Category Archives: Jewish History

      This Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Day, celebrating the liberation and reunification of the Holy City by Israel in 1967 – finds Israeli sovereignty over its capital in its most precarious state since the Six Day War, owing to two causes: the hostility of Barack Obama and the weaknesses of Binyamin Netanyahu.

       Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu boasted Wednesday evening that Jerusalem will never be divided again. “We cannot divide or freeze a city as vibrant and creative as Jerusalem – we will continue to build and be built by it.” He insisted at Yeshivat Mercaz Harav on Tuesday night that Jews are building and will continue to build in Yerushalayim. The statement is truthy, but not completely true, and note its ambiguities: Jews will continue to build in Yerushalayim, but, left unsaid, not in every sector of Yerushalayim despite all protestations to the contrary.

    Netanyahu’s assertion that there is no building freeze in Yerushalayim is contradicted by two sources. The spokesman for the US Department of State announced last week that there is a building freeze – this after all the uproar over the 1600 apartments approved two months ago for Ramat Shilo and the subsequent deterioration in US-Israeli relations that led to the Hillary Clinton rage against Netanyahu and his snub at the White House. (It is a shame that Netanyahu is not perceived to be as decent a fellow or as reliable an American ally as is Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who is being feted in Washington this week after announcing last month that he may join forces with the Taliban if Obama doesn’t back down in his criticisms of the Karzai regime. Obama backed down.) Now it seems that Netanyahu backed down, to his shame and that of his right-wing coalition partners.

     Or did he ? He denies it, but then again his own Housing Minister confirmed in the Knesset earlier this week that building in Yerushalayim has indeed been halted, and for some time. So what gives ?

       It is true that duplicity is diplomacy without the mask of niceties. There is a certain skill in diplomacy, in speaking equivocally in order to avoid escalations or inflammations of delicate political situations. But Israel – whose diplomats have long snatched defeat from the jaws of victory – has always suffered from both the appearance and reality of duplicity – of saying one thing, and doing another. That tactic works with a rogue like Arafat, but as Israel is part of the civilized world, its interlocutors who are treated with such disdain rightly protest. An Abbas can promise – again – to crack down on terror and incitement in exchange for this new freeze, but few believe him, or should. (He is not even the legal authority in the PA anymore; his term expired almost 15 months ago in that joke of a political entity.) But Israel is held to account, as it should be, and should not – for a variety of reasons – acquiescing to another freeze, a tacit admission that the land is not theirs and that they are doing something illegal or ignoble building on it.

     For Netanyahu to play this double game is shameful. For Israel’s prime minister to forego attendance at the re-dedication of the Hurva synagogue in the Old City (a most magnificent facility that was destroyed twice by marauding Arabs, and in which I was privileged to pray a few weeks ago) so as not to seem “provocative” by entering the Old City is disgraceful. Is Israel’s Prime Minister effectively barred from the Kotel, because his appearance there might create an international incident ? That type of pusillanimity does not bode well for the future.

    Israel’s PM has a checkered past; his first term ended in ignominy and he became a political exile once it became clear that his values were for negotiable, his word meaningless, and his principles fluid. He vowed that he had learned from his mistakes. In one sense, he has – he has become a cleverer politician, neutralizing the left and the media by incorporating both secular right-wing and left-wing elements in his government, dangling before them portfolios and the sinecures of high office. But in another sense, he has not: he still lacks a backbone that enables him to tell critics – whether domestic or foreign – to stuff it. He can proclaim his love of Yerushalayim from the rooftops, but the facts on the ground do not nourish those convictions. Those who know him personally have told me that he – like many politicians – has a desperate need to be liked, and will do anything to avoid criticism and to be perceived as popular. Would that he had the audacity of a Hamid Karzai; if he did, he might not be heading to a second disastrous failure.

     How unsuccessful has he been, and how much has the political culture in Israel changed during his term ? Consider: there have been two staples of Israeli diplomacy for decades – one, the indispensability of direct talks between Israel and the Arabs, so as to impress upon them the permanence of Israel; and, two, the refusal to take any concrete steps – such as building freezes – that pre-judge the outcome of the negotiations. This was policy for decades, and upheld recently by even a lightweight such as Ehud Olmert (with whom, it seems, the law has finally caught up). And yet, under the “staunch” right-winger Netanyahu, all that has gone by the boards. Israel conceded, for the sake of inducing the Arabs to join in “proximity” (i.e., indirect, not direct) talks, that it will freeze building in Judea, Samaria and Yerushalayim.

     That is unprecedented, sheer madness, as well as gross incompetence: Netanyahu has skillfully navigated Israel into a weaker diplomatic position that it had even under the far-leftist Olmert. Not to mention his endorsement of a Palestinian state (in utter disregard of his party’s platform) and his inability to win international acceptance of Israel’s right of self-defense. It is a puzzle why his failures have not won more attention, except for the obvious facts that his rivals are perceived as even more inept, and the strong Israeli economy lulls people into complacency. Terror is also down, but how long that will remain if Israel pulls its forces from the Arab cities it patrols – and when it opens major Route 443 (Modiin to Jerusalem) to Arab traffic – remains to be seen. The surface is calm, with great turbulence rising up from the underground.

    So this Yom Yerushalayim had its customary pomp and pageantry, its heartfelt prayers and wistful recollections. But there is an air of uneasiness. Netanyahu’s glib talk does not at all complement his actions. Trying to appease Obama so he will thwart Iran is foolhardy in the extreme. And duplicity eventually turns on its practitioners. People without core values become absorbed with self-preservation as their only value. Once again – again – a right-wing leader is guiding Israel down a path of concessions and defeat masquerading as strength and triumph. When will we wake up ? Better, will we wake up ?

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).