Category Archives: Jewish History

     Should Jews in Israel  – people or institutions – accept charitable donations from Christians ?

     This controversy has roiled many religious Israelis, and even provoked a public conference during Pesach that answered this question in the negative –  and vehemently so. What is the background, and what are the issues ?

     There are many Christian groups, primarily but not exclusively evangelicals, that are among the most enthusiastic financial and political supporters of the State of Israel. One in particular, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, was founded 27 years by Orthodox Rabbi Yechiel  Eckstein, and that organization has donated well over $100,000,000 (that’s one hundred million dollars) to the Jewish poor in Israel, and were especially instrumental in facilitating the aliya and resettlement of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union. The IFCJ stepped in when assistance was desperately needed – winter coats and blankets, food for the hungry, etc. He has come under withering attack, which he –dedicated to building bridges between Jews and Christians – has borne quite well. But what exactly should be controversial about Christians helping the Jewish poor ?

     Many of the opponents , including Rabbis for whom I have great respect, argue that it is a desecration of G-d’s name to accept charity from non-Jews. In that contention, they are not wrong, and would that we could provide assistance to all Jewish poor. But such considerations do not inhibit many Jewish poor in America from accepting welfare, food stamps, and all sorts of government assistance (even as I wish it would). So Chilul Hashem (desecration of G-d’s name) in this context seems to be a bit elastic.

   The more prevalent reason, often articulated, is the fear that Christian evangelicals will use their contacts in Israel in order to proselytize, and that it reflects a certain Christian eschatological view that requires that all Jews be in Israel for the Second Coming to take place. Each argument needs to be analyzed separately.

    Israeli law bans proselytizing, even if it is rarely enforced, and when enforced, has few consequences. It reflects the obvious point that Israel is the Jewish State, and that proselytizing, despite being part of the Christian faith (depending on denomination), is a disrespectful act in the Jewish state. Certainly, to my knowledge, IFCJ has never been involved in missionary work, nor have most of the Christian organizations that involved in Israeli charitable endeavors.

      Naturally, I oppose any attempts to convert Jews (as I do any attempts to convert Christians to other faiths, including Judaism) but I hasten to add that I have never been troubled by missionaries. In my spirited youth, I used to debate them on street corners and through correspondence. The bottom line is: we should be able to compete in the marketplace of ideas. If we do not reach fragile Jews with the message of Torah, we have only ourselves to blame. We have a most wonderful product that all thinking Jews should explore. And if our failures are exacerbated by our inability to provide financial or emotional support to these wayward Jews, and Christians step into that breach, the fault is, again, ours. The happy, intelligent, educated Jew who feels a part of the Jewish community is not in any danger from missionaries.

    What of the Christian belief that utilizes support for Israel in order to advance a distinctly Christian eschatological agenda ? I don’t believe this is the case. I have spoken to evangelicals – leaders and laymen – and to a person they have rooted their support for Israel and love for Jews in the Bible’s admonition (Isaac’s blessing to Jacob) “those who curse you will be cursed, and those who bless you will be blessed.” The latter is powerful motivation indeed, and has been the catalyst not only for the substantial financial support provided Israel but also for the political support. Many see America’s prosperity as predicated on its support for Jews and Israel and – especially recently – fear America’s decline and financial woes are traceable to its wavering support for Israel. And, of those Christians who await the Second Coming and support Israel accordingly, so be it. I don’t share that belief, but they are certainly entitled to it. The poor who benefit likely could care less what is in the hearts of these eschatologists. Overt friendship is more meaningful than a covert conviction.

     Today, evangelical Christians are the leading supporters of Israel in the United States, (frankly) shaming Jews both in the depth and consistency of their support. They can muster 40,000,000 (that’s forty million) e-mails within hours, and influence policy, while Jewish organizations meet, and talk, and discuss, and brainstorm, and strategize, and then issue a watered-down apologia. (Case in point: in April 2002, President Bush ordered – ordered ! – Prime Minister Sharon to remove Israeli tanks from Jenin and withdraw Israeli forces after the first few days of Operation Defensive Shield. He was quite adamant about it, but then, two days later, nothing. Silence from the White House. What changed ? Forty million e-mails (count ‘em) from Christian evangelicals calling on the President to support Israel’s right of self-defense as Israel sees fit.) Time and again, American policy towards Israel these days is driven by evangelicals and not – as we think – by Jews, whose support for Israel is often tepid and unreliable, who lack the raw numbers of Christians to make a political difference, and who are knee-jerk Democrats and therefore often irrelevant to the process.

     Most Jews, sad to say, do not believe in the divine origin of the Bible, and so they do not accept that the Jewish people are in the land of Israel by divine right. The leading advocates of the biblical right to the land of Israel for the Jewish people are Orthodox Jews and Christian evangelicals. That is why the commitments of both those communities are unswerving, and occasionally necessitate challenging and emboldening even the government of Israel. That friendship and that support are, therefore, unconditional, and that is not a common experience for Jews or Israelis.

     A people with few friends should embrace all those who offer friendship, and not assume improper motivation. Of course, part of the discomfort is justified, a legacy of two millennia of Christian outrages against Jews – violence, mass murder, forced conversion, persecution, economic deprivation, and the like. But it is important that we not trap ourselves in a 19^th or 15^th century paradigm. Christians have changed; while there are still pockets of Jew hatred, the average Christian – in America, and in much of the world outside of Europe – harbors no innate enmity towards Jews. Christian tourists flock to Israel because it is the Jewish state. Most Christians seek to support Israel for positive and virtuous reasons, and it ill-behooves us to interpret that as sinister. And, perhaps most importantly, Jews and Christians today share a common enemy – radical Islam, which has a rabid hatred of Jews but also an open contempt for Christianity. Bear in mind that Jews and Christians lived as second-class citizens in the Muslim world (Coptic Christians in Egypt even today, to name one group). It would be most advantageous if Jews fought today’s battle together with our natural allies, rather than re-fought the battles of the 11^th and 12^th centuries.

    When the Temple stood, non-Jews brought offerings as well, in accordance with Jewish law. We long for the day when “My house shall  be called a house of prayer for all nations,” when all nations will flock to Jerusalem, from which the word of G-d emanates. We should guard against illegal proselytizing, to be sure, but I prefer to believe that the assistance and support Israel receives from Christians is a harbinger of that awesome day when the kingdom of G-d on earth will be recognized by all mankind.

    “There are pseudo-intellectuals, journalists and diplomats, who constantly declare that “everyone knows what the solution is,” and it is just a question of will and time. They assume a Palestinian state alongside Israel, living in peace and harmony and prosperity. And the evidence for that rosy scenario ? Non-existent. The evidence that Obama will actively engage Iran to thwart its nuclear ambitions ? Non-existent. Rather, they (and we) would do well to heed Tedlow’s definition of denial: “the unwillingness to see or admit a truth that ought to be apparent and is in fact apparent to many others.”

    So I wrote in “Denial,” and among the prime exhibits of pundits who have presumed the outcome in the face of all evidence and who have therefore been relentlessly wrong and shameless unapologetic about it is Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria. One would think that his touting of Oslo and other debacles, Gush Katif and the rockets on Israel that that retreat created, would give at least some pause to re-consider, re-evaluate or perhaps even be silent about an area on which he clearly knows little. Yet, he persists. Herewith follows portions of this week’s screed, followed by simple commentary, relating to the current “crisis” in US-Israel relations.

   “…this crisis hasn’t been caused by just one event – the announcement while VP Joe Biden was visiting Israel, to approve new Jewish housing units in East Jerusalem…And while he’s apologized for the ill-timed announcement, Netanyahu remains unyielding. In fact, the Israeli press has reported plans to build not merely the 1600 units announced last week, but 50,000. ‘We will act according to the vital interests of the State of Israel,’ Netanyahu said last week.”

    Of course, the “crisis” wasn’t caused by one event; it was manufactured and contrived by an administration hostile to Israel, one that is re-orienting American foreign policy away from the US’s traditional allies. Unmentioned, of course, is that Netanyahu is continuing a policy advocated by each of his predecessors, and in furtherance of policy enunciated last year that would restrict building in Judea and Samaria but not at all in Jerusalem – a policy acknowledged by the United States, even if not fully embraced. So Israel, then, announced the third of seven stages in a process of building in its capital city where Israel has long maintained it would continue to build and from which it would never withdraw. What, then, is the cause for “crisis” ?

    “What are those vital interests ?….Iran… But…if tackling the rise of Iran were [Netanyahu’s]  paramount concern, would he have allowed a collapse in relations with the United States, the country whose military, political and economic help is indispensable in confronting this challenge…?”

     But America has been singularly ineffectual in dealing with Iran, and has been feckless in its diplomacy – failing to enact any meaningful sanctions , brutally failing (an epic collapse of American diplomacy under Hillary Clinton) to win over friendly nations (Brazil) to sanctions, much less adversaries like Russian and China. American threats are empty and routinely (and contemptuously) dismissed by Iran, and the pronouncements (“We will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear blah-blah-blah”) that it has been propagating for more than two years are ridiculed when they are not ignored altogether. What has Obama done that would engender the slightest hope in Israel that America will prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state? Nothing that I can think of, besides words and more words repeated ad nauseum. And for that Israel should refuse to build in its capital city, thereby tacitly conceding that its status is negotiable ?

    “Bibi likes to think of himself as Winston Churchill, warning the world of a gathering storm. But he should bear in mind that Churchill’s single obsession during the late 1930’s was to strengthen his alliance with the United States, whatever the costs, concessions and compromises he had to make.”

    And Zakaria should in mind that Churchill had Franklin Roosevelt to deal with, and not a post-modern, post-American, cosmopolitan, citizen of the world, radical liberationist, pacifist who rejects the concept of American exceptionalism (i.e., Obama). Nor did Churchill ever hear from FDR about the need to avoid violence or “disproportionate” violence, to negotiate with his enemies, to surrender all of Wales and parts of London. What a specious comparison !

     Zakaria, continues, in typical, anti-Israel polemicist fashion, to approvingly cite from a columnist from Haaretz – as if that is mainstream opinion in Israel –about how Netanyahu has “plunged Israel’s essential relationship with the United States to unheard of depths.”

    Can it not be argued that an administration without any natural sympathy for any of America’s traditional allies would eventually be at loggerheads with Israel ? Even allies can have diverging interests – must every divergence represent a nadir in a strategic relationship ? Does the United States have perfectly symmetrical interests with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, France, Italy, etc.? I think not, that is why this current “crisis” is not real but contrived. And I wonder how Zakaria would respond to Caroline Glick’s observations ?

    “Israel continues to live in a terrible strategic environment, with radical groups eager to combat it, most of its neighbors unwilling even to recognize its existence, and a broader world that is increasingly dismayed by or hostile toward it.  Many of these problems and attitudes stem from a deep-seating rejection of Israel. But much has changed in that regard. The Arab states have had to accept that their goal of defeating Israel has crumbled…”

     Really ? If so, then why are its neighbors unwilling to recognize it?  Herein lies the disconnect between fact and fantasy. In truth, not much has changed in 60 years, and simple honesty would demand that Zakaria mention that Arab hostility towards Israel pre-dates “settlements,” “fences,” “occupation,” “roadblocks” – and by a good 80 years. It deserves mention that from 1948-1967, Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria (and Egypt occupied Gaza) – and Arab states were still unwilling to recognize Israel, and waged wars of extermination against it. There is not a shred of evidence to support the contention that the Arabs have relinquished their dream of destroying Israel; on the contrary, reams of evidence support the very opposite conclusion. And nothing underscores the futility of this “peace process” and the ones before it than the elementary deduction that Arab rhetoric has changed, but not Arab genocidal motivations. And the world is turning on Israel for reasons that every Jew understands in his or her heart.

     “The Palestinians in the West Bank have extremely good leadership, with President Abbas committed to a peaceful path to a two-state solution and PM Fayyad committed to a competent, clean, and effective Palestinian government that focuses on economic growth, not violence.”

     Really ? With these insights, Zakaria crosses the line separating observer from propagandist. “Peaceful path” ? Does that include incitement (naming a square in Ramallah last weekafter a terrorist mass-murderer, an event attributed by Hillary Clinton to Hamas, not Fatah) ? Or the continued violence – stabbings, shootings and the like – against Israeli citizens ? Or the continued funding of Hamas – by the very same Palestinian Authority ? This is wishful thinking masquerading as analysis and bears no reality to the facts on the ground. Only a person who harbors ill-will toward Israel would conclude that “the Palestinians are being led wisely.” Pray tell: and how many “refugees” have been provided permanent housing during this enlightened reign ? Answer: none.

    “Bibi Netanyahu looks more like a local ward boss, concerned only with keeping himself on power while the dangers to Israel mount from all sides.”

     Someone give Zakaria a faux box of tissues to dry the crocodile tears he sheds over the great dangers facing Israel. Implicit in this criticism is the furtherance of one American policy objective – the destabilization of the Netanyahu government and his loss of power. And he can easily lose that power and that position of influence – if he pays any attention at all to another tendentious, uninformed and dangerous essay of Fareed Zakaria (ditto for Tom Friedman).

Prime Minister Netanyahu today offered President Obama a direct and unequivocal reply to the demand that Israel cease building Jewish homes in Yerushalayim: no. “We will build in Jerusalem as we build in Tel Aviv.”

So far, the sky has not fallen. If Netanyahu retains this dignity and self-respect, he will compare favorably with Menachem Begin, who, as reported by Moshe Zak in the Jerusalem Post (March 13, 1992), knew how to deal with American presidents’ interference with Israel’s right to develop its own land: “As for settlements, too, over which the Administration rebuked Begin during all of his visits to Washington in the following six years, Begin knew how to respond with unconventional replies. “Why is it permitted for a Jew to settle and live in Bethel or Shiloh in the US, towns named after places in Judea and Samaria, but forbidden to build his home in the original Shilo or Beth El?” he asked Carter, and added: “I shall not lend my hand to discrimination against Jews in the Land of Israel.”

And not only with Carter, but at all his meetings with heads of state and government, Begin customarily replied with direct, frank words against anything he perceived as harming Israel’s interests or honor.

It is hard not to long for those days, and painful to ponder that it has been more than 30 years since Israeli prime ministers spoke like that. Here is another example, drawn from the same article, about a confrontation between Begin and that self-described “great Zionist,” Joe Biden, when the latter was a blowhard Senator, from 1982:

“In a conversation with Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, after a sharp
confrontation in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the subject of the settlements, Begin defined himself as “a proud Jew who does not tremble with fear” when speaking with foreign statesmen.

During that committee hearing, at the height of the Lebanon War, Sen. John Biden (Delaware) had attacked Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria and threatened that if Israel did not immediately cease this activity, the US would have to cut economic aid to Israel.

When the senator raised his voice and banged twice on the table with his fist, Begin commented to him: “This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don’t threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the US lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats. Take note: we do not want a single soldier of yours to die for us.”

After the meeting, Sen. Moynihan approached Begin and praised him for his cutting reply. To which Begin answered with thanks, defining his stand against threats.”

We say to PM Netanyahu: stand strong, and be strong, and the strength of an eternal people will carry you aloft.