Monthly Archives: November 2009

Rabbinical News

Posted on November 29, 2009 | 10 comments

The sun shone brighter not long ago, and all earthlings had more pep in their step, with the news that a new rabbinical organization was launched – the International Rabbinic Fellowship. Ostensibly, it was formed in order to counter what they perceive as the too-dominant influence of Roshei Yeshiva in psak (Jewish legal decision-making) and communal life. In reality, it is an organization with a narrow agenda – to push the envelope of halacha so wide that it can accommodate the demands of feminists, homosexuals, and other assorted causes blowing in the cultural winds, and in a way that it senses that neither the Rabbinical Council of America nor the “right-wing” Yeshiva world will, properly, ever tolerate.

Ordinarily, the founding of a new rabbinical organization would not be an occasion for comment, or even much general interest, as Jews are well known for organizations that are either redundant or promote – even just for vanity – the interests of one person. And since not all doctors belong to the AMA, not all lawyers belong to the ABA, and not all seasoned citizens belong to the AARP, why should all Orthodox Rabbis belong to any of the current five, six or seven existing rabbinical organizations ? If in the rest of Jewish communal life, the slightest difference in tinge, color or philosophy warrants a new organization (with overhead costs, officers, fund-raising, dinners, etc.), why should Rabbis be different ? Indeed, everyone knows (although few admit) that the quest for “unity” in Jewish life usually means “agree with ME or I will go my own way” (and everyone is a ME to himself). As such, the formation of any new organization is rather unsurprising.

There is an interest, though, in highlighting the stated objectives of this new organization, if only out of a desire to propagate the Torah truth and safeguard the Mesora, as I see it. If several dozen Rabbis find fault with the ideological direction of the more than 1000 member RCA, not to mention the thousands of Orthodox Rabbis who are considered as part of the right-wing world, it is legitimate to inquire as to the nature of the disagreements, and whether they contain any substance.

Clearly, they find the influence of the “Roshei Yeshiva” as stultifying – certainly those in the Yeshiva world but perhaps even most at Yeshiva University. They are perceived – probably justifiably – as resistant to the “changes” in Jewish life, first made by the Conservative movement in the last century but now embraced as a legitimate expression of “Torah” by proponents of this new organization. Actually, the rivalry between Roshei Yeshiva and shul (or town) Rabbis is not new, but was a staple of Jewish communal life in Eastern Europe. There, the balance of power favored the town Rabbis – and not the Roshei Yeshiva – as the town Rabbis were considered both scholars and pragmatists, and were more actively involved in people’s lives. Indeed, in Europe, it was considered more prestigious to be a town Rabbi than a Rosh Yeshiva.

Today, the balance of power has shifted somewhat, and Roshei Yeshiva are, if not more respected (I have no complaints in that regard), then at least widely construed as more reliable and consistent interpreters of halacha. This is perhaps an over-generalization, and is shaped by three distinct phenomena: one, many people do not have a Rosh Yeshiva, and for them their Rabbi remains the exclusive address for Torah advice and guidance (that is a good part of my job); two, many students who spend years learning with a particular teacher develop a warm personal relationship with him, which is quite natural and understandable; three, Roshei Yeshiva generally train the pulpit Rabbis, and the burden of proof is on the Rabbi to justify why he deviated from his teacher’s path.

It is not my place to judge the relative Torah scholarship of Roshei Yeshiva vs. pulpit Rabbis, as there are many pulpit Rabbis (and Roshei Yeshiva) who are fine, outstanding Talmidei Chachamim. To be a pulpit Rabbi or a Rosh Yeshiva requires a different set of skills. Because pulpit Rabbis live in the grass roots, their decisions are often rooted in a greater awareness of communal concerns; conversely, Roshei Yeshiva can be in an “ivory tower,” unaware of how their decisions will affect a community beyond the individual who questioned them. Even to suggest that the world of Roshei Yeshiva is monolithic, or that their decisions are necessarily correct, would be misleading. And no one is infallible.

But the pulpit Rabbi is also subject to pressures that the Rosh Yeshiva is not, and therefore Roshei Yeshiva today have become – fairly or not – perceived as more coherent defenders of the Mesora against the onslaught of modern cultures and its insatiable demands on halacha and minhag Yisrael. Undoubtedly, that underlies the discomfort (distaste ?) this new organization feels toward the authority of the “Roshei Yeshiva” who have not been forthcoming on issues of importance to them.

Three examples suffice: the nascent movement among some liberal-Orthodox Rabbis to find a place for practicing homosexuals in Orthodox life, usually by embracing the politicized conclusions of academics that homosexuality is innate, and it is therefore wrong – even immoral – to term homosexuality an abomination or homosexuals sinners. I’ll address that another time, but the attempt to accept homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle, and even support the legalization of homosexual marriage, may be an expression of sensitivity and compassion on some level but is clearly driven by the popular culture. That itself erodes the respect that these Rabbis think should be theirs, and increases in inverse proportion the ire they feel towards the “Roshei Yeshiva.” That is to say, they lose credibility as representatives of Torah when they adopt such trendy views, and founding five or ten new organizations will not change that one iota. Simply put, the mass of Torah-faithful Klal Yisrael will not stand for it.

Secondly, “liberal” Orthodox Rabbis call for relaxed standards for converts, and dissent from the standards promulgated several years ago by the RCA. They would rather revert to the practices of the recent past, where Rabbis were often compelled to look away from insincerity, or pretend that halachic commitment existed where it patently did not. See http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/30621 . But an individual Rabbi retains the autonomy to pronounce a particular restaurant kosher or not, based on standards that others can accept or reject; he does not have the right to dictate to the nation of Israel who will properly be termed a citizen. (I refer here not to the State of Israel but to the Jewish people. Membership in the Jewish people is not determined by the predilections of individual rabbis but by generally-accepted standards. Nor was the State of Israel endowed with the authority to declare “who is a Jew;” they can only decide “who is an Israeli.”)

The third issue is that (now) century-old bugaboo of women’s rights and feminism. I have no doubt that the International Rabbinic Fellowship will find a way to admit women as members, and as Rabbis, and thereby in the short-term necessitate a change in their name (already!) to International Rabbinic Fellowship and Galship (IRFG).

More seriously, I sense their inner turmoil. They would like to ordain women as rabbis, but fear the obvious repercussions. Similarly, they must chafe at the mechitza, women’s inadmissibility as witnesses, judges, or in a minyan, or the restrictions on women in public prayer, or the very notion that the Torah ideal is based on a division of roles and responsibilities between men and women (analogous to the division between kohanim, leviim and yisraelim). They recognize the “mechitza” as a political statement – a clear sign of Orthodoxy in a synagogue, as lack of a mechitza is a clear sign of non-Orthodoxy. So they are stuck – emotionally, intellectually, halachically and spiritually – and therefore bristle at organizations – RCA, Young Israel, Aguda – that do not give them cover or succor, and at people – “Roshei Yeshiva” – whose authority, popularity and credibility they resent, and crave for themselves. It must be hard to explain these encroachments on the altar of egalitarianism to their constituents who have learned to expect flexibility-on-demand in halacha.

So they skirt the issues, and implausibly think they can introduce gimmicks for women (sheva brachot in English, serve as Rabbis without the title, etc.) that do not really satiate the demand for equality, and are themselves rationalized by cherry-picking halachic sources and ignoring the mesora. Women’s prayer groups and the Yoetzet movement (the latter, more understandable in Israel where the Rabbinate is largely dysfunctional) are just two examples of the straight line one can draw from the Reform ordination of women in the early 1970’s and the Conservative ordination in the 1980’s until today. What changed ? Why did Orthodoxy vehemently oppose those ordinations then, and a few support it today ? Were we sexist, male chauvinists then, and more enlightened today ? Did it take thirty years to find the sources to rationalize it ? Not at all. The secular world changed, and for those whose halachic foundations shift with every change in the secular world, their world had to change as well.

In brief, one has to line up a number of halachic ducks in a row (permitting women to learn Torah she-be-al peh, sing in public, speak before male audiences, decide matters of Jewish law, et al – each one somewhat controversial, some more controversial than others) in order to entertain these changes. The outcome is predetermined, because the psak is not based on an honest appraisal of sources but on finding the supportive sources and ignoring the rest. And then one has to wantonly discount Minhag Yisrael.

Some of my dearest colleagues who endorsed either (or both) women’s prayer groups or yoatzot (I didn’t) now find themselves on the horns of a dilemma. Each move raised expectations, each move fostered the idea that we were revising the traditional role of women in Jewish life, or entirely abandoning it as both antiquated and repugnant – and so each move just encouraged the next one and the one after that.

We can always play with halacha in an attempt to devise new roles. A husband is as capable of lighting Shabbat candles as his wife is, and usually less harried. How uplifting it would be if men went to the mikveh monthly, as well as women. Nothing wrong with that; some men go every day. We can also find a way to eat milk right after meat; we don’t, because that has no lobby. We also don’t, because that is not our tradition. The Torah – not liberal society – also determines our values, not just our practices.

The real dividing line in Jewish life today is between those who are happy with the mesora and those unhappy with the mesora. Kabbalat Ol Malchut Shamayim (acceptance of the yoke of G-d’s kingship) demands that we accept the mesora even if we deem ourselves “more enlightened;” otherwise, we – like Nadav and Avihu before us – are worshipping ourselves, and not the Almighty. And isn’t that the ultimate reality of Western man today – self-worship ? If I am unhappy with the Mesora, it is because of something within me that needs rectification. I have to bend to the Torah’s will, and not bend the Torah to suit my will. Those who live with grievances against the Torah must recognize that on some level, as Moshe once said to his flock, “…your complaints are not against us, but against G-d” (Sh’mot 16:8).

The feminist movement ravaged the American family, with skyrocketing rates of divorce that have only recently begun to level off, with a majority of children born out-of-wedlock, and with the continuing unreliability of the home as the transmitter of values. The Jewish world has suffered from this as well, and we should not look to repeat the mistakes from which American society is already retreating.

Sometimes, the answer to a she’ela is “no” – like the answer a wise parent has to give to a child on occasion. Any organization founded on the principle that a leniency can always be found to justify what we want to do (women, converts, homosexuals, Shabbat, you name it) will attract like-minded, tenuously-committed Jews but will soon be an anachronism, leaving only the questions: how much damage can it do to Jewish life ? How many well-meaning Jews will be misled into thinking that the Torah is a ball of wax that can be shaped any way they want in order to satisfy their needs ? How will pulpit Rabbis retain the respect of Torah Jews ? And how long before the Torah world rejects these notions, and this new organization merges with some form of Conservative Judaism that posited the same approach in the last century, with devastating results for Jewish life ?

The reality is that men are the transmitters of the Mesora, and therefore entrusted with responsibilities of psak and leadership. Man’s nature is such that he will not regularly seek out a female teacher of any sort – and certainly not Torah – and those who doubt this should behold the steep decline in male attendance at female-led temples. Any attempt to tamper with the Mesora will not succeed, and the very framework of this new organization will be self-marginalizing. The “Roshei Yeshiva” will reject it, and so will most of the RCA, and the Yeshiva world, and the educated young people of today – men and women – and the religious world in Israel. It will be a curiosity, like Edah that came and went. And the second reality is that women are partners in transmitting the Mesora, but with a different role, different responsibilities, and, yes, different skill sets to help them fulfill their role. Their contributions are indispensable, their growth in Torah is a marvelous development – but neither should lead to a diminution or elimination of their traditional role on which the Jewish family depends, literally, for its survival.

Should these individuals be purged from the RCA ? I am not enamored of purges, and the RCA can certainly accommodate a wide range of thinking, something natural to the study of Torah in any event. But anyone who thinks that a particular rabbinical organization no longer suits them should probably resign; I know I would. The saddest aspect is that many of the individuals involved – I am not familiar with all of them – are very talented teachers and leaders, with much to offer the Jewish people. Indeed, their greatest weakness might be a boundless love of every Jew that precludes them from inflicting on Jews the slightest pain – even the pain that comes from hearing the word “no.” With Jewish identity under attack (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/books/24jews.html?pagewanted=2&em) and the target of the most vulgar distortions and lies, we need all Jews and especially all Rabbis to strengthen the Torah and not to dilute it. We need clarity and consistency – from generation to generation. There needs to be the expectation that halacha will not change because of interest-group politics.

In America, everyone has the right to found an organization that propounds any philosophy. And everyone has the right – sometimes the obligation – to challenge that organization, to defend what is pure and holy, to expose (where possible) hidden motivations, and to underscore the beauty of our mesora – the tree of life of Torah, for those who want to grasp it.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Halacha, Machshava/Jewish Thought, Philosophy

Beginning of the End?

Posted on November 26, 2009 | 1 comment

Prime Minister Netanyahu is about to take his administration past the point of no return and down the road to its ruination, for the second time in a decade. Two fateful decisions are before him, and word is his choices will be designed to promote popularity, foreign and domestic, and will therefore likely not succeed.

One decision relates to his apparent concession to American pressure and his agreement to freeze new construction in the “settlements” for nine, ten or whatever number of months. This is wrong-headed on a number of counts. There is an obvious immorality in Jews being directed by a foreign power not to allow Jews to live normal lives in a given geographical area, and becomes even more abhorrent when that policy applies in the Land of Israel. And by freezing construction – even for a brief period of time – he allows the Arab and American narrative to take root: that “settlements” are the obstacle to peace, even though any rational observer and casual student of history remembers that there was no peace even when there were no settlements (1948-1969).

This narrative, once subscribed to by Israel, is a tacit admission that building in the land of Israel is wrong, and something about which Jews should feel guilty. Is there anything that more undermines the very enterprise of Jewish nationalism, and that threatens Yerushalayim – and Tel Aviv ? If only Arabs can build – and illegally at that – and not Jews, then why should Jews feel any confidence in the future of the Jewish state ? To allow the Arabs to essentially dictate the pace and direction of Jewish settlement – unprecedented in the history of Israel – is to give them a veto over the Jewish national idea entirely. Indeed, a cogent argument can be made that only an increase in Jewish settlement will succeed in bringing the Arabs to negotiations, as they will see the clock ticking against them.

Obviously, the freeze, once enacted, can never painlessly be lifted. No American administration will openly admit that the ostensible purpose of the freeze – negotiations with a “successful” outcome – has ever lapsed. That would be tantamount to conceding that the “peace process” has ended, and that will never happen. Ten months can easily stretch into ten years, because the Arabs will gladly wield that cudgel, threatening to halt any negotiations if any home is built. So why make a concession, likely to be permanent, without achieving anything in return ? Well, that question answers itself: that has been Israeli “diplomacy” for decades – the surrender of vital assets and interests in exchange for nothing of substance.

What is even more likely to happen is the continuation of surreptitious building, which transforms Jews from being proud builders of our G-d-given land into liars and cheats who cannot be trusted to uphold any agreement. And doesn’t a freeze pre-judge the outcome of negotiations, by implying that these lands cannot – or should not – remain under Jewish sovereignty ? So why would any skilled negotiator weaken his own position ? Because he is convinced that this will purchase short-term good-will. And it will, just like the expulsion of Jews from Gaza and Northern Shomron made Israel the world’s darlings. Right…

The worst aspect of the freeze is the implication that Netanyahu subscribes to the fiction that peace is possible and that negotiations are warranted, when for ten different reasons the entire “process” is a macabre joke, from the continuation of terror to the risibly weak Palestinian interlocutors who represent no one to the growing sense in the Arab world that Israel’s days are numbered. Netanyahu should be propounding this concept – the impossibility of peace in the current environment – because he would then sound credible, courageous and leader-like. Instead, he is gripped by the illusion that Barack Obama will be his friend if he agrees to this one concession.

That type of vacillation doomed his first tenure as prime minister, and will doom this one as well, with the recognition that, once again, the secular-right in Israel has proved itself incapable and unworthy of leadership.

The second fateful decision is the pending negotiations for the release of Gilad Schalit in exchange for nearly 1,000 murderers of one stripe or another. Most Israelis acknowledge the irrationality of the move, which will only encourage more kidnappings and engender more terror. Prisoners previously released have gone back to their chosen line of work, and have subsequently murdered more than 150 Israelis.

But even people who acknowledge its irrationality and the likelihood of an upsurge in terror support the trade because of something in the Israeli culture, or better said, the Israeli mythology: not leaving a soldier on the battlefield. But these myths – like the hoary one that “Israel does not negotiate with terrorists” – have been shattered in the last few decades. All Israel does is negotiate with terrorists, and soldiers – Katz, Baumol, Feldman, Arad, Pollard – have all been abandoned on the battlefield. So why prop up a failed myth, a myth that will shed more Jewish blood ?

Rabbis and scholars of Jewish law are almost unanimously against this release, on grounds that the Mitzva of Pidyon Shvuyim (ransoming captives) applies only when the price is “reasonable,” and will not encourage future kidnappings. But the Arabs – Hamas and others – boast that they will take more captives until Israeli jails hold no Arab prisoners at all. And is the price “reasonable” ? It does serve as convincing proof that Jewish lives are more precious than Arab ones – apparently, each Jewish life is worth 1,000 Arab lives.

Those who say that soldiers are not typical captives – for they serve a government that has promised to spare no efforts to free them – miss one point: they are soldiers, who occasionally even die in battle, give their lives for their country. If winning the release of one Jew costs the lives of another hundred, then there might as well not be an army. Granted, the anguish of the family must be unbearable – poor Yona Baumol z”l went to his grave never learning of his son’s fate since 1982 – but if the needs of the society in wartime did not trump the rights of the individual, then there would be no justification to send any soldier into battle at any time – because he could potentially lose his life.

The great compassion of Jews is here a tremendous weakness that our enemies willfully exploit. And any parent would do what the Schalits are doing – placing their child’s interests above the national interest. And that is to be expected, and that is quite reasonable and understandable. But it is unacceptable in a leader who must weigh broader concerns, and catering to this phenomenon is no different than a prime minister catering to a mother’s request not to send her son into battle. It is compassionate, it is sensitive – but it is also deadly, and a leader can make other choices.

How about cutting off the entry of ALL food and supplies in Gaza until, at first, Schalit is visited by the Red Cross ? Why accept this gross, Nazi-like violation of international law ? ALL food. Cut off oil, electricity, power. If the Israeli public is suffering vicariously the torment of the Schalit family – let the Gazans (who voted Hamas into power) suffer as well, but really suffer.

How about gradually re-taking the territory from which rockets are fired into Israel ? Each time a rocket is fired, Israel re-occupies that area – slowly driving the Arab inhabitants of that war zone further south (from northern Gaza) and further west (from eastern Gaza). Let them feel the noose tightening, let them feel the grip of the vise around their necks, let them feel the loss of their homes, let them feel the yearning of the Israelis for peace and tranquility.

How about Israel stating unequivocally that until Schalit is released there will be no normalcy in Gaza, and there will be a price of voting into power that band of murderous Jew-haters.

Israel has options; if they choose not to use them and instead the leadership again treads the path of weakness and vulnerability, then undoubtedly the right and then the left will turn on Netanyahu – and before he can right the ship, his term will be over and his government a failure – a second time.

The quest for popularity abroad is an Israeli fantasy, and populist decision-making at home is a recipe for a disaster. Message to Netanyahu: if you want to be a leader, then lead; or get out of the way.

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Posted in Current Events, Israel

Group Think

Posted on November 22, 2009 | Comments Off

When black Alabama Congressman Artur Davis (D, of course) deigned to vote against the health reform boondoggle, his very identity was questioned. Opined Jesse Jackson: “You can’t vote against health care and call yourself a black man.” Strange, but true.

Stranger and just as true: Wendy Doniger, a feminist and professor (of Hinduism and mythology) at the University of Chicago, said last year of Sarah Palin: “Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman,” which, if true, reflects, on the erudite professor’s part, a curious use of pronouns.

How can a black man not be a black man and a woman not be a woman ? When they refuse to wear the strait jackets assigned to them by liberal elitists, and play the only roles allotted to them. Goethe’s quote comes to mind: “there is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity,” and aggressive stupidity is, sadly, rampant in American life today.

Indeed, there is no more pernicious doctrine in American society today than “you are your origins” – meaning that each person is defined by his/her group – by your country of origin, your skin color, your race, your sex, and your religion. You are limited – intellectually, spiritually, socially and materially – by your background. Your “group” therefore determines how you are supposed to think, talk and act; individuality is an illusion. All blacks must think one way, all women must think one way, and all Jews must think one way. (I wish the latter were true, just not in the way they would have us think.) You are advantaged or disadvantaged – and therefore entitled to have others support you from cradle to grave – by your background. Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher who lived at the beginning of the Second Temple era, famously said “character is destiny.” That is now passé – we are being led to believe that the destiny of each person is written by factors beyond his control, by an artificial determinant that need not reflect his essence.

It is such a grievous mistake, such a disgraceful distortion of human potential that one would have thought it needed no refutation – that civilized, intelligent people could never proffer such absurdities. Alas, that is not so.

Liberal politics has for two generations relied on this fiction, on sowing the seeds of discords by identifying people not as individuals but as members of groups defined by accidental characteristics. Liberals appeal to the voters to identify themselves as part of a group – blacks, women, homosexuals, Latinos, union workers – and vote accordingly. Take, for example, affirmative action. Aside from the inherent injustice of preferring one group over another because of skin color, is there any logic in affording preferential treatment to the children of multi-millionaires like Jesse Jackson or Michael Jordan – and not to the children of a poor Appalachian farmer ? But those injustices are recurrent when the value of the individual is downgraded and he becomes nothing more than a member of a group.

Or, take the movement to award blacks “reparations” for slavery (as if the trillion dollars invested in the inner cities since the 1960’s did not serve the same purpose). How would one determine who is eligible? For example, Barack Obama is construed as “black,” so he should be eligible – but his black ancestors were Africans and not slaves. Conversely, his white ancestors were slave-owners ! Should his left hand then pay his right hand ? Those anomalies are frequent when man becomes nothing more than a superficial sketch.

Man’s uniqueness lies in his soul, which provides him the ability to think, reason and foster a connection to G-d. It provides him with free will, the capacity to make his own moral choices, defy expectations and be creative. He is not part of a faceless mass, who – as the Socialists believed – all think the same, so they might as well live in identical block housing.

Elitists will have none of that; they are tormented by individuality, and therefore troubled by a Sarah Palin, a political conservative with “too many” children and “too” traditional views ( I am not certain that she has the experience to be President, but clearly “experience” is not a prerequisite for the presidency – as we have learned to our chagrin.); by a Clarence Thomas, who did not fit the mold of the black “victim” blaming white society for all the ills of black society. The self-made man or woman is a threat to that world view, and so must be ridiculed and castigated.

We are not defined by our circumstances, but rather how we respond to them. Almost nothing is life is inherently a blessing or a curse – it only matters what we do with them, how we exploits our strengths and overcome our weaknesses. Before this notion slowly fades out of America society, it behooves us to rebel against the thought-police and their narrow, constricted view of the destiny of each person, to cherish the rights and responsibilities of each individual, to embrace those movements that cater to the uniqueness of each soul and that revel in the diversity that makes man the crown of creation and life both interesting and meaningful.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Machshava/Jewish Thought

A Teachable Moment

Posted on November 13, 2009 | Comments Off

Israel is, again, locked on the horns of a dilemma. Having been indicted by the “world community” (in the guise of the Goldstone report) for alleged war crimes in its conduct of last winter’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, it faces unenviable and unacceptable choices.

Goldstone himself suggested Israel could partly exculpate itself by conducting its own investigation into the conduct of its soldiers. But that presupposes an outcome to the investigation that, presumably, satisfies the world community – and such an outcome is unlikely in the extreme.

If the investigation reveals that the Israel Defense Forces went above and beyond the norms of warfare in its regard for civilian welfare – notifying thousands of civilians in advance of any attack through leaflets, text messages and even cell phone calls – then the conclusions will be dismissed as a whitewash.

If the investigation reveals that some civilians were killed – an avoidable consequence of every war – Israel will be castigated and its soldiers and politicians deemed war criminals and international pariahs. Conventional wisdom would therefore dictate that an investigation is futile – a classic no-win situation – as a biased jury has already prejudged the outcome.

This is underscored by the blatant hypocrisy that fuels the entire process. The contempt that most of the world community has for Israel is so pronounced that it would rather rewrite the rules of warfare than concede that Jews have a right to self-defense – i.e., a right to not have an enemy fire missiles with impunity on the heads of its civilians.

And so the Goldstone report argues, in an unctuous way completely divorced from the realities of warfare, that an attacked party cannot respond if enemy civilians might be harmed – a most novel, unprecedented and bizarre interpretation; one that would revolutionize warfare as we know it and a standard that obviously no nation has any intention of ever applying to any country except to Israel, and certainly not to itself.

It would be the stuff of comedy and farce if the stakes were not so serious.

Nonetheless, handled correctly, we have arrived unwittingly at what President Obama likes to call a “teachable moment,” a moment in which the Jewish people can assume our natural roles as moral educators to the rest of mankind. Stated another way, it is a “J’Accuse” moment – a chance to upend the tables at the anti-Israel festival that is unfolding before our eyes and startle the world with the recitation of uncomfortable truths – as did Emile Zola when he exposed the framing of Alfred Dreyfus.

Israel should investigate its conduct of war – and preface its report with a brief history of the norms of warfare, with the prohibition of deliberately targeting civilians, with the horrific fate of civilians that is so typical in battle, with the challenges of fighting an enemy that utilizes civilians as weapons, and with the conduct in warfare, even recently, of some of Israel’s leading accusers.

The report could cite Sudan, a proud member of the UN’s Human Rights Council, and its murder of millions of innocent civilians in Darfur in the last decade. It could cite Russia, and its brutality against tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Chechnya, and China, whose own civilians are subject to imprisonment and deprivation.

It should note the case of Syria, which leveled its own city of Hama in 1982 and in the process killed approximately 20,000 civilians, and Turkey, which for ninety years has stonewalled its massacre of more than one million Armenians. The report can mention, delicately, of course, the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, where thousands of civilians were killed – not because of malice or malevolence but simply because dead civilians are the unfortunate collateral damage of every war.

Less delicately, the report could mention that the atomic bombs detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed civilians almost exclusively – and, ironically, saved both American and Japanese lives, as the human toll taken by a land invasion would have been much greater. Similarly, the Allied bombing of Dresden and other German cities in 1945 killed tens of thousands of civilians, and also hastened the end of the war. Certainly Germany’s record in treating civilians in wartime is well known, except perhaps to the Iranian government, itself a wanton murderer of civilians during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.

These nations and most others – past and current perpetrators of ferocious violence against civilians they now regard as sacrosanct – deign to sit in judgment of Israel, which never targeted civilians; which fought an enemy that disguised itself as civilians (against international law), used civilians as human shields and hid its weapons and rocket launchers in hospitals, mosques and residential areas; which killed at most several hundred civilians – civilians who had voted into power the despots who launched the incessant war against Israel. Civilians? Yes, for the most part. Innocent civilians? Hardly.

As the report continues, Israel can then refer to the unprecedented measures it took to avoid civilian casualties – the warnings, the notifications – all of which impaired its operational abilities and the successes of its missions as it informed the enemy of the locations of Israel’s counterattacks. It can note, with sadness, that half of Israel’s own war resulted from friendly fire, an even more unfortunate consequence of the fog of war.

Israel should certainly regret its error in surrendering Gaza to the forces of terror – as the “world community” had encouraged, of course, guaranteeing then – then, not now – that Israel would always retain the right of self-defense in case of aggression launched from Gaza.

Israel should then express its pride and admiration at the humanity, morality and skill of its fighting forces, and the inherent difficulty in fighting an enemy that targets civilians and cares not at all about its own except to use them as cannon fodder.

And in conclusion, the report can state what is patently clear to any impartial observer: that this indictment is just another weapon in the Arab war against Israel – a classic attempt by those who are waging asymmetrical warfare to demoralize the people of Israel, and induce it to make additional territorial concessions that will garner short-term praise but engender long-term vulnerability.

Israel should state unequivocally that it categorically rejects the double standard the world is employing and should insist that the judges first judge themselves before sitting in judgment of others.

Israel should declare that it will not play in a macabre game in which the rules change in order to coerce an outcome deleterious to Israel’s strategic position and existence; that “peace” negotiations are not warranted and “peace” itself not feasible in the current, hostile environment; and that Israel will continue – despite the world’s hypocrisy and duplicity – to aspire to moral goodness, and to highlight, as is our divinely-ordained mission, what is right and what is wrong, what is moral and what is immoral, what is the word of God and what is the falsification of the word of God.

The report should not refer at all to any specific acts during the recent battle, as the findings will convince no one and accomplish nothing productive. Israel must reject the impression that it is sitting in the dock, but rather stand with pride behind the preacher’s lectern and lecture a world whose moral compass is severely askew, once again.

Urging this band of haters to look in the mirror may not inspire them to either repentance or honesty, but it will clear our consciences and strengthen us with new resolve for the battles that loom just over the horizon.

Reprinted from www.JewishPress.com

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