Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 07, 2024

Say Their Names: The Nameless American Hostages of Gaza (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Three Americans held hostage in Russia were released a week ago today. While you may not have been familiar with the name Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist with dual US/Russian citizenship, it is almost certain you knew the names of the other two now-freed hostages: Paul Whelan, and Even Gershkovich. But how many of you are familiar with the names of the 8 American citizens still held hostage in Gaza?

Edan Alexander
Itay Chen HY"D
Sagui Dekel-Chen
Hersh Goldberg-Polin
Gadi Haggai HY"D
Judith Weinstein Haggai HY"D
Omer Neutra
Keith Siegel

Some of the eight are no longer alive, their dead bodies held captive by Hamas and their families denied the chance to bury their loved ones. Others still live in daily torment. Their names, if not their bodies, need to live in our minds, and in the minds of the public. In that task, the world has failed them.

One exception that proves the rule is the name “Hersh Goldberg-Polin,” thanks to the intensive efforts of his parents, Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin. The two have somehow managed to keep their son’s name front and center; not an easy feat in our ever-changing news cycles. The campaign on behalf of their son has made a difference, not least of all because Rachel Goldberg is both appealing and a gifted speaker. She appears fragile, yet we admire her strength and wonder how she manages to keep going, day after day. We can tell she is living a nightmare, and her pleas for her son’s release hit home.

Photos have also helped to keep Hersh and his name alive in our minds, in particular, that of Rachel stooping to peek at the camera over Hersh’s shoulder as he sits in a lawn chair. Other visual reminders of Hersh would have to include the eye-catching bright yellow and black posters emblazoned with Hersh’s face and name that sprang up in my town early on. We might not yet have known the details of how it happened; how Hersh was thrown into the back of a truck with a bloody stump where his arm used to be. But we knew he was an American hostage in Gaza and we knew his name: Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

Another effective visual reminder of Hersh’s absence is the bit of masking tape affixed to Rachel’s clothing. Replenished daily, the piece of tape is marked with the number of days Hersh has been held in captivity, that number written in ballpoint pen by a yearning mother’s hand. When you see Rachel Goldberg’s Instagram posts, it’s that piece of tape that catches your eye. It’s poignant; a real punch to the gut to see it. Rachel Goldberg literally wears her pain on her shirt, and for her followers, the strip of tape is a stark, daily reminder of just how long this nightmare has lasted for her son, Hersh. All of these things, the posters, the photos, the piece of tape, the soft-spoken, quietly-suffering mother have served to cement the name “Hersh Goldberg-Polin,” firmly in our minds.

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But what about the other 7 American captives? Do you know their names like you know Hersh’s name? Have you heard their names spoken by the American president and/or his administration? Is the American media keeping their names alive in your mind?

If not, why not? They managed to make you remember the names “Paul Whelan” and “Evan Gershkovich,” so why not follow the same recipe on behalf of the American hostages in Gaza? After all, politicians and journalists, if they know anything, know branding. They know how to use a name to their advantage. And they know how to keep a name quiet when it is controversial, harmful, or distasteful.

Take President Biden’s triumphant remarks on the release of the three Americans wrongfully detained by Russia. In those remarks, the president managed to get in a dig at his opponent, Donald J. Trump, with a false accusation regarding the number of Americans held since before he took office. What Joe Biden didn’t do, is get the names of the Gaza hostages out there to the American people:

I will not stop working until every American wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world is reunited with their family. My Administration has now brought home over 70 such Americans, many of whom were in captivity since before I took office. Still, too many families are suffering and separated from their loved ones, and I have no higher priority as President than bringing those Americans home.

Today, we celebrate the return of Paul, Evan, Alsu, and Vladimir, and rejoice with their families. We remember all those still wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world. And reaffirm our pledge to their families: We see you. We are with you. And we will never stop working to bring your loved ones home where they belong.

Think of the impact it would have had, had Biden slowly recited the names of the hostages in the course of his speech, pausing for effect between each name. One small edit was all it needed:

We see you. We are with you. We remember our eight hostages in Gaza:

Edan Alexander
Itay Chen HY"D
Sagui Dekel-Chen
Hersh Goldberg-Polin
Gadi Haggai HY"D
Judith Weinstein Haggai HY"D
Omer Neutra
Keith Siegel

And we will never stop working to bring your loved ones home where they belong.

We should all say their names, of course, but in particular, the American president should be saying their names at every possible occasion. Because they are Americans. And because the president is currently working to negotiate a Gaza ceasefire—it’s something that is happening right now.

Which makes it totally appropriate to mention their names:

Edan Alexander
Itay Chen HY"D
Sagui Dekel-Chen
Hersh Goldberg-Polin
Gadi Haggai HY"D
Judith Weinstein Haggai HY"D
Omer Neutra
Keith Siegel

In fact, this writer could not find a single instance when Biden recited the names of these eight. He refers to them only as “hostages.” Of course Biden had no trouble using the release of Natalie and Judith Ranaan and little Avigael Idan to his advantage. Biden said THEIR names aplenty. But not these eight—those Americans still in the clutches of Hamas. Not even in his statement marking 100 days of captivity for the hostages of Gaza:

Today, we mark a devastating and tragic milestone—100 days of captivity for the more than 100 innocent people, including as many as 6 Americans, who are still held being hostage by Hamas in Gaza. For 100 days, they have existed in fear for their lives, not knowing what tomorrow will bring. For 100 days, their families have lived in agony, praying for the safe return of their loved ones. And for each of those 100 days, the hostages and their families have been at the forefront of my mind as my national security team and I have worked non-stop to try to secure their freedom.

Since Hamas brutally attacked Israel on October 7, my Administration has pursued aggressive diplomacy to bring the hostages home. We saw the first results of that effort late October, when two Americans were reunited with their loved ones. In November, working in close coordination with Qatar, Egypt, and Israel, we brokered a seven day pause in fighting that resulted in the release of 105 hostages—including a 4-year-old American child—and allowed us to surge additional vital humanitarian aid into Gaza. I was deeply engaged to secure, sustain, and extend that deal. Sadly, Hamas walked away after just one week. But the United States and our partners have not given up. Secretary Blinken was back in the region this past week seeking a path forward for a deal to free all those still being held. I look forward to maintaining close contact with my counterparts in Qatar, Egypt, and Israel to return all hostages home and back to their families.

I will never forget the grief and the suffering I have heard in my meetings with the families of the American hostages. No one should have to endure even one day of what they have gone through, much less 100. On this terrible day, I again reaffirm my pledge to all the hostages and their families—we are with you. We will never stop working to bring Americans home.

That is the sum total of Biden’s statement, leaving the eight hostages to remain nameless before the public. How hard would it have been to include those names? It would have made so much sense to name the hostages before the public as the president of the United States.

But it’s no wonder Biden keeps a low profile when it comes to the hostages of Gaza. With the left ascendant, the Jews are in bad odor. Which renders Jewish hostages unmentionable not only by the president, but by the mainstream media as well.

Even the word “hostage” is a no-no if one is to go by today’s CNN homepage or Middle East section. Ditto today’s NY Times front page and world section. The word “hostage” is nowhere to be found, let alone those eight precious names:

Edan Alexander
Itay Chen HY"D
Sagui Dekel-Chen
Hersh Goldberg-Polin
Gadi Haggai HY"D
Judith Weinstein Haggai HY"D
Omer Neutra
Keith Siegel

Biden has done a very thorough job of keeping the names of the American hostages under wraps, and the media has fallen right in line. With Kamala Harris waiting in the wings, it can only get worse. Meantime, the dire situation of the hostages drags on.

There doesn't seem to be much if anything we can do about the hateful attitudes of those who strive to keep the hostages’ names out of sight and out of mind. They're antisemites; their hate isn’t logical and there’s nothing you can do about that. What you can do is what they won’t do:

Say their names.

Edan Alexander

Itay Chen HY"D

Sagui Dekel-Chen

Hersh Goldberg-Polin

Gadi Haggai HY"D

Judith Weinstein Haggai HY"D

Omer Neutra

Keith Siegel

***
Note: Edited after sharp reader ahad_ha_amoratsim suggested that Z"L should be changed to HY"D, wherever it appears. And he is correct. Z"L means "May his/her memory be a blessing," while HY"D means "May God avenge his/her blood."

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

In the absence of real information on Iran's attack plans, everyone is guessing. Here's what we do know.

Every few hours we see a new report based on some anonymous intelligence sources on what Iran might be doing.

The latest comes from an opinion piece in the Washington Post by David Ignatius:

The risk of a devastating regional war remains uncomfortably high. But White House officials said Tuesday they believe Biden’s efforts may be paying off. Iran may be reconsidering a plan for major retaliation after last Wednesday’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, is still a wild card, officials said.

The Iranian response has been complicated by seeming confusion over the circumstances of Haniyeh’s death. Tehran at first claimed he was killed by an Israeli missile, requiring a similar Iranian response. But officials say that Tehran has concluded privately that he was instead eliminated by a concealed bomb, perhaps prompting a different response. The Iranian regime is said to have conducted similar targeted attacks in third countries.

Tehran may also be dissuaded by the U.S. show of force this week, and secret White House communications passed via the Swiss embassy in Tehran and the Iranian mission at the United Nations. “Iran understands clearly that the United States is unwavering in its defense of our interests, our partners and our people. We have moved a significant amount of military assets to the region to underscore that principle,” a senior administration official messaged me.

U.S. messages to Iran have also made clear that the risk of a major escalation is extremely high, with serious consequences for the stability of the new government of President Masoud Pezeshkian.

That's a lot of "mays" and no details on what, exactly, the consequences to Iran might be if they escalate beyond what Washington thinks is acceptable for Israel to bear. Based on the previous three years, where the US has only loosened up its position on Iran, forgive me if I don't think Iran is dissuaded by US bombers that can drop 5,000 lb explosives - but never, ever will use against Iran.

Saying Hezbollah is a wild card is an indication that Ignatius' sources are not as good as he thinks. hezbollah does what Iran tells it to. If it takes the lead in an attack ,it isn't because it is defying Iran - the only times it does that is when it does less, not more, than Iran wants.

We've already gone through lots of experts guessing what is going to happen. Two waves of attacks, where the first wave will be to test defenses? October 7 type attacks? Hezbollah taking the lead? Timing it for Tisha B'Av next Monday night/Tuesday?

No one knows.

Here's what we do know:

Iran is making the decision to attack based on regaining honor, not self defense or retaliating in kind. It was embarrassed that there was such a giant intelligence failure and wants to project strength to its "axis of resistance" partners.

Because it is driven by honor, there is no way they will not attack. To them, there is no choice. They have been sounding the war drums to their people for days - they cannot climb down that tree.

Iran is already playing a psychological war. It is enjoying Israelis' unease as they wait for the attack, and very much enjoys seeing the Tel Aviv stock market go down, for example. It knows that the longer it waits with a credible threat, it hurts Israel's economy.

Iran is winning the psychological war. While it is making public threats to Israel and its infrastructure, no one is publicly describing what the response would be, except very general statements about Lebanon, not Iran or Yemen.

Israel is, publicly at least, purely on the defensive, except for continuing to do what it has been doing in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

That's about it. Everything now is about optics, not anything real. Israel is not handling the optics as well as it should. (That's one of the reasons I wrote my post earlier today about Kharg Island - to get possibilities like that in the public radar.) Even a public statement that actions speak louder than words would be welcome.

I hope Israel has a plan to counterattack immediately in an appropriate way. Maybe unconventionally - cyberattack, another major assassination, destroying an important monument in the middle of Tehran without hurting any people, or something similar - but something that sends an unmistakable message of both high capability and a conscious choice of restraint, letting Iran know that next time there will be no limits.

But for now, everything we are reading is a combination of purposeful leaks and wishful thinking. Take it all with a grain of salt.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Israel haters successfully bully Nagasaki mayor to not invite Israel to A-bomb memorial

On July 31, Kyoto News reported:

The mayor of Nagasaki on Wednesday said Israel will not be invited to its annual peace ceremony in August commemorating the 1945 atomic bombing of the Japanese city, opting to take a different path from Hiroshima, which has asked the Middle Eastern country to join its ceremony.

Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki said in June that he had sent a letter to Israel calling for a cease-fire in the conflict in the Gaza Strip, while leaving an invitation to the Aug. 9 ceremony on hold due to the risk of "unexpected situations" such as protests, amid international condemnation of the country's war conduct.

He said the "wrenching decision" not to invite Israel is "not a political one but is based on our hope that we want the ceremony conducted smoothly under a solemn atmosphere."

It is unclear how much of this is really fear over protests and how much because he simply doesn't like Israel. He first floated the idea that he might not invite Israel in early July, and a number of Western states told him that they might not come if Israel isn't invited:

Envoys of the United States and other Western nations sent a letter to Nagasaki in mid-July expressing concern over the city not inviting Israel to its peace ceremony on the anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing by the United States, the document showed Wednesday as multiple ambassadors pulled out of the event.

The letter, dated July 19 and sent ahead of Nagasaki's formal decision, warned that if Israel was excluded, "it would become difficult for us to have high-level participation" in the event.

The envoys of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United States and the European Union said it "would result in placing Israel on the same level as countries such as Russia and Belarus," which have not been invited to the ceremony for a third consecutive year.

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel will no longer attend the Nagasaki peace ceremony on Friday in response to the city not inviting Israel, a source familiar with the matter said the same day.

British Ambassador to Japan Julia Longbottom also announced the previous day that she would be absent from the ceremony, as she disagreed with the decision by the southwestern city.

His ignoring those warnings indicates that it was not only fear of disruption that prompted his decision. Nevertheless, that is the oly reason he gave, so BDSers cannot claim that this was a principled decision to protest Israel's actions.

Meanwhile, in Hiroshima, their A-bomb memorial was held yesterday with Israeli participation. There were anti-Israel protests several hours afterwards at the same location at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, but as far as I can tell they did not disrupt the ceremony itself.

Terrorism is the use of violence and intimidation against civilians in the pursuit of political aims. Threats to disrupt any event if Israel participates is just another type of terrorism. And sometimes, as we see, it works.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Washington Post quietly corrects claim that AIPAC is the most powerful lobby in Washington

Sometimes, the small things indicate the big things.

In most versions of a Washington Post story about Cori Bush's campaign over the past day, the reporter, Abbie Cheeseman, wrote that AIPAC was "long considered to be Washington’s most powerful lobbying force."

Who, exactly, considered AIPAC to be the most powerful lobby in Washington?

Antisemites, of course. It is part of the "Jews control America" meme that they accept as fact.

No one doubts that the pro-Israel lobby is powerful and that it poured a lot of money into some specific congressional races. But compared to other Washington lobbies - the health sector, finance, electronics, energy - the amount spent on pro-Israel lobbying is not large at all. (It fits in under "single issue" in the chart below by OpenSecrets.)

And here's another chart from OpenSecrets showing how much various nations themselves have spent to influence Washington over the past eight years. Israel is in tenth place, while others like China and Saudi Arabia have spent hundreds of millions.

AIPAC's' spending is minuscule compared to China's.

In the later versions of the Washington Post story, the language changed. It now says AIPAC is "one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying forces."

The initial language indicates that the writer of the story, Abbie Cheeseman, may harbor subconscious antisemitic feelings. It was caught and corrected, but she didn't do that - an editor did.

Before working at the Washington Post, where she is a Stern-Bryan Fellow with a three month internship for young British reporters, Cheeseman was a Beirut-based journalist. An examination of her tweets since October 7 find not a single ounce of sympathy for Israelis but plenty for Palestinians. She has reported favorably on Human Rights Watch anti-Israel reports. She does not seem to support Hezbollah, but she absolutely believes that Hezbollah has no choice but to support Hamas.

Of course, as a liberal, Cheeseman won't ever say anything explicitly antisemitic. But in 2012, she felt compelled to posit another antisemitic theory - that Hitler himself was part Jewish.

That theory has been thoroughly debunked, including in the Washington Post itself. The only other "evidence" is that his relatives have a chromosome called Haplopgroup E1b1b (Y-DNA) that is commonly found in the Berbers of Morocco, in Algeria, Libya and Tunisia, as well as among both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, Which is a very tenuous thread to hang a theory on.

Most left-wing antisemitism today is not conscious. But when asked questions about policy using Jews as examples, compared to using other groups as examples, the were found to be more likely to judge the policies mentioning Jews more harshly than with others.

Every progressive and liberal critic of Israel is convinced that they base their opinions on hard evidence and that they do not have a biased bone in their body. . But when the evidence itself is cherry picked on only one side, and when Israel is judged by standards that no other nation in history has been judged by, the bias becomes more and more obvious.

In the end, it does come down to antisemitism. The irony is that this is the same kind of unconscious bias that the progressive Left accuses all white people of having against people of color. Yet they never even consider they have it themselves.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Iran exports some 90% of its oil through Kharg Island, as 12 square mile island 35 miles off the coat of Iran.

Kharg Island has lots of storage tanks, loading facilities, pumping stations, a power plant, an airport, an natural gas liquefication facility and a desalination plant.

It would be terrible, just terrible, should the island be attacked and the facilities obliterated. Just...awful.

It has happened before. Iraq bombed it multiple times during the Iran-Iraq War, hurting but not crippling its capacity.

About 40% of Iran's entire governmental revenue comes from oil exports. Any unthinkable, banish-the-thought attack on Kharg Island would have an instant and devastating impact on Iran's economy. The Islamic Republic would certainly not have the funds necessary to keep paying Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad and the Houthis and armed groups in Iraq to the levels it has been supporting them.

Think of the children of those terrorists who would lose their luxury apartments!

Such an attack would accomplish what US sanctions have not since the Biden administration. It would make Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Gulf countries happy. China would be disappointed, since Iran is selling them oil at a steep discount, and then they would have to pay other Gulf countries market value.

What a shame that would be.

If Iran attacks Israeli infrastructure, like power plants or natural gas fields, it would not be a disproportionate response to make Kharg Island look like Gaza City does nowadays.

That would be just horrible! How could anyone even think of such a thing? Tsk, tsk.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

08/06 Links Pt2: Daniel Pearl’s Father: KSM Deserves the Death Penalty; Wikipedia hates Israel and Jews; Paris ceremony honors Israeli athletes killed in 1972 Munich

From Ian:

Daniel Pearl’s Father: KSM Deserves the Death Penalty

One person applauding Austin’s rejection of the plea is Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s 88-year-old father. One of the country’s most prominent computer scientists, Judea Pearl told The Free Press that it was important that KSM be executed. “He not only never expressed regret, he bragged about what he did,” Judea said. None of the government’s charges against KSM include the murder of his son, because it could complicate his prosecution on the 9/11 charges—a fact that angers Judea. “As a moral issue, it is clear that my son’s murder should be part of the charges,” he said. Here’s what else he told The Free Press during a short interview on Sunday.

On his son’s last moment:
It pains me to think that the last image Danny saw on this earth was the beastly face of KSM, the embodiment of inhumanity. My son believed that man was created in the image of God, and he treated every person as though they were also created in the image of God. I’m really sorry that Danny left this planet with that sort of image.

On the plea deal that Austin overturned:
Changing the possibility of a death sentence to life imprisonment sounds like they are reducing the sentence, which sends a bad message to the world. It suggests there were some kind of extenuating circumstances, that his crime was not as horrible as we had thought, or that he had expressed some regret or become less inhumane. But all of that is wrong.

On how the U.S. should avenge Daniel Pearl’s death:
A new trial should start with a new charge about KSM’s responsibility for the murder of my son. Witnesses must be called, evidence must be considered, and new charges must be brought. If the allegations for murdering Danny are not brought up in court, then the KSM prosecution will always be incomplete.

On how his son approached his job:
Danny looked at every person as an object of curiosity, not fear. So he traveled through the Middle East and northeast Africa with his violin and his laptop, and he was very interested in getting the Western reader to understand the hardship and the suffering of the ordinary people in those countries.

On sending a message about KSM’s crimes:
I seek justice. I know that’s a poetic term, and I’m not a poet, I’m an engineer, and I look at things pragmatically. The pragmatic fact is that there are thousands and thousands of young Muslims who view KSM as a hero—the one who had the guts to stand up to the evil United States. Our job is to tell those young people that KSM is a criminal, not a hero. He is a criminal, and not only a criminal but a unique type of criminal, and that’s why the death penalty is important.

The New Yorker’s Fact Crisis

It was a commonplace among right-minded people at the dawn of the 20th century that hatred and bigotry were the products of ignorance and would be eliminated through the sanitary means of education. Unfortunately, the horrors of the 20th century would prove this theory to have been radically false. Even the horrors of the Holocaust failed to immunize Western societies against the plague of antisemitism, which is clearly thriving in major Western culture centers to an extent that Victorian optimists and post-Holocaust pessimists alike would find incredible.

So how did so many intelligent people go wrong? In the case of plain old bigotry, they missed the fact that hatred and resentment are at least as foundational to the human psyche as love or the desire for social progress. It is also clear that antisemitism is distinguished from other tribal hatreds and bigotries by the fact that it is a conspiracy theory, and conspiratorialism in societies, institutions, and individuals has an inherent tendency to become more extreme and deranging over time rather than less so. That’s because, by substituting a cosmos of false causes for real ones, conspiracy-theorizing traps its victims in a mirror world in which they progressively lose hold of demonstrable relationships between causes and effects. The more deranged the sufferers become, the more dissonance they feel, and the angrier they get at those they hold responsible for their ills—and, in their minds, the world’s ills. Entire societies—the Spanish Empire, czarist Russia, 20th-century Germany—can descend into the pit of conspiratorial antisemitism and never be heard from again. Which is why normal people who don’t ordinarily give a hoot one way or another about Jews and Israel should greet the yearlong orgy of deranged Jews-are-Nazis pronouncements from the country’s leading universities and culture organs with alarm.

It may come as a surprise that the biggest star among the Jews-are-Nazis crowd works at The New Yorker, a magazine once synonymous with editorial excellence and still synonymous with the art of dressing up Jews in WASP clothing for the consumption of recent Ivy League graduates looking for a guide to normative urban thought and behavior via its famous cartoons. In a moment in which the mid-20th-century marriage between Jews and WASPs has clearly come apart, The New Yorker is undergoing an identity crisis—in which the magazine is “too white” and “too Zionist” for WASP progressives and the Jews who crave their acceptance, yet at the same time clearly unwilling to defend its distinctive if dated American literary voice against the schizophrenic demands of its own class, which includes both its audience and its Upper West Side editors. As the product of a failing cross-cultural marriage, The New Yorker is probably fated to wind up in rehab regardless. But the speed at which it does so is a choice.

Enter Masha Gessen, once a brilliant author, whose early books are classics. The memoir about Gessen’s grandmothers, Ester and Ruzya, and the books about Vladimir Putin and Pussy Riot are distinguished works of journalism, of the type that would no doubt have earned Gessen many warm welcomes at progressive synagogues throughout America in the early 2010s. Over the past decade, however, Gessen has become a purveyor of unhinged conspiracy theories about everything from Butlerian understandings of gender as a vast, malign cultural conspiracy to the malign influence and actions of the State of Israel—which as the ur-conspiracy theory of Western civilization, is inevitably where both Gessen and The New Yorker have wound up.

Gessen, in three lengthy pieces, one in December, one in February, and one recently, has become The New Yorker’s point person on Gaza—at the direction of the magazine’s editor, David Remnick. Unsurprisingly, the chief argument that Gessen wishes to prosecute is that Netanyahu’s Israel is now fully equivalent to Hitler’s Germany.

Gessen’s February New Yorker piece claims that “Israeli officials probably speak for their country when they say, in effect, How can you call it genocide if it’s waged by us?” Gessen bizarrely ventriloquizes Jewish opinion as follows: Jews should (“probably,” or “in effect”) be allowed to slaughter any other people, since they can never by definition commit genocide. One only imagines that The New Yorker’s once-vaunted fact-checking department allows this kind of ad hominem attack on an entire category of people on the theory that because Gessen is of Jewish descent, they are therefore an adequate source for “what Jews secretly all believe,” just as a Black writer would be allowed to pronounce on “how Blacks feel about Donald Trump.” Which is another way of saying that fact-checking is a relic of the 20th century, i.e., The New Yorker is in trouble.

How To Pose as a Reasonable Critic of Israel (With a Little Help From the Media)

Mark Perlmutter is an orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina. He is Jewish but believes that Zionism is "sadism" and "the moral equivalent of Nazism."

Feroze Sidhwa is a trauma surgeon from California. He alleges that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Yet in an essay for Politico, Perlmutter and Sidhwa present themselves as physicians lacking "any political interest in the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—other than wanting it to end." From this perch of supposed neutrality, they accuse Israel of "murdering children" yet do not have a bad word to say about Hamas, even though their article goes on for nearly 5,000 words.

The essay by Perlmutter and Sidhwa is an illustration of how the media can launder Israel's virulent critics to render their views palatable, or even compelling to a mainstream audience. This phenomenon is hardly new, but with a bit of help from Google and X (formerly Twitter), it has become far easier to expose.

In all fairness, Perlmutter and Sidhwa do have a story worth telling. They traveled to Gaza in late March as part of a humanitarian mission for which they volunteered via the Palestinian American Medical Association. They tell the story of a malnourished nine-year-old girl named Juri who had festering wounds, a split femur, and other grave injuries. The surgical team had to wash clumps of maggots off Juri before they could operate, and they warn that she will suffer from severe and permanent disabilities despite their best efforts.

Juri's story is one that deserves to be told, but by a narrator who is prepared to consider the responsibility Hamas bears for her plight. Perlmutter and Sidhwa oppose the horrors of war but cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that Hamas started it. They make a single oblique reference to the events of October 7 and include neither an explicit condemnation of the attack nor expression of sympathy for its victims. Likewise, they express no concern for the Israeli hostages who remain captive in Gaza.

An editor would not have had to conduct much due diligence to discover the two surgeons' bias. Perlmutter's comments on X read like the signs at a campus protest encampment. He describes the Israeli government as fascist, compares a pro-Israel physician to Josef Mengele, and, lest anyone miss his point, simply says, "Israel's genocidal behavior parallels that of Nazi Germany in the 40s."

The bias of Perlmutter's coauthor is no more difficult to discern. Sidhwa has 20 years of experience as a critic of the Jewish state. He first wrote about the subject as a student, contributing a pair of essays to the Israel-bashing website Electronic Intifada in 2005. In the first essay, he mounted a defense of Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, who is once again a figure of controversy thanks to his praise, the day after the October 7 massacre, for the "astonishing" and "astounding" achievements of an "innovative Palestinian resistance."

08/06 Links Pt1: Israel’s Spectacular Missions Are Necessary for Its Survival; Sinwar to replace Haniyeh; 19 wounded, one critically, as Hezbollah attacks Western Galilee

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Israel’s Spectacular Missions Are Necessary for Its Survival

The boundaries with which Israel was born invited immediate invasion. The armistice lines demarcating positions after the Israeli victory were not much better and invited low-level war and then major war again in 1967. Amazingly, Israel was lectured for decades after that about how it didn’t need to hold on to land it won in that defensive war because it also won the war in 1948 and therefore its original boundaries were “defensible.”

This argument continued until the Oslo years of the 1990s and the outbreak of suicide terrorism as a main strategy of Palestinian Arabs against Israel. At that point, the new lecture was that there really was no such thing as defensible borders in the Israeli-Palestinian element of the conflict, because the violence was coming from inside land controlled by Israel, not outside.

That indefensibility argument only increased with the second intifada, launched by Yasser Arafat after he rejected an offer of Palestinian statehood in 2000. Israel was burning up from within, its critics said, and therefore the only solution was a diplomatic one that forfeited Israeli sovereignty and security. But it turned out there was a military solution to the violence: Israel undertook a campaign of targeted assassination that made a continuing campaign of organized terrorism impossible for the time being.

There was also a way for Israel to protect, rather than surrender, its borders and its sovereignty. In 2002, Israel began building its security fence to prevent infiltration from the West Bank. By 2004, areas protected by the fence had seen fatalities from West Bank-originating terror attacks drop to zero. Construction of the fence continued, and so did its security benefits.

Case closed on defensible borders? Hardly. The advent of the rocket wars brought a return of the lectures that Israel could not have defensible borders. The idea was that the nature of war had changed, the contours of the conflict were different now, and Israel needed to think about appeasement as a path to survival.

That brought about the efforts to build the Iron Dome missile shield, which has kept Israel generally safe and sovereign during this most recent phase of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

We may be coming to a new era. Iron Beam, the next generation of missile interception using lasers, is in development but likely won’t be ready for deployment until next year. Iron Dome’s interceptor missiles are expensive, and anyway the system wasn’t designed to stop thousands of missiles and rockets and drones per day, which is what could happen if war breaks out with Hezbollah in the north. Israel’s recent demonstrations of its capabilities inside Iran may not prevent that war. But they are a signal to Iran—and to the world—that the Jewish state has more up its sleeve. Only if Israel’s capabilities cease to match its worst-case scenarios will its borders cease to be defensible.

Seth Mandel: Arrest and Prosecute the UN Workers Caught Aiding Hamas on Oct. 7

Now that even a UN review gritted its teeth and admitted the truth, it’s worth revisiting the allegations. In February, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant revealed the identities of twelve UNRWA workers who “actively participated” in Hamas’s October 7 massacre.

“In addition to these 12 workers,” Gallant said at a briefing at the time, “we have significant indications based on intelligence, that over 30 UNRWA workers participated in the massacre, facilitated the taking of hostages, looted and stole from Israeli communities, and more.” According to Gallant, “1,468 workers are known to be active in Hamas and [Palestinian Islamic Jihad]. 185 UNRWA workers are active in the military branches of Hamas and 51 are active in the PIJ military branch.”

Turns out this wasn’t all some Israeli fever dream, as many critics had hoped (and claimed). The agency really is shot through with Hamasniks. Some hostages were held by UNRWA employees in Gaza. The organization is unsalvageable and should be dismantled for parts.

And this feint of “accountability” is another reason that the agency can’t be saved. Firing these employees should be the beginning, not the end, of the disciplinary action.

Every single person that even the UN admits participated in a monstrous campaign of war crimes should be in custody. They deserve to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Everyone who worked with them in the field should be investigated and the higher-ups at the UN—who will feign ignorance unconvincingly—should have their turn in the dock as well.

Indeed, UNRWA was as much a mobile mercenary group as it was an aid organization. The internal review looked at 19 employees, but Israel gave the UN the documentation of over 200 active terrorists in its ranks and 1,500 who are affiliated with Gaza-based terror groups in one way or another. Sounds like there should be close to 2,000 investigations. When can we expect those?

Even if you pretended to believe the absurd excuse that high-level agency workers and UN officials didn’t know all this, none of them should still have a job. Most likely, there is real criminal liability there, but at the very least, the UN should be tripping over itself to cut loose anyone with supervisory responsibilities over these thugs.

In what other case would a person caught on camera carrying the corpse of a murder victim not be on trail for that person’s murder? How could anyone justify sending a penny to this organization under these circumstances? Indeed, why should it even be legal to do so?

The devaluing of Jewish life has reached a shocking level when a taxpayer-funded global body like the UN provides automatic immunity for murderers and terrorists—and that fact alone isn’t cause for outrage in every corner of the civilized world.

The West's Fear of Escalation Is Not Helpful

The many calls for restraint by Israel are not very useful. These pronouncements that express genuine reluctance to use force are seen by most people in the Middle East as weakness. In many situations, climbing the escalation ladder is probably the best way to put an end to violence.

For years, Israel preferred to absorb many rocket attacks and refrained from a strong response that could lead to escalation. This only gave time to Hamas to build its military capabilities and acquire the might to withstand an Israeli offensive now in its tenth month.

Similarly, Israel's reluctance to preempt in Lebanon allowed Hizbullah to build a formidable missile arsenal. Hizbullah grew to become a monster that since Oct. 8 has conducted, undeterred, a war of attrition against Israel. The continued existence of over 100,000 missiles in the hands of Hizbullah is an intolerable situation for Israel. Only an escalation intended to eliminate the missile arsenal can put an end to the war of attrition. The "diplomatic solution" the Americans and the French are pushing for in Lebanon is a mirage. Hizbullah cannot be trusted to abide for long by any agreement.

Being perceived as having a predilection for escalation helps deterrence. Deterrence must be maintained over time by the occasional use of force. Restraint may be construed as weakness and invite aggression. This is the way the bullies read things in the Middle East. In the final analysis, the only effective persuasion is the use of force. This requires willingness to escalate the struggle to defeat the Islamist radicals.

Islamic Jihad announced that the IDF killed several of its fighters today including at least one senior terrorist.

One of them was 14 years old.

Their announcement:

Today, Tuesday, August 6, 2024, the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine/West Bank, announced to the Palestinian people and the Arab and Islamic nations a group of its martyrs who were killed while fighting against the occupation army in the city of Tubas, north of the occupied West Bank.

With the highest expressions of pride and honor, the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine/West Bank, announces

To our struggling Palestinian people and to the Arab and Islamic nations

The martyr Mujahid Nour Mohammed Al-Yassin (19 years old)

The martyr, Mujahid, Brigadier General Yassin Ghanem (19 years old)

In the company of our brothers in blood and arms, the heroic sons of our people

The martyr Mujahid: Ayser Muhammad Abu Ara (36 years old)

The young martyr: Bilal Ezz El-Din Sawafta (14 years old)

From the heroes of the Tubas Battalion - West Bank

And those who were martyred while performing their combat duty in breaking the siege on their fellow fighters in the town of Aqaba in the city of Tubas, as part of the Battle of the Flood of Al-Aqsa. The Al-Quds Brigades affirms that it will remain steadfast on the path of jihad and resistance until liberation

There have been indications that as part of Iran's "vengeance" on Israel, they are trying to get West Bank Palestinians to mount an October 7-type attack. Israel has been very active in Judea and Samaria to frustrate any such ambitions.

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Jordan and Saudi Arabia did more to dissuade Iran than all Western diplomats combined

As teams of Western diplomats try to convince Iran to limit its planned attack on Israel, two Arab countries have done more than all of them combined.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

The Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi informed Tehran that if it responds to Israel's assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Jordan will not allow it to enter its airspace, Sky News Arabia reported.

Riyadh has declared it will not allow Iranian missiles or drones to pass through its airspace en route to Israel, a senior member of the Saudi royal family told Kan News on Monday evening. The official emphasized, "Riyadh will not allow any foreign object to pass through."

This has been barely reported elsewhere, but it is very important.

All you have to do is look at a map:

Iran wants good relations with all Islamic countries. Its new president has said that this is one of his top priorities. Violating the airspace of two of the most important such countries is not a way to achieve that goal.

It is even possible that this message has delayed Iran's response.

Iran wants to "punish" Israel, and if it cannot do it directly, it appears weak to the region. But if it is forced to route all its missiles through Syria that blunts the effects of their "crushing blow."

In fact, Iran is already trying to message the world that using proxies does not indicate weakness. The "Holy Defense News Agency" of the Iranian military is already setting the stage, in English, for the bull of the attack to come from its proxies, positioning this as a surprise: "Quadrilateral operation for the revenge of Resistance martyrs."

Israel doesn't know that this time, it will face a different operation than the True Promise [April] operation. In the True Promise Operation, Iranians themselves bombed the depth of the occupied territories. But this time Lebanon's Hezbollah will also be present because terrorist Israelis have assassinated the top commander of Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The third side of this harsh punishment is the zealous Yemenis, who yesterday emphasized in their million march that revenge for the blood of Haniyeh and other martyrs of the Resistance should be taken from the Israelis.

Islamic resistance groups of Iraq are the fourth side of revenge for the Resistance martyrs.

Iran and the rest of the resistance axis countries have raised the flag of revenge for martyrs. It seems that this time the punishment of the Zionists will be different compared to their punishment in the True Promise operation, but now how much and how, need time to understand.

This is just conjecture, of course, like all the other analysis of Iran. But it is possible that Iran had to change its attack plans to avoid upsetting Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and as such they have done more to make Iran think twice than anyone else. Their statements comes with an implicit warning that there would be diplomatic consequences for Iran violating their airspace.

That would shame Iran.

On the other hand, no Western nation has directly threatened Iran with consequences - military, economic, diplomatic, anything - if they violate international law by attacking Israel for reasons of "revenge." And that is why nothing they say will have the slightest effect. On the contrary, their efforts makes Iran feel more important and it feeds Iran's sense of "honor," which only gets enhanced with its public refusal to listen to them. Placing warships in the area does not dissuade Iran one bit, unless there is a threat to use those ships against Iranian targets themselves and not just missiles and drones.

As always, it is all about honor. And the West simply doesn't get it.

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Defa Press, the "Holy Defense News Agency" in Iran published by the Iranian military, issued a "list of possible targets of the Axis of Resistance in the occupied territories."

Here they are:

Governmental centers:
Parliament
Prime Minister's Office
Ministry of War

Airports:
Ben Gurion International Airport
Haifa International Airport
Ramon International Airport

Military bases:
Sdot Micha Airbase
Ramon Air Base
Ramat David Air Base
Hatzor Airbase
Hatzerim Airbase
Nevatim Airbase
Tel Nof Airbase
Palmachim Airbase

Ports:
Port of Haifa
Ashdod port
Port of Eilat

Power plants:
Orot Rabin power plant
Rutenberg power station
Eshkol power station
Reading power station
Haifa power plant

Oil and gas fields:
Karish gas field
Leviathan gas field
Tamar gas field
Shimson gas field

The news agency has English, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu editions, but this is a top story only in English (I couldn't find it at all in the other languages but didn't look exhaustively.)

This is pure psychological warfare. The list of "targets" could be discovered by anyone with Google; there is nothing novel or showing any intelligence in this list.

The rest of the article is also part of an Iranian attempt to demoralize Israel:

The above-mentioned data-x-items are the most vital and sensitive installations of the Zionist regime that can be targeted in any possible battle, and of course, everyone admits that this attack will inevitably happen soon.

Israel is in the crosshairs of the storm and despite having a lot of military, intelligence, and technological capabilities and unlimited support from its allies around the world, it does not have a high depth and security, and it does not have enough manpower to face a multi-front war. In addition, there is an obvious weakness on its domestic front that could collapse under the weight of massive attacks that the Zionist regime may be exposed to in the coming days or weeks.

It is true that there is a so-called regional alliance that seems ready to participate once again in supporting these terrorist Zionists, but the expected attack will take a different form before. Especially since it can include fronts where the missiles and drones of these fronts do not need a distance of 2000 kilometers to reach Israeli settlements. Therefore, the situation prevailing in the occupied territories these days is not at all similar to the previous retaliatory attacks and has caused the Zionists to panic more.

The "obvious weakness on its domestic front" is the haredi refusal to be drafted, a story that has been heavily covered in Islamic media.

There is another psychological dimension to this list. As reported by Critical Threats:

Iran’s decision to explicitly name these targets, which are spread throughout Israel, likely seeks to cause the Israel Defense Forces to disperse air- and missile- defense assets across a wide area. Iran may calculate that by causing Israel to spread out its defenses, this information effort will increase the likelihood that Iran can hit some of its targets. The US-Israeli coalition intercepted the majority of Iranian drones and missiles outside of Israel during the April 13, 2024 attack on Israel.[3] Drones and missiles fired from Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria would be much harder to intercept than those launched from Iran given the shorter distances and flight times to Israel.

A third psy-ops goal is to further dissuade international airlines from operating in Israel.

However, it isn't as if Israel didn't already have its priorities on what to defend. This list is unlikely to change the defense decisions much, especially since Iran's attempts to manipulate their enemies with bombastic threats is well known.

What Israel should do, however, is issue a statement that it has lists, too. And those lists include targets that could cripple Iran's economy.

They don't have to say what they are out loud. But Iran's ports and its oil facilities are obvious targets if Iran should attack Israel's infrastructure. Iran is heavily dependent on imports and exports via the sea and if they are taken out, the effects on Iran's population would be almost immediate.

Israel doesn't need to give specifics. They just need to tell the world that Iran knows what Israel could do if it attacks. Let thei rown imaginations fill in the rest.

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Dr. Ahmed Al-Farra, head of pediatrics at the Nasser Medical Hospital in Khan Yunis, has been interviewed by a number of major media outlets like the Washington Post and The New York Times who relied on his words to describe the situation in Gaza accurately.

After all, he's a doctor, and wouldn't lie, right?

Mondoweiss decided to write about the non-existent polio epidemic that the Gaza health ministry declared in Gaza. They found Dr, Farra was happy to speak to them about how Gaza is teetering on the edge of complete polio devastation.

“The solutions lie in personal hygiene and the use of soap, alcohol, and sterilizers,” al-Farra said. “But the Israeli occupation prevents the entry of these materials, and the fuel that is needed to operate the sewage treatment facilities.”

Israel doesn't allow Gazans to have soap and alcohol and othe rbasic medical hygiene equipment? How cruel of them!

But when you check the UNRWA page of imports to Gaza, you find trucks filled with first aid kits, hygiene kits, medical supplies, soap, liquid detergent, wet wipes and other similar cleansing and disinfectant materials.

Are there enough of them? I have no way of knowing. But as a top doctor at a hospital, al-Farra absolutely knows that these items are not being prevented to enter Gaza, and his statement that Israel blocks their entry into Gaza is shown to be a lie by UNRWA's own records.

We've established that the head of the Nasser Hospital pediatrics department is a liar. So what else has he lied to the media about?

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08/05 Links Pt2: The Origins of Anti-Zionism; Drawing on the legacy of Ze'ev Jabotinsky is critical in fighting Iran; An apology to Ariel Bibas

From Ian:

The Origins of Anti-Zionism

Berger’s motivations remain open to debate. What is clear, however, is that he was right on the money in thinking that the more his views were perceived as part of internal American Jewish discourse and motivated by “authentically” American Jewish values and interests, the better these views served Arab critics of Israel.

Notably, Berger’s critique of Zionism went well beyond his insistence on the rejection of Jewish nationhood, and exposed what he saw as Israel’s racist laws and acts. Moreover, he ultimately expressed profound sympathy for Palestinian nationalism and specifically for the PLO. In 1983, a few years after the publication of his Memoirs and in the wake of the 1982 Israeli war against the PLO in Lebanon, Berger reviewed a book about the PLO published that same year. This book, Cheryl Rubenberg’s The Palestine Liberation Organization, Berger wrote, “breathes a living soul into the recognized leaders of the Palestinian nation” and “eliminates any excuse for caricaturing the PLO as one-dimensional ‘terrorists,’ single-mindedly devoted to the ‘destruction’ of the State of Israel.” Adopting a laudatory tone, Berger opined that the PLO’s “dedication to the total welfare of its forcibly dispersed people approximates a religious commitment.” In fact, the PLO’s “network of institutions serving Palestinian education, arts, health services, labor organizations, and many other needs,” Berger declared, is comparable “to only enlightened, humanistic, socially conscious States.” Berger singled out the Research Center as the PLO’s crown jewel.

Another layer of complexity in this nexus between the PLO Research Center and the American Council for Judaism is the fact that Elmer Berger apparently had, as late as the 1950s, professional ties to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Historian Hugh Wilford has argued that the network of the ACJ and the American Friends of the Middle East (AFME), on the board of which Berger served, was “both a government front and a lobby group with an agenda of its own.” Berger, who acted as AFME’s “chief pamphleteer,” wrote in his 1978 memoirs that “by now … everyone knows it [AFME] was conceived and financed by the CIA.” In private correspondence from 1978, Berger wrote to an associate that “at one point in my life, when [Kermit] Kim Roosevelt was running the Middle East section of CIA, I served as a consultant—part time.”

Wilford contended that Berger was not doing the CIA’s work so much as engaging in coordinated efforts to advance interests he shared with the CIA Arabists (and with the anti-Zionist Arabist Protestants at the helm of AFME). “Berger and his friends did not see Kim Roosevelt as their boss,” according to Wilford, but rather as “a partner working in a common cause.” Nonetheless, the CIA’s support of Berger and its role in connecting him to figures in the Middle East lead us to ponder how the conception of Judaism espoused by the PLO and its Research Center may have been, however indirectly, informed and influenced by an American intelligence agency.

This excerpt is reprinted with minor modifications from Jonathan Marc Gribetz, “Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy” (2024), with permission of Princeton University Press.

JPost Editorial: Drawing on the legacy of Ze'ev Jabotinsky is critical in fighting Iran

Jabotinsky’s doctrine of defense was encapsulated in his famous Iron Wall concept, which argued that only through an unassailable defense could Jews ensure their security and sovereignty. Israel has built on this since the state’s founding, from the strength of the IDF and its ability to call upon reservists in times of war to the modern-day technological phenomenon that keeps Israel’s citizens relatively safe from incoming rockets, UAVs, and missiles. His insistence on a strong military is mirrored in Israel’s contemporary defense strategies, including its preemptive strikes on Iranian targets in Syria and advanced missile defense systems like the Iron Dome.

Another pillar of Jabotinsky’s thought was the importance of strategic alliances. He understood that Israel could not stand alone against its adversaries. This belief is evident in Israel’s current diplomatic efforts to build coalitions against Iranian aggression. Many have sought to alienate the State of Israel after Hamas’s attacks on October 7, but we have seen (and saw in April during Iran’s attack) that our neighbors and allies can and will come to our aid when necessary. Israel’s close relationship with the US echoes Jabotinsky’s foresight in recognizing the necessity of having powerful friends. This alliance is crucial in countering Iran’s influence and ensuring continued support for Israel’s security needs.

One of Jabotinsky’s most vital tenets of Zionism also emphasized fostering a resilient and culturally proud Jewish population. He believed that a strong national identity was essential for the survival of the Jewish state. Today, as Israel faces one of the greatest threats in its 75 years of statehood, this principle is reflected in our efforts to stand together as one and face our enemies. This comes after a year of civil unrest and a divided nation over the government’s attempted judicial reforms.

Jabotinsky’s advocacy for military strength, strategic alliances, and national pride offers a blueprint for navigating the complexities of modern threats, particularly from Iran. By adhering to these principles, Israel can increasingly maintain its security and sovereignty in the region. Drawing on Jabotinsky’s legacy will be essential as the country continues to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions and regional hostility.

Yisrael Medad: Words and thoughts from Ze’ev Jabotinsky

To mark the death date of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, which falls this year, as it did 84 years ago, on the convergence of the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars—the 29th of Tammuz and Aug. 4—it would be appropriate to allow some of his thoughts be remembered. There is no need to recall his roles and activities, as they were of the past. What is proper at this occasion is to remember his analyses, his predictions and his instructions since they are relevant at this time.

I have selected from some of his lesser-known articles to illustrate the breadth and depth of his thinking that can affect our approaches to today’s events.

From “Two Tablets: One Torah,” 1934:
“I did not learn my Zionism from Ahad Ha’am or even from Herzl and Nordau: I learned it from non-Jews. I spent the best years of my youth in Rome and managed to take a good look at Italy. A lovely and free country … liberal, peaceful, without a shadow of chauvinism. … No one bothers anyone, no one oppresses anyone. This is how, it seemed, every nation should live, and we Jews too.

“Now they sometimes say that the ‘non-Jewish school’ of Zionism gave a bad education, that Zionism should be studied from Jewish sources, from a catechism with various paragraphs, with arguments for and against. I believe that this is not so. In Zionism there is no place for pilpul, commentaries or arguments for and against. Zionism is as clear and simple as air and water, as a mountain and a valley. Just as it is enough to look at God’s world to understand its wisdom, so Zionism can be understood without any special intellectual approaches. A piece of God’s land, whether it is called Italy, France, England or something else; it does not matter …

“ … Forgive me for being wary of the category of ideas that make up the complex of spiritual Zionism in my Zionist youth. At that time, it sounded like an attempt to instill in Zionism the dangerous features of ghetto psychology: political passivity, admiration for the East, its quietism and patriarchy—a kind of pacifism that boils down to Eretz-Yisrael being conquered for us by strangers. … Spirit can also be ‘imperialist’ and can annex everything—from the right and from the left. Spirit demands both banks of the Jordan, and state independence, and the gathering of millions of the dispersed. Spirit believes in the West, in Europe and America, in technical progress and in women’s suffrage. Spirit is not afraid of the Jewish legion. Spirit is not only a university with a technical school and a commercial academy and even a military academy (until the prophet Isaiah’s dream of disarmament comes true). Herzl, Nordau, Ahad Ha’am—they had disagreements in life, but today we know their common truth: two tablets, one Torah. Spirit is building a kingdom for itself on earth.”