At home with the family

I'm currently sitting in my family's vacation home in Westport, Mass., and my niece is trying to persuade my father ("Grandpa") and my brother (her father) to get them help her pay for a new MacBook. There are three of us sitting here and working on our laptops - and Eve (my stepmother) just took a photo of all of us working on our computers (although to tell the truth I think that only my brother is actually working). It's rather amusing here.

Outside, it's cool and rather humid - quite a change from hot and dry Jerusalem.

My niece is trying her best persuasive arguments but hasn't quite made the sale yet.

Another terrorist attack in Jerusalem

This afternoon there was another terrorist attack in Jerusalem, also committed by a driver who took his tractor and attacked a bus, cars, and pedestrians on King David St., close to the intersection with Keren ha-Yesod St. A friend of mine works in an office right there and heard (and saw) what happened. No one was killed by the terrorist, although quite a few were injured, one very seriously (leg severed). The terrorist himself was killed by a Border Policeman.

I happened to be near Jaffa Gate at the time - I had just come to the end of Mamilla St. closest to Jaffa Gate (after strolling down there - my intention was to go into the Old City and buy some photographs of old Jerusalem as gifts), and when I walked up the steps to the plaza before Jaffa Gate I heard a lot of police and ambulance sirens. With a lot of other people, I looked over the bridge towards the King David Hotel and wondered what was going on. Lots of police cars went under the bridge and up the road to where they could turn onto Hebron Rd. It didn't seem so good.

I started asking people what was going on and it turned out that there had been another tractor attack, this time on King David St. I called my friend and she told me what she had seen. I was rather shaken up and wondered what I should be doing. I walked inside the Jaffa Gate and stood around. The usual men trying to get one to buy from their shops came up to me, and I asked them if they had heard anything about what was happening - which they hadn't. I then saw more police and soldiers rushing out of the gate - two policemen on horses and a number of soldiers on foot. I went out a few minutes after they had gone and talked to a haredi guy I had previously spoken to - he said that they had headed for the Sultan's Pool area and further on below Yemin Moshe. They told people to get away. (I read on the news just now that apparently the police were chasing two men they thought were accomplices of the terrorist).

My friend on King David St. told me that there were shots then - this is when they shot at the driver and killed him. I went back inside the Jaffa Gate and went into a shop at the beginning of David St. - a watchseller where there was a television on showing the Israeli news. The shopkeeper and I watched the news for a while and then I went out again.

After I had calmed down a bit, I went into the Old City and found the photo shop that I had been looking for - Elia's Photos on 14 Hanka Rd., in the Christian Quarter. The man who owns the shop is Armenian, and the photos he sells were taken by his father, a refugee from the Armenian genocide, who came to Jerusalem in 1924. I bought a few for gifts and then decided it was time to go.

I went back to the Jaffa Gate and tried to figure out what to do. It seemed unlikely that a cab would be able to get me back to my apartment on Shimon St., because the police had closed off King David St. I started to walk, going back on Mamilla St. to King David and then walking down towards Gan ha-Pa'amon. At Mapu St. the road was blocked by police tape, so I turned onto Mapu St. and passed the bus that had been damaged by the tractor - the windows had been knocked out.

I then turned on Keren Ha-Yesod heading towards Baka and came to the intersection with King David, where there were still many police and soldiers, as well as the international press. People were standing around and looking - including me - and I could see a damaged car and the tractor itself. It wasn't as big as the one that wreaked havoc on Jaffa Rd. three weeks ago, but sufficiently big to overturn a car and run into others. It's really a miracle that no one was killed.

The Lubavitchers had set up a big banner right in the intersection - something about how the Rebbe thinks the government should be overturned. (Of course, the rebbe is dead, something these particular Lubavitchers don't acknowledge, since they think he's the Messiah and still alive - shades of Christianity). I thought it was pretty disgraceful that they had decide to come here to this place to shove their political opinions in our faces, and I told them so. I then continued down Keren ha-Yesod to where Emek Refaim and Bethelehem Rd. meet, and there my friend picked me up in a (thankfully) air-conditioned cab. And so I came home and took a shower.

Not what I wanted to experience on my last day in Jerusalem.

Oh, and by the way, this was actually a terrorist attack - the previous attack was considered by the BBC (but not by any Israelis) to be the attack of a disturbed man. The perpetrator of this assault is related to a Hamas official who is currently in an Israeli prison.

Radovan Karadzic captured

Some unequivocally good news (via Drink Soaked Trots) - Serbia captures fugitive Karadzic. He has been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for war crimes and genocide over the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, in which at least 7,500 Muslim men and boys were killed. He was also charged over the shelling of Sarajevo and the use of UN peacekeepers as human shields. See this BBC story for more details on the charges. Ratko Mladic, who was chief of the Bosnian Serb army, has still not been captured - may it happen soon!

Benny Morris - nuclear war against Iran

Benny Morris has an utterly terrifying article in yesterday's New York Times arguing that Israel should bomb Iran's nuclear sites sometime after the U.S. presidential election and before the next president is sworn in - or else there will be a nuclear war between Israel and Iran.

Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war — either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb.

He admits that if Israel's conventional strike fails, there will be Iranian counterattacks, both directly and through Iranian proxies like Hizbollah and Syria. He also says that it's unlikely that Western countries will then force Iran to abandon its nuclear program, which Iran will in turn work on even more strongly. His argument then slides into the possibility/probability that Israel will launch a nuclear first strike against Iran before Iran succeeds in building a nuclear weapon.

Such a situation would confront Israeli leaders with two agonizing, dismal choices. One is to allow the Iranians to acquire the bomb and hope for the best — meaning a nuclear standoff, with the prospect of mutual assured destruction preventing the Iranians from actually using the weapon. The other would be to use the Iranian counterstrikes as an excuse to escalate and use the only means available that will actually destroy the Iranian nuclear project: Israel’s own nuclear arsenal.

Given the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran, Israel knows that deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men who ran the Kremlin and White House during the cold war. They are likely to use any bomb they build, both because of ideology and because of fear of Israeli nuclear pre-emption. Thus an Israeli nuclear strike to prevent the Iranians from taking the final steps toward getting the bomb is probable. The alternative is letting Tehran have its bomb. In either case, a Middle Eastern nuclear holocaust would be in the cards.

Morris should not have written this article and the New York Times should not have published it. I think that this is one of the most irresponsible articles I have ever read. I think that it is quite possible to read Morris' article not only as descriptive of what might happen, but also as urging Israel to attack Iran conventionally, and if that doesn't work, launch a nuclear war against it. The Israeli government doesn't even admit publicly that it has a nuclear capability.

I assume that Morris really cares about Israel - if so, why is he writing such inflammatory words in an already dangerous situation? Not to speak of the moral implications of such a possibility - hasn't Morris thought about the absolute immorality of launching a nuclear first strike on a nation which has not attacked Israel?

Physicians for Social Responsibility produced a report in 2006 on the consequences of an American nuclear strike on Iran (using nuclear bunker-buster bombs with the purpose of destroying its underground nuclear installations in addition to conventional bombing). They estimate that about 2.6 million people would die in the first 48 hours after the attack. In the wider region, over 10 million would be exposed to significant radiation. (See the article for complete information and how they arrived at the numbers).

Gershom Gorenberg has a far more reasonable article on Iran and Israel in the most recent American Prospect, laying out the reasons why such an Israeli attack would be unwise and ineffective.

We should not be listening to Benny Morris and I hope that someone high-up in the Bush administration is informing the Israeli government right now that such an attack should not even be contemplated.

Regev and Goldwasser

It's just been announced - the bodies have been positively identified as those of Regev and Goldwasser, and the army has sent officers to their families to give them the official announcement of their deaths.

In about an hour and a half, the handover of the Lebanese, including Samir Kuntar, will occur.

What can one say?

End of the Second Lebanon War

Two years and four days after it broke out, as Yaron Dekel of Israel Radio just said, "The Second Lebanon War has just ended."

Hizbollah just handed over two black coffins to the Israelis at Rosh Ha-Nikra, on the border between Israel and Lebanon. The Hizbollah spokesman announced, "Here are Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser." He was asked - "Are they alive or dead?" He said: "Now you will know their fate."

The Israelis will now proceed with making sure that these are indeed the bodies of Regev and Goldwasser, and when they do so, they will hand over to Hizbollah Samir Kuntar and the other Lebanese terrorists.

An article in today's New York Times says, "Hezbollah has said it carried out the 2006 raid in a bid to win the release of Mr. Kuntar, whom Hezbollah celebrates as a hero. Past attempts to secure his release include the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985."

Freeing Samir Kuntar

Haaretz reports on how the exchange will be conducted tomorrow to return Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser to Israel, in exchange for five Lebanese terrorists. They were abducted on July 12, 2006 - the attack by Hizbollah that sparked the Second Lebanon War. It's unclear whether Regev and Goldwasser are still alive - a couple of weeks ago the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, was asking the military rabbinate to declare them dead, and there was a report in today's Haaretz that said that one of them was killed during the abduction two years ago. The Lebanese government has announced that tomorrow will be a national holiday to celebrate the "liberation of prisoners from the jails of the Israeli enemy and the return of the remains of martyrs."

I wrote about Kuntar before, on August 10, 2006, and about the horrendous crime he committed. It's disgusting that the Lebanese government is celebrating him.

One of the other things that Hizbollah is giving to Israel is a report on Ron Arad, an Israeli pilot who was shot down over Lebanon in 1986 and hasn't been heard from since. Olmert rejected the report that Hizbollah has already delivered, saying that it's unsatisfactory and didn't give Israel the information it needs about him.

If Regev and Goldwasser are still alive, then it will be worthwhile to set Kuntar free. Their lives and freedom are more important than he is. But if they are not - then is it worth it to set free this murderous, unrepentant terrorist?

Bradley Burston says it better than I can:

For Israelis, even after all these years, the release of Kuntar is a form of self-inflicted torture. So heinous, so unpardonable were his crimes, that American Jewish author and journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, himself a veteran of the IDF, wrote on The Atlantic Monthly's Website last week, "As unbelievable as this sounds, Israel is actually thinking of swapping Samir Kuntar in a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. Kuntar is perhaps the most terrible person held in an Israeli prison, a man who crushed the skull of a Jewish child against a rock. Sometimes, these prisoner exchanges don't seem worth it."

What are they for, these prisoner exchanges? Perhaps only for this: that when sending their troops into battle, Israeli commanders can continue to look them in the eye and say with candor and in good faith that if they are taken prisoner, Israel will spare no effort to bring them back.

It may be all we have left to endure this torture. But it may also be the essence of what we are.

Uniting Jerusalem through architecture?

On a cheerier note, today I visited a new pedestrian mall in Jerusalem that has positively beautiful architecture. It's an outside mall in the neighborhood called Mamilla, which is between the Old City and west Jerusalem. Before the 1948 war Mamilla St. was a lively commercial street, but then for 19 years (from 1948 to 1967) it was located in the no-man's-land between Israeli and Jordanian Jerusalem. After Israel took the rest of the city in the 1967 war, it retained its no-man's-land look (sans road barriers and barbed wire) for a very long time. When I first came to Jerusalem to live, in the summer of 1987, it was a mess. In fact, it was a mess up until last year. Now, the whole area is being vigorously redeveloped. The new pedestrian mall includes the facades of buildings on Mamilla St. that were painstakingly moved, stone by stone, from Mamilla St. to the new mall. You can still see the numbering on the blocks.

It took me a little while actually to find the entrance to the walkway (which was quite unpleasant because it was so hot today) but it was definitely worth when I did. This new walkway provides a very useful service, in addition to its inherent worth - it creates the first real architectural connection between west Jerusalem and the Old City since 1967. Prior to this, if you wanted to walk to the Old City from west Jerusalem, you had to start at the end of Jaffa Rd. (near the old Jerusalem city hall), cross one of the busiest intersections in the city, and then walk along the outside walls of the Old City until you reached Jaffa Gate. When I first came to Jerusalem in 1987, this wasn't a bad walk, but there really wasn't anything there on the sidewalk - no stores, houses, nothing. In the last few years, every time that I've visited, there's been construction going on that's made the walk quite unpleasant.

They've now finished reconstructing the giant intersection and it's much more pleasant. It's possible to see what the goal of all the mess was - to create the connection between the eastern and western parts of the city.

Unfortunately, architecture alone has not managed to actually unite the eastern and western parts of the city. The divisions between east Jerusalem (Arab-Palestinian) and west Jerusalem (Jewish-Israeli) are deeper than ever - only underscored by the terrorist attack last week.

Some recent anti-semitism

I thought it would be interesting to highlight two recent examples of anti-semitism, one from the left and one from the right. The first example comes from Harry's Place and is a quote from the International Socialist, published by the (British) Socialist Workers Party:

Where would a socialist be who decided their political attitude to Malcolm X on the basis of his reactionary religious beliefs as a member of the Nation of Islam, to Bob Marley on the basis of his belief in the divinity of that old tyrant Haile Selassie or even to Hugo Chavez on the basis of his self-proclaimed Catholicism and admiration of the pope? Unfortunately some would-be socialists who have no difficulty grasping this in relation to Chavez or Marley, under the pressure of intense bourgeois propaganda are unable to apply the same approach when the religion in question is Islam. To put the matter as starkly as possible: from the standpoint of Marxism and international socialism an illiterate, conservative, superstitious Muslim Palestinian peasant who supports Hamas is more progressive than an educated liberal atheist Israeli who supports Zionism (even critically).

The second example is from The Plank (TNR blog): Pat Buchanan Advertises His Book On Neo-Nazi Radio Show.

On June 29th, MSNBC personality and three-time presidential candidate Pat Buchanan appeared on a neo-Nazi radio program to promote his new revisionist history of the Second World War, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. James Edwards is the host of the program "Political Cesspool," the stated mission of which is to "represent a philosophy that is pro-White." Edwards and his colleagues seek "to revive the White birthrate above replacement level fertility and beyond to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races" and believe that "Secession is a right of all people and individuals. It was successful in 1776 and this show honors those who tried to make it successful in 1865."

According to the researchers at the Anti-Defamation League, who listened to the show, Buchanan defended Charles Lindbergh, saying, "…his reputation has been blackened because of a single speech he gave and a couple of paragraphs in it where he said that … the Jewish community is beating the drums for war … but frankly, no one has said what he said was palpably untrue."

Leaving the UCU - Norman Geras

I've been following the discussions on the Engage list and on Normblog about the responses to the UCU motion 25, which in effect is calling for a boycott of Israeli academics. (See my prior discussions here and here). A number of people have finally made the decision to resign from the union, including Eve Garrard, who made a particularly eloquent statement of why she is doing so. Today Norman Geras wrote about why he would resign from the union, if he were still teaching. There's one paragraph that I particularly like, because it expresses my feelings about the need not to be craven in the face of anti-semitism:

This, for me, is the decisive point. To be a Jew in UCU today is to be, in some sort, a supplicant, pleading with the would-be boycotters and those unmoved to oppose them and deliver them a decisive defeat, pleading for Israeli academics to be accepted as having the same status as other academics world-wide, pleading that Jewish supporters of the rights of academics in the Jewish state should not be made to feel isolated in their own union, like participants willy-nilly in an anti-Semitic campaign. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, shove that. Not today, not tomorrow, and not any time. To be a supplicant Jew is not a choice I would be willing to contemplate. I should come and entreat within the UCU for the same consideration for Jewish academics in Israel and Jewish academics in Britain as are extended to academics of every other nationality? Forget about it.

What he's expressing, it seems to me, is a simple manner of self-respect. (I don't know if he'd think it was simple, but it seems simple to me). I understand why some people are staying in the union, to fight the boycotters - but the choice to leave for the sake of one's self-respect seems paramount to me.

Women and Qumran

I went to a panel discussion tonight on the question of whether there were women among the Qumran sect. It was very interesting, with quite a variety of speakers. This was the sole public event of a three-day conference sponsored by the Israel Museum on the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. For abstracts of the talks, click here. The conference is being webcast live (not that my browser can probably stream it!). If it were open to the public, I might go to some of the sessions. Tonight's panel discussion was in Hebrew, while the conference is entirely in English.

Jodi Magness spoke on the archaeological evidence, specifically on whether there were skeletons of women found in the Qumran cemeteries. She said that there were some skeletons of women, but many more skeletons of men. The next speaker was Larry Schiffman, who discussed the halakhah at Qumran, which assumes the presence of women and discusses such things as laws of marriage, purity, Shabbat, etc. Tal Ilan was the next speaker, who discussed the phenomenon of sects in Second Temple Judaism in general. She compared the evidence for the Dead Sea Sect with accounts in Josephus of the Pharisees and in Philo of the Therapeutae. Her contention is that women tend to be involved in sects that do not have political power, so that women supported the Pharisees, and as we know there were both men and women among the Therapeutae. She cited a few Qumran texts, including one which specified that a woman may be a witness against her husband for transgressions he may perform. 

The next speaker, Eyal Regev, pointed out that a central Qumran text, Serekh ha-Yahad, which is usually taken as evidence that the sect was monastic and included only men, in fact never discusses whether only men can belong to the group. He contrasted this with discussions in other communities, such as early Christian monastic groups, or the Shakers, about whether women could belong an what the relations between men and women should be. Since the Serekh ha-Yahad doesn't mention any disputes like this, he assumes that it should not be taken as evidence that the sect only consisted of celibate men. 

Adolfo Roitman, the final speaker, who is the director of the Shrine of the Book (part of the Israel Museum, where many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed) presented part of a movie that the Shrine of the Book made to show to tourists visiting the site. Originally it included a few scenes alluding to internal conflicts among the men of the community over whether to act on their attraction to women. These scenes were excised from the film because religious people in Jerusalem objected to them. From what he showed, the film seemed to run counter to everything the other speakers were suggesting - it assumed that the entire Qumran community was male and celibate, and run according to the rules of the Serekh ha-Yahad. He said that after the panel discussion tonight, a third edition of the film might include another point of view on that issue.

A number of people asked questions afterwards - most of which were in fact mini-lectures - but the panel members were finally able to address the questions. 

All in all, a very interesting evening.

Early Morning, Jerusalem

I woke up about an hour ago (5:30 a.m. my time) because the light woke me up. I got up and opened the door - and felt the nice cool, damp air of early morning. The birds were singing, and it was still cloudy. I looked up at the misty air breezing past. What I didn't hear (or see) were the sounds of other human beings. Across the street there was a woodpecker pecking away in a tall palm tree. Then a man walked by, holding his tallit bag (bag with his prayer shawl in it). He went into the synagogue next door. According to halakhah (Jewish law) the earliest time to say the Sh'ma ("Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one") is before sunrise, when it is possible to distinguish a white from a blue thread.

The pomegranate tree in the garden.

I went back inside to my little apartment and lay down again, trying to fall asleep. I began to hear more sounds of the city awakening, and finally decided to get up, despite wanting to get more sleep. I opened the door again to the garden (I have a one-room studio apartment that is attached to a much larger apartment with a nice garden) and saw a couple of other men walking by carrying their tallitot. Just sitting here now I remembered that it was Thursday morning, and the Torah is read in synagogue on Monday and Thursday mornings - this was the reason for the earlier service (I imagine it was earlier, but since I try to be asleep at this hour of the morning, I'm not sure). When I opened the door this time I could hear the sounds of the men praying next door.

(update, 6:42 a.m.) I can now hear the Torah reading from next door.

Just a normal, quiet, Jerusalem morning.

Terrorist attack in Jerusalem

There was a terrorist attack earlier today in Jerusalem - a Palestinian from east Jerusalem drove a bulldozer (which he drove as a part of his job working on the construction of the light rail in the city) into a couple of city buses, some cars, and pedestrians on Jaffa Rd., near to the old central bus station. At least 3 or 4 people were killed, and dozens were injured. I was sitting here in the National Library reading "Joseph and Aseneth" (a pseudepigraphic work about Aseneth, the wife of Joseph) when I checked the news and saw the first reports of the attack. Scary and unnerving. May it be the last one.

Gay Pride in Jerusalem

Balloon arch.

I went to the gay pride march in Jerusalem on Thursday night (see here for posts on past Jerusalem gay pride marches, including the one I went to last year). It was much more relaxed than last year. Only about 2,000 police (still a lot!) were on hand for security (instead of the 7,000) last year. They were much less ubiquitous than last year. Apparently the leaders of the haredi community in Jerusalem decided that it wasn't worth holding protests against the parade - it would only call attention to it, so the police felt less need for a massive presence to protect the marchers.

However, at about 3:00 p.m. on Thursday afternoon (while I was getting ready to go over to Independence Park, the starting point of the march), I received a very strange phone call. I picked up the phone, expecting to hear a friend's voice, but instead I heard someone shouting in Yiddish. It turned out to be an automatic phone call, telling the listener about an anti-gay rally in Shabbat Square (the center of Meah Shearim, an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem) set to begin at 4:00 p.m., and imploring attendance at this rally. I heard later on the radio that there had been a protest in Meah Shearim and that some garbage bins were set on fire (a favorite tactic of ultra-Orthodox agitators when they're protesting something).

I also saw some anti-gay graffiti in the city, but that was really the extent of the anti-gay action that occurred this year.

The parade this year seemed to me to have more younger people, and fewer of the liberal Jerusalemite pro-human rights crowd than last year. There was a hearty representation of Hadash, the Israel communist party, as well as of Meretz (a left-wing Zionist party). The communists in particular chanted very loudly for the whole length of the march. There were also representatives of Bat-Kol, an organization for religious lesbians which I hadn't heard of before. People also came from other cities - Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheva - in organized groups to support their Jerusalemite kin.


Red flags - note the hammer and sickle!

At the end there was a rally in Gan Ha-Pa'amon (Liberty Bell Park) called in Hebrew a "happening" (הפניג), the sixties word which has charmingly remained in Hebrew. It lasted about an hour, with several speakers. The MC was a drag queen who was very funny. The head of the Open House (the Jerusalem LGBT center which organized the march) spoke, as did an openly gay member of the Jerusalem city council, someone from Meretz, a couple of transgender people, and a representative of Bat Kol.


Bat Kol balloons.

All in all, a satisfying march, unmarred by the commercialism that seems to have taken over gay pride marches in the U.S.

Visiting Israel!

I just arrived in Israel on Wednesday for a month's stay, most of which will be spent in the National Library working on two chapters of my book - Angels’ Tongues and Witches’ Curses: Women and Ritual Power in Late Antique Judaism. I'll be working on researching two chapters.

Chapter 4 is “‘She Spoke in the Language of the Cherubim’: Women and Revelatory Experience in Early Jewish and Christian Literature,” and chapter 5 is “Does God Reveal His Mysteries to Women?” Chapter 4 compares early Jewish and Christian literature that depicts women as recipients of divine revelation. The Jewish texts include Philo’s On the Contemplative Life, the Testament of Job, Jubilees, and Pseudo-Philo, while the Christian texts include Montanist literature and the apocryphal acts.

Chapter 5 discusses rabbinic interpretations of biblical stories of women’s encounters with God and the angels (for example, the matriarchs, Hagar, and the mother of Samson), which occur mostly as announcements to women that they will bear a significant male child (for example, the announcement to Sarah that she will give birth to Isaac, recounted in Genesis 18).

So far, I've not gotten any work done, since Thursday was spent suffering from jet lag, and then Friday was erev Shabbat. I'll be heading to the library tomorrow to get some work done.

Obama Claims Nomination

Obama Claims Nomination; First Black to Lead a Major Party Ticket.

Yes we can!

Obama Quits His Church

I think it is a good thing that Obama quit his church. Much as I like him, I do find it difficult to understand why he remained a member of the church for so long. I saw the "performance" of Rev. Michael Pfleger on CNN the other day. Pfleger "delivered a tirade against Mrs. Clinton that included fake tears, a high-pitched voice and top-of-the-lungs screaming." Pfleger is white, and the sermon seemed to me to be an attempt to (badly) imitate a black preacher's style in order to appeal to the congregation of the church. It was very strange, and I found it very offensive. I also didn't understand how he was even able to make such a partisan political sermon in the face of the Catholic Church's prohibition of priests getting involved in partisan politics.

The text of Resolution UCU 25

This is from the Stop the Boycott website:

Motion 25: Palestine and the occupation: University of Brighton - Eastbourne, University of Brighton - Grand Parade, University of East London Docklands, National Executive Committee

Congress notes the

1. continuation of illegal settlement, killing of civilians and the impossibility of civil life, including education;

2. humanitarian catastrophe imposed on Gaza by Israel and the EU;

No mention, of course, of the role of Hamas in making it nearly impossible even to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza - for example, the bombing of the crossing points by Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza.

3. apparent complicity of most of the Israeli academy;

This is the part of the resolution that is a demonstrable lie. Most of the Israelis whom I know who work against the occupation are, in fact, academics, teaching at a variety of colleges and universities in Israel. I would think that if one were calling for a boycott of Israeli academics that one should ascertain whether in fact they support the occupation.

4. legal attempts to prevent UCU debating boycott of Israeli academic institutions; and legal advice that such debates are lawful

Legal attempts to prevent the UCU from taking a step that is illegal under British law! Whose legal advice is it that such debates are lawful? The legal advice that was given last year, and which stopped discussion of the boycott, stated that even in discussing such a boycott the union was coming close to violation of the Race Relations Act.

Congress affirms that

5. criticism of Israel or Israeli policy are not, as such, anti-semitic;

6. pursuit and dissemination of knowledge are not uniquely immune from their moral and political consequences;

Congress resolves that

7. colleagues be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating;

8. UCU widely disseminate the personal testimonies of UCU and PFUUPE delegations to Palestine and the UK, respectively;

9. the testimonies will be used to promote a wide discussion by colleagues of the appropriateness of continued educational links with Israeli academic institutions;

10. UCU facilitate and encourage twinning arrangements and other direct solidarity with Palestinian institutions;

11. Ariel College, an explicitly colonising institution in the West Bank, be investigated under the formal Greylisting Procedure.

British academic union passes boycott motion

I think that the most disheartening detail in Eve Garrard's description of the University and College Union's Congress passing the motion to boycott Israeli academics was this item: "There was a real, palpable desire in the meeting to take some action against Israel. An otherwise rather somnolent audience woke up at the first mention of Palestine, and applauded every suggestion that action should be taken against Israel. A congress which had just passed very moderate motions on Burma and Zimbabwe and Sudan, about solidarity with trade unions and asylum seekers, and putting pressure on governments, quite clearly felt that these measures weren't sufficient for Israel's crimes: that for Israeli academics, nothing but punishment would do."

So Israel is worse than Burma, Zimbabwe, and Sudan? What is wrong with these people? What else is this other than anti-semitism?

McCain repudiates Hagee - when will Jewish leaders follow?

An article in the Huffington Post - McCain Backer Hagee Said Hitler Was Fulfilling God's Will - seems to have made enough waves about pastor John Hagee to persuade John McCain it was time to reject Hagee's endorsement of him. Sam Stein, the Huffington Post writer, learned of an offensive sermon by Hagee from Bruce Wilson's website, Talk 2 Action.

A couple of days before this I was cruising the Talk 2 Action site and came across the audio clip from one of Hagee's sermons in the 1990s, in which he referred to Hitler as a "hunter" who was sent to harry the Jews into Palestine. Wilson introduced the clip by referring to Hagee's book Jerusalem Countdown: "In his 2006 book 'Jerusalem Countdown', Hagee proposed that anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves - the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive."

I just took a look at Jerusalem Countdown (the revised 2007 edition, available on Amazon) and discovered that Hagee put almost the same words as he uttered in his sermon into the book (pp. 132-33).

The Bible is a book of parables and word pictures describing principles of truth from God to man. The prophet Jeremiah puts his pen to parchment and paints a vivid picture of the human agents God intended to use to bring the Jewish people back to Israel.

“But now I will send for many fisherman” declares the Lord, “and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks.”
Jeremiah 16:16 (NIV)

I believe this verse indicates that the positive comes before the negative. Grace and mercy come before judgment. The fishermen come before the hunters. First, God sent the fishermen to Israel. These were the Zionists, men like Theodor Herzl who called for the Jews of Europe and the world to come to Palestine to establish the Jewish state. The Jews were encouraged to escape while there was still time. The situation for the Jews in Europe would only get worse, not better.

A fisherman is one who draws his target toward him with bait. Herzl and his fellow Zionists were God’s fishermen, calling the sons and daughters of Abraham home. Herzl was deeply disappointed that the Jews of the world did not respond in greater numbers.

God then sent the hunters. The hunter is one who pursues his target with force and fear. No one could see the horror of the Holocaust coming, but the force and fear of Hitler’s Nazis drove the Jewish people back to the only home God ever intended for the Jews to have – Israel. I stand amazed at the accuracy of God’s Word and its relevance for our time. I am stricken with awe and wonder at His boundless love for Israel and the Jewish people and His divine determination that the promise He gave Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob become reality.

This passage is part of a longer discussion about how the return of Jews to Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel fulfill God’s plan to restore Israel, as outlined in Ezekiel 37. He maintains that even though the state has physically been established, it is still waiting for spiritual life (p. 131).

At the conclusion of Ezekiel 37, the nation of Israel had been physically reborn. Today they have a flag; they have a constitution; they have a prime minister and a Knesset. They have a police force, a powerful military might, and the world’s best intelligence agencies. They have Jerusalem, the City of God. They have a nation. They have everything but spiritual life.

Like the dry bones of Ezekiel 37, Israel waits the spiritual awakening of the breath of God and the coming of Messiah.

Even without discovering the sermon, anyone who read Hagee's book could have found out that he considered Hitler to be the "hunter" who providentially made sure that the Jews (minus the six million who died at the hands of the Nazis!) returned to the land of Israel. For Hagee, Hitler did God's will. I guess those who died in the Holocaust were just the collateral divine damage to enable the state to be established, in Hagee's opinion. For Hagee, this is a sign of God's "boundless love" for the Jewish people. Mass death=love?!

I don't understand how anyone could believe in a God who would do that. As Yehuda Bauer (well-known Israeli historian of the Holocaust) wrote in 2000:

For me, the existence of God after the Holocaust is impossible from a moral point of view. It makes belief in God a vast problem, quantitatively and qualitatively. One and a half million children - of the Chosen People - under the age of thirteen were murdered! This is not a question of free choice because the children didn't have any free choice. It is the Nazis who had the free choice, not the children. So if there is a God that in one way or another controls the destiny of the world - even if that God retires and does not wish to do it, he can and he knows; otherwise he's not a God. He's responsible for the murder - no way out. No answer, human or divine, is satisfactory for the murder of one and a half million children - and if there is an answer from high above, then it is the answer of Satan, and rather than believe in Satan, I will not believe.

I don't come to the same conclusion that Bauer does - that it is impossible to believe in God after the Holocaust - but I agree with him that if one believes that God permitted the Holocaust to occur, that one believes in a Satanic God.

What's more, Hagee is saying that the only place Jews should be living is in Israel - so those of us who live in the United States and other countries are defying God's will, and presumably should suffer the divine consequences.

Tell me again why this man is considered to be "pro-Israel" or "pro-Jewish"? Tell me again why "Jewish leaders" like Joe Lieberman are willing to cosy up to Hagee because of his supposed "support" for Israel?

For my previous posts on Hagee - click here.