Hot Irony

Posted on August 17, 2012 | 3 comments

     Here in Modiin, the buzz this week is about the new status awarded to all residents quite suddenly and unexpectedly: the status of “settler.”

     The European Union, in enforcing its segregation of Israeli exports from the “territories,” decided in its wisdom that areas of Modiin (and its conjoined towns of Maccabim and Re’ut) are not really part of Israel but instead “occupied territories,’ no man’s land from the 1948 Armistice agreement that Israel wrongfully seized 63 years ago. Modiin straddles the former Green Line, almost equidistant between Yerushalayim and Tel Aviv, and was meticulously delineated.

     The irony is rich, especially because Modiin – rightfully dubbed the “City of the Future” – is a mixed city of some 80,000 souls, joining together in relative harmony right-wingers and left-wingers, religious and non-religious Jews, a microcosm of all Israel and a model of living together in shared space. The left-wingers are not amused. Those who decry the “occupation” and fantasize about peace erupting in the country/region/world/galaxy/universe the very day after all Israeli settlements are destroyed and the settlers dispersed have now been rudely informed by the guardians of civilization and right-thinking that the bell tolls for them as well.

     This is actually not new. It is widely known that the hotbed of leftism in Israel – TelAvivUniversity and its environs – rests on the land of an abandoned Arab village named Al-Shaykh Muwannis. It doesn’t stop leftists from condemning the settlements in Judea and Samaria, or from criticizing the “occupation.” For some, it might even be the reason why they – those who are bereft of Torah and any sense of Jewish history or nationhood – perceive Israel’s very existence as illegitimate.

      Most people I saw this week were walking a little prouder, with heads a little higher, after the news broke. It is not only solidarity with the residents of Judea and Samaria, but rather the pervasive sense that, to Israel’s enemies in Europe and across the Arab world, all of Israel is occupied territories – pre-1948, post-1948, post-1967, and post-Oslo. To them, Netzarim really is the same as Tel Aviv, and Jews have as much right to Netanya as they do to Bet El. At last, agreement on something has scattered the fog of hatred and political double-talk: the Jewish claim to the land of Israel is either absolute or non-existent. At last, the battle of ideas is joined and honestly confronted. There really is no middle ground.

     This realization actually spawns a great opportunity for Israel, now that the enemy’s intentions – to whittle away Israel’s land until it completely disintegrates – are clear. It is assisted by another recent development that has the capacity to transform the terms of the conflict in Israel’s favor. I refer not to the fragmentation and collapse of Syria on Israel’s northern border, where the massacres of tens of thousands of Arabs do not seem to rile up the celebrated “Arab street” as much as does the construction of a single building in Shiloh or the location of a solitary caravan in Kiryat Arba, nor to the ongoing evolution of Egypt into a fundamentalist Islamic state that will eventually renounce the peace treaty with Israel, but to the findings of the Levy Commission.

      The Levy Commission, charged with investigating and reporting on Israel’s legal rights in Judea and Samaria, found that, indeed, Israeli settlement in the center of its Biblical heartland is…legal. What occupation? How can a nation occupy its own land, as if it is a foreign element? Its findings are dry, historical, and, well, legalistic, essentially reporting that the area in question was set aside multiple times for Jewish settlement, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Despite changes in possession due to war- and its illegal and mostly unrecognized occupation by the Jordanians in 1948 and renounced by them 40 years later, the sovereign nation with the strongest and most logical claim to the land is Israel.

     Remarkably, this echoes a report from decades ago, drafted by former US Under Secretary of State Eugene Rostow, who asserted both the legality of the settlements and the superiority of Israel’s claims over those of any Arab entity. He even pointed out that under the prevailing provisions of international treaties and agreements, “the Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem before the state of Israel was created.” That this conclusion has never been formally adopted by the United States, or that even the Levy Commission does not call for immediate annexation of Israel’s heartland, is, ultimately, politics. Political decisions must weigh a number of competing factors, whereas legality rests on more objective judgments. It was Jimmy Carter, in the first manifestation of the Jew-hatred that so obviously afflicts him (but still does not preclude his being honored with an address at the Democratic Convention this year), who first pronounced the settlements “illegal.” President Reagan explicitly repudiated that designation, and but for a blip during the Bush I administration, that has remained US policy – not illegal but “unhelpful to the peace process,” or the nastier “obstacles to peace.” But those were political judgments, not legal ones.

     What can be the result of the Levy Commission findings? For one, it finally restores to Israel the narrative it has lacked since Oslo in asserting its moral, legal, biblical and historical claims to this small territory bequeathed by the Creator to the Jewish people. The Left – Rabin, Peres et al – labored to explain Israel’s legitimate presence in the region, much less in Judea and Samaria. They, and later Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, et al, embraced the language of “occupation,” foolishly playing into the hands of the Arab enemy who gleefully pocketed this unilateral concession and sought more – the total delegitimization of the State of Israel. Let Israel stake its legal claim to the entirety of the land of Israel – and dispatch its ambassadors and spokesmen across the world to explain why – and the tide will turn. It is not that the other nations will become Zionists overnight; it is sufficient that Israel stop being defensive and apologetic about its existence, its struggles, its enemies’ incessant attempts to destroy it, and its eternal rights to its sacred soil. That is the second bonus of the Levy Commission findings – the pride of purpose, the pep in the step of the average Israeli who need not feel on his own land like a thief and trespasser, whether he lives in Hevron, Tel Aviv, or Modiin.

     The catch, as is frequently the case, these days, is the coyness of PM Netanyahu, who commissioned the report, but now is sitting on its findings, reluctant to adopt it as Israel’s formal policy. He has become a master fence-sitter – alternately freezing settlements and building settlements, alternately absorbing blows and striking back, alternately embracing political adversaries and discarding political adversaries (and sometimes allies). For sure, he is focused on the Iranian threat, which looms large, and senses that in the macabre calculus of the Arab world, the sins of Syria will be forgiven in an instant by the “Arab street” that would be up in arms over the much graver “crime” of legalizing the existing settlements and spurring the development of war.

    All true, but rather than be a status-quo leader, Netanyahu can be a transformative leader, making Israel’s case to the world, and perhaps more importantly, to Israelis themselves. Naturally, the media jumped on a report of 41American –Jewish “leaders” – leftists all – who sent a letter to the Prime Minister urging his rejection of the Levy Commission report. (Oddly, the same media ignored a letter sent by even more American-Jewish “leaders” – I know, because I was a signatory – urging the Prime Minister to immediately endorse the Commission report. Hmm… why would they disregard our letter?)

     The irony of Modiin as “occupied territory” provides such a welcome moment, leaving its inhabitants delighted, horrified or bewildered, and reminding everyone that to our relentless adversaries all of Israel is “occupied.”  It can be a defining moment, if seized, to change the terms of the debate in Israel’s favor.    

     Memo to PM Netanyahu: there is nothing better than striking while the irony is hot.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel

THE SUCCESSFUL

Posted on August 10, 2012 | 8 comments

     Like a skilled acrobat, President Obama is tying to extricate himself from his unguarded but truthful statement several weeks ago. As part of his effort to incite class warfare and raise taxes on the “rich” to some unspecified amount that will constitute “fairness,” he veered from his teleprompter and exclaimed, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” “If you’re successful, it’s not because you work hard – a lot of people work hard.” It’s something else – not the village – but, apparently, government, and especially all others who created the infrastructure that facilitated your success. (Of course, those others, for some indeterminate reason, did not achieve the same success as did the protagonist; evidently, that is the “unfairness” at the heart of the system, notwithstanding that the successful” also paid for the infrastructure but perhaps utilized it more productively. No matter.)

     Winston Churchill once said that the difference between socialists and liberals (he meant the classical liberals of his day, those who loved liberty, akin to today’s libertarians) is that the socialist wants to tear down the rich, whereas the liberal wants to build up the poor. In a nutshell, Churchill defined not only his era but also the primary issue before the American electorate this year.

       One potential problem in criticizing the Obama philosophy is an allusion to such an approach in this week’s Torah reading (!): “And you will say in your heart, it is my might and the power of my hand that has afforded me this great wealth. And you should remember G-d, for it is G-d who has given you the power to achieve this wealth” (Devarim 8:17-18).

      In other words, it is not you! Many people may work hard, many people may be educated – but their success is not due to their own efforts but to G-d’s will. Obama meant government as that unseen force, and if he had substituted “G-d” for “government,” his argument would have met little objection except from diehard secularists. And he would have flabbergasted his supporters and opponents alike – but for wholly different reasons. Is there some merit to this argument? Is the contention that “my might and the power of my hand have afforded me this great wealth” inherently arrogant? If so, where is there room for human endeavor, ingenuity and effort? Are we not allowed some personal satisfaction in the wake of any achievement?

       As always, the Torah penetrates to the depths of our thoughts. At the beginning of the Torah reading (7:17), we are enjoined that “if you say to your heart” that the nations around us are too powerful, then do not fear, and later (9:4) we are admonished “do not say in your heart” that G-d gave us the land because of our righteousness. Note the difference in phraseology: If you say, or do not say… as opposed to here, where the Torah writes “and you will say” when you see the great abundance and physical blessings of the land of Israel, that “my strength and my might made me all this wealth.”

      Is this latter statement positive or negative statement? We widely interpret it as negative, the height of arrogance, as if to say, it is all me, I did it. But if it is negative, then why doesn’t the Torah use the other locutions, “if you say,” or “don’t say.” Here, the Torah emphasizes “you will say.” Furthermore, how can a person who builds an organization, a building, a home, a family, a successful business – how can he not feel that but for him, it would not have occurred? The Torah’s prescription would seem to be a recipe for passivity or even apathy – “I didn’t do it, it’s all from G-d.” But if it is all from G-d, then why should we do anything?

    The “Ran” (Rabbenu Nissim, 14th Century, Gerona, Spain) comments in his tenth sermon that “you will say” is meant literally – you will say it, because you should say it. Every person should feel that there are things that only he or she can do – there is no one else to do it; it is my responsibility. The truth is that people have “segulot meyuchadot,” special abilities and talents, so that the successful person should say “it is my might and the power of my hand” that have accomplished my goals. There is only one caveat, one limitation: “remember G-d,” remember as well that G-d is the ultimate source of your talents and abilities, that the forces that inhere in you all come from G-d.

    There are times when a person must say, in the language of our Sages, “ein hadavar talui eleh bi,” it is all up to me. And what a delicate balance that is – between the arrogant form of “my might and the power of my hand” and the weighty realization that “everything is my responsibility.” How do we distance one and bring near the other? Through remembering G-d.

     Countries are not built, wars are not won, communities are not founded, and organizations are not sustained by the passive or the reactive, but rather by the activists, the strong, the leaders, the fearless – especially those who don’t fear failure or success, and by those who are willing to take personal responsibility for failure. Successful businesses are not built by the timid, and great advances in civilization are not the product of the diffident – and nor, for that matter, are they the product of government but of people, entrepreneurs, independent thinkers, creative souls.

    The catalyst for all success is “and you will say” and “you will remember         G-d” – to do our share, to take responsibility for our own destiny, to know that G-d has given each of us the tools to accomplish great things in life, each of us in accordance with our own personalities. It is what built Israel, it is what built America, and is at the heart of the challenge facing civilization today – the war of the timorous and the brave, the struggle between those who crave dependency and those who love freedom, and the battle between those prone to concession and weakness and those with strength of spirit and character. It is that spirit that will sustain even through difficult times – as we await the great and awesome days of complete redemption.

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Posted in Chumash, Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel

SMALL COUNTRY

Posted on August 3, 2012 | 2 comments

Here in Israel, the talk is not of Iran and its Jew-hating leaders and ongoing threat to civilization, but rather of Yakov Tumarkin and Israel’s other Olympic athletes. There was great rejoicing, and the lead story on the news the other night, when Tumarkin became only the second Israeli swimmer (and first in twelve years) to make it to a finals, this in the backstroke. He immediately announced that he does not expect to win, which is in fact refreshing, not to mention accurate (his best time, an Israeli record, is seconds off – but in swimming, light years away – from championship caliber). His candor speaks volumes, as does the celebration of his achievements.

     I don’t follow or watch the Olympics. Few of the sports interest me, and there are far better, more enlightening ways to spend one’s time than to watch strangers competing in ultimately meaningless exercises. Add to that the contrived hype about the “Olympic spirit” which says nothing and means even less; the “Olympic spirit” seems to encompass cheating, doping, gloating, and these days the worst political correctness – the rejection of a moment of silence for the slain Israeli athletes of Munich, forty years ago, was attributed to a desire not to “offend” the Arabs, and, as incredible as it sounds, a declaration that such commemorations would have to mention the “Palestinians” who lost their lives that fateful day, i.e., the Palestinian terrorists who were killed while murdering the Jews would have to be mourned along with the Jews they killed. So much for the “Olympic spirit,” which in a Jewish context also involves the rampant Chilul Shabbat that the Games engender. But the news remains the news, and the reaction to Tumarkin’s achievement in Israel is remarkable from an American perspective.

      Freed of the expectation of winning, the Israeli athletes can actually enjoy the experience of competing on the world stage with their peers. In America, the losers – even winners of silver medals – receive little acclaim and few endorsements. No second-place finisher finds his/her visage adorning a box of Wheaties, which is after all the breakfast of champions, not also-rans. Thus, young lives are effectively sacrificed for fame and fortune. Athletic children (gymnasts, swimmers, etc.) grow up without normal childhoods. (Even in Israel, “exceptional sportsmen” are exempt from IDF service, or at least have their service postponed for several years while they compete internationally; Haredim, take note, as should anti-Haredim, who apparently value sports more than Torah study.) Most of their dreams are snuffed out, as there can only be one champion. But in Israel, the mere fact that they have made it to that stage suffices for acclaim and approbation.

    Thus, the badminton scandal – wherein some Asian teams threw games in order to achieve a better seeding in the real tournament – is typical of the problems of these competitions. Medals count more than performances do. While this happens in team sports fairly often towards the end of the season (star players are rested, games are won or lost based on a team’s playoff wishes), it surprised the Olympic officials and surely disappointed the dim-witted fans who shelled out exorbitant sums of money to attend this foolish spectacle. In any event, I am not sure why there needs to be so many sports involving throwing things back and forth over a net; one sport would have sufficed. But the thrill of competition means nothing; the victory is everything and the sense of failure in defeat can be overwhelming when one’s life is so focused on – even obsessed with – winning the event.

      What else is sacrificed for sports? The peculiar boast by champion swimmer Ryan Lochte’s mother – that her son has no time for relationships but prefers to exploit women serially, and very briefly – is not only a sign of the decline of normal motherhood and the inculcation of moral values in the young but also of the single-mindedness that afflicts parents who are living through, and profiting from, their children’s success, if they indeed succeed. That narrow focus strikes me as sad, and such an upbringing as deprivation of the worst sort – of what is most important in life.

     Even that does not compare to the classical American conundrum that Senator Marco Rubio is trying to avert: in the US, the medal winners are taxed by the federal government because the medals themselves have value and are construed as income. He estimated that a gold medal winner would have to pay more than $8000 just for winning the medal, a hefty sum for a young amateur competitor in an obscure sport that promises no great payday at the end. Such penalties (See? Taxes can be penalties also, as per Chief Justice Roberts) are largely unknown in the rest of the world, and Senator Rubio wants to amend the US tax code to exempt the winners from this mandate, even so as not to encourage them to eschew the gold and win silver or bronze, which are worth much less. But the government behemoth must be fed, and that pettiness is sprinkled throughout the tax code. Good for Rubio to try to undo the effects of this parsimoniousness.

     A country’s smallness is ultimately not determined by size, population or even achievements in sports – but by its embrace (or rebuff) of fundamental values, its commitment to moral excellence, and, in our case, to the propagation of G-d’s word to the rest of the world. This morning’s paper brought the news that Tumarkin finished seventh in the finals; yet, his effort was celebrated and he is being extolled for his accomplishment.

    The cliché would maintain that that is the true Olympic spirit, but that is an empty platitude. There is no Olympic spirit, and the crass commercialization only adds to the small-mindedness. The truth is that the Tumarkin episode is uplifting, and arouses momentary national pride without any tears, frustrations or recriminations. Each Israeli athletes’ feats are honored, lose or lose, and if someone sneaks in a medal victory every few years, how wonderful and unexpected.

     Those countries where the national esteem is dependent on medals are the real losers, small and morally diminutive. Any place where achievement and effort can be lionized is really not small at all – and particularly where those achievements benefit, and not simply serve to distract, all of mankind.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel

Senseless

Posted on July 31, 2012 | 41 comments

      The alternating dazed and demonic looks of the Colorado killer illustrate the senselessness of the murders. And “senseless” is the operative and literal definition: it makes no sense, and it will make no sense, however hard inquiring minds seek a rational motive. While James Holmes might not be legally insane – that requires an inability to distinguish between right and wrong, as in ‘he thought he was blowing bubbles when he was firing his weapons’ – clearly he has several screws loose. The planning, the preparation and the execution all point to a calculating but disturbed mind that rests somewhere inside a red-colored head. How can society guarantee safety from such monsters?

     The sad and troubling news is that, ultimately, it can’t. There is no perfect, foolproof system that can protect against massacres of the innocent unarmed by the determined heavily-armed. Suicide bombings cannot be prevented, but bombers (or their dispatchers) can be halted before the mission begins. But at the time? It is usually too late. One who wants to kill, and does not mind being killed, has a distinct advantage over the sane and the decent.

     Nonetheless, these horrors are always accompanied by demands of pandering politicians for new gun control laws, to be added to the existing gun control laws. The reality is that gun control laws only inhibit the law-abiding citizen from acquiring a self-defense weapon. Criminals can always acquire weapons. Indeed, in my part of the world, it is much easier to purchase an illegal gun that it is to purchase a gun legally, after licensing and waiting periods. It is also cheaper; this I recall from my days practicing law. The plethora of illegal guns on Bronx streets – and the dearth of legal weapons – was shocking, and itself encouraged lawlessness.

    This is an aspect of the gun control fantasy that advocates refuse to recognize but that has been demonstrated conclusively by the research of John Lott, among others. An abundance of guns in the hands of decent, civilized people decreases street crime rather than increases it. The statistics do not support the argument that normal people who possess weapons routinely become enraged and start settling disputes with their weapons. That simply does not happen in a statistically significant manner.

    Gun possession is legal in Colorado, but – not surprisingly – the Aurora theater banned patrons from entering with concealed weapons. Surely, if a moviegoer that night – or several – had been armed with their privately-owned and licensed defensive weapons, the massacre would have been halted in its tracks (if it even would have taken place at all). Gun “control,” in that theater on that night, aided the criminal and hampered the victims.

That didn’t stop liberal Senator (and gun control fanatic) Dianne Feinstein from opining that those who might have had concealed weapons on that night would have caused a “bloodbath” and many people would have been shot in the “crossfire.” Huh? It was a bloodbath because only the killer was armed, and dozens were killed and wounded because there was no “crossfire.” But, as often happens in politics, ideology trumps common sense.

Gun control advocates are fighting a losing battle because the American ethos will not support it, because over 100,000,000 Americans already own more than 300,000,000 firearms, and because there should be a palpable fear when only government and naturally, the criminal, are in possession of weapons. The initial objective of every dictatorship is to remove the means of self-defense from the average citizen; that is why the Second Amendment was so cherished by the Founders and defended vigorously ever since. One need not speculate too deeply about how differently the Holocaust would have unfolded had Jews been armed and able to defend themselves. Yet, liberal Jewish groups are in the forefront of the gun control lobby, as sensible and Jewish-oriented as everything else they do.

Some people just hate guns, and they should fight for their right not to bear arms. But others see firearms as essential to defense of person, home and property, and therefore oppose even the incremental restrictions that are frequently proffered. Certainly, reasonable people support background checks to weed out the insane, but adjudication of insanity is difficult to obtain. If James Holmes had announced his intention to kill people a week before he did, I am not sure what could have been done to stop him. The police don’t arrest for prospective crimes (assuming he did not reveal any overt steps taken to perpetrate his massacre) and liberals ensure almost 30 years ago that nuts could not be institutionalized against their will, greatly exacerbating the homeless problem as well. If James Holmes could not be arrested or institutionalized, then how could he be stopped? Trailed every day the moment he left his home? Not likely.

The suggestion that semi-automatic weapons or clips that allow rapid fire be banned also falls short on the sensibility spectrum. And it is not because I seek to allow hunters freedom to kill their prey as simply as possible, hunting being anathema to any Jew and strikes me personally as barbaric. It is rather for the reason outlined above: a ban on any personal hand-held weapon just drives the market underground. The criminals will always have it, and the police never have to fight the honest citizen – so the only group ever affected by these restrictions is the group of peaceable citizens.

Paradoxically, we probably could use more guns on the street and in the places we deem worthy of protection rather than fewer. Cities with very, very restrictive gun laws – think Chicago – have the highest rates of homicide and violence in the country. The average person cannot protect himself against criminal assaults. The old bumper sticker – “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” – still rings true. And societies with high rates of legal possession – think Israel or Switzerland – actually have very low rates of gun violence.

As frustrating as it sometimes might sound, the price we pay for having a free society in which an individual has the right and the capacity to protect himself or herself against hostile attacks is the occasional eruption of senseless violence. It is a tradeoff that we make, much like we do in our mass use of the automobile wherein reckless drivers kill many more people during the course of a year than do guns, and with all the licensing and testing that legal driving requires.

Rabbi Eliezer (Shabbat 63a) wanted to permit men to carry their swords in the public domain on Shabbat, deeming them “ornaments.” The majority disagreed, saying that such weapons reflect poorly on man and the sad necessity of war, and of course carrying weapons are only permissible for security reasons. Nevertheless, we can appreciate Chazal’s characterization of weapons as a “gnai” while understanding – as they did – their indispensability before the Messianic Era dawns upon us,

To imagine that we live in a world more moral than it actually is simply courts danger unnecessarily and leaves us ill-prepared to defend ourselves when appropriate. That fantasy directly negates fundamental Jewish values.

Until Messiah comes, let us fight for the right to defend ourselves and our homes, in conjunction with the police. In the meantime, let the maniacal miscreant be tried, convicted, and, if there is true justice, executed for his crimes. But let him not be used as a pretext to tamper with our vital freedoms.

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