Category Archives: Current Events

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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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel

Tower of Babel Redux

Posted on November 11, 2009 | 1 comment

This is a sensitive subject.

The builders of the ancient Tower of Babel always appear to us to be knaves and primitives. The very notion of constructing a “tower with its top to the heavens” strikes us – sophisticated modern types – as bizarre and downright silly. Even more so is the commentary of the rabbis of old that every Jewish child is taught: the tower eventually reached such a great height that it took a year to climb to the top. Therefore, “a brick was more precious in the eyes of the builders than a human being. If a man fell and died, they paid no attention to him. But if a brick fell, they wept.”

What a terrible indictment of a society in which human life is unappreciated and man’s well- being is an afterthought in pursuit of a superior goal! It would be comical if it were not tragic – but who could believe that any society – even ancient ones – could be so cavalier about life and health and individual worth? Surely such a disgraceful phenomenon could not exist in our day.

Welcome to professional football, an outlet for man’s aggressive instincts for both participants and viewers – and worse: the Tower of Babel redux. Think about it: there rarely a game in which a human being is not carted off the field because of some serious injury, only to be replaced by another equally at risk. It is a game that in the first instance is intentionally violent, in which physical confrontation on the battlefield (the line of scrimmage, and note the military terminology rampant in football – blitz, bomb) is at the heart of each play, and where tackling the opposition – quarterback, running back, receiver – hard is the mark of a dedicated player.

Surely there is concern when a player is injured, but not outrage or disgust. Injuries are “part of the game.” Real outrage and disgust is reserved for those occasions when the brick – i.e., the football – is lost, through fumble, interception or just poor play. That is the tragedy; that draws the spectator’s ire and dismay. Injuries – concussions, broken bones, torn ligaments and cartilage, the occasional paralysis – are “just part of the game.” Players can be replaced, but the loss of the football is a lost opportunity that can never be regained.

What does that say about us as a society? At least the builders of the Tower of Babel, also nonchalant about human suffering, had a political and spiritual objective in mind. Here, human beings are watching fellow human beings attempt to maim each other, and for what? Entertainment. Amusement.

Contrast football with the other major sports, all of which involve some risk but not the persistent mayhem of football. Baseball, by comparison, is a bucolic sport, in which the threat of injury – aside from the rare beaning – comes from players overreaching in their physical efforts, exceeding the limits of what the body can tolerate. Basketball is, by definition a “non-contact sport,” at least in the sense that physical contact is penalized. And although American hockey has body checks (unlike European hockey), those are sidelights to the game – the team wins through goals not hits, and excessive aggression is also punished.

Football stands alone in its brutality, and although I don’t have time to watch much football in any event, I am losing the inclination as well. (Basketball is also increasingly hard to watch. For years, the New York area had two professional basketball teams. Today, we have none.) It is a celebration of violence marked by the occasional demonstration of a variety of skills that should be inappropriate in a civilized society. Undoubtedly, it serves as a release for the pent-up frustrations of millions of people, but that is scant justification. In its pandering to peoples’ basest instincts, it parallels boxing and bull-fighting – both recreations of singular viciousness and inhumanity.

Football’s popularity is a reflection on our values, and also a telling reminder to all of us that perhaps the builders of the Tower of Babel was not as primitive or ridiculous as they seem at first glance. We are merely, sad to say, modern echoes of a very ancient distortion of the human personality. Perhaps owning up to that is the first step to regaining our humanity, and building a society of faith, goodness and holiness.

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