They are Jews and they are Israelis, period

The Israeli deputy consul general could not, for all his humble sagacity, see the future.

Yet Benjamin Krasna’s heart was heavy. It was June 28, 2006 — two weeks before Israel and the Iranian terror proxy Hezbollah would fight a bitter, monthlong war in which Hezbollah would succeed in causing the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians in addition to the Israeli casualties of the war. But as he spoke that night to the Jewish Federation of Ocean County, there was still some hope that 18-year-old Itamar resident Eliyahu Asheri was alive. Asheri had been kidnapped by Palestinians earlier that week, and his body would be found only hours after Krasna’s speech.

When asked about Asheri, Krasna said he wanted to make one thing clear: “He is an Israeli,” Krasna said. We don’t, he continued, perform the crass act of pretending to better understand Asheri’s kidnapping in light of the fact that Itamar is a Jewish village near Shechem — a “settlement.”

Krasna was clearly irritated by the media’s portrayal of Asheri as a “settler” — as if that made his kidnapping OK.

Two years later, on July 3, 2008, a Palestinian terrorist would drive a bulldozer over Jewish pedestrians and motorists in Jerusalem, killing three and wounding more than 60. Haaretz, the Israeli daily, via its columnist Bradley Burston, was in utter disbelief at the savagery of “the man behind the wheel of a bulldozer, who has taken it upon himself to kill Jews. Not Israeli security force personnel, not occupation troops, not the Shin Bet. Jews. Women and children and the elderly and the infirm. Jews who may be in favor of an independent Palestinian state. Jews who have nothing against Arabs. Jews who may work to end the occupation. Jews.”

The ideologues behind Haaretz, who have admitted to covering up corruption and last year told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Israel has to be “raped” into making concessions for peace, were aghast. Where, they wanted to know, have all the good terrorists gone? You know, the ones with the decency to target settlers and occupiers and soldiers. Why target Jews unaffiliated with Israel’s settlements?

On July 7, almost 100 Israel Defense Forces reservists from the Rabbinate Corps were called up to active duty for the purpose of exhuming bodies of foreign fighters that are to be returned to Hezbollah as part of a prisoner swap. Hezbollah will receive hundreds of prisoners and bodies, as well as Samir Kuntar, who is currently serving consecutive life sentences in Israel for his murder of Einat Haran. Einat was 4 years old when Kuntar smashed her head repeatedly against a rock with the butt of his rifle until he crushed her skull, next to the lifeless body of the girl’s father, Danny Haran, who Kuntar had executed moments before in order that Einat’s last sight would be the murder of her father.

It is doubtful that there is any air on this planet more wasted than that which circles Kuntar’s lungs, giving life to someone who exists only for death.

Yet he will be free, and he will kill again. And in return, Israel will receive the bodies of two of the IDF’s fallen heroes, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, whose kidnapping by Kuntar’s masters touched off the war.

Goldwasser and Regev were taken from within Israel’s borders. But to the purveyors of self-hating collaboration such as Haaretz, are they still tools of the “occupation”? Upon their return, as the worldwide Jewish community cries for its sons of Israel, mourns for its two faithful servants of God and country, sees the tragic end of a story that compelled it to say Tehillim every day for two years, feels the weight of failed hope and fights the onset of hope’s loss: what will we think?

To those of us who watched Goldwasser’s wife and mother plead for his return last year in New York, standing across the street from that nest of corruption, that cathedral of depravity known as the United Nations building, we will think simply that we have lost two of our own. There are no categories; there is no caveat — regardless of on which part of biblical Israel they stood when they were taken from us.

After all, international law unequivocally sides with us on this one. Ex iniuria non oritur ius. An illegal act cannot produce a legal result, roughly translated. That’s the principle of international law that removes any recognition of Jordanian sovereignty over the West Bank. An illegal act (Jordan’s occupation of the West Bank from 1948-67) cannot produce a legal result (accepted claim of sovereignty over that land by Jordan and the Jordanians now living there as a result, known as West Bank Palestinians).

Additionally, it is not disputed that Jordan shelled Israel before any Israeli guns were aimed at Jordan during the Six-Day War in 1967, so the West Bank was land that Israel won in a defensive conflict. International law, as scholar Julius Stone wrote, considers Israel’s actions perfectly lawful — an obvious but important edict.

International law, he wrote in International Law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, “does not so forbid [taking land], in particular, when the force is used to stop an aggressor, for the effect of such prohibition would be to guarantee to all potential aggressors that, even if their aggression failed, all territory lost in the attempt would be automatically returned to them. Such a rule would be absurd to the point of lunacy. There is no such rule.”

Which means Haaretz, the New York Times, et al. are wrong about Asheri and his fellow Itamar residents. They’re Israelis. And so are the Jews in the oldest Jewish community in the world, Hebron. And the tumultuous modern history of Jews in and around Shechem (now home mostly to a large Palestinian settlement called Nablus) makes them no less Israeli. Same goes for the flourishing Jewish community in Ariel, which is separated from Jerusalem by random Palestinian settlements along the way but is of great value to the state and the Jewish people.

And what about Jerusalemites? They’re Israeli, too! Despite this, in January, just before President George W. Bush was to visit Israel, Condoleezza Rice admonished Israel over a planned housing complex in Jerusalem called Har Homa. “Har Homa,” Rice carped, “is a settlement the United States has opposed from the very beginning.” The very beginning of what? On July 16, 1997, the U.N. voted to criticize the housing project. The United States voted against that resolution.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) offers the reasons why then-U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson voted with the Israelis, instead of voting against them or even simply abstaining. First, the land is 1,850 dunams, about 460 acres, which the Israeli government acquired via eminent domain, and 1,400 of the 1,850 dunams were owned by Jews. Much of that land was owned by Jews prior to 1948. Every single dunam of the entire planned housing project is currently vacant — not a single home would have to be knocked down nor anyone displaced.

Additionally, in the Oslo Accords, Jerusalem is specifically separated from settlements: “1. ... the jurisdiction of the Council will cover West Bank and Gaza Strip territory as a single territorial unit, except for: a. issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status
negotiations: Jerusalem, settlements, ... (Interim Agreement, Article XVII).” Building in Jerusalem is not only a feature of the final status agreements (not the interim agreements or Declaration of Principles), but it is also a distinct feature from settlements.

Fortunately Rice, whose strange ruling on Har Homa contradicts Bush’s opinion on the matter, managed to defuse the situation when she couldn’t even answer questions about building in Jerusalem. For example, reporters asked her, do you consider other Jewish neighborhoods outside the Green Line, such as Gilo and Ramot, to be “settlements?”

“The important point here is that one reason that we need to have an agreement is so that we can stop having this discussion about what belongs to Israel and what doesn’t,” she responded.

In other words, she has no idea.

But the answer is that while Jerusalem has the greatest significance for Jews and the Jewish state, Jews have every right, as Israelis, to live in the West Bank, and the brave men and women of the IDF have every right to defend them. Terrorism against Jews in the West Bank is murder, and it cannot be justified or explained away any more than the Mercaz Harav massacre in Jerusalem in March. The Palestinians want Tel Aviv as much as they want Ariel or Hebron or Beersheba, and they want West Jerusalem cleared of Jews, too. That, Mr. Burston, is what Husam Taysir Dwayat, the 30-year-old driver of the bulldozer and resident of a southeast Jerusalem neighborhood, was doing.

Walid Shoebat, the former PLO terrorist turned Israeli advocate once said: “There are only two choices when it comes to terrorism. The first is to make excuses for it. The second is to say there is absolutely no excuse for it. There is no third choice.”

Settler, soldier, secular, or scholar, the second choice should always be our first response.

{This column first appeared in the July 18, 2008 issue of The Jewish State.}

Presidents find favor in the Waiver; we share the blame

Though "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem..." has become a near-ubiquitous reference point for discussions about the Israeli capital, there is another Psalm that rings poignant with an upcoming ignominious anniversary.

"Behold, your foes are in an uproar, and those who hate you have raised their head," warns Psalm 83. "They said, 'Come, let us cut them off from nationhood, so that the name of Israel will not be remembered any longer'."

May 31 should be the ninth anniversary of the opening of the United States Embassy in Jerusalem; instead, it will mark the ninth anniversary of nothingness carefully constructed, lies carefully crafted, and failures shamefully abetted.

It will mark nine years since Senators Bob Dole, Jon Kyl, and Joseph Lieberman saw insulting proof that they had overestimated Jewish support for recognition of Jerusalem's Israeli sovereignty.

The Psalm quoted above does not mention Jerusalem, but rather "nationhood," and we should never hesitate to equate the two. Because on Passover, we do not say "next year in Tel Aviv"; after the '67 war, we did not sing "Ramat Gan of gold"; we do not celebrate Yom Herzliya Pituach.

We should revere every Israeli city as hallowed ground. But Jerusalem, whether under Israeli sovereignty or not, should be treated as the beating heart among the organs of Jewish unity.

The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, sponsored by Dole and passed overwhelmingly in both houses of Congress, states, among other provisions, that Jerusalem is the "capital of the State of Israel" and "the spiritual center of Judaism". It also declared that by mid-1999, the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv should be complete.

After the BBC last year apologized for calling Jerusalem Israel's capital, I asked Alan Dershowitz if there were some provision in international law regulating a state's designation of its capital that perhaps I didn't know about.

Dershowitz smiled at the absurdity that news outlets like the BBC required my question to be anything other than rhetorical. He told me that any nation may set its own capital, and to deny such basic rights to Israel was the uncivil union of hypocrisy and anti-Zionism.

So, if Jerusalem is Israel's capital, and the Embassy Act states that "Each sovereign nation, under international law and custom, may designate its own capital", then what's the problem? It's the escape clause, called the Presidential Waiver, which states that the president may suspend the action for six months if he believes it will "protect the national security interests of the United States."

Former President Bill Clinton and current President George Bush have both used the waiver every six months. Clinton, having promised to review the situation after Camp David, presumably put his intention to move the embassy in the same pile as his promise to commute Jonathan Pollard's sentence. Bush's hands-off approach to the peace process, often for the better, unfortunately seems to include keeping his hands off the embassy.

But to blame only Clinton and Bush would be a mistake. The Israeli government has routinely undermined efforts to move the embassy, afraid it will upset their Palestinian negotiating partners. In 1995, then-Communications Minister Shulamit Aloni told the New York Times that American congressional support for moving the embassy to Jerusalem "has a smell of provocation." Charming.

The powerhouse American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) admitted that it officially opposed such a bill, but once the bill was drafted and voted on, former AIPAC head Neal Sher said AIPAC was "boxed-in" and forced to support it. At the time of the bill's floor vote, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations did not take a position on the bill, and refused to endorse an earlier version of it. The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) took a strong stance supporting the bill, but its pleas failed to inspire even an echo.

The Times picked up on that lead and ran with it; Times columnist Thomas Friedman accused Kyl and Lieberman of "exploit[ing] the issue for Jewish votes."

Other news organizations carried that mantle. CNN, in its news story about Bush promising to move the embassy in 2000, explained snidely that "Jerusalem is claimed as its new capital by Israel". Washington Post columnist Richard "Israel itself is a mistake" Cohen wrote that moving the embassy would only "win points wherever Dole gathers campaign funds" since Jerusalem's "political status is disputed" -- though the embassy would be in undisputedly Israeli west Jerusalem.

"Tel Aviv is charmless. For the time being, though, it will have to do," Cohen declared.

One ally in the media was Times columnist William Safire. Safire had no patience for the "national security" waiver, since, as he wrote in July 1996, Clinton had presented no national security threat. Instead, Clinton's spokesman stated that the waiver was being exercised "to ensure that no steps are taken that could be interpreted as pre-empting the negotiating process."

Safire fired back that such an "excuse for delay is nowhere in the law". For that matter, Safire said, the substance of the argument was based on a false premise anyway -- that peace negotiations would be upset. He quoted Lieberman as pointing out that in any final status agreement, part of Jerusalem would be Israeli.

"Our site would be on Israeli land," Lieberman said, infusing the discussion with a refreshing dose of logic and fair play. "Let peace negotiations proceed and let the U.S. law be carried out."

Lieberman wasn't alone. A year earlier, then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich marveled at the opposition to what he thought was patently obvious.

"I think it is absurd for us to single out Israel as a country where we define what we think the capital should be," Gingrich told Israeli media in 1995.

Thus, the desire to move the embassy was bi-partisan -- even at the N.Y. Times! So what held it up? Safire pulled no punches.

"In Jerusalem's 3,000th year, Israel's new Government is eager for America's acknowledgment of its capital," Safire wrote in 1996. "Plain justice and the new realism demand it. The last obstacle is Mr. Clinton's reluctance to obey the law."

And that reluctance to obey the law has been passed down. It, too, has become bi-partisan, and a tradition in the Oval Office.

But maybe it really was a national security issue. The vehemently anti-Israel Middle East International warned of, in an editorial during the 1984 Reagan-Mondale election campaign, what amounted to thinly veiled threats of retaliation in the Arab world should the embassy be moved to Jerusalem.

"The reaction to the move in Muslim countries would be catastrophic," the editors wrote. "It is easy to imagine the attacks on American embassies, the rupture of diplomatic relations, and all the rest that would follow."

"All the rest" is a diplomatic way of putting it, but I think the message gets through.

The editors did, however, manage to stumble upon what unfortunately has been confirmed in the almost-quarter century since.

"Supporting the move to Jerusalem," the editors wrote, "is one of those easy gestures, "like being in favor of a united Ireland, or approving of motherhood and disapproving of sin, which cost the maker of them nothing."

In 1995, Senator John McCain co-sponsored the bill, and during her 2000 Senate run Hillary Clinton said she supported moving the embassy ASAP. When I asked McCain's campaign what his official position is on the issue, a spokeswoman reiterated that McCain co-sponsored and voted for the original legislation. McCain was in Jerusalem in March of this year and stated unequivocally that it is Israel's capital; would he commit to moving the embassy there? His campaign wouldn't get that specific with me.

A Clinton staffer, before setting off on the hunt for the campaign's official stance, told me she had just been to Jerusalem less than a year ago and remembered visiting the U.S. Consulate General there -- a reminder that there is at least some form of official recognition in the holy city. Senator Barack Obama has yet to respond to my query in any form.

So, is that it for moving the embassy? Will politicians no longer be cavalier about tossing out that promise?

They may not feel they need to make the promise anymore, and that's probably a good thing. But what about us? Can we so easily be absolved of our role in letting the issue fade?

Lieberman once exclaimed that, if need be, he and former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott would move the embassy to Jerusalem "ourselves, brick by brick!" Yet, when the mouthpieces of the American Jewish community picked up their shovels, it was to facilitate the issue's burial.

After a nearly 2,000-year struggle to reclaim it, Jerusalem shouldn't be taken so lightly. And on May 31, it shouldn't be forgotten.

(Originally published in the May 23, 2008 edition of The Jewish State.)

Who are these unmasked men?

Question: Who are Martin Kramer, Daniel Pipes, Peter Berkowitz, Nile Gardiner, and Norman Podhoretz?

Answer: They are Norman Podhoretz, Martin Kramer, Daniel Pipes, Peter Berkowitz, and Nile Gardiner, respectively.

Confused? So is Newsweek, the author of this pictograph-riddle.

Newsweek, the weekly personality tabloid, recently went after presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani with disastrous results. Not only was the article — which focused on his team of experienced and highly respected conservative advisers — embarrassingly inaccurate, the magazine offered a sidebar with the pictures, names, and descriptions of the six top advisers to help its reader(s) keep track.

Except five out of six headshots are mislabled; only Robert Kasten's photo matches his name and description.


Anyone who still reads Newsweek knows by now that the magazine's writers and editors have never heard of Republicans; they have, however, heard of "neoconservatives" and have been known to appoint "neocons" sans research or contact with said "neocons".

Which makes it even less acceptable to have made such a huge mistake — if you only know one group ("neoconservatives") you should at least know that group. Newsweek admittedly knows nothing of the one thing it claims to know anything about.

Of course, the magazine's hatred of these fine people has to do with the fact that most of them are clear-thinking experts on Middle Eastern affairs. What is striking, however, is that the MSM has championed defeat in Iraq for so long, they are actually getting bored; it's time for them to defeat any prospects for peace in Israel — which is why champions of logic and reasoning like Pipes, Kramer, and Podhoretz are in their crosshairs.

Giuliani recently questioned the wisdom of establishing an independent Palestinian state when it's clear that that state would sponsor terrorism against Israel and the United States. That is a logical approach to the situation, but one that earns you the label "neoconservative" by the MSM.

As president, Giuliani would be careful not to undermine the safety and security of the United States and its important strategic and moral allies. But the MSM isn't concerned with the United States or its allies, so why would Giuliani, who is steadfast in his loyalty to Americans and our Israeli friends, appeal to Newsweek?

Newsweek is a New York-based publication, and New Yorkers are famously protective of the man whose accomplishments as mayor of NYC are still not even fully appreciated by many in the tri-state area. (He helped NJ and NYC simultaneously by catching welfare double-dippers, and his use of the trigger/broken windows crime theory to clean up some of the uncomprehendingly dirty and dangerous parts of the city was more creative and intellectually impressive than most people give him credit for.)

Yet, all it took for the MSM to turn on him completely was his brainy-yet-tough approach to brokering the Arab-Israeli conflict only in such a way that would not sign the Jewish state's death warrant.

Time Warner, Inc., is also based in New York. Yet its current events magazine TIME decided to report on the upcoming Annapolis peace parley from... Cairo. The article, titled "Can Annapolis Forge a Mideast Peace?" unsurprisingly includes exactly zero quotes or comments from Israeli sources.

What it does include, however, are 14 separate references to "Arab sources". Only three are named, and they are the peaceniks Bashar al-Assad (Syria's dictator), Ahmed Abul-Gheit (Egypt's foreign minister), and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal — and those references are either attributed to other news sources or public statements.

The only reference to Israeli points of view is the following sentence, written by the piece's author: "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apparently prefers a looser conference agenda, one unlikely to commit to fresh negotiations."

Some form of the word "skepticism" was used three times in the article — never in a quote.

Arab "worry" or "concern" about lack of Israeli or American effort and concessions is referenced four times, and the author, Scott MacLeod, even uses the term "separation wall" to describe the Israeli security fence.

The term "photo-op" is thrown around, as are doubts about Israel's willingness to make peace and President George W. Bush's true intentions. The author refers to Hamas as Fatah's Islamic rival, failing to note that Hamas is actually Islamist, and that Fatah is at best Islamic (clearly not secular). And MacLeod doesn't feel it necessary to challenge either the Saudi prince's implication that Israel's settlements are illegal, or the Arab self-portrait as victims should the parley fail and the region descend into violence. (When was the last time Israelis launched an intifada?)

In other words, MacLeod wrote the article not by paying attention to the news, but by looking at his MSM handbook and relying on (only!) unnamed Arab sources.

So, memo to Giuliani: If you are skeptical about the creation of a Palestinian state, the media will come after you, (A) because you're not Arab or a terrorist apologist and (B) because you and your "neoconservative" advisers only want to go after enemies who have waged war against us.

Memo to everyone: If you want to become a mainstream media darling in the the United States, start by attacking our allies.

Otherwise, Newsweek doesn't even want to know your name.

Let me help you, Shimon

From CNN's God's Jewish Warriors:

President Shimon Peres: The legal advisor of the Foreign Ministry (MFA) doesn't tell us how to defend our lives.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour: Are you saying Theodore Meron was wrong [in saying that the settlements post-1967 violated the Fourth Geneva Convention]?

SP: I don't know if he was right or wrong from a legal point of view; but he was wrong from a pragmatic point of view. Israel was under a steady attack all the time.

CA: So, just to help me understand this, for the Israeli leadership at the time, pragmatism triumphed over international law.

SP: What you call pragmatism was, in our eyes, —

CA: (Interrupting and pointing disrespectfully) You just said pragmatism.

SP: (Cool as a cucumber) Pragmatism in the sense of security, of defending our lives, yes.

Thankfully, Amanpour's embarrassing bias, lack of even the most basic knowledge of Middle Eastern history, and the overall worthlessness of the settler-bashing project called "God's Jewish Warriors" have been exposed by any number of watchdogs, media critics, and even fellow members of the media. The series on the whole, "God's Warriors", has been panned for the same reasons.

But this particular conversation was problematic for me, because Peres, who handled himself so well it was unclear as to whether he even knew who Amanpour was (lucky him), intimated that Meron's opinion, later proven to be incorrect, might indeed be true.

The truth is that, once upon a time, Peres — an intelligent, eminently likable, and experienced public servant — would never have answered the question this way, but he has taken the role of peacemaker and doesn't seem to want to offend the purveyors of popular opinion, whose latest fad is to blame the settlers and religious Zionists for, well, everything. (I'm anticipating the next JFK docudrama to lay out how Ariel Sharon ordered the Gaza disengagement after discovering the settlers' role in the assassination. Nevermind that Gaza wouldn't fall to Israel for another four years after the murder, facts and numbers don't bother these people.)

Here's how the conversation should have gone:

Christiane Amanpour: Are you saying Theodore Meron was wrong?

Shimon Peres: Yes, he was. And here's why: You see, strange lady, the British Mandate states that the government "shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land." The Mandate, as your CNN anti-Zionist programmers should have loaded onto the hard drive of your android brain computer, referred to the entirety of what is now Israel, Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.

Furthermore, you anti-religious interloper, the Mandate made clear that unless the nations that inherited Mandated property directly from the British Crown renounced their rights under the Mandate, the Mandated rights would continue under the new governments. Israel has not renounced its settlement rights, and, according to the Mandate, CNN "reporters" aren't permitted to do so for them.

Additionally, Professor Stephen Schwebel, former judge on the Hague’s International Court of Justice, wrote that since "The last legal sovereignty over the territories was that of the League of Nations Palestine Mandate which encouraged Jewish settlement of the land", calling the settlements "illegal" has no basis in international law.

CA: (Pointing angrily at Peres, in a huff) But what about UN Resolution 242? Doesn't it state that the evil Zionist occupiers should withdraw from all of the territories captured?

SP: (Pinching himself to make sure he is awake and this woman is for real) Um, no, it doesn't. former US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Eugene Rostow helped craft the resolution, and pointed out in an essay you should have read that the resolution was written the way it was for a reason.
The resolution doesn't state that Israel should withdraw from "all" territories, "the" territories, or "all the" territories. It states Israel should withdraw "from territories". It also makes clear that which territories Israel withdraws from is up to the Israeli and Palestinian governments to mutually agree upon.

CA: (Alternately jumping up and down and stomping on the floor) But doesn't the resolution explicitly state that, as occupiers, the Zionists are forbidden from wearing any head covering that conceals their horns?

SP: (Yawing — he was actually asleep this time, but was woken by all the jumping and stomping) No, it doesn't say that either.

CA: (Now eating her chair, foaming at the mouth, and screaming) But Israel is occupying the territories!

SP: (Looking around the room for Ashton Kutcher, who he is now certain is "Punking" him) Actually, no, and please keep your voice down, this is a civilized society. As former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Meir Shamgar wrote, the Geneva Convention "is based on the assumption that there had been a sovereign who was ousted and that he had been a legitimate sovereign."
Obviously, since there had been no "legitimate sovereign" in between British rule and Israeli rule, there could not possibly be an "occupation" — no one is being occupied.

Back to our friend Schwebel, who wrote in the American Journal of International Law:

"Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title."

So, since Egypt and Jordan had illegally occupied Gaza and the West Bank, respectively, prior to the 1967 war, Israel's claim over those areas is stronger than either of those countries'. Though, as we all know, Egypt and Jordan want nothing to do with those territories. One thing is for sure, according to international law, the territories are least of all Palestinian — no one involved has less of a claim to that land.

CA: (Now about two inches from Peres's nose and screaming in his face ceaselessly)...

SP: (Exiting with his bodyguards, leaving Amanpour screaming at the empty chair where Peres was sitting) This was fun.

There's no place like home: in praise of the pro-Zionist, pro-Torah rabbis and soldiers

Heroes. גבורים.

It isn't surprising that Ehud Barak doesn't know a hero when he sees one, or that he would take such pleasure in a group of them being imprisoned for, say, 28 days.

That's because Barak has it backwards; he suffers from a sort of historical dyslexia.

I'm talking, of course, about the 12 IDF soldiers, many of whom were sentenced to 28 days in prison and dismissed from their combat units, who refused to assist in the forced "evacuation" of two families from the Hebron marketplace.

The soldiers followed their moral compass to their rabbi, who confirmed what they had already suspected: the mission, to help force Jews — at gunpoint, if need be — from their God-given (and legal) homeland, was just plain wrong.

The fact that the soldiers consulted their rabbi set off a firestorm of anti-religious sentiment in the government that would make any atheist blush. Some said the supporting rabbis should be imprisoned, too; some said the military establishment should end its support for the Hesder program; and some said religious Jews should be scattered among the rest of the IDF units so they could not undermine its missions.

While I am certainly not condoning mass insubordination in the IDF, some of the statements made by members of the government and media show just how little they know about Israeli (and Jewish) history.

The demand made by Zehava Gal-On (Meretz Party) that Hesder yeshivot be immediately dismantled showed her complete disregard for the Torah. In the Talmud (that's Torah, too, Zehava!) we learn repeatedly that the protectors of the Land of Israel and its people are first and foremost its Torah scholars — those who have dedicated their lives to spiritual pursuits. So a yeshiva that teaches the Torah lifestyle and also enables its students to serve in the military is the best of both worlds: the physical and spiritual defense — of the highest level and merit — of the Jewish State.

Likewise, Knesset Education Committee chairman Michael Melchior (Labor-Meimad), apparently with a straight face, claimed that "the soldiers, parents, and rabbis are cynically using the Torah for political aims."

Melchior, of course, was using the age-old "I'm rubber and you're glue" defense. The soldiers, parents, and rabbis involved in the incident were the only ones not performing political grandstanding. They were actually using the Torah for Torah. The government, now apparently in the business of appeasing and defending the Arabs who murdered Hebron Jews less than 80 years ago and stole their land, was willing to offer Jewish humiliation if it helped them obtain some political goodwill. Of course, it will not, but that is hardly the point.

OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Gadi Shamni, who ordered the prison terms and dismissals, said the soldiers "undermined the basic foundations of the IDF."

This lie — along with the claim made by some in the public that just as Left-leaning soldiers cannot refuse to serve in the territories, so, too, Right-thinking soldiers may not refuse to evacuate Jews from those same territories — must be dealt with immediately and severely.

You see, this is where the tower of babble run by Barak has it backwards. Jews came to pre-state Israel to live in their biblical homeland, and risked their lives to do so. They often came with nothing, and at times had virtually no protection whatsoever from the Arabs who not only supported Hitler's game plan, but attempted to make pre-state Israel Judenrein before Hitler tried it in Germany.

At first, these idealistic, heroic Jews didn't live in Israel because they had the protection of a fierce military establishment, they lived there despite the lack of any such protection. They essentially created a state; they formed schools, built hospitals, even learned to farm the desert.

Through it all, the pioneers were routinely victimized by violent anti-Semitic pogroms, had their land taken from them (now that it was actually, thanks to them, worth something), and, through inspiring self-sacrifice, helped found the State of Israel.

Then came the brave pre-state soldiers followed by the Israel Defense Forces. To protect them. To serve them. To safeguard the Zionists.

Refusing to serve in any military operations in the territories cannot be lumped into one category; policing terrorist breeding grounds cannot — MUST not — be compared to removing fellow Jews from their homes at gunpoint.

And it is the height of stupidity and arrogance for Barak to pretend that what he ordered the soldiers to do is anything like what Ariel Sharon ordered during the disengagement from Gaza.
While Sharon's disengagement plan certainly appears to be nothing short of a complete and total disaster, just like everything Barak has ever laid his hands on, the similarities end there.

Because in Judaism, intentions count for something. Sharon's intentions were to protect the Jews of Gaza and the Negev, just like when Sharon recommended that, during peace negotiations with Egypt, the government order the removal of Jewish settlements in Sharm al Sheik. And by the way, it is now up to Barak, as defense minister, to carry out Sharon's plan and protect the Jews of Sderot and other communities within missile range of Gaza. He's really doing a hell of a job, isn't he?

But just who is Barak protecting in Hebron? Himself? Maybe. Jews? Absolutely not. Arabs living on stolen land? Indeed.

While Arik Sharon's policies may have failed, his heart was heavy with the suffering of his people. Barak can better relate to the Tin Man, since both are in need of any heart at all.

Barak is also currently holding the nation hostage; the people have no confidence in this government, and would much prefer new elections, and Barak is the only person who can bring those about, by leading Labor out of this coalition.

But Barak is afraid to do so, because he plans to run for Prime Minister and fears his likely opponent, Binyamin Netanyahu. I guess that makes him more like the Cowardly Lion.

Additionally, while Bibi is campaigning by presenting education and economic plans, leading the Western charge to divest from Iran, and meeting with Tony Blair and opposition leadership in Syria, Barak is campaigning by telling people that he is, to be sure, not Bibi. That makes Barak sound like the Scarecrow, in desperate need of a brain.

The rest of us hope to be more like Dorothy, who wakes up to the comical realization that it was all just a frightening dream.

Until then, maybe we could all benefit by listening to those darn Jew-loving rabbis more often.

UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention that I haven't made myself crystal clear about something here, and that has led to some confusion about my point.

I absolutely support the soldiers' punishment. I don't want them receiving any special treatment from the IDF. There would be nothing heroic about what they did if such missions were voluntary. But knowing the harsh punishment that would come their way if they followed through on their threats to refuse their orders, they still consulted their rabbi and did the right thing.
For that, they deserve our praise.

It is the punishment that causes the concerns of the government — that soldiers will randomly refuse orders — to ring hollow, not least because the threats of punishment, both here in Hebron and in Gaza, were enough to prevent mass insubordination in both cases, despite the threat of such action.

{If anyone wants to know what's really hurting the IDF, they should read the Jerusalem Post's article on Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi's attempts to reform the army. It seems Ashkenazi is the right man for the job, though one of the problems he's dealing with seems to be (though clearly not the largest problem, to be fair) the deterioration of troops' morale after the disengagement from Gaza, and others like it, like Hebron.}

The soldiers should follow through on their threats to refuse to march Jews out of their homes, just as the IDF brass should follow through on their threats to punish those soldiers.

Of course, we can't expect such consistent honesty from government officials like Barak, but we can and should expect it from the IDF, the world's most moral army.

Textbook case of Leftist propaganda

I have to say, this is a first. I have never before been compelled to write something about Israel because of the Quakers.

But the Quakers are owed the lion’s share of credit for this post, because at first I was willing to ignore the news that Labor activist/education minister Yuli Tamir approved the following line in a third-grade textbook meant for Israeli Arabs: “The Arabs call the war ‘nakba,’ a war of disaster and loss, while the Jews call it ‘the War of Independence.’”

The line does three things that makes us question Tamir’s competence as an Israeli education minister (though her resume is now picture-perfect for that same position in Ramallah or Gaza City).

First, the line puts the Arab version of the war before the Israeli version; second, the line lends legitimacy to any discussion about what to name the war, as if it were a personal preference issue and not a state history issue; and third, the line offers a creative definition of the Arabic word “nakba” — it does not mean a “war of disaster and loss”, it means “catastrophe.” There is a significant difference, as well as a simple accuracy issue that shouldn’t slip past an education minister.

Now, back to those Quakers. I wasn’t going to write anything about this, because I naïvely assumed that the world understood that the use of the word nakba was simply an attempt by Arab propagandists to rewrite history — mostly, in fact, to mislead their own people.

Along comes the American Friends Service Committee, a peacenik, campfire, Sesame Street clone of any number of worldwide dovish support groups. In its own words:

"Founded by Quakers in 1917 to provide conscientious objectors with an opportunity to aid civilian war victims, AFSC's work attracts the support and partnership of people of many races, religions, and cultures.
AFSC's work is based on the Quaker belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice."

Fantastic. They even have a Nobel Peace Prize. Another thing they have is a glossary of terms related to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Here is their definition of nakba: “‘The Catastrophe’ — Refers to the loss of Palestine to the Israelis in the 1948 War.”

Wow. So “Palestine” was lost to “the Israelis” in the war? That sounds terrible. It’s a good thing it’s not true. Not only was the land divided and independence declared before the war, Palestine wasn’t lost to anybody, and the way this is worded, well, it’s a denotation nakba.

The definition is an absolute disaster, and it’s one of the reasons many in the government called for Tamir’s job. Because Arab propaganda spreads so quickly and so thoroughly, Tamir’s nakba textbook description is at best foolish ineptitude and at worst treasonous. There is likely a BBC desk job awaiting Tamir after her work here is done.

One imagines what else is in the “history” book. Does it describe Passover as a holiday when according to Jews we spread haroseth on our matzah but according to Arabs we spread the blood of Christian babies? Does it refer to Jerusalem as al-Quds? Or maybe it offers one of the now-popular and unequivocally ridiculous pieces of propaganda characterizing Jesus as a Palestinian (he was Judean, born in Nazareth long before it was called Syria Palaestina or Palaestina).

The truth is that the Arabs don’t need Tamir’s help; they write their own textbooks — dishonest manuals of hate, racism, and corruption — and far better than what Tamir can write for them. I would suggest she read them, but I don’t want to give her any ideas.

It’s really just self-serving politics; Tamir has a chance to use her platform to release the nakba of her poisonous left-wing imagination.

A new low for terrorist apologists

There is a worthwhile article from today’s Jerusalem Post on Augustus Richard Norton’s new public relations campaign for Hezbollah. Norton is, of course, calling it a “book”, a word that looks great on a resume.

Norton is a professor of international relations and anthropology at Boston University who has just published “Hezbollah: A Short History”, a whopping 184-page epic about the “complex” nature of Iran’s proxy terror club, though one would think that this magnificent ode to the lighter side of murder — about the size of a feature story in The New Yorker magazine — would be evidence enough that Norton has looked in all the wrong places for “complexity.”

Either way, Jonathan Schanzer’s review in the Post, titled "Answering the call of jihad", exposes Norton as a fraud. I encourage everyone to read the review, so I won’t quote much of it here, but I will point out that according to Schanzer 24 of the 159 pages of written text in the book mention Hezbollah’s impressive record of killing innocent people — what most of us call terrorism, though Norton likes the word resistance.

But this book comes straight from the Leopard Doesn’t Change Its Spots Department. Norton was interviewed by Harper’s Magazine one year ago yesterday, during the Second Lebanon War, which was sparked by a Hezbollah cross-border raid in which three Israeli soldiers were murdered and two were kidnapped (Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, the captives, are still missing, and Hezbollah has provided no signs of life).

While Norton’s paid work is done for Boston University, it is his volunteer work that is truly spectacular. A long-time member of Hezbollah’s street team, Norton was called on by Harper’s to explain the war to the masses.

The magazine’s Ken Silverstein asked Norton six questions. The article was titled Six Questions for Augustus Richard Norton on Lebanon.

The first question was “Why did Hezbollah snatch the Israeli prisoners last week?”

In his answer, he showed just why he makes the big bucks as an educator.
“I believe Hezbollah acted autonomously,” he said, claiming that all Hezbollah and Iran share are “a worldview.”

I assume most readers couldn’t stomach the rest of the interview, but those that finished reading found out a whole lot about Norton’s own funhouse mirror-reflection worldview.

For example, Norton says that Israel struck back with force because Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wanted the Israeli defense establishment to hit Iran “indirectly.” But wait, don’t Iran and Hezbollah only share “a worldview”? I was confused, but not as confused as Norton, who said that Hezbollah’s rockets were an impediment to Israel’s coming attempt to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Norton then said that Israel’s reaction was “grossly excessive”, and proceeded to lie about how many Lebanese civilians had been killed and why.

And then Norton finally unmasked himself. After he made the following statement, I exhaled, relieved that he had finally put any credibility he could have possibly had as an academic, informed, sane intellectual. He said Israel had made a profound mistake in another example of “its vainglorious attempts to consolidate hegemony over its neighbors”.

Norton has become the Andromeda Strain of terrorist apologists: at first seemingly dangerous to the point of provoking overreaction, then morphing himself into something so ridiculously insignificant as to become unworthy of anyone’s time or attention.