Category Archives: Politics

Musing: Two NYT Articles about Israel Say it All

Two recent articles in the New York Times conveyed as informative a picture of Palestinians and Israel as might be imagined. One, on August 4, profiled the “culture of conflict” nurtured by West Bank Palestinians, focusing on Arab teenagers’ delight in throwing large stones at Israel soldiers and Jewish residents of nearby communities, and younger boys’ games imitating their elders’ activities.

“Children have hobbies,” one teen, Muhammad, is quoted as explaining, “and my hobby is throwing stones.”

When a 17-year-old, arrested for his stone-throwing, was released in June after 16 months in prison, the article reports, “he was welcomed like a war hero with flags and fireworks, women in wedding finery lining the streets to cheer his motorcade.”

The second Times piece, the next day, described how, in its headline’s words, “Doctors in Israel Quietly Tend to Syria’s Wounded.”

Most Syrian patients “come here unconscious with head injuries,” said Dr. Masad Barhoum, the director general of one of the hospitals, the Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. “They wake up after a few days or whenever and hear a strange language and see strange people,” he continued. “If they can talk, the first question is, ‘Where am I?’ ”

“I am sure,” he added “there is an initial shock when they hear they are in Israel.”

A 13-year-old girl, who had required complex surgery, was interviewed “sitting up in bed in a pink Pooh Bear T-shirt.” Her aunt, who had managed to locate her and was happy with the treatment her niece had received, told the reporter that they hoped to return to Syria later this week.

“Asked what she will say when she goes back home, the aunt replied: ‘I won’t say that I was in Israel. It is forbidden to be here, and I am afraid of the reactions’.”

The two pieces, taken together, really say it all.

Meet Cindy

Meet Cindy.

A single mother living in the Midwest with her three young children, she’s deeply unhappy because of the news she received the other day.

Although Cindy does some sales work from her computer at home, her income is insufficient to cover the monthly mortgage payments for her small home and food and clothing for her family. Until now, though, she has managed to make ends meet, with the help of various social safety-net needs-based programs like WIC and food stamps.

Earlier this week, though, Cindy, and hundreds of thousands of others like her, received word that the government is ending those programs. Budgetary concerns were one reason given but the letter Cindy received also noted that she could still qualify for some of the benefits she was receiving if she found and accepted a full-time job. “When citizens like you, Cindy,” the personalized form letter explained, “are a regular part of the workforce, it benefits not only you and your family, but the economy as a whole. And that is something that every loyal citizen should appreciate!”

Well, says Cindy to herself somewhat bitterly, I don’t. The state of the economy is important, but improving it isn’t my main personal goal. Raising my children myself is what I consider my immediate mandate. Spending my days in an office or behind a counter and entrusting my children to some sitter is not what I consider good parenting. Being a full-time mother, she tells herself, may not make me a model citizen, but it makes me, at least in my mind, a model human being. My children are my most important asset.

The new bad news, moreover, came on the heels of some earlier unhappy tidings, the repeal of the federal mortgage interest tax deduction, which increased Cindy’s tax bill by a good chunk of her income.

Making Cindy even more outraged and despondent was the popular move to require that every American child join a “junior civil service program” where values she (as a conservative Christian) doesn’t endorse are taught. And then, to top things off, there were the relentless media and public assaults on “welfare” single parents like her, the newspaper editorials and talk-show hosts labeling of them as “freeloaders,” “unpatriotic” and even “parasites.” It made her angry enough to cry.

Cindy, of course, and her troubles, are hypothetical. Our country still extends a generous safety net to its neediest citizens, and the mortgage interest deduction is alive and well. Children are not forced into any educational program and can even be home-schooled. But can you relate to how hypothetical Cindy would feel if the nightmare scenario were in fact real? If so, then you might better appreciate how charedim in Israel are feeling these days.

Over the past decade or so, their social services – primarily in the form of child allowances – have been drastically cut, several times. Now what is left of the allowances is under the knife again. And charedim are being pressured to forgo full-time Torah-study, their “most important asset” and first priority. They are told that they must enter the army, even though there is no need for them in the military (as its leaders have repeatedly stated) and they fear the impact Israel’s “military melting pot” will have on their lives. They are vilified without pause, and cajoled to act not in what they consider their best interest (and the best interest, ultimately, of the entire country) but rather just to do what they are told. All, of course, for “the economy” and the “greater good.”

No one, to be sure, can claim a “right” to social service entitlements. And one can, if he chooses, take the stance that no citizen of any country should expect, for any reason, that the government needs to take care of him in any way. That’s a perfectly defensible position, at least from a perspective of cold logic.

But every compassionate country recognizes the rightness of assisting the poor. And a country that calls itself the Jewish one, it can well be argued, has a special responsibility to underwrite the portion of its populace that is willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism (which, as it happens, is what kept the connection between Jews in the Diaspora and their ancestral land alive for millennia, and allowed for a state of Israel in the first place).

Gratitude for what one has received is a deeply Jewish ideal. And Israeli charedim should indeed feel and express gratitude for all that the state provides them. But absent are calls for non-charedi Israelis – or the rest of us – to consider feeling and expressing gratitude for the charedi willingness to live financially constricted lives in order to remain immersed in Jewish practice and learning. Instead, just the opposite is seen: Israeli charedim are used as political pawns, regarded and portrayed and treated as Israel’s misfortune.

Cindy would relate.

Musing: Some advice for Yesh Atid

Something Yesh Atid would do well to remember: Yesh Avar.

Musing: They’ve Uncovered Our Secret Weapon

Mehdi Taeb, who is close to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, recently revealed that the Jews are the most powerful sorcerers in the world today, and that they have used their powers to attack Iran. While Iran has so far prevailed, he explained, the full force of Jewish sorcery has not yet been brought to bear.

“The [Jewish] people,” he confided, “believe that it is possible to… even… control G-d’s decisions, by using sorcery methods… ”

Don’t know about sorcery, but prayer and repentance have indeed long demonstrated the potential to merit Divine assistance.

Obama Comes Clean

Back in 2009, I was troubled by the reaction of many of my friends to President Obama’s speech in Cairo to the Muslim world.

I had shared the same concerns they had about Mr. Obama during his first campaign for the presidency – his Chicago politics background, his attendance of a church headed by a rabid racist, his association with other distasteful characters, the suddenness of his rise to political prominence. But after his election (which happened somehow, despite my vote for his rival) I tried to focus not on the past but the present. And I found his Cairo speech pleasantly surprising.

That he chose to address the Islamic world in itself did not disturb me. Were I in his position, I reflected, were I a person of color who lived in a Muslim environment as a child and now the leader of a free world plagued by Islamic extremism, I would have made the same choice, seized the golden opportunity to try to reach the Muslim masses with a message of moderation.

And, continuing my thought experiment, I imagined myself saying much what the new president did. He spoke of Islamic culture’s accomplishments, extended a hand of friendship and addressed some of the problems facing his listeners.

And not only didn’t he shy away from the topic of Israel, he seized it hard and fast. To be sure, he reiterated America’s long-standing support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the position of even the Israeli government these days. And he called for an end to new settlements, also reflecting long-established American policy. But he declared too that “America’s strong bonds with Israel are… unbreakable… based upon cultural and historical ties, and that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.”

In fact, he decried Holocaust denial, so rife in the Muslim world, as “baseless, ignorant, and hateful,” and condemned the “threatening [of] Israel with destruction” and the “repeating [of] vile stereotypes about Jews.” He poignantly declared that “Palestinians must abandon violence,” that it is “a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus.”

And yet some Jews were deeply unimpressed – because the president described the state of Israel as rooted in the Holocaust. The Jewish connection to Eretz Yisrael, they complained, is rather older than that. Indeed it is, of course. But somehow I wouldn’t have thought it necessary or wise for Mr. Obama to quote from the Torah, particularly to an Islamic audience.

I suppose that the critics weren’t begrudging him quite that. They just wanted to hear some reference to the fact that the Holy Land was holy to, and populated by, Jews before Muslims (or Islam for that matter) came on the scene. Even that, I thought, would have been unwise at that time and place, and I felt it was ungenerous to not at least give Mr. Obama credit for what he did say, clearly and unequivocally. And I found the president’s subsequent actions on behalf of Israel, from pushing the Iron Dome project to intensifying the anti-Iran Stuxnet collaboration with Israel to his strong and quick intercession on behalf of Israelis held hostage in Egypt (and much more) as confirmation of my judgment of the man’s commitment to Israel’s safety and security.

Now, on his recent trip to Israel, the president came clean, so to speak, on the issue of the Jewish connection to Eretz Yisrael.

“More than 3,000 years ago, the Jewish people lived here,” he said, “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 ark, 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.

So the future cannot be known by any of us. But the present can, and we are obliged by our tradition, which hallows the concept of hakaras hatov, “recognition of the good,” to be thankful for both what President Obama has done and what he has said.

May we merit to see his continued support for our brothers and sisters in the Holy Land.

Lies, Statistics and News Reports

It’s rare for light to be cast on the origins of a rumor. But a recent revelation about a charge made against Chuck Hagel before his confirmation as Secretary of Defense does that – and might provide us all some illumination too.

(Contrary to what some have surmised, I didn’t and don’t feel there is enough hard information about the now confirmed Defense Secretary on which to make a judgment of his attitude toward Israel. As attacks mounted on nominee Hagel, though, I suggested that Jews should think twice and thrice before attacking a public figure for animus to the Jewish state on the basis of pickings as slim as those gathered to criticize him.

Several people, including some pseudonymic letter-writers to a magazine that published my article, took my suggestion that bandwagons are best inspected before being leaped onto as support of Mr. Hagel. I explicitly wrote, however, that he might well not make a good Defense Secretary, and that I can’t claim to know one way or the other. All that I pointed out was that, despite a maladroit phrase Mr. Hagel once used – for which he apologized – and unsubstantiated claims of a similar sin, there was no actual evidence for the charge made by some that the man is “anti-Israel” or “anti-Semitic.” I pointed out, too, that a Secretary of Defense does not make U.S. foreign policy, and that it behooves us American Jews, in a world containing all too many all too real enemies of Jews, to not imagine, or inadvertently create, new ones.)

An edifying postscript to the Hagel hubbub emerged this week. In the midst of all the sturm und drang over the nomination, a conservative website (a “news source,” as it happens, that the angry letters to the editor suggested I consult for my education) reported suspicions that Mr. Hagel had received foreign funding from a group called “Friends of Hamas.” The story, of course, spread across the blogosphere with the speed of a brazen lie, which is precisely what it was. There is no such group.

And this week, the tale of how the charge came about was told – by the fellow who originated it, albeit unwittingly.

New York Daily News reporter Dan Friedman explained how, digging for a story, he had asked a Republican aide on Capitol Hill if Mr. Hagel’s Senate critics knew of any controversial groups that he may have addressed. Had the nominee perhaps “given a speech to, say, the ‘Junior League of Hezbollah’… or the ‘Friends of Hamas’?” the journalist jocularly queried.

Not realizing that politicians and their aides can be humor-impaired, Mr. Friedman compounded his little pre-Purim joke with a follow-up e-mail to the aide, asking if anything had turned up about that “$25K speaking fee from Friends of Hamas?”

Before Mr. Friedman could say mishenichnas Adar, the website had its scoop.

“Senate sources told Breitbart News exclusively,” the report, by one Ben Shapiro, informed its readers, “that they have been informed one of the reasons that President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has not turned over requested documents on his sources of foreign funding is that one of the names listed is a group purportedly called ‘Friends of Hamas.’”

And so, other websites immediately ran with the fiction. For good measure, Mr. Shapiro tweeted the link to his nearly 40,000 Twitter followers. Countless inboxes welcomed the “news”; countless heads nodded knowingly.

Whether or not Mr. Hagel turns out to be a happy surprise or great disappointment, one thing is undeniable: Anyone who values truth – the “signature” of the Divine, in the Talmud’s description – must make painstaking efforts to be objective, and eschew the siren-call (to mangle a metaphor) of the bandwagon.

Lies, overt and subtle, large and small, are, unfortunately, the fertilizer (in both senses of the word) of politics today. They are regularly foisted upon us all from every political corner and by both major parties’ “activists.” We are being gently misled and manipulated whether our source of information is right-wing talk radio or NPR, Rush Limbaugh or Diane Rehm. True objectivity and fair-minded discussion are as rare as Yangtze River dolphins.

And so, if we really insist on having opinions about political matters, we do well to absorb different perspectives, to weigh them fairly and to realize, constantly and deeply, that not everything portrayed as obvious or fact is necessarily either.

Prisoners of Preconceptions

Even with protective cover from Senator Charles E. Schumer – as determined a defender of Israel as there ever was – and even speaking only for myself, I hesitate to address the overwrought reaction in some corners to President Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. I don’t want to be labeled an anti-Semite too.

Not that there wasn’t or isn’t cause for some concern about Mr. Hagel. He is famously on record as having once referred to AIPAC as the “Jewish lobby,” and in the past questioned the wisdom of too hastily employing military force against Iran. But such things – you might want to sit down – do not an anti-Semite or unconscionable isolationist make.

At least not to reasonable eyes. Unfortunately, some tend to the visceral rather than the rational in such matters, prisoners of their own preconceptions. Despite the clear and ample evidence to the contrary, they just can’t stop pegging the president as less than committed to Israel’s wellbeing, and can be counted on to shoot at anything that moves if Mr. Obama set it into motion. So Mr. Hagel was immediately judged by some as bad for Israel, if for no other reason than that his nominator was the Dark Prince himself. Thus does circular reasoning attain its orbit.

A mindset is a terribly hard thing to move.

Mr. Hagel may turn out to be unsuited for the job of Defense Secretary. But that is a judgment to be made by Congress, based on the candidate’s testimony at his confirmation hearings – not by a trigger-happy pundit gallery.

Do Mr. Hagel’s critics even know what a Secretary of Defense does?

Hint: He does not make U.S. foreign policy. He oversees the operations of the military and, as part of the chain of military command, is answerable to the Commander in Chief. (Of course, that will hardly reassure those who choose to project their darkest fears onto Mr. Obama; cue the circular reasoning. And so, unfortunately, it goes.)

Particularly irksome is that the media has adopted the moniker “pro-Israel” for what would more accurately be characterized as pro-Likud. Employing the phrase implies that, somehow, anyone who dares to wonder whether every building project in Israel is a geopolitically wise thing to do is somehow insufficiently concerned with the country’s future. But not every legitimate right is rightly acted upon. I can understand (although I’m no less irked for the fact) how a believer in Israel as a re-established Davidic Monarchy might see Israel’s thumbing its nose at the (admittedly largely unsavory) family of nations as some sort of religious imperative. But that is not the approach of mainstream Orthodox Jewish theology – i.e. the teachings of the universally recognized Torah leaders of past generations and our own.

No, those interpreters of Judaism insist that the Messianic Age is yet to come, and counsel Jews as individuals to embrace modesty, and as a people to demonstrate a degree of deference to the nations of the imperfect world in which we float. Just as Jews in the Middle Ages or pre-Holocaust Europe had to pay (often distasteful but nonetheless necessary) homage to the nobleman or Czar, so do contemporary Jews bear a responsibility to take the feelings – yes, even unjustified, even hypocritical, even evil-fueled feelings – of the rest of the world into account. Even in a world with a Jewish state in the ancestral Jewish land, we are still in exile.

Maybe the Israeli right is right, and there’s a rational reason why contested population centers must be expanded, no matter what the United States or European countries say. Maybe there’s some larger-picture strategic need to do such things even if they alienate important global players, even Israel’s closest friends. But one thing is clear – or should be: Doubting those maybes, as all recent American administrations have done, is no sign of unconcern with Israel, and certainly not of anti-Semitism.

Senator Schumer spent some time with Mr. Hagel the other day, and emerged from their long conversation satisfied that the nominee’s views, both concerning Iran and Israel, are in consonance with his own. Mr. Hagel apologized for calling AIPAC a “Jewish lobby.”

To be sure, even if the nominee is approved, none of us can know the future. “In no man do I place my trust,” goes the prayer taken from the Zohar, advice for the ages. We cannot assume that even leaders who have demonstrated good will toward the Jewish people (or, today, the Jewish state) will always remain the same. But neither do we have the right to indulge in unwarranted panic attacks.

No question about it, it’s a dangerous world for Jews and for Israel. But that’s all the more reason for eschewing alarmism. We have all too many all too real enemies out there. What we really don’t need is to imagine, or create, new ones.

Never Going Back Again

American politicians tainted by scandal and forced to resign their positions usually explain that they want “to spend more time with their families.” Issam al-Aryan, a top advisor to Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, who recently tendered his own resignation said he is overly “occupied with my work as head of the Freedom and Justice Party bloc in the Shura Council.” He must not lack for family time.

The scandal that attached itself to Mr. al-Aryan was that he had publicly invited Israeli Jews of Egyptian descent to return to their erstwhile home. “Egypt,” he told Jews who had fled Egypt over the years, “is worthier of you than Israel,” which, he explained, is a “racist, occupying entity.”

There was no rush of Egypt-born Israelis to take up Mr. al-Aryan’s offer, or for that matter any evidence of even a single Jewish individual who was enticed by the prospect of leaving a modern, prosperous country, not to mention his ancestral homeland, for a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated pit of poverty and political upheaval. What did come quickly, though, was the backlash against the Egyptian politician for his impudent invitation.

Muslim Brotherhood spokesperson Mahmoud Ghozlan, for example, lambasted Mr. al-Aryan, insisting that “Egyptian Jews are criminals who must be punished for what they did to Egypt and the Palestinians.” An associate of Mr. Morsi informed an Egyptian newspaper that Mr. al-Aryan does not represent the presidency’s stance and is not an official presidential spokesman.

In the wake of the criticism, Mr. al-Aryan hastened to clarify his message, explaining that his wish for Jews to return to Egypt had only been “in order to make room [in Israel] for the Palestinians,” and that, in any event, “there will be no such thing as Israel” within a decade.

Alas, it was too late for clarifications. Mr. al-Aryan came to be convinced that he needed more time if not for his family then for his Freedom and Justice Party duties. Pronouncements in Egypt about Israel these days, he now realizes, are better left to people like Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood cleric Mahmoud al-Masri, who recently told his audience on Egyptian television that “Allah willing, Israel will be annihilated because the prophet Muhammad said so,” adding for good measure that “ultimately, not a single Jew will be left on the face of the earth.” No Oliver Cromwell, he; the Hitlerian model is clearly his preference.

(Interestingly, comments about Jews made by Mr. Morsi himself recently came to light. In 2010, he referred to the “descendants of apes and pigs,” who “have been fanning the flames of civil strife wherever they were throughout their history” and who are “hostile by nature.” And he told a rally that year that “We must never forget to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for… Zionists, for Jews.” The White House and State Department called the comments “deeply offensive” and “unacceptable.” Even The New York Times editorialized that Mr. Morsi’s words were “repulsive,” “scurrilous” and “pure bigotry.”)

Melodiously chanted in the Jewish background as Mr. al-Aryan’s travails transpired were the Torah portions read in synagogues around the world, about the original Jewish sojourn in Egypt, the one that came to a famous end with the ten plagues and the exodus.

That first emigration from Egypt, of course, also begat some – how shall we put it? – negativity on the part of the Egyptian leadership of the time. Whether Pharaoh, in leading his army to pursue the Jews he had earlier begged to leave wanted to return them to Egypt (presaging Mr. al-Aryan’s ill-fated approach) or to wipe out the Jewish people entirely (providing Mr. al-Masri with yet another historical model), he made his move and met his fate.

Interestingly, despite that determined pursuit and the fact that Egypt enslaved our ancestors for hundreds of years, we Jews are charged by the Torah to “not hate an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land” (Devarim 23:8). We must actually feel a degree of gratitude for Egypt’s having hosted our forebears for so long.

And yet, in no less than three places, the Torah forbids Jews from returning to live in Egypt (e.g. Devarim 17:16). There’s something about the place, it seems, that contraindicates a Jewish presence.

So Mr. al-Masri needn’t fret – at least not about any large-scale return of Hebrews from their ancestral land. He might though, along with Mr. Ghozlan and Morsi, give some cautious thought to the synagogue Torah readings these weeks.

Send Obama a Message

The Obama administration considers Israel a sponsor of terror —at least according to Dick Morris, the disgraced ex-advisor to Bill Clinton, and a host of self-styled “conservative” media. The news was shocking—well, maybe not to the clever folks who knew all along that the president is a secret Muslim, but certainly to the rest of us.

What turned out to be the case is that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency maintains a list of 36 “specially designated countries” whose immigrating citizens get extra scrutiny because their nations “promote, produce or protect terrorist organizations or their members.” Note the word “or.”

“Produce,” in this context, means that terrorists reside in the country. Thus, countries like the Philippines and Morocco, along with Israel, are on the list. Approximately a million and a half Israeli citizens are Arabs—many of whom have ties to Arab residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. So no, with apologies to Mr. Morris et al, the U.S. does not consider Israel a terror sponsor.

What makes some people all too ready to misrepresent such things is that many Americans, especially in the Jewish community, have deep concerns about President Obama’s Middle East policies. My personal view is that these concerns are overblown. While I realize there are other opinions, as far as I can tell Mr. Obama’s positions on building in the settlements and on the terms of Israel-Palestinian negotiations have been American policy since long before his presidency.

Even doubters of Mr. Obama’s good will, though, should recognize the import of the administration’s declared readiness to veto any U.N. Security Council resolution recognizing Palestinian statehood. That stance risks the U.S.’s international political capital and may even, G-d forbid, come to threaten Americans’ safety. Might it speak more loudly about the president than his opposition to new settlements?

Speaking equally loudly is what happened on September 9, when Mr. Obama acted swiftly to warn Egyptian authorities that they had better protect Israeli embassy guards in Cairo besieged by a mob. When Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minster Barak were unable to reach the apparently indisposed Egyptian military leader Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spent hours hounding the Egyptian, finally reaching him at 1 AM to let him know that if anything happened to the Israelis, there would be “very severe consequences.” Egyptian soldiers protected the hostages until an Israeli Air Force plane safely evacuated them.

Mr. Netanyahu later recounted that he had asked for Mr. Obama’s help and that the president had replied that he would do everything he could. “And so he did,” testified the Prime Minister.

It may not be meaningful for many, but I was struck two days later on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks when the president, betraying his Islamic beliefs (joke!), chose for his reading at the New York ceremony the 46^th chapter of Tehillim. The one including the words (in the White House’s translation):

“Though its waters roar and be troubled… there’s a river whose streams shall make glad the City of G-d, the holy place of the Tabernacle of the Most High.”

And: “The God of Jacob is our refuge.”

Whatever our takes on this or that statement or position, hard facts are not up for debate.

Let’s not forget some such facts: The Obama administration has provided more security assistance to Israel than any American administration; he has repeatedly declared (first in 2009 in Cairo during his speech to the Arab world) that the bond between the U.S. and Israel is “unbreakable”; his Secretary of State lectured Al-Jazeera that “when the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon they got Hezbollah and 40,000 rockets and when they pulled out of Gaza they got Hamas and 20,000 rockets”; his State Department has condemned the Palestinian Authority’s “factually incorrect” denial of the Western Wall’s connection to the Jewish people; and much more.

Last week, in the lead-up to a Congressional election in Brooklyn in which Jews had ample other reason to vote against the Democratic candidate, some ads presented the contest as an opportunity to “Send Obama a Message”—which some Jews took to mean an angry message about Israel.

Many thoughtful Jews, though, have a different message for Mr. Obama: Thank you.

Zero-Sum Game

Anyone entertaining the notion that the advancement of “gay rights” needn’t adversely affect those with moral objections to the normalization of homosexual unions should pay close attention to what happened to Christopher Kempling.

The British Columbia public school teacher was suspended for a month without pay and received a black spot on his professional record for writing letters critical of the practice of homosexuality to a local newspaper, the Quesnel Cariboo Observer.

The Canadian Charter of Rights protects citizens’ freedom of expression and religion, but that was apparently no bar, in the eyes of the British Columbia Supreme Court, to a local teachers panel’s punishment of Mr. Kempling.

As one of the justices wrote for the court in denying Mr. Kempling’s appeal of the penalty: “Discriminatory speech is incompatible with the search for truth. In addition, [Mr. Kempling’s] publicly discriminatory writings undermine the ability of members of the targeted group, homosexuals, to attain individual self-fulfillment…”

The lesson of the Kempling case transcends its Canadian context; it is of no less import to Americans or Europeans. The issue of “gay rights” is not benign; the struggle between those who wish to make homosexuality acceptable as a normative lifestyle and those who do not is, simply put, a zero-sum game. To the degree that the gay movement’s program is advanced, those who adhere to a traditional moral system will be not merely ignored, but vilified, demonized and penalized.

That “gay rights” zero-sum truism is at the core of a legal brief recently submitted to the United States Supreme Court by the organization I am privileged to represent, Agudath Israel of America. We asked the Court to review and reverse a lower court’s decision permitting the state of Connecticut to disqualify the Boy Scouts from inclusion on a list of charities to which state employees were encouraged to contribute. The reason the Boy Scouts were disqualified was the group’s policy of not allowing homosexuals to serve as scoutmasters or in leadership positions

One of the brief’s main points is that decisions like the lower court’s patently malign traditional religious groups for their deeply-held beliefs. As The New York Sun noted in an editorial shortly after the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s “same-sex marriage” ruling, “with a few exceptions, this cause [the acceptance of same-sex marriage] is being advanced through the denigration of Jews and Christians who adhere to the fundamentals of religious law.”

The editorial went on to recount the reaction of “a friend” of the editorialist to the opposition to same-sex marriages asserted by “Agudath Israel and its Council of Torah Sages.” Said the gentleman: “I see them as bigots…”

Similarly, an American Civil Liberties Union advertisement several years ago in The New York Times compared those who object on moral grounds to homosexuality as akin to vicious racists of yesteryear. Those who espouse a traditional view of acceptable sexual behavior, the ACLU asserted, seek “to hide behind morality.” But, the ad continues, “we all know a bigot when we see one.”

If disapproving of homosexual behavior is bigotry, then adherents of most religions – along with nonbelievers who nevertheless accept the validity of the traditional moral code – are, ipso facto, villains. What is more, there is no reason why the label is any less applicable to those who disapprove of other affronts to the moral ideal – like multi-partner or incestuous relationships. Either morality has true meaning and trumps what some people, even many people, wish to do, or it does not.

And if moral scruples are indeed conceptually devolved into bigotry, there will be not only denigration and derision of traditionalists, but discrimination and legal action against them too – as Mr. Kempling’s treatment and Connecticut’s action against the Boy Scouts well demonstrate.

The scenario of Catholic organizations, or Jewish religious schools, or devout Muslims being branded – and even prosecuted as – bigots, simply for operating or living according to deeply-held religious convictions is not unthinkable.

It is, on the contrary, but the logical outcome of a process that began as a plea for “rights,” is continuing as a demand that marriage be redefined, and that – unless it is stopped soon – will end as a triumphant crushing of the ability of religious, or just morality-minded, citizens and communities to live their lives freely, in accordance with their consciences and beliefs.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life