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).

Av 16, 5770, July 27, 2010

by Rabbi Avi Shafran,  Am Echad Resources

The proposed Israeli conversion-reform legislation known as the Rotem Bill – now on hold for several months – became a sort of Rorschach test for many Jews’ fears.

The bill was introduced by Yisrael Beiteinu, a nationalistic and not infrequently anti-religious political party representing a largely secular immigrant constituency. The legislation’s essential aim is to ease the conversion process for non-Jewish Israelis – like thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union – allowing them greater choice of religious courts than they currently have.

To advance the bill, Yisrael Beiteinu garnered the support of Israel’s hareidi, or so-called “Ultra-Orthodox,” parties.  What allowed the religious parties to back the conversion reforms was the bill’s formalization of part of the decades-old religious status quo, placing conversion in Israel under the auspices of the country’s official Chief Rabbinate.  That, the religious parties reasoned, would ensure that the bill’s reforms would not result in a conversion free-for-all.

When the bill  passed its first procedural hurdle, a hue and cry rose up from Reform and Conservative leaders in America, who contended that it could potentially lead to a change in the definition of “Jewish” regarding qualification for automatic citizenship under the Law of Return.  (Currently, any convert to any Jewish religious movement is registered as Jewish for civil purposes.)  The bill’s sponsors vehemently deny that any such change could be effected by the legislation.   

The lion’s share of fear-mongering, as usual, has the hareidim themselves as the bogeymen. Rabbi David Stav, the head of a liberal Orthodox group in Israel, strongly supports the bill, and warns that non-Orthodox opposition to it, in the words of the Jerusalem Post, “plays directly into the hands of the hareidi political leadership.”  Even as he touts the legislation, he sees a hareidi plot: The dastardly hareidim crafted parts of the bill “as a means to incite the anger of the Reform and Conservative communities.”  Once again, it seems, the hareidim are the Jews’ Jews.  At least he doesn’t accuse us of poisoning the Knesset water supply.

And on July 16, the New York Times featured an op-ed that began with the baseless image of a “small group of ultra-Orthodox, or hareidi, rabbis” deciding that “almost no one” is Jewish; smeared hareidi religious authorities by associating them with a disgraced rabbi; called unnamed hareidi rabbis “demonstrably corrupt”; and fantasized how, should the Rotem bill become law, a Jewish Israeli walking down the street could be suddenly summoned to a court and have his Jewishness revoked.

Vying a few days later for the Best Insult Award was a respected Jewish columnist for the Forward, who characterized Israeli religious courts as a “rabble of rabbis… a counterfeit product, pretenders to a piety they daily demean.”  And that’s before he even got to the “arrogant hypocrisy” part.

Both writers are personal friends of mine (something I know will be true even beyond this writing). But their harsh words made my recent Tisha B’Av – when Jews mourn the toll taken by intra-Jewish ill will – particularly, painfully poignant.

My friends, of course, would defend their hysterics by claiming that the heat emanates from a deep desire for Jewish unity, a concept they seem to understand as requiring the Orthodox to sit back and watch quietly as the Jewish People becomes a gaggle of “Jewish Peoples.”  They fail to perceive Jewish unity’s real mandate here.

What most violates the ultimate oneness of the Jewish People are multiple definitions of the word “Jew” – what results from a smorgasbord of conversion standards.

When the heterodox Jewish movements first appeared on the scene, Jews who remained stubbornly faithful to the entirety of the Jewish religious heritage decried the abandonment of the Jewish mission and warned of the dreadful toll that would result from “conversions” lacking halachic validity. The decrying was roundly condemned as impolite (or worse) and the warning dismissed as the death rattle of an expiring obsoleteness.

But commitment to Jewish religious law hasn’t gone away, and it won’t ever.  What is more, in Israel, polls have shown that the majority of G-d-believing Jews in Israel – hareidi, Modern Orthodox and merely “traditional” alike – consider halacha to be the arbiter of Jewish personal status issues like conversion. That is why, for all their prodigious efforts and funding, the heterodox movements have not really taken hold in the Holy Land.

Which fact fuels the frustration and even anger in parts of the non-Orthodox world. So apoplectic are some at the prospect of halacha continuing to govern conversion in Israel, they have apparently taken the disturbing step of asking members of Congress to interfere in another sovereign state’s internal consideration of a piece of legislation.

Thought Experiment: Imagine Israel embracing a multiplicity of standards regarding conversion. In a generation or two, the Jewishness of every convert and convert’s child in the country would be suspect to all halacha-respecting Jews. What is more, and more tragic, descendants of non-halachically converted women in Israel who became observant (it has happened, you know) would painfully come to discover that they are suddenly not Jewish by the measure of their own beliefs. They (and, if they are themselves women, any children they may have had in the interim) would have to undergo a halachically valid conversion.  Worse still, women among them engaged to cohanim would discover that they cannot halachically marry their fiancés. Even greater soul-wrenching challenges would result from multiple standards in other Jewish personal status issues.

All of that, sadly, is already happening here in the United States and elsewhere. Orthodox Jews can no longer assume the halachic Jewishness of those presenting themselves as non-Orthodox Jews. And newly Orthodox young people have discovered that their parents’ or grandparents’ choices have inadvertently left them in terrible straits.

Whatever one thinks of the Rotem Bill, it raises an important, if uncomfortable, question: Is exporting American Jewish chaos to Israel really a road to Jewish unity?

© 2010 AM ECHAD RESOURCES

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

All Am Echad Resources essays are offered without charge for personal use, sharing and publication, provided the above copyright notice is appended.

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

Shepherd on a Mission

By David Suissa

If ever there were an Israeli who could lead Israel to peace with its Arab neighbors, it might be the Israeli diplomat I met the other day in the lobby of the Century Plaza Hotel. This is your classic Zionist. He stands tall and proud of his country, doesn’t ignore its faults, has a deep understanding of the issues from all sides and craves peace.

Of course, it helps that he’s a Muslim. Not just a Muslim, but a Bedouin Muslim.

Ishmael Khaldi’s official position is policy advisor to the Israeli foreign minister, but he’s a lot more than that. He has become a one-man hasbara machine for the Jewish state, traveling around the world to make the case for the country he loves. When he encounters anti-Israel hecklers who spout slanderous words like “apartheid state,” he has an easy answer:

“If Israel was a racist state, a Muslim like me would never have made it this far.”

This notion of going far came early for Khaldi. Until he was 8, he walked four miles to school from his tiny Bedouin village of Khawalid in the western Galilee, then the same distance to get home again. He has fond memories of the family tent, where he lived with his parents and 10 siblings. He calls the tent an “extraordinary thing,” because it was made of goat hair, which he says keeps you “warm and dry in the winters, and cool in the hot summers.”   

It wasn’t just the memories of the goat-hair tents that marked him. It was also the ancient Bedouin lifestyle and the stories he heard from his grandmother, Jidda, who passed away in 2005 at the age of 96.

Khaldi recalls an early life that revolved around caring for animals, usually goats, sheep and cows. Because the condition of the land changed with the seasons, Bedouins were always on the move, looking for somewhere to nourish their flock. Their nomadic lifestyle lasted for thousands of years. Today, Khaldi says, many Bedouins have settled in more permanent dwellings in villages.

The turning point in Khaldi’s life came when he decided, at 17, to visit America. He spent three months in New York City getting by on “one miracle after another,” including one episode when he jumped onto subway tracks to get to the other side. “Bedouins always look for the shortest route,” he says.

He met religious Jews in Brooklyn and Queens who gave him room and board. He learned what it was to be a “Shabbos goy,” but he also remembers the joys of Shabbat and listening to the Torah portion of the week.

When he returned to Israel, higher education beckoned. Bedouins today do everything in their power to send their children to university, “even if I need to sell my clothes,” his father once told him. So he enrolled at the University of Haifa, where he got a degree in political science and arranged cultural tours for overseas students, mostly Americans, to his Bedouin village.

After completing his college degree, he followed his brothers’ footsteps in the national service and rose to second sergeant in the Israeli police force. He recalls his emotion when, after completing basic training, he was handed a Quran on which to swear his oath to his country, Israel.

He says that throughout history, Bedouins lived a life of tension with governing regimes, whether Ottoman, British or Arab. His own tribe developed a good relationship with the early Jewish pioneers in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. Bedouins and kibbutzniks always had a deep affinity for one another. His grandmother even learned a little Yiddish. So it was natural, he says, to want to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces and develop a loyalty to the Jewish state.

What I found fascinating about Khaldi is that at 38, with a graduate degree from Tel Aviv University and an important position in the Foreign Ministry, he’s still a nomad at heart. He’s always on the move, going from one country and city to another, telling Israel’s side of the story. He’s even found time to write a book about his story (“A Shepherd’s Journey”).

Israel’s story is his own, he says. No one stopped him from moving up. It was his choice to wake up at 3:30 in the morning to work to make enough money to buy a plane ticket to America. It was his choice to get an education and apply to work in public service. Israel is far from perfect, he says, but it gave him the freedom and opportunity to get where he is today.

Maybe his nomadic background has been a blessing. Nomads get attached to values, not to land or ideologies. They don’t build permanent structures; they don’t get bogged down if the land doesn’t produce. They’re used to being fluid, to moving on and looking for more fertile areas. And they never abandon their flock, or each other.

What better values for a diplomat? Loyal, practical, resourceful and travels light. Oh, and one more – respectful of his elders. This one, though, has landed him in hot water.

“My father keeps asking me when I will settle down, get married and start a family,” he says.

The only good excuse I can think of is that he’ll first need to take care of another matter – making peace between Muslims and Jews.
David Suissa is the founder of OLAM magazine, OLAM.org and a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. He can be reached at Suissa@olam.org

Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 21 Jul 2010

The cooperation agreement between the ITF and the ODIHR gives an enormous boost to Holocaust remembrance and the fight against antisemitism.

DFM Ayalon and ODIHR Director Lenarcic sign agreement (Photo: MFA)

(Communicated by the Deputy Foreign Minister’s Bureau)

This morning (21 July 2010), a cooperation agreement between the ITF (Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research) and the ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) was signed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem, in the presence of Deputy FM Daniel Ayalon. The ODIHR is an operative branch of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe)

This year, Israel was chosen for the first time to head the ITF. Under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an agreement was signed today that boosts the strength of the forces in the global arena fighting against antisemitism and Holocaust denial. The agreement will bring about cooperation among 87 countries.

ITF Chairman Dan Tichon and ODIHR Director Janez Lenarcic signed the memorandum of understanding. DFM Ayalon welcomed the signing of the agreement and said that it gives an enormous boost to the fight against the delegitimization of Israel and antisemitism in the world, bringing 87 states for the first time into cooperation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has acted, and will continue to act, against these manifestations of hate and will promote any initiative whose purpose is to eliminate them. Ayalon added that there are elements that deny the Holocaust and are preparing the next one. We must preserve the memory of the Holocaust so that similar horrors and hatred will never be repeated and the world will become a safer place.

The ITF was founded about ten years ago at the initiative of the Swedish government. Israel is heading the task force this year, with Mr. Dan Tichon, past Speaker of the Knesset, serving as the chairman and Ambassador Yakov Rozen as the political coordinator. The ITF, which has as its purpose the preservation of Holocaust remembrance through education, research and memorial sites, currently has 27 members, mostly European, and sees the cooperation agreement as very important.

The ODIHR, which has 57 members, deals with educational programs and follows up on instances of xenophobic, primarily antisemitic, hatred. For this reason, the cooperation agreement is likely to help promote Holocaust remembrance, including the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and the fight against antisemitism.

Ambassador Janez Lenarcic is a senior diplomat who in the past was advisor to the prime minister of Slovenia. The ODIHR joins six other organizations belonging to the Task Force whose representatives serve as observers: the UN, DPI, UNESCO, the EU, FRA, and the European Council.

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.”

Av 5, 5770, 16 July 10 08:19

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, (Israelnationalnews.com)

Note to our readers: The following video is intended for women only. It features a woman singer and clips of her performing, which involves halakhic issues for men.  Israel National News is posting this important statement by the performer in order not to deprive women viewers from seeing and hearing it.

A young woman from Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, has succeeded the Latma website’s “We Can Con the World” spoof on the IHH flotilla terror activists as Israel’s best PR representative.

Yedida Freilich, a daughter of Australian immigrants, plays the piano and sings an original song that decries international hypocrisy towards Israel as the video shows scenes of terrorists and their attacks on Israelis. The video, produced by photographer Daniel Sass, also features screenshots of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit and retired South African Judge Richard Goldstone, who authored a scathing report on Israel’s self-defensive Operation Cast Lead against the Hamas terrorist infrastructure.

The lyrics were composed with the help of her father and brother, and the joint effort resulted from an assignment at the Rubin Academy of Music and dance, where Yedida, age 22, is studying.

The bi-lingual family wrote the lyrics in Hebrew and English, and Yedida sings the lyrics of “Only Israel” in both languages.

The following pictures are from the video:

www.IsraelNationalNews.com

© Copyright IsraelNationalNews.com

The following was written by David Brinn, Jerusalem Post

A 22-year-old pianist from the Gush Etzion settlement of Neveh Daniel has become the latest YouTube phenomenon with her pro-Israel hasbara song “Only Israel.”
Yedida Freilich, a composition student at the capital’s Rubin Academy of Music and Dance, wrote the mournful piano ballad along with her father, Gabby, and brother Yuval, following the Gaza flotilla incident last month. In only two weeks, the video has attracted over 350,000 views on YouTube and turned Freilich into a celebrity in nationalist circles.

“The song transpired by chance,” Gabby Freilich told The Jerusalem Post this week from Australia, where he was visiting family. “One of Yedida’s projects in school was to compose a musical piece for a political song. As it happened, the assignment fell on the same week as the flotilla.”
Freilich said he was moved to write down lyrics after seeing the world’s reaction to the IDF raid on the Mavi Marmara, which left nine passengers dead.
“Yedida, myself and my son Yuval sat around the kitchen table, and I came up with some English lyrics, and they added some Hebrew and we put together what we wanted to say – basically other nations can do what’s in their interest, but only Israel isn’t able to,” he said.
“Then Yedida put it to music.
It didn’t take her very long.”
The video clip of her moving performance on piano and vocals, with lyrics switching between English and Hebrew, is juxtaposed with images of Kassam rockets, St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, judge Richard Goldstone and the Mavi Marmara.
The lyrics decry the double standard Freilich says Israel faces when trying to defend itself, and includes couplets such as “Eight thousand rockets is no excuse / suicide bombers, it’s all just a ruse” and a Hebrew chorus of “Darfur is ignored, Russian troops in Chechnya, only Israel has no right to defend itself, because the world cares nothing about Jewish blood.”
“It was obvious to me that this was a hasbara [public diplomacy] song. Our efforts at explaining what happened with the flotilla were so appalling, and this did so well in explaining our positions, I knew it had to go on YouTube,” said Freilich.
He found a professional videographer, Daniel Sass, who volunteered his time, and together they chose the images and produced the clip.
Freilich insisted that the song appear with English, Hebrew and Arabic subtitles.
“I thought that it was important that the Arabs would be able to understand it,” he said.
“I think it’s a powerful song and a great tune. Yedida sings it from the heart. You can tell she’s involved in the lyrics and the performance, because it’s part of her life – her friends and her family are involved.”
Yedida was raised in Neveh Daniel – a community of around 1,500 residents south of Jerusalem with a large English-speaking religious population – where Freilich and his wife moved soon after immigrating from Sydney 25 years ago. He said that Yedida, one of six Freilich children, began playing the piano when she was twoyears- old. She attended the Rubin Academy High School and was part of an IDF band during her military service.
“Wherever there was an outpost of soldiers, her idea was to take a group and go play there.
She’s played on every border, whether to a handful of soldiers or a thousand. She was chosen to play at a reunion of the Palmah before 12,000 people, and she’s performed at Auschwitz for officers from the National Military Academy,” said Freilich.
He wasn’t surprised by the sudden popularity of “Only Israel,” chalking it up to not only the message of the lyrics, but to Yedida’s unaffected, emotional performance.
“Yedida is a completely open and sincere girl, and the dichotomy of those images being presented in that way, with no tattoos, lights and strobes, just her playing the piano, that honesty is transparent even if you don’t know her,” he said.
When Yedida presented the song as her class assignment, however, there wasn’t unanimous praise.
“Some people at the Rubin Academy were pretty shocked.
It’s a place where nobody hangs their political banners out. I’d say that almost everyone turned out to be really supportive, but one of her early mentors was appalled that she chose music to present a ‘horrific’ political message,” said Freilich.
Freilich, a radiologist, said that “Only Israel” was his first foray into hasbara.
“I had never considered it, because like almost every other Israeli, I could never say it as well as people who really know what they’re talking about. But I knew that my daughter could say it with emotion and from the heart better than anyone else,” he said.
“My hope for the song is that it achieves the aims of waking people up and opening their eyes to the situation Israel is in, and seeing the reality of what we’re facing. It’s a reality that Yedida, her friends and the whole country goes through. If it does something good for Israel, that would be a great thing.”