This is the right week to have photos of Jerusalem, isn’t it?

These are from Antohinson’s Flickr pages.

This is a three part post.

1.

Jerusalem Cemetery, Absalom's Tomb

This was a hard week for Israel, but I think it came out of it okay. The relationship with Obama’s administration in the US and Israel’s administration under Netanyahu will continue to be challenging.

I have a strange feeling that the Americans were acting as they did because they were acting on psychological profiling of Netanyahu. He caved in to American demands and heavy pressure in 1998, signing the Wye Accords without getting much in return. It was 12 years ago and I recall that at the beginning of the trip, Netanyahu attempted to get Pollard freed. It didn’t happen and still hasn’t happened but Netanyahu gave in at Wye.

In fact, some Israeli MKs asked Biden before the Ramat Shlomo announcement fiasco to release Pollard in time for this year’s Passover. Fat chance of Pollard getting out now. Then again, it would probably regain for Obama a lot of the goodwill he has lost in the past week with many Israelis and supporters of Israel.

Anyway, I wonder whether the American profile of Netanyahu indicated that he would falter under severe pressure. He was an officer in one of Israel’s elite commando units, so one would think this profile would be wrong, but I can’t imagine what else they would have been thinking.

2.

Jerusalem View

One of our fine writers, Sarke, reminds us of the Sabbath Manifesto, which is a list of things people can do on the Sabbath to make that day special, um, like the sabbath. Once upon a time, we had one of our bigger debates here and I recall that I spoke about the Sabbath being a day of special time even if one treats that time without consideration for, say, keeping the car engine off. It looks to me as if the Sabbath Manifesto idea is exactly what I was talking about and it’s nice to see it make waves.

And then some Pharaoh’s Daughter makes everything go down smoother.

3.

I’m not done. The music brings up more questions.

We have become so consumed by the political fight, that it’s hard sometimes to remember that there is beauty in our traditions, in our heritage. The poetry has been stolen by this bitter fight over land that has lasted longer than virtually any of us have been alive. It’s important to fight this theft and to keep our ability to see beauty; to understand that while there is much evil out there, it is tempered with good.

The war has always been, to some degree, a war of semantics: terrorist; revolutionary; war; intifadah. Today, it’s apartheid; war crimes; settlements; theft. Words that steal beauty. Words that indicate the opposite.

It is odd to watch as Israel becomes the accused even as ample evidence exists to show the other side has no desire for peace or compromise. How many times has Abbas been described as a “moderate?” Is there a publication out there which does not refer to him as a moderate? And yet, Olmert offered him peace and was rejected outright. Olmert was not called a moderate because he offered peace. A war of words.

A Palestinian commemoration of a terrorist who murdered over 30 Israeli civilians is glossed over this week, just like most of their anti-Israel rhetoric, but the announcement – one which was an admitted mistake – of construction in a Jewish neighborhood in an area that will clearly remain inside Israel in any deal, is treated as a breach of faith and exhibit A in the supposed Israeli attempt to stall peace. This after a year of stating over and over that Israel is ready to talk and being rebuffed time after time.

How did they – let’s leave “they” vague – manage to take a democracy and depict it as a worse offender than the dictatorships surrounding it? Whose rhetorical trick is that? Meanwhile some of the very same critics fight wars in far-away lands, killing innocent civilians in the process, and hold another country accountable to standards they violate when that country has actually been attacked, unlike the critical countries.

How have good intentions, ethical intentions, such as, for example, waiting years before responding with war to thousands of rocket attacks, or dropping “door knocker” bombs on buildings prior to attacks in a time of war, providing warning to BOTH residents and fighters (who you generally try not to warn) to leave, considered affronts to the ethics of war?

And how is it that the world is allowing a mad regime to develop technology that can wipe out entire cities with one or two successful rocket attacks, even as that regime announces over and over again its intention to annihilate another country?

You don’t need to answer. The questions are rhetorical.

The reason is that the world is insane.

In an upside down world, taking a day of rest and small pleasures may be the most sane thing one can do.

Shabbat shalom.

No, not Israel! Obama.

Look, Israel made a mistake. Heck, I wrote two posts about that idiotic mistake because it was so huge. Then, Israel apologized profusely for the mistake.

However, the Obama administration decided that this gave them a pretext for taking a very aggressive stance toward the Netanyahu government. Essentially, we saw a repeat of last year’s settlement freeze fiasco, multiplied by a factor of two or three. Suddenly Israeli officials were being lambasted by American politicians and officials, new demands were on the table, the press was being leaked “Obama furious stories,” and it became very clear that this US administration would indeed treat Israel differently than any other country in the world.

That isn’t the worst of it, however. This NY Times article shows the worst part of it.

But in discussions in recent days, some senior officials have amplified their argument that the American approach needs to change. They said that Israel’s announcement that it would build 1,600 new houses in a disputed area of Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, undermining a trip by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., further called into question the Netanyahu government’s commitment to seriously engaging in the peace talks.

Do you get that?

It’s Israel’s fault there are no peace talks.

At this point, in order to win this idiotic battle, that might only change the course of history, the Obama administration is rewriting history in order to explain its policy.

To remind the Obama folks, Israel WANTED peace talks. Netanyahu actually stood on a podium and accepted the premise of a two state solution. He backed off his demand that the Palestinians enter negotiations only after acknowledging that Israel is a Jewish state. He spoke often of having talks with Mahmoud Abbas. He even agreed to slow or freeze settlement construction.

What did the Palestinians do? They walked away from a peace offer in 2008, announced in the Washington Post that they now planned to wait because they thought that Obama-Netanyahu tensions were certain to follow as a result and within 2 years Netanyahu’s government would fall. They upped their demands of a settlement freeze to include a Jerusalem construction freeze. They continued to incite internationally and at home against Israel. And they did nothing about making peace.

It is so obvious that they would rather pursue a single state solution that I’ve had the pleasure of writing 4 posts about how they believe they are currently in their endgame (put “endgame” into our search box). They believe time is on their side, and Israel is reeling from numerous blows in recent years that have weakened its society and its motivation to continue the fight. However, their ace in the hole, the Palestinians believe, is Obama.

He is proving that they are right. The US could have been an honest broker here. The Year 2000 Clinton Parameters, for example, exhibit a great sensitivity and understanding regarding the needs and concerns of both the Israelis and Palestinians. Obama, however, has placed a great deal of pressure upon Israel, with very little on the Palestinians. This is now happening again, and he has made it so public, that whoever comes down from the tree first, will harbor great anger at the other side. That is to say, he has intentionally sown the seeds of a long-term conflicted relationship with the US that will be very hard to repair. He did this when peace talks are supposed to restart – peace talks that were proceeding despite the absence of a moratorium on east Jerusalem construction.

“There’s an issue of street credibility here,” said Aaron David Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who was deeply involved in the Camp David talks during the Clinton administration.

Mr. Miller said that while the administration had “been thinking for months” about the advantages and risks of putting its own plan on the table, “they are worried about being accused of imposing their own solution.”

But such a plan could also, in the minds of some senior American officials, force Mr. Netanyahu to choose between the peace talks and the right-wing elements of his coalition, or to try to form a new coalition with the more centrist Kadima Party, led by Tzipi Livni, the former foreign minister.

If that’s really what they’re thinking in the White House today, they fail to understand that the problem isn’t the Likud. The problem is the White House. Israel has already offered REASONABLE peace twice in the past decade and once less reasonably (though certainly not justified in launching the war the Palestinians launched in 2000). Everybody knows the approximate parameters of a final deal. Netanyahu even said that he accepts a two state solution and is willing to negotiate. His ambassador to the US has stated that Israel is willing to make tough compromises.

Now Obama thinks he can produce a deal that will be superior to Clinton’s? After he has attacked Israel and its leadership so publicly? He thinks he can bring down the coalition in Israel and usher in a new age with Likud and Kadima?

Perhaps Obama should be focusing on the crew that has rejected negotiations, rejected previous peace offers, publicly stated a reluctance to enter new negotiations, and is benefiting from US military training and Israeli opening of avenues that enable the robust growth of the Palestinian economy.

It seems like a no brainer.

Unless you have a different plan in mind.

Obama has a different plan: to force and compel Israel to give up things, while he asks nothing from the Palestinians except to show up. Obviously, any Israeli government entering negotiations with this handicap, will seek to avoid closing any deal at all. They’d be crazy not to sabotage the talks.

In the meantime, with all this time wasted, Obama has forbidden Israel to tackle Iran militarily. The joke here is on Israel, since Obama won’t have to deal with the danger of an Iranian rocket reaching US shores for some years. The joke is, of course, that he actually treats the Iranians better than he treats the Israelis.

It may be time for those Jews who vote to think carefully about which party deserves their vote in November.

A little while back, I had the bitter pleasure of criticizing the J Street student division for having a challenging time describing themselves – and ultimately they rejected the description – as “pro-Israel.”

It turns out the J Street students were prescient. They were merely expressing publicly what J Street, the organization, would demonstrate a few months hence.

Today, J Street went on the offensive.

…The Obama administration’s reaction to the treatment of the Vice President last week and to the timing and substance of the Israeli government’s announcement was both understandable and appropriate.

As Vice President Biden said, “Sometimes only a friend can deliver the hardest truth.” That is what he, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod have done in recent days – and J Street, along with many friends of Israel, stands solidly behind them.

Um, false.

It’s true that only a friend can deliver the hardest truth. However, when the friend starts frothing at the mouth yelling at his junior friend and then after a year of obvious failure, falls right back into his previous pattern of undermining the possibility of negotiations by creating undue expectations that he will deliver the friend on a platter to his nemesis, then the friend’s behavior is neither understandable nor appropriate. In fact, it harms the peace process while undermining Israel and unfairly laying the blame for any failures at its feet.

Then J Street offers their recommendation for an agreement:

We urge the United States to take this opportunity to suggest parameters to the parties for resuming negotiations – basing borders on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps, with the Palestinian state demilitarized and on territory equivalent to 100% of the area encompassed by the pre-1967 Armistice lines.

Hmmmm, where have I heard that before?

Oh wait, I know!! First I heard Israel offer that to the Palestinians at Taba and then I heard Israel offer it to the Palestinians in 2008. The first time, it led to nothing but more violence, and the second time it led to nothing and a couple of months later we had Cast Lead.

The Obama administration will find vast support among American Jews and other friends of Israel for a bold new approach that aims to advance that interest and guarantees Israel a secure, democratic and Jewish future.

Yes it would.

Which is why most sane supporters of Israel realize that Obama has just stumbled again, just as he did when he first came to power and gave the Palestinians a reason to do nothing for an entire year, by demanding that the Israelis unilaterally stop all settlement construction and including east Jerusalem, part of Israel’s capital. They anticipated more pressure on Israel and did nothing while it was pending.

Now we are back to square one. It’s easy to blame it on Israel, especially if one rejects Netanyahu’s explanation that he had no idea that new construction in Ramat Shlomo would be announced on the eve of new talks with Biden visiting as a gesture of goodwill. However, even if this is true, and chances are it is NOT true, the last thing the US should have done is go on the warpath with Israel.

Ramat Shlomo is a Jewish neighborhood in a part of Jerusalem that will remain in Israeli hands. Building there is certainly part of the consensus of Israeli society both on the Left and the Right. If you’re offended about the timing of the announcement, that is fair. However, an apology was made at the highest levels and making a big stink over construction there is inappropriate, particularly since it plays into the hands of the Palestinians who are on the other side of these negotiations.

It also interferes, in a fundamental way, with Israel’s sovereignty. Contrary to the opinion of some commentaries out there, Israel is not a child and does not require hand-holding or scolding. The complexities of Israel’s existence are perhaps difficult to comprehend these days where the primary opponent has become the Palestinians, not so much other Arab states, and where the “settlements” have become the perceived stumbling block and not Palestinian refusal to compromise or negotiate. However, Israel is a sovereign state, and it has the right to govern itself.

In fact, as we watch Hillary berating Netanyahu like he’s a five year old dipping his hand into the cookie jar, and Oren being treated by the Administration as Israel treats the envoy of a country whose leader goes around the world accusing Israel of war crimes and intentional murder of Palestinian children, one wonders what the Americans expect to happen. Do they think the Palestinians will now negotiate in good faith? Or do they think the Palestinians will realize they’ve now bought another year or so? Do they think the Palestinians will offer any significant concession, or gain brazenness and complacency – as we’ve already seen with their subsequent commemoration of a square to a terrorist who murdered Israeli civilians? Do they think the Israeli public will trust the Americans to be honest brokers, or that they will come to view this administration with wariness and distrust, thus undermining any concessions Israel could have made that now will appear to be forced upon Israel and against its best interests?

One thing is certain. If Obama would apply to his Iranian problem the same vigor he applies to castigating Israel, insulting its leaders and undermining the prospect of bringing the parties to the negotiating table by weakening Israel’s position, Iran would have stopped or at least slowed its nuclear plans long ago.

I guess we have our own amateurs running the place.

Which is all to say that once again J Street is in the wrong and as a friend to Israel the best thing it could do is reject the US administration’s misplaced full-court press on Israel and try to bring the two countries back to the equilibrium which existed before Obama came to power. That will enhance the already remote prospects for peace faster than any other approach.

This is not an easy post to write.

As our readers know, I am a dedicated Zionist and strong supporter of Israel. It is with a heavy heart, then, that I must report a development today that will probably make the life of one Palestinian a truly living hell.

Earlier today, Israeli forces in Ramallah captured a Hamas terrorist by the name of Maher Ouda. Ouda is in his mid-forties and accused of being involved in the murder of at least 10 Israelis and possibly as many as 70 Israelis.

Well, tough luck for Ouda because now he’s really going to suffer. In an Israeli prison.

How do I know this?

Because today, Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah terrorist leader widely held to be the “Nelson Mandela” of the Palestinians who will apparently merely need to be released in order to bring them to some sort of, uh, holy land, showed the world what it means to be incarcerated in an Israeli jail for the murder of four Israeli civilians and the attempted murder of one.

Yes indeed. Today, Marwan Barghouti completed his doctorate.

He has finished his thesis and other obligations!! He is going to be considered by a faculty committee at an Egyptian university as to whether he has completed all of his obligations towards a Ph.D.

Now at this point, you’re thinking, “Those horrid, vicious Israelis must have broken his thumbs so that he had to type with eight fingers.” Nope, it doesn’t say that in the story.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Surely some NGOs financed by Naomi Chazan’s New Israel Fund are planning to sue the Israel prison system for “shaking” Barghouti until all his knowledge spilled out.” Nope, as far as I know, the NGOs are busy undermining Israel with important accusations.

Your mind is telling you, “Well, hell, of course he had time to finish a doctorate, what else is he going to do?” Well, Israeli prisons permit conjugal visits, just ask Samir Kontar, the Lebanese terrorist and murderer who killed a little girl after murdering her dad in front of her and forcing her to watch. Yup, Samir got married and had conjugal visits during his horrendous stay in an Israeli prison.

Now you’re thinking, “Get outta here!”

Nope. It’s all true and I’m staying.

How did Barghouti get his degree?

Barghouti, 50, is one of several hundred Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons who enroll in studies at universities around the world, including in Israel.
…
Barghouti was able to complete his thesis with the help of hundreds of books and documents that Israeli authorities allow inmates to bring into prison.

Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners are currently enrolled as students with the Open University of Israel, which facilitates their studies by allowing them to sit exams in jail.

You’re thinking, “Sure, only ‘hundreds’ of prisoners are enrolled in university studies, but there are thousands of Palestinian prisoners. Ha!”

Maybe so, but some are still completing their high school studies. They’ll have opportunities in future arrests, especially if murder is involved.

That’s right, all you need to do is murder or plan to murder some Israelis and then you get to study for a number of years, generally uninterrupted except for the pesky conjugal visits or management duties for your in-prison political machinery that influences Palestinians outside prison.

And you don’t really need to worry about the 4 life sentences imposed upon you by the dastardly Israelis because at some point a live or dead Israeli soldier will be traded for your release and that of a thousand or so others. It’s not a question of “if” but “when?”

The sweetest part of the story is that it’s obvious that Israel wants to help the international community support the Palestinians as much as possible. Sure, the Palestinians get billions of dollars in aid from UNWRA and other bodies, but they don’t need to waste that money on things like education. After all, the Israelis will take care of any gaps. You didn’t believe me about the high school studies, but now you will:

Barghouti, who is also a Fatah member on the Palestinian Legislative Council, completed his high school exams while in Israeli prison in 1980.

See? I told you this was a painful post to write. I can only imagine the pain Maher Ouda is going through right now as he decides whether to apply for an MA degree. Poli Sci or Sociology? If only the Zionist occupiers would stop with the newspapers, television and radio available in Arabic, Hebrew and English and start offering cooking and yoga classes!

And yet…

“Dr. Marwan Barghouti.”

It has a nice ring to it.

Dr. Marwan Barghouti Thanks His Jailers for Their Kind Offer to Subsidize His Education

Tel Aviv Storm

Both photos taken by the talented Tommy Junger from his Tel Aviv-Jaffa collection.

Sunset * Tel Aviv

A rough week diplomatically for Israel. Fortunately, it remains a beautiful and vibrant place, despite setbacks.

Shabbat shalom!!

So I called the Israeli government amateurish and blamed them for recent debacles relating to Israel, especially the announcement of 1600 new units in Ramat Shlomo, Jerusalem, on the eve of new peace talks with the Palestinians while US VP Biden was on a “let’s get everybody on the same page” tour of the Holy Land.

One of the points I made in the ensuing debates is that Israel snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. After a year of stalling by the Palestinians, the Israelis with a right wing government in place managed to enlighten the world that there were no peace talks because of the Palestinians, not the Israelis. The world believed and pushed the Palestinians back to the table.

Needless to say, the new construction announcement has given them a perfect excuse to avoid talks again, and allows them to put the blame on Israel. Not only can they blame Israel for the breakdown in talks, but they can retroactively claim that their previously-expressed reservations about going into talks with Israel were justified, as were their demands to halt all “settlement” construction not only in Judea and Samaria/West Bank but also in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem Post tells us:

…On Friday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he and Tunisia’s leader, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, have begun to discuss how the Arab League should respond to an Israeli plan for new construction in Ramat Shlomo.

Speaking during a visit to Tunisia, Abbas said Israel’s move “got in the way of” plans to begin US-mediated indirect talks with Israel.

And the Americans are laying it on thick, trying to reclaim the supposedly deteriorated confidence of the Arabs,

In a bid to salvage those negotiations, Mitchell and the top US diplomat for the Middle East, Jeffrey Feltman, called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Arab League chief Amr Moussa and the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates over the past two days, Crowley said.

“We have reached out … to a range of leaders,” he said. “We jointly remain committed to this process, acknowledging that, obviously, it is a difficult environment, given the Israeli statement.”

Boo hoo and sob! Amr Moussa’s poor old feelings must be shattered. He deserves a massage and champagne, preferably provided by an attractive US State Department employee.

Of course, one US government female employee isn’t available to provide this service to Mr. Moussa and his cronies. She’s busy yelling at Netanyahu.

The US State Department said Clinton spoke to Netanyahu by phone for 43 minutes to vent US frustration with Tuesday’s announcement that cast a pall over a visit to Israel by US Vice President Joe Biden and endangered the indirect peace talks with the Palestinians that the Obama administration had announced just a day earlier.

Clinton called “to make clear that the United States considered the announcement to be a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip,” department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters.

“The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel’s security and she made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process,” he said.

43 minutes!!! Clinton yelled at him for 43 minutes! You’d think he was given oral sex by Monica Lewinsky.

Well, actually, this is worse. Nobody in Israel can claim to have enjoyed blissful physical pleasure by announcing the construction on that particular day. I mean, Bill Clinton can at least explain what happened by alluding to the loneliness of being President, the need to have his ego massaged, the type of mid-life crisis many men go through at that age and the fact that except in some authors’ or screenwriters’ active imaginations, it really is unusual to have a woman agree to provide oral sex under the desk like a good little servant while the man is on the phone doing business.

Forty three minutes of yelling would seem fair under those circumstances. Netanyahu, of course, must be pretty pissed off since he got the 43 minutes of yelling, but received no reward. In fact, he must be pretty afraid at this point that the Americans will force another Wye Accords-type agreement down this throat, just as they did in 1998 when he agreed to remove Israeli forces from key areas of Judea and Samaria/West Bank.

Hmmmm…how to repay Netanyahu for all of the pressure and yelling coming at him from the Americans?

Hey, I know! Let’s get Eli Yishai, the minister whose ministry announced the construction right in the middle of Biden’s visit, to repay him somehow. Repay with something that’s worth 43 minutes of berating by Hillary.

Sort of a bootleggish video of one of the performers at the 6.0 Jewlicious Festival. This is Basya Schechter.

Here is a bio of Basya.

Let’s review:

US Vice President treats Israeli PM like dirt after Israeli government announces 1600 new residential units in east Jerusalem during his visit to begin long-postponed peace talks.

UN’s Ban releases statement that any Israeli construction in east Jerusalem is illegal according to international law in response to Israel’s untimely announcement.

The EU parliament which appeared to be leaning toward voting against a resolution accepting the Goldstone Report, voted to endorse the Report. The vote was relatively close, suggesting that yesterday’s announcement may have swayed some in the wrong direction and caused some pro-Israel votes to abstain.

The EU parliament vote was also probably influenced by public and government anger at the recent use of European passports by the hit team that killed the Hamas terrorist in Dubai.

The Goldstone Report is not going away because the Israelis have not appointed an independent commission to investigate, so that they have a hard time making the case that they have met the Report’s recommendations.

None of these things should have happened. Being incompetent is one thing, but inviting problems when things are already challenging enough, is downright foolish.

According to Ynet, the idiotic, catastrophic and harmful announcement of the construction of 1600 new residential units in the neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo on the day that the VP of the USA, Mr. Biden himself, was in Israel to show senior-level support for a new round of Israel-Palestinian peace talks, happened without Netanyahu’s knowledge or approval. In fact, according to Ynet, Netanyahu demanded that the Interior Ministry, headed by Eli Yishai from Shas, a Sephardic Orthodox party, keep him abreast of any new housing developments and avoid any “surprises.”

Well, Biden kept Netanyahu and his wife waiting for him for an hour and a half when it was time to host him for dinner. An hour and a half! At least he showed up, Israel should be grateful that he was in a forgiving mood.

Netanyahu apologized, of course, but it was far too late. After months of trying to bring the Palestinians to the table and involving half the Arab governments in the region in the process, on the day when the US administration sent its second most senior member to initiate the process, the Israeli government humiliated him, the US administration, the PA government and the state of Israel in general.

Remember when Israel sent soldiers to Lebanon without food or fighting supplies? Remember when the Deputy Foreign Minister sat the Turkish envoy to Israel on a low seat and happily told reporters to note the humiliation? Remember when the Israeli Olympics team kept the Israeli figure skating champion away from the Vancouver Olympics because she was only ranked 20th in the world? Remember when the Goldstone Report came out and the Israeli government refused (and refuses) to appoint an independent investigative commission even though it opens every Israeli officer who played a role in that war to potential war crimes charges if Israel can’t get the West to play along? Remember how in the midst of this difficult diplomatic dance, it was discovered that some intelligence agency was using, for a hit in a foreign country, passports from the Western countries that will determine how Goldstone is addressed? Remember the recently opened ridiculous government propaganda website that is intended to make every Israeli a spokesperson for Israel?

This one takes the prize. This has to be the most offensive, most amateurish, most foolish action taken by Israel in many, many years.

It also makes Netanyahu look like an idiot. If he knew about this and didn’t stop it, then he’s very stupid. If he didn’t know about this and he’s the PM of Israel being undermined by one of his ministers and ministries, then he’s not in control.

There will be lots of apologies by Israel to the US over this one and there will be a price to pay because Israel will now enter these negotiations hamstrung by its inability to play up its deep friendship with the US. On the contrary, expect the US to teach Israel a lesson.

And it will be well deserved.

Update:

“The district committees approve plans weekly without informing me,” Yishai told Israel Radio. He further said that the committee could not have predicted that the approval would spur such a political storm.

“A few days ago, hundreds of new housing units were approved in Beitar Illit, which is much more problematic,” said Yishai. “So if the committee members saw that those houses were approved without a problem, they didn’t think a technical authorization in Jerusalem, which isn’t part of the settlement freeze, would require the minister’s knowledge.”

Yishai emphasized that even though he doesn’t see a problem with the actual authorization of the East Jerusalem homes, if he knew about it, he would have delayed the move by a few weeks.

“If I’d have known, I would have postponed the authorization by a week or two since we had no intention of provoking anyone,” Yishai said. “It is definitely unpleasant that this happened during Biden’s visit. If the committee members would have known that the approval would have escalated to such a situation, they would have informed me,” Yishai emphasized.

“I apologize for the distress this matter caused,” he added.

I don’t love Hanania, but I find that he’s necessary. There are few bridges between the two sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict and as a writer, I believe he has positioned himself as a bridge. For evidence of this, consider that both Arab and Jewish readers tend to consistently criticize his editorials.

I think today’s editorial by Hanania, touching on the issue of apartheid week, may be one of the better articles I’ve seen by him and it deserves a full read. Yes, it’s flawed, and yes, there are debatable points that are raised by him. However, there is also a great deal of truth and it’s worth thinking about. Here is some of it, but it’s worth a full read.

THE WORD apartheid does not really apply accurately to the Palestinian-Israel conflict. The word occupation does. But the rejectionists no longer like the word occupation. Apartheid symbolizes the creation of one state, while occupation fuels the movement to create two.

In misusing the word apartheid, the rejectionists and their angry, blind followers are pushing toward reenacting the transformation of South Africa in Israel and Palestine.

Palestinians who support “apartheid week” do so either out of sinister hatred of Jews, or out of blind, unreasoning anger that simmers because they can’t properly vent. The inability to release pent up anger empowers the rejectionist minority but stems from the failures of Palestinians and Arab leadership.

When Arabs couldn’t defeat Israel, they turned toward demonization. And when demonization didn’t work enough, they simply exaggerated the truth. Exaggeration is a common trait among Arabs and Israelis, too.

It’s not easy for Israelis to deal with. Israelis also come in two categories, those who hate Arabs and those who are angry with Arabs but don’t know how to deal with the issue of justice and compromise.

Most Israelis simply denounce anyone who uses the word apartheid as anti-Semitic – another abused word used as a bludgeon for those who criticize Israel.

The word anti-Semitic is to Palestinians what apartheid is to Israelis.

I could ask Palestinians, won’t it make the creation of a Palestinian state that much harder to achieve if they put all their bets onthe word apartheid? I could ask Israelis, doesn’t it show a weakness in your beliefs if you are so afraid of one simple word?

Maybe the answer is that both Palestinians and Israelis live in the dark shadows of one real truth – that they have done terrible things to each other over the years.

ck added: This video was produced by NJOP for its annual Shabbat Across America program which took place… last week. But don’t fret, NJOP, the leading “kiruv” organization of Modern Orthodox Judaism, has some handy Shabbat tips for you for the rest of the year. And the best part? Even David Kelsey approves of NJOP. Sorry for chiming in there TM.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Germany’s publicly funded Berlin Center for Research on Antisemitism and its director Wolfgang Benz improperly used their influence to dismiss a scholar from the editorial board of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, according to leading professors in the field.

Dr. Clemens Heni, a Berlin-based scholar who had criticized the center’s neglect of Islamic anti-Semitism and Israel’s security, has since been reinstated (in February) to the Journal’s editorial board.

In an exclusive investigative report, The Jerusalem Post obtained previously unpublished internal e-mails between the editors of the Journal and Israeli, American, German, South African and British anti-Semitism experts who objected to the removal of Heni from the its editorial board.

…

Heni wrote an article on “Anti-Semitism as Specific Phenomenon” in the first issue of the Journal last year. It included a scathing indictment of the Berlin Center, asserting that it is placating political Islam by playing down “anti-Semitic rallies in Germany” and dangerously conflating murderous anti-Semitism with Islamophobia.

According to Heni’s central thesis, while anti-Semitism among Muslims in Germany is spiraling out of control, Benz and his colleagues’ decision to merge anti-Semitism with hatred toward Islam is endangering the security of Israel and Jews.

For this he got sacked.

Apparently he also accused the director of the center for Antisemitism of having “…praised his Nazi doctoral supervisor and…refused to distance himself from his mentor, Karl Bosl, a rabidly pro-Hitler ideologue.”

Well, if I had some doubts before, I guess these guys prove the need for a center for the study of antisemitism.

Image source: Jerusalem Shots, by Roman Dembitsky

Shabbat shalom!

The other day I posted in disgust a story about the video capturing Sheikh Jarrah Jewish inhabitants listening and dancing to a song praising the murderer Baruch Goldstein. My friends and colleagues on Jewlicious, ck and Rabbi Yonah, both voiced skepticism that the video was authentic.

Not being able to tell from the video itself whether it depicts a real moment or not, simply because just as the voice-over is dubbed, the music could be dubbed as well, I’ve been looking for clues. So far, I don’t have much to go on. Ynet credits “Ta’ayush” for the photo and video that it published, with a big splashy “exclusive” on the video.

What is Ta’ayush? They describe themselves thus:

We — Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians — live surrounded by walls and barbed wire: the walls of segregation, racism, and discrimination between Jews and Arabs within Israel; the walls of Apartheid, closure and siege encircling the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip; and the wall of war surrounding all inhabitants of Israel, so long as Israel remains an armed fortress in the heart of the Middle East.

In the fall of 2000 we joined together to form “Ta’ayush” (Arabic for “living together”), a grassroots movement of Arabs and Jews working to break down the walls of racism and segregation by constructing a true Arab-Jewish partnership. Together we strive for a future of equality, justice and peace through concrete, daily, non-violent actions of solidarity to end the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and to achieve full civil equality for all.

About Ta’ayush website

The activities and the activists of Ta’ayush were always concentrated on field work. Documentation (written or photographic) was and will continue to be secondary to this.

Okay, so they’re leftists whose views incline towards making Israel into a state that’s no longer a Jewish state. That doesn’t make them into liars, necessarily, although it also leaves them as less than objective observers, especially because Sheikh Jarrah has become a controversial flashpoint in recent weeks and they’ve been advocating against the families that have moved there.

That’s the first problem with the video. Now on to the second problem. Ta’ayush has a couple of filmmakers working with them, one of whom is Joseph Dana. Dana is a personal friend of our ck, and ck has actually posted one of his videos a video Dana had put up on his Facebook page. In fact, it is a video capturing an event at Sheikh Jarrah and ck posted it because at one point a Palestinian woman yells “Falasteene Bladna, al-Yahud klabna.” ck does us the favor of translating…and what she said was “Palestine is our country! The Jews are our dogs!”

The irony of posting a video intended to show the evils of the Jews but actually highlighting the absolute hate and peace-killing behavior of a Palestinian woman did not sit well with the videographer, Dana, probably because he belongs to an organization claiming that Palestinians and Israelis can live in harmony in one country. He criticized ck for not posting the “reality” of Sheikh Jarrah.

By the way, one of Dana’s complaints was that leftist protesters at Sheikh Jarrah were treated unjustly by the police, a position agreed to yesterday by Israel’s courts. On the other hand, in the video the protest leaders make false statements about the Palestinian “owners” of the homes into which the Jewish “settlers” had moved. The Palestinians weren’t owners, they were renters who didn’t pay their rent for years and the “settlers” are not settlers because east Jerusalem is annexed to Israel.

Dana also partners with Max Blumenthal as reporters and they gained notoriety, which we covered and discussed at some length on Jewlicious, when they posted a video that went viral about American Jews in Jerusalem who were saying horrendous things about Obama. Blumenthal and Dana defended their work, which really was nothing more than a hack job, on grandiose grounds. Dana wrote:

As a resident of Jerusalem, I can say that the people represented in this video are not members of a fringe group or simply drunk college kids. These people reflect the sentiments shared by many people in this country and this city. These people and their families are the core of the opposition to meaningful peace between Israel and her neighbors. This is what Obama is up against.

I call bullshit. That video represents nothing more than a bunch of kids half drunk and trying to be cool. That debate can be read on our post so I won’t get into it again. However, I do believe it represents impoverished journalism that is political in its nature and is far from objective, reasonable or fair. This is why I also believe that while the video may accurately depict this group of kids, it is used in a dishonest manner to score political points.

All of this brings us back to the Sheikh Jarrah – Baruch Goldstein video by Ta’ayush to which Dana and Blumenthal are contributors. That Ta’ayush are political and their politics are on the opposite side of the spectrum from the Jewish residents of Sheikh Jarrah can’t be disputed. That their view of the conflict is heavily distorted because of their politics also can’t be disputed – and the same holds true for the extremists on the right, just so we are clear.

Is the video real or not?

Well, ck knows Dana personally and Dana works for Ta’ayush. An email should be enough to have them meet for a coffee with the filmmakers who captured this event and it should be easy for those filmmakers to show ck the unedited, raw footage.

I look forward to the report.

Yehuda Avner, who was the English speechwriter for Rabin is about to publish a book, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership
.

As the Jerusalem Post reports, there is a segment in which he relates Yitzhak Rabin’s explanation to him about Oslo. It is a prescient and strategically accurate description of precisely what we see playing out before us.

“My first question was, ‘Why did you shake Yasser Arafat’s hand?’”

…
“Number one,” he recounts Rabin as saying, “Israel is surrounded by two concentric circles. The inner circle is comprised of our immediate neighbors – Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon and, by extension, Saudi Arabia. The outer circle comprises their neighbors – Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. Virtually all of them are rogue states, and some are going nuclear.

“Number two,” the prime minister went on, “Iranian-inspired Islamic fundamentalism constitutes a threat to the inner circle no less than it does to Israel. Islamic fundamentalism is striving to destabilize the Gulf Emirates, has already created havoc in Syria, leaving twenty thousand dead, in Algeria, leaving one hundred thousand dead, in Egypt, leaving twenty-two thousand dead, in Jordan, leaving eight thousand dead, in the Horn of Africa – the Sudan and Somalia – leaving fourteen thousand dead, and in Yemen, leaving twelve thousand dead. And now it is gaining influence in theWest Bank and the Gaza Strip.

“Iran is the banker,” Rabin pointed out, “pouring millions into the West Bank and Gaza in the form of social welfare and health and education programs, so that it can win the hearts of the population and feed religious fanaticism.

“Thus,” he continued to Avner, “a confluence of interest has arisen between Israel and the inner circle, whose long-term strategic interest is the same as ours: to lessen the destabilizing consequences from the outer circle. At the end of the day,the inner circle recognizes they have less to fear from Israel than from their Muslim neighbors, not least from radicalized Islamic powers going nuclear.”

…The Israel-Arab conflict, he said, “was always considered to be a political one: a conflict between Arabs and Israelis. The fundamentalists are doing their level best to turn it into a religious conflict – Muslim against Jew, Islam against Judaism. And while a political conflict is possible to solve through negotiation and compromise, there are no solutions to a theological conflict. Then it is jihad – religious war: their God against our God. Were they to win, our conflict would go from war to war, and from stalemate to stalemate.

“And that, essentially is why I agreed to Oslo and shook hands, albeit reluctantly, with Yasser Arafat. He and his PLO represent the last vestige of secular Palestinian nationalism. We have nobody else to deal with. It is either the PLO or nothing. It is a long shot for a possible settlement, or the certainty of no settlement at all at a time when the radicals are going nuclear.”

Avner and Rabin were supposed to meet again the following week but Rabin was murdered the evening before by a religious fanatic. A Jewish one.

On Jewlicious, we make no bones about vilifying the cult of murder and death that exists on the Palestinian side. They extol “martyrs” who are nothing more than cold-blooded murderers targeting as many Israeli civilians as can be found. They put on bloody, violent television shows for little children praising or encouraging violence against Jews. They have put on an “art exhibition” depicting the inside of an Israeli restaurant in the midst of blowing up in a suicide bombing, blood and body parts included. They praise and excuse terrorism. It is a disgusting cult of death and any Palestinian who takes part or gives any sort of support for these activities is beneath contempt.

On Jewlicious, we also make no bones about vilifying any cult of murder and death that exists on the Jewish side. We have not had many opportunities to vilify people for actions such as these because the amount of Jewish terrorism has been relatively small over the past few decades. There was the group that blew up the cars of some Palestinian mayors and the group that tried to blow up a Palestinian girls’ school. There was a teen who was recently arrested for stabbing attacks as well as the American immigrant to Israel who has recently been arrested for at least one and possibly more shootings of Palestinians. These attacks are reprehensible and deserve severe punishments, some of which have been meted out and a couple which were not, in my opinion, severe enough.

One attack by a Jew that I considered the act of a single, sick man, is that of Baruch Goldstein who went into the Cave of the Patriarchs, specifically into the Jacob Room which was being used as a mosque and opened fire. He killed 29 Palestinians and injured another hundred. Pardon me, he MURDERED 29 Palestinians.

Israeli society acted swiftly. Kach, Kahane’s party of which Goldstein was a member, was essentially kicked out of the Knesset. Political leaders such as Yitzhak Rabin, who was PM at the time, condemned the murder in no uncertain terms:

“I am shamed over the disgrace imposed upon us by a degenerate murderer,” he said. “You are not part of the community of Israel,” he continued, addressing the most militant settlers. “You are not part of the national democratic camp which we all belong to in this house, and many of the people despise you. You are not partners in the Zionist enterprise. You are a foreign implant. You are an errant weed. Sensible Judaism spits you out. You placed yourself outside the wall of Jewish law. You are a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism.”

Goldstein committed his massacre on Purim, which in that year was also during Ramadan. He did it while Israel was negotiating the Oslo Accords with the PLO. Those who knew him said that he did it because he had lost his mind after seeing a friend and the son of a friend slain by Palestinians even as he, a physician, was unable to help them and one died in his arms. Maybe true, maybe not. It doesn’t matter. His murderous actions are despicable. Later polls in Israeli society showed a vast majority, nearly 80% of Jewish Israelis opposed to the attack and only about 3.5% in favor – which in a typical poll could mean virtually 0% support because it is within the margin of error, but unlikely in this instance. Three percent sounds about right.

Those 3% supported the attack, presumably extremist settlers from the most extreme outposts of Israeli settlement, Kiryat Arba and Hebron. Many made pilgrimage to Goldstein’s grave. The Israeli government then created a law prohibiting monuments to terrorists and eliminated the pseudo-shrine that had been built on his burial site. Still, there are those who still commemorate him and his act fondly.

They are despicable people. They are exactly what Rabin said about Goldstein: errant weeds that are a stain on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism. Nothing less.

This post is about a video posted on Ynet today, showing Purim celebrations in Sheikh Jarrah, among the newly arrive Jews there, singing a song in praise of Goldstein and his massacre.

UPDATE: Here is a version of it on Youtube.

Our own ck and Rabbi Yonah do not believe it is a true video and that the song has been implanted to the video. In other words, somebody is trying to make these families look bad. As I review it, I have to admit that you can’t see anybody actually singing the song or with it. If anybody has ideas regarding the veracity of this video, bring them on. Does anybody know who the videographer is?

I am assuming this video is true and if so, these people are the scum of the earth. These people are the equivalent of those who support Hamas’s terrorism. They should be spit out of the Jewish nation and kept far away.

Sheikh Jarrah is a controversial neighborhood right now because these new Jewish residents are living in homes that have recently seen their Palestinian tenants evicted. The matter had gone up to the Israeli High Court which ruled in favor of the Jewish owners of these buildings, who had watched for decades while Palestinians lived there but without paying rent even though there was a clear title to the buildings. Finally, the Palestinians were legally evicted and Jewish families moved in.

At least one of these families, and from the video it looks like it might be more than one, should be forced to leave that neighborhood because of their celebration of this murder. If it can be shown that other families were involved in the party that included this video and the robust sing-along to the song extolling a terrorist, then those families should be evicted as well.

Sheikh Jarrah is a serious tactical mistake by those Jews who want to reclaim parts of east Jerusalem, precisely because it opens up areas inside Israel to similar claims by Palestinians. Buying up land or houses today and then moving people in is one thing, and it is legitimate. However, if one wants to bring in pre-1948 real estate into the equation, must one be prepared for the Palestinians to do the same. For that reason, the Israeli government should pass a law challenging the Court’s ruling and removing these Jews from Sheikh Jarrah. If there was doubt before, let it be gone now, because if these people support Goldstein, they should be condemned, evicted and prevented from living anywhere where they could provoke Palestinians. They do not deserve the protection or support of any part of the Israeli government or population.

How low and shameful.

Clay Rattle, Jerusalem the city of David Iron Age II period

I’m a little late on this, since Purim is over, but this year the Israel Antiquities Authority put on an online gallery of ancient masks and rattlers found at archaeological sites in Israel.

The gallery and the intro to the gallery.

Hat tip to Ynet.

David Frum writes in Canada’s National Post:

.

..At York, speech is free — better than free, subsidized — for anti-Israel haters. But for those who would defend Israel, York sets very different rules.

In advance of York’s annual hate-Israel week, the campus group Christians United for Israel applied to use university space to host a program of pro-Israel speakers.

The university replied that this program could only proceed on certain conditions.

It insisted on heavy security, including both campus and Toronto police — all of those costs to be paid by the program organizers. The organizers would also have to provide an advance list of all program attendees and advance summaries of all the speeches. No advertising for the program would be permitted — not on the York campus, not on any of the other campuses participating by remote video.

These are radically different and much harsher terms than anything required from the hate-Israel program. The hate-Israel program is not required to pay for its own security. It is free to advertise. Its speakers are not pre-screened by the university.

The pro-Israel event, scheduled for this past Monday, Feb. 22, was cancelled when the organizers declined to comply with the terms. A university spokesman told the Jewish Tribune that it insisted on the more stringent requirements on pro-Israel groups “due to the participation of individuals who they claim invite the animus of anti-Israel campus agitators.”

The logic is impressively brazen: Since the anti-Israel people might use violence, the speech of the pro-Israel people must be limited. On the other hand, since the pro-Israel people do not use violence, the speech of the anti-Israel people can proceed without restraint.

Mr. Frum goes on to comment about what we’ve already stated on Jewlicious a number of times. York University has become a difficult place for Jewish students who wish to be involved in campus Jewish life to do so without being penalized by the current environment on campus. This is an environment that the university’s administration has indirectly fostered. An administration-appointed task-force committee put out a report over the aggressive hounding of the students who were hounded into the Hillel office last year, and concluded (incredibly) that both sides needed to take future responsibility for potential actions in similar ways. In other words, the instigators got off with nothing more than a mild warning and the pleasure of knowing their victims were held at fault to the same degree as they. Yes, the two ring-leaders were given a slap on the wrist, but some anti-Israel professors quickly gathered some funds to support them, so that not even a mild punishment was suffered by the offenders.

At that time, the Jewish community and the active Jewish organizations on campus accepted the verdict politely. They shouldn’t have, because it was a clear victory for the other side which had clearly crossed a boundary. They shouldn’t have because it means that even more Jewish students who might have reconsidered, decided to attend York.

Well, now it’s out in the open. If you’re Jewish and studying at York University, do your best not to be visually identifiable as a Jew, because somebody might hit you. Be sure not to participate in campus politics, because somebody might yell at you. Be sure not to take part in active Jewish organizational life, because you and your organization will be targets. Be very careful not to support Israel openly, because then you can be certain that you will be vilified and treated differently than all other students, not just by anti-Israel organizations, but, as Frum points out, by York’s administration.

Oh Canada.

I learned about the singer Yael Meyer thanks to the list of performers attending Jewlicious 6.0. She has a beautiful, glistening, crystal clear voice and a terrific sensibility about her songs that not only allow her voice to shine but have a romance and light humor to them that resonate deeply with me. I wish her a long and successful career.

Fortunately, I can get a regular fix of Yael because she has a blog on which she features a weekly podcast of her songs.

Here is her first podcast:

Today, she came out with her latest podcast and it combines a song with an appeal to help raise money for Chilean relief. Here is the video, but you can download the song and provide a donation through paypal here. Please help.

Here again is where to make a donation. Please be generous.

Wiley on Get Out LB reports that it was good!

Last weekend proved to be yet another epic year for Jewlicious. For those who have never been or never heard, Jewlicious is a three-day festival at the Long Beach JCC that happens every February, bringing Jewish people together from all over the country for music, food and chutzpah! This is my fifth year. It’s possible that I will be a lifer.

Caroline Kessler in In The Moment provides the first of two reviews:

There were about 450 people at Shabbat dinner that night–nearly everyone joined in for Shalom Aleichem. At the head of our table was the infamous Matisyahu. As we were breaking and passing the challah, our table ran out. Our friend Marc yelled, “Hey Matis! Throw me a piece of challah!”

Miraculously, he did. There was an exuberance in the air that tonight, and I think a lot of it came from using our voices at a volume that we don’t normally practice. There were so many different kinds/types/labels of Jew there–and to see everyone raise their voices in the same song was something bordered on extraordinary. The next morning, (Saturday), there was a reggae-inspired Reform service. I missed it to attend Marcus Freed’s Shabbat Strength sequence–and there was music even in the heavy breath of everyone in the small exercise room, the stomping of our feet on the floor when Marcus said, “Just let your body play,” and there was music in our chanting of ’shalom.’

Over a week later, I still have something that my friend Bri taught me on the trip: kol ha’olam kulo, gesher tzar m’od, v’ha ikar lo l’fached klal, which translates to ‘the entire world is a narrow bridge, but the main thing is not to fear.’ I love the translation, but what I love even more is singing the song all the way to John Wayne Airport, all the way back to Pittsburgh.

Comedian Lizzy Cooperman at Jewlicious 6.0 (photo by David Miller in The Forward)

Yonah and their gang had a very good time at Jewlicious 6.0 held in Long Beach last week. The LA Jewish Journal has covered it, and included an interesting clip of WBC world welterweight boxing champion (and rabbinical student?) Yuri Foreman giving a brief boxing lesson to the tall and fit Matisyahu at this year’s festival.

From Ryan Torok’s Jewish Journal article:

His [Matisyahu's] 45-minute set was the final performance of the festival, though he had made surprise appearances over the weekend. On Saturday, he joined comedian Smooth-E for a parody of “King Without a Crown.” He could also be seen walking with his family in the main hallway, gym, auditorium and the several event rooms of the JCC.

During the concert, one of Matisyahu’s children, dressed in a Superman costume, went up to the stage and said, “Hi, Daddy.” To which his famous father replied: “Hi, Superman,” a simple, normal exchange that captured the spirit of the weekend.

Adam Weinberg, music director for the festival, reinforced that there should be no preaching at the festival—that attention, instead, should be on the music. “I think music should speak for music’s sake,” Weinberg said.

Weinberg, also a musician, accompanied Matisyahu on acoustic guitar, as did Dave Holmes, a member of Matisyahu’s band.

Matisyahu spoke afterward about how strongly the performance resonated with him. “When you have an audience listening, taking the journey with you, it’s pretty special,” he said. “For some reason, we seem to be having these kinds of performances at Jewlicious shows.”

There’s also some more coverage in The Forward, where Gordon Haber finds some flaws with the festival, but still asks to be invited back next year…which perhaps tells us a little about just how flawed it really was. Our own Rabbi Yonah, co-founder of Jewlicious Festivals, responded to and corrected some of Haber’s assumptions, but I found Yonah’s report on the survey of the people attending Jewlicious 6.0 more fascinating. Here are the details he provided about the make-up of the 900 or so people in attendance:

How do you define your Jewish affiliation?

Unaffiliated 8.3%
Other 9.7%
Reform 30.6%
Conservative 34.7%
Orthodox 16.7%

Seems fairly representative of the Jewish community at large, if one excludes the unaffiliated which make up about half of American Jewry these days.

UPDATE: More Jewlicious 6.0 videos from Jewish Journal

Mark LeVine, a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine said in 2007, about attempts to quell some initiatives taken by the MSU and other UCI organizations involved in anti-Israel activism:

“The only thing that would satisfy the critics now would be if they expelled every Muslim student and painted stars of David on all the buildings.”

So don’t be too surprised that he has written a lengthy article defending the 11 students, 8 from UCI and 3 from UC Riverside, who disrupted the Michael Oren talk at UCI a couple of weeks ago.

Before I proceed, however, I’d like to remind everybody of a couple of events led by students from the UCI MSU and other anti-Israel groups on that campus.

LeVine’s arguments on behalf of the disruptive students can be boiled down to:

1. Yes, the students intended to disrupt Oren’s speech but “not to…scuttle it.”

2. “UC Irvine’s policies on student conduct offer little guidance as to whether the protests against Oren’s speech crossed the line.” “Since Oren was not ultimately prevented from speaking, how the “Irvine 11″ actually interfered with the university’s obligation to protect the Israeli ambassador’s 1st Amendment rights is unclear.

3. “The utter disparity in power between the students and the views they represent, and Oren and the government he represents.” “Oren’s appearance was part of a sophisticated effort by the Israeli government and its supporters to present Israel in the most positive light possible.”

4. “In fact, hard-line advocates for Israel aren’t strangers to “uncivil” behavior against adversaries.” He brings up “the Jerusalem-based World Union of Jewish Students’ “Hasbara Handbook” and explains that it encourages Jewish students to use negative language when referring to anti-Israel organizations. He then adds, “Given this, calling for a pound of flesh from the Muslim students for their protest seems disingenuous to say the least.”

5. “The chilling effect on free speech and dissent the response to the student protests could have on UC Irvine” because UCI sent out an email following the Oren event stating, “if anyone ‘without authority of law, willfully disturbs or breaks up any assembly or meeting that is not unlawful in its character . . .’ [they] can be charged with a misdemeanor.”

5 Continued: LeVine adds, “Imagine how a 19-year-old student would react to being told that she could be arrested and face expulsion from the university for merely engaging in vigorous protest against a speaker who supports forced female genital mutilation or the execution of homosexuals — or, more to the point, a speaker who represents a government that engaged in these practices.”

6. He concludes: “Marginalized voices sometimes have little recourse except to push the boundaries of polite debate to get their messages heard…In this case, the “Irvine 11″ played into deeply ingrained stereotypes of irrational and unreasonably angry Muslim men. But should they be punished without clear standards in place and when similarly rowdy protests in the past led neither to arrests nor university discipline?

If I may, I’d like to respond to Professor LeVine, who actually claimed in 2007 that only Stars of David painted across UCI buildings would satisfy critics of anti-Israel advocates on campus and is now using the laden phrase “pound of flesh” to make his case (after the break).

(more…)

Last week, we all enjoyed Amira Hass elaborating on the evils of Israel’s “hostile” control of Judea and Samaria/West Bank as she told us the story of the young Palestinian teenager who was arrested by Israeli forces. According to her claims, the boy was not only entirely innocent, he had to be told what a slingshot was. Oy, the pain! Her story failed to elicit much sympathy from yours truly since the very next day three young Palestinian teenagers were captured at a checkpoint with explosives and knives in their pockets. I didn’t report it, but the following day, a 16 year old Palestinian boy was also captured with explosives at a checkpoint.

Fortunately for Ha’aretz, they do not rely on just one columnist or reporter to regularly find fault with Israel, they have an experienced team in place. I thought today would be a propitious day to introduce Akiva Eldar’s latest wonder.

Akiva, like Amira, has no difficulty finding numerous faults with any of Israel’s activities. He has been a journalist for some decades and rarely misses an opportunity to attack Israel while giving the Palestinians a pass. Now, lest you think that I’m just making this up, be assured that he is not shy about providing this information himself.

The prominent Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in November 2000…that “there are Israeli reporters who do not pass the ‘lynch test.’” These, he wrote, are journalists who could not bring themselves to criticize the Arabs even when two Israelis were savagely murdered by a mob in Ramallah…I was honored to be mentioned as one of those journalists, alongside my fine colleagues Gideon Levy and Amira Hass.

I admit to being guilty as charged. I am a journalist with a mission, and also no small amount of passion. Every Israeli with a conscience, in particular one who watches reality from up close on a daily basis, cannot write about the occupation from an objective observer’s neutral point of view. My parents immigrated to Israel in 1933 out of choice and hope, not out of despair or fear. Sixty years ago, shortly after I was born, they sat glued to the radio when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state that would be democratic, egalitarian and peaceful. My primary mission is to leave behind for my children and grandchildren a state that is loyal to these principles and values. The occupation of a people, while denying its basic rights, robbing its lands and trampling its dignity, is turning us Israelis into prisoners–prison guards spend a significant part of their lives behind prison walls.

There are many Jews who believe that there is no difference between Hebron and Tel Aviv, or between West and East Jerusalem. As far as they are concerned, the Land of Israel was promised solely to the People of Israel. Yet anyone who perceives the West Bank (and not “Judea and Samaria”) and East Jerusalem as occupied territories cannot accept the policies of Israel’s governments for the past forty years. Occupation does not have two sides. There is no symmetry between the occupier and the occupied. This is true even if the occupied fight the occupier with despicable and contemptuous methods.

Well, it must be noted before I proceed that I, too, wish for an Israel that is democratic, egalitarian and peaceful. I, too, believe that having Israeli soldiers in the midst of another population is a terrible thing for Israeli society. I understand the difference between Hebron and Tel Aviv, although not so much the difference between West and East Jerusalem.

Yup, I dare say that I want peace just as badly as Akiva Eldar. Which is why I wish he would stop with his war-mongering.

The idea that the occupation is entirely Israel’s fault is absurd and flatly false. The idea that Israel isn’t peaceful by its own design is also entirely false. That’s even before we get to the contentious question of why one should accept the moniker “West Bank” for a territory that was so named during an illegal occupation that included a failed attempt at annexation by Jordan. Why is that narrative more acceptable than “Judea and Samaria?” Why is the true proposition that Jordan was the part of Mandate Palestine given to the Arabs so far-fetched that Eldar deems “West Bank” to be appropriate? How does he accord to the Palestinians lands that were never controlled by them?

Those are minor problems, nowhere near as great as his acceptance of the despicable and contemptuous methods used by the Palestinians to fight the Israelis. It is reprehensible and absolutely immoral to accept the violence perpetrated against Israeli civilians over these decades. To remind Eldar, this violence began long before 1967 and long before 1948. It was not excusable then and the Six Day War did not make it more acceptable now.

The idea, furthermore, that the “occupier” has an asymmetrical relationship with the “occupied” ignores Israel’s reality over these past decades. As has been noted elsewhere by others, it is not the “Palestinian-Israel” conflict, but rather the “Arab-Israel conflict.” Israel has built its army to fight other armies for good reasons, and did not construct their army around Palestinian violence. The asymmetry that exists between the Palestinians and Israel becomes symmetrical when one considers that other countries are involved in this conflict and Israel must remain on its guard. Example? Iran provides Hamas with its rockets…

Anyway, today Eldar blamed Palestinian violence on Netanyahu.

The cabinet’s decision to renovate Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron illustrate what awaits, reminding veterans of the Oslo Accords of Netanyahu’s directive in September 1996 to open the Western Wall Tunnel. Netanyahu’s weakness for Jewish heritage and his lack of sensitivity to the neighbors’ dignity cost dozens of Israeli and Palestinian casualties.

Eldar is referring to Netanyahu’s government’s declaration that Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs are officially Israeli heritage sites. Of course, they are also Muslim heritage sites, which means that Muslim Palestinians might become very upset by this desire of the Israelis to proclaim these sites as having historical importance to them. Eldar obviously expects Palestinian violence to result from the assignment of Jewish heritage status to these sites, violence that he blames on the nasty Jewish Israelis who would dare to declare the cave of their patriarchs part of their heritage. The resulting violence, Eldar asserts, will be the fault of Israel, not the Arabs.

He dares to compare it to Netanyahu’s decision to open a tunnel at the Western Wall, which led to riots and violence instigated by Palestinians that left both Israelis and Palestinians dead. Then, too, the connection to a historic Jewish site was asserted by the state of Israel. Apparently, any action taken by Israel leads to Palestinian violence. Those snarky Jews in Israel should stop thinking they control or have any right to places like the Western Wall!

To recap: Eldar opposes declarations of this sort because they lead to Palestinian violence and any Palestinian violence is the fault of Israel because it is an asymmetrically superior power to the Palestinians who are therefore permitted contemptuous acts of violence against Israeli civilians. He forgot to add “while they pursue the destruction of Israel.”

Wait! He doesn’t really believe they’re pursuing the destruction of Israel. How do we know this? His wacky article tells us that he had a long chat with Saeb Erakat, the ubiquitous Palestinian bald guy spokesman, in which Erakat hinted that the Palestinians not seeking to destroy Israel. Erakat reported sending out a plaintive booklet to European diplomats outlining how Obama screwed disappointed the Palestinians by backing off on his hard-hitting agenda with respect to Israel and how this, not the Palestinian recalcitrance to negotiate, has led to the current impasse in talks.

Needless to say, there was no mention in there of the Washington Post article outlining the Palestinian leadership’s decision to boycott talks with Israel under the assumption that it would bring down Netanyahu’s government. Nope, Erakat’s world, like Eldar’s, is filled with underdog Palestinians and monstrous Israelis. Erakat can provide no evidence that he or his colleagues seek peace, while Israel can show three peace offers in the past decade, but according to the current Palestinian narrative, effectively conveyed by Erakat and echoed rigorously by Eldar, the fault for absence of negotiations or peace lies with Israel.

Nevertheless, Erekat in his document refuses to rule out the two-state solution. In the concluding section, he mentions the option of a binational state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, but stressed to me this is the worst possible option. He assured me that he would do everything possible to avert a descent into that abyss.

Gee, thanks Saeb! He “refuses” to rule out the two-state solution. Imagine a people without a state being so magnanimous! Better yet, it is a relief to know that Erakat believes that a single state “solution” is the “worst possible option” and that he would personally do everything to “avert” that outcome. This is indeed first-rate reporting where Eldar’s passion comes through loudly and clearly. All Israel needs to do is give in and then give in some more and then just maybe, the Palestinians will be willing to talk about peace. And if Israel doesn’t give in? They get the Palestinians going for a single state.

I love that Eldar appreciates blackmail of this sort with equanimity. With people like him having a soapbox like Ha’aretz, peace is surely just around the corner. If, that is, the Palestinians don’t believe that it’s the worst possible option. They wouldn’t believe that, would they?

Check out our articles about the Palestinian endgame…

First:
The Palestinians Think They Are in the Endgame

Second: The Palestinian Endgame Enters High Gear

Third: More About the Palestinian Endgame

Fourth: Palestinians believe they have Israel in the corner

We all know that UC Irvine has been a hotbed for intense anti-Israel activism, which sometimes has slipped into outright anti-Semitism. Even when it’s not anti-Semitic, UCI activities, often led by their Muslim Student Union or affiliated parties, have taken on-campus anti-Israel activism to another level. Fortunately, most of the time, these attacks reflect poorly on the activists, so that even though they succeed in getting their message publicized, reasonable people often conclude that the protesters are in the wrong.

Similar conclusions have been drawn by many regarding the disruptions of Michael Oren, a historian who is currently Israel’s ambassador to the US, a couple of weeks ago at the UCI campus. One by one, 11 students, 8 from UCI and 3 from UC Riverside, disrupted the talk so that the audience heard his speech in bits and pieces and never had a chance to ask him questions. The students were warned that they would be removed and there would be consequences, yet they persisted to disrupt the speech. Upon removal from the auditorium, they were arrested and their names were released. It turned out that the president and vice-president of UCI’s MSU were involved as were other members. Despite this, and the website posting against Oren’s appearance, the MSU has denied any connection to the disruptions.

Since then, the campus has entered into a debate about freedom of speech. The defenders of the disruptions claimed that the offenders were merely exercising their free speech rights and, in fact, by removing them from the hall and by arresting them, those rights have been being quashed. Those who oppose the disruptions make the claim that the First Amendment does not give carte blanche to disrupt the right of a speaker to express his views or to have his listeners be prevented from hearing those views.

Well, it turns out that UCI has a recently opened law school and it is headed by Erwin Chemerinsky, its founding dean. As a side note, it appears that his hiring involved unfavorable attention by some Repubicans. Chancellor Drake at first announced that Chemerinsky wouldn’t receive the job he was offered, and denied any outside interference. However, after it was shown that he had been contacted by interested parties, he traveled to meet with the professor, who had recently been called one of America’s top 20 legal thinkers by a prominent legal publication. It appears that Mr. Chemerinsky schooled Mr. Drake about academic freedom, because he got his offer and the job back again.

Needless to say, between allowing UC Irvine to become a punching bag for all sorts of interests, his weak condemnation of the MSU protesters at the Oren speech and the quick turnaround with Chemerinsky and his job prospects, one wonders whether another leader would serve this campus better than Drake.

Anyhoo, Chemerinsky is an expert in “constitutional law, federal practice, civil rights and civil liberties, and appellate litigation.” He’s also Jewish. And, he wrote an editorial in the LA Times about “UC Irvine’s free speech debate.” What does he think?

College campuses, especially at public universities, are places where all ideas should be expressed and debated. No speech ever should be stopped or punished because of the viewpoint expressed. Of course, there must be rules to regulate the time, place and manner of such expression to preserve order and even to make sure that speech can occur.

These general principles are unassailable, but their application to recent events at the University of California, Irvine, has attracted international attention. …

Eleven individuals were arrested, and those who are UCI students are facing disciplinary action. In the last week, I have been deluged with messages from those saying the disruptive students did nothing wrong and deserve no punishment, and also from those saying that the students should be expelled and that others in the audience who cheered them on should be disciplined.

Both of these views are wrong. As to the former, there are now posters around campus referring to the unjust treatment of the “Irvine 11″ and saying they were just engaging in speech themselves. However, freedom of speech never has been regarded as an absolute right to speak out at any time and in any manner. Long ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes explained that there was no right to falsely shout “fire” in a crowded theater.

The government, including public universities, always can impose time, place and manner restrictions on speech. A person who comes into my classroom and shouts so that I cannot teach surely can be punished without offending the 1st Amendment. Likewise, those who yelled to keep the ambassador from being heard were not engaged in constitutionally protected behavior.

Freedom of speech, on campuses and elsewhere, is rendered meaningless if speakers can be shouted down by those who disagree. The law is well established that the government can act to prevent a heckler’s veto — to prevent the reaction of the audience from silencing the speaker. There is simply no 1st Amendment right to go into an auditorium and prevent a speaker from being heard, no matter who the speaker is or how strongly one disagrees with his or her message.

…
At the same time, I also disagree with those who call for draconian sanctions against these students or of punishment for a larger group. Only the students who were actually disruptive should be punished. Whether there will be criminal prosecutions is up to the Orange County district attorney. Within the university, the punishment should be great enough to convey that the conduct was wrong and unacceptable, but it should not be so severe as to ruin these students’ educational careers.

I bow my head in humility to Mr. Chemerinsky’s deep knowledge of the law and accept his verdict that “There is simply no 1st Amendment right to go into an auditorium and prevent a speaker from being heard.” I thank him for teaching me about the “Heckler’s Veto.”

My problem with his conclusion, however, is that it only deals with this incident and treats it as an anomaly instead of part of a larger pattern, which is easily provable. By absolving the MSU from any involvement in this case, despite their online call against Oren’s speech and the involvement of key members of this group in the disruptions, Chemerinsky only encourages groups to foment disruptive behavior on campus and if there are consequences to their members, claim innocence or ignorance and let those individuals hang without support. Of course, this type of absolution will mean that any group can organize these sorts of protests without fear of consequences.

I can understand this in matters where there is a bigger question mark about the involvement of the group in question, but in this case, this disruption was part of a much broader pattern.

A meaningful punishment is required for another reason. Chemerinsky himself notes that “Prior to this event, campus officials heard rumors that some members of the Muslim Student Union planned to disrupt the ambassador’s speech…When asked, the officials of the Muslim Student Union denied any plans to do this.”

We don’t know who the MSU officials were, but we can assume that the president and vice-president of the group have to take responsibility for any actions taken by their officials when they are speaking on behalf of the group. Since those two individuals (the pres and VP) were directly involved in the disruptions at the Oren talk, their responsibility not only grows far beyond that of the average MSU student, but it directly implicates the MSU as an organization since they would have had prior knowledge that the university was concerned about such disruptions.

In other words, to allow the MSU to get away with officially denying involvement in the disruptive activities that the university sought to quell, even though its members, and particularly its leadership, were direct participants, is no different than an abuser punching somebody after being asked not to, and then denying that the punch came from the abuser because his right hand acted independently.

Along with punishing the MSU, Chemerinsky should reconsider his position about what makes for an appropriate punishment for these protesters. He doesn’t believe that they deserve the punishment “so severe as to ruin these students’ educational careers.”

In light of the fact that it is virtually impossible that MSU members who participated in the disruption did not know that the university had asked them not to cause disruptions, and in light of the fact that the individuals involved were senior enough to be leaders of this on-campus group and in light of the fact that they are adult students who were given the opportunity not to behave in a manner inimical to the request and best interests of the university, why should the university permit them to continue with their studies? They openly lied to the university.

They may be able to claim that the university was speaking to the MSU, not to its individual student members, but since those members comprise the MSU’s leadership, even as individual students with no MSU backing for their actions, they knowingly went against the university’s desire to avoid disruption.

It seems to me that a severe punishment is due. Should they be expelled? Maybe not. That would galvanize support around them. However, a break from studies to mull over their behavior and learn from it seems appropriate here, as would some permanent mark on their school transcripts explaining why there is a gap between semesters.

The issues here go beyond stealing the opportunity for students at the university to hear a speaker and learn from the exchange of ideas. They touch directly on the ideals of a university as a place where integrity is a must because a lack of integrity undermines properly imparting and receiving knowledge. This is why plagiarism is treated severely in the academic world. Lying to a university’s administration would seem to be on the same plane.