Category Archives: Israel

A Stone’s Throw

During the Islamic month of Ramadan, which is about to end, Muslims are to engage in introspection, fasting and spiritual improvement. Which, according to some, includes doing whatever they can to kill innocent people.

ISIS, for instance, exhorted Muslims to use Ramadan as a time for violence, and, earlier in the Islamic holy month, in apparent response, Islamists launched attacks on three continents. A deliveryman ISIS supporter crashed his truck into an American-owned chemical plant in France, in an attempt to blow it up, and then allegedly decapitated his boss at the scene and placed the murdered man’s head on on the plant’s gate. Mere hours later, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a Kuwait City mosque, killing 27 worshippers and injuring more than two hundred. A mere hour later came an attack on a Tunisian beach, where an Islamist gunman – may we call him a terrorist? – gunned down 39 people without warning.

It wasn’t just ISIS either. A Hamas-affiliated website, for instance, published an article titled “Resistance During Ramadan – A New Beginning And A Different Flavor,” which explained that “Ever since the first intifada, martyrdom operations, stabbing and shooting attacks have had a special character during the month of Ramadan…” and that “During Ramadan, the Palestinians welcome resistance to the occupation and carry it out with a different flavor…” Make ours vanilla, please.

Which was a likely contributor, of course, to the fact that Israel has also been a target of Ramadan violence, with rockets fired from Gaza landing in her territory, and six acts of terrorism in the month’s first 10 days, killing and maiming Israelis. Some were shootings; one, a stabbing of a female IDF soldier in the neck; and several incidents of rock-throwing.

Later in the month, after Israeli forces shot and killed a 17-year-old Palestinian, Muhammad Hani al-Kasba, after he had thrown rocks at their vehicle and ignored orders to stop, dozens of youths clashed with the soldiers near Yerushalayim.

Stone-throwing by Palestinians has been described by some as an essentially benign activity, a “rite of passage” or, as Thomas Friedman once infamously characterized it, as a form of “massive nonlethal civil disobedience.” When Israeli police or soldiers shoot stone-throwers, the shootings are often presented by the Arab media as terrible overreactions; Western media tend to imply the same thing.

The headline over the recent story in the International Business Times read “Palestinian protester shot dead in West Bank,” as if the young man had been carrying a placard, not a rock. The Boston Globe sought its readers’ eyeballs with “Palestinian teen killed by Israeli forces in West Bank.” What the deceased was doing would seem to be more germane than his age.

Let’s move, though, now from the “West Bank” – or, better, Yehudah V’Shomron – to the West Coast – of the United States. Specifically to Pasco, Washington, a small city in the shadow of the Cascade Mountain range. There, a 35-year-old man, Antonio Zambrano-Montes, was shot and killed in a hail of police bullets earlier this year, leading to an investigation into the circumstances of the killing.

Documents recently released by the Franklin County prosecutor’s office presented a detailed timeline of the happening, diagrams and the testimony of officers, all of whom said they had felt that their safety or the safety of others was in jeopardy.

Mr. Zambrano-Montes had been throwing rocks at cars before the police arrived, according to witnesses quoted. A lawyer for the man’s family said that the central question of the case was whether the threat posed by his clients’ relative was genuine, or could reasonably be perceived as genuine.

The officers who fired at Mr. Zambrano-Montes maintain that their actions were justifiable. One, Ryan Flanagan, said he had considered nonlethal options but did not see a way to safely get close enough to the stone thrower.

“Had he dropped the rock, then we would have been able to holster our firearms,” Officer Flanagan said in the report. “He didn’t,” the officer continued, “give us that option, though.

An investigator then pressed further for an answer to the question of why lethal force was necessary, when there were three officers, one suspect and only one rock.”

His answer was brief and to the point – and something reporters and editorialists the world over might take time to think about. “Well,” Officer Flanagan, responded, “one rock can kill you.”

Non-Crime of Omission

I have to admit that there was one assertion in Michael Oren’s recent book, “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide,” that disturbed me greatly. As I wrote two weeks ago, I found his book’s main points, which he outlined in essays for Foreign Policy, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, to be factually incorrect. But I was taken aback by Mr. Oren’s description of how President Obama left Israel off a list of countries the president lauded for aiding Haiti after its devastating earthquake in 2010. That omission – especially considering Israel’s prodigious role in rescue and recovery efforts after that disaster – seemed to contradict my positive judgment of Mr. Obama’s regard for Israel.

On pages 132-133 of his book, Mr. Oren writes how his “foreboding only deepened” when Mr. Obama, on January 15, three days after the earthquake struck, made an official statement in which he announced that American personnel were on the ground in Haiti and that “help continues to flow in” as well from “Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, among others.” Israel’s omission from the list, Mr. Oren writes, made him feel “like I had been kicked in the chest.”

The passage greatly bothered me. As it apparently did the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Ron Kampeas. But whereas I just puzzled over the passage, Mr. Kampeas actually researched its claim, and compiled a timeline of events that January. What he found was that Israel’s rescue activities – powerful and laudable though they were – only began the day after Mr. Obama spoke.

A day earlier, on January 14, four Israeli situation assessors did arrive in Haiti, joining the Israeli ambassador of the neighboring Dominican Republic, but it was only on the 16^th that the Israeli field hospital was first set up. Anyone less negatively inclined than Mr. Oren could easily imagine the president asking a member of his staff to find out from Haitian officials which countries were on the ground searching for survivors. And receiving the answer he incorporated into his speech.

So Mr. Oren’s feeling kicked in chest was, to put it mildly, unwarranted. Perhaps he wanted Mr. Obama to list all the countries that had plans for rescue operations, but there were many more of those. There would have been no reason to mention only Israel.

Why harp on Mr. Oren’s book? And why reiterate Mr. Obama’s numerous actions on behalf of Israel’s security, as I have several times?

For a simple reason: One of Judaism’s most fundamental principles is hakaras hatov, literally “recognition of the good.”

One may certainly disagree with any of the president’s actions one doesn’t like. But one may not overlook what he has done. I listed a few things two weeks ago in my earlier essay on Mr. Oren’s book. There is, however, much more, like increased military aid to Israel, like Iron Dome, like Stuxnet. And like his words when he visited Israel two years ago.

“More than 3,000 years ago, the Jewish people lived here,” he declared, “tended the land here, prayed to G-d here.” And he called the fact of Jews living in their ancestral land “a rebirth, a redemption unlike any in history.”

Needless to say, as the Zoharic prayer “B’rich Sh’mei,” recited by many when the Torah is removed from the aron, has it, we are not to put our trust in any man. And the hearts of leaders, in any event, are in Hashem’s hands, and subject to the effect of our own merits.

But none of that absolves us of the holy duty to be makir tov, to recognize the reality of good things and to give credit where it is due.

Oren Gets Ornery

It’s axiomatic that diplomats must be, well, diplomatic. That might explain why Michael Oren, a current member of the Knesset (Kulanu) but who served as ambassador of Israel to the United States from 2009 until 2013, kept his disillusionment with President Barack Obama under wraps until now.

In a Wall St. Journal op-ed to promote a new book he’s written, Mr. Oren has accused Mr. Obama of, if not quite in the WSJ headline-writer’s contention, “abandon[ing] Israel,” at least (in Mr. Oren’s actual words) “abandoning the two core principles of Israel’s alliance with America.”

A serious charge, though, in its own right.

Mr. Oren acknowledges that “contrary to many of his detractors, Mr. Obama was never anti-Israel” and “significantly strengthened security cooperation with the Jewish State.” The president, moreover, “rushed to help Israel in 2011 when the Carmel forest was devastated by fire.”

Presumably the ex-ambassador appreciates, too, Mr. Obama’s swift and strong warning to Egyptian authorities in 2011 that they had better protect mob-besieged Israeli embassy guards in Cairo. And the president’s informing the Arab world in his 2009 Cairo speech that the U.S.-Israel bond is “unbreakable.” As well as things like the administration’s condemnation of the Palestinian Authority’s “factually incorrect” denial of the Kosel Maaravi’s connection to the Jewish people. And its vetoing of every anti-Israel U.N. Security Council proposal raised during its tenure.

But never mind all that (and more). Mr. Obama stands accused by Mr. Oren of two sins: openly disagreeing with Israel, which Mr. Oren contends had “never” happened before; and neglecting to provide Israel with advance copies of statements concerning U.S. policy in the Mideast.

Sin #1, according to Mr. Oren, consisted of Mr. Obama’s telling American Jewish leaders in 2009 that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s lack of movement toward a peace process “erodes our credibility with the Arabs.” And the president’s “void[ing of] George W. Bush’s commitment to include the major settlement blocs and Jewish Jerusalem within Israel’s borders in any peace agreement.” And Mr. Obama’s call for a temporary “freeze of Israeli construction” in contested areas.

Sin #2? President Obama didn’t share a copy of his Cairo speech with Israel ahead of time, even though it contained “unprecedented support for the Palestinians” and “recognition of Iran’s right to nuclear power.”

Strong evidence for a guilty verdict, it might seem. Some pesky facts, though, get in the way.

American disagreement with Israel was unprecedented? Presidents Reagan, Bush I and Clinton (let alone Carter) all publicly took issue with various Israeli policies and actions. Pesky fact.

Support for a “two-state solution,” as it happens, has been American policy for decades (not to mention the current desire of a majority of Israelis – and the hope, at least so stated, of Mr. Netanyahu). Thus, whatever one may think about the idea’s wisdom, not advancing it certainly erodes Palestinian hopes, and the credibility of the U.S. as an effective advocate for a peace agreement. Pesky fact.

As to the terms of a final peace agreement – if ever there is one – Mr. Obama has never – never – said or implied that major settlement blocs or Jewish Jerusalem will not end up as part of Israel. When he famously spoke about an agreement “based” on the 1967 lines, he also added, in the very same sentence, that it would include land swaps to ensure Israel’s security – code for land Israel considers essential. Pesky fact.

As to a construction freeze, Mr. Netanyahu actually ordered one, for 10 months, in 2009. The Palestinian Authority irresponsibly wasted the opportunity to negotiate then. Would another freeze yield a different result? No one can know. But urging Mr. Netanyahu to try again isn’t an abandonment of anything.

Mr. Obama’s Cairo speech, while it indeed included outreach to the Arab world (a wise, if doomed effort), contained not only a clear call on that world to accept Israel but a condemnation of “baseless, ignorant, and hateful” Arab Holocaust denial, and of Arab nations’ “threatening Israel with destruction – or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews.”

No, he didn’t announce an invasion of Iran in that speech. He referenced that country’s past evils and asserted that the U.S. is “prepared to move forward” to help prevent “a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path.” Mr. Oren, and others, might consider that approach misguided. But the leader of the free world is entitled to his own opinion about what will best protect Israel and the rest of the world. And he may even be right.

Mr. Oren didn’t respond to messages from the New York Times last Thursday. He had a book party that night.

Thoughtless Jewish Jeers

I’m trying to understand the sort of mindlessness that expressed itself in the jeering of Treasury Secretary Jacob (“Jack”) Lew by some Jews at a recent gathering.

The third Jerusalem Post Annual Conference which took place in Manhattan on June 7 and featured Israeli and American officials and journalists, was convened with the hope of garnering international attention. It succeeded, if only in the widespread reportage of the way some in attendance reacted to Mr. Lew’s measured and accurate words.

Applause ensued when he told the crowd that the U.S. continues to consider Israel’s security a top priority as it negotiates a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear capabilities and that “we must never allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.”

The Treasury Secretary then explained how the U.S.-led sanctions against Iran were intended to pressure that country to agree to negotiations about limiting and monitoring its nuclear program, and that they succeeded. The first murmurs from the crowd were heard then.

And then, when he asserted that Iran’s movement toward a nuclear weapon had been arrested for now, and that an agreement, if one is signed, would thwart the outlaw nation’s suspected designs, the booing began in ugly earnest.

Mr. Lew is an Orthodox Jew with impeccable pro-Israeli security credentials who worked in the 1980s with Natan Sharansky to secure freedom for Soviet Jews and served for a year as Mr. Obama’s Chief of Staff. With the knowledge of a true insider he went on to assert that “We are not operating on an assumption that Iran will act in good faith” and that “No administration has done more for Israel’s security than this one.”

Members of the audience openly jeered. One called out “Nonsense!” Another shouted “Chamberlain,” a reference to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who tried to appease the Nazis.

According to one Israeli journalist present, it was “one of the surliest receptions ever accorded to such a high-ranking administration official by a Jewish audience in the United States.”

Jerusalem Post editor Steve Linde tried to quiet the audience. Mr. Lew, looking sad, pleaded, “I only ask that you listen to me as we’ve listened to you,” to no avail.

Clearly taken aback by what transpired at its conference, the Jerusalem Post subsequently published an editorial calling Mr. Lew “a true friend” of Israel.

I do get that some American Jews regard any deal with Iran, even one that will include monitoring of all Iranian nuclear facilities and strict limits on Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon, as a bad idea. Even though the only alternatives are to do nothing or to attack Iran, which knowledgeable Israeli and American military and intelligence experts say would only somewhat set back Iran’s nuclear program and would further incentivize the rogue nation’s determination to attack Israel and the West.

But don’t those who feel that war is preferable to a deal realize that it is not only uncouth but counterproductive to express their view by booing an Administration official (much less an accomplished, informed and pro-Israel one like Mr. Lew)?

Apparently not. The mentality of such jeerers is that Jews are no longer in galus, that Israel doesn’t need the U.S., that her existence constitutes the geulah shleimah and that Benjamin Netanyahu is, if not Moshiach himself, his harbinger.

The catcallers were likely among those who decried the U.S. Supreme Court decision the very next day that ruled in favor of the White House and undermined an act of Congress that aimed to allow U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to request passports listing Israel as their birthplace.

As nice as it would be for the U.S. to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over Yerushalayim, all American presidents since 1948, when the U.S. recognized Israel, consistently held the position that no state has sovereignty over Jerusalem. George W. Bush, no less than President Obama, refused to enforce the Congressional action.

And the ruling, in any event, was not about Israel per se, but rather about who gets to chart foreign policy, the President or Congress. Should Congress’s and the White House’s positions be reversed at some point in the future, the decision will prove to Israel’s benefit.

It was though, a timely reminder that the world, including even Israel’s closest friends, is not yet ready to recognize the unbreakable Jewish bond between Yerushalayim – the object of Jewish yearning for millennia – and Klal Yisrael.

A reminder, in other words, that we’re still in golus, jeerers and all.

Ism Schism

Liberal-minded American Jews rightly regard Pamela Geller, who organized the Garland, Texas cartoon-of Islam’s-founder contest earlier this month, as an irresponsible provocateur. What’s odd is that many of those very same liberal-minded American Jews enthusiastically champion (and generously support) another irresponsible provocateur.

That would be the “Women of the Wall” – the attention-addicted feminist group bent on holding vocal women’s services at the Kosel Maaravi that offend the sensibilities of the traditional Orthodox women and men who most frequent the site and have regularly prayed there in traditional fashion for decades.

It might seem at first thought that Ms. Geller’s stunts are in a category of their own. After all, by snubbing her nose at the Muslim world, she courts violence of the sort that extremists within that world so readily and joyfully embrace. In fact, her Texas event attracted not only a small crowd but two angry and armed Islamists who sought to spill blood but who were, baruch Hashem, killed before they could wreak the havoc of their dreams.

But Ms. Geller isn’t misguided only because of the violent reactions she invites. She is misguided because, put simply and starkly, it’s wrong to provoke people. There is nothing wrong with condemning Islamist terrorism or holding the banner of free speech as high as one chooses. But to try to make one’s points by insulting the sensibilities of all Muslims is boorish.

Which brings us to the “Women of the Wall.” They are free to make the case that their feminist vision should trump Jewish tradition. But seeking to flaunt their conviction in the faces of others for whom it is anathema is crass.

In its mission statement, the group declares its desire “to change the status-quo” at the Kosel, and that it stands “proudly and strongly in the forefront of the movement for religious pluralism in Israel.” Were it well-mannered, it would limit itself to lobbying Knesset members and making its case to the public in as reasoned a manner as it can. Instead, though, it chooses to push its program squarely and harshly into the faces of Jews who cherish the “status quo,” i.e. the Jewish mesorah, and oppose the “religious pluralism” that seeks to undermine it. That’s not advocacy; it’s indecent.

Celebrated writer and translator Hillel Halkin, no traditional Jew, doesn’t generally cover his head. Yet he has written that, “in certain places – on a rare visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, for example – I’ll put on a kippah even though I resent having to do it.” And, referencing the Women of the Wall, he shared his imagined reaction were a fellow non-kippah-wearer to invite him to “a demonstration of bare-headed Jewish men at the Wall [where] we’re going to pray and sing and keep coming back every month until our rights are recognized.” He would, he writes, “politely tell him to get lost.”

First, though, he writes, he would challenge the inviter: “Why insist on [forcing your issue] in the one place where it’s going to offend the sensibilities of hundreds or thousands of people?… If you need to go to the Wall, just cover your head and don’t indulge in childish provocations.”

Women of the Wall’s quest, Mr. Halkin asserts, has “to do only with the narcissism of thinking that one’s rights matter more than anyone else’s feelings or the public interest.”

That narcissism is even more pronounced these days, as – for better or worse – a temporary platform for “non-Orthodox egalitarian prayer” has been prepared at Robinson’s Arch, adjacent to the Kosel plaza, facing the Kosel and no less holy than where traditional prayer has been the norm. Women of the Wall’s leader, Anat Hoffman, though, has dismissed that accommodation as a “sunbathing deck” and “second-rate.” Her group has apparently opted to shun the alternate site, preferring instead to continue to try to upset fellow Jews in the place where they have prayed in the traditional manner since 1967.

Shavuos approaches. The anniversary of the moment when true Jewish unity was forged, when our ancestors – including those of Mrs. Hoffman and her American Jewish supporters – stood “like a single person with a single heart” at the foot of Har Sinai.

What unified Klal Yisrael then, of course, was their declaration of naaseh v’nishma, their embrace of the Torah whether or not they could “hear” everything it requires of them. It was a commitment, in effect, to place the Torah above all else, above all the isms of the time.

And of the future, something contemporary provocateurs and their supporters might do well to ponder.

Inform or Incite?

Many who recognize the evil that permeates radical Islam likely felt a reflexive satisfaction at the recent ruling of U.S. District Judge John Koeltl that New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority cannot reject an anti-Islamist advertisement.

The ad, created by the “American Freedom Defense Initiative” (AFDI), presents a keffiyeh-wrapped head of a man, only his eyes showing, next to the words: “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah,” a quote attributed to Hamas television. Below that is the legend: “That’s his Jihad. What’s yours?”

That final phrase is a pointed parody of a Muslim advocacy group’s ad campaign several years ago to try to detach the word “jihad” from its “holy war” connotation.

Telling quote, clever ad. And, according to Judge Koeltl, within AFDI’s rights to run.

The MTA had notified AFDI that it would not accept the ad (one of four that the group purchased space for on the sides of New York buses) because it could incite violence. A simpleminded Muslim, the MTA claimed, might misunderstand the ad’s true message and be inspired by its quote to kill Jews. Rejecting that argument, Judge Koeltl noted that the ad had had no such effect when it ran in San Francisco and Chicago in 2013; and he ruled that “Under the First Amendment, the fear of such spontaneous attacks… cannot override individuals’ rights to freedom of expression.” (The MTA has a month to appeal his decision and has said that it will reject all political ads.)

Judge Koeltl, apparently referencing a disclaimer to accompany the ad, also said he believes the MTA underestimates “the power of counter-advertisements to explain that the MTA does not endorse the ad…”

The person behind AFDI is activist Pamela Geller. She is, laudably, committed to exposing Islamist extremism. But she has also given ample cause to doubt her judgment. She has written, for example, that “Hussein” – her way of referring to President Obama – “is a muhammadan [sic]. He’s not insane … he wants jihad to win.”

And she responded to criticism leveled at her by several prominent Jewish organizations by labeling them “Dhimmi Jewcidals” and contending that they are worse than “the Judenrat [which] didn’t protect and defend the Nazis’ war on the Jews [but only] went along… They didn’t advance and promote it.”

She also is planning a contest for the best cartoon of the founder of Islam. The “Draw the Prophet” event is scheduled for May 3, in the same Garland, Texas location where a Muslim group held a solidarity conference in January. If she imagines that non-radicalized Muslims will not be insulted by her contest, she has a formidable imagination.

And the AFDI ads, although their points are valid ones, present several problems. First, they are read by many as implicating not only those who use their religion to spew hatred and wreak mayhem but all Muslims. Ms. Geller denies that accusation, but it’s not an unarguable one.

Secondly, while the ads aren’t likely to be misunderstood as encouraging violence against Jews, they are entirely likely to foster ill will among Arabs and Muslims – against Ms. Geller and, perforce, all defenders of Israel in general, who will be seen, fairly or not, as her enablers.

Thirdly, the same First Amendment right that permits the AFDI ads permits potential ads portraying Israel as a murderous, fascist state, or Jews as nefarious would-be world-domineering devils. Those contentions may be lies but such false speech is arguably free speech too. Does Ms. Geller really want to risk igniting an ad war?

To be sure, there is a need to call attention to the evils of Islamism and to try to undermine anti-Israel sentiment, but attempting to do so with inflammatory ads on the sides of buses may not be the most effective way to advance those goals. Or the right way.

Informing is one thing; incitement, another.

A spokesman for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio didn’t mince words. “These anti-Islamic ads,” she said, “are outrageous, inflammatory and wrong… While those behind these ads only display their irresponsible intolerance, the rest of us who may be forced to view them can take comfort in the knowledge that we share a better, loftier and nobler view of humanity.”

That loftier and nobler view of humanity may or may not be justified. But that’s not the issue. The issue is whether ads like AFDI’s help or hinder the goal of winning hearts and minds.

The answer seems obvious.

Muddy Study

Have you heard the story of the scientist whose area of research was insects’ hearing? He trained a flea to jump on command. In the interest of his research, he pulled off one of the flea’s legs and ordered it to jump. The insect complied, if a bit clumsily because of its handicap. The scientist recorded the data – the delay in the jump, the distance covered, etc., on a chart. After a second amputation, the flea’s response to the command was even less impressive, and the new results were duly entered on the chart. After a third leg was removed, the flea’s jump was greatly compromised, and the chart became host to the new data. Finally, after being deprived of all of its legs, all the flea could do when ordered to jump was buzz about hopelessly on the table.

Solemnly, the scientist consulted his chart, created a formula to reflect his findings, and recorded his conclusion: “Fleas hear with their legs.”

The myopic researcher was brought to mind by a recent article about the work of two French economists, Ruben Durante and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya. The piece, which appeared at MarketWatch, published by Dow Jones & Co., relates the pair’s investigation of the timing of Israeli military attacks against its enemies over an 11-year period. The economists’ methodology was simple (and rather simple-minded). They catalogued Israel’s military interventions from 2000 to 2011, and then compared them to what was going on in the news at the time – noting whether that news was “scheduled,” like a major sporting event, or “unscheduled,” like an earthquake or plane crash.

The scientists’ conclusion, in the synopsis of the MarketWatch article’s author, Brett Arends: “Israel habitually launches its most unpopular and, sometimes, deadly attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to coincide with big news events here in the U.S., so that they don’t get too much public attention.”

In Mr. Durante’s and Ms. Zhuravskaya’s own words: “Israeli attacks are more likely to occur prior to days with very high news pressure driven by clearly predictable events.” There were statistically significant upticks, they assert, in Israeli military action in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before sporting events, but not before things that the Israeli military could not anticipate.

So here, presumably, is the picture: Israel’s Prime Minister and top generals are huddled in the war room, analyzing a current threat against the citizenry. They pick apart intelligence data about enemy plans, track militants’ movements by aircraft and satellites, consult weather forecasts and, for nighttime operations, moon phases. And they decide that a strike is necessary. “No! Wait!” shouts the Prime Minster. “The Super Bowl’s not until next Sunday!”

A few minor problems here. First of all, did the researchers factor in the Final Four? And what about avoiding the attention of the rest of the world, which really doesn’t care much about American sports? Did the economists take soccer’s World Cup into account? Hockey’s Stanley Cup?

And if the Israeli military/political complex is in fact guilty of the nefarious machinations imagined by the economists, well, the plot doesn’t seem to have worked very well. When was the last time Israel launched an attack on her enemies and the world’s residents, glued to their sports event of choice, uh, didn’t notice?

Besides, don’t the Elders of Zion control earthquakes and plane crashes too?

Okay, that last argument was facetious. But no less so than the economists’ study, which proffered a wealth of charts and formulae to try to demonstrate a “statistically significant” correlation between attention-getting events and Israeli military action. How much of a correlation, though, and how much of it may just reflect chance or statistical static isn’t entirely clear. What is clear, though, is that cynicism, born of the stylish if smelly anti-Israel atmosphere these days, informed the study.

A mistaken conclusion about how a flea hears is a rather minor matter. An accusation of underhanded tactics hurled at a country trying to protect its citizens from murderous attacks, quite another.

The noted British psychologist H. J. Eyesenck famously observed that scientists can be “just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anybody else, and their unusually high intelligence only makes their prejudices all the more dangerous.” It’s a truism that, in our understandable and usually merited respect for science, we can sometimes forget.

Scientists are people too; and if they harbor personal biases, their prejudices can inform their “science.” That’s not just unfortunate but, particularly today, downright dangerous.

And In Third Place…

And so the horse trading begins.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has gotten down to the nitty-gritty business of cobbling together a government coalition. Particularly attractive stallions, thankfully, will be the religious parties, the Prime Minister’s “natural partners,” as he calls them, although, apparently unnaturally, he jettisoned them the last time around. Their being in Bibi’s good graces (for now) is happy news.

What many may not see as happy news is the remarkable fact that, after Likud and the Zionist Union (Hamachaneh Hatzioni), the third largest winner of votes was… the “Joint List” (Hareshima Hameshutefet) – the new Arab party, comprised of four previous Arab parties.

No one is concerned that the Joint List’s 13 seats will make it an attractive partner to a Likud-dominated government – or, for that matter, any government. Nor would the Joint List itself consider being part of either. Its very essence is oppositional.

The genesis of the Joint List, though, holds some irony; and its success, perhaps, something positive.

The impetus for the joining together of the four Arab parties, representing utterly disparate, contradictory, ideologies – communism, feminism, Islamism, and Palestinian nationalism was legislation passed last year raising the electoral threshold from 2% to 3.25%, or at least four seats. None of the Arab parties saw themselves as viable in that calculus. So they decided on a sort of multiple-wives marriage of necessity. And ended up with more seats than their combined catch in 2013.

The irony? The law that brought them together was pushed through by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose own party, Yisrael Beiteinu, scored only six seats this time around, less than half of the Joint List.

The head of the Joint List, lawyer Ayman Odeh, somehow managed to herd the cats that comprise the list. He also strikes a moderate, unflappable pose. In a campaign ad, he appears at a Jewish family’s Shabbos table, after the mainstream party candidates have burst in and made their cases. They leave when Mr. Odeh enters and, smiling, he says to the Jewish family, “We all live in the same building together and we all want the same thing: Equal rights, peace and quiet.”

And in a debate, when Mr. Lieberman told Mr. Odeh that he should better be in Ramallah or Gaza and that “You’re not wanted here,” the Arab, who was born in Haifa, calmly responded to the Russian-born foreign minister, “I am very wanted in my homeland,” and went on to emphasize what he characterized as his party’s universalist and democratic message.

To be sure, some of the cats in his herd are anything but universalist or democratic. Which is why the Joint List’s campaign slogan was the soothing but hollow “The Will of the People.”

So what possible role could the Joint List play in the Knesset? It will surely use its votes to oppose measures it sees as expansionist or anti-Arab. But beyond those things, which the liberal parties will oppose no less, are there any other causes such a confederacy of incoherence might embrace?

Practically speaking, the Joint List’s fractious felines can probably come together on the issue of Arab poverty, and Israel’s insufficient assistance to that sector of its citizenry.

Israel ranks high among developed nations in the percentage of its citizens living in poverty. Economist Paul Krugman attributes that in part to “policy choices: Israel does less to lift people out of poverty than any other advanced country.”

According to a 2013 National Insurance Institute report, the poverty rate among Israel’s Arabs – some 20% of the population – was 47.4%.

The same report estimates the poverty rate at the time among Israeli chareidim (approximately 10% of the population) at 66%. Both communities’ high poverty can be attributed, at least in part, to low earnings and government cutbacks in child allotments.

So it might not be outlandish to imagine that, however either impoverished sector may feel about each other, both will vote to bolster any legislation put before the Knesset designed to assist poor families. Stranger unplanned but de facto alliances have taken place.

For Jews who perceive Israel in nationalistic or religious colors, the emergence of an Arab party with 13 seats in the Knesset may seem like a violation of the idea of the state. Those of us, though, who see Israel as a wonderful democracy and haven for Jews but who are not flag wavers or Yom Ha’Atzmaut celebrators might dare to hope that the Joint List, the abhorrent nature of some of its members notwithstanding, might end up actually helping advance the Israeli societal good.

Persian Diversion

It was a tad early for “Purim Torah,” but on Taanis Esther, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zari responded to a question from an NBC correspondent by insisting that Iran cares deeply for and is entirely protective of its Jews.

Asked about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s recent assertion in his speech before the U.S. Congress that “Iran’s regime is not merely a Jewish problem, any more than the Nazis were a Jewish problem,” Mr. Zarif bristled and changed the topic to the Israeli leader’s citation in his speech to Megillas Esther.

“He even distorts his own scripture,” said the Iranian about the Israeli. “If – if you read the book of Esther, you will see that it was the Iranian king who saved the Jews.” We needn’t engage Mr. Zarif on the finer points of the Purim story, but the question in the end, of course, isn’t what Achashverosh was or did, but what Iran is and does (and wants to do).

(Mr. Zarif, incidentally, also proudly cited Koresh, as having granted the Jews of his time permission to rebuild the Beis Hamikdash – apparently oblivious to the irony of the fact that the aforementioned edifice was to be built, and in time was built, in Yerushalayim.)

The Iranian foreign minister animatedly explained how “We have a history of tolerance and cooperation and living together in coexistence with our own Jewish people, and with – with Jews everywhere in the world.” And he added, “If we wanted to annihilate Jews, we have a large number of Jewish population in Iran” who presumably could provide a convenient first stage opportunity. But, Mr. Zarif went on to proudly state, Jews “have a representative in Iranian parliament allocated to them, disproportionately to their number.”

A recent CNN article happily swallowed that sunny Iranian party line, describing the Iranian Jewish community of Esfahan in warm and delicate tones. It characterized the community’s members as happy, and interviewed several. Not one of them had anything negative to say about the current Iranian regime, clear proof of its benevolence (or, perhaps, of the very opposite).

Esfahan Jewish community leader Sion Mahgrefte, the article noted, while he “declined to comment directly on political matters, especially in the current heated environment,” did assert that the members of his community felt very much at home in Iran.” Puts one in mind of James Baldwin’s line about home being “not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”

The NBC interviewer was, thankfully, less meek. She presented Mr. Zarif with a statement made by Iran’s “supreme leader,” Sayyid Ali Khamenei, in which he declared: “This barbaric wolf-like and infanticidal regime of Israel which spares no crime [and which] has no cure but to be annihilated.” “Can you understand,” the interviewer asked, “why Jews and others would take umbrage at that kind of language?”

He could not, of course, and insisted that “annihilating” a country of six million Jews (evocative number, that) is one thing; hating Jews elsewhere, something entirely another. Slippery fish, that distinction between Jews and a country of Jews.

Iran’s Jews may not be overtly persecuted these days, but there are subtle sorts of repression too. No Iranian Jew can dare speak up in defense of Israel in any way, for fear of his life. And not long after the inception of the current “Islamic Republic,” the Jewish community’s leader at the time was arrested on charges of “corruption” and “friendship with the enemies of G-d” and executed. Other Iranian Jews have likewise been executed over ensuing years for being “spies.” (One wonders how thin the line is between being a Jew in Iran and a spy.) Criticism of the Iranian policy of appointing Muslims to oversee Jewish schools, moreover, resulted in the shutting down of the last remaining Iranian Jewish newspaper, in 1991.

And so, Iran’s claim of love for its Jews, and some Iranian Jews’ claim to feel safe and protected, has to be taken with a grain, or perhaps a nuclear missile silo, worth of salt. It is belied not only by Iran’s execution of Jews and its declared wish to annihilate a country with arguably more Jews than any other, but by the less guarded words of Iran’s allies and proxies.

Like Hassan Nasrallah, a leader of Hezbollah, the group conceived in 1982 by Iranian clerics and still funded by Iran. “If they [Jews] all gather in Israel,” he said in 2002, “it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”

Thank you, Hassan, for your candor.

Sense and Centrifuges

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress is:

A bald political move to shore up support for his candidacy in imminent Israeli elections.
A misguided attempt to meddle in American partisan politics and embarrass President Obama
A straightforward effort to express sincere concerns about the Iranian danger, and the conviction that any negotiations with Iran are inherently misguided.

My guess? A bit of “all of the above.”

There’s no doubt that Mr. Netanyahu’s presenting himself as a prophet before the legislature of the superpower ally of Israel (if not as leader of the Jewish People itself, a mantel he’s been donning of late) will help him in his reelection bid. Or that he has often seized opportunities to express his dislike of Mr. Obama. (Yes, it’s mutual; kamayim hapanim lapanim… “As water reflects a face, so the heart of a man to a man.” – Mishlei, 27:19.)

But only a hardened cynic would assume that Mr. Netanyahu’s concern about Iran is a guise, that his disdain for negotiations isn’t sincere. It surely is.

But is it right?

For those who insist on seeing Mr. Obama as, at best, insufficiently concerned with Jews or Israel, the answer is clear. Those would be the people who condemn Mr. Obama’s reluctance to use the word “Islam” when referring to Islamist terrorism, and reject his reasoning that doing so would alienate 1.5 billion Muslims. And who seized on the president’s abysmal choice of adverb in a long interview, when he referred to “vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.”

Whether the president meant to say “wanton” or just didn’t realize what he was saying (which happens to many a speaker), a president has no excuse for imprecision. The pouncing critics, though, ignored the fact that, in the wake of the attack, the White House called it a “violent assault on the Jewish community” and “the latest in a series of troubling incidents in Europe and around the world that reflect a rising tide of anti-Semitism.” Those intractable critics of Mr. Obama surely reject, as a matter of principle, his strategy regarding Iran.

No one doubts that Iran’s leaders are evil men, and cannot be trusted. How, though, to thwart their nuclear intentions? Mr. Netanyahu insists that Iran must shut down all its centrifuges, the machines at the core of the uranium-enrichment process, something no one believes Iran will ever do. The U.S. has chosen the path of negotiation (with, of course, verification, and likely some Stuxnet-style “alternate strategies” – one example of which was unfortunately uncovered by the Russian firm Kaspersky Lab last week), carrying the big stick of sanctions, which is what brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place.

If there were a practical option of just bombing Iranian nuclear sites to Islamic heaven, that would be the clear course of action. Unfortunately, no such option exists, and such an attempt would inflame not only Iran but its proxies and its friends like Russia and China, likely ushering in World War III.

Mr. Netanyahu has been bristling at reports that the current state of negotiations will leave a large number of centrifuges operational. But anyone who researches the subject will quickly learn that there are a number of factors, like how the machines are configured and what will happen to fuel produced by them, that render the number of centrifuges less than crucial.

Mr. Netanyahu is the face of Israel. But he isn’t a nuclear expert. (Recall his 2012 speech before the UN, where he held up a cartoon bomb and implied that by the following spring Iran would have nuclear weapons.) Someone who is, though, is the retired head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, Uzi Eilam. And Mr. Eilam favors the negotiations approach, and asserts that “Netanyahu and other politicians have instilled a terrible and unnecessary fear in the Israeli public.

Are he and Obama right? Or is Bibi? I don’t know, but neither do the posse of pundits who wouldn’t know a centrifuge from a centipede but loudly declare that Obama can’t be trusted and that Bibi is, if not melech Yisrael, at least the wisest of men.

The negotiations may well fail, which will trigger even harsher sanctions against Iran. To some, that will be a good thing. To others, an unrestricted Iran is cause for the deepest concern.

None of us can know whether or not to root for the negotiations’ success. What we all can do, though, is be mispallel that this Adar will bring about a modern-day Purim miracle in the land of the original one, complete with gallows, these, hosting malevolent mullahs.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life