Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Zionism As A Reflection of Jewish History - Interview with Alex Ryvchin (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

An interview with Alex Ryvchin, author of Zionism: The Concise History
(Originally posted on The Jewish Press)

Q: What do you see as the purpose of your new book, Zionism: The Concise History, and who is it for?

A: The whole concept of Zionism has been politically and strategically trashed by her enemies. The danger is that future generations will only know Zionism as an evil to be fought and the young people, whom we count on as the next advocates to tell the story of Zionism and defend it, today are generally apathetic or ignorant of this story. We hear people saying Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism or being Jewish, but I think Zionism is inextricably linked to Jewish history.

The story of Zionism is the story of the Jewish people. And if Jews don’t know that story and don’t take part in it, we will see greater rates of intermarriage and loss of identity.

For this reason, I’d like to see my book taught in schools and universities.

Q: One of the patterns in Jewish history is making questionable alliances with apparent enemies. You mention Herzl in this regard. Can you give an example, and do you think this is an unavoidable element of Zionism?

Herzl dealt with a lot of ardent antisemites like the Kaiser and the Russian Foreign Minister. He felt a cold synergy between the interests of Zionism and these rabid antisemites. Herzl thought that for the Jews to achieve the return to their ancestral land, these antisemites who are so keen to purge their countries of Jews would be accommodating. And indeed, many of them saw a benefit in a movement that could absorb a large number of Jews.

In any political campaign such as Zionism, there has to be a dose of realpolitik--to think not only about the idealism, but also how to practically achieve your goal. That means creating alliances with those you find unsavory. The danger is when you look at an alignment of interests as temporary and mistake that for good faith or long term alliances. To Herzl’s credit, he quickly realized he was not going to achieve the goals of Zionism through alliances with those who were fundamentally hostile to Jewish rights. That is why he shifted the Zionist movement from the European continent to Great Britain, where he found men who more driven by Christian ideals and a general passion for the idea of the Jews returning to their ancestral land.

Today, Israel has formed alliances with some nations that might really see a short term alignment of interests, but don’t harbor any great feeling of warmth towards the Jewish people. That is dangerous, but it is also the world that we live in. And as long as the Netanyahu government and the successive governments go into this with their eyes open, I think it is something that can and needs to be done. But at the same time, I think that Israel should act morally in this regard and call out antisemitism of far-right leaders around the world with whom they may have diplomatic relations. If those relations are genuine, they will withstand those criticisms.

Q: We know the Balfour Declaration favors the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine and that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” -- but it also says nothing should be done to prejudice “the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” What was that issue?

A: The concern was that Zionism was not the universal position of the Jewish World. There was still discussion in the Jewish World what was best way to alleviate the suffering of the Jews was through assimilation. Not everyone was on the side of Zionism, particularly those who lived in liberal Democratic countries like the UK, Australia and the US. They did not see the need for a national movement to return to Palestine. They favored assimilation.

In order to assuage those concerns, that wording was put in, to say that basically, those Jews who preferred to live outside of the Jewish State would continue to live in the Diaspora with nothing to impede their rights. There was a concern that once the Jewish State was formed, Jews living outside that state would be viewed as alien, foreigners. That language in the Balfour Declaration was to protect them.

I am keen that people should read this book and apply its lessons to contemporary times. I think that is very important.

Bernie Sanders is different from those Jews in the early 20th century who were driven mainly by self-preservation. They were men who, despite being Jewish, soared to the heights of public life in the UK and Australia. They looked at Zionism, dedicated to liberating the Jewish people and alleviating their antisemitism and thought: what do I need this for; it will only have a detrimental effect on my standing!
Sanders is not motivated by that sort of calculus. He is an American Jew, deeply committed to perfecting American society, making it as just and equitable as possible the way he sees it. I think he views Zionism as a foreign project and doesn’t identify with it. Also, he is associated with the hard left who are rabidly anti-Zionist and has to placate them.

Alex Ryvchin, author of Zionism: The Concise History. Source: Screen-cap

Q: Originally, Arab leaders like Hussein ibn Ali and his son Amir Faisal allied with Chaim Weizmann and favored the re-establishment of a Jewish state. Then along came Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti, who incited riots and tried to prevent it. Today, are we seeing a shift back in the other direction?

A: Today the Arab states see the peace treaties between Israel and Egypt and Jordan. They see if you don’t threaten Israel, it won’t harm you back, will be good friends and share technology. Israel can become a dependable strategic ally in the face of much bigger threats like Iran.

But at the same time, one thing that Zionism teaches us is that alliances come and go, they rise and fall, and cannot really be depended on. They need to be used at that point in time. As long as Israel is economically, militarily, and diplomatically strong, that is the most important thing. Let Israel choose alliances at that point in time, but it cannot depend on anyone.

Q: In the last chapter of your book, you discuss anti-Zionism, which started off as Jewish opposition to Zionism. How is that different from today’s anti-Zionism on college campuses and expressed by politicians?

A: Early anti-Zionism is virtually unrecognizable from anti-Zionism today. The anti-Zionist Jews at the time were overwhelming loyal, proud Jews who cared deeply for the future of the Jewish people, but they had a different view on how to solve the problem of antisemitism in the streets. Their solution was the full immersion into the societies in which they lived. It was a legitimate point of view, but ultimately disproven.

The anti-Zionist Jews of today do not care about Jewish rights. Instead, they use their Jewishness to attack their own people. Rather than stand up against their oppressors, they side with them.

But once the state of Israel exists, anti-Zionism becomes not merely a different political position or philosophy, it now becomes the opposition to the existence of the state of Israel--a state that has now existed for over 70 years. Anti-Zionism is no longer a morally tenable position. That is why you will not find in the ranks of anti-Zionist Jews someone who cares about the future of the Jewish people. Instead, overwhelmingly you find selfish people of low character.

Q: You trace Great Britain’s change into an enemy of Zionism to its being a declining imperial power, stretched thin and wearied by Palestine. Some might see that as a description of the US. Do you think there is a danger of Zionist history repeating itself here too?

A: I think so. That description of Great Britain in the 1940s could apply to the US today. There is a growing trend, particularly under the current president, of isolationism and rethinking US foreign policy solely in terms of US interests. It is no longer fashionable to think the US should bring the values of democracy to the darkest places in the world and be a force for good.

There especially a risk with the progressive Democrats who don't have that instinctive warmth for the state of Israel as establishment Democrats have in the past.

Governments and allies come and go. Israel needs to remain strong and independent to preserve its interests. We have seen this already in the course of its existence.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

11/28 Links Pt1: On Day of Rage, Palestinians burn Trump, Pompeo, and Netanyahu, Fatah official participates; Palestinian child abuse: Mom tells her son he is destined for Martyrdom; It’s Time to Cancel the Jew Exception

From Ian:

Shift on settlements creates space for political resolution, Mike Pompeo says

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed his latest announcement about the legality of the settlements on Wednesday, and said he is confident that the administration was right about that decision.

“President Trump made clear we were going to recognize facts on the ground, the reality of the situation,” he said in an interview on The Ben Shapiro Show.

“In this case, the State Department’s previous view had been that settlements were illegal under international law, and we now have taken another look at that issue and have concluded that the settlements themselves are not per se illegal. The Israeli courts are quite capable of making determinations about particular settlements, but it’s our conclusion – and we’re confident that we’re right – that the settlements themselves are not per se illegal under international law,” he added.

Pompeo stressed that this move was important also in the perspective of reaching an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.

“We know that the resolution of the conflict that is there between Israel and the Palestinians is going to be a political resolution,” he continued. “We want to create the maximum space for that political resolution. And so, our legal conclusion we think facilitates an increased likelihood that we can ultimately see a political resolution between Israel and the Palestinian people.”

The Secretary of State also spoke about the protests in Iran and said that the administration is taking “the opposite” approach compared to the Obama administration.

Today's award for most courageous politician: @LanceForman of @brexitparty_uk for his 1-minute blast of truth. Hello, @EUpalestinians - anyone home? pic.twitter.com/sTBDSqPLdC
— Regavim (@RegavimIsrael) November 27, 2019

PMW: On Day of Rage, Palestinians burn Trump, Pompeo, and Netanyahu, Fatah official participates

The Palestinian leadership called for Tuesday to be a “Day of Rage” to protest US Secretary of State Pompeo’s announcement that the US no longer views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as being “inconsistent with international law.”

Many Palestinians took to the streets to participate in the “Day of Rage,” including Fatah Central Committee member and Fatah Commissioner of NGOs Dalal Salameh, who joined the ceremonial burning of images of US President Trump, US Secretary of State Pompeo, and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Nablus.

Abbas’ Fatah Movement chose to promote this event and posted the images with the following text:

Posted text: “Burning pictures of [Israeli] occupation Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu], US President [Donald Trump], and his Secretary of State [Mike Pompeo] during a protest procession in Nablus against the American steps.” [Official Fatah Facebook page, Nov. 26, 2019]

Palestinian Media Watch reported that the PA Ministry of Education urged children to participate in the “Day of Rage” processions, so much so that the ministry closed all PA schools for an hour in the middle of the day to ensure children would join the demonstrations. And indeed, kids participated in the rallies, a fact that Fatah promoted on Facebook. In the image below children with their school backpacks are seen at a “Day of Rage” rally:

This is not the first time Palestinians have burnt in effigy or otherwise shown their disrespect for members of the US administration or the Israeli government. Earlier this year, in protest of the US-initiated Bahrain Conference, Palestinians hung an effigy of Trump on the gallows and burned it:

'The Day of Rage': Palestinians Riot Against US Admin & Israeli Gov't

Palestinian Security Analyst Mohammad Najib joins Jeff Smith to discuss the 'Day of Rage' and what Fatah leaders are saying is a reaction towards the US administration and the Israeli government, both they believe are preventing them from a having a future Palestinian state.

UNRWA has a campaign against gender based violence. That's the good news.

The bad news is that it still wants to blame Israel for Gaza men beating and sexually abusing their wives.

UNRWA issued a report about women in Gaza, and the section on domestic abuse is filled with justifications because of "occupation."

Violence against women is high in Gaza, and linked to external political and economic factors. The most recent PCBS study on violence found that 51 per cent of women ever married had been exposed to at least one form of violence by their husbands, matching other more recent studies that found over half (58 percent) of women have experienced domestic violence and a quarter (25 per cent) sexual harassment. Another indicator of violence against women is early marriage, or marriage under the age of 18: while there has been a decline in the proportion of early marriages, the number is still high at 21 per cent of all females’ registered marriages. Some estimates are higher, stating that 40 per cent of women aged 20-24 were married and 20 per cent had given birth to a child before the age of 18. Finally polygyny (the practice of a man taking more than one wife) is cited as an indicator of violence against women, since women in polygynous households are typically at greater risk of different forms of abuse: 6 per cent of women in Gaza are in polygynous marriages and popular media reports indicate the rate is rising in line with religious conservatism.

A range of studies have explored the correlation between political and gender-based violence in Gaza. Research in 2017 looked at surges in violence against women and girls during times of direct military operations and found significant positive correlation: during the 2014 hostilities there was a reported 22 per cent rise in domestic violence experienced by married women, and a 30 per cent increase for non-married women. The research also found the displacement caused by military operations increase the likelihood of experiencing domestic violence.

So when Israel warns people to move out of a house that is being bombed for hiding weapons, husbands are more likely to beat their wives and kids. By pointing this out, UNRWA is taking away responsibility for violence from the wife beaters to Israel. They are saying that Palestinian men are inherently violent and misogynist, no more in control of their emotions than donkeys.

Isn't that racist?

At a more local level, connections between poverty and unemployment and violence against women in Gaza are frequently articulated. The economic crisis has left many men unable to fulfil their traditional role as breadwinner, leading to stress, anxiety and addiction. Women can be left to bear the brunt of men’s frustrations in the home and community; and as they move more into the workforce to make up the household income shortfall, they risk further inflaming tensions by threatening traditional male identities. In this way it has been asserted that in Gaza, “structural violence initiated and perpetuated by militarism enhances violence in all its forms.”

Finally, UNRWA admits that not everyone shares their desire to blame everything on Israel.

At the same time, such claims have been rejected as inappropriate ‘cover’ for unjust treatment of women, whether by individual perpetrators of gender-based violence or by a state that fails to provide adequate legal protection for women. As the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner articulated, “the occupation does not exonerate the State of Palestine from its due human rights obligation to prevent, investigate, punish and provide remedies for acts of gender-based violence”.

UNRWA doesn't say it rejects those claims, just that some other people do.

What about fundamentalist Islam's role in treating women as second class citizens? In the entire 46 page report, it is only touched upon once, and still only in context of the "occupation" of Gaza that doesn't exist.

Additionally Gaza’s political context, in particular the form of political Islam associated with the ruling party Hamas, has a relationship with attitudes towards women. Some regard social conservatism, and in particularly patriarchy as a structure for power and control, as having achieved greater political legitimacy in the current political era where it can be justified as a response to the occupation.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Tomorrow is the UN-created "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" set up in 1977 specifically to be on the anniversary of the UN partition resolution that would have created a Palestinian Arab state if those same Palestinian people had not rejected it.

Hanan Ashrawi of the PLO, a person with more chutzpah than any Jew, said today that the UN system that has done more to legitimize the Palestinian national cause than anyone in the world did not give the Palestinians a minimum level of justice, encouraged extremist groups in "the State of Palestine" and the region in general, and provided Israel with "a cover to continue its crimes based on ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, apartheid and escalating settlement expansion." She also said the UN allows Israel to "practice fundamentalist Zionism and extremist colonial ideology."

Ashrawi also made a bizarre claim about the 1947 UN General Assembly resolution 181 I had not previously seen: "Although the partition resolution, which marks the beginning of the suffering of our people, gives the Security Council the right and the ability to take action against any dissenting party, it has repeatedly failed to exercise this right. "

The dissenting parties were the Arabs in Palestine and the entire Arab world, which attacked the Jews of the region within hours of the resolution being passed!

The resolution requested the Security Council to act in case anyone opposed the resolution's implementation - which is exactly what the Arabs did:

(b) The Security Council consider, if circumstances during the transitional period require such consideration, whether the situation in Palestine constitutes a threat to the peace. If it decides that such a threat exists, and in order to maintain international peace and security, the Security Council should supplement the authorization of the General Assembly by taking measures, under Articles 39 and 41 of the Charter, to empower the United Nations Commission, as provided in this resolution, to exercise in Palestine the functions which are assigned to it by this resolution;
(c) The Security Council determine as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution;

Palestinian Arabs could have had a state if they hadn't decided to attack Palestinian Jews instead. If the Security Council is guilty of anything it is for not protecting the Jews - mostly civilians - who were attacked by the opponents of the resolution. Ashrawi's trying to claim that the Security Council didn't intervene on behalf of the attackers and rejecters of UNGA 181 is perhaps a new low even for her.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Last week, the University of Cape Town’s Senate last week rejected a resolution to join an academic boycott of Israel.

It had voted in favor of a boycott previously, but when the resolution went to the university's Council in March, it was sent back to the Senate with a request for "a full assessment of the sustainability impact" and saying a "more consultative process was necessary before the matter could be considered any further."

The resolution failed this time by a huge 2-1 margin.

Of course, the haters are whining, and showing both their hypocrisy and their antisemitism.

The Palestine Solidarity Forum at UCT said the senate’s decision "is a clear indication of the persisting conservatism of UCT and the fact that UCT, and the vice-chancellor in particular, is beholden to its donors and the Zionist lobby."

It then went on to an Orwellian claim that supporting academic freedom is the opposite. “It sets a remarkably dangerous precedent that donors can dictate university policy – an affront to and violation of academic freedom," the group said.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Middle East Monitor reports that Jordanian kickboxer Mohammed Eid has refused to compete against Israeli contestant at the 4th International Turkish Open Kickboxing European Cup held in Turkey.

“After continuous training for several months with the Jordanian team and after arriving in Antalya to participate in the European Cup. My opponent was a player from the Zionist entity and therefore I decided not to participate” Eid wrote on Facebook. "It was easier for me to step aside from the dream of winning the championship than to compete against the Israeli, even though I was fully prepared to try for the gold medal."

Eid had the misfortune of drawing an Israeli in the very first round.

Eid's opponent, as well as practically the entire Israeli kickboxing team, is Arab, based on the names of the Israeli competitors from the list on the right (click to expand.) That didn't stop many of his fans to comment about how it is good he didn't normalize relations with "Jews."

Eid says he looks forward to other competitions, which makes it sounds like the kickboxing association did not penalize him for his stunt.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Getting Respect (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

In New York City, smacking a Jew in the face for the hell of it is OK. Oh, you will get arrested if a cop sees you doing it, but in a larger sense, it’s OK, because everyone knows that Jews are racists, and you can do anything you want to a racist.

In Amsterdam, police “stand idly by” while a local Jew is beaten by hooligans singing about Nazis burning Jews, because – now, pay attention – the hooligans are fans of a football team whose major rival is considered “Jewish,” having had several Jewish players and being liked by Jewish fans. If you don’t think this is strange, consider that nobody beat up Yankee fans because of Joe Dimaggio and Phil Rizzuto.

In Pruchnik, Poland, a ritual observed before WWII in which an effigy of Judas is beaten and burned has recently been revived. For some inexplicable reason the effigy has “a hooked nose, black hat and sidecurls typical of ultra-Orthodox Jews.”

In the UK, the candidate from a major party for Prime Minister is … you know.

In the halls of the European Court of Justice in Brussels, it’s been decided that Europeans need to know not only where something is made, but whether a Jew made it. It’s important that Europeans be “informed” so that their decisions can be based on “ethical considerations” among others. The ECJ thinks it’s illegal for a Jew to live in a place where his ancestors lived, which was set aside for Jewish settlement by the international community in 1920, where Jews lived until they were ethnically cleansed by the Jordanian army in 1948, to which they returned in 1967, and which the PLO itself agreed (in 1994) would be under full Israeli control. But we are talking about Jews, and the rules are always different for Jews.

I could go on for pages and pages if I had the stomach for it. But I’ll get to the point, which is what I think we should do about it.

It isn’t what you think. I do not advocate trying to teach Jew-hating bullies about the Holocaust, or about the importance of tolerance, or that someday they might be the ones being persecuted, or about how all humans are brothers (they aren’t). I would like the police to do their jobs, but that is only a solution in individual cases, and requires that the perpetrators be captured and actually punished – and anyway, the European Court of “Justice” and Jeremy Corbyn are unlikely to be arrested.

Humans are not all that far in an evolutionary sense from their animal ancestors. And they are still primarily motivated by deep emotional urges. Logical reasoning at best gives them an excuse or a justification for their behavior. So there is little point in education. And as I have pointed out before, teaching them about the Holocaust often encourages anti-Jewish violence because it demonstrates that the darkest desires of the Jew-haters can actually be – indeed, have been – realized.

No, what they need is to respect Jews, which is different from liking them and even farther from feeling sorry for them. I haven’t done the research, but I am willing to bet that worldwide antisemitic acts decreased sharply after the Six Days War, even taking into account the fact that the Arabs were angry about losing the war. This is because Israel, as the nation-state of the Jewish people, is also a standard-bearer for them. Strength brings respect. If Israel wins wars and international sporting competitions, if it is economically successful, then the respect earned by the state of the Jewish people also trickles down to the individual Jew in New York, Amsterdam, or anywhere else.

Of course humans are complicated. Success has a downside of stimulating envy and hatred. Antisemitism has a big component of envy. But I’ll trade that for respect.

Everything we do in Israel either adds to the sum total of respect we get or subtracts from it. Terrorism against us, when it is successful, subtracts, although if the terrorists are killed on the spot, that’s a plus. We do a pretty good job of arresting terrorists, a plus, but unfortunately the leniency they often receive makes us look weak, a minus. Our ability to develop technological marvels like Iron Dome is a plus, but the fact that we are content to bat away missiles without killing the would-be murderers that are launching them is a very big minus.

Of course, the thug that punches a Jew in New York is not thinking about the Six Days War or Iron Dome, or indeed about Israel. He is just enraged by the Jewishness of his victim. But I think there is such a thing as a collective consciousness, and everything that happens to a Jew or the Jewish state that enters this consciousness changes it, perhaps only a tiny bit, but changes it nevertheless.

So it is very important for us to not only win wars, kill terrorists, and in general crush our enemies as viciously as possible, but our messaging must project strength, competence, and even aggressiveness. We must avoid the image of victimhood. Experts in self-defense teach that a tactic for avoiding attacks in the street is to not look like a victim. Victims are held in contempt and invite attack. This goes for states as well as individuals, for hasbara as well as posture.

What about the establishment bullies in Brussels and the UK? I think we sometimes do the opposite of what’s necessary to fight them.

For example, the IDF goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, and to try to hew close to the letter of the laws of war. It has been more successful in this endeavor than any other army, including the US and NATO forces. But the complex of “human rights” NGOs and the UN still come down harder on Israel than any other nation. And since our enemies use tactics of asymmetric warfare against us, the more careful we are, the harder it is to defeat them.

This may be the wrong tactic. After all, the US and Britain engaged in strategic bombing of cities during WWII, in order to “destroy the enemy’s will to fight.” Today, such bombing would be considered a war crime. I am not suggesting that we deliberately harm civilians, but rather that we apply the same standards that today’s US, UK and NATO would. We would still be excoriated by the “international community” but in addition to the military advantages, there would be a psychological one – both against the enemy and in the rest of the world.

This isn’t easy. Millennia of diaspora existence taught the Jews to take a low profile, to not be aggressive, to not tug on anyone’s cape. They were dispersed and weak and in most cases didn’t have a choice to behave differently. Antisemitism grew and thrived, in part because it was easy and safe to victimize them. As a sovereign nation we don’t have to take it anymore. If we make that clear to the world by our actions, it might ultimately change the image of the individual Jew as well – from a victim to an object of respect.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

11/27 Links Pt2: Knifing Netanyahu Could Sink Release of Trump Peace Plan; Praise be the Dutch; Arab States Are Claiming the Heritage of Their Expelled Jews; The dilution of higher education by BDS

From Ian:

David Singer: Knifing Netanyahu Could Sink Release of Trump Peace Plan

Trump will seemingly not release the final details of his deal unless he first receives Arab assurances to bona fide negotiate with Israel in translating those details into binding commitments to end the long-running conflict.

Trump will not release his deal only to find it is dead in the water because no Arab negotiators will sit down with Israel.

Trump is interested in winning – not losing before he even jumps out of the starting gate.

Trump will need to now be satisfied that any new Israeli Prime Minister possesses the same views as Netanyahu on the issuesTrump has already identified as integral elements of his deal:
• extending Israeli sovereignty toJewish towns and villages in Judea and Samaria,
• declaring Jerusalem to be Israel’s eternal capital
• recognising Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights

Trump will now also need to be assured that any new Israeli Prime Minister will not call on Trump to renew America’s payments to UNRWA and UNESCO, to reopen the PLO Embassy in Washington or resume funding to the PLO.

Netanyahu’s uncertain political future and the absence of Arab negotiators ready to stand up and be counted – could see Trump’s deal being put on the political back burner until Trump’s bid for re-election for another four years is known on 3 November 2020.

Knifing Netanyahu introduces yet another wild card that could sink the release of Trump’s deal – leavingthe failed leadership of the PLO cheering and heaving huge sighs of relief.

The Tikvah Podcast: Eugene Kontorovich on America and the Settlements

On November 18, 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a momentous announcement: The United States does not consider Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria—the West Bank—illegal or illegitimate. The conventional wisdom, of course, is that Israeli building in the territories it captured in 1967 is a violation of international law. But after a process of many months, the Trump State Department has decided to return to an understanding of the Geneva Convention once embraced by the Reagan Administration, and to recognize that the status of Israeli building in Judea and Samaria is a political and diplomatic question, not a legal one.

In this podcast, Tikvah’s Jonathan Silver is joined by one of the world’s foremost scholars on Israel and international law. Eugene Kontorovich is a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, a director at the Kohelet Policy Forum, and author of of “Pompeo Busts the ‘Occupation’ Myth,” published in the Wall Street Journal on November 9, 2019. In this conversation, he makes the case for the legality of Israeli settlements and explains how an erroneous and hypocritical interpretation of international law became the conventional wisdom about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Traditional Rabbi Group Blasts House Democrats Over ‘False And Misleading’ Letter On Israeli ‘Settlements’

On Tuesday, a prominent politically and religiously conservative Jewish organization took 106 House Democrats to task for signing a “false and misleading” letter with respect to the Trump administration’s recent unilateral decision to declare that so-called Israeli “settlements” are legal. The group, the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), identifies as “the largest rabbinic public policy organization in America” and “represent[s] over 1000 traditional Orthodox rabbis in matters of public policy.”

As The Daily Wire reported last Monday, “the Trump administration … revers[ed] an Obama-era policy and now does not view Israel’s settlements in [Judea and Samaria] as a violation of international law.” “The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explained at the time.

Led by Jewish Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI), 106 House Democrats responded to Pompeo with a scathing letter that issued strong legal and policy objections to the Trump administration’s bold move. “If the U.S. unilaterally abandons international and human rights law, we can only expect a more chaotic and brutal twenty-first century for Americans and our allies, including the Israeli people,” the tendentious screed concluded.

CJV responded with a powerful letter of its own that systemically picks apart Rep. Levin’s own missive. “The signatories demonstrated an alarmingly callous attitude towards Israelis, their self-determination, and their human rights,” said Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, CJV eastern regional vice president, in a press release accompanying the letter. “Jews were ethnically cleansed from towns in Judea and Samaria in 1929 and 1936, and then driven out entirely by Jordan in 1948 — yet the signatories claim that the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits them from moving back. It is hard not to read that claim as unsympathetic to Jews and history.”

Today's award for most courageous politician: @LanceForman of @brexitparty_uk for his 1-minute blast of truth. Hello, @EUpalestinians - anyone home? pic.twitter.com/sTBDSqPLdC
— Regavim (@RegavimIsrael) November 27, 2019

Professor Richard Landes, being an original thinker, has many new terms, or at least they are new to me. "Demotic." "Cogwar." But I particularly love the concept Richard Landes describes as “Hopium” where hope, in the form of the coming of the messiah, acts as an opiate to dull the pain of the struggle to live in a harsh and sometimes unforgiving world. The idea is striking as an accurate description of the need for the belief in the messiah, separate from whether or not he is actually on the way.

There’s one term, however, that has become a part of the lexicon of every serious observer of the media’s war on Israel and that is “Pallywood.” This term, too, originated with Richard Landes, referring to photos, footage and news coverage staged to make Israel look bad. Pallywood, as a concept, way predates “fake news.” And it was that term and its underlying concept that made Richard Landes a household name for those of us in the trenches defending Israel.

Richard Landes

When I thought of whom I wanted to interview next, Richard came to mind not only because he is interesting, but because I had a hunch he’d say yes, because he’s so approachable. I know that if I comment on one of his papers, he will respond, even though I’m not a scholar or a professor. To my mind, this is the way the internet was meant to be: people with like interests who would otherwise never meet, can find each other online to discuss important and serious concepts.

Not only did Richard Landes agree to be interviewed, but he informed me in a subsequent progress report that he was maybe having “too much fun” answering my questions. Which is when I knew he was going to be giving me interview gold. Which is exactly what I got. Because Richard Landes is not just interesting and approachable, but generous with his thoughts and time, as will become clear in the scope and breadth of this in-depth interview.

Without further ado, I give you Richard Landes:

Varda Epstein: Where did you grow up? Can you tell us about your parents, and further back, about your family roots? What is your earliest memory?

Richard Landes: I was born in Paris as my father was researching his thesis on the Industrial Revolution. My family left France soon thereafter, though I spent about seven of my first 25 years in that country. I was otherwise in the US, from age 3-7 in Westchester County, then in Palo Alto, California from age 7-8, in Berkeley from age 9-14, and in Cambridge, Massachusetts from age 15-21.

My father’s family came to the United States in the early 20th century from Romania. My great grandfather was a merchant, he sold dry goods and developed supermarkets in Baltimore; my grandfather was a contractor, building skyscrapers in New York City; and my father was a professor and an economic historian at Harvard.

My father wrote several books, among them “The Unbound Prometheus,” “Revolution in Time,” “Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” and “Dynasties,” all about the marvels of Western technology. I grew up with the question “Why the West?” today considered politically incorrect, since it acknowledges that the West has accomplished something no other culture has done, and therefore prompts inferiority feelings of others.

My mother’s family was from Tarnopol, in Russia. They were fur traders, though my maternal grandfather was in real estate. My mother was an English teacher and the author of a series on teaching children’s literature published with BookWise. She also wrote “Pariswalks” with my sister the year they were in Paris in 1973-1974, and I was in the Pyrenees.

My earliest memory is of falling into the swimming pool on the Queen Mary and seeing someone dive in to catch me when I was three years old.

Varda Epstein: Your specialty is millennialism. What is the significance of the belief in the coming of a messianic age to the Jewish people? Imagine if you will, Jews without a belief in the coming of the Messiah. How would we be different without that belief?

Richard Landes: Millennialism, or the belief in a coming Golden Age of peace, plenty and happiness on earth (also known as the messianic era) is, in my understanding, one of the most powerful drives in history. It can lay dormant for years or even decades, but generally bursts out into full-fledged apocalyptic movements (“Now is the time!”), every generation or so. The egalitarian strands (what I call “demotic” or “of the people”), are the driving force behind modernity, and a key element in Jewish survival over the millennia.

Millennialism is an outrageous hope that makes working for a better world possible, despite all the disappointments of life. The belief in messianic era can be an addiction – hopium – and lead to really stupid decisions, for instance sticking with the Oslo Process long after it became clear it was in actuality a war process. Or like today’s Progressives allying with the Caliphaters.

But millennialism/messianism is like fire: at the right temperatures, it is life-giving, but at the wrong temperatures, too much or too little heat, it can cause massive destruction. My book, Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience,” traces the paths of some of the most spectacular apocalyptic movements (i.e. movements of people who think, like the Caliphaters, that the cosmic transformation is happening now!).
I don’t think it’s possible to imagine the Jews without messianism, just as I don’t think it’s possible to imagine either Christianity or Islam, both born in apocalyptic times, without messianism, with all three religions renewing imminent expectation generation after generation. I run across some raised eyebrows when pressed to say whether I believe a messiah will come, and I claim that my mother taught me that “if he didn’t come during the Holocaust, he ain’t coming.” As far as I’m concerned, we’re on our own with all the tools we need. We just need to use them wisely.

I guess I’m part of an unknown number of people who can appreciate the value of messianic thinking and not partake of it, a little like Odysseus and the sirens. Hitler strapped me to the mast. I don’t expect the messiah.

Israel as a state, on the other hand, could not have been built without the messianic hope that the great and moral effort would result in our coming to our homeland free and in peace. Whether secular (Plough Women) or religious (Rav Kook), the messianic Zionist currents constantly met, crossed, reinforced, and struggled against each other. Zionism, in fact, is the only egalitarian millennial movement that has taken power and not, under the blows of hostile neighbors, turned to megadeath and totalitarian coercion (examples of this include the French Revolutionary “terror”, the Soviets, the Nazis, and the Jihadis, among others.) Indeed, Israel’s continuing commitment to democratic principles for over 70 years of constant threat stands as a unique achievement. (The United States, in its early years, managed to overcome the same authoritarian paranoid tendencies as in the examples mentioned above, although under a much lower level of threat.)

Varda Epstein: Were you ever targeted on campus, for your stance on Israel? How has the climate on campuses all over America changed for Jewish students? What should we be doing to fight back?

Richard Landes: I wasn’t targeted, as far as I know, and certainly not openly as what happened to Andrew Pessin at Connecticut College in 2015, the year I retired. But I did become isolated. People didn’t want to hear me defend or discuss Israel. I remember showing “Pallywood” to a colleague in the history dept. He said to me, “I don’t know if you realize this, but I’ve become a liberal,” by which he basically meant, “I won’t acknowledge your evidence, discuss your analysis, or give you a platform.”

Pallywood: "According to Palestinian Sources" from Al Durah Project on Vimeo.

Another colleague, the one with whom, of all my colleagues, I had had the most interesting intellectual discussions, noted how pale I looked one day in the winter of 2002. “It’s all these suicide bombings,” I said.

“Yeah, what choice do they have,” he responded without missing a beat.

I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach.

“You have heard of Oslo?” I said.

“Oh yes, that,” he responded, as if the Palestinians had not just chosen war.

I only later identified the revolting phenomenon of “humanitarian racism” in assuming Palestinians incapable of any moral responsibility, and the transferring all of that responsibility instead to Israel: “You give them no choice but to teach their children to want to kill themselves trying to kill your children.”

And it’s not only this man, this colleague, per se. We’d never before discussed the Middle East that I can recall. He must have heard this idea of Palestinian Arabs having “no choice” from others, and when they had said it, everyone around had nodded, so he assumed it to be true. I wrote a response, a letter, which later became this essay. He never really responded.

I didn’t fully understand this at the time it was happening, but 2000 was an historical turning point. As far back as the 1980s, with its anti-Orientalism stance, academic standards for handling empirical evidence, and thinking with any humane moral consistency about the conflict in the land between the river and the sea had already taken a sharp downturn. But by and large, the larger culture had resisted: public figures, policy-makers, mainstream journalists, even most academics had remained reasonably sympathetic to, and willing to take into account the Zionist narrative, especially when the empirical evidence so strongly supported it.

In 2000, with the outbreak of the Intifada, the post-colonial voice took over. This was evident from the way journalists reported and progressive voices interpreted that event. The anti-Zionists began to shout accusations – Nazis – while those sympathetic to Israel fell silent.

By 2002, a strident anti-Zionist narrative dominated whole areas of the public sphere, from classroom to coffeehouse to dinner-table conversation and opinion pieces. As for the previous, seemingly solid support for Israel, it had collapsed. By 2003, at the height of the suicide terror jihad that increasingly targeted the West, you couldn’t be a Western Liberal if you weren’t pro-Palestinian.

We Zionist sympathizers, on campus, in scholarship, and in journalism, resembled the guy in the samurai movie after his opponent ducks under his blow – he stands stock still, then there is a trickle of blood across his shins, and finally his body falls away from his severed feet. The current craziness on campuses is the result of the spread of that mentality from academia to the journalists and on to the global Progressive movement in tandem with the impotence of the Zionist response. And all of that went mainstream in 2000. In fact, the global progressive protest in Seattle held the previous year, in 1999, did not even raise the Palestinian issue.

Varda Epstein: You are credited with coining the term “Pallywood.” How would you define the term? When and how did you become aware of the phenomenon?

Richard Landes with his film, "Pallywood."

Richard Landes: I coined it as I walked out of the office of France2 TV on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, on October 31, 2003. I had just reviewed the TV footage shot by Talal abu Rahmah, a France2 cameraman, who had persuaded Charles Enderlin to run his video and story of the IDF targeting and killing a 12-year-old Palestinian boy in the arms of his father. This was an event I considered a global cognitive earthquake, and from the Jihadi perspective, a nuclear bomb in the cognitive war (cogwar) against the West.

The video I saw, which Enderlin refused to release, and showed only to vetted friends (I got vetted by a colleague), was nothing but kids standing around, unafraid of the Israelis, and trying to provoke them. These scenes were punctuated by extraordinary staged footage of Palestinians being “shot” by Israelis, then taken by half a dozen men and thrown into an ambulance (more Palestinian suffering at the hands of IDF), followed by more fake fighting scenes (Palestinian David takes on Israeli Goliath).

Violent "injured" evacuation

At one point, it got so silly that Enderlin’s Israeli cameraman who was watching with us, snorted. “Why do you laugh?” I asked.

“Because it’s so obviously staged.”

“I know,” I said, turning to Enderlin, who had used the footage of this photographer to tell his explosive story.

“Oh yeah,” said he in a burst of unconscious Orientalism, “They do it all the time. It’s a cultural thing.”

“So why couldn’t Al Durah be staged?” I asked.

“Oh, they couldn’t fool me,” said Enderlin.

Muhammad al Durah, after he's supposed to be dead, looking at the camera in a scene cut by Enderlin.

As I walked out of the office, I realized that not only do the Palestinian cameramen stage these things all the time, but Western journalists had no problem with this. The other shoe had dropped. It was not just the Palestinians who used Western camera equipment to stage their war propaganda, but the mainstream news media, who rummaged through the junk looking for the most believable sight-bytes to accompany reports on events. It’s not a pick-up game, I thought, it’s an industry… it’s Pallywood. That’s what blew my mind and seemed incomprehensible to so many people outside of Israel – and even to some Israelis: that the media could so violate its own most basic principles.

Journalists, I suddenly realized, weren’t looking for what had actually happened, but for believable footage to illustrate the Palestinian narrative that they had now formally adopted: the narrative that runs somewhere between the Palestinian David versus the Israeli Goliath of the mainstream news media (CNN, BBC, the New York Times) and the Israeli Nazi versus the Palestinian Jew-victim of advocacy journalism (the Nation, the Guardian, Open Democracy). And that narrative, which increasingly overtook the Western public sphere in the aughts (‘00s) and teens, began with Al Durah in 2000, and continues with the current weaponization of BDS on campus.

Varda Epstein: Why do you call your blog “Augean Stables?”

Richard Landes: I realized that Enderlin and his colleagues (the journalists who bring the news of what’s happening here in Israel), had developed atrocious habits, accepting staged footage from their cameramen, and then using the best parts to tell their story to viewers back home. Indeed, the encrustation of bad habits, both empirical and moral, involved in adopting the Palestinian narrative as news and dismissing Israeli counter-claims or counter-evidence as propaganda, struck me as the modern (free) journalist’s version of the Augean Stables: layer upon layer of bad choices, and bad reporting, never corrected, never changed, which had led to an edifice that literally stank globally of accumulated layers of bullshit. And of course, as Heracles cleaned out the stables in a day by running a river through them, I thought the internet would become that river, the one that could sweep away those atrocious habits.

I was, of course, wrong. Lethal journalism is still as strong and as self-destructive as ever. In fact, that brand of lethal journalism has spread. The first “fake news” of the 21^st century was the reporting of the Western press of what was happening here in Israel. It was widespread and sustained (think Jenin in 2002, Lebanon in 2006, and so forth) and it fundamentally disoriented Western thinkers into mistaking the first Jihadi attack on a democracy in the new century, one that pioneered the apocalyptic weapon of suicide terror, for a bunch of “freedom fighters” fighting an evil empire. In 2002, reports of an Israeli massacre at Jenin had Spanish models wear nothing but mock suicide belts to show their solidarity with their Jihadi enemies, celebrating mass-murderous attacks on civilians in (by far) the most progressive culture in the Middle East. It was a massive victory in the cognitive war Caliphaters are so effectively waging against the West.

I’m beginning to wonder if the cleaning out of the stables will happen in time to stop what these bad habits continuously empower, namely people who indeed want to burn down the free news media’s stables, now highly explosive with accumulated fertilizer. Perhaps cyberspace is not a river, but an electric current.

Varda Epstein: Tell us about your Aliyah. When did you know you would make Aliyah? Why did you make Aliyah? Any regrets?

Richard Landes: I came here as an 18 year-old, weeks after the 1967 war was over, and again for a year after the Yom Kippur war, and once more with family in 1994-5. And I always thought of staying, telling myself I’d eventually come back.

In 2004, while here working on the Al Durah Pallywood documentaries, I met Esther Sha’anan (thanks to Tova Weinberg of “Saw You at Sinai” fame). Esther had told Tova she wouldn’t marry someone who wasn’t going to live in the Land. Tova, without knowing she was right, told Esther I was planning to make Aliyah.

We were married in 2005; I polluted the skies with my trips to Israel over the next ten years, then, with a sigh of relief, left Boston University and the Western academic scene in 2015. I think I made Aliyah formally in 2009. At that point it was just a question of working with Nefesh b’Nefesh. I’m somewhat ashamed it took me so long to finally do it.

Varda Epstein: Do you think the “fake news” phenomenon is real? Is it recent? A resurgence of an old problem?

Richard Landes: I’d say it’s very bad, indeed, when you look at what’s happening to democracies around the world, whether political insanity (Labour, Progressive Democrats, Trump) or an inevitable self-protective move to the “right” (Right-wing parties), reacting to the suicidal “cosmopolitanism” of the political and information elites who consider it a sacred duty in honor of the Holocaust to bring in waves of Jew-hating Muslims and spread them over Europe.

Now we swim in fake news that has taken over even the mainstream news media. Venerable brands are predictable only in the narratives they pitch. This level of sloppiness and disregard for the basic principles of modern journalism (also known as “post-modern advocacy journalism”) that we see everywhere from our information professionals, began at the Middle East desks of our major news outlets. Such outlets include, for instance, the BBC, CNN, France2, the New York Times, Le Monde, and Haaretz, with their coverage of the “Al Aqsa Intifada” or what we might be better understood if we called it the “Oslo Jihad,” or the opening round of the global Jihad against democracies.

Fake news is, of course, an old problem. One can even argue that modern, free, reasonable, accurate journalism is the appearance of an island of news in a sea of fake news. In time of war, the problem becomes especially acute. Historically the danger was “patriotic war journalism” that reported its own side’s war propaganda as news (e.g., the way Hearst and Pulitzer started the Spanish war for Teddy Roosevelt). It was a high moral and professional aspiration to have the media skeptical enough to resist their own side’s war propaganda.

Pallywood is a form of “partisan war journalism,” in which outside reporters take sides in a conflict and report that side’s propaganda as news. That’s how the Oslo Jihad was reported. But what the 21^st century has wrought that is, I think, unique, is “own-goal war journalism,” in which the post-modern journalists report their enemy’s – Caliphater – war propaganda as news. Hence, the reported massacre at Jenin inspires infidels to cheer on apocalyptic, suicidal Jihadis as they attack a democratic society. Hence, the increasing and increasingly dysfunctional fissure in Western democracies between journalists and the increasingly restive and pained citizenry they are trying to manipulate into peaceful choices. On some level our social body has contracted a kind of CIPA (congenital insensitivity to pain) in which the nerves/information professionals do not deliver to the brain/public sphere the news of where it hurts and who did it.

Results of own-goal journalism: identifying with your enemy, London 2009

Varda Epstein: What can regular people do to combat media bias? How far should we go to punish biased outlets? Should we avoid reading the content of anti-Israel publications? What outlets do you trust for hard news about Israel?

Richard Landes: On the grand scale, we need to initiate and participate in the establishment of reliable websites (like Snopes used to be), that people can go to for a trustworthy escape from fake news. This is an enormous endeavor, but in an age of information excess and collapse of reliability, it should have a very high value… cognitive anchors, if you will. These shouldn’t be Jewish or uniquely Jewish-themed, but collective efforts to make a free, productive, self-correcting society possible by providing a cleaning process that strips away fake news – a kind of information dialysis.

On a more individual level, I think it helps to realize that the problem is systemic, that fighting the details, however important – and thank God for sites like CAMERA, HonestReporting, and UK Media Watch, there should be many more – is not going to turn the tide. The height and depth of the failure of information professionals in the 21^st century is hard to imagine, partly because they’ve convinced themselves they’re doing a good job. (The Augean Stables smell just fine to them.)

And this is no longer just a problem over here (the Land of Israel) and not there (the West). It’s metastasizing. BDS is a symptom; it can only succeed because both media and academia have succumbed to the replacement narrative of Palestinians suffering genocide at the hands of the Zionists. In the process, they have betrayed the ethical demands of their profession.

What this means for how you speak with people who don’t understand what’s going on, really depends on the individuals who are interacting. But the orienting principle to articulate is that anti-Zionism is an attack not just on autonomous Jews but on the Western progressive world and on democracies: lands to which a majority of the rest of the world’s inhabitants would love to emigrate. The West’s susceptibility to lethal journalism about Israel is the soft underbelly whereby Caliphaters can infiltrate the Western progressive world and implement their authoritarian vision. When you can’t be a Progressive and a Zionist on campus, the Caliphaters have won their fight to turn infidels into useful idiots (think Linda Sarsour).

At least for now, BDS damages academia much more than it damages Israel, which continues to thrive. Real scholarship, meantime, high professional standards for the gathering and analyzing of data, especially where the Middle East is concerned, continues to degrade dramatically. Today, it’s extremely difficult for anyone in college to be exposed to the narrative that Israel represents the future of progressive politics, including feminism, in this crazy neighborhood. And yet, as my kids used to say, it’s a “no duh.”

Humor helps. I think we need to develop truly telling and penetrating jokes about the idiocy of the current acamediacracy. It’s a bit beyond my skill set. Caroline Glick had a great comedy group going about a decade ago. Latma. Maybe it made too much fun of our cousins and not enough of the insane “global progressive left.” We need some good comedians to write us some one-liners.

Ultimately, if we make our way out of this, it’ll be because people who have been too timid till now, at least play nice cop to some Zionist’s tough cop. When the thought police yell “Islamophobe” and “racist” and “blaming the victim,” any time people start to describe some of the less savory elements of the Arab and Muslim world, the (until now, largely silent) bystander needs to intervene and explain how what’s being said needs to be listened to and considered and not driven from the public sphere. That’s especially important on campuses. The reason the other side is so vociferous and morally agitated is because if they let us speak and our audience were fair-minded, they would lose.

Varda Epstein: What did you think about Israel applying its No Entry law to Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar? Who won? What is the ultimate goal of these people, from your perspective?

Richard Landes: It was a win-win for them. The way they set it up, whatever Israel did, we lost and Tlaib-Omar won. They’re both Caliphaters, vying for top spot in the American cogwar. It was a major victory for them to make it into Congress, and for Omar to win a place on the Foreign Relations Committee. It was, of course, majorly stupid of both voters and the democratic congresspeople who put her there. But, alas, virtue signalers would rather shoot themselves in various body parts than give the appearance of being prejudiced.

Saying the two could come to Israel, long before they made a formal request with a written agenda, was a big mistake. (We may have been virtue-signaling about how open we are.) We jumped the gun there. I wanted to put up a site welcoming them, and that would serve to, among other things, fact-check their statements while here. I still think that site should be prepared.

Another lesson learned from this incident: don’t wait for them to put us in a corner. Start thinking aggressively and not defensively. Israeli spokespeople have an unfortunate tendency to consider a draw or not too big a disaster, a victory of sorts, and don’t follow through when they have the upper hand. It’s a modified form of battered-wife syndrome, especially as we’ve seen it since the beginning of 2000. I don’t think we’ve won a single mivtza, a military operation, in the cogwar as yet. I think we need to amend the prayer for the IDF. ביבשה באוויר בים ובתקשורת*

Part of the problem is we don’t realize how much ground we’ve lost in the last 20 years. We think people agree with us when it comes to reality. Most Zionists think most people understand that Jenin was a massive episode of fake-news lethal journalism. Most outsiders, though, old enough to remember, think the reporting might have been exaggerated at the time, but was more or less accurate along the main lines. And so it has been with every subsequent story of Palestinian suffering, right down to the recent reporting on the weekly “Border March,” a euphemism for violent, staged protests.

Figuring out how to get out of this hole we’re in calls for deep and long-term (though urgent) thinking. Not “how can I (temporarily) move the needle for my donor?” but a serious dedication of funds (a couple of fighter jets’ worth), strategy, and tactics with which we might fight a cognitive war, not just for Israel, but for any democracy that wants to remain free and productive.

Varda Epstein: What is the main lesson we learn from history?

Richard Landes: That it’s those who fail to learn the right lessons who are fated to repeat the wrong decisions. Like the “woke left” of today, that is still unable to absorb the lessons of the millennial madnesses of the 20^th century like communism and Nazism, and is about to repeat the madness by allying with and empowering a terrifyingly destructive millennial movement (the Caliphaters), endorsing them as carriers of a redemptive message.

Solidarity with the most ambitious and ferocious imperialist movement on the planet, Denver Democratic National Convention, 2008.

As I mentioned, I grew up with the question “Why the West?” – and my answer is, above all, the ability to absorb criticism and learn from it. It’s the major difference between an honor-shame culture and an integrity-guilt culture. In the former, public admission of wrongdoing or failure is a shameful sign of weakness and hurts your standing in others’ eyes. In the latter, it’s a way of both maintaining integrity and learning from mistakes. One dynamic favors a culture of consensus, the other a culture of dispute. The integrity-guilt culture is why the West is so spectacularly successful in all kinds of technology and learning, and why the Jews are so successful in the modern West.

Self-criticism is very hard, and many people spend most of their emotional energy defending their honor or image in others’ eyes (lethal journalists). They invest a great deal of time anticipating and imagining attacks. The learning curve of the 21^st century Western “intelligentsia” (the people who have a large impact on the conversation in our public sphere), has been lamentably low.

We need a generation of all ages that can learn from and give criticism effectively. But for that we need to quiet the moral hysteria – indignant cries of “Islamophobia,” “white supremacism,” “racism,” “hate-speech,” and even “antisemitism” – so we can listen and be listened to, and respond in a thoughtful manner.

* On land, in the air, at sea, and in the news media

***

Comparing Quran and Tanach competitions

Every year, there is a worldwide International Bible Competition - Chidon HaTanach - held with the final round in Israel.

Competitors study between 100 and 150 chapters of the Hebrew Scriptures and go through regional competitions to the finals in various age groups.

Here are some of the questions from 2016: (Some of the tests are in Hebrew.)

There are national and international Quran competitions as well. But all of the famous ones do not require the competitors to study the texts - but to memorize them. These are competitions on chanting beautifully. Some of the criteria for scoring in this Toronto competition, for example, are:

½ mark will be deducted for each time the participant is unable to read fluently
1 mark will be deducted for any Hifz errors that are corrected by the participant himself after being informed by the Questioner by the ringing of the bell
2 marks will be deducted if the Questioner has to correct the mistake
If a participant makes more than 3 Hifz mistakes in a question, which the Questioner has to correct, the participant will fail that question.
The Questioner will ring the bell to bring any Hifz mistakes to the participant’s attention.
For Tajweed errors, the bell will not ring but the Judges will mark the mistakes on the mark sheet.

The Jews study the content. The Muslims memorize words and punctuation.

Every once in a while a Muslim writer will point out that Israelis have more Nobel prizes than the entire Arab world combined. This comparison of how the religious of each faith look at their sacred texts - analysis versus rote memorization - is a strong clue as to why this is.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.