Saturday, March 02, 2019
From Ian:
Matti Friedman (NYT$): Israel’s Secret Founding Father
The Line Between Criticism of Israel and Anti-Semitism
Netanyahu’s Downfall?
Matti Friedman (NYT$): Israel’s Secret Founding Father
The members of the Arab Section were one part of what later became the Mossad. When Cohen died in 2002, having spent much of his life under an assumed identity, he was described by a military historian as one of Israel’s most successful agents: “We never heard of him because he was never caught.” Saman, the mastermind, eventually ran Eli Cohen, Israel’s most famous spy, who penetrated the Syrian regime as the businessman Kamal Amin Thabet before he was exposed and hanged in 1965. But the point I’d like to make here is not about what they did, but instead about who they were and what it says about the country they helped create.Ben Shapiro: Stop Treating Ilhan Omar Like A Child. Her Anti-Semitism Isn't 'Sad.' It's Consistent, Vicious, And Vile.
Were they the “ones who become like Arabs”? Or was that identity real?
This is an important question beyond the particular case of these spies. The divide between Jews from Christian countries (known as Ashkenazim) and from Muslim countries (generally called Mizrahim) has always been the key fault line in Israeli society, with the former clearly on top. But in recent years it has become more acceptable to admit or even celebrate the Middle Eastern component of Israel’s Jewish identity. The Hebrew pop style known as Mizrahi, long scorned, now rules the airwaves. The dominance of the political right in recent years comes far less from the settler movement, as foreign observers tend to think, than from the collective memory of Israelis who remember how vulnerable they were as a minority among Muslims and grasp what this part of the world does to the weak. In the country’s official view of itself, it might still seem as if the Jews of the Islamic world, by coming to Israel after the founding of the state, joined the story of the Jews of Europe. But in 2019 it’s quite clear that what happened was closer to the opposite.
As the young Jamil Cohen found when he was recruited in the 1940s, the world of military intelligence is, ironically, one corner of Israeli society where Arab identity has always been respected. The Israeli scholar Yehouda Shenhav opens his 2006 book “The Arab Jews” with an anecdote about his father, who came to Israel from Iraq and found his way into the secret services. Looking at a photograph of his young father on a beach with friends from those early days, the author is forced to consider his father’s tenuous position in Israeli society and his utility as a spy: His appearance, Mr. Shenhav wrote, “confronted me with my complex location within what is often represented as an ancient, insurmountable conflict between Arabs (who are not Jews) and Jews (who are not Arabs).”
To an Israeli viewer, that ethnic blurriness runs clearly beneath the surface of “Fauda,” the popular Netflix thriller. In the second season it’s embodied in the character of Amos Kabilio, who confuses us when he first appears on screen — he’s speaking Arabic and it’s not clear which side he’s from, until we realize that he’s the father of Doron, the Israeli agent who’s the main character. Amos is a Jew from Iraq, and when he speaks to his son, the Israeli spy, it’s partly in his mother tongue, Arabic. We’re meant to grasp that when Doron “becomes like an Arab” as part of his mission, it’s not entirely artificial.
“Espionage,” John le Carré once observed, “is the secret theater of our society.” Countries also have cover stories and hidden selves. The identity of Israel’s spies teaches us who Israel has to spy on, of course. But it also has much to say about what Israel is — and how that country differs from the country we know from stories. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
This is simply the soft bigotry of low expectations – or, more insidiously, an attempt to soft-pedal anti-Semitism in order to preserve the intersectional hierarchy. Omar is, you see, a Muslim woman from Somalia, and that means that she ranks higher than Americans Jews do on the victimhood scale – and thus she must be treated with kid gloves when she targets said American Jews. Omar will still be cheered, despite her open and unapologetic Jew-hatred, by the same media members who place her alongside Nancy Pelosi on the cover of Rolling Stone. And Nancy Pelosi will continue to cover for her, all the while claiming to be an advocate of anti-bigotry.
Now, imagine, for just a moment, that Omar were instead a white Congressman from Iowa who said something bigoted. Would the media react with “sadness” and advice? Or would the media correctly react with outrage?
You don’t have to theorize. When Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said, according to The New York Times, that he didn’t understand how the language “white nationalist” became “offensive,” he wasn’t accorded any of the hemming and hawing surrounding Omar. There was no weepy talk about learning curves and ignorance of “tropes.” There was appropriate and universal condemnation.
Not so with Omar, who will continue to get away with her anti-Semitism, as Democratic Party leaders and their allies in the media simply shake their head and tut-tut softly while elevating her to a position of public leadership. We don’t have to speculate. They’re already doing so.
The Line Between Criticism of Israel and Anti-Semitism
Criticism becomes bigotry when it involves demonizing and delegitimizing Israel. Accusing Israel of genocide—or of running an apartheid state, as Omar did on Wednesday—is a shameful lie that cannot be labeled legitimate criticism. The same goes for describing Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, as a human rights abuser on the level of China and North Korea. Those who support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel employ such rhetoric as part of their campaign of economic warfare against the Jewish state. Such efforts seek to destroy the Jewish state through international pressure, undermining Israel to the point that it effectively ceases to survive as we have come to recognize it. Think about the implications for Israeli Jews, who live in a region in which most governments have shown indifference to if not support for slaughtering Jews. Moreover, now that the Jewish people have Israel and are not prepared to surrender it after 2,000 years of exile and persecution, the only way to replace Israel with Palestine, or a bi-national state, or whatever else Omar and her allies envision, is by forcibly taking it. That would mean killing many Jews. Those who do not realize this reality cannot plead ignorance and absolve themselves.
Imagine if someone demonized and sought to de-legitimize another country—say, Ireland—with the same obsessive hatred that Omar shows Israel. Would they not be bigoted against the Irish? Of course they would.
But no one targets Ireland, or any other country, like so many target Israel. And here we get to the bigger point. Anti-Semitism, to paraphrase the eminent historian Bernard Lewis, has two special features that make it a distinct form of bigotry: Jews are assigned restrictive, disadvantageous double standards, and more importantly, a cosmic, satanic evil is attributed to them unlike anything else in this world. What do these criteria look like today? Treating Israel differently than all other countries and accusing it of being a nefarious puppet master controlling world events—maybe even hypnotizing the world.
Separating anti-Semitism from criticism of Israeli policy is not that hard. As with pornography, "I know it when I see it."
In today's world, where hatred and persecution based on race and religion are supposed to be no longer tolerated, anti-Semitism is based primarily on the Jewish people's nation-state. Anti-Zionism, or opposition to Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state, is the chief medium through which anti-Semites push their agenda. Those who may not have a personal animus toward Jews at large—like Omar (one certainly hopes)—but who support the BDS movement and other efforts to destroy the Zionist project—again, like Omar—are complicit in anti-Semitism. As nefarious and troubling as her comments peddling anti-Semitic canards are, her efforts to isolate, hurt, and ultimately destroy the world's only Jewish state pose a much greater threat. Those who want to fight anti-Semitism need to fight the policies toward Israel that Omar and like-minded progressives support. In other words, those who support such policies, those warriors for social justice, are part of the problem.
Netanyahu’s Downfall?
One of Netanyahu’s most bellicose and loyal supporters, Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev, responded to the bombshell by helping a woman advance her claim that Gantz exposed himself to her while they were both teenagers. Jacobs’s trauma was triggered only recently when she learned that Gantz had a shot at becoming the next PM. Apparently, Gantz’s promotion to Chief of the IDF years ago did nothing to ruffle her sensitivities.
Israeli politics is a notoriously murky cesspool, but this episode seems a little dirtier, uglier, more pungent. It involves hundreds of individuals, more than a handful of ruined lives and careers, and a lot of collateral damage.
Most worrisome is how it further sullies public office and the very noble and important work that so many fine people do in these positions. We tend to remember the scandal, tumbles from grace, corruption. We forget quiet competence.
Should Netanyahu be indicted and found guilty of one or more charges, it will also mark the downfall of a man of towering intellect, ability and, I believe, boundless devotion to the well-being of the state of Israel—a man who lost his way.
