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Shabbat Shalom!!

Look, Rabbi Yonah and ck are hard at work with Tanya and others preparing what looks to be an incredible 6.0. Sadly, TheMiddle can’t be there, but he knows from previous Jewlicious Festivals that they’re incredibly exciting events that bring young (and less young) Jews together in a fantastic weekend that is not like anything else you’ve ever seen.

The preparations for Jewlicious festivals run like clockwork thanks to the efforts of Rabbi Yonah, his wife Rachel Bookstein, our hard-working ck (David Abitbol) and the crew helping them from Long Beach Hillel and JConnectLA. I’ve seen them do it in the past and I’m sure this year is no different.

As they go through the process of putting the festival together, with its numerous attendees, hosts, guests, musicians, comedians and sponsors, the place runs like a factory. Everyone knows their roles, and everybody takes their work very seriously, showing absolute commitment and dedication to the festival and its success.

Needless to say, they also have a ton of fun.

So, when somebody emailed me this video earlier today, I realized that it represented a very different reality than the behind-the-scenes going on right as they prepare Jewlicious 6.0.

Very different.

Here’s the link one more time. Again, I remind you all that this is nothing like the preparations for Jewlicious 6.0. Not even close.

The headline reads:

IDF legal official: Israel should probe Goldstone Gaza report

The Ha’aretz article then proceeds to tell us:

…The head of the Military Advocate General’s international law department during Operation Cast Lead…Sharvit-Baruch said she was concerned by the Goldstone report’s negative effect on Israel’s legitimacy in the global arena, and that Israel could potentially turn into “a kind of South Africa or Serbia” or a “criminal” or “racist” state in international opinion.

…
Asked whether Israel should establish a commission of inquiry to respond to the Goldstone report’s findings, Sharvit-Baruch said such a panel could provide “friendly countries” with the means to counter calls for Israeli officials to be tried in foreign countries or the International Criminal Court over alleged violations of international law.

“There is not necessarily a need for a commission of inquiry because we essentially know more or less what happened in terms of decision making, orders and targets,” she said. “As for the top brass, we have the protocols of government meetings.”

Nonetheless, she added, “We are now in a situation in which we need to give our friends – who don’t want to see lawsuits filed against us in their own courts – the tools to do away such claims, along with other charges against us,” she said.

“If they need a commission of inquiry then that’s what we’ll give them,” she added. “I really don’t think we have anything we need to hide.”

Let’s remind everybody that the day the report came out, some of us called for a commission of inquiry (read the comments) because it was clear that Israel could not wipe away this smear without a serious inquiry. It is possible that the IDF conducted a serious inquiry, and it is possible that they will show that most of Goldstone is false. They will certainly show that none of the killing of civilians was mandated or systematically and intentionally committed with orders from above as the Report asserts.

None of it will matter. Nobody will let it slide, because the countries that control the UN with their voting blocs are smelling victory. All they have to do is point to Israel’s failure to create an independent commission and they win. And they don’t just win, they get to send Israel to the Hague for war crimes.

In fact, just yesterday it was reported that a key part of Israel’s primary response to the UN, a denial of an attack on the flour mill factory from the air with the excuse that Hamas was fighting from within the mill, has been challenged by a group of UN investigators who came to the building after some days and found a portion of a bomb used by planes. Now, it’s not hard for Hamas to plant one of those, but the point is that Israel is going to have a hard time proving its innocence if the army is doing the investigating.

Many Israelis have figured this out already and are calling for a commission. The media even goes as far as to suggest that Netanyahu wants an inquiry. Who is stopping it? Barak and Ashkenazi, the Minister of Defense and Chief of Staff, respectively. They claim that they have to stand behind their officers and soldiers after a war. All well and good, and from an ethical standpoint, they are right. But from an ethical standpoint, Israel was right not to participate in the Goldstone investigation and that came back to bite Israel hard.

Israel has little choice but to appoint some sort of inquiry that will enable the West to point and claim that Israel’s investigation was legitimate. Having the army investigate itself may convince Israelis because they trust their military to do the right thing. However, it won’t convince many outside of Israel and even Israel’s friends don’t know how they can defend Israel without a legitimate independent inquiry by a civilian body that has authority over the army.

—-

By the way, today the army announced that they will NOT be deploying the Iron Dome missile system to protect communities in the Western Negev. This is an unbelievable decision that indicates either extremely poor planning, extreme failure by Israel’s defense manufacturing, or some sort of game played either by those who wanted to pump money into the defense manufacturing industry or those who know that if such a system doesn’t protect Ben Gurion Airport near the West Bank, then the West Bank can’t really be evacuated of most of its Jewish residents like Gaza.

Whatever the reason, this is a deal-breaker for all those communities living on the front lines and all of us who have been waiting for Israel to develop a system that works. This is not only very disappointing, it undermines trust in those who make decision.

Let’s hope that the reason for this is poor planning or scientific failure, because the alternative is that Israel’s leadership really are doofuses, or worse…liars.

I stumbled upon a site dedicated to Leonard Cohen called Leonard Cohen Files. Do me a favor and click on the link, then click on the link in the menu on the left for “Tributes and Covers” and in the box under his photo, click on “All Covers.”

Holy cow! I mean, how many people have covered Bird on a Wire?

Okay, check out this video for Because Of by Cohen.

Better yet, check out this classic Canada National Film Board movie, “Ladies and Gentlemen…Mr. Leonard Cohen” from 1965. Seriously, there is incredible footage in there including of Montreal in the mid-’60s (also available on the NFB website). The hairstyles are especially troubling.

Man, that hair just makes me want to cry.

(photo is by Ratnesh Mathur, India 1999)

Tamar Katz

The NY Times gives us the absurd story of an Israel figure skater who qualified for the Olympics, but did not qualify to make the Israeli Olympic team.

Tamar Katz, the three-time national champion, met the International Skating Union’s standards for Olympic eligibility. But the Olympic Committee of Israel has a rule that says a skater must place among the top 14 at the European championships to earn a trip to the Olympics, the group’s president said. Katz finished 21st at the recent championships in Tallinn, Estonia.

“This issue is not about resources or gender — it’s purely professional,” Efraim Zinger, the secretary general for the Israeli Olympic Committee, said in a telephone interview. “We set the target about two years ahead of time for our athletes. Those who don’t make it must stay back. Some countries’ main goals are to participate, some send their athletes to win. We are interested in our athletes reaching the top.”

Let me guess. One day, Efraim Zinger, having nothing better to do with his time, and upset that Syria had beaten Israel to its first Olympic gold medal, decided that Israel should only send “top” international athletes. What is “top?” Hmmmm…Wait, I know! Let’s make it the top 14 spots! After all, the Olympics isn’t about competing, it’s about WINNING. In fact, there are rumors that Mr. Zinger is considering shutting down the country of Israel and dispersing its citizenry because it doesn’t rank in the top 14 (or 20, for that matter) internationally in population size, GDP, per capita income, water resources or average male height.

So here is Tamar, working away year after year, her parents paying private coaches small fortunes to train her, just for a chance to compete at the highest level of amateur competition. The World Championships are good, but the Olympics, as we all know, are the dream of every athlete. They are certainly Tamar’s dream. And her dream is infused with representing Israel at the Olympics because apparently she loves her country. AND SHE WAS GOOD ENOUGH TO QUALIFY.

Sadly, her country has decided that it has so many eligible winter athletes (4) to send to the Winter Olympics, that they can skip over a skater who’s likely to end up in the top 20 IN THE WORLD in her sport. A young woman who would proudly bear her Israeli connection and present it to an international and Canadian audience in the positive light that surrounds figure skating in general. A figure skater, representing Israel, a country with virtually no snow or ice, who is attractive and can speak English without an accent.

Yup.

Schmucks!

Would somebody explain to these people that there’s a much smarter way to run Israel’s Olympic team?

Here is an interview with Tamar.

Here is Tamar’s website. Make sure to look at the photos in the Media section, to see how photogenic the young woman looks with “Israel” plastered on her uniform.

A Facebook “support” group can be found here.

The Olympic Committee of Israel can be reached at nocil@nocil.co.il
Phone, +972 3 649 8385. Fax, +972 3 649 8395

The Israel Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport is led by:
Minister of Education, Gideon Sa`ar, MK at 972-2-560 2330 and its Director General, Shimshon Shoshani, Ph.D, who can be found at 972-2-560 2242.

“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.”

J.D. Salinger,
Franny and Zooey

After 45 years of hiding from the public and the press, J.D. Salinger has passed away at 91 years of age. His work still holds up. His work will hold up in 50 years. I don’t know how to explain the magic of his tone, but it is there and every time I’ve read his work, a new layer of understanding came about. Was it intentional? Did he really consider each and every word in what he wrote? It seems that way. There was an economy of words, but somehow he was able to create a feeling and a mood. He was able to tell us about people and about ourselves.

He was, by the way, half Jewish. His father was Jewish (a kosher cheese salesman), his mother was Irish Catholic. I read somewhere that only later in life did Salinger discover that his mother wasn’t Jewish by birth because she had changed her name to Miriam. I’m not sure whether he also discovered that she hadn’t converted. Either way, he identified as a Jew in his younger life…and nobody has a clue with what he identified later in life since he kept to himself in the most severe way.

The LA Times had a reasonable obituary.

Ah, the NY Times has a better obit.

Virginia Heffernan has an interesting take on Salinger at Tablet.

Hat tip to Ynetnews for writing about this. Three Jewish Israelis sit and discuss Israel with three Palestinians. In Arabic.

From the Israeli side, Avi Melamed, a history teacher by profession, Yohanan Tzoref, an academic and expert on Palestinian affairs, and Yoni Yahav, a student, were invited to participate on the panel.

As they conversed in fluent Arabic, the three confronted their Palestinian counterparts who were invited to the broadcast on a series of issues on the political agenda. The Palestinian panel members were Ayesha a-Sayafi, a nurse by profession, Ayoub a-Tutanji, a student, and Dr. Jamal Amar, a building engineer.

This took place live, in Arabic, on BBC’s Arabic service. This is a good thing because there are few Israeli voices heard unfiltered in the Arab world.

This serves as another reminder that half of Israel’s population comes from the East, many from Arab lands. A reminder to those who continue to falsely claim that Israel is a foreign European colony in the Middle East.

In any case, I can’t understand a word of what is being discussed, but watching sections of the debate (it flips in and out of the discussion, but look for the parts where 3 Israelis are seated across from the 3 Palestinians) is fascinating. The passion of the debate on both sides is evident.

Ooooh, the man is really angry. Shlomo Sand (also known as Shlomo Zand) is angry that historians like Simon Schama have critiqued his work unfavorably. Does he bother to refute their claims? No, he has a different response: “I live there and you don’t, therefore I can speak and you should not criticize me.”

Here is how he put it to The Guardian:

“The book fails to sever the remembered ­connection between the ancestral land and Jewish experience,” Schama wrote. “What chutzpah coming from Simon Schama, speaking about his ancestral land!” Sand says, eyes widening. “He doesn’t want to come to his ‘ancestral land’ to live!”

Sand is scathing about accusations made by Jews living elsewhere that his book is anti-Israel. From the comfort of the diaspora they charge him with sedition. Some say his thesis fuels antisemitism. Overseas donors to Tel Aviv University have called for him to be sacked.

But Sand has voted for Israel with his feet. He is not anti-Zionist, he says, but post-Zionist: accepting modern Israel as a fait accompli. Besides, his interest in the country’s survival as a democracy is not theoretical. His family lives there.

Diaspora Zionists can nurture the Jewish myth of biblical nationhood as dual citizenship alongside their passports from safer states. When they refer to “Israel” and “Jerusalem” in their prayers, they do not have to distinguish between scriptural metaphor and political reality. It is a distinction on which Israel’s survival depends.

“A lot of pro-Zionists in London and New York don’t really understand what their great-grandparents felt about Zion,” says Sand. “It was the most important place in the world in their imagination, as a religious, sacred land, not a place to emigrate.” That “Israel” was a metaphysical destination to be reached at the End of Days. The modern Israeli state is a political enterprise, conceived in the late 19th century, made necessary by the Holocaust, founded in 1948.”

Methinks Mr. Sand doesn’t get it. First of all, he is forgetting that well-regarded Israeli historians such as Anita Shapira have criticized his work for shoddy scholarship and they also live in Israel.

He also forgets that a person who lives outside of Israel, Jewish or not, has the right to find flaws with his work and point them out. They don’t need to live in Israel in order to do that and their arguments and claims are no less valid just because they live elsewhere. His resources for the research of history are no greater than the resources available to Simon Schama. The same goes for the discussion of a link between Jews and their ancestral homeland. A Tibetan monk could discuss this link and if his resources or knowledge are good and the argument is historically sound, his views are just as valid as those of Israeli scholars.

Why does Mr. Sand think that he gets a pass on doing good research and coming to correct conclusions simply because he lives in Israel? He doesn’t.

What is particularly galling is that he actually admits that his thesis is wrong!

“”A lot of pro-Zionists in London and New York don’t really understand what their great-grandparents felt about Zion,” says Sand. “It was the most important place in the world in their imagination, as a religious, sacred land, not a place to emigrate.” That “Israel” was a metaphysical destination to be reached at the End of Days.”

Precisely, Mr. Sand. Except for the part about it not being a place to emigrate. This is exactly what your critics have been telling you. For almost two millenia this particular idea has been at the center of Jewish life and Jewish imagination. Whether a person was genetically connected to our ancestors in Judea or Israel is not what defines our connection as Jews to the Land of Israel. It is exactly what you say it is: “the most important place in the world in their imagination, as a religious, sacred land.” After all, you’re the one who talks about the Jewish people being the result of mass conversions. Yet, you know well that the idea of Israel that you mention in the interview was a bond that Jews shared throughout the world, whether in Yemen, Morocco, Germany or anywhere else. It is this link that made them a nation and a people. It is this link that connected them and connects us to modern Israel.

The claim that the Jews did not envision Israel as a place to which they could emigrate is a red herring. They did not have the option. Not only was there no economic infrastructure in the area, but there were often hostile forces, Christian and Muslim, who controlled the place and who would have made it difficult to travel there or live there. Sand knows the story of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi who traveled to visit the Western Wall and was then, according to legend, run over by a horse and killed. Why would such a legend crop up? Because Jews did not believe they could safely return to their homeland.

It took a political movement and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire facilitating this movement’s activities (not the Holocaust, as Sand mistakenly claims) to bring Jews to the belief that they could return to their homeland. While many opposed the idea, many accepted it as real and possible.

The bottom line is that Shlomo Sand’s claim about the supposedly invented nationhood of the Jewish people is the real invention here. He decided that his political views could be justified and perhaps even brought into being if he could reconfigure the meaning of the link between the Jewish people and Israel. While his book is like manna from heaven to many Israel haters and anti-Israel activists and will now become part of the debate about Israel, the simple fact is that his ideas are wrong and based on a false understanding and odd recording of history. The saddest part of all is that under it all he is seeking peace, but his book will only serve those who seek war. Wittingly or unwittingly, he has become a weapon in their arsenal.

Our other articles about Shlomo Sand:

The one about Simon Schama ridiculing him

Shlomo Sand excoriated for shoddy history once again

And our original,

The French Love Sex a Good Anti-Zionist, Socialist Book

Nina Simone singing Eretz Zavat Halav!

We’re here to entertain you.

(Video is fixed so check it out if you missed it the first time!)

This is getting to be such a bad habit.

This time it’s the Guardian – no particular friend of Israel, this publication – which has a London Rabbi, Jonathan Wittenberg, review the book. After finding many of the same flaws in history, logic and conclusions in Sand’s work, he writes:

Sand makes it clear from the outset that he identifies with those excluded by the Jewish-Israeli narrative. Regrettably, the book lacks the empathy for the outsider which one might have expected. Instead, it is driven by a sustained polemic against a misreading of Judaism imposed more by the author himself than by those “authorised historians” whose supposed repression of “cheeky little facts” he sets out to unveil. Ironically for a book intended to deconstruct myths, it may well be taken up by those with an alternative mythology in which the Jews have no right to a state at all. Sadly, this would be unlikely to further the interests of Palestinians, or Israelis, or peace.

It’s already happening. All over the place I see people quoting Sand as an authority with the claim that the Jewish people really aren’t the Jewish people but the Palestinians are, etc., etc.

Astounding but true. As if that’s going to bring about peace or a bi-national state.

This is a prime example of naive idealists causing more harm than good. WE ALL WANT PEACE, Professor Sand, but not at the cost of making Israel into another Muslim, Arab country. There are plenty of those already and their societies don’t impress all that much. Remember when Hamas men threw Fatah men off rooftops while they were taking Gaza over? Those are your partners in this project of a bi-national state. Good luck with that.

Look, over the years here on Jewlicious, we’ve had some uncomfortable debates about aspects of halacha – Jewish law – that to some of us appeared outdated and WRONG, and to others among us appeared to be the way things are and have to remain. Among flash-points such as what it means to keep the sabbath, what, if anything, is the Jewish value of Conservative and Reform Judaism other than to subsidize Orthodox Jews, whether converts who converted in movements other than Orthodox are actually Jewish, whether children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers who identify themselves as Jewish are indeed Jewish and should visitors at the Western Wall be segregated or divided into the haves (men) and have-nots (women), there was one particular topic that always raised my ire: agunot.

To those who don’t know, according to Jewish law, when a man wants to divorce a woman, he gives her a “get” which is his consent to be divorced. Without that “get,” the woman is not considered divorced and may not remarry in Jewish tradition. She is an agunah (agunot is the plural form). If she does remarry, it would most certainly not be considered valid by Orthodox rabbis and the children would be considered bastards which carries all sorts of negative connotations. In other words, this is a rabbinic sanction for a man to have extensive leverage over the woman who despises him sufficiently to seek a divorce from him. To give up the “get,” he can ask for money, sex, favors and all sorts of other goodies because until he says the magic words, the woman is “his” (literally, since that is what the traditional ketubah – marriage contract – stipulates).

Needless to say, this happens all the time. It’s actually even worse for some women because the husband so hates the wife that he does not grant her the “get” under any circumstances. She waits for years, usually her finite child-bearing years, hoping that he’ll release her, but very often he will move on with his life and out of spite refuse to grant her the “get.”

The rabbis know all of this, of course. In Israel, they have the luxury of controlling civil laws pertaining to marriage and divorce so the issue of receiving the “get” takes on even greater importance since the woman cannot even get around the country’s civil administration unless the husband grants a “get.” Over the years, some rabbis have tried different solutions. Some have tried pre-nuptial agreements, but the rabbis who control the rabbinate have rejected most of these agreements because the man, according to tradition, must come to the decision of his own volition and not because of coercion (Get it? He can coerce his wife any way he wants, but he cannot be coerced). Other rabbis send tough guys over to the guy’s house where they are supposed to apply, um, pressure on him. That’s supposed to work, but often it doesn’t because this is a form of coercion and unless the guy is seriously afraid that somebody is going to risk going to jail over this, chances are he won’t budge.

All of this is preamble to what this post is really about: how well halacha works!

From the Jerusalem Post:

A 50-year-old man from the Jerusalem area divorced for the 11th time, a new Israeli record for Jews, according to an announcement released Monday by the Rabbinical Court Administration.

The man, whose divorces were performed both in Israel and abroad in accordance with Halacha, said his custom is to divorce his wives every two years and look for a new bride immediately after.

“I throw out a hook and the fish come on their own,” the man reportedly said.

In his latest marriage, which also lasted two years, the two sides split the debts the husband had accrued. The woman claimed her husband had promised to work but ended up living off her assets and those of her parents.

See? What did I tell you? Halacha works! This guy gives a “get” on schedule and does not leave his wives as agunot, not even once out of eleven chances.

It’s good to be a man.

There is no room for insubordination in the IDF on the basis of ideology. That has been the case since Israel was formed as a state and the IDF was constituted from the Haganah. Back then, it took into its fold not just the Haganah fighters but also the Irgun fighters who had a very different political philosophy. Being a conscription army, the IDF has always been a sort-of melting pot for Israeli society and a “people’s army” whose task it is to defend Israel from the many threats it has faced and faces.

One small hiccup in this plan was the provision granted during the formation of the state by Ben Gurion to the Orthodox: (this is in a nutshell) they would control civic laws and they would be permitted to refuse military service if they were studying Torah.

That has translated into generations of Orthodox men who have not served in the IDF. By the same token, the Orthodox Zionist stream, took it upon itself to participate actively and diligently in the IDF by sending their husbands and sons not just to the army, but often to combat units. In the past two decades, this movement has accelerated and many of the soldiers who go to combat and elite units in the IDF are Orthodox Jews, typically from an Orthodox Zionist background and frequently from families who live or support those who live in Judea and Samaria/West Bank or formerly in Gaza.

They and the IDF overcame the hurdle of ensuring these highly motivated, effective soldiers would continue to serve and join the army in large numbers despite their ability to avoid service by simply declaring they would study Torah, by establishing the Hesder system. Hesder apparently means “arrangement” in Hebrew, although I’m not sure that is the reason they names this system “Hesder.” The arrangement calls for these Orthodox soldiers to spread their 3 year military service over 5 years while using the additional two years as a period of study at these specific yeshivas that were part of the system.

A few years ago, during the disengagement from Gaza, there was already a great deal of concern that since the ranks of the Hesder soldiers were dominated by people who reside in the Territories, that there would be insubordination and a refusal to obey orders. To the credit of the IDF and these soldiers, there were only a small number of problems, but for the most part these soldiers did what they had to do. In the meantime, it is no accident that the IDF often sends soldiers from different backgrounds than Orthodox Zionism to address issues involving the Israeli population living in Judea and Samaria/West Bank.

Over the past several weeks, a severe crisis has been brewing in the IDF after a number of new recruits from Orthodox Zionist backgrounds publicly declared that they would not act on orders to remove settler outposts. Their actions were supported by some of the Hesder yeshivas, and some of the religious leaders connected to these yeshivas provided support for these soldiers. These rabbis also began to speak publicly about the right of these soldiers to act this way even if it is in violation of orders.

Ehud Barak, a secular Israeli who is renowned as a great combat soldier and military leader, is the current Minister of Defense. He, together with Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, decided that they had to nip this movement in the bud and ordered that a certain outspoken Rabbi Melamed who heads a Hesder yeshiva stop teaching his guards that their actions against the IDF were permissible and desirable. He refused and Barak ordered to eliminate his yeshiva from the roster of approved yeshivas for Hesder.

Since then, a petition signed by over 150 combat soldiers, has been passed around, essentially demanding that Barak refrain from taking any such actions with the implied threat that they would stop their IDF service otherwise. Now a group of rabbis who lead Hesder yeshivas have met and instead of announcing that they would get off their high horse, publicly insulted Barak and rejected his actions. These are religious leaders who can and do influence the students who study in their yeshivas, students who are also some of the IDF’s best soldiers today.

This is a delicate moment in Israel’s history. In fact, in some ways it may be a defining moment. Historically, the population in Israel has skewed to the secular, and they have represented the majority in the IDF and were often the leaders in its combat units and elite ranks. The past couple of decades have changed this equation, particularly because of the Hesder yeshivas, and these days some of the most important IDF units and up-and-coming officers come from a religious background. This change is also reflected in the general population as the ratio of observant to non-observant or non-halachically-observant Israelis changes.

What the Hesder leaders are doing is a simple power play. They are telling the IDF’s establishment that they call the shots, not the politicians and not the secular generals. If something is deemed to be offensive to these Hesder soldiers, the rabbis suggest, then they can simply refuse to participate in their orders.

Barak knows that if he lets this course of action emerge victorious, the IDF is going to become an ineffective force in short order. He also knows that some of these soldiers are the best and most highly motivated Israel has. On the other hand, if he does nothing, then they will come to view the IDF as a shell that facilitates their political views and nothing more.

As hard as it’s going to be for Barak, he should not be afraid to shurt down any Hesder yeshivas that are out of line or whose rabbis support order-refusal. Even if it means shutting down the entire system and replacing it with new yeshivas or none at all for a while. It will be wrenching for many Israelis, especially the Orthodox Zionists, to be sure. It will be challenging for the IDF to survive otherwise and without a strong IDF, there will not be a Jewish state in short order. These young soldiers are in a bind as well, and that’s why he should not be afraid to blow up the Hesder system. These soldiers’ homes and communities rely on the IDF and without a strong IDF, they may well soon be in a war with Palestinian forces.

Shut down these yeshivas and make these rabbis lose the right to participate in any future Hesder program. Announce that any community which has more than 3 soldiers or new conscripts who refuse to serve with full support for the IDF’s leadership will lose its IDF protection for a period of 3 years. Demote every soldier who takes active steps to support this movement to challenge the IDF (petitions are fine, I’m talking about people who take concrete steps to challenge their commanders or the system) and remove them from service for a period of 3 years.

There is no room for compromise here. Israel’s very existence relies on an effective counter-offensive to what these rabbis are trying to do.

This is the first year I’ve exclusively used olive oil for making latkes and they were unusual and good. Canola is much less expensive and can be very good in certain recipes, but I think I’m going to stick to olive oil. I think the trick is to prevent it from getting too hot while letting it get and stay hot enough…

Just thinking out loud.

Paul Samuelson was the first American to win a Nobel for Economics. He, like Milton Friedman, who he often debated, was very influential and considered one of the important economists in American history. I have to check this but I believe Ben Bernanke studied at MIT, which means he would have studied under Samuelson. Also, Samuelson was Lawrence Summers’ uncle.

The NY Times business section has this terrific, fascinating report on Sauelson’s extraordinary life and career, including the part where they write about how MIT was able to pull him away from Harvard:

Mr. Samuelson earned his master’s degree from Harvard in 1936 and a Ph.D. in 1941. He wrote his thesis between 1937 and 1940 as a member of the prestigious Harvard Society of Junior Fellows. In 1940, Harvard offered him an instructorship, which he accepted, but a month later M.I.T. invited him to become an assistant professor.

Harvard made no attempt to keep him, even though he had by then developed an international following. Mr. Solow said of the Harvard economics department at the time: “You could be disqualified for a job if you were either smart or Jewish or Keynesian. So what chance did this smart, Jewish, Keynesian have?”

Indeed, American university life before World War II was anti-Semitic in a way that hardly seemed possible later, and Harvard, along with Yale and Princeton, was a flagrant example.

Times have changed…

I noticed that one of our advertisers is Modern Tribe, which sells the Texas Dreidel game. I own a set and can heartily recommend it. It’s a fun, original concept and it’s fun to play together as a family. It’s also reasonably priced.

Go ahead, don’t be shy. Look for the Modern Tribe ad on the right side of this page which appears to be rotating between an inexpensive “Peace sign menorah” and an inexpensive Texas Dreidel Game, and click on it. Then buy your family a set and enjoy.

No, I wasn’t paid or asked to post this and I have no idea whether ck was paid, or how much he was paid, for the ad on our page. I saw the game at some Jewish event where the founder of Modern Tribe was selling them and bought one because she seemed like a nice person. It’s a great little invention and I’m pleased to see it advertised here and to recommend it and her company.

Leave it to the colonialist Israel Antiquities Authority (the vaunted IAA) to continue to play a role in the formation and enactment of Israel’s colonial-national historical imagination by presenting yet another of all the countless hard-to-refute archaeological findings that shape the spatial foundations and ideological contours of Israel’s settler nationhood and help to facilitate its territorial extension, appropriation and gradual reconfiguration (borrowed liberally from Nadia Abu El-Haj, now tenured professor at Columbia University).

How did they commit this evil deed? They publicly presented, on the eve of Hannukah, an inscription found on a stele in the caves of Beit Guvrin, 30 minutes outside Jerusalem.

The Stele was reconstituted after some fascinating puzzle-like repairs that took place when a researcher, Dov Gera, who had been asked for help by the archaeologist, Ian Stern, who had found two of the broken pieces from the Stele, realized that if he took a piece from Michael Steinhardt’s collection, which happened to be on display in Israel, and connected it to the other two pieces and then to the larger stele section that was in the Israel Museum, that they would make a whole inscribed tablet.

What an incredible find! In the stele, the Syrian-Greek King Seleucus IV (187-175 BCE) writes to the ruling leadership in Judea, providing instructions to his chief minister to appoint a man by the name of Olympiodorus (now there’s a mouthful) to collect money from all of the temples in the region, a new development. He specifically mentions the Temple in Jerusalem and apparently this Seleucid stele references the beginning of the period that would culminate in the Maccabean Revolt several years later (the stele is dated to 178 BCE and the Revolt is believed to have taken place around 168 BCE).

Of course, it is this Jewish Revolt against the Seleucids which the non-Jews who pretend to be Jews and have colonized Israel celebrate – and which the real Jews who are the Palestinians no longer celebrate – in the holiday of Hannukah (that was borrowed from Shlomo Sand, a tenured professor at Tel Aviv University).

Just kidding! Sand and Abu El Haj are examples of how free speech and academic freedom are used to pervert history through the use of politics, even as they complain and claim that it’s the other way around. Kudos to Gera, Stern, the IAA, Michael Steinhardt and the folks who dug and fixed up the ancient site at Beit Shearim and those who continue to make Beit Guvrin a fascinating destination (Stern found two pieces of the stele in the “archeology for a day” program they hold at Beit Guvrin. I’ve never done it, but I’ve seen visitors dig and sift through what they find on a day’s archaeological outing on location there. They found these in that touristy program! How about that?!).

Oh, and by the way, the IDF’s initial report on their investigations of the 36 incidents listed in the Goldstone Report as Israeli war crimes is that 30 of them are “baseless accusations” and 6 may be true but appear to be operational errors.

I recommend reading both articles.

Happy Hannukah!

Happy Chanukah!

Happy Hanukkah!

Happy Channukah!

Happy Chanuka

Happy Hannuka

Happy Hanukka

Happy Chanuka

Jpost reports:

The 27 EU foreign ministers are scheduled to decide Tuesday on the final wording of a statement on the Middle East that may very well include European recognition of east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

The official said that Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt was working hard to pass the statement, extremely problematic from an Israeli point of view. He is being supported by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Other countries behind the proposal are Ireland and Portugal.

…

Israeli officials said that they had been told by those supporting the statement that it was needed to prod Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas back to the negotiating table.

Israel has waged an extensive diplomatic charge over the last week against the Swedish draft, one that included intervention by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and National Security Council head Uzi Arad.

Well, apparently the draft gives east Jerusalem to the Palestinians, but it does not give west Jerusalem to Israel. It also doesn’t mention anything regarding Israel’s security.

This is known in the trade as a slap in the face. Since coming to power, Netanyahu’s government eased up on checkpoints and military presence in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, has supported and protected Mahmoud Abbas and his government, have slowed and now frozen virtually all settlement construction while being far more cautious about construction of Jewish homes in Jerusalem as well as destruction of Palestinian homes. In return, Israel has had to swallow the Goldstone Report, the Swedish “IDF Steals Body Parts” attack with no apology from the government and now this.

Make no mistake, this is important because the EU is part of the Quartet and a move such as this will encourage the present US administration to do the same.

To remind everybody out there: EAST JERUSALEM INCLUDES THE OLD CITY, WHICH IN TURN INCLUDES THE HOLIEST SITE FOR JEWS AND THE ANCIENT JEWISH QUARTER.

Since the Europeans see fit to take away from Israel its historical provenance and its holiest sites, it’s time for Israel to stop being nice. Here are some proposals which I hope would be enacted the day after this vote, if indeed is passes as described:

1. Assert that in all future EU ministerial visits to Israel, the topic of the Israeli-Arab conflict shall remain off the table entirely. If they have such a poor understanding of the situation, they have no place at the table.

1a. Alternatively, only speak to visiting EU ministers about the holiness of Jerusalem to Jews and about the Temple Mount.

2. Remove all protection, visible and otherwise, provided by Israel to Abbas and his crew.

3. Give up the 1000 prisoners, without Barghouti, to Hamas for Shalit. Do it right after removing all protections from Abbas. Do nothing to interfere with Hamas surge in the polls.

4. Eliminate any further support for American training of Palestinian forces.

5. Inform the Waqf that within one week, it loses control over the Temple Mount which is inside Israel’s sovereign territory. Then, do it.

6. Announce several building plans in Jerusalem, particularly east Jerusalem, that will establish large Jewish neighborhoods in the heart of this part of the city. Start construction immediately.

7. Unfreeze settlement construction in the major blocs – the “consensus” blocs.

8. Increase roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria. Remove all support for Palestinian economic growth, including shutdowns of the Jordanian entry points.

Europe should really stay out of it. They have done enough damage with their constant funding for NGOs that oppose Israel, for their blind support of the Palestinians and relative silence over Hamas and Gazan attacks on Israeli civilian targets and the constant pressure presented from their courts over potential arrests of Israeli leaders.

Yes, it’s petulant and acting out of anger. However, consider what judicious and positive acts by Israel have caused. Obviously the EU is a little confused and needs to have its thinking adjusted.

Update: This is the language which the Italians and French prevailed upon the English and the Swedes to use in their final document:

The European Union will not recognise any changes to the pre-1967 borders including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties.

This is a minor victory for all of Israel’s hard lobbying efforts since the EU didn’t just give away east Jerusalem. Negotiations based on 242 always indicated there would be some horse-trading before a deal is achieved and it had to take place between the key parties. I don’t think that in 1967 anybody believed that the Palestinians would be seated across the table from the Israelis, but here they are. This wording, of course, does not help in the efforts to achieve peace, but it also does not cause terminal damage.

They would have been better off just keeping quiet.

Igor Berezovsky took these lovely images.

Shabbat Shalom!

The boxing match continues and Israel is about to get bloodied.

As I’ve written in the past few weeks, the Palestinians believe the timing is propitious for them to pursue their endgame. I believe they think their endgame – the knock-out punch that will bring about the final part of this century-old conflict and finally give them control over the Jews and the former Ottoman Palestine – is what happens when a single state, run by an Arab majority, exists from the Sea to the River (I would argue they believe they would next lay claim to Jordan, but that’s fodder for another discussion).

To achieve this goal, the Palestinians must keep Israel off-balance while continuing to jab and throw the occasional left hook or two. Their jabs and punches take many forms: terrorism (not just blowing up buses, restaurants and hotels, but also rockets launched at civilians), diplomatic warfare, propaganda that vilifies Jews and Israel, strong media relations that consistently depict Israel’s actions as that of an evil ogre (especially if they are security based), international and domestic law-fare and pressure upon Israel’s allies which is supported and strengthened by the Arab and Muslim entourage blocs who sit in the Palestinian’s corner profiting from the Palestinian’s black eyes and bloody nose while watching from the sidelines.

This fighter, the Palestinian nation, has shown moments of brutal aggression in previous rounds, showing that it indeed belongs in the ring and doesn’t need proxies fighting its wars, but in the latest, current round, is taking a more sophisticated approach to the fight.

This fighting strategy has evolved in the past few years partly as a response to prize-fighter Israel’s success in winning the Palestinian War of 2000. For years, the Palestinians succeeded in penetrating Israel and committing atrocities against Israeli civilians, inflicting severe emotional and physical blows against their opponent. However, their opponent is a middleweight and they’re lightweights. Israel wore them down with efficacious punches that became harder and harder to counter. It evacuated Gaza, leaving that strip of land without a connection to the West Bank, forcing the Palestinians to fight with two uncoordinated arms. It parried punches with stronger punches, stopping most of the terror attacks through intensive intelligence gathering, using targeted killings, developing defensive strategies such as the security barrier and large increases in the number of check-points, and decreases in the number of Palestinians permitted to travel into Israel to work. While doing these things, Israel also kept pushing the Palestinians into a smaller and tighter corner. With Gaza gone, additional territory in the rink was being overwhelmed by Israel as it grew settlements in Judea and Samaria/West Bank and built out parts of Jerusalem. To fortify their claims, the over-confident Israelis kept pointing to their increasing activities such as archaeological digs to point out that the ring should be theirs because of the historic connection of early Jews to Jerusalem and Israel.

But the Israelis don’t know how to close a fight, and when they had the Palestinians down for the count, they stepped back and offered peace. They did this in 2000, 2001 and 2008. Every time, the Palestinians refused to accept a truce and stepped right back into the fight, even more fiercely than before. Even after the pain of fighting a losing war in the Palestinian War of 2000, faced with extensive body blows and reeling from the loss of their charismatic promoter, Yasser Arafat, the Palestinians did not bow down or give up – after all, this fight is in an inescapable iron cage and since the UN ref won’t let either side kill off the other, the fight must go on, blow after bloody blow.

It took a few years, but the solution came in the form of a new trainer, Salam Fayyad, a western-trained economist who worked in the highest echelons of international finance. Fayyad understands that the crowd which matters here is the West and they can influence the ref to give advantages to the Palestinians. Fayyad and his boss, Mahmoud Abbas who had once written a doctoral dissertation denying parts of the Holocaust, understood well that fighting a bigger, stronger fighter with brutality would only lead to greater injury and a possible loss. No, that was not the way to win an uneven fight. The only way to beat a stronger opponent is to make him work harder, make him work non-stop, tire him out, weaken him with painful and confusing jabs to the side and wait until he is too fatigued to resist. Time will do the rest.

So the Palestinians went into the rope-a-dope.

Instead of terrorism, the Palestinians began to demonstrate using civilians at B’ilin; instead of loud proclamations in the Arab media, they wooed European and North American activists to proclaim for them that Israel was an unjust state; instead of fighting fire with fire, they fought fire with fake media demonstrations like Muhammad al-Dura and the bomb that killed the family on the beach in Gaza; instead of calling Israel names, they let their shills from the Left (especially sympathetic Jews and university activism) vilify Israel in the most heinous terms (genocide; apartheid), and of course they counted on the confusion their elusive rope-a-dope strategy was sowing upon their opponent.

Their lumbering opponent, unable to see that the underdog’s strategy had changed and was now making use of their smaller size and sympathetic crowd to form a dangerous advantage, kept acting with unsophisticated brutishness. it kept pushing the settlements, watched its economy grow and its society become more entrenched even in areas that it knew it may not be able to keep, it announced a law that made it look bigoted because it prevented Palestinian Arabs from moving into Israel and bulldozed buildings under judgmental reporters’ watchful eyes. Whenever stung by jabs, Israel fought back with a barrage of heavy blows against Lebanon and Gaza, proving that a media victory can overwhelm a military victory.

Winning few points against the elusive smaller fighter who kept bouncing against the ropes, the lumbering middleweight began to feel tired and to question his own motives and tactics. And that’s the moment in which we find ourselves now: the moment when the smaller fighter against the ropes senses the weakness and fatigue of the larger fighter and comes out of the ropes quickly and aggressively to fight in the hope that time has done its share and given the advantage to the less tired and extremely motivated underdog.

Over the past few weeks, the Palestinians have come out of the ropes with threats that they won’t even discuss peace unless Israel treats not just the settlements as illegal by stopping all construction there but also give the same status to Jerusalem. The US, a fight enthusiast that had been trying to support both sides even as it kept sending messages of support to Israel’s corner, immediately supported this idea.

The Palestinians followed that jab with a second jab to the other side by announcing that their leader, Abbas, would resign, throwing the ref and the crowd into a tizzy since Abbas is believed to be a “moderate” and the only one on the Palestinian side with enough heft to deliver peace.

After these couple of jabs, the Palestinians followed with a strong right hook, allowing leaks to Ha’aretz and other reporters that Fayyad was planning to unilaterally announce a state on the 1967/1949 Armistice lines. The Israelis, tired and hurt, began to lobby the Americans, the Europeans and even the ref hard to stop this from happening. Feinting to the right, the Palestinians announced that Abbas was not in favor of Fayyad’s action. Somewhat relieved, the Israelis went to Washington to meet with the American President, who treated them as if they were from the enemy’s gym, not as their supporter and mentor. In fact, he apparently informed the Israelis that he was now supporting the Palestinian fighter unless the Israeli fighter backed off with his heavy-handedness.

Israel got the message. Bloodied, hurt and surprised by the new-found strength and crowd-support the other fighter was bringing to the fight, the Israelis lowered their defenses a little and announced a settlement freeze. Sensing weakness, the Palestinians lured in the Israelis with a light punch as Saeb Erakat announced that even the announcement to stop settlement building wouldn’t open the door the crowd demanded to talk peace. Duped, the Israelis felt they had gotten out of trouble and already began to make crowing noises about how they had put the ball in the Palestinians’ court and the Palestinians were the ones refusing to play. The Palestinians ignored this entirely. They had the Israelis right where they wanted them.

POW!! Uppercut!

That was today’s announcement that they will seek to have the ref change the rules by which the fight had been fought to their advantage. They are asking the UN to relinquish UNSCR 242 and 338 by replacing them with a new resolution that grants the Palestinians the West Bank/Judea and Samaria as well as the eastern part of Jerusalem before the next round begins. It’s official.

UNSCR 242 demands that before any peace deal is achieved and any land is given up – and specifying that not ALL the land is to be given up – peace and acceptance of all states in the region, including Israel, must be achieved. Suddenly these rules are to be changed and if they are, the price is not the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, it is Jerusalem itself. The holy part of Jerusalem.

Lo and behold, it appears the Palestinian wooing of the crowd in previous rounds as well as Israel’s perceived brutishness, mixed in with unfair singling out of this fighter because he wears a star of David on his shorts, have solidified the crowd’s support for the move and the ref will have no less than the EU supporting this move. He might even have the US’s support.

Do the Palestinians think this is the end? Heck, no. They think this is the beginning of the endgame; a final round of this fight that will last the next several years. Victory for them will be when Israel is no longer even fighting in the ring but is subjugated to their control. To accomplish this, whether they get the UN Security Council to accept the changes to 242 or not, just by having the General Assembly record these new rules and then kicking it into the Security Council, which has authority to create international law, they know that the pressure on Israel to succumb will be great, and they also know they will have the moral backing of the world as they continue to lash out at the weakened prize-fighter in front of them. After all, it will now be their land, as promised by the UN, that they will be “defending.”

Can Israel get out of this predicament? Yes. It will be tough, and I doubt that any of Israel’s current leaders in the government and the opposition have shown they have the acumen to do it, but some well aimed moves at their opponent can put Israel back in control of the fight. Sadly, if they don’t do these things soon, there is a very good chance we will see another war soon. A real war this time, where the Arabs bring the war into Israel itself.

What can I say, I’m not a big fan.

I used to be a bigger fan of this Turkey:

Then they started with the latest round of anti-Israel attacks and now I’m not a fan of that Turkey either.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Hat tip to David Kelsey who keeps us informed:

The Wall Street Journal reviews “Start-Up Nation” by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, a book that reviews Israel’s incredible success with innovative technologies and their related industries.

‘There are more new innovative ideas . . . coming out of Israel than there are out in [Silicon] Valley right now. And it doesn’t slow during economic downturns.” The authors of “Start-Up Nation,” Dan Senor and Saul Singer, are quoting an executive at British Telecom, but they could just as easily be quoting an executive at Intel, which last year opened a $3.5 billion factory in Kiryat Gat, an hour south of Tel Aviv, to make sophisticated 45-nanometer chips; or Warren Buffett, who in 2006 paid $4 billion for four-fifths of an Israeli firm that makes high-tech cutting tools for cars and planes; or John Chambers, Cisco’s chief executive, who has bought nine Israeli start-ups; or Steve Ballmer, who calls Microsoft “as much an Israeli company as an American company” because of the importance of its Israeli technologists. “Google, Cisco, Microsoft, Intel, eBay . . . ,” says one of eBay’s executives. “The best-kept secret is that we all live and die by the work of our Israeli teams.”

Israel is the world’s techno-nation. Civilian research-and-development expenditures run 4.5% of the gross domestic product—half-again the level of the U.S., Germany or South Korea—and venture-capital investment per capita is 2½ times that of the U.S. and six times that of the United Kingdom. Even in absolute terms, Israel has only the U.S.—with more than 40 times the population—as a challenger.

As Messrs. Senor and Singer write: “Israel—a country of just 7.1 million people—attracted close to $2 billion in venture capital [in 2008], as much as flowed to the U.K.’s 61 million citizens or the 145 million people living in Germany and France combined.” At the start of 2009, some 63 Israeli companies were listed on the Nasdaq, more than those of any other foreign country. Among the Israeli firms: Teva Pharmaceuticals, the world’s largest generic drug maker, with a market cap of $48 billion; and Check Point Software Technologies, with a market cap of $7 billion.

Such economic dynamism has occurred in the face of war, internal strife and rising animosity from other nations. During the six years following the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000, Israel suffered one of its worst periods of terrorist attacks and fought a second Lebanese war; and yet, as the authors note, its “share of the global venture capital market did not drop—it doubled, from 15 percent to 31 percent.”

The review goes on to note that the authors of Start Up Nation do not attribute this success to the predominance of Jews in Israel. Instead, they claim that Israel’s military culture fosters the type of skills, innovation, entrepreneurial spirit and individualism that enable people to develop products and companies.

Interesting idea. It’s always hard to say that it’s Jewish intellect that is driving this extraordinary success because let’s face it, we all know some fairly stupid Jewish people, not to mention average ones. Then again, I’m sure I’m no exception in knowing a large number of extraordinarily smart Jews.

It’s a difficult subject to address, especially for those of us who don’t often wade into the messy idea of a Jewish ethnicity, but the question here is dangling tantalizingly and it is a fair one to ask: is it Judaism or is it simply the way Israeli culture has evolved that has led to this unusual situation?

Also, if it is Judaism, is it ethnicity or is it a cultural aspect of Judaism that has brought about this unusual success?

One clue is that a very large proportion of Nobel Prize winners, Wolf Prize winners and chess grandmasters are Jewish, not to mention a disproportionate number of the Forbes 400 and of the biggest individual contributors to charity in North America. Although 9 of the Nobel Prize winners come from Israel, the vast majority of other Jewish winners and businesspeople come from other countries including the USA. This is a strong clue.

I think, however, that a better clue might be that Jews are also disproportionately represented among lawyers, doctors and academics. This leads me to believe that perhaps the issue isn’t ethnicity after all and maybe it’s also not military training. How about the reason being education as an emphasis in Jewish families and culture?

Education.

That might explain why today at Barnes and Noble I was looking at the Humor section and the only group that had joke books dedicated to them were Jews. There were three large Jewish joke volumes spread out among the multitudes of adult joke books, silly joke books, toilet joke books, etc. I asked myself why there would be a large enough audience for publishers to put out these books (two were hardcovers) dedicated to Jewish jokes. The answer is that there are enough customers, and there are enough customers because Jews buy books. I know this because Israel publishes and sells more books per capita than any nation on earth. It boils down to education, I think. A culture that promotes education, encourages learning and maybe even promotes “outside the box” thinking because we are usually a minority wherever we live.

In a ridiculous bid to gain more readers, Tablet Magazine did just that.

If you read it, don’t be surprised if your penis leaves you and goes into hiding. As for female readers, DON’T GET ANY IDEAS! Then again, Tablet missed a terrific opportunity to make some bucks by selling high end Israeli sex toys.

Mosh Ben Ari and Shotei HaNevua