This year, Tisha B’Av (the annual Jewish fast day commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem) once again reminded us of the dangers of “gratuitous hatred” without rhyme or reason for one’s fellow Jews; the kind of hatred for its own sake, which seems more recently to have become part of our everyday Israeli reality. Divisions between Ultra-Orthodox and Secular Jews or the bitter antagonism towards the settlers in the West Bank are of course not new, but they have lost nothing of their malevolent edge. No less distressing are the actions of those Israeli lecturers who defend the international anti-Israel boycott in the name of academic freedom and the much larger numbers of those who denounce any criticism or sanctions against these boycotters as “McCarthyism”.

Such harsh polemics are happening at a time of unprecedented hatred towards Israel as a nation within the international community. The hysteria surrounding the Gaza flotilla brought this trend to new heights of hypocrisy. It reflects the ongoing campaign of branding Israel as the “Jew” of nations – libeling it as a racist, bloodthirsty, pariah-state. At the same time, American Jewish support for Israel’s policies, especially among liberals, has also been increasingly eroded. This has potentially dangerous consequences for our relations with the Diaspora, already tense over the issue of non-Orthodox conversions.True, the majority of Americans still show remarkable empathy with Israel’s dilemmas and President Obama has more recently chosen to adopt a somewhat friendlier tone to Israel’s prime minister. Many European leaders, while less supportive than the United States, are by no means blind to Israel’s security needs, to the Iranian threat or to the disastrous implications of Hamas’s violent rule in Gaza. Nevertheless, the international weakening of Israel’s legitimacy as a state remains deeply troubling. It has been accompanied by an unprecedented explosion of global anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism during the past few years.    

The assault from without is not unconnected with a growing sense of spiritual disorientation and deeply conflicted Jewish identities within Israeli society. This trend is, if anything, the most dangerous of all since social, economic and cultural alienation are centrifugal forces – accelerating the divisive schisms that already exist in Israeli society. Against such a background, the disaffectation of the Israeli academic elite from the Zionist ethos is bound to have particularly demoralizing consequences.

For some of the anti-Zionist or “post-Zionist” intellectuals the foundation of the Jewish state in 1948 is evidently the “original sin” that has caused all subsequent Middle Eastern wars. They have, in effect, uncritically adopted the Palestinian narrative, which is not only supported by almost all Muslim holy warriors and many radical leftists, but has also infiltrated an influential sector of mainstream Western opinion. If we are to move forward we will have to find more creative means to circumvent this destructive discourse and show the world that another path is possible – one which rejects Jihadi barbarism and terror but also excessive reliance on Israeli force alone. This will not be easy. We do need to be more sensitive to the suffering of our Arab and Palestinian neighbors. But they too must take responsibility for their own terrorist nihilism, self-deception, and historic guilt (such as the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands). They must once and for all end their tolerance of genocidal incitement to holy war against Israel.

This will necessitate a major effort of intellectual honesty, introspection and self-criticism on all sides. It also requires considerable political will, broad international support and an unequivocal recognition of the identity of “the other” and his legitimate rights. In order to come with clean hands to the table, we Israelis might begin by putting our own house in order. A good start would be to display greater empathy, tolerance and solidarity with the problems of the underprivileged – whether Jewish or Arab – in our own society. We also need to more positively internalize the tragic lessons of divisiveness and fragmentation in our own history, so that we can achieve a minimal consensus on what kind of Israel it is that we really want – both for ourselves, our neighbors, and the wider world.

Prof. Robert S. Wistrich is the director of The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/) and the author of A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House, January 2010).

Systematically and methodically exposes the myths and lies about the Arab right to the land of Israel.

This is a phenomenal book.The research is impeccable and the narrative one of the most compelling I have ever read.This book dispels the untruths and reveals the real truth behind the creation of the State of Israel.This should be required reading for every college student studying the Middle East and for that matter for anyone who wants to be enlightened with the truth surrounding the State of Israel. I consider this one of the most important books ever written on the Middle East.

An exhaustively researched, refreshingly honest, and extraordinarily well-argued elaboration of the case for Israel. Dr. Grobman correctly observes that ‘one cannot reason with people who do not wish to be swayed by facts,’ but for those who are still open to rational discourse, this book proves from a variety of angles not only that Israel has a right to exist, but that all free people should stand with her.

Grobman’s well documented study traces the uninterrupted Jewish connection with the Holy Land from the biblical era to the present. It will undoubtedly become an important reference for scholars and laymen wishing to acquaint themselves with the truth about the Arab Israeli conflict. It is also provides readily accessible information to expose the lies and distortions promoted by those seeking to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state.

An excellent historical source for nearly 100 years of the Middle East Arab-Israeli conflict.

Available At Balfour Store

Project aiming to preserve remnants of Jewish life around globe under threat due to budget cuts

By Tzofia Hirschfeld, YNet News, July 21, 2010

The Jewish people’s personal belongings are scattered all over the world: It has synagogues, prayer books, tombstones and cemeteries in various countries. Jews no longer reside in some of these places, and all they left behind is slowly disintegrating.

The “Journey to Jewish Heritage” project, initiated by Beit Avi Chai and the Zalman Shazar Center, aims to locate and document the remnants of Jewish life. Budgetary constraints now threaten the project’s existence, and if it is shut down, an entire world will be lost with it.

“We may be losing out last chance to document important evidence of Jewish existence in the Diaspora,” said Hannah Holland, the project’s director. “We are talking about disappearing communities – some of them diminished because of the Holocaust, some of them because of emigration. When we visit these places, we are met with remains of a splendid past and try to salvage last pieces of evidence of what once was, but now is gone.  

Wall painting uncovered in Chernivtsi synagogue (Photo: Avital Vibran)

“Beyond that, the program also gives students from Israel the opportunity to take part in a very moving encounter with people and places that are part of their people’s history. Students of all different backgrounds take part in this project – religious, secular, new immigrants, old immigrants, Israel-born. They come from a variety of academic fields: Architecture, painting, photography, history, and more.

Uncovering ancient tombstone in Greece (Photo: Tomer Appelbaum)

“After the training they receive with us, they go to document the disappearing communities and this gives them the rare opportunity to create a very strong connection to their people. They are given the chance to feel rare books with their own hands, to touch tombstones, to enter ancient synagogues – and this chance will be lost.”

Time is an important factor in the journey that Holland takes with the students. Time is not kind to the memories, and it eats away at them and breaks them to pieces. Each year, less is left.

“What we find today is not what could be found 10 years ago,” Holland said. “Last summer we uncovered a beautiful wall painting in a synagogue in Chernivtsi, which is now in the hands of the Evangelical Church. This painting is no longer there. Our documentation is the only documentation of it.

“The same applies to tombstones. In one of the places we found a tombstone from the 15th century, and in another place a student uncovered his grandmother’s tombstone by chance. In Georgia, we documented an ancient synagogue that may not still be standing. This project, in many cases, is the last chance.”

By DANIEL GORDIS, Jerusalem Post, May 28, 2010

Instead of trying to convince ourselves that it’s not really raining and that there are only a few clouds in the sky, we should be asking a few basic questions on the relationship between Israel and young American Jews

In October 1994, several days after kidnapped IDF soldier Nachshon Wachsman was killed in a failed attempt to save him from his terrorist captors, I was scheduled to teach my weekly graduate seminar at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. But given the horror of what had just transpired, I couldn’t even imagine simply teaching as planned. I no longer recall what had been scheduled for that day. But what I do remember is that I decided to scrap the usual fare and that I taught a text in memory of Wachsman.

As the seminar drew to a close, it was obviously quiet in the room. But just as the students were preparing to disperse, one looked at me and asked, “What does any of this have to do with us?”

More than 15 years later, I can still picture that moment, frozen in time. I remember exactly where she was sitting. I recall the looks of discomfort on the faces of some of the other students, but the nods of agreement with her question from others. And I remember that I had no idea what to say.

And I remember feeling unbearably lonely and wholly out of place. Lonely because it was clear that she was not the only one wondering why in the world we were thinking about Nachshon Wachsman, when my own heart was breaking, and out of place because I had no idea how to engage those students in a conversation about why he mattered to me. I didn’t know where to begin.

What I didn’t know then, of course, was that a question that seemed to me an aberration would soon become the norm.    

BUT IT has. Among young American Jews today, the public discourse has been captured by the intellectual and emotional heirs of that graduate student. Today’s is a generation of young American intellectuals and communal leaders without the instinctive bond to Israel that my generation possesses, even when Israel infuriates or embarrasses us. This is a generation of people like the talented writer Jay Michaelson, who wrote in The Forward, “I no longer want to feel entangled by [Israelis’] decisions and implicated in their consequences… count me out.”

Even in the moments of our greatest frustration with Israel, the people that I grew up with could never utter the words “count me out.”

Michaelson is but part of a massive wave. Prof. Jack Wertheimer, in presenting some preliminary findings from his newest study of American Jews (the specific figures are still being processed), noted a few weeks ago that most young American Jewish leaders (yes, leaders) “do not see Israel as central to Jewish identity and peoplehood.”

The evidence is virtually limitless. We’re witness to a tectonic shift in American Jewish life, but many people would rather ignore it than face the serious work that lies ahead. Thus, when I pointed out (“If this is our future,” Jerusalem Post, May 7) that following Brandeis University’s invitation to Ambassador Michael Oren to be its commencement speaker, the public discourse was captured by those opposed to his invitation, some people responded by pointing out the (obvious) fact that many Brandeis students (and probably the majority) supported the invitation. A petition in favor, signed by 5,000 people, was also reported. And a small number of articles in the Brandeis paper, opined one faculty person in a response to the Post, ought not be taken out of context. “Imagine someone telling you it’s pouring rain outside and you stick your head out the window and see there are just a couple of clouds in the sky,” he wrote.

But what we’re facing would be “just a couple of clouds in the sky” if the story that mattered was about Brandeis, which it obviously is not. Everyone knows that Jewish life on campus doesn’t get better than Jewish life at Brandeis. So why pretend that Brandeis is the issue? What is significant is that even at Brandeis, one of the crown jewels of American Jewish academe, as of the publication of my previous column, there had been four pieces in the student newspaper about the Oren invitation. The Justice’s official editorial and the head of the campus J Street chapter weighed in opposed. So, too, did a member of the computer science faculty. And a student representative to the Board of Trustees aimed to defend the invite by suggesting that Oren was being asked to campus not as a representative of the State of Israel, but as an academic.

WHY DOES any of this matter? Because in not one of these pieces did any of the four writers have a single positive thing to say about Israel. That, not Brandeis, is the story.

So instead of circling our wagons, seeking to convince ourselves that it’s not really raining and that there are only a few clouds in the sky, I propose that we ask ourselves a few basic questions: (1) Do we believe that the future of the Jewish people depends on what happens to Israel? (2) Do we believe that Israel can survive without strong and consistent support from the American Jewish community? (3) Given today’s younger generation, does a serious problem loom? (4) If we are facing a challenge, how did it arise? (5) And perhaps most importantly, what should be done?

To me it seems patently obvious that the secure, confident and creative Diaspora community that many American Jews now take for granted is directly dependent on a vital and flourishing State of Israel. Today’s young American Jewish leaders can neither recall nor imagine the days in which Jews hesitated to march on Capitol Hill, or the days in which one could not get a job on Wall Street wearing a kippa. That confidence is the product of Israel, and of the formative experiences that many American Jewish leaders have had in the Jewish state. The image of the Jew, no longer one of victim, but of utter confidence, was born in June 1967. In Israel.

Though many will disagree, it seems equally clear to me that were the State of Israel to be vanquished, the vibrant American Jewish life that we now too easily take for granted would wither away within a generation. And if that were to happen, the two great centers of world Jewry – Israel and America – would each essentially be gone.

And I believe that Israel’s military might, cultural flourishing, strength of spirit and more, important though they all are, are not sufficient to sustain the country. America’s support – financial, military and in the increasingly hostile court of international public opinion – is critical. Yet that support would be much endangered without an American Jewish leadership that instinctively feels deeply connected to Israel, that doesn’t ask, “What does any of this have to do with us?”

Today, we have that leadership. But the future is not as secure as many would like to believe. Nor is that future very far away.

SO HOW did this come to be? To be sure, Israel is partly at fault. It is notoriously horrendous at telling its own story, and has allowed those sworn on its destruction to capture world opinion. Nor has Israel been blameless in the interminable conflict with the Palestinians, of course. Israel alienates American Jewry with an anti-intellectual and often intolerant religious establishment. And the government still refuses to see the gradual distancing of young American Jews as a serious existential challenge, which it could become, if it isn’t one already.

But the responsibility for this widening fissure in world Jewish life cannot be attributed solely to Israel. Too many young American Jews have not been taught what they need to know to evaluate the conflict fairly. They know that they are opposed to the occupation, but they are much less clear on how the occupation began or what Israel has done in the past 43 years to seek to end it. Largely illiterate in Jewish texts or language, they are increasingly unaware of the cultural renaissance that Israel has made possible for Jews the world over.

Yet the problem is actually far more complex. At its core, the issue isn’t really Israel, or even American Jewish education. The real issue is the larger world in which today’s younger American (and Israeli) Jews live. Responding to Wertheimer’s study and the concerns it raised, Noam Pianko, a professor of Jewish history at the University of Washington, denied that there is a problem. As Gary Rosenblatt of the Jewish Week recently wrote, Pianko insisted that “boundaries don’t match the moment” of 21st-century America. His America, Pianko says, is “‘post-ethnic,’ symbolized by President Barack Obama, who he said represents racial fusion rather than division.”

Obama did not create this worldview; this Weltanschauung elected him. But Obama is perhaps the most eloquent spokesperson for this orientation, insisting, as he did in Cairo, that we ought not be “defined by our differences.”

Even if we set aside the obvious fact that it is precisely by pointing to differences that we define most things, Obama reflects the worldview that is shaping both young Americans and increasingly, young Israelis: Difference is not an ideal, but an unfortunate reality, best transcended whenever possible.

In such a world, it is no surprise that a successful young nation-state, which breathes new life into an ancient language, which fosters Jewish ingathering from across the globe and which enables a cultural regeneration unlike anything humanity has ever witnessed – a state which, in other words, celebrates difference – would be uncomfortable for many, and reviled by some.

All of which makes the challenge even greater. Because engendering the instinctive passion for Israel that many of us feel, and miss, requires swimming against the current of an intellectual culture now pervasive in America and much of the Western world. But Jewish history in general and Zionism in particular are proofs that the trends of Western civilization can be withstood, and even altered at times. The question facing us now is whether we plan to capitulate, or whether we’re willing to lace up our boots and enter the battle.

This will be no simple battle. But as Joshua said to the angel (Joshua 5:13), you are either with us or against us. Left versus Right, or Orthodox versus Reform are now secondary issues. What matters now is whether or not each individual, organization, movement, etc. sees defense of Israel’s absolute right to exist as a Jewish state as its foremost responsibility. Let all our differences abide. But let both leftists and hard-liners understand that today, they are not opponents, but rather partners, assuming that both are committed to Israel’s survival and to making the case for that survival day in and day out. The rest we can deal with down the road. For the moment, especially when any substantive chance for a peace deal seems remote, changing the Jewish conversation about Israel, and then the international conversation, is what matters most.

That will not be easy, but first we have to decide that that’s what we want to do. So let’s begin with honesty. We delude ourselves if we pretend that there are but a few clouds in the sky. The Jewish people will survive, and thrive, not by pretending that everything will magically work out, but rather by acknowledging the challenges that lie ahead, and by then bonding together and resolving to meet them head-on.

The writer is senior vice president of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. His most recent book, Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End (Wiley), recently received a 2009 National Jewish Book Award. He blogs at http://danielgordis.org

Palestinians, aided by the media, effectively exploited Jewish liberals by portraying themselves as the real victims, and Israel as the oppressors.

By Philip Klein , American Spectator, May 17, 2010

In the past, I’ve remarked to friends that the difference between a Jewish liberal and a Jewish conservative is that when a Jewish liberal walks out of the Holocaust Museum, he feels, “This shows why we need to have more tolerance and multiculturalism.” The Jewish conservative feels, “We should have killed a lot more Nazis, and sooner.”

I thought of this as I read Peter Beinart’s new essay, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” which argues that “liberal Zionism” is in danger unless groups such as AIPAC start to take a more critical view of Israel’s actions. Beinart, using a Frank Luntz survey of young American Jews as a jumping off point, writes:

Particularly in the younger generations, fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal. One reason is that the leading institutions of American Jewry have refused to foster — indeed, have actively opposed — a Zionism that challenges Israel’s behavior in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and toward its own Arab citizens. For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.

The problem, however, isn’t with leading Jewish organizations that defend Israel, but with liberalism. As sickening as it sounds, Jewish liberals see their fellow Jews as noble when they are victims being led helplessly into the gas chambers, but recoil at the thought of Jews who refuse to be victims, and actually take actions to defend themselves. It isn’t too different from American liberal attitudes toward criminal justice or terrorism, where morality is turned upside down and the lines between criminals and victims become blurred, and in certain cases, even reversed.    

In the case of Israel, what changed over time was that Israel went from a state that exemplified Jewish victimhood (a role that Jewish liberals are comfortable with) to one in which Jews were actually in a position of power, which liberals are not comfortable with. Meanwhile, Palestinians, aided by the media, effectively exploited Jewish liberals by portraying themselves as the real victims, and Israel as the oppressors. I experienced this first hand once when I went on a Birthright Israel trip (which is a paid trip for American Jews to travel to Israel). At one point, we went to the cemetery at Mount Herzl, which is sort of Israel’s equivalent of Arlington National Cemetery, and is located by Yad Vashem, Israel’s main Holocaust Museum. While stopping at the cemetery, we were asked to offer our feelings standing in a cemetery honoring fallen Israeli soldiers, and the first American Jew who commented was this liberal girl who reflected, “All I can think about is how many Palestinian graves there are.”

Israel, right now, is surrounded by terorrist groups dedicated to the nation’s destruction. Palestinian society teaches its children to aspire to slaughter Jews much in the same fashion as the Nazis indoctrinated their young. Suicide bombers who die in the act of killing Jewish civilians are celebrated as heroes. It’s a culture that glorifies death and uses women and children as human shields to gain sympathy from the international community — and especially liberal Jews. And the terrorists are receiving aid from Iran, a radical nation that vows to wipe Israel off the map within the context of seeking a nuclear weapon.

Yet against this backdrop, all liberal Jews want to do is to pin the blame on Israel’s efforts to defend itself, and engage in the magical thinking that more Jewish concessions will create peace and security. By doing so, they are helping the enemies of the Jews who are intent on finishing the job that Hitler started. While Israel has no shortage of critics, when Jewish liberals attack Israel, it’s that much more damaging, because Israel’s enemies can say, “See, even Jews admit that Israel is the oppressor.”

While I would never suggest that Jews who happen to be politically liberal would want a second Holocaust to happen, I do think that by participating in a campaign to defang Israel and prevent it from taking the actions necessary to defend itself, that Jewish liberals are making things significantly easier for those who do want to carry out a second Holocaust.

Luckily, though, there are a lot of Jews in Israel who are determined not to let that happen.

Philip Klein is The American Spectator‘s Washington correspondent. You can follow him on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/Philipaklein

Selections from classical Torah sources
which express the special relationship between
the People of Israel and Eretz Yisrael

Reprinted for Shavuot 5770

In our Pesach Special we called attention to the arrangement of the long list of expressions of gratitude to Hashem in the “Dayenu” song which suggests that the gift of Torah was an indispensable prerequisite to the gift of the land of Israel. For our Shavuos Special, focusing on the Festival of the Giving of the Torah, we offer the following insight on the special dimension which Eretz Yisrael lends to the quality of Torah observance.

The Jewish Learning Exchange (JLE) of Ohr Somayach offers summer and winter programs in Israel that attract hundreds of university students from around the world for 3 to 8 weeks of study and touring.

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Dedication opportunities are available for Torah Weekly. Please contact us for details.

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Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Talking-with-Itamar-Marcus-by-Joan-Brunwasser-100507-213.html

Talking with Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch

By Joan Brunwasser

My guest today is Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch. Welcome to OpEdNews, Itamar. Please tell our readers what Palestinian Media Watch is and why you felt compelled to create it.

Itamar Marcus

PMW was established 14 years ago. Since then, we have been reading the three daily Palestinian newspapers, watching and video recording Palestinian Authority official TV and studying all their schoolbooks. Our goal is to get an accurate picture of the internal Arabic language Palestinian world and especially what Palestinian leadership is saying to their children. We feel that if there is to be peace, it has to start with children and has to be founded on peace education. Therefore, what children are being taught in schools and what they are learning from music videos and children’s media are a better indicator of the real beliefs and goals of the leaders, and will also determine if we have peace in the next generation.

Our conclusion, unfortunately, has been that there are two different worlds: the English language world for foreign consumption and the Arabic language for internal consumption and there is often no resemblance between the two.

How different is that from what goes on in Israel? You enjoy real freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Israel. So, Arabs, and especially Palestinians, are often vociferously attacked in the Israeli media, aren’t they?

Arabs and Palestinians are never attacked in Israel for what they are. In fact, in Israel, it is against the law to incite. Palestinians are verbally attacked for terror promotion and terror support. After the terror attack in 2008, in which 8 Israeli teenagers were murdered by a Palestinian terrorist who murdered them while they were studying in a high school library, the New York Times reported that 84% of Palestinians supported the attack and killings. This is the kind of thing that makes Israelis angry and critical of Palestinians. The Palestinians have named summer camps and soccer tournaments for kids after Palestinian suicide terrorists. This likewise brings anger and condemnation.  

Did something specific happen fourteen years ago to impel you to create PMW?

Israel and the Palestinians were at the beginning of a peace process but, instead of bringing peace, under the new Arafat-led Palestinian Authority, terror was worse than ever before. There had never been a suicide bomber in Israel until Yasser Arafat was allowed into the region. We felt it was necessary to see if the peace Arafat was promoting in English was also being promoted in Arabic.
Unfortunately, we found that the worst of our suspicions and fears had been correct. In Arabic, Palestinians were being fed systematic anti-Jewish and Israel hate propaganda. The good will that had been built between Israelis and Palestinians for many years was being undermined by this continuous demonization under the new Palestinian Authority.

So, who reads PMW? Aren’t you preaching to the choir (those who support Israel)? And doesn’t everyone else just look at PMW as another propaganda tool for Israel?

Just the opposite. PMW is not seen as propaganda because the only opinion we express is the need for peace education. Aside from that we just let the Palestinians speak for themselves.

When we exposed, for example, that Palestinian Authority had been using music videos on TV to indoctrinate its children to aspire to die as child martyrs; that they would go to child martyr heaven with Ferris wheels and where children play with kites, everyone left and right was horrified. And PMW did not have to express any opinions. We just showed the PA TV videos at a hearing in the Senate. Hillary Clinton called them “child abuse”. Not only wasn’t it propaganda but the main beneficiaries of PMW were Palestinian children, because two of the worst Palestinian Authority propaganda videos promoting the glory of death as martyrs were taken off PA TV the next day.

PMW is doing a service to anyone interested in peace.

In a sermon on official Palestinian Authority TV in January this year, the cleric preached:

“The Jews, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger, enemies of humanity in general, and of Palestinians in particular ” The Jews are the Jews. Even if donkeys would cease to bray, dogs cease to bark, wolves cease to howl and snakes to bite, the Jews would not cease to harbor hatred towards Muslims” The Prophet says: ‘You shall fight the Jews and kill them”‘” [PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 29, 2010]

How can any reasonable person not condemn and not fight to eliminate that hate speech? How can any reasonable person not understand that Palestinian hate speech that calls for murder in the name of a religion will destroy the chance for peace?

There are Palestinians and Muslims who have spoken at conferences after I have spoken, who make a point of condemning the material I have shown and the hate propaganda that the Palestinians expose their society and children to.

Why are you in Washington right now?

The purpose of the DC trip now is to heighten awareness that as we start peace talks again with the active participation of the US government – the issue of peace education must not be left behind. It is too important to leave it for the end. Every day that goes by will make it harder to undo the damage.

Have you found American government officials and the media generally open to PMW’s message? How about elsewhere in the world – what kind of press response do you get?

We find government officials, Congress and MPs around the world very appreciative to receive the material on a regular basis. People whose job it is to know what is really going on in the international arena are happy to have this material. People are tired of opinions being expressed by “experts” and they welcome the opportunity to receive information that enables them to form opinions on their own with objective data.

In the last year, we have presented to the Foreign Affairs Committee of Congress and of Holland, and to MPs from Italy, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, and others. Media likewise is very favorable because we hand over material and let the media see, hear, and pass it on in a way that others can make their own opinions.

Can you tell us the story behind the link to the television show you sent me?

We often observe hate promotion from both the PA and Hamas. This is one example when a skit that was performed before a live audience at the Islamic University in Gaza and was broadcast on Hamas TV . The segment featured actors playing a Jewish father and son dressed in traditional Hasidic Jewish garb.

from skit on Hamas TV

The skit opens as the father instructs:

Father: “We Jews hate the Muslims, we want to kill the Muslims, we Jews want to drink the blood of Muslims and Arabs.”

[Turns to the audience:] “Are you Muslims and Arabs?”

[The audience responds in the affirmative.]

“I hate you, to please God.”

…

Father: “Shimon, look, my son, I want to teach you a few things. You have to hate the Muslims… You have to drink the blood of the Muslims.”

…

Father: “You must stand next to me and pray, my son.”

Son: “Okay, one moment and I’m coming.”

Father: “Where are you going, my son?”

Son: “I am going to wash.” [as Muslims do before prayer]

Father: “You’re going to do WHAT?”

Son: “To wash. You said you want us to pray.”

Father: “Muslims [do that], not us… We have to wash our hands with the blood of Muslims.”

Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas) April 3, 2009

Demonization of Jews like this and Israel is very common among the PA. Israel has been accused by a senior official of the PA of spreading AIDS intentionally among Palestinians, of trying to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque by injecting acid into the foundations, of doing 5,000 medical experiments a year on Palestinian prisoners, and much more. This demonization and the hatred it creates becomes the justification for terror.

I understand that this demonization also goes on in schools and can be found in children’s textbooks. So, how does one ever have a hope of overcoming all that hate and propaganda in order to build bridges toward peace?

It cannot be overcome without a total change in direction. That is why it is so urgent that we start now. Borders can be redrawn with one political decision but hatred is embedded. It can only be changed if there is a courageous Palestinian leader who will receive world support only if he replaces the hate promotion with peace education. If this happens it can be turned around. It will take time and that is all the more reason to start ASAP.

PA TV 4/29/10, Qatari Cartoon: Arab world as bottle sucked dry by Israeli baby

Given what you see and do on a daily basis, do you have to drag yourself out of bed every morning? Does it leave you completely pessimistic about chances for peace?

Actually, I have hope for a very specific reason. The Palestinians did not always hate Israelis they were taught to hate.
 As recently as 1966 1999, following 28 years of Israeli administration of the West Bank and Gaza which included daily contacts between the populations, the most important Palestinian pollster checked Palestinian attitudes on how they rated the “democracy and human rights” in the Palestinian Authority, France, the US and Israel.

It turned out that, after 28 years of daily contact between Israelis and Palestinians, Israel received the best rating in the world with 78% of Palestinians giving Israel a “positive” rating in democracy and human rights. The US had only 65%, France 55% and the PA 50% of Palestinians giving them positive ratings. The poll was done three more times in the next three years and Israel was always seen as the best in the world by Palestinians, with 77%, 75% and 65% giving Israel positive ratings in democracy and human rights.

So, open borders and contact between the Israelis and Palestinians created healthy attitudes and respect. It was the terror and hate education of that PA that ruined the trust. My hope is that peace education can turn back the clock. The same way the Palestinian Authority poisoned their people with hate education, they can rectify the situation with peace education.

That’s why I see PMW’s role as central to the peace process. When the Palestinian Authority decides to change its message and turn to peace, we will be the first to know it and the first to publicize it.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me, Itamar. Good luck with your work with Palestinian Media Watch. If you can be optimistic about the prospects for peace, then we can, too.

***

Original PMW website with archives

New PMW website

Author’s Bio: Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. We aim to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Electronic (computerized) voting systems are simply antithetical to democratic principles.

CER set up a lending library to achieve the widespread distribution of the DVD Invisible Ballots: A temptation for electronic vote fraud. Within eighteen months, the project had distributed over 3200 copies across the country and beyond. Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.

By ABE SELIG, Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2010

NYC chancellor shares wealth of experience.

An education system made up of multiple sectors, like Israel’s, is an acceptable model with potential for success, as long as all of those sectors are held to the same standards and the same level of accountability, New York City School Chancellor Joel Klein told The Jerusalem Post in an interview on Sunday.

“Different systems are fine,” said Klein, who sat down for the brief interview before addressing a conference on education reform, sponsored by the Jerusalem Municipality and Hakol Hinuch – the Movement for the Advancement of Education in Israel, at the Jerusalem International Convention Center (Binyamei Ha’uma).

“But no matter what the system is, when a child graduates, he or she has to be college- or career-ready,” he said.

While Klein stressed that he was speaking only through the lens of his experience in America, the chancellor’s eight-year tenure as the head of the United States’ largest public school system – it has more than 1.1 million pupils in more than 1,420 schools – has seen the implementation of a number of highly successful, albeit controversial, reforms that have turned New York City’s educational institutions around.

Asked what steps the Israeli education system could take to mirror such success, Klein said that ensuring the equality of skills among pupils emerging from secondary school – regardless of whether they were modern Orthodox, secular, haredi or Arab – was among the most important.   

“There are different ways to assess it, be it tests or portfolios,” Klein said of the necessary skill set. “But I would move toward a system where people are required to demonstrate those skills, because if they don’t have them, they won’t be able to compete – they won’t be protected from meaningful global competition.

“If you don’t have well-educated people in a country without great natural resources, [well-educated people] have to become your natural resource,” he said.

Klein described his warm relationship with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, and said his trip to Israel was a “sharing opportunity for both parties.

“I’m learning from the mayor,” Klein said. “His ideas on how to use technology – he’s teaching me. He understands that good ideas alone are not going to lead to success, and he knows how to navigate challenges, which you’ll always have when you’re trying to change the system.

“Education reform requires big thinking and a willingness to challenge the status quo,” Kelin added. “And one of the things that impresses me about Mayor Barkat is that he understands that.”

Klein said that he and Barkat had agreed to begin a joint effort regarding the “Time to Know” program, which was started in Israel, and makes extensive use of technology – essentially turning the classroom to an “online zone” in which every pupil is given his or her own desktop or laptop computer and progress is monitored digitally.

“We’re starting our efforts in September in New York with ‘Time to Know,’ and we’ll learn from each other,” Klein said of the partnership.

“It could be very powerful because I think having the benefit of hearing about what’s working here, what the successes are, is the way to enrich the way we think about it [in the US].”

Klein elaborated on some of the methods that had proven successful for him in New York.

“The most important thing is what happens at an individual school,” he said.

“One of the things I believe is that without the right leadership, you won’t succeed. We started what’s called the New York Leadership Academy, where we train about 60 to 70 of what I call ‘transformative leaders’ – people who understand accountability, data, budgeting. We train them for a year and then send them to start a new school or to try and assist a school that’s failing.

“Focus relentlessly on leadership,” Klein continued. “If you don’t get that right, you won’t succeed.

“Recruit, retain and support great teachers, because no school system will be better than the quality of its teachers. I’ve talked to the mayor about a ‘Teach for Israel’ program, because it’s a way to draft new human capital – and then to think hard about how to keep them. A lot of my Teach for America teachers are now principals. Such a program could have a huge, huge impact.”

The chancellor also advocated “as much transparency to parents and the press as possible.

“Let them know how things are going,” he said. “In New York, we’ve started putting a letter grade on each school, based on student progress. It’s controversial, but with regards to failing schools, we show them how to succeed, and if they continue to get F’s, we’ll close the school.

“I’ve probably closed some 80 schools and opened up another 400,” Klein said. “And I’ve done that to create a choice for the parents. In the old days many parents only had one choice. Today, every incoming high school student in New York City lists at least 12 choices for potential schools.”

But the most important thing was to “think big,” Klein said.

“One of the things I’ve learned is that too often we think small,” he said. “We say, ‘You can only make small changes, incremental changes’ – but education reform requires big thinking. It doesn’t mean that every [idea] will succeed, but if you keep doing the same thing and expect similar results, you’re doomed to fail.

“We have to challenge ourselves and the status quo,” Klein said. “And that’s a noisy process. But in a lot of systems the status quo protects interests but not the children, and therefore, it has to be addressed.”

By: Richard L. Cravatts,  Ph.D., Jewish Press,  April 28 2010

University officials need to make clear their campuses will allow many different views and perspectives and not countenance the exclusion of unpopular thought from the proverbial marketplace of ideas.

Of the many intellectual perversions currently taking root on college campuses, perhaps none is more contradictory to what should be one of higher education’s core values than the suppression of free speech.

With alarming regularity, speakers are shouted down, booed, jeered, and barraged with vitriol, all at the hands of groups who give lip service the notion of academic free speech – and who demand it when their speech is at issue but have no interest in listening to, or letting others listen to, ideas that contradict their own world view.

Earlier this year, two Israeli officials, Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon and Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren had the unpleasant experience of confronting virulent anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian Muslim students whose ideology on academic debate seems to be “free speech for me, but not for thee.”

Ayalon, who spoke at Oxford University, had his speech interrupted by several audience members, including one who yelled incessantly and called Ayalon a “racist” and “a war criminal” while waving a Palestinian flag, another student who loudly read passages of the incendiary Goldstone report, and a third student who remained standing for the entire balance of the lecture while she hurled anti-Israel invective.     

The genteel, soft-spoken Ambassador Oren did not fare much better during his visit to the University of California at Irvine, a notorious hotbed of radical anti-Israel sentiment. During the aborted speech to some 500 people about U.S.-Israel relations, which was loudly interrupted ten times, boorish hecklers screamed over Oren’s talk such profound observations as “Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech,” “I accuse you of murder,” “How many Palestinians have you killed?” and “Israel is a murderer.”

Oren is hardly what even his staunchest critics could consider an Islamophobe eager to trample Palestinian aspirations. A Columbia and Princeton graduate, he is the author of two seminal books on the Middle East – Six Days of War and Power, Faith and Fantasy. He is at least as qualified to speak about the Israeli/Palestinian situation as the raucous, boorish students who had decided, in advance of his UC-I appearance, that he was morally unfit to even appear on their campus.

Even after he took a 20-minute recess to let the crowd cool off and regain its collective composure, his return to the podium was greeted with more volleys of invective, shouting, and speech-stopping bombast from the Muslim students, eleven of whom – eight from UC-Irvine (including the Muslim Student Union president) and three from UC Riverside – were eventually escorted out of the hall and arrested.

The fact that UC-I’s habitually craven administrators, led by Chancellor Michael Drake, were even motivated enough by the students’ errant behavior to have them ejected from the event is a promising sign.

While the university has always claimed to be dedicated to encouraging debate and scholarly inquiry by letting the Muslim Student Union mount annual hate-fests to demonize and vilify Israel and Jews, the MSU has effectively hijacked all discussion of the Middle East on campus, and its events are not platforms at which opposing views are aired and discussed.

As is frequently the case when speaking about the Israel/Arab conflict, the discussion often glosses over the real problems of Palestinian culture, politics, and society (including its cult of death), and focuses all criticism on the perceived defects of Israel, Zionism, and Jewish power.

This notion that pro-Israel speakers and scholars do not deserve, on a moral or intellectual basis, an opportunity to participate in scholarly debate is a dangerous one, even if it comes from tendentious students. It starts with the assumption that Israel, because of its perceived moral defects and its oppression of the hapless Palestinians and the theft of their lands, does not even have the right to participate in intellectual debate, that academic free speech in Israel’s case can be modified and is not absolute.

And while Muslim students and other campus radicals have, at UC-I and other college campuses, seen to it that speech they do not approve of, spoken by people with whom they disagree, is shut down with the “heckler’s veto,” they have never missed an opportunity to invite their own stable of slimy, anti-Israel, anti-U.S. speakers.

A closer look at the ideas tossed about by some of the Muslim Student Union’s invited guests suggests both the moral incoherence and intellectual debasement that characterizes the human output of these events.

Amir-Abdel Malik-Ali, for instance, former Nation of Islam member and convert to Islam, has been a ubiquitous, poisonous presence on the Irvine campus who never hesitates to castigate Israel, Zionists, Jewish power, and Jews themselves as he weaves hallucinatory conspiracies about the Middle East and the West.

Speaking in May 2006 from a podium with an execrable banner reading “Israel, the 4th Reich,” Malik-Ali referred to Jews as “new Nazis” and “a bunch of straight-up punks.”

At a 2008 event, he claimed that “Groups like Hamas and Hizbullah” are not the real terrorists at all. No, the actual “terrorists are the United States; the terrorists are Israel!”

Another odious guest speaker who regularly makes appearances on the hate-fest circuit is Muhammad al-Asi, a Muslim activist from Washington, D.C., who has written that “The Israeli Zionist are [sic] the true and legitimate object of liquidation.”

Just months after 9/11, al-Asi hurled similar invective at Jews, in the context of Israeli oppression of Palestinians. “You can take a Jew out of the ghetto,” he said, “but you can’t take the ghetto out of the Jew, and this has been demonstrated time and time again in Occupied Palestine.”

The MSU is entitled to hear whatever opinions it desires. It is not, however, entitled to prevent other views from being heard on campus merely because pro-Palestinian students have decided they will not recognize the very existence or legitimacy of Israel or hear the ideas of individuals who are able to explain the Israeli side of the argument.

University officials need to make clear their campuses will allow many different views and perspectives and not countenance the exclusion of unpopular thought from the proverbial marketplace of ideas.

Concern for the Palestinians may be a commendable effort, but the exclusion and demonization of Israeli speakers and government officials as a tool for seeking social justice for that one group “represents a profound betrayal of the cardinal principle of intellectual endeavor,” observed commentator Melanie Phillips, “which is freedom of speech and debate,” something universities should never stop diligently defending. And they should certainly never abandon that pursuit to the baleful whining of ideological bullies intent on suppressing the views of others.

Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., is director of Boston University’s Program in Publishing. He just finished writing “Genocidal Liberalism: The University’s Jihad Against Israel,” a book about the worldwide assault on Israel taking place on college campuses.

Copyright 2008 www.JewishPress.com