Final Hanukkah message from President Biden

I'm sad that President Biden will be leaving office in a little more than three weeks, and not just because he will be replaced by Donald Trump. He has been so supportive of Jews and Israel since he became President - I very much appreciated his flying to Israel soon after October 7 to show his support. No other president has done that and I can't imagine Donald Trump (or, for that matter, Kamala Harris) expressing his concern in such a personal way. 

And as far as I know, he's the only president to send American troops to defend Israel (if I'm wrong, please let me know). Other presidents have certainly sent military aid, even the antisemitic Richard Nixon during the Yom Kippur War (for which I'm very thankful!). Just today US troops using the THAAD missile defense system shot down the Houthi missile that was launched at Israel (see previous blog post). 

This doesn't mean that he's always done the right thing with regard to Israel. I think he should have put much more pressure on Netanyahu about the Israeli conduct of the war in Gaza. The New York Times and other news sources have written about how Israel has loosened its rules of engagement in Gaza, resulting in a very high civilian death toll, and probably in some cases violating American rules for what we permit weapons we give or sell to other countries to be used for. 

I will certainly miss him for many other reasons. I think he's done a generally good job, and has emphasized the right actions, like industrial policy to rebuild American infrastructure (we finally have Infrastructure Week!) and foster making computer chips and other high tech manufacturing, and the many incentives to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

One of the things I've appreciated is his administration's outreach to the Jewish community. Obviously, other presidential administrations have done this, but his is the first one I've paid much attention to - especially reaching out with briefings in the wake of the October 7 attack and the Gaza war.

Others certainly disagree with me, and my purpose in writing this is not to persuade anyone, but simply to express my personal feelings.

December 27, 2024

Friends,

On the first night of Hanukkah, President Biden lit the official White House Menorah alongside his family. This menorah was made in 2022 from wood salvaged during the Truman-era renovation. The beam of wood sat in storage for 70 years — through 13 presidencies. Today, it shines as a symbol of resilience, honoring the enduring strength of the Jewish people.

At the White House Hanukkah reception, President Biden reflected on this strength: “I know it’s hard to find hope while carrying so much sorrow. But from my perspective, Jewish people have always embodied the duality of pain and joy.”

He also invoked the words of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z'l, whose teachings continue to inspire me personally, and I know so many around the world. “A people that can walk through a valley of shadow of death and still rejoice is a people that cannot be defeated by any force or fear.”
As we celebrate this season of light and miracles, President Biden offered his final Hanukkah message as President. "Hold onto that hope, shine your light, shine the light of optimism, and above all, keep the faith. Keep the faith.”

From all of us at the White House, Chag Hanukkah Sameach — wishing you a joyous and meaningful Hanukkah.

Shabbat Shalom,

Shelley Greenspan

Liaison to the American Jewish Community

The attempted massacre at the synagogue in Halle, Germany

I feel deeply affected by the attempted murder of Jews at prayer in Halle, Germany, on Yom Kippur, and by the murder of two people on the streets of Halle simply because the killer came upon them when he failed to get into the synagogue.

It's really too hard for me to articulate my feelings - they are a mixture of fear, and anger, and a feeling that the world is irrevocably broken. I don't know why this event has finally given me that feeling. So much awful has happened in the last few years - including the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh last year (the anniversary is coming up on October 27). But that this attempted massacre occurred in Germany, of all places, which is a flawed country but has very much engaged in remembering the Holocaust and facing up to the horrific deeds of the Nazis against Jews and other victims, is simply too much.

(For me this is coupled with Trump's decision to stab the Kurds in the back and allow the Turks to invade the Kurdish area of Syria. To betray people our soldiers fought with to defeat ISIS, the genocidaires of the Yazidis. People who fought and died for the security of the US and for their own people. I never used to think that concepts of "national honor" meant anything - but now that we've lost ours, I feel it keenly).

Medieval Jewish community of Worms, Germany

http://argaman01.tumblr.com/post/119683503134/jewish-medieval-sites-in-worms-germany

May 16, 1948 - Jews of Arab lands endangered

I've published an article on my Israel blog, "The Land and the People," giving the text of a New York Times article published on May 16, 1948, detailing the danger that Jews of Muslim and Arab lands were in with the establishment of the state of Israel. See Jews in Grave Danger in All Moslem Lands for the complete text.

What's Up With the Jews?

An interesting New York Times column from Stanley Fish online: What's Up With the Jews?

I'm not often a fan of Fish (especially when he writes about academic freedom - I think his definition is far too narrow). He often writes with the intent to offend, in my opinion. This article, however, is an interesting meditation on how whatever Jews do is read through prepackaged narratives that don't have much to do with reality.

....as many before me have observed, the Jew as a cultural/ historical figure is oversaturated, which means that the meanings that accrue to him (or her, but mostly him) are in excess of any empirical record and accumulate like barnacles without any regard for the law of contradiction. Attitudes, especially negative ones, toward Jews flourish whether there are Jews around or not. Anti-Semitism survives in Poland even though most of its Jews have either fled or been killed. There is anti-Semitism in China, but few actual Jews.

An important part of the protean and shape-shifting history of anti-Semitism is illuminated by Matthew Biberman’s brilliant book “Masculinity, Anti-Semitism, and Early Modern English Literature.” Biberman traces the intertwined careers of two characterizations of the Jew — the Jew as devil, an impossibly strong alien being who blocks and destroys everything that is good, and the Jew as sissy, an effeminate, slight, pasty figure who stays in the background and assimilates, but who, because of his having disappeared into the woodwork, is able to rot it out from within. (This quick summary does not do justice to the richness of Biberman’s analysis.) So you can have the fierce barbaric Jew (Israel as the atom-bomb wielding destroyer of Arab armies, at least in 1967) and the insidiously bland Jew, the obsequious figure who, while no one’s looking, takes control of everything. That means that whatever a Jew does there are a number of pre-packaged, and often mutually exclusive, narratives in which to place him, and, by and large, they are not positive ones.

What should Jews think or not think about the overthrow of Mubarak?

Interesting debate over at Harry's Place on what Jews should or should not feel about the overthrow of Mubarak, sparked by a stupid article in the Guardian's Comment is Free entitled On the side of the Pharoahs? by Rabbi Howard Cooper. Cooper writes, "I was saddened by the predominantly muted and apprehensive response to these uplifting events from many of my fellow Jews in the UK and in Israel."

I personally was happy when Mubarak fell, but I'm apprehensive about what will happen next.

I particularly liked the comments by Lamia -

Of course, had Jews in large numbers or Israel itself made approving noises about the events in Egypt, or take a close an interest, the conspiracy mongers would have gone into overdrive claiming that the interest of Jews was suspicious (if predictable), and that they were interfering in a sovereign Egyptian matter, and that their support for the revolution showed it was all a zionist plot.

Obama – of whom I’m not the greatest fan – has been in a similar ‘Heads I’m a hypocrite, tails I’m a hypocrite’ situation, especially regarding Iran. And regarding Libya, there are those who will criticise the west for standing by and not intervening there while hundreds or thousands are dying, but who are poised to jump all over any actual sign of intervention or support for the revolutionaries as ‘imperialism’. As another thread has pointed out, there are still those on the left who view Gaddafi as a good socialist hero.

What this boils down to is motivism, the self-righteous paranoia which defines the world view of so much of the left in the post-Soviet world. It’s a lazier form of conspiracy theory, in that it’s not even interested in suggesting that what appears to have happened is not what has really happened. That would take no less madness or dishonesty, but would require at least some imagination.

Motivism doesn’t dispute the facts so much as start with an assumption that whatever Jews or zionists or the west or NATO do or say has a malign motiviation, and then ascribes the same pre-ordained end interpretation to whatever they do or say or don’t do or don’t say.

The main thing is that Pilger and co are always right, no matter their own inconsistency, and Blair amd co are always wrong, no matter their own inconsistency.

In due course it will become an orthodoxy of the left that whatever they said or didn’t say at the time, ‘the zionists’ got exactly what they secretly wanted from the Arab revolutions. Or if they didn’t, it will still be their fault for whatever bad consequences there may be for any Arabs and anyone else. because it always is.

Even if Israel didn’t exist, ‘the zionists’ always will. They will be everywhere behind the scenes (and rocks, and trees) because they are needed. The Pilgerists may have, unlike the Islamists, stopped believing in God, but they still believe in the same devil.

SBL Sunday November 21

Today was another pleasant day at the SBL. I went to the morning session of the Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism section, and heard papers on merkabah elements in early Christian writings (Ascension of Isaiah and Hebrews), as well as a review of the new book by Bogdan Bucur, Angelomorphic Pneumatology: Clement of Alexandria and Other Early Christian Witnesses.

In the afternoon, in lieu of going to sessions, I went to the book display and got several expensive books from European publishers - Mohr Siebeck and Brill. It's still a wonder to me how university presses in the United States still manage to publish scholarly books that cost much less than these excellent European presses. I've published several articles in books from these presses, and their cost is always much too high to recommend to anyone to buy them. I also had a good time talking to a friend of mine about Jewish Studies and especially about the definition of the word "Jew" - at what historical point can we start speaking of "Jews" and not "Israelites"? We agreed between ourselves that the term becomes relevant - to refer to an ethnic-religious group - in the books of the Ezra-Nehemiah, specifically pointing to the returning exiles who go from Babylonia to the Persian sub-province of Yehud after the decree of Cyrus in 538 B.C.E. Obviously, others disagree, and argue that the term only really becomes meaningful in the time of the Maccabees in the second century B.C.E., or even later in the first century C.E. or afterwards.

In the evening, to the reception for Rachel Elior, to honor her with the presentation of a festschrift, edited by Andrei Orlov and Daphna Arbel, entitled With Letters of Light: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Early Jewish Apocalypticism, Magic, and Mysticism. I contributed an article to the volume, "'They revealed secrets to their wives': The Transmission of Magical Knowledge in 1 Enoch." The reception began with an introduction by Andrei and Daphna, and continued with greetings and appreciations by the other people attending the evening - many of whom had contributed to the festschrift. Rachel then thanked all of us and talked about how she had gotten interested in the connections between Hekhalot literature and the Qumran texts - when she discovered the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice in 1987 and began to read them together with the Hekhalot hymns. I didn't know the particular story of her learning about the Songs, but I do remember her Hekhalot seminar at the Hebrew University in the 1988-1989 academic year, when we spent quite a long time reading Qumran texts, and focused upon the Sabbath Songs.

After that reception some of us left and went to the JTS reception, which was marked by the presence of good kosher food - and plenty of it! (Always an important consideration at these convention receptions).

Tomorrow morning I'm heading back to Ithaca, and won't be going to any other SBL sessions, unfortunately. This has proven to be an enjoyable conference.

Yad Vashem - Untold Stories of the Murder Sites in the Occupied USSR

I just came across a New York Times article published last year about new research being done at Yad Vashem on lesser-known killing fields in the Holocaust: "New Looks at the Fields of Death for Jews" (April 19, 2009). One report about Liepaja is from a German sailor who filmed the killings at Skede.

One little-known case comes from a German sailor who filmed killings in Liepaja, Latvia. The film has been on view for some years at the Yad Vashem museum. But the new Web site has a forgotten video of a 1981 interview with the sailor, Reinhard Wiener, who said he had been a bystander with a movie camera.

According to part of his account, “After the civilian guards with the yellow armbands shouted once again, I was able to identify them as Latvian home guardsmen. The Jews, whom I was able to recognize by now, were forced to jump over the sides of the truck onto the ground. Among them were crippled and weak people, who were caught by the others.

“At first, they had to line up in a row, before they were chased toward the trench. This was done by SS and Latvian home guardsmen. Then the Jews were forced to jump into the trench and to run along inside it until the end. They had to stand with their back to the firing squad. At that time, the moment they saw the trench, they probably knew what would happen to them. They must have felt it, because underneath there was already a layer of corpses, over which was spread a thin layer of sand.

Yad Vashem has created a website devoted to this topic - the Untold Stories. There are several pages devoted to what happened in Liepaja.

Touring Copenhagen - Resistance Museum

I arrived in Copenhagen Friday afternoon from Tartu, via Riga (which was a little nerve-wracking, because I had left one piece of luggage in the luggage storage room in the airport, and I had to figure out how to get it on as hand luggage without paying an enormous sum of money to Air Baltic, which allows only one piece of checked luggage - but I did get it on without having to pay). I was pretty tired, so I didn't go anywhere once I got here, but I went out yesterday morning. The first challenge was figuring out how to buy a metro ticket at the closest stop - there were directions in English, but they weren't very clear. With the help of several patient Danish people, I bought the ticket and headed for my first destination, the harbor, where I was going to take a harbor tour.

It was really a beautiful day - not too hot, with a nice breeze, and it was great to be out on the water. We sailed into the harbor and on several canals (I hadn't realized before this that Copenhagen has canals), passing lots of other tourist boats doing the same thing.

People relaxing at the water's edge, with the Amalieborg castles behind them.

When we got back, I was hungry and had lunch in an Italian restaurant (of which Copenhagen appears to have an abundance). I then walked over to the Museum of the Danish Resistance (during WWII), which turned out to be quite an affecting museum. It covered the whole period from the German invasion in April 1940 to the liberation in May 1945, including the rescue of the Danish Jews from Nazi deportation. The story is really quite amazing. Almost all were ferried to Sweden by the Danish resistance; only about 450 were captured and sent to Terezin, and of those, about 400 survived.

The museum was divided into several sections, starting with a general introduction to Nazism. While some of the exhibits were photographs or facsimiles, many were authentic artifacts of the time period. One of the first items that I saw, to my shock, was the label below from a canister of Zyklon B, which had been found by a Dane in the hold of a sunken German ship.

The next part of the museum was devoted to the first stage of the Nazi occupation of Denmark – accommodation to the wishes of the occupiers. Germany occupied Denmark on April 9, 1940, and the Danish government quickly capitulated. The Germans ruled Denmark through a Danish government coalition, so that full Nazi policies were not implemented (for example anti-Jewish legislation). This included Denmark furnishing Germany with many of its food needs during the war, as well as favorable trade agreements for Germany. The next item illustrates this trade.

These are toy figures of Hitler and Mussolini, purchased in a Copenhagen store in 1943. It had somehow never occurred to me that little figurines of fascist dictators were made – presumably for children to play with!

This is one of the German ENIGMA code machines, which was used by the German Navy in Esbjerg, Denmark.





  The Communist Party was not outlawed in Denmark until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. At that point, the Germans told the Danish government to intern the leaders of the Danish communists, which they did. In November 1942 about 250 were sent to the Horseroed camp, which was run by the Danish police, not by the Nazi Gestapo (later on it was taken over by the Nazis).

A drawing from the internment camp by one of the inmates, Knudaage Larsen.

The next part of the museum was devoted to various types of Danish resistance to German rule in the early years of the occupation. An underground press flourished with newspapers produced by various factions of the Danish resistance. The picture above is of the printing press used to print a newspaper called “Frit Danmark,” which was a collaboration between Communists and Conservatives.

The Danish resistance was in close communication with the British by various methods, including illegal telegraph machines. The picture below shows a reconstruction of a room with equipment used by a telegraphist.

The Jews of Denmark were untouched by German persecution until the Danish government resigned in the summer of 1943, in the face of German decrees that they could not accept. This meant that Denmark was now under direct German rule, and they quickly organized for the arrest of the entire Danish Jewish community on October 1-2 (Rosh Hashanah). The Danish underground found out about the German decree, and through quick action, managed to save almost the entire community by ferrying them to Sweden.

On the right is a model of one of the boats used to ferry Jews to Sweden.

About 500 Jews, however, did not manage to get away – they were captured and sent to Terezin. Most of them survived the war without being deported to Auschwitz because of pressure exerted by the Danish government and aid sent by the Danish Red Cross.

(I visited Terezin in the summer of 2005 when I visited Prague - I wrote about it here).

This is a revolting German propaganda poster [from 1942] about Jews being forced to wear the yellow star. The text reads:

The cat cannot change his spots!

The leading English newspaper "Daily Mail" reported:

"The participation of Jews in breaking British wartime economic legislation has caused Judaism and Jewish names to be ostracized in England, said the Chief Rabbi Dr. J. Hertz in a London synagogue."

With these accusations, the rabbi certainly wanted to warn his racial comrades to greater caution in their dark black marketing business, so that the English people would not recognize whose lice are in the fur. His efforts, however, are likely to be in vain. So are the Jews. First they chase the people into war, and while the soldiers of those nations fight and bleed, they make business out of the war, pushing and cheating and filling their filthy pockets at the expense of their host peoples. In Germany the blame was pinned on them. We have separated them from the German national community and they are marked with a yellow Star of David.

Everyone knows: Whoever wears this sign is an enemy of our people.

A jacket belonging to one of the Danish Jews imprisoned in Terezin. 481 Danish Jews were imprisoned in Terezin, of which 51 died there. The rest were sent to Sweden at the end of the war.










When I came out of the museum I was feeling sad at the fate of some of the resistance fighters (who were captured and executed by the Nazis), and sat for a little while thinking and looking out over a stream. I then walked towards what turned out to be a fort, but on the way encountered a statue erected after the war, dedicated to those who had fallen in the war. (It's below).

Our fallen
in Danish and allied war service
1940-1945
Raised by the Danish people

What *is* in Tartu?

I just spent a week in Tartu, Estonia, at a conference on biblical studies. I gave a paper on whether there were women mystics in early Judaism, and went to lots of other interesting papers. I also went on a couple of tours - one of a series of communities along Lake Peipsi (which forms the border between Estonia and Russia - I had hoped I could take photos of Russia on the other side of the lake, but it's actually quite large, so I couldn't fulfill my desire of saying that I could see Russia from Estonia, unlike Sarah Palin who claimed that she could see Russia from Alaska), and another in and around Tartu itself.

For those of you who may not know where Estonia is (no need to be embarrassed, I checked on the map to be sure exactly where it is), it's the northernmost country of the Baltic states, and it's right next to Russia. From 1940-1991 it was part of the Soviet Union (along with Latvia and Lithuania it was swallowed up by the Soviets as a result of the pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany that agreed to divide the Baltic states and Poland between them). Then, when the Soviet Union disintegrated, it became an independent country again. It's also a member of the EU. There's quite a bit of anti-Russian sentiment there, as a result of this history.

The tour that I took on the Sunday before the conference started first went to several small villages along Lake Peipsi that are inhabited by the "Old Believers" - a sect that split off from Russian Orthodoxy in the 17th century, when the official church enacted a series of reforms that the Old Believers rejected. The reaction against them was extremely violent - Old Believers were persecuted, their priestly leadership was murdered, their churches were burned down - so as a result many of them left Russia for other safer locations, including Estonia. They managed to survive through the years of communist rule, and the communities still exist. I just looked up the term on the internet, and discovered that there are communities of Old Believers even in Oregon!

We went inside an Old Believer church, and it was really beautiful inside. (Unfortunately, they didn't want us to take photos, so I can only describe it). The inside was painted with bright colors, and the front of the church was covered with beautiful icons, vividly painted. One of the women members of the church spoke to us about the religion and tried to explain the differences between the Old Believers and other kinds of Russian Orthodox, but frankly I didn't really understand it. She also talked about how for the most part women are the religious leaders of the community, even though according to their theology men should be - because there are so few men now left who are priests.

We then got back on the bus and went to a little museum of Old Believer life, where another woman told us about Old Believer life, including some very interesting rules that she had grown up with. When her grandmother was alive, the family would never eat with anyone who was not also an Old Believer - if a stranger came to the house, that person had to eat on separate dishes. Also, if anyone in the family went away to work far away, and then came back, he had to go through a two-week period of eating on separate dishes as well before he would be considered pure enough to eat with the family.

The rest of the tour consisted of a visit to a castle (actually, not much of a castle, it was from the 19th century, built by a German baron), where we had lunch, and then a visit to the shore of Lake Peipsi to watch the "christening" of a boat built out of local reeds. This consisted of someone reciting something in Estonian, which of course we didn't understand, then pouring some rum over the boat, and then passing around the rum to whoever was interested in drinking. Unfortunately, we didn't bring our bathing suits, so there was no possibility of taking a dip in the lake - and it was very hot!

We then returned to Tartu, rather sated with Estonian tourism, and got down to the serious business of biblical scholarship the next day.

On Tuesday afternoon I went on a walking tour of Tartu with the same guide who had taken us to Lake Peipsi, and the tour had a very interesting ending. She showed us some of the main buildings of the University of Tartu, where the conference took place, brought us to the town hall in front of which is a statue of two students kissing, had us slog up the hill behind the university where we saw the university observatory and the supreme court of Estonia, which is headquartered in Tartu, and then back to the main university building where we had started. At that point one of the people on the tour asked the guide about the Soviet occupation - because the guide was uniformly negative about the period of Soviet rule.

The guide answered and then a woman named Irena, who was also on the tour, interrupted her - saying that she had studied at the University of Tartu in the 1970s because it was one of the few universities in the USSR where Jews were freely admitted (she herself now lives in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, but she grew up in Leningrad). She also then mentioned one of the luminaries of the University of Tartu who had taught there for many years - a Jewish scholar of semiotics named Yuri Lotman who founded the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School. He was from St. Petersburg/Leningrad and was unable to find work in Russia because of antisemitism, and so began teaching in Tartu in 1950.

Irena also talked about another Jewish scholar at the university in the 1930s named Lazar Gulkowitsch. The University of Tartu established a chair in Jewish Studies in 1934, and he took up the position. He was killed when the Nazis invaded in 1941. (Many of the Jews of Estonia escaped the Nazis by going east into the Soviet Union, but about a thousand didn't, among them Gulkowitsch). A scholar at the conference, Anu Pölsdam of the University of Tartu, gave a paper about Gulkowitsch that I'll write more about here.

It was interesting to see the guide then backtrack on her uniformly negative view of the Soviet period. I guess this was just a taste of the internal politics of Estonia.

Our extremists on the Temple Mount

From Ynet:

In a move that may heighten tensions in the capital, the Organization for Human Rights on the Temple Mount (OHRTM) called for Jews to visit the east Jerusalem compound, which houses the al-Aqsa Mosque.

During a rightist event held in Jerusalem Sunday evening, just hours after Muslims rioted in and around the Temple Mount amid reports that Jewish extremists were planning to visit the site, Professor Hillel Weiss said, "The (third) temple must be built now. The mosques do not have to be destroyed in order for us to do this."

The conference, which was attended by a number of Knesset members and leading rabbis, was held in protest of the decision to seal off the compound due to the recent violence.

"It's time that we stop surrendering to violence," Temple Institute Director Rabbi Yehuda Glick said, adding that "before his assassination, prime minister Yitzhak Rabin said the greatest threat to Israeli democracy is bowing down to violence. "Unfortunately, lately police are surrendering and withdrawing in the face of the Palestinians' violence," said the rabbi.

Kiryat Arba Chief Rabbi Dov Lior said, "It is vital that the Israeli people visit the (Temple Mount). We are suffering because a large segment of the populations is indifferent towards this issue. "Reclaiming our sovereignty over (the Temple Mount) will bring redemption closer," said the rabbi.

Far-right activist Moshe Feiglin told the conference that the Temple Mount riots and the Goldstone Report, which accuses the IDF of committing war crimes during its December-January conflict with Hamas in Gaza, both constitute attempts to "undermine our legitimacy in this land."

Don't these people realize they are playing with fire? It seems like the Islamic movement in Israel, Hamas, the PA, and this right-wing Jewish group are working together to start the third intifada. (Although I doubt that the OHRTM intends to start the third intifada, unlike Hamas).

(For a contrary view, read Yisrael Medad at My Right Word. He attended the conference, and I hope will write more about it on his blog).

More trouble on the Temple Mount

Nadav Shragai's opinion piece in the March 12, 2009 issue of Haaretz reveals some information that I did not know, and it provides a key to why there was violence on the Temple Mount the morning before Yom Kippur a week ago. He wrote in March:

For years, the Jerusalem District Police "benefited" from the fact that few Jews visited the Temple Mount, sparing the police this "headache." But now the situation is changing. The halakhic consensus that Jews are forbidden to ascend the mount has been broken. More and more rabbis are permitting Jews to visit, and more and more Jews are seeking to do so.

The police have not come to terms with this new situation. They are confused and are confusing others, and have inverted the natural order of things on the mount, which is both the world's most sensitive site and the Jewish people's holiest site. Not much remains for Jews on the Temple Mount. The Temple is gone. Prayer is forbidden there. The mount's antiquities have been destroyed, and its mosques have become founts of religious and nationalist incitement against the State of Israel.

It is certainly true that more religious Jews have started to go to the Temple Mount, despite the halakhic prohibition of the Chief Rabbinate which has existed since 1967. The question is whether this should be regarded as a "provocation," as the leaders of the Islamic Movement in Israel and the Palestinian Authority seem to.

On April 16, 2009, Haaretz reported that "Hundreds of Muslim protesters block Jewish entry to the Temple Mount." Apparently a Jewish group was given permission to ascend the Mount and pray there, something which I thought was not allowed at all.

Hundreds of Muslims gathered Thursday at the foot of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem, to prevent Jewish worshippers from entering the Temple Mount for a planned prayer service. The Muslim protesters began arriving Wednesday evening, gathering on the slope leading to the Temple Mount area. The rise, which overlooks the Western Wall, is considered holy to both Jews and Muslims, and houses a sacred site for both religions.

The Islamic Movement had opposed the prayer session, and police said they would allow the Jews to pray on the Mount, but not to engage in any other activities in the area.

Army Radio on Wednesday quoted Jerusalem Police as saying that they would limit the number of Muslim worshippers entering the Temple Mount for prayers on Thursday due to fears of disturbances. Hundreds of police and Border Police officers were to be deployed to East Jerusalem to prevent violence, and entry to the Temple Mount was to be restricted to women, and men over age 50 holding Israeli ID cards. Police said they received intelligence warnings about thousands of Palestinians being called to protest at the site. The Islamic Movement's northern branch arranged dozens of buses to take Muslim protesters to the area.

See also Shragai's September 28, 2009 Haaretz article, "Digs, Lies, and Mugrabi bridge," on growing Muslim denial that Jews ever had anything to do with the Temple Mount, including denying that Solomon's Temple once stood there.

The problems on the Temple Mount were renewed today: Israel keeps Temple Mount closed in wake of clashes

After a day of clashes near the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem on Sunday, Israeli security forces have decided to limit access to the compound for another day. The compound will be open only to men over the age of 50 with a valid Israeli identification card and to women of all ages.

Tensions in the Old City seemed to have calmed by late Sunday afternoon, following hours of clashes between Arab youth and security forces. Israeli security forces released from custody Jerusalem's senior Fatah official, Khatem Abed Al-Kadr, who was arrested earlier in the day on suspicion of inciting riots. Al-Kadr was released on condition that he not enter the Old City of Jerusalem and that he remain at least 250 meters from the area gates for 15 days. He was released on NIS 10,000 bail. Deputy leader of Israel's northern Islamic Movement, Sheikh Kemal Khativ, was also released on similar conditions.

Some 150 Palestinian protesters hurled rocks and bottles at Israeli police on Sunday after being barred from one of the holiest shrines in Jerusalem, on Temple Mount.

Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said police have dispersed the demonstrators who had gathered near the disputed hilltop compound. One police officer was lightly hurt in the clash. Ben-Ruby said that the unrest continued at a nearby East Jerusalem neighborhood and that three men have been detained.

Earlier Sunday, police closed the Temple Mount complex to visitors. The complex is sacred to Jews as the site of the two biblical Jewish temples and to Muslims as home of the al-Aqsa mosque. The closure was imposed after Palestinians rioted at the site last week on Yom Kippur. The northern chapter of the Islamic Movement reported Sunday morning that buses en route to the Al-Aqsa mosque had been detained on route 6.

It was further reported that tensions were high in the area following recent calls on Muslim residents of East Jerusalem to show a presence at the mosque.

On Friday, the Islamic Movement held a rally in the Israeli Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, under the heading "Al-Aqsa is in danger." The rally is a 14-year old annual tradition. The head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, Ra'ad Salah, warned Friday against Israel's alleged plan to take over the mosque. "[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu will set the Middle East on fire," Salah told his supporters at the rally.

I would say that the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel is also trying to set the Middle East on fire, as the words of Ra'ad Salah below demonstrate:

An Islamic Movement leader on Sunday urged Muslims across Israel to gather at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to prevent extreme right-wing Jews from entering the compound to pray. "I call on everyone in Jerusalem and within the Green Line to come to the [Al-Qasa] mosque and show your presence," said Sheik Ra'ad Salah, who heads the northern branch of the Islamic Movement.

A reporter for a website affiliated with the northern branch of the Islamic Movement was beaten by police during the riots today:

A reporter for the Arab-Israeli news website PLS48.net was injured during the riots that broke out Sunday morning at the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem's Old City. He claims a police officer struck him with a baton and disappeared. Police reject the claims.

Reporter Abdallah Zidan arrived at the Temple Mount at dawn to cover the prayers for his website, which is sponsored by the Islamic Movement's northern branch.

Many heeded Islamic Movement leader Sheikh Raad Salah's call to arrive at the Al-Aqsa Mosque after word got out that extreme-right wing Jews would be making their way to the site as well.

Zidan, a resident of the Manda village in the Galilee was among the visitors, and along with a group of fellow worshipers arrived at the entrance gate at around 5 am. A tumult suddenly erupted near Sheikh Kamal Khatib, Salah's deputy, who was standing in Zidan's vicinity. Khatib, who was later arrested on suspicion of incitement, was surrounded by people who prevented officers from reaching him. Zidan claims that during the fracas a police officer struck him with a baton in a forceful manner. "I started bleeding from my eye, the people around me tried to help but the police officer disappeared," Zidan recalled.

Zidan was evacuated to an east Jerusalem hospital and transferred by ambulance to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital. "I was lucky the actual eye wasn't hurt, it was very close," said Zidan, who required stitches.

"Police officers were behaving very brutally, like animals. They came and hit me for no reason. Media personnel who come for news coverage cannot be hurt in such a way," he said.

The reporter added that he intends on filing a complaint against the officer with the Justice Ministry.

Jerusalem Police rejected the claims and stated that "Border Guard forces together with minority section officers requested Kamal Khatib to come with them, which he did. Nothing unusual occurred at any stage of his arrest. It went by very smoothly."

While I deeply suspect the motives of the Islamic Movement, I don't necessarily believe all of the police accounts either. Police certainly present themselves in the best possible light and deny any wrongdoing when they clearly did the wrong thing in a given situation - like beating a reporter.

Khaled Abu Toameh of the Jerusalem Post also reports on today's events:

At least 100 Palestinian men, who had refused to leave the Temple Mount despite an Israeli decision made on Sunday morning to shut down the site due to security concerns, left the area in the early evening. The Palestinian Authority and the Waqf had instructed the men to arrive at the site on Saturday night and stay put, fearing what they termed a "Jewish takeover."

On Sunday morning, approximately 150 Arabs hurled rocks and bottles at security forces in the Old City shortly after the decision to shut down the compound was announced.

In the evening, Jerusalem Magistrate's Court issued restraining orders against senior Fatah official Hatem Abdel Kader and Islamic Movement official Kamal Khatib, banishing both men from the Old City area for a period of 15 days. Khatib was arrested in the afternoon on suspicion of fanning the riots. Kader was detained overnight Saturday on suspicion of inciting Muslims to cause disturbances in the Old City by issuing the call. Kader previously served as the Palestinian Authority's minister for Jerusalem affairs after acting as PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad's adviser on Jerusalem affairs.

In Gaza, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh commented on the riots, saying that "The Israeli attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque is continuing, they have surrounded the mosque and broken into it." Speaking at a function in honor of the release of the 20th female Palestinian prisoner, Haniyeh claimed that gun-toting Israeli security forces had forced devout worshipers to leave the compound.

Earlier in the day, Border Police closed off roads around the Old City and dispersed the rioters into the neighborhood of Wadi Joz, where residents briefly joined in the disturbances. Three rioters were arrested and one border policeman was lightly wounded in the clashes.

Many of the Arab rioters were believed to have traveled to the capital from the North. Palestinians had claimed that police planned to order groups of Jewish settlers to pray within close proximity of mosques.

The clashes come two days after the US State Department called on its citizens to avoid the area over Succot.

According to police, access to the area was barred following a call made throughout east Jerusalem to "come and defend" the mount.

Last week, shortly before Yom Kippur, disturbances flared up across east Jerusalem, beginning when 18 policemen and 15 rioters were hurt during clashes on the Temple Mount, and later elsewhere in the Old City.

A Channel 2 commentator suggested that the riots were not just a reaction to Jewish presence in the compound, but also "induced by fear that Israel would plant false archaeological evidence, as though a Jewish temple never existed in Jerusalem."

Police said some 150 Muslim worshipers participated in last week's disturbance on the Temple Mount, which began when a group of Jewish visitors entered the compound with a police escort.

The Temple Mount compound will also be shut down on Monday, when tens of thousands of Jewish worshipers are expected to pray at the Western Wall. Only Muslim worshipers over the age of 50 will be allowed access to the compound.

Abe Selig contributed to this report.

Click here for a video report from the Jerusalem Post.

From Jaffa Gate - Holy Sepulcher - Haram - Mt. Zion

View of a northern archway on the Temple Mount.

One of the things that has disturbed me about the status quo on the Temple Mount is that Jews (or any non-Muslims) are forbidden to pray there in any way. If the police see someone just moving their lips in prayer they can take the person off the Mount. I understand that some Jews go up to the Mount to pray in order to provoke Muslims - I can see why the police wouldn't want to permit them to do so. But I do wish that some provision could be made for peaceful prayer by non-Muslims. The Temple Mount is the holiest place for Jews. When I visit there, I wish I could pray.

From Muslim Quarter & Temple Mount/Haram esh-Sharif

Inside view of the ceiling of the Dome of the Chain (situated just to the east of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount).

I would prefer that the permission allow personal, individual prayer, however, not the establishment of a synagogue on the Temple Mount, because it would inevitably be controlled by the most rigidly Orthodox. (Not by the ultra-Orthodox, who wouldn't go on the Temple Mount in any case, as far as a I know). Men and women would be separated in prayer and the men would be in control. I would like unfettered prayer there - not controlled by the Waqf, the Israeli police, or Orthodox Judaism.

Why Hanukkah Still Matters

Edgar Bronfman has a nice column in the Washington Post on Hanukkah and the meanings it has (and can have) for American Jews -Why Hanukkah Still Matters.

He writes:

But the success and confidence of "assimilated" American Jews is also what makes them capable of creating a new kind of Judaism, one that may grow and thrive with freedom. The interest is there, among both in-married and intermarried families, but the knowledge is lacking. Jewish education must replace the fight against anti-Semitism as the focus of Jewish communal life. American Jews have the opportunity to create a Jewish practice that is based not in fear but in hope. And hope, after all, is the theme that runs so powerfully through both the Maccabees' story of triumph against all odds and the rabbis' story of the lasting power of a single flame.

The first step toward carrying on Judaism is to begin learning. American Jews should not let Christmas define Hanukkah--they should define it for themselves, based on knowledge of its multi-layered texts and traditions. I am convinced that Judaism still has much to offer to the world, with its spirit of questioning, its focus on living ethically, its communal ethos. And there may be a message for the world in the Hanukkah story. If the Maccabees had not been victorious, would monotheism have survived? Would Christianity or Islam ever have come into being? Perhaps the Hanukkah story should be cause for celebration outside the Jewish community as well as within.

It's an interesting question - if the Maccabees had not succeeded, would Judaism have survived as a separate religion? Would Christianity or Islam ever have come into being? I sometimes think about historical nexus points, where a single event would have led to a significant change in the future. (For a much more obscure example - what if King Sennacherib had succeeded in his siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.E.? It's possible that the kingdom of Judah would have been dissolved into the Assyrian empire, as the northern kingdom of Israel had been - in which case there would have been no Bible and no Judaism either).

Jewish organizations that lost money with Madoff

Update: For another list, see article in the Forward. The list below has been updated from the Forward article.

The The New York Times has a list of Bernard Madoff's clients who have lost truly stunning amounts of money. They include some iconic Jewish organizations. Information below is from the NYT article and several others (see this Forward article). It is a truly grim story of betrayal of personal and institutional trust. There is a particularly horrifying detail from a story in the New York Jewish Week -

One private investor here said he was still in disbelief that all of his money was gone after he had entrusted it to a man who “over the years was a pillar of the community.”
“The whole story is so bizarre that it surpasses understanding,” he said. “I have known him for 20 years. Our relationship was close enough that when he was raising money for a cause because a family member was ill, I made a contribution and he hugged and kissed me. Knowing that relationship, it is impossible he could do this to me and all the other organizations and people he did it to. ... How a human being could turn that way on fellow human beings and charities and organizations that he respected and admired, I can’t fathom.”

In an article from the Forward, a statement on the impact on the Jewish community:

Mark Rosenblum, director of the Jewish Studies Center at Queens College said: “This is a much more Draconian hit on American Jewish philanthropy than the generalized credit crunch has been. This one man has demonstrated a capacity to radically impact American Jewish philanthropy and, even more important, elements of American civil society.”

Here's the list:

American Friends of Yad Sarah $1.5 million
American Jewish Congress (more than 2/3 of its endowment was invested with Madoff - he was treasurer of the board)
American Technion Society - $72 million
L. Bravmann Foundation $5 million
Chais Family Foundation (had assets of $178 million in May 2007)
Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun $3.5 million
Eisenberg Family Foundation $5.1 million (in 2006, donated $950,000 to Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey)
Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity $15.2 million
Forward Foundation $355,000
Hadassah $90 million (this is truly awful!)
Hillel Foundation $20,000 (thank God it's not more!)
Jewish Federation of Greater Washington $10 million
Jewish Foundation of Greater Los Angeles $6.4 million
Los Angeles Jewish Community Foundation $18 million
Jewish Community Centers Association of North America $7 million
Jewish Funds for Justice $3.9 million
Charles and Mary Kaplan Foundation (Rockville, MD) $29.2 million
U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg's foundation - $12.8 million
Julian J. Levitt Foundation $6 million
Madoff Family Foundation $19.1 million
Maimonides School $5 million.
North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System $5.7 million
Ramaz School $6 million
Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation $7 million
SAR Academy $1.2 million
Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation $145 million (has given money to Brandeis)
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology $6 million
Yeshiva University $100 to $125 million (Madoff also served as the board treasurer)
Mortimer Zuckerman Trust $30 million

Total known thus far: approximately $814 million

Other Jewish groups mentioned in articles that are tied to Madoff which may have lost money -

Kav Lachayim (received money from Madoff Family Foundation)
Lower East Side Tenement Museum
Gurwin Jewish Geriatric Center
Wunderkinder Foundation (Steven Spielberg) - has funded the Chabad charity Children of Chernobyl (in 2006, 70% of its dividend income and interest was handled by Madoff)
Lautenberg Foundation has given to the United Jewish Appeal of MetroWest ($352,000 in 2006)
American Committee for Weitzmann Institute (Chais Foundation donated money $1.4 million to them)
Hillel: Foundation for Jewish Campus Life (received $300,000 from Chais)
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (money received from Chais)
The Shapiro Family Foundation has given to Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston, Jewish Home for the Aged in Palm Beach, and the Anti-Defamation League
Fifth Avenue Synagogue
State of Israel Bonds

An interesting article from Business Week on the Madoff scandal.

This is, of course, only a small part of the $50 billion that is reported to be lost in the Ponzi scheme, including billions of dollars invested by banks, hedge funds, and rich individuals.

More on the Mumbai attacks

An article in the New York Times outlines how the Mumbai attackers seem to have proceeded. One "black inflatable lifeboat" landed on the Fisherman's Colony fishing pier with ten men on it plus their supplies. This location is only three blocks from Nariman House, where the Chabad House was located. They joined other attackers - including some who had arrived in Mumbai days before. There were other boats that landed as well - up to four others. Up to 40 terrorists were involved in the attacks, and not all of them may be dead or captured.

The first location hit was the train station - Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. They went then to the Leopold Cafe, the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, and Nariman House. Nariman House was not the first target.

Indian officials are now specifically linking "elements in Pakistan" to the attacks. American intelligence officials point to Lashkar-e-Taiba, "which has long been involved in the conflict with India" over Kashmir.

(From CNN - the Indian prime minister "indicated that the gunmen came from" Karachi, Pakistan).

The leader of an Indian commando unit said, that the attackers were “very, very familiar with the layout of the hotel.” The terrorists "who appeared to be under 30 years old, were 'determined' and 'remorseless.'" Two of them may have had British passports.

Another rabbi at the Nariman House was found dead - Rabbi Leibish Teitelbaum, who was a mashgiach in Mumbai.

Israel blues - המצב

Another few events have recently occurred that have made me feel even more hopeless than usual about the situation (המצב) in the Middle East. First of all, the escalation of fighting between Hamas and Israel - the killing of a student at Sapir College, the increase in the range of Hamas rockets to northern Ashkelon. Any response that Israel makes to the Hamas attacks is condemned - if it's military, then because innocent civilians get killed (which they do); if it's through an economic blockade, because innocent civilians, again, are being harmed for the actions of the terrorists. Israel has withdrawn, totally, from Gaza.

Why should Israel be expected to aid people who respond only with violence? Even when Israel opens the crossings between Israel and Gaza to allow humanitarian shipments in, there are attacks at the crossing points themselves. Why can't aid go through Egypt? I actually thought it was good when Palestinians knocked down the wall between Egypt and Gaza and were able to go to Egyptian Rafah and buy supplies. Why can't that be made permanent? (I suppose one of the problems is that this would make it easier for trained terrorists to enter Gaza, which seems to have been the case - some Iranian-trained terrorists who had entered Gaza recently were killed by an IDF strike, which was one of the factors that led to the escalation from Hamas).

I was talking to a (non-Jewish) friend the other day and brought up the topic of Israel/Palestine. I was saying that about 2/3 of Israelis in a recent poll had said that they were willing to negotiate with Hamas for a cease-fire. She pointed out that it's unlikely that Hamas itself actually wants to negotiate with Israel, since what they want is the destruction of Israel. This same friend has met members of the Israeli peace camp and knows that not all Israelis are right wing (and in fact that they are very ill-served by their political leadership). It was actually quite nice talking to her and having the expansive feeling that it was possible to be pro-Israel, pro-peace, and pro-Palestinan at the same time.

Then there's U.S. politics. Barak Obama is being attacked by right-wingers because he's supposedly anti-Israel (because he actually expressed compassion for Palestinians, among other things). But actually he's just as pro-Israel as Clinton or McCain. Read his recent speech to AIPAC. He says the same thing the other candidates say. One of the things that was giving me some hope was his capability to see that there is right on both sides.

And then McCain gets endorsed by John Hagee, the right-wing nut case who believes that the best way to love Israel is to hope that it gets blown to smithereens in the final war of Armageddon. And the same media that's all over Obama for not renouncing Farakhan vigorously enough does nothing to pressure McCain to renounce Hagee's support. The same Hagee that some deluded Jews have started to believe is really "pro-Israel." I recently received a book in the mail (unsolicited) by someone named David Brog, called Standing with Israel, with a foreward by John Hagee. The purpose of this book is to try to prove to Jews that we should welcome support from the evangelical right wing that supports Israel because it fits into their theological end-times scenario. No thanks, I'm not interested in this pseudo-support, which will turn to outright anti-semitism when Jews or Israel don't act according to the way they've scripted us into their scenario.

And then, from the left side of the spectrum, I found out that local "peace" groups are bringing speakers and an exhibition to Ithaca in order to inform us all about the "Nakba" and the unmitigated disaster that was created sixty years ago when Israel was established. The speakers and exhibition are completely one sided - there's no acknowledgement that there could be any right on the Israeli side, or that there's moral/political ambiguity in this situation.

I think that what's really depressing me the most is that these events, both in Israel and in the American presidential campaign (as well as in the parochial world of Ithaca) lead to a real narrowing of the political space for anyone who does not want to belong to one of the extremes. For a while it seemed to me that Obama's candidacy was helping to create slightly more political space for this middle ground on Israel/Palestine. But then the Hagee endorsement and the attacks on Obama's "anti-Israel" stand are doing their best to make that space vanishingly small. I think that most American Jews are actually in the middle - we support Israel and we want the best for it, we are concerned about the human rights of Palestinians as well as of Israeli Jews, and we want to see a compromise solution that will allow for the creation of a Palestinian state, both to lessen the misery visited upon the Palestinian people and to give Palestinians fewer reasons to want to attack and destroy Israel.

But the extremes of both the left and the right are not interested in any compromise. According to them we must be ideologically pure - anything else is a betrayal of our principles. I don't believe in purity in politics anymore. My basic political premise now is that the perfect is the enemy of the good. The search for purity just ends up with a lot of injured and dead people.

(Mahatma) Gandhi and the Jews

Harry's Place has dredged up two of Gandhi's more notorious quotes about the Jews, nonviolence, and the Holocaust (Gandhi's article can be found here: Gandhi). In 1938 he recommended nonviolent resistance against Nazi persecution in Germany, and seemed convinced that if Jews willingly offered their lives, this would result in a moral reformation of the German people.

He was also opposed to Zionism, partially on the grounds that the Jews should prefer to be citizens of the countries where they lived (England, France, Germany) and should fight for their rights in those places. (Obviously at the time this would not have worked in Germany!) He also thought that Zionism was unjust to the Arabs of Palestine. One curious part of his position was that although he opposed the Jewish use of violence in Palestine against Arabs, he did not object to the Arab use of violence against Jews. He says: "I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds." It is very curious, in my opinion, that he would so fiercely condemn Jewish use of violence without at the same condemning Arab use of violence. He does not recommend that the Arabs use satyagraha against the British or Jews in Palestine. (The context for this article was the 1936-39 Arab Revolt against British rule and Jewish settlement in Palestine).

In 1939, Martin Buber wrote an open letter to Gandhi offering a rejoinder to his views on Zionism and the situation of the German Jews. (Partial text found at the Jewish Virtual Library - Buber to Gandhi). I found a precis of his letter on the National Review online site:

In a thoughtful personal response dated February 24, 1939, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber — who had himself emigrated to Israel from Germany a short time earlier and combined his Zionism with earnest efforts to peacefully reconcile Jewish and Arab claims in the Holy Land — chided Gandhi for offering advice to the Jews without any recognition of their real situation. The individual acts of persecution that Indians had suffered in South Africa in the 1890’s hardly compared, Buber noted, to the synagogue burnings and concentration camps instituted by Hitler’s regime. Nor was there any evidence that the many instances in which German Jews peacefully displayed strength of spirit in response to their persecutors had exercised any influence on the latter. While Gandhi exhorted them to bear “testimony” to the world by their conduct, the fate of the Jews in Germany was to experience only an “unobserved martyrdom” without effect.

Turning to Gandhi’s allegation that to claim a homeland in Palestine was inconsistent with the Jews’ claims to equal citizenship in the other countries of their birth, Buber recalled to him that the Indians of South Africa whose cause Gandhi had championed themselves drew sustenance from the existence of India as their “living center.” It was only the existence of such a home that made Diaspora tolerable, respectively (Buber added) for both Jews and Indians.

As for Gandhi’s denial that the Jews had any place in Palestine, since it “belonged” to the resident Arab population, Buber reminded him that the Arabs themselves had previously acquired the land by virtue of a “conquest of settlement” — in contrast to the peaceful methods of the Jews in purchasing land there. Why, indeed, in view of the “primitive” state of Arab agriculture, should Palestinian land be held to belong exclusively to the Arabs, when Jewish settlers had done far more to develop that land’s fertility in the past 50 years than the Arabs in the preceding 1,300? With proper development, there was no reason that the land of Palestine might not support millions of Jewish refugees along with resident Arabs at a far higher standard of living than the latter had heretofore enjoyed. Finally, Buber reminded Gandhi that when the subject was the rights of Indians, as opposed to those of the Jews, Gandhi himself had remarked (in 1922) that he had “repeatedly said that I would have India become free even by violence rather than that she should remain in bondage.”

Arun Gandhi seems to have taken his grandfather's position on Palestine and added to it his own frisson of anti-semitism. I thoroughly disagree with Mahatma Gandhi's pacifism, in the wake of the Holocaust, but at least he did not insult the victims of mass death. However, both Gandhis fall into the same pitfall of excusing the violence of the Palestinians while condemning the Jews or Israelis for using violence to gain their ends. It seems to me that for nonviolence really to have the moral force that is claimed for it, the same demand should be made to both sides - as, for example, Martin Luther King did in the United States.

Note (12-03-12): I will publish further comments on this post, but only if they refrain from excusing Nazism and the Holocaust, or from repeating the witless statement that most Jews in the world today are descendants of the Khazars. This blog does not give a platform to Nazis and antisemites.

Ray Hanania on Israel/Palestine

Ray Hanania on the Mideast Youth website has a very interesting posting on the upcoming demonstration in Washington to commemorate the 40th year of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and to call for an end to the occupation.

This June marks the 40th anniversary of the Six-day war when Israel defeated the combined Arab armies and occupied the West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

To commemorate the event, pro-Palestinian supporters including ultra-leftist Israelis and American Jews have organized a rally in Washington June 10 –11.

But, a war of words has erupted between protest organizers and moderate Israelis and pro-peace American Jews that touches on the heart of how pro-Palestinian groups are helping to undermine rather than help the peace movement.

The protest is organized by two powerful yet loosely structured networks called “the U.S. Campaign to end the Israeli Occupation” and “United for Peace and Justice” who contend the rally should “only” focus on pressuring Congress to stop supporting Israel’s policies.

They do not want to lose the support of the more extremist pro-Palestinian groups who advocate the “One-State solution,” which is the latest in a long line of creative strategies to destroy Israel and undermine peace based on compromise.

Two Israeli and American Jewish leaders who advocate the “Two State solution,” Uri Avnery and Rabbi Michael Lerner, challenged the protest in the May/June issue of Tikkun Magazine (www.tikkun.org). They argue that the failure of protest organizers refusal to denounce the wrongs of both sides and offer a reasoned political settlement only strengthens the extremist Palestinian and Israeli elements who continue to fuel the occupation and the conflict.

Hanania agrees with Avnery and Lerner and argues that:

Avnery and Lerner argue that in order to be effective and achieve its goals, the peace movement must disassociate itself from extremists who use peace demonstrations as a cover for extremist policies like advocating the “One-State Solution.”

There is a sad truth in the pro-Palestinian movement. It is dominated by a small group of fanatics who use intimidation to silence moderate voices. They exploit Palestinian suffering to augment the hate against Israel and Jews, and advocate Holocaust Revisionism and anti-Semitism. They say they support peace but all they do is bash Israel and close their eyes to Palestinian crimes against Israel.

He says:

The correct and principled strategy is to denounce the Occupation and denounce those who reject compromise based on Two-States. They should denounce Hamas and suicide bombings and the use of violence against Israeli civilians just as strongly they denounce the brutality of the Israeli military occupation against Palestinians.

Don’t just denounce the Wall and the expansion of settlements, denounce the refusal of the current Palestinian government to embrace the fundamental principles of the only solution that will result in both sides winning.

They should speak out when Israelis are killed just as strongly as they speak out when Palestinians are killed.

I agree with everything he says, and have the same discomfort with groups like United for Peace and Justice and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. I certainly want the occupation to end, but I don't want Israel to end - and Israel is not coterminus with the occupation. It is groups like this that increasingly make me feel like there is no room in the middle, between them and the right-wing elements of the American Jewish community who think that our salvation lies with the Christian Zionists (like Pastor John Hagee who spoke to an enthusiastic crowd at the most recent AIPAC conference in Washington). (For more information on Hagee and his organization, "Christians United for Israel," see Jews on First).