite the frictions—you will see Jews and Arabs peacefully coexisting. They all can take pride in their country’s accomplishments, as when Israel faced a water crisis a decade ago and launched a desalination project that is now the envy of the world.
This despite the fact that, as Bar-Yosef notes, “Israelis live in a hostile and volatile neighborhood, engaged in an endless conflict with the Palestinians and under the threat of nuclear annihilation by Iran.” He does not even mention the constant assaults on Israel’s very right to exist, the movement to delegitimize the Jewish state in global fora, the media and at universities around the globe, or the outrageous attempts to deny the unique Jewish connection to the land of Israel and even to the Shoah.
So why are Israelis happy?
As Israel approaches its 68th Independence Day, perhaps Israelis understand that, notwithstanding these challenges—and perhaps in spite of them—they’re doing a bang-up job building a free and democratic society and contributing to the well-being of humanity. Not many countries can say that, least of all Israel's neighbors.

Vic Rosenthal: Sacrifice and independence

Wednesday is Israel’s day of remembrance for fallen soldiers. More than 23,000 military personnel have died in Israel’s wars (including military actions before the founding of the state), and about 4,000 civilians have been killed as a result of war and terrorism.
This is the real, concrete cost of maintaining a Jewish state. Proportionate to population, it is about the same as the number of Americans who died in all of America’s wars since 1775, including the Civil War and the two World Wars.
These Israelis died for one reason: the Arab/Muslim rejection of Jewish sovereignty.
Not ‘the occupation’. Not the settlements. Not the checkpoints or the security barrier. The simple fact that they do not accept that any of this land can be governed by Jews. They didn’t accept it in 1920 when it only was a possibility, they didn’t accept it in 1947 when the UN proposed it, and they didn’t accept it in 1948 when the Jews declared it. They do not accept it today, and there is no reason to think they will accept it in the foreseeable future. And their expression of this rejection has always been violent.
Those who struggle to find a ‘solution’ that includes the continued existence of a Jewish state will not find a partner on the Arab side. Some of the Arabs will agree to accept partial victories as steps toward a final, total victory and some won’t. But none will agree to end the conflict while there is still a Jewish state standing.