PRIMER offers מזל טוב to Bob Fishman, Executive Director of JFACT, the Jewish Federation Association of Connecticut, since his son Ben works for Dennis Ross and helped to draft this speech.
We only wish the remark "Fayyad and President Mahmoud Abbas represent unique Palestinian leaders committed to non-violence, negotiations, and state-building. Their interest in peace represents a strategic opening" was true.
Abbas has, unfortunately, energetically avoided negotiations; the Palestinian Authority under his leadership continues incitement; both Fayyad and Abbas are publicly threatening to even more blatantly violate their commitments under the Oslo Agreements by unilaterally declaring a Palestinian Arab state.
It is imperative that the American government make it abundantly clear that if the Palestinian Arabs carry out that threat, they will face an American veto of any United Nations Security Council Resolution endorsing such a deplorable move and will finally stop encouraging Arab intransigence by making the Palestinian Arabs pay a price for refusing to negotiate peace.
The American government needs to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 25, 2010
Remarks by Dennis Ross, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for the Central Region
AIPAC National Summit
Hollywood, FL
October 25, 2010
As Prepared for Delivery -
Thank you for inviting me here today to your National Summit. It is always good to get out of Washington for a day, although coming down to Florida without playing golf means I'll have to come back soon.
Thank you, Howard, for your continued leadership of this fine organization. And thank you, Rosy, for your continued friendship to President Obama and his administration.
It is always a pleasure to speak to AIPAC, one of the most active and well-informed foreign policy groups in the country.
I want to spend some time talking to you today about an issue you care deeply about and where the AIPAC membership has been deeply engaged: Iran. It is also the issue on which I spend much of my time.
When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to your Policy Conference in Washington six months ago, she laid out the Obama administration's fundamental approach to what is one of the most complicated and serious challenges facing the United States today. It is an approach rooted in the fundamentals of diplomacy and statecraft: building leverage through creative and persistent diplomacy to change the behavior of a government insistent on threatening its neighbors, supporting terrorism, and pursuing a nuclear program in violation of its international obligations.
The first step in this process was making an unmistakable offer of engagement to the Iranians to show their government - and the rest of the international community - that we were committed to resolving our long-standing differences with Iran through peaceful diplomacy on the basis of mutual respect. We recognized that during the years of not talking, Iran significantly expanded its nuclear program and sowed its breed of terror and coercion across the region.
Engagement was also designed to take away excuses: the excuses of those in Iran who focused on blaming us for the failure of diplomacy; and the excuses of many in the international community who would not support additional pressure on Iran, because the United States was too often seen as part of the problem and not the solution.
And finally, engagement clearly signaled to Iran that there is a path of peace it could take by fulfilling its international obligations and restoring the confidence of the international community in the peaceful nature of its nuclear program.
Iran's own behavior over the past two years, however, has demonstrated that it prefers defiance and secrecy to transparency and peace. Iran continues to provide incomplete information about its nuclear program to IAEA inspectors. When it revealed last September that it had constructed a covert enrichment facility outside Qom, Iran only raised greater suspicions about its nuclear program. The Iranian government's continued repression and intimidation of its own people following the presidential election last year demonstrated the lack of respect it shows even to its own citizens. And in the Middle East, Iran continues to rely on tactics of intimidation and coercion to gain influence, a pattern clearly on display during President Ahmadinejad's provocative recent visit to Lebanon and through Iran's ongoing support for Hizballah.
So the combination of our diplomatic initiative and Iran's behavior has helped build a broad-based international coalition that is now imposing significant pressure on Iran to change its behavior.
But that coalition did not emerge on its own. It required President Obama's commitment and leadership on this issue. Over the past 18 months, the President has consistently devoted more time to this issue than almost any other national security challenge. It has been a focal point in his meetings and conversations with President Medvedev of Russia and President Hu of China, with our European partners, and other key international leaders around the world. The President's focus on this issue has been matched with the same level of intensity by the rest of the administration, especially Secretary Clinton and our new National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, who tirelessly orchestrated our diplomatic campaign. As a result of these efforts, we produced United Nations Security Council Resolution 1929, which established the most comprehensive set of sanctions on Iran to date.
UNSCR 1929 bans a wide range of Iranian activities including ballistic missile activity, Iranian investment in nuclear industries abroad, and the export of certain heavy weapons to Iran, which the Russians in particular have used as the basis for canceling the sale of an advanced air defense system to Iran.
The resolution provides mechanisms for inspecting Iranian cargo and seizing contraband, and requires member states to exercise vigilance when conducting business with any Iranian entity, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran's shipping firm IRISL.
The resolution highlights the potential linkage between Iran's energy sector revenues and procurement, proliferation, and its nuclear activities and. And perhaps most significantly, the Resolution calls upon member states to prevent all financial services, including banking, insurance, and reinsurance if there are reasonable grounds to believe that such services could contribute to Iran's nuclear or missile programs. This provision, in particular, has provided the legal basis for states to take additional strong steps of their own.
Following the passage of 1929, we have seen the EU, and others in the international community from Australia and Canada to Japan and South Korea adopt additional sanctions measures of their own. The EU prohibited the opening of new outlets of Iranian banks, the establishment of any new correspondent accounts by Iranian banks, and the provision of insurance or re-insurance to the Government of Iran or any Iranian entity. In other words, Iran is no longer able to conduct business as usual abroad.
And of course, with strong encouragement from AIPAC, Congress amplified all of these measures by passing the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act, which the President signed on July 1. This was a completely bipartisan bill indicating that the entire American political spectrum views the challenge of Iran as a foremost national security priority of the United State.
This legislation makes it increasingly difficult for companies doing certain business in Iran to do business with the United States. It makes it harder for the Iranian government to purchase and trade refined petroleum and the goods, services and materials to modernize Iran's oil and natural gas sector. It makes it harder for the Revolutionary Guards and banks that support Iran's nuclear programs and terrorism to engage in international finance. And companies that want to work with the United States government must now certify that they're not engaged in prohibited business with Iran.
When Secretary Clinton spoke to you in March, she noted, "Our aim is not incremental sanctions, but sanctions that will bite." I think it is fair to say that over the last several months, we have produced biting sanctions.
Here are some of the results we have observed since the adoption of USCR 1929 and the additional sanctions measures:
· More and more international companies and foreign subsidiaries of American companies have stopped doing business in Iran. These include: Toyota, Kia, Daimler, Lukoil, Allianz, Lloyds, Royal Dutch Shell, and many others.
· Major fuel suppliers, such as Total and TUPRAS are cutting back fuel shipments to Iran, forcing Iran to divert its own fuel production capabilities to cover domestic needs.
· At the same time, investors in Iran's energy sector are pulling out of projects, making it far more difficult for Iran to modernize its infrastructure or develop new oil and gas fields. These include Royal Dutch Shell, the Spanish firm Repsol, and the Japanese energy firm INPEX. Iran has been unable to increase production despite the presence of large oil and gas reserves, and its actual production will likely begin declining in the near future as a result of these difficulties. Iran has limited abilities to advance Liquified Natural Gas projects, because the western companies with the required specialized technologies and services are now unwilling to work in Iran.
· Earlier in October, the Iranian rial experienced a sudden drop in value by 10-20 percent, and the Central Bank had to intervene to stabilize the currency. Iran is struggling to sell its currency abroad and access hard currency from its traditional suppliers. The currency run is symptomatic of the public's concern that the government is mismanaging the economy. With an unhealthy and unstable banking sector, Iran's currency problems are likely to get even worse.
· Bazaari merchants in several cities including Tehran and Shiraz went on strike in July and again in October to protest government plans to impose value added taxes on certain guilds. These are the kinds of reactions we can expect to see from Iranians as the government moves to raise funds to make up for economic mismanagement.
· And we have already seen the Iranian government postpone a decision to implement a drastic cut in domestic subsidies due to the unrest it expects will take place when it has to raise prices on heavily subsidized gasoline and other important items. With high unemployment and inflation, Iran has little margin for error.
The point here is that the pressure on Iran only continues to grow.
As my colleague Stuart Levey from the Treasury Department circles the globe explaining sanctions measures to governments and companies, and highlighting the risks of doing business with Iran, we expect that more banks and more industries will continue to cut ties with Iran. The Iranians are a proud people - and rightfully so. Their heritage and civilization are worthy of international respect and admiration. But the Iranian people are now experiencing isolation because of the actions of their government.
Sanctions, like engagement, were always intended as a tool, not as an end to themselves. There is no question Iran has been surprised by the magnitude of the sanctions and the depth of support for them in the international community. They can no longer rely on those in the international community they thought would block such measures on their behalf.
Ultimately, we hope that the severe pressure Iran faces today will compel a change in behavior. The door for diplomacy is still open and we certainly seek a peaceful resolution to our conflict with Iran. But should Iran continue its defiance, despite its growing isolation and the damage to its economy, its leaders should listen carefully to President Obama who has said many times, "we are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."
Before I leave you today, I'd like to say a few words about the Obama administration's relationship with Israel, which is of course foremost on your minds.
I was fortunate to be able to visit Israel with then-Senator Obama in the summer of 2008. I saw through his engagements with Israeli officials and with the Israeli people, including in Sderot, that he immediately understood Israel's unique situation, its achievements, and the many threats it still faces. The President has insisted repeatedly that our commitment to Israel is rock solid. I see this commitment every day in the serious and unique manner in which we work to improve Israel's security.
Just last week, I participated in the U.S.-Strategic Dialogue, a biannual event that includes a comprehensive exchange of views on regional issues crucial to both the United State and Israel. It is a serious discussion among inter-agency representatives from both sides, and this administration has upgraded the level of our participation.
But more importantly, the Strategic Dialogue is just one of many, ongoing, and high-level exchanges that occur regularly between the United States in Israel. I'm not aware of another country that we engage more regularly on such a wide range of issues. These types of exchanges not only provide opportunities for discussion of ideas on policy, but they also help solidify connections between our two governments. Over the last two years, I have seen four-star generals, intelligence officers, and high-ranking diplomats all develop personal relationships with their Israelis counterparts.
Frankly, this degree of coordination is unprecedented. I have participated in these types of discussions for the last 30 years, and they have never been as intense or focused, reflecting the serious cooperation that we have today with Israel.
But our commitment to Israel's security is defined not by talk. It is defined by the kinds of actions and deeds that help make both of our countries safer and stronger in the face of common threats. This year, President Obama decided to supplement our annual $3 billion in military assistance to Israel with a $205 million request to Congress to support Israel's indigenously-developed Iron Dome short-range rocket defense system. This assistance comes in addition to the existing multi-year commitments we have made for jointly developing Israel's David's Sling and Arrow missile defense systems.
Our military regularly conducts exercises with the IDF, including the JUNIPER COBRA ballistic missile defense exercise in Israel a year ago that involved 1300 U.S. servicemen and women, as well as other exercises involving our Navy, Marines, and Air Force. These commitments are real. They are tangible. And they solidify the truly special relationship between the United States and Israel.
This administration's commitment to Israel has also been demonstrated in our work to defeat efforts in international organizations to single out or delegitimize Israel. Most recently, we successfully coordinated the opposition to a resolution at the IAEA General Conference singling out Israel's nuclear program for rebuke. A similar resolution passed in 2009, but together with our international partners, we defeated the resolution last month in part because the Obama administration has restored America's standing in international organizations. We will continue to stand up for Israel in these organizations, but there should be no mistake that our efforts are strengthened when Israel is actively participating in peace negotiations.
I don't have time to go through how we are working intensively to jump-start negotiations today, but I do want to close with a couple of points about the need for peace and the importance for both sides to take the strategic and historic decisions that are required to preserve a two-state solution before it is too late.
First, while we will continue to do whatever we can to support Israel's security needs and to fight efforts to delegitimize Israel, the only true way for Israel to gain the long-term security it deserves is through a genuine peace with its neighbors. There is a struggle today in the region between radicals and pragmatists, between those aligned with Iran and those who are not, between those who reject peace and those who are prepared to coexist with Israel. It is in our interests and in Israel's interests for the pragmatists to succeed in that struggle. It is in our mutual interests to strengthen the pragmatists and discredit the narrative of the rejectionists - and real progress toward peace can make a significant difference in this struggle.
Second, there has been remarkable progress on the ground in the West Bank over the past two years in security and the economy. I remember conversations not so long ago with Israeli security officials doubting that Palestinian security forces could ever take serious steps against terrorism. Today, the situation is very different. Palestinian security forces have reached new levels of training and professionalism, and they coordinate more closely than ever with their Israeli counterparts. They are committed to stopping the kind of violence that only feeds the conflict. Just last week, Palestinian security forces uncovered a large cache of weapons in Ramallah that can no longer be used in support of terrorism. These positive developments will be difficult to sustain if the prospects for peace look less and less real.
Third, under Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority is building the kinds of transparent and effective institutions required for a functioning, independent state. Fayyad has said many times that he models his efforts in part after Ben-Gurion's record of building the institutions of Israel so that the state could function once it was established. Fayyad and President Mahmoud Abbas represent unique Palestinian leaders committed to non-violence, negotiations, and state-building. Their interest in peace represents a strategic opening and it should not be lost.
Now, no one is more familiar with the challenges of reaching an agreement than I am. And there are serious and difficult issues that must be resolved both in the near-term and in the long-run to achieve an agreement and ensure that it lasts. I am certainly under no illusions about how hard that will be. But no one should underestimate the strategic importance of peace for Israelis, for Palestinians, and for the United States.
I hope that as you continue to advocate on behalf of the United States and Israel, you will continue to advocate for peace, security, and the decisions that will be necessary to realize these objectives.
Thank you very much.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Understanding the News About Israel
When it comes to understanding the news about Israel, it’s not enough to read between the lines.
I used to defend the Israel coverage of The New York Times by explaining that, although even the allegedly straight news stories were biased, if one read the article with a jaundiced eye one could usually separate fact from opinion and figure out what really happened.
Unfortunately, that’s no longer true, with virtually every American newspaper, including The Times. (The situation outside America is even worse.)
The last month was particularly revealing, with several articles published in the Waterbury Republican-American going beyond bias to include unprofessional (and grossly misdirected) sarcasm and false information while omitting key information which would have contradicted much in the articles.
Some Examples
Much of this involved the reporting on the Palestinian Arabs again walking out on its direct negotiations with Israel, less than a month after they reluctantly resumed … only after effectively announcing they’d walk out in a month.
The excuse they used, as planned, was the end of Israel’s ten-month moratorium on construction in Jewish communities in the disputed territories. An article about this published in the Republican-American on October 16 ended with the sarcastic and factually incorrect sentence: “That so-called “moratorium” expired last month.”
That’s perhaps the most unprofessional single sentence I’ve ever read in any newspaper. Sarcasm is even more out of place than bias in a news article and this sarcasm was also grossly misplaced, since the moratorium was very real and caused significant hardship for families living in cities like Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumin and Beitar Illit.
This article - and every other article I read - also irresponsibly omitted crucial context, including the fact that when the moratorium was instituted the Israeli government clearly stated it was a one-time gesture which would not be renewed and was accepted as such, and praised, by the Obama Administration.
Also omitted was any mention of the fact that the Obama Administration promised the moratorium would be matched by conciliatory gestures by both the Palestinian Arabs and by Arab states such as Saudi Arabia. No such gestures were forthcoming, so once again Israel made a tangible and painful concession and got nothing in return other than increased pressure to make even more concessions.
An article on October 24, “Mideast sides eye mid-term vote,” expressed concern that the elections could affect “President Obama’s ability to coax concessions from Israel.”
The perspective of this article was that peace was being prevented by Israeli intransigence, omitting any reference to several statements made by Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority as well as the PLO and Fatah, which clearly show Arab intransigence is the problem. Indeed, Abbas admitted as much.
In early September, Abbas spoke about the core issues, such as borders, Jerusalem and refugees, and said “I can’t allow myself to make even one concession” and on October 15 he admitted that if he “showed flexibility on these issues the peace agreement would have been signed a long time ago.”
Amazingly, neither of these revealing statements were reported in any Connecticut newspapers and, although I’ve looked and asked about them, I’ve found no evidence of them being reported elsewhere in the United States. (I did find an article about the first in the Kuwaiti Times.)
One Last Example
Catholic bishops spent two weeks in October at a synod in Vatican City, issuing lengthy communiques after each session. The last two contained tiny references to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The October 23 communique contained the following references:
The October 24 communique contained:
These in themselves are highly biased and problematic: The so-called occupation effectively ended in the mid-1990’s when almost all the Arabs in the disputed territories came under the governance of the Palestinian Authority; the consequences the bishops ascribe to “occupation” are really a consequence of Arab terrorism and United Nations resolutions are notoriously one-sided and anti-Israel.
However, the report in an article in the Sunday Republican October 24 completely misrepresented the communique, saying the bishops demanded that Israel not “use the Bible to justify ‘injustices’ against the Palestinians.”
It also reported on some of the things which may have been said by some bishops in a misleading way, making it appear that those opinions were part of a consensus and falsely implying they were in the communique. For example, according to the article: “while the bishops condemned terrorism and anti-Semitism, they laid much of the blame for the conflict squarely on Israel.” This misleadingly makes it appear that the (unfair) blame was placed on Israel in the communiques, despite the fact no such attribution is in the communiques.
If We Are Not For Ourselves, Who Will Be?
Israel has many good friends outside the Jewish community, but everything starts with us.
Like every other country, Israel is far from perfect. However, despite slurs from the likes of Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer and Jimmy Carter, there is no shortage of criticism of Israel or debate about its actions.
What there is a shortage of is honest reporting about Israel’s drive to make peace and the nature of Israel’s enemies. It’s up to us, the Jewish community, to do what we can to correct the imbalance.
The first step is to keep informed. This is something that’s very difficult to do if we rely only on the standard American media. Fortunately, we have other resources to which we can turn, including Israeli newspapers, media monitoring organizations and even some blogs.
•The Jerusalem Post and Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s newspaper with the largest circulation, have excellent web sites.
•CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, has an excellent web site. We can be proud that Charles Cramer, who grew up in Beth El, is one of the machers with CAMERA.
•In Connecticut, I’m proud to be part of PRIMER, Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting. Its web site is.
Both these sites contain links to many other useful sources of reliable information.
This is the beginning: reading the news with a healthy dose of skepticism and keeping yourself informed.
There is no end.
I used to defend the Israel coverage of The New York Times by explaining that, although even the allegedly straight news stories were biased, if one read the article with a jaundiced eye one could usually separate fact from opinion and figure out what really happened.
Unfortunately, that’s no longer true, with virtually every American newspaper, including The Times. (The situation outside America is even worse.)
The last month was particularly revealing, with several articles published in the Waterbury Republican-American going beyond bias to include unprofessional (and grossly misdirected) sarcasm and false information while omitting key information which would have contradicted much in the articles.
Some Examples
Much of this involved the reporting on the Palestinian Arabs again walking out on its direct negotiations with Israel, less than a month after they reluctantly resumed … only after effectively announcing they’d walk out in a month.
The excuse they used, as planned, was the end of Israel’s ten-month moratorium on construction in Jewish communities in the disputed territories. An article about this published in the Republican-American on October 16 ended with the sarcastic and factually incorrect sentence: “That so-called “moratorium” expired last month.”
That’s perhaps the most unprofessional single sentence I’ve ever read in any newspaper. Sarcasm is even more out of place than bias in a news article and this sarcasm was also grossly misplaced, since the moratorium was very real and caused significant hardship for families living in cities like Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumin and Beitar Illit.
This article - and every other article I read - also irresponsibly omitted crucial context, including the fact that when the moratorium was instituted the Israeli government clearly stated it was a one-time gesture which would not be renewed and was accepted as such, and praised, by the Obama Administration.
Also omitted was any mention of the fact that the Obama Administration promised the moratorium would be matched by conciliatory gestures by both the Palestinian Arabs and by Arab states such as Saudi Arabia. No such gestures were forthcoming, so once again Israel made a tangible and painful concession and got nothing in return other than increased pressure to make even more concessions.
An article on October 24, “Mideast sides eye mid-term vote,” expressed concern that the elections could affect “President Obama’s ability to coax concessions from Israel.”
The perspective of this article was that peace was being prevented by Israeli intransigence, omitting any reference to several statements made by Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority as well as the PLO and Fatah, which clearly show Arab intransigence is the problem. Indeed, Abbas admitted as much.
In early September, Abbas spoke about the core issues, such as borders, Jerusalem and refugees, and said “I can’t allow myself to make even one concession” and on October 15 he admitted that if he “showed flexibility on these issues the peace agreement would have been signed a long time ago.”
Amazingly, neither of these revealing statements were reported in any Connecticut newspapers and, although I’ve looked and asked about them, I’ve found no evidence of them being reported elsewhere in the United States. (I did find an article about the first in the Kuwaiti Times.)
One Last Example
Catholic bishops spent two weeks in October at a synod in Vatican City, issuing lengthy communiques after each session. The last two contained tiny references to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The October 23 communique contained the following references:
“We have evaluated the social situation and the public security in all our countries in the Middle East. We have taken account of the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the whole region, especially on the Palestinians who are suffering the consequences of the Israeli occupation: the lack of freedom of movement, the wall of separation and the military checkpoints, the political prisoners, the demolition of homes, the disturbance of socio-economic life and the thousands of refugees. We have reflected on the suffering and insecurity in which Israelis live. We have meditated on the situation of the holy city of Jerusalem. We are anxious about the unilateral initiatives that threaten its composition and risk to change its demographic balance. With all this in mind, we see that a just and lasting peace is the only salvation for everyone and for the good of the region and its peoples.”and
“The citizens of the countries of the Middle East call upon the international community, particularly the United Nations conscientiously to work to find a peaceful, just and definitive solution in the region, through the application of the Security Council’s resolutions and taking the necessary legal steps to put an end to the occupation of the different Arab territories.
“The Palestinian people will thus have an independent and sovereign homeland where they can live with dignity and security. The State of Israel will be able to enjoy peace and security within their internationally recognized borders. The Holy City of Jerusalem will be able to acquire its proper status, which respects its particular character, its holiness and the religious patrimony of the three religions: Jewish, Christian and Muslim. We hope that the two-State-solution might become a reality and not a dream only.”
The October 24 communique contained:
“Our Churches commit themselves to pray and to work for justice and peace in the Middle East and call for a ‘purification of memory,’ choosing the language of peace and hope and avoiding that of fear and violence. They call upon the civil authorities to implement the resolutions of the United Nations concerning the region, particularly the return of refugees and the status of Jerusalem and the Holy Places.”
These in themselves are highly biased and problematic: The so-called occupation effectively ended in the mid-1990’s when almost all the Arabs in the disputed territories came under the governance of the Palestinian Authority; the consequences the bishops ascribe to “occupation” are really a consequence of Arab terrorism and United Nations resolutions are notoriously one-sided and anti-Israel.
However, the report in an article in the Sunday Republican October 24 completely misrepresented the communique, saying the bishops demanded that Israel not “use the Bible to justify ‘injustices’ against the Palestinians.”
It also reported on some of the things which may have been said by some bishops in a misleading way, making it appear that those opinions were part of a consensus and falsely implying they were in the communique. For example, according to the article: “while the bishops condemned terrorism and anti-Semitism, they laid much of the blame for the conflict squarely on Israel.” This misleadingly makes it appear that the (unfair) blame was placed on Israel in the communiques, despite the fact no such attribution is in the communiques.
If We Are Not For Ourselves, Who Will Be?
Israel has many good friends outside the Jewish community, but everything starts with us.
Like every other country, Israel is far from perfect. However, despite slurs from the likes of Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer and Jimmy Carter, there is no shortage of criticism of Israel or debate about its actions.
What there is a shortage of is honest reporting about Israel’s drive to make peace and the nature of Israel’s enemies. It’s up to us, the Jewish community, to do what we can to correct the imbalance.
The first step is to keep informed. This is something that’s very difficult to do if we rely only on the standard American media. Fortunately, we have other resources to which we can turn, including Israeli newspapers, media monitoring organizations and even some blogs.
•The Jerusalem Post and Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s newspaper with the largest circulation, have excellent web sites.
•CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, has an excellent web site
•In Connecticut, I’m proud to be part of PRIMER, Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting. Its web site is
Both these sites contain links to many other useful sources of reliable information.
This is the beginning: reading the news with a healthy dose of skepticism and keeping yourself informed.
There is no end.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Bias, Errors and Absurd Exaggerations
This was submitted to The New Haven Register on September 16, 2010. The editors several times indicated they planned to publish it, but after a month it has yet to appear the the probability seems close to 0.
The Register did not publish a single response to Stanley Heller's vicious anti-Israel letter, a hateful letter which should never have been published by any reputable newspaper.
To the editor of The New Haven Register:
In his letter published September 15, Stanley Heller falsely accuses George Will of writing a column "replete with bias, errors and absurd exaggerations."
That description does aptly describe Heller's own letter.
Almost everyone agrees with Heller that the election of Hamas represented the will of the Palestinian Arabs, but few sensible people agree with him that America and Israel should reward the Palestinian Arabs for electing a terrorist group committed to the destruction not only of Israel, but ultimately Western civilization as well.
Sorry, Stan: elections have consequences.
If anything has turned Gaza into anything resembling a prison, it is the repressive Hamas government its people chose. In contrast, Israel has been acting to mitigate the Gazans' self-inflicted disaster, pouring so much assistance into Gaza the people there reportedly have a higher standard of living than their neighbors in Egypt and Turkey.
It should be borne in mind that the participation of Hamas did violate the legal requirement that candidates neither "commit or advocate racism" nor "pursue the implementation of their aims by unlawful non-democratic means." Of course, so did the participation of Fatah.
Also worth noting: Mahmoud Abbas' term in office officially ended January 9, 2009.
The Palestinian Arabs are governed by two separate, warring governments of questionable legality, led by someone whose term of office ended long ago.
Given the absurdity of the reality, perhaps Heller can be excused for having a perverted perspective so divorced from reality.
Sincerely,
Alan Stein
President, PRIMER-Connecticut
The Register did not publish a single response to Stanley Heller's vicious anti-Israel letter, a hateful letter which should never have been published by any reputable newspaper.
To the editor of The New Haven Register:
In his letter published September 15, Stanley Heller falsely accuses George Will of writing a column "replete with bias, errors and absurd exaggerations."
That description does aptly describe Heller's own letter.
Almost everyone agrees with Heller that the election of Hamas represented the will of the Palestinian Arabs, but few sensible people agree with him that America and Israel should reward the Palestinian Arabs for electing a terrorist group committed to the destruction not only of Israel, but ultimately Western civilization as well.
Sorry, Stan: elections have consequences.
If anything has turned Gaza into anything resembling a prison, it is the repressive Hamas government its people chose. In contrast, Israel has been acting to mitigate the Gazans' self-inflicted disaster, pouring so much assistance into Gaza the people there reportedly have a higher standard of living than their neighbors in Egypt and Turkey.
It should be borne in mind that the participation of Hamas did violate the legal requirement that candidates neither "commit or advocate racism" nor "pursue the implementation of their aims by unlawful non-democratic means." Of course, so did the participation of Fatah.
Also worth noting: Mahmoud Abbas' term in office officially ended January 9, 2009.
The Palestinian Arabs are governed by two separate, warring governments of questionable legality, led by someone whose term of office ended long ago.
Given the absurdity of the reality, perhaps Heller can be excused for having a perverted perspective so divorced from reality.
Sincerely,
Alan Stein
President, PRIMER-Connecticut
Friday, October 15, 2010
Abbas Admits Palestinian Arab Intransigence is Behind Continued Conflict
According to the article Abbas: We'll never sign deal demanding recognition of Israel as Jewish state published in Haaretz:
This goes beyond Abbas' oft-repeated insistence he would never compromise on any of his outrageous demands on the core issues; it's an admission there would have been peace a long time ago if the Arabs weren't totally intransigent.
Obviously, all the pressure exerted on Israel to make concessions only reinforces that intransigence which makes peace impossible. Intelligent policy would put pressure where it belongs, on the Arabs, including the Palestinian Arabs, and make them pay an increasing price for perpetuating war.
Abbas clarified that the PA would exhibit flexibility regarding the nature of the negotiations, but added that they would not negotiate on issues the Palestinian people consider principal matters.
"If we showed flexibility on these issues the peace agreement would have been signed a long time ago," Abbas said.
This goes beyond Abbas' oft-repeated insistence he would never compromise on any of his outrageous demands on the core issues; it's an admission there would have been peace a long time ago if the Arabs weren't totally intransigent.
Obviously, all the pressure exerted on Israel to make concessions only reinforces that intransigence which makes peace impossible. Intelligent policy would put pressure where it belongs, on the Arabs, including the Palestinian Arabs, and make them pay an increasing price for perpetuating war.
US Campaign to End the Occupation Boasts About Being a Hate Group
On October 14, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a press release identifying the top ten anti-Israel groups in America. Those hate groups are:
The last group on that list promptly sent out an email with the subject "Congratulations to Us--We Made ADL's List," in which it boasted about being included.
As is typical, the "End the Occupation" email was full of errors, misrepresentations and contradictions, but the very first sentence, "We were honored to learn yesterday that we made the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) top ten list of 'anti-Israel groups' in the United States," makes it obvious it (correctly) looks on itself as anti-Israel. It doesn't even pretend otherwise except for one lame sentence lost near the end, in which it unconvincingly protests "Of course, we dispute the ADL's facile characterization of our mission as 'anti-Israel.'"
Once again, we have confirmation of the wisdom in Golda Meir's observation that peace would come when the Arabs started loving their children more than they hate the Jews.
The following is the full text of the email from "End the Occupation;" we omit only those parts in which it pleads for money to help it promote its hate campaign.
- Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER)
- Al-Awda
- Council on American-Islamic Relations
- Friends of Sabeel-North America
- If Americans Knew
- International Solidarity Movement
- Jewish Voice for Peace
- Muslim American Society
- Students for Justice in Palestine
- US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
The last group on that list promptly sent out an email with the subject "Congratulations to Us--We Made ADL's List," in which it boasted about being included.
As is typical, the "End the Occupation" email was full of errors, misrepresentations and contradictions, but the very first sentence, "We were honored to learn yesterday that we made the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) top ten list of 'anti-Israel groups' in the United States," makes it obvious it (correctly) looks on itself as anti-Israel. It doesn't even pretend otherwise except for one lame sentence lost near the end, in which it unconvincingly protests "Of course, we dispute the ADL's facile characterization of our mission as 'anti-Israel.'"
Once again, we have confirmation of the wisdom in Golda Meir's observation that peace would come when the Arabs started loving their children more than they hate the Jews.
The following is the full text of the email from "End the Occupation;" we omit only those parts in which it pleads for money to help it promote its hate campaign.
We were honored to learn yesterday that we made the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) top ten list of "anti-Israel groups" in the United States. Read more about our accomplishment by clicking here.
Help us "thank" the ADL for its recognition of our work by replanting Palestinian olive trees, which Israeli settlers are currently uprooting and stealing fruits from.
[Plea for money.]
You can help us replant 1,000 olive trees in Palestine as a "thank you" to the ADL. Then, we'll give the ADL a nicely framed certificate showing how naming our coalition to the list enabled Palestinian farmers to remain steadfast on their land, despite Israel's attempted colonization and ethnic cleansing. [Plea for money.]
The ADL, which long ago abandoned its noble charter to fight racism--in favor of spying on U.S. peace and justice organizations, fanning the flames of Islamophobia, and defaming anyone who supports Palestinian human rights, named the US Campaign the "primary organizer of efforts to persuade the U.S. government to cut off aid to Israel." The ADL said that the US Campaign "function[s] as an umbrella organization [that] boosts cooperation among various anti-Israel groups."
Thanks, ADL, for recognizing our centrality in building a national movement to end U.S. support for Israeli military occupation and apartheid policies toward Palestinians and to change U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality. We appreciate it!
[Plea for money.]
Of course, we dispute the ADL's facile characterization of our mission as "anti-Israel." It's the same type of wrong thinking that produces the red herring that people who criticize U.S. foreign policies are "anti-American." That Bush-era mentality went out of fashion a long time ago.
[Plea for money.]
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Ehr Kumt
This is the sermon delivered on the first day of Rosh Hashanah by Rabbi Shalom Lewis of Atlanta. It is posted here with the permission of Rabbi Lewis.
Many years ago a Chasid used to travel from shtetl to shtetl selling holy books. On one occasion he came to a wealthy land owner and asked if he would like to purchase a book of Torah teachings. The banker agreed and not only purchased the book, but paid for it with a hundred ruble note. He then began to chat with the Chassid and offered him a cigar, taking one also for himself. The Chassid noticed that the banker proceeded to rip a page from the holy book he had just bought and holding it to the open flame on the stove, used the page to light his cigar. The Chassid said not a word but simply drew out from his pocket the 100 ruble note he had just received from the banker, held it over the stove as well and used it to light his cigar.
This simple, little tale reflects a profound divergence of values. Our sympathy clearly and instinctively is not with the banker but with the pious Chassid. None of us would come to the defense of the banker. None of us would claim moral supremacy for the banker. None of us would justify his boorish deed. As the sages of the Talmud would say - "Pshita - It is so obvious." Sadly though our planet is immersed in perversity where morality is not so manifest - where the book burner is a hero and the pious one, a villain.
I thought long and I thought hard on whether to deliver the sermon I am about to share. We all wish to bounce happily out of shul on the High Holidays, filled with warm fuzzies, ready to gobble up our brisket, our honey cakes and our kugel. We want to be shaken and stirred - but not too much. We want to be guilt-schlepped - but not too much. We want to be provoked but not too much. We want to be transformed but not too much.
I get it, but as a rabbi I have a compelling obligation, a responsibility to articulate what is in my heart and what I passionately believe must be said and must be heard. And so, I am guided not by what is easy to say but by what is painful to express. I am guided not by the frivolous but by the serious. I am guided not by delicacy but by urgency.
We are at war. We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn't know it from our behavior. During WWII we didn't refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters. We didn't call the Gestapo, militants. We didn't see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors. We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault. We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people. We did not apologize for Dresden, nor for The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein, nor for D-Day.
Evil - ultimate, irreconcilable, evil threatened us and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral clarity and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake. It was not just the Sudetenland, not just Tubruk, not just Vienna, not just Casablanca. It was the entire planet. Read history and be shocked at how frighteningly close Hitler came to creating a Pax Germana on every continent.
Not all Germans were Nazis - most were decent, most were revolted by the Third Reich, most were good citizens hoisting a beer, earning a living and tucking in their children at night. But, too many looked away, too many cried out in lame defense - I didn't know." Too many were silent. Guilt absolutely falls upon those who committed the atrocities, but responsibility and guilt falls upon those who did nothing as well. Fault was not just with the goose steppers but with those who pulled the curtains shut, said and did nothing.
In WWII we won because we got it. We understood who the enemy was and we knew that the end had to be unconditional and absolute. We did not stumble around worrying about offending the Nazis. We did not measure every word so as not to upset our foe. We built planes and tanks and battleships and went to war to win….. to rid the world of malevolence.
We are at war… yet too many stubbornly and foolishly don't put the pieces together and refuse to identify the evil doers. We are circumspect and disgracefully politically correct.
Let me mince no words in saying that from Fort Hood to Bali, from Times Square to London, from Madrid to Mumbai, from 9/11 to Gaza, the murderers, the barbarians are radical Islamists.
To camouflage their identity is sedition. To excuse their deeds is contemptible. To mask their intentions is unconscionable.
A few years ago I visited Lithuania on a Jewish genealogical tour. It was a stunning journey and a very personal, spiritual pilgrimage. When we visited Kovno we davened Maariv at the only remaining shul in the city. Before the war there were thirty-seven shuls for 38,000 Jews. Now only one, a shrinking, gray congregation. We made minyon for the handful of aged worshippers in the Choral Synagogue, a once majestic, jewel in Kovno.
After my return home I visited Cherry Hill for Shabbos. At the oneg an elderly family friend, Joe Magun, came over to me.
"Shalom," he said. "Your abba told me you just came back from Lithuania." "Yes," I replied. "It was quite a powerful experience." "Did you visit the Choral Synagogue in Kovno? The one with the big arch in the courtyard?" "Yes, I did. In fact, we helped them make minyon." His eyes opened wide in joy at our shared memory. For a moment he gazed into the distance and then, he returned. "Shalom, I grew up only a few feet away from the arch. The Choral Synagogue was where I davened as a child."
He paused for a moment and once again was lost in the past. His smile faded. Pain filled his wrinkled face. "I remember one Shabbos in 1938 when Vladimir Jabotinsky came to the shul" (Jabotinsky was Menachim Begin's mentor - he was a fiery orator, an unflinching Zionist radical, whose politics were to the far right.) Joe continued "When Jabotinsky came, he delivered the drash on Shabbos morning and I can still hear his words burning in my ears. He climbed up to the shtender, stared at us from the bima, glared at us with eyes full of fire and cried out. 'EHR KUMT. YIDN FARLAWST AYER SHTETL - He's coming. Jews abandon your city.'."
We thought we were safe in Lithuania from the Nazis, from Hitler. We had lived there, thrived for a thousand years but Jabotinsky was right -- his warning prophetic. We got out but most did not."
We are not in Lithuania. It is not the 1930s. There is no Luftwaffe overhead. No U-boats off the coast of long Island. No Panzer divisions on our borders. But make no mistake; we are under attack - our values, our tolerance, our freedom, our virtue, our land.
Now before some folks roll their eyes and glance at their watches let me state emphatically, unmistakably - I have no pathology of hate, nor am I a manic Paul Revere, galloping through the countryside. I am not a pessimist, nor prone to panic attacks. I am a lover of humanity, all humanity. Whether they worship in a synagogue, a church, a mosque, a temple or don't worship at all. I have no bone of bigotry in my body, but what I do have is hatred for those who hate, intolerance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated.
Today the enemy is radical Islam but it must be said sadly and reluctantly that there are unwitting, co-conspirators who strengthen the hands of the evil doers. Let me state that the overwhelming number of Muslims are good Muslims, fine human beings who want nothing more than a Jeep Cherokee in their driveway, a flat screen TV on their wall and a good education for their children, but these good Muslims have an obligation to destiny, to decency that thus far for the most part they have avoided. The Kulturkampf is not only external but internal as well. The good Muslims must sponsor rallies in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square, in the UN Plaza, on the Champs Elysee, in Mecca condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent. Thus far, they have not. The good Muslims must place ads in the NY Times. They must buy time on network TV, on cable stations, in the Jerusalem Post, in Le Monde, in Al Watan, on Al Jazeena condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent - thus far, they have not. Their silence allows the vicious to tarnish Islam and define it.
Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil.
I recall a conversation with my father shortly before he died that helped me understand how perilous and how broken is our world; that we are living on the narrow seam of civilization and moral oblivion. Knowing he had little time left he shared the following - "Shal. I am ready to leave this earth. Sure I'd like to live a little longer, see a few more sunrises, but truthfully, I've had it. I'm done. Finished. I hope the Good Lord takes me soon because I am unable to live in this world knowing what it has become."
This startling admission of moral exhaustion from a man who witnessed and lived through the Depression, the Holocaust, WWII, Communist Triumphalism, McCarthyism, Strontium 90 and polio. - Yet his twilight observation was - "The worst is yet to come." And he wanted out.
I share my father's angst and fear that too many do not see the authentic, existential threat we face nor confront the source of our peril. We must wake up and smell the hookah.
"Lighten up, Lewis. Take a chill pill, some of you are quietly thinking. You're sounding like Glen Beck. It's not that bad. It's not that real." But I am here to tell you - "It is." Ask the member of our shul whose sister was vaporized in the Twin Towers and identified finally by her charred teeth, if this is real or not. Ask the members of our shul who fled a bus in downtown Paris, fearing for their safety from a gang of Muslim thugs, if this is an exaggeration. Ask the member of our shul whose son tracks Arab terrorist infiltrators who target - pizza parlors, nursery schools, Pesach seders, city buses and play grounds, if this is dramatic, paranoid hyperbole.
Ask them, ask all of them - ask the American GI's we sit next to on planes who are here for a brief respite while we fly off on our Delta vacation package. Ask them if it's bad. Ask them if it's real.
Did anyone imagine in the 1920's what Europe would look like in the 1940's. Did anyone presume to know in the coffee houses of Berlin or in the opera halls of Vienna that genocide would soon become the celebrated culture? Did anyone think that a goofy-looking painter named Shickelgruber would go from the beer halls of Munich and jail, to the Reichstag as Feuhrer in less than a decade? Did Jews pack their bags and leave Warsaw, Vilna, Athens, Paris, Bialystok, Minsk, knowing that soon their new address would be Treblinka, Sobibor, Dachau and Auschwitz?
The sages teach - "Aizehu chacham - haroeh et hanolad - Who is a wise person - he who sees into the future." We dare not wallow in complacency, in a misguided tolerance and naïve sense of security.
We must be diligent students of history and not sit in ash cloth at the waters of Babylon weeping. We cannot be hypnotized by eloquent-sounding rhetoric that soothes our heart but endangers our soul. We cannot be lulled into inaction for fear of offending the offenders. Radical Islam is the scourge and this must be cried out from every mountain top. From sea to shining sea, we must stand tall, prideful of our stunning decency and moral resilience. Immediately after 9/11 how many mosques were destroyed in America? None. After 9/11, how many Muslims were killed in America? None. After 9/11, how many anti-Muslim rallies were held in America? None. And yet, we apologize. We grovel. We beg forgiveness.
The mystifying litany of our foolishness continues. Should there be a shul in Hebron on the site where Baruch Goldstein gunned down twenty-seven Arabs at noonday prayers? Should there be a museum praising the U.S. Calvary on the site of Wounded Knee? Should there be a German cultural center in Auschwitz? Should a church be built in the Syrian town of Ma'arra where Crusaders slaughtered over 100,000 Muslims? Should there be a thirteen story mosque and Islamic Center only a few steps from Ground Zero.?
Despite all the rhetoric, the essence of the matter can be distilled quite easily. The Muslim community has the absolute, constitutional right to build their building wherever they wish. I don't buy the argument - "When we can build a church or a synagogue in Mecca they can build a mosque here." America is greater than Saudi Arabia. And New York is greater than Mecca. Democracy and freedom must prevail.
Can they build? Certainly. May they build? Certainly. But should they build at that site? No -- but that decision must come from them, not from us. Sensitivity, compassion cannot be measured in feet or yards or in blocks. One either feels the pain of others and cares, or does not.
If those behind this project are good, peace-loving, sincere, tolerant Muslims, as they claim, then they should know better, rip up the zoning permits and build elsewhere.
Believe it or not, I am a dues-paying, card carrying member of the ACLU, yet from start of finish, I find this sorry episode disturbing to say the least.
William Burroughs, the novelist and poet, in a wry moment wrote - "After one look at this planet, any visitor from outer space would say - "I want to see the manager."
Let us understand that the radical Islamist assaults all over the globe are but skirmishes, fire fights, and vicious decoys. Christ and the anti-Christ. Gog U'Magog. The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness; the bloody collision between civilization and depravity is on the border between Lebanon and Israel. It is on the Gaza Coast and in the Judean Hills of the West Bank. It is on the sandy beaches of Tel Aviv and on the cobblestoned mall of Ben Yehuda Street. It is in the underground schools of Sderot and on the bullet-proofed inner-city buses. It is in every school yard, hospital, nursery, classroom, park, theater - in every place of innocence and purity.
Israel is the laboratory - the test market. Every death, every explosion, every grisly encounter is not a random, bloody orgy. It is a calculated, strategic probe into the heart, guts and soul of the West.
In the Six Day War, Israel was the proxy of Western values and strategy while the Arab alliance was the proxy of Eastern, Soviet values and strategy. Today too, it is a confrontation of proxies, but the stakes are greater than East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel in her struggle represents the civilized world, while Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, Iran, Islamic Jihad, represent the world of psychopathic, loathesome evil.
As Israel, imperfect as she is, resists the onslaught, many in the Western World have lost their way displaying not admiration, not sympathy, not understanding, for Israel's galling plight, but downright hostility and contempt. Without moral clarity, we are doomed because Israel's galling plight ultimately will be ours. Hanna Arendt in her classic Origins of Totalitarianism accurately portrays the first target of tyranny as the Jew. We are the trial balloon. The canary in the coal mine. If the Jew/Israel is permitted to bleed with nary a protest from "good guys" then tyranny snickers and pushes forward with its agenda.
Moral confusion is a deadly weakness and it has reached epic proportions in the West; from the Oval Office to the UN, from the BBC to Reuters to MSNBC, from the New York Times to Le Monde, from university campuses to British teachers unions, from the International Red Cross to Amnesty International, from Goldstone to Elvis Costello, from the Presbyterian Church to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
There is a message sent and consequences when our president visits Turkey and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and not Israel.
There is a message sent and consequences when free speech on campus is only for those championing Palestinian rights.
There is a message sent and consequences when the media deliberately doctors and edits film clips to demonize Israel.
There is a message sent and consequences when the UN blasts Israel relentlessly, effectively ignoring Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, North Korea, China and other noxious states.
There is a message sent and consequences when liberal churches are motivated by Liberation Theology, not historical accuracy.
There is a message sent and consequences when murderers and terrorists are defended by the obscenely transparent "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
John Milton warned, "Hypocrisy is the only evil that walks invisible."
A few days after the Gaza blockade incident in the spring, a congregant happened past my office, glanced in and asked in a friendly tone
-"Rabbi. How're y' doing."
I looked up, sort of smiled and replied - "I've had better days."
"What's the matter? Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?" he inquired.
"Thank you for the offer but I'm just bummed out today and I showed him a newspaper article I was reading.
"Madrid gay pride parade bans Israeli group over Gaza Ship Raid." I explained to my visitor - "The Israeli gay pride contingent from Tel Aviv was not allowed to participate in the Spanish gay pride parade because the mayor of Tel Aviv did not apologize for the raid by the Israeli military."
The only country in the entire Middle East where gay rights exist, is Israel. The only country in the entire Middle East where there is a gay pride parade, is Israel. The only country in the Middle East that has gay neighborhoods and gay bars, is Israel.
Gays in the Gaza would be strung up, executed by Hamas if they came out and yet Israel is vilified and ostracized. Disinvited to the parade.
Looking for logic?
Looking for reason?
Looking for sanity?
Kafka on his darkest, gloomiest day could not keep up with this bizarre spectacle and we "useful idiots" pander and fawn over cutthroats, sinking deeper and deeper into moral decay, as the enemy laughs all the way to the West Bank and beyond.
It is exhausting and dispiriting. We live in an age that is redefining righteousness where those with moral clarity are an endangered, beleaguered specie.
Isaiah warned us thousands of years ago - "Oye Lehem Sheh-Korim Layome, Laila v'Laila, yome - Woe to them who call the day, night and the night, day." We live on a planet that is both Chelm and Sodom. It is a frightening and maddening place to be.
How do we convince the world and many of our own, that this is not just anti-Semitism, that this is not just anti-Zionism but a full throttled attack by unholy, radical Islamists on everything that is morally precious to us?
How do we convince the world and many of our own that conciliation is not an option, that compromise is not a choice?
Everything we are. Everything we believe. Everything we treasure, is at risk.
The threat is so unbelievably clear and the enemy so unbelievably ruthless how anyone in their right mind doesn't get it is baffling. Let's try an analogy. If someone contracted a life-threatening infection and we not only scolded them for using antibiotics but insisted that the bacteria had a right to infect their body and that perhaps, if we gave the invading infection an arm and a few toes, the bacteria would be satisfied and stop spreading
Anyone buy that medical advice? Well, folks, that's our approach to the radical Islamist bacteria. It is amoral, has no conscience and will spread unless it is eradicated. - There is no negotiating. Appeasement is death.
I was no great fan of George Bush - didn't vote for him. (By the way, I'm still a registered Democrat.) I disagreed with many of his policies but one thing he had right. His moral clarity was flawless when it came to the War on Terror, the War on Radical Islamist Terror. There was no middle ground - either you were friend or foe. There was no place in Bush's world for a Switzerland. He knew that this competition was not Toyota against G.M., not the Iphone against the Droid, not the Braves against the Phillies, but a deadly serious war, winner take all. Blink and you lose. Underestimate, and you get crushed.
I know that there are those sitting here today who have turned me off. But I also know that many turned off their rabbis seventy five years ago in Warsaw, Riga, Berlin, Amsterdam, Cracow, Vilna. I get no satisfaction from that knowledge, only a bitter sense that there is nothing new under the sun.
Enough rhetoric - how about a little "show and tell?" A few weeks ago on the cover of Time magazine was a horrific picture with a horrific story. The photo was of an eighteen year old Afghani woman, Bibi Aisha, who fled her abusive husband and his abusive family. Days later the Taliban found her and dragged her to a mountain clearing where she was found guilty of violating Sharia Law. Her punishment was immediate. She was pinned to the ground by four men while her husband sliced off her ears, and then he cut off her nose.
That is the enemy (show enlarged copy of magazine cover.)
If nothing else stirs us. If nothing else convinces us, let Bibi Aisha's mutilated face be the face of Islamic radicalism. Let her face shake up even the most complacent and naïve among us. In the holy crusade against this ultimate evil, pictures of Bibi Aisha's disfigurement should be displayed on billboards, along every highway from Route 66 to the Autobahn, to the Transarabian Highway. Her picture should be posted on every lobby wall from Tokyo to Stockholm to Rio. On every network, at every commercial break, Bibi Aisha's face should appear with the caption - "Radical Islamic savages did this." And underneath - "This ad was approved by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by Taliban, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, by Islamic Jihad, by Fatah al Islam, by Magar Nodal Hassan, by Richard Reid, by Ahmanijad, by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, by Osama bin Laden, by Edward Said, by The Muslim Brotherhood, by Al Queda, by CAIR."
"The moral sentiment is the drop that balances the sea" said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Today, my friends, the sea is woefully out of balance and we could easily drown in our moral myopia and worship of political correctness.
We peer up into the heavens sending probes to distant galaxies. We peer down into quarks discovering particles that would astonish Einstein. We create computers that rival the mind, technologies that surpass science fiction. What we imagine, with astounding rapidity, becomes real. If we dream it, it does, indeed, come. And yet, we are at a critical point in the history of this planet that could send us back into the cave, to a culture that would make the Neanderthal blush with shame.
Our parents and grandparents saw the swastika and recoiled, understood the threat and destroyed the Nazis. We see the banner of Radical Islam and can do no less.
A rabbi was once asked by his students….
"Rebbi. Why are your sermons so stern?" Replied the rabbi, "If a house is on fire and we chose not to wake up our children, for fear of disturbing their sleep, would that be love? Kinderlach, 'di hoyz brent.' Children our house is on fire and I must arouse you from your slumber."
During WWII and the Holocaust was it business as usual for priests, ministers, rabbis? Did they deliver benign homilies and lovely sermons as Europe fell, as the Pacific fell, as North Africa fell, as the Mideast and South America tottered, as England bled? Did they ignore the demonic juggernaut and the foul breath of evil? They did not. There was clarity, courage, vision, determination, sacrifice, and we were victorious. Today it must be our finest hour as well. We dare not retreat into the banality of our routines, glance at headlines and presume that the good guys will prevail.
Democracies don't always win.
Tyrannies don't always lose.
My friends - the world is on fire and we must awake from our slumber. "EHR KUMT."
Many years ago a Chasid used to travel from shtetl to shtetl selling holy books. On one occasion he came to a wealthy land owner and asked if he would like to purchase a book of Torah teachings. The banker agreed and not only purchased the book, but paid for it with a hundred ruble note. He then began to chat with the Chassid and offered him a cigar, taking one also for himself. The Chassid noticed that the banker proceeded to rip a page from the holy book he had just bought and holding it to the open flame on the stove, used the page to light his cigar. The Chassid said not a word but simply drew out from his pocket the 100 ruble note he had just received from the banker, held it over the stove as well and used it to light his cigar.
This simple, little tale reflects a profound divergence of values. Our sympathy clearly and instinctively is not with the banker but with the pious Chassid. None of us would come to the defense of the banker. None of us would claim moral supremacy for the banker. None of us would justify his boorish deed. As the sages of the Talmud would say - "Pshita - It is so obvious." Sadly though our planet is immersed in perversity where morality is not so manifest - where the book burner is a hero and the pious one, a villain.
I thought long and I thought hard on whether to deliver the sermon I am about to share. We all wish to bounce happily out of shul on the High Holidays, filled with warm fuzzies, ready to gobble up our brisket, our honey cakes and our kugel. We want to be shaken and stirred - but not too much. We want to be guilt-schlepped - but not too much. We want to be provoked but not too much. We want to be transformed but not too much.
I get it, but as a rabbi I have a compelling obligation, a responsibility to articulate what is in my heart and what I passionately believe must be said and must be heard. And so, I am guided not by what is easy to say but by what is painful to express. I am guided not by the frivolous but by the serious. I am guided not by delicacy but by urgency.
We are at war. We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn't know it from our behavior. During WWII we didn't refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters. We didn't call the Gestapo, militants. We didn't see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors. We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault. We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people. We did not apologize for Dresden, nor for The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein, nor for D-Day.
Evil - ultimate, irreconcilable, evil threatened us and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral clarity and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake. It was not just the Sudetenland, not just Tubruk, not just Vienna, not just Casablanca. It was the entire planet. Read history and be shocked at how frighteningly close Hitler came to creating a Pax Germana on every continent.
Not all Germans were Nazis - most were decent, most were revolted by the Third Reich, most were good citizens hoisting a beer, earning a living and tucking in their children at night. But, too many looked away, too many cried out in lame defense - I didn't know." Too many were silent. Guilt absolutely falls upon those who committed the atrocities, but responsibility and guilt falls upon those who did nothing as well. Fault was not just with the goose steppers but with those who pulled the curtains shut, said and did nothing.
In WWII we won because we got it. We understood who the enemy was and we knew that the end had to be unconditional and absolute. We did not stumble around worrying about offending the Nazis. We did not measure every word so as not to upset our foe. We built planes and tanks and battleships and went to war to win….. to rid the world of malevolence.
We are at war… yet too many stubbornly and foolishly don't put the pieces together and refuse to identify the evil doers. We are circumspect and disgracefully politically correct.
Let me mince no words in saying that from Fort Hood to Bali, from Times Square to London, from Madrid to Mumbai, from 9/11 to Gaza, the murderers, the barbarians are radical Islamists.
To camouflage their identity is sedition. To excuse their deeds is contemptible. To mask their intentions is unconscionable.
A few years ago I visited Lithuania on a Jewish genealogical tour. It was a stunning journey and a very personal, spiritual pilgrimage. When we visited Kovno we davened Maariv at the only remaining shul in the city. Before the war there were thirty-seven shuls for 38,000 Jews. Now only one, a shrinking, gray congregation. We made minyon for the handful of aged worshippers in the Choral Synagogue, a once majestic, jewel in Kovno.
After my return home I visited Cherry Hill for Shabbos. At the oneg an elderly family friend, Joe Magun, came over to me.
"Shalom," he said. "Your abba told me you just came back from Lithuania." "Yes," I replied. "It was quite a powerful experience." "Did you visit the Choral Synagogue in Kovno? The one with the big arch in the courtyard?" "Yes, I did. In fact, we helped them make minyon." His eyes opened wide in joy at our shared memory. For a moment he gazed into the distance and then, he returned. "Shalom, I grew up only a few feet away from the arch. The Choral Synagogue was where I davened as a child."
He paused for a moment and once again was lost in the past. His smile faded. Pain filled his wrinkled face. "I remember one Shabbos in 1938 when Vladimir Jabotinsky came to the shul" (Jabotinsky was Menachim Begin's mentor - he was a fiery orator, an unflinching Zionist radical, whose politics were to the far right.) Joe continued "When Jabotinsky came, he delivered the drash on Shabbos morning and I can still hear his words burning in my ears. He climbed up to the shtender, stared at us from the bima, glared at us with eyes full of fire and cried out. 'EHR KUMT. YIDN FARLAWST AYER SHTETL - He's coming. Jews abandon your city.'."
We thought we were safe in Lithuania from the Nazis, from Hitler. We had lived there, thrived for a thousand years but Jabotinsky was right -- his warning prophetic. We got out but most did not."
We are not in Lithuania. It is not the 1930s. There is no Luftwaffe overhead. No U-boats off the coast of long Island. No Panzer divisions on our borders. But make no mistake; we are under attack - our values, our tolerance, our freedom, our virtue, our land.
Now before some folks roll their eyes and glance at their watches let me state emphatically, unmistakably - I have no pathology of hate, nor am I a manic Paul Revere, galloping through the countryside. I am not a pessimist, nor prone to panic attacks. I am a lover of humanity, all humanity. Whether they worship in a synagogue, a church, a mosque, a temple or don't worship at all. I have no bone of bigotry in my body, but what I do have is hatred for those who hate, intolerance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated.
Today the enemy is radical Islam but it must be said sadly and reluctantly that there are unwitting, co-conspirators who strengthen the hands of the evil doers. Let me state that the overwhelming number of Muslims are good Muslims, fine human beings who want nothing more than a Jeep Cherokee in their driveway, a flat screen TV on their wall and a good education for their children, but these good Muslims have an obligation to destiny, to decency that thus far for the most part they have avoided. The Kulturkampf is not only external but internal as well. The good Muslims must sponsor rallies in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square, in the UN Plaza, on the Champs Elysee, in Mecca condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent. Thus far, they have not. The good Muslims must place ads in the NY Times. They must buy time on network TV, on cable stations, in the Jerusalem Post, in Le Monde, in Al Watan, on Al Jazeena condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent - thus far, they have not. Their silence allows the vicious to tarnish Islam and define it.
Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil.
I recall a conversation with my father shortly before he died that helped me understand how perilous and how broken is our world; that we are living on the narrow seam of civilization and moral oblivion. Knowing he had little time left he shared the following - "Shal. I am ready to leave this earth. Sure I'd like to live a little longer, see a few more sunrises, but truthfully, I've had it. I'm done. Finished. I hope the Good Lord takes me soon because I am unable to live in this world knowing what it has become."
This startling admission of moral exhaustion from a man who witnessed and lived through the Depression, the Holocaust, WWII, Communist Triumphalism, McCarthyism, Strontium 90 and polio. - Yet his twilight observation was - "The worst is yet to come." And he wanted out.
I share my father's angst and fear that too many do not see the authentic, existential threat we face nor confront the source of our peril. We must wake up and smell the hookah.
"Lighten up, Lewis. Take a chill pill, some of you are quietly thinking. You're sounding like Glen Beck. It's not that bad. It's not that real." But I am here to tell you - "It is." Ask the member of our shul whose sister was vaporized in the Twin Towers and identified finally by her charred teeth, if this is real or not. Ask the members of our shul who fled a bus in downtown Paris, fearing for their safety from a gang of Muslim thugs, if this is an exaggeration. Ask the member of our shul whose son tracks Arab terrorist infiltrators who target - pizza parlors, nursery schools, Pesach seders, city buses and play grounds, if this is dramatic, paranoid hyperbole.
Ask them, ask all of them - ask the American GI's we sit next to on planes who are here for a brief respite while we fly off on our Delta vacation package. Ask them if it's bad. Ask them if it's real.
Did anyone imagine in the 1920's what Europe would look like in the 1940's. Did anyone presume to know in the coffee houses of Berlin or in the opera halls of Vienna that genocide would soon become the celebrated culture? Did anyone think that a goofy-looking painter named Shickelgruber would go from the beer halls of Munich and jail, to the Reichstag as Feuhrer in less than a decade? Did Jews pack their bags and leave Warsaw, Vilna, Athens, Paris, Bialystok, Minsk, knowing that soon their new address would be Treblinka, Sobibor, Dachau and Auschwitz?
The sages teach - "Aizehu chacham - haroeh et hanolad - Who is a wise person - he who sees into the future." We dare not wallow in complacency, in a misguided tolerance and naïve sense of security.
We must be diligent students of history and not sit in ash cloth at the waters of Babylon weeping. We cannot be hypnotized by eloquent-sounding rhetoric that soothes our heart but endangers our soul. We cannot be lulled into inaction for fear of offending the offenders. Radical Islam is the scourge and this must be cried out from every mountain top. From sea to shining sea, we must stand tall, prideful of our stunning decency and moral resilience. Immediately after 9/11 how many mosques were destroyed in America? None. After 9/11, how many Muslims were killed in America? None. After 9/11, how many anti-Muslim rallies were held in America? None. And yet, we apologize. We grovel. We beg forgiveness.
The mystifying litany of our foolishness continues. Should there be a shul in Hebron on the site where Baruch Goldstein gunned down twenty-seven Arabs at noonday prayers? Should there be a museum praising the U.S. Calvary on the site of Wounded Knee? Should there be a German cultural center in Auschwitz? Should a church be built in the Syrian town of Ma'arra where Crusaders slaughtered over 100,000 Muslims? Should there be a thirteen story mosque and Islamic Center only a few steps from Ground Zero.?
Despite all the rhetoric, the essence of the matter can be distilled quite easily. The Muslim community has the absolute, constitutional right to build their building wherever they wish. I don't buy the argument - "When we can build a church or a synagogue in Mecca they can build a mosque here." America is greater than Saudi Arabia. And New York is greater than Mecca. Democracy and freedom must prevail.
Can they build? Certainly. May they build? Certainly. But should they build at that site? No -- but that decision must come from them, not from us. Sensitivity, compassion cannot be measured in feet or yards or in blocks. One either feels the pain of others and cares, or does not.
If those behind this project are good, peace-loving, sincere, tolerant Muslims, as they claim, then they should know better, rip up the zoning permits and build elsewhere.
Believe it or not, I am a dues-paying, card carrying member of the ACLU, yet from start of finish, I find this sorry episode disturbing to say the least.
William Burroughs, the novelist and poet, in a wry moment wrote - "After one look at this planet, any visitor from outer space would say - "I want to see the manager."
Let us understand that the radical Islamist assaults all over the globe are but skirmishes, fire fights, and vicious decoys. Christ and the anti-Christ. Gog U'Magog. The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness; the bloody collision between civilization and depravity is on the border between Lebanon and Israel. It is on the Gaza Coast and in the Judean Hills of the West Bank. It is on the sandy beaches of Tel Aviv and on the cobblestoned mall of Ben Yehuda Street. It is in the underground schools of Sderot and on the bullet-proofed inner-city buses. It is in every school yard, hospital, nursery, classroom, park, theater - in every place of innocence and purity.
Israel is the laboratory - the test market. Every death, every explosion, every grisly encounter is not a random, bloody orgy. It is a calculated, strategic probe into the heart, guts and soul of the West.
In the Six Day War, Israel was the proxy of Western values and strategy while the Arab alliance was the proxy of Eastern, Soviet values and strategy. Today too, it is a confrontation of proxies, but the stakes are greater than East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel in her struggle represents the civilized world, while Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, Iran, Islamic Jihad, represent the world of psychopathic, loathesome evil.
As Israel, imperfect as she is, resists the onslaught, many in the Western World have lost their way displaying not admiration, not sympathy, not understanding, for Israel's galling plight, but downright hostility and contempt. Without moral clarity, we are doomed because Israel's galling plight ultimately will be ours. Hanna Arendt in her classic Origins of Totalitarianism accurately portrays the first target of tyranny as the Jew. We are the trial balloon. The canary in the coal mine. If the Jew/Israel is permitted to bleed with nary a protest from "good guys" then tyranny snickers and pushes forward with its agenda.
Moral confusion is a deadly weakness and it has reached epic proportions in the West; from the Oval Office to the UN, from the BBC to Reuters to MSNBC, from the New York Times to Le Monde, from university campuses to British teachers unions, from the International Red Cross to Amnesty International, from Goldstone to Elvis Costello, from the Presbyterian Church to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
There is a message sent and consequences when our president visits Turkey and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and not Israel.
There is a message sent and consequences when free speech on campus is only for those championing Palestinian rights.
There is a message sent and consequences when the media deliberately doctors and edits film clips to demonize Israel.
There is a message sent and consequences when the UN blasts Israel relentlessly, effectively ignoring Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, North Korea, China and other noxious states.
There is a message sent and consequences when liberal churches are motivated by Liberation Theology, not historical accuracy.
There is a message sent and consequences when murderers and terrorists are defended by the obscenely transparent "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
John Milton warned, "Hypocrisy is the only evil that walks invisible."
A few days after the Gaza blockade incident in the spring, a congregant happened past my office, glanced in and asked in a friendly tone
-"Rabbi. How're y' doing."
I looked up, sort of smiled and replied - "I've had better days."
"What's the matter? Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?" he inquired.
"Thank you for the offer but I'm just bummed out today and I showed him a newspaper article I was reading.
"Madrid gay pride parade bans Israeli group over Gaza Ship Raid." I explained to my visitor - "The Israeli gay pride contingent from Tel Aviv was not allowed to participate in the Spanish gay pride parade because the mayor of Tel Aviv did not apologize for the raid by the Israeli military."
The only country in the entire Middle East where gay rights exist, is Israel. The only country in the entire Middle East where there is a gay pride parade, is Israel. The only country in the Middle East that has gay neighborhoods and gay bars, is Israel.
Gays in the Gaza would be strung up, executed by Hamas if they came out and yet Israel is vilified and ostracized. Disinvited to the parade.
Looking for logic?
Looking for reason?
Looking for sanity?
Kafka on his darkest, gloomiest day could not keep up with this bizarre spectacle and we "useful idiots" pander and fawn over cutthroats, sinking deeper and deeper into moral decay, as the enemy laughs all the way to the West Bank and beyond.
It is exhausting and dispiriting. We live in an age that is redefining righteousness where those with moral clarity are an endangered, beleaguered specie.
Isaiah warned us thousands of years ago - "Oye Lehem Sheh-Korim Layome, Laila v'Laila, yome - Woe to them who call the day, night and the night, day." We live on a planet that is both Chelm and Sodom. It is a frightening and maddening place to be.
How do we convince the world and many of our own, that this is not just anti-Semitism, that this is not just anti-Zionism but a full throttled attack by unholy, radical Islamists on everything that is morally precious to us?
How do we convince the world and many of our own that conciliation is not an option, that compromise is not a choice?
Everything we are. Everything we believe. Everything we treasure, is at risk.
The threat is so unbelievably clear and the enemy so unbelievably ruthless how anyone in their right mind doesn't get it is baffling. Let's try an analogy. If someone contracted a life-threatening infection and we not only scolded them for using antibiotics but insisted that the bacteria had a right to infect their body and that perhaps, if we gave the invading infection an arm and a few toes, the bacteria would be satisfied and stop spreading
Anyone buy that medical advice? Well, folks, that's our approach to the radical Islamist bacteria. It is amoral, has no conscience and will spread unless it is eradicated. - There is no negotiating. Appeasement is death.
I was no great fan of George Bush - didn't vote for him. (By the way, I'm still a registered Democrat.) I disagreed with many of his policies but one thing he had right. His moral clarity was flawless when it came to the War on Terror, the War on Radical Islamist Terror. There was no middle ground - either you were friend or foe. There was no place in Bush's world for a Switzerland. He knew that this competition was not Toyota against G.M., not the Iphone against the Droid, not the Braves against the Phillies, but a deadly serious war, winner take all. Blink and you lose. Underestimate, and you get crushed.
I know that there are those sitting here today who have turned me off. But I also know that many turned off their rabbis seventy five years ago in Warsaw, Riga, Berlin, Amsterdam, Cracow, Vilna. I get no satisfaction from that knowledge, only a bitter sense that there is nothing new under the sun.
Enough rhetoric - how about a little "show and tell?" A few weeks ago on the cover of Time magazine was a horrific picture with a horrific story. The photo was of an eighteen year old Afghani woman, Bibi Aisha, who fled her abusive husband and his abusive family. Days later the Taliban found her and dragged her to a mountain clearing where she was found guilty of violating Sharia Law. Her punishment was immediate. She was pinned to the ground by four men while her husband sliced off her ears, and then he cut off her nose.
That is the enemy (show enlarged copy of magazine cover.)
If nothing else stirs us. If nothing else convinces us, let Bibi Aisha's mutilated face be the face of Islamic radicalism. Let her face shake up even the most complacent and naïve among us. In the holy crusade against this ultimate evil, pictures of Bibi Aisha's disfigurement should be displayed on billboards, along every highway from Route 66 to the Autobahn, to the Transarabian Highway. Her picture should be posted on every lobby wall from Tokyo to Stockholm to Rio. On every network, at every commercial break, Bibi Aisha's face should appear with the caption - "Radical Islamic savages did this." And underneath - "This ad was approved by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by Taliban, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, by Islamic Jihad, by Fatah al Islam, by Magar Nodal Hassan, by Richard Reid, by Ahmanijad, by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, by Osama bin Laden, by Edward Said, by The Muslim Brotherhood, by Al Queda, by CAIR."
"The moral sentiment is the drop that balances the sea" said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Today, my friends, the sea is woefully out of balance and we could easily drown in our moral myopia and worship of political correctness.
We peer up into the heavens sending probes to distant galaxies. We peer down into quarks discovering particles that would astonish Einstein. We create computers that rival the mind, technologies that surpass science fiction. What we imagine, with astounding rapidity, becomes real. If we dream it, it does, indeed, come. And yet, we are at a critical point in the history of this planet that could send us back into the cave, to a culture that would make the Neanderthal blush with shame.
Our parents and grandparents saw the swastika and recoiled, understood the threat and destroyed the Nazis. We see the banner of Radical Islam and can do no less.
A rabbi was once asked by his students….
"Rebbi. Why are your sermons so stern?" Replied the rabbi, "If a house is on fire and we chose not to wake up our children, for fear of disturbing their sleep, would that be love? Kinderlach, 'di hoyz brent.' Children our house is on fire and I must arouse you from your slumber."
During WWII and the Holocaust was it business as usual for priests, ministers, rabbis? Did they deliver benign homilies and lovely sermons as Europe fell, as the Pacific fell, as North Africa fell, as the Mideast and South America tottered, as England bled? Did they ignore the demonic juggernaut and the foul breath of evil? They did not. There was clarity, courage, vision, determination, sacrifice, and we were victorious. Today it must be our finest hour as well. We dare not retreat into the banality of our routines, glance at headlines and presume that the good guys will prevail.
Democracies don't always win.
Tyrannies don't always lose.
My friends - the world is on fire and we must awake from our slumber. "EHR KUMT."
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
The Days of Awe, the Hope for Peace
This was written for Creedible, a web site created "so that the people of Connecticut could still have a way to learn about spiritual happenings here." The commentary may be viewed on the Creedible web site by clicking here.
I write this during the Days of Awe, the period between Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
These are the most solemn days on the Jewish calendar.
בראש השנה יכתבון וביום צום כפור יחתמון
"On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed: How many shall leave this world and how many shall be born into it, who shall live and who shall die, who shall live out the limit of his days and who shall not, ... , who shall be at peace and who shall be tormented, who shall be poor and who shall be rich, who shall be humbled and who shall be exalted."
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are called the "High Holidays." These services, like the weekly Shabbat (Sabbath) service, generally include "A Prayer for Peace." This prayer begins "May we see the day when war and bloodshed cease, when a great peace will embrace the whole world" and ends "Let love and justice flow like a mighty stream, let peace fill the earth as the waters fill the sea."
These prayers for peace have had extra meaning during the 62 years since the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty to portions of Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, after two millennia. Unfortunately, Israelis haven't yet enjoyed a moment of peace. Six Arab armies invaded on the day Ben Gurion issued Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948 and there have been countless wars and acts of terrorism since. Israelis are grateful for the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, even though both those countries continue to refuse to enter into normal relations, yet Israel is still threatened by dozens of Arab and Muslim states populated by hundreds of millions of hostile people.
This year the High Holidays come as the Palestinian Arabs have again agreed to enter into peace negotiations. This brings decidedly mixed emotions.
On the one hand, Jews in Israel and the Diaspora desperately hope these talks succeed in bringing about peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs and hope such a peace leads to a more general peace between Israel and all its neighbors. One should not forget that the conflict between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel is just one aspect of the overall conflict between the Arab and Muslim world and Israel; indeed, it is a consequence of that more general conflict.
On the other hand, there have been countless rounds of negotiations which, rather than bringing peace, have often brought more conflict and more terror directed against Israeli civilians.
To add to the concerns, Jewish holidays have often been chosen by Israel's enemies for both military and terrorist attacks.
The 1973 War was started by Egypt and Syria with a brutal, coordinated surprise attack on Yom Kippur.
There were also significant purely terrorist attacks during the High Holiday season in 2002 and 2003. That terrorist offensive was launched in 2000 by the Palestinian Arabs after they rejected a peace offer which included the establishment of their own state in an area comprising virtually all the disputed territory. Indeed, that terrorist offensive was launched during the High Holiday season, using the rationale that a pre-Yom Kippur visit by Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, the Holiest site for Jews, was a "provocation." This was somewhat analogous to Israel launching a war on Saudi Arabia because one of the thousands of members of the Saudi royal family paid a visit to Mecca during Ramadan.
I was reminded of the propensity for Arab terrorism during major Jewish holidays several times last winter, when I walked past the Park Hotel in Netanya several times every day. On March 27, 2002, Palestinian Arab suicide bombers murdered 22 people celebrating Passover with a seder at the Park Hotel, injuring another 140 people.
The propensity for launching terrorist attacks during Jewish holidays and during peace talks came together two weeks ago, with Hamas claiming credit for murdering Yitzhak and Taliyah Immas, Avishai Shindler and Kochava Even Haim in a surprise attack in which they sprayed their victims' car with bullets and then, after pulling their victims from their automobile, pumped more bullets into them even though they were probably already dead. Taliya Immas was nine month pregnant.
Meanwhile, even before the current round of peace talks got started, Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, effectively insisted he would pull out - again - in less than a month unless Israel extends a building moratorium which is already strangling normal life for Jews. He insists on Israel preventing Jews from building homes in any parts of the disputed territories, including even the areas everyone knows will be incorporated into Israel under any conceivable peace accord.
Abbas has also repeatedly insisted that he will never compromise at all on any of what are called the "core issues." These core issues include refugees (Abbas insists on an Arab "right of return," demanding Israel accept the unrestricted immigration of millions of hostile Palestinian Arabs), Jerusalem (Abbas insists that Israel's capital be redivided and Israel cede sovereignty over Judaism's holiest site) and that the settlement be recognized as a permanent agreement providing for two states for two peoples (Abbas insists he will never recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people).
Abbas' intransigence is not surprising, given that the Palestinian Arabs have yet to make a single significant concession since the start of the failed Oslo Process back in 1993, but it certainly doesn't augur well for a peace that will require compromise by all parties.
It's thus with good reason that, during these Days of Awe, Jews around the world hope for and pray for peace but realize it will probably be many more years before those prayers are answered.
Shalom. Salam. Peace.
Alan Stein is president of PRIMER-Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting), vice chair of the Waterbury Coalition for Better Government, secretary of JFACT (Jewish Federation Association of Connecticut) and is on the steering committee for the Connecticut Coalition to Save Darfur. Dr. Stein is Professor Emeritus at the University of Connecticut, where he taught mathematics, and formerly served as president of the Jewish Federation of Waterbury and vice president of Beth El Synagogue. He spent two months in Israel last year on Hadassah's Winter in Netanya program, walking past the Park Hotel every time he walked to his volunteer job at the Meir Panim Soup Kitchen.
I write this during the Days of Awe, the period between Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
These are the most solemn days on the Jewish calendar.
בראש השנה יכתבון וביום צום כפור יחתמון
"On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed: How many shall leave this world and how many shall be born into it, who shall live and who shall die, who shall live out the limit of his days and who shall not, ... , who shall be at peace and who shall be tormented, who shall be poor and who shall be rich, who shall be humbled and who shall be exalted."
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are called the "High Holidays." These services, like the weekly Shabbat (Sabbath) service, generally include "A Prayer for Peace." This prayer begins "May we see the day when war and bloodshed cease, when a great peace will embrace the whole world" and ends "Let love and justice flow like a mighty stream, let peace fill the earth as the waters fill the sea."
These prayers for peace have had extra meaning during the 62 years since the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty to portions of Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, after two millennia. Unfortunately, Israelis haven't yet enjoyed a moment of peace. Six Arab armies invaded on the day Ben Gurion issued Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948 and there have been countless wars and acts of terrorism since. Israelis are grateful for the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, even though both those countries continue to refuse to enter into normal relations, yet Israel is still threatened by dozens of Arab and Muslim states populated by hundreds of millions of hostile people.
This year the High Holidays come as the Palestinian Arabs have again agreed to enter into peace negotiations. This brings decidedly mixed emotions.
On the one hand, Jews in Israel and the Diaspora desperately hope these talks succeed in bringing about peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs and hope such a peace leads to a more general peace between Israel and all its neighbors. One should not forget that the conflict between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel is just one aspect of the overall conflict between the Arab and Muslim world and Israel; indeed, it is a consequence of that more general conflict.
On the other hand, there have been countless rounds of negotiations which, rather than bringing peace, have often brought more conflict and more terror directed against Israeli civilians.
To add to the concerns, Jewish holidays have often been chosen by Israel's enemies for both military and terrorist attacks.
The 1973 War was started by Egypt and Syria with a brutal, coordinated surprise attack on Yom Kippur.
There were also significant purely terrorist attacks during the High Holiday season in 2002 and 2003. That terrorist offensive was launched in 2000 by the Palestinian Arabs after they rejected a peace offer which included the establishment of their own state in an area comprising virtually all the disputed territory. Indeed, that terrorist offensive was launched during the High Holiday season, using the rationale that a pre-Yom Kippur visit by Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, the Holiest site for Jews, was a "provocation." This was somewhat analogous to Israel launching a war on Saudi Arabia because one of the thousands of members of the Saudi royal family paid a visit to Mecca during Ramadan.
I was reminded of the propensity for Arab terrorism during major Jewish holidays several times last winter, when I walked past the Park Hotel in Netanya several times every day. On March 27, 2002, Palestinian Arab suicide bombers murdered 22 people celebrating Passover with a seder at the Park Hotel, injuring another 140 people.
The propensity for launching terrorist attacks during Jewish holidays and during peace talks came together two weeks ago, with Hamas claiming credit for murdering Yitzhak and Taliyah Immas, Avishai Shindler and Kochava Even Haim in a surprise attack in which they sprayed their victims' car with bullets and then, after pulling their victims from their automobile, pumped more bullets into them even though they were probably already dead. Taliya Immas was nine month pregnant.
Meanwhile, even before the current round of peace talks got started, Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, effectively insisted he would pull out - again - in less than a month unless Israel extends a building moratorium which is already strangling normal life for Jews. He insists on Israel preventing Jews from building homes in any parts of the disputed territories, including even the areas everyone knows will be incorporated into Israel under any conceivable peace accord.
Abbas has also repeatedly insisted that he will never compromise at all on any of what are called the "core issues." These core issues include refugees (Abbas insists on an Arab "right of return," demanding Israel accept the unrestricted immigration of millions of hostile Palestinian Arabs), Jerusalem (Abbas insists that Israel's capital be redivided and Israel cede sovereignty over Judaism's holiest site) and that the settlement be recognized as a permanent agreement providing for two states for two peoples (Abbas insists he will never recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people).
Abbas' intransigence is not surprising, given that the Palestinian Arabs have yet to make a single significant concession since the start of the failed Oslo Process back in 1993, but it certainly doesn't augur well for a peace that will require compromise by all parties.
It's thus with good reason that, during these Days of Awe, Jews around the world hope for and pray for peace but realize it will probably be many more years before those prayers are answered.
Shalom. Salam. Peace.
Alan Stein is president of PRIMER-Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting), vice chair of the Waterbury Coalition for Better Government, secretary of JFACT (Jewish Federation Association of Connecticut) and is on the steering committee for the Connecticut Coalition to Save Darfur. Dr. Stein is Professor Emeritus at the University of Connecticut, where he taught mathematics, and formerly served as president of the Jewish Federation of Waterbury and vice president of Beth El Synagogue. He spent two months in Israel last year on Hadassah's Winter in Netanya program, walking past the Park Hotel every time he walked to his volunteer job at the Meir Panim Soup Kitchen.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
President Obama Calls For Arab Construction Moratorium
He didn't say it in so many words, but that's the clear implication (assuming he sees himself as an honest broker) of the following words uttered at his press conference on September 10, 2010, the second day of Rosh Hashanah:
(He is assuming that, sooner or later, the Palestinian Arabs will stop blocking the establishment of another Arab state in Palestine alongside Israel and the existing Palestinian Arab state of Jordan, which already comprises nearly 80 percent of Palestine. This is a dubious assumption, but let's grant it to him.)
He, for some reason, feels there shouldn't be additional housing for Jews built in those territories until the division of the disputed territories is resolved.
It's obviously unfair to ask one group to refrain from building homes unless the other side is treated the equivalently. If one grants President Obama the benefit of the doubt and assumes he is an honest broker, he thus obviously feels the Palestinian Arabs should also stop building additional housing in that disputed territory until there is an agreement on their division.
Unless he's not an honest broker.
Postscript:
The following documented facts, but which are indisputable but generally either forgotten or ignored, must be borne in mind if there are to be meaningful negotiations:
1. The Armistice Agreements specifically state that the armistice lines were not political borders and essentially were to be disregarded when borders were negotiated.
2. By calling for secure borders, United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 specifically bars using the armistice lines as borders.
"What I’ve said to Prime Minister Netanyahu is that, given, so far, the talks are moving forward in a constructive way, it makes sense to extend that moratorium so long as the talks are moving in a constructive way. Because, ultimately, the way to solve these problems is for the two sides to agree what’s going to be Israel, what’s going to be the state of Palestine. And if you can get that agreement, then you can start constructing anything that the people of Israel see fit in undisputed areas."Carefully consider what he said, from an objective perspective: He is saying that the Arabs and Israelis are going to have to agree on what portions of the disputed territories, the unallocated portions of what had been the British Mandate over Palestine, will be incorporated into Israel and which parts will be given to the Palestinian Arabs to be incorporated into their own state.
(He is assuming that, sooner or later, the Palestinian Arabs will stop blocking the establishment of another Arab state in Palestine alongside Israel and the existing Palestinian Arab state of Jordan, which already comprises nearly 80 percent of Palestine. This is a dubious assumption, but let's grant it to him.)
He, for some reason, feels there shouldn't be additional housing for Jews built in those territories until the division of the disputed territories is resolved.
It's obviously unfair to ask one group to refrain from building homes unless the other side is treated the equivalently. If one grants President Obama the benefit of the doubt and assumes he is an honest broker, he thus obviously feels the Palestinian Arabs should also stop building additional housing in that disputed territory until there is an agreement on their division.
Unless he's not an honest broker.
Postscript:
The following documented facts, but which are indisputable but generally either forgotten or ignored, must be borne in mind if there are to be meaningful negotiations:
1. The Armistice Agreements specifically state that the armistice lines were not political borders and essentially were to be disregarded when borders were negotiated.
2. By calling for secure borders, United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 specifically bars using the armistice lines as borders.
Only By Pressuring Palestinians Can Peace Talks Succeed
This letter was published in the Waterbury Republican American on September 10, 2010.
To the editor:
There's a valuable lesson between the lines of the Sept. 6 Associated Press article "Israel considers resuming settlement construction" in the Republican-American: One sided, unreciprocated concessions by Israel not only do nothing to further peace but are counterproductive.
Last year, under intense pressure from the United States, Israel did something that would be illegal in America: It temporarily declared some disputed parts of its territory off-limits for the construction of homes.
U.S. leaders assured Israel this concession, lauded as far-reaching and unprecedented by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, would be matched by gestures to be taken by Israel's Arab neighbors and would bring the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table.
The first never happened, and it took nine months for PA President Mahmoud Abbas to agree, kicking and screaming, to resume negotiating with Israel, even though the core of all negotiations consists of Israel offering even more concessions to the Palestinian Arabs.
And he already is effectively announcing he's going to pull out after less than a month.
Israelis may debate among them selves whether it's wise to build homes in areas where they'll be surrounded by hostile Arabs.
But the rest of the world ought to be smart enough to realize if the Palestinian Arabs were interested in peace, the presence of a relative handful of Jews in those areas would not be an issue.
Jews around the world, in Israel and in the diaspora, are in the midst of our High Holidays. We are pray ing for peace, not just for America and Israel but for the entire world.
Many congregations are including special prayers that the current negotiations succeed in bringing peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, even if not with the rest of the Arab and Muslim world.
Unfortunately, these negotiations will have little chance of success if we don't learn from our mistakes and finally start putting pressure on those, the Palestinian Arabs, who have been resisting peace, rather continuing to pressure Israel to make unreciprocated concessions that only encourage the intransigence of its enemies.
Alan H. Stein
Waterbury
The writer is president of PRIMER-Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting; www.primerct.org).
To the editor:
There's a valuable lesson between the lines of the Sept. 6 Associated Press article "Israel considers resuming settlement construction" in the Republican-American: One sided, unreciprocated concessions by Israel not only do nothing to further peace but are counterproductive.
Last year, under intense pressure from the United States, Israel did something that would be illegal in America: It temporarily declared some disputed parts of its territory off-limits for the construction of homes.
U.S. leaders assured Israel this concession, lauded as far-reaching and unprecedented by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, would be matched by gestures to be taken by Israel's Arab neighbors and would bring the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table.
The first never happened, and it took nine months for PA President Mahmoud Abbas to agree, kicking and screaming, to resume negotiating with Israel, even though the core of all negotiations consists of Israel offering even more concessions to the Palestinian Arabs.
And he already is effectively announcing he's going to pull out after less than a month.
Israelis may debate among them selves whether it's wise to build homes in areas where they'll be surrounded by hostile Arabs.
But the rest of the world ought to be smart enough to realize if the Palestinian Arabs were interested in peace, the presence of a relative handful of Jews in those areas would not be an issue.
Jews around the world, in Israel and in the diaspora, are in the midst of our High Holidays. We are pray ing for peace, not just for America and Israel but for the entire world.
Many congregations are including special prayers that the current negotiations succeed in bringing peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, even if not with the rest of the Arab and Muslim world.
Unfortunately, these negotiations will have little chance of success if we don't learn from our mistakes and finally start putting pressure on those, the Palestinian Arabs, who have been resisting peace, rather continuing to pressure Israel to make unreciprocated concessions that only encourage the intransigence of its enemies.
Alan H. Stein
Waterbury
The writer is president of PRIMER-Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting; www.primerct.org).
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Neglecting the Heart of the Problem
The following was sent as a letter to the editor of The New Britain Herald:
It's disappointing that the Associated Press article "Abbas Asks US to Step Into Settlement Dispute," published September 8 on the eve of the Jewish New Year, helps spread misleading Arab propaganda while totally omitting any reference to the statements of the supposedly "moderate" Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas which demonstrate the heart of the problem: the continued refusal of the Palestinian Arabs to end their drive to destroy Israel and instead negotiate, in good faith, the peace that is in the best interest of all the people involved.
In the Palestinian Authority's own Al-Ayyam newspaper, Abbas is quoted as saying "If they [the Israelis] demand concessions on the rights of the refugees or the 1967 borders, I will quit. I can’t allow myself to make even one concession."
This, of course, is in keeping with traditional Arab intransigence; in the seventeen years since the start of the failed Oslo Process, the Palestinian Arabs have failed to make a single meaningful concession, even as Israel has made countless tangible and painful concessions.
Obviously, a meaningful peace requires good faith negotiations by both sides - not just by Israel - with meaningful compromises made by both sides - not just by Israel.
Until the Palestinian Arabs, under Abbas or under a future leader who is actually interested in peace, is prepared to seriously negotiate in good faith and stops threatening to walk away at the flimsiest of pretexts, there is no serious chance of peace.
If Abbas would stop demanding that the heart of Eretz Yisrael be made judenrein, free of Jews, it might signal there is finally some hope.
Israel can't institute peace by itself. It needs a partner.
It's disappointing that the Associated Press article "Abbas Asks US to Step Into Settlement Dispute," published September 8 on the eve of the Jewish New Year, helps spread misleading Arab propaganda while totally omitting any reference to the statements of the supposedly "moderate" Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas which demonstrate the heart of the problem: the continued refusal of the Palestinian Arabs to end their drive to destroy Israel and instead negotiate, in good faith, the peace that is in the best interest of all the people involved.
In the Palestinian Authority's own Al-Ayyam newspaper, Abbas is quoted as saying "If they [the Israelis] demand concessions on the rights of the refugees or the 1967 borders, I will quit. I can’t allow myself to make even one concession."
This, of course, is in keeping with traditional Arab intransigence; in the seventeen years since the start of the failed Oslo Process, the Palestinian Arabs have failed to make a single meaningful concession, even as Israel has made countless tangible and painful concessions.
Obviously, a meaningful peace requires good faith negotiations by both sides - not just by Israel - with meaningful compromises made by both sides - not just by Israel.
Until the Palestinian Arabs, under Abbas or under a future leader who is actually interested in peace, is prepared to seriously negotiate in good faith and stops threatening to walk away at the flimsiest of pretexts, there is no serious chance of peace.
If Abbas would stop demanding that the heart of Eretz Yisrael be made judenrein, free of Jews, it might signal there is finally some hope.
Israel can't institute peace by itself. It needs a partner.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
