Petah Tikva, with the dubious distinction of currently being Israel’s only city with native neo-Nazi gangs, has just launched a municipal program to prevent Jewish women from dating Arab men. This is one of several programs throughout the country to prevent interracial dating and marriage.

Pisgat Zeev, a large Jewish settlement in the middle of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, has formed citizen patrols to prevent Arab men from “race-mixing” with Jewish girls, according to an article by Jonathan Cook. The patrol, consisting of a vigilante brigade of roughly 35 men, is known as “Fire for Judaism.”

Cook reports that “polls on the subject, in 2007, found that more than half of Israeli Jews believed intermarriage should be equated with ‘national treason’.”

A 2008 Ha’aretz report discussed a similar program launched in Kiryat Gat schools intended to prevent Jewish girls from becoming involved with Israeli Bedouin:

The program enjoys the support of the municipality and the police, and is headed by Kiryat Gat’s welfare representative, who goes to schools to warn girls of the “exploitative Arabs.”

The program uses a video entitled “Sleeping with the Enemy,” which features a local police officer and a woman from the Anti-Assimilation Department, a wing of the religious organization Yad L’ahim, which works to prevent Jewish girls from dating Muslim men.

In 2004 in Safed posters warning Jewish women that dating Arab men would lead to “beatings, hard drugs, prostitution and crime” appeared. Safed’s chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, was quoted in a local paper that “seducing” of Jewish girls was “another form of war” by Arab men.

Cook adds, “both Kiryat Gat and Safed’s campaigns were supported by a religious organization called Yad L’achim, which runs an anti-assimilation team publicly dedicated to ‘saving’ Jewish women.”

“The Jewish soul is a precious, all-too-rare resource, and we are not prepared to give up on even a single one,” says the organization’s website.

Dear JStreet,

I read your Iran policy this morning. I was momentarily buoyed by your measured remarks “that the immediate imposition of harsher sanctions on Iran would be counterproductive.” This appears to be the same position that APN has, and one I completely agree with. But further down in your statement you ominously add “the full range of options should always be available when considering possible US responses to any future Iranian threats or provocations.”

The “full range of options” can only mean only one thing: support for war.

The only “Iranian threats or provocations” so far have been Holocaust denial and the insistence on the right to pursue its own nuclear program (like Israel, India, or Pakistan). We may not like Holocaust denial, but is it a provocation?

It seems to me that the only provocation thus far has been Israel’s. Israel was the party that conducted a simulated attack on Iran last year. Israel was the one to send its navy up and down the Suez canal earlier this year. Israel is the nation which keeps making remarks about “when” to bomb Iran, not “if.”

Just as Iraq was “unfinished business” for many neoconservative, Iran is as well. How many wars are we going to permit neoconservatives to get us into?

I would like to see JStreet come out strongly against any kind of attempt by Israel or its American neoconservative friends to draw the United States into an Iran war. This, unfortunately, is the direction we are already heading. Already, most significant American Jewish organizations have been enlisted to support this coming war and JStreet should be a voice of sanity resisting efforts that serve only one purpose: to preserve Israel’s nuclear hegemony, not to protect it from some supposed “existential threat” – a threat that Ehud Barak has denied.

Please sharpen your message of opposition to any American support or participation in a war against Iran. We don’t need to be embroiled in any more wars.

Regards, – > JStreet’s Iran statement: > > Iran
> http://jstreet.org/page/iran > > J Street believes that an Iran with nuclear weapons, especially one that continues to support terrorist groups, would present a major threat to Israel, American interests, and a challenge to peace and stability in the Middle East. > > The Unites States and Israel have a clear interest in preventing Iran from possessing nuclear weapons. The international community equally shares an interest and responsibility in ensuring that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapons capability. > > We believe that an effective policy on Iran demands a comprehensive and multilateral approach. The United States needs to reach out to its international partners. J Street applauds the efforts of President Obama to engage the European Union, Russia and China, and other members of the international community in developing a common strategy on the question of Iran¹s nuclear program. > > J Street believes that US policies should be designed with the aim of influencing Iran’s decision-makers to arrive at an outcome that is in line with the above goals. > > We strongly support President Obama¹s efforts to engage in a diplomatic dialogue with Iran as the most effective means to achieving that outcome. That policy of dialogue needs to be combined with diplomatic pressure and the possibility of further economic sanctions. Diplomatic engagement should not be open-ended. But a policy of strategic patience and caution is required. Political “posturing” and the setting of artificial deadlines in our view hinders diplomacy. > > J Street believes that the immediate imposition of harsher sanctions on Iran would be counterproductive. The hardliners in Iran have a long and successful track-record in manipulating the threat of sanctions to bolster their own position. At a time when the hardliners are in some disarray, the imposition of tougher sanctions by the United States may allow them to consolidate their hold on power, and only serve to alienate large sectors of the Iranian population. > > We do not rule out the option of deeper and more targeted sanctions in the future. But to be most effective, any policy of sanctions requires broad international support and needs to be seen as supporting, and not replacing, diplomatic efforts. Endangering the unity of the international coalition by pursuing unilateral American or narrow “coalition of the willing” enhanced sanctions is likely to prove counterproductive and allow Iran to more effectively play off different actors in the international community against one other. > > J Street, like most Americans, was inspired by the Iranian people’s struggle for democracy. We were outraged by the violent crackdown of the Iranian regime on the peaceful demonstrations by the Iranian people for the upholding of their democratic rights. The US Government should play a behind-the-scenes role in supporting outreach to open channels of communication with Iranian civil society. > > J Street believes that the full range of options should always be available when considering possible US responses to any future Iranian threats or provocations. > > But at this time we urge Congress and the President to exercise strategic patience. We ask Congress not to move forward at this time with further sanctions and we are strongly opposed to any consideration at this time of the use of military force by Israel or the United States to attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Last Wednesday, according to Ha’aretz, Israel asked the United States for help in “curbing the international fallout from the Goldstone Commission report released this week, which accuses Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.” Apparently taking a page from her predecessor, John Bolton, Susan Rice’s first big job at the UN will be to thumb her nose at the institution. Or perhaps it’s not her thumb she’s showing the UN.

Ron Kampeas at JTA quotes unnamed sources that the U.S. will torpedo any attempt to refer the Goldstone report’s recommendations to the International Criminal Court:

A top White House official told Jewish organizational leaders in an off-the-record phone call Wednesday that the U.S. strategy was to “quickly” bring the report – commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council and carried out by former South African Judge Richard Goldstone – to its “natural conclusion” within the Human Rights Council and not to allow it to go further, Jewish participants in the call told JTA.

The report said the U.N. fact-finding mission investigating Israel’s conduct during the January 2009 war found evidence of Israeli war crimes. Israel has denied the allegations and said the report’s mandate was biased – an opinion echoed by U.S. officials.

The Obama administration is ready to use the U.S. veto at the U.N. Security Council to deal with any other “difficulties” arising out of the report, the White House official said Wednesday. The administration also has made clear to the Palestinian Authority that Washington is not pleased with a P.A. petition to bring the report’s allegations against Israel to the International Criminal Court.

The official said the Obama administration’s view was that the report was flawed from its conception because the mandate presumed a priori that Israel had violated war crimes and that the mandate ignored Hamas’ role in prompting the war through its rocket fire into Israel.

No mandate. Biased. Difficulties. Flawed. But no dispute with the Goldstone report’s basic findings.

This circling of the wagons will have several effects. One is that it seals the verdict of Obama’s Cairo speech as meaningless verbiage or, worse, the proof that a promise by the United States to start being an honest broker in the Middle East was a lie. The use of an American veto in the Security Council will also be rightfully seen as a confederacy of criminals refusing to be held accountable for their crimes.

But even a U.S. veto cannot completely inoculate Israel against legal actions.

Before the announcement, Ian Williams at Foreign Policy in Focus suggested that Israeli human rights abusers can still be prosecuted outside the ICC:

A U.S. veto might indeed protect Israel from the ICC, but a report with the credibility of a revered and honored jurist like Goldstone will certainly help mount prosecutions across the globe in other countries, particularly Europe. Indeed, his report already contains that fallback position (once again for Hamas too), invoking the universal jurisdiction of the Geneva Conventions as well as referrals to the UN General Assembly and other avenues. Many Israeli military and civilian officials already have to check with government lawyers before setting off on international trips. There will be many more, whatever happens in the Security Council.

Attorney Michael Sefarad, a specialist in international human rights law quoted in Israel News, believes civil cases are also likely to follow an American veto.

The Goldstone report is highly unusual, since it states Israel’s inquests into the operation were unworthy. The bottom line is that this report brings us one step closer to seeing foreign courts hear war crimes cases involving Israeli officials.

Such actions will then raise the precedent for Americans to be prosecuted for  illegal renditions, torture, and reckless murder of civilians by drones and air strikes.

See you in court.

On September 15th a United Nations Human Rights Council commission led by Richard Goldstone, a South African Jew, released a 545-page report on last winter’s offensive in Gaza, Israel’s Operation Cast Lead. The report accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes and potential crimes against humanity. The commission will forward its recommendations to the International Criminal Court in the Hague if independent examinations by Israel and Hamas do not occur within 6 months.

The report follows two others by Human Rights Watch, one issued on the 13th on the killing of unarmed civilians, another on the 6th concerning Qassam rocket attacks on Israelis. Both the UN and HRW findings are similar.

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, carefully documented cases of IDF killings of unarmed civilians, the bombing of ambulances, of the IDF preventing medical personnel from helping the wounded, the use of white phosphorus on civilians, and called on Israel to permit the UN to investigate the allegations. Israel consistently refused, choosing to impede investigations.

Israeli Defense Forces soldiers who participated in the Gaza operation recounted the use of the “Johnny procedure” (using Palestinians as human shields) and the shooting of unarmed civilians, 70 cases of which were documented by B’Tselem. Similar findings were released by a group of soldiers called “Breaking the Silence,” whom the government attempted to intimidate in the months after Cast Lead. On September 9th B’Tselem released its report analyzing the number of civilian casualties which again were consistent with the UN results.

A joint report by Israel Physicians for Human Rights and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society documented cases of shooting unarmed civilians and widespread attacks on hospitals and ambulances by the IDF. Employees of the World Health Organization, the World Food Program, and the UN numbered among IDF victims.

By UN and B’Tselem counts, almost 1400 people were killed in Israeli operations, while only 330 of them were militants. These figures agree with statistics from another human rights group, Amnesty International.

The day after the Goldstone report was issued, Israel immediately went on the offensive. It flew Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon to New York to kick off a number of meetings with Jewish and pro-Israel organizations. Ayalon reportedly told the American Jewish Congress they had to commit to “removing … and torpedoing” the report. The AJC dutifully condemned the findings as “grotesquely distorted” and attacked Human Rights Watch as well. Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League labeled the investigation an “initiative born of bigotry.” NGO Monitor, CAMERA, UN Watch, and other pro-Zionist “watch” groups all ratcheted up their attacks on the United Nations and most of the established human rights organizations.

But not all Jewish organizations were ready to vilify the Goldstone report. JStreet, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” PAC, had condemned Israel’s disproportionate force in Gaza in the early days of the military campaign but has cautiously refrained from publicly commenting on the report. The progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun wrote this evening of “the disgrace of Israel now trying to deny what everyone knows to be true.”

All this comes at an inconvenient time for Israel. It is simultaneously trying to swat down a damning UN report and trying to drum up support for bombing Iran. All this while defying the White House on the issue of settlements and imposing new travel restrictions on American citizens which use ethnic profiling.

In the coming days we are certain to hear a lot of rhetoric on the right of a sovereign nation to defend itself while the entire world is arrayed against it, and so on. This argument has kept its charge for a surprisingly long time, but the battery died after Gaza. Many of Israel’s problems are linked to increasingly ugly displays of nationalism, blindness of its own excesses, insensitivity to the people it has displaced, and to no longer caring whether it is accepted as a “nation among nations,” as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu titled one of his books.

The tragedy of the UN report is not that it was ever written, but that Israel is so determined to repudiate what others can so clearly see.

This was published in the Standard Times on September 21, 2009
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/20090921/opinion/909210306

How does this sound? The Iran War.

Zionist organizations in America are on the warpath. A war with Iran over nuclear exclusivity. The American Jewish Committee released a video on Youtube today entitled “This is the button,” inexplicably accompanied by lounge music, showing a toy truck followed by a terrorist explosion in Argentina attributed to Iran. Then the image of a child’s toy truck is followed by video footage of Iranian thugs on motorbikes terrorizing demonstrators in Teheran. Then videos of hangings of adulterers, and finally the words “This is the button” followed by another image “You don’t want to see what Iran does with the button.”

Clearly any nation that would murder civilians, suppress dissent, or make a mockery of its legal system cannot be trusted to have nuclear weapons. I certainly agree, but unfortunately these characteristics describe every nation that already possesses nukes, especially Israel.

The AJC goes on to inform us in its online petition to Congress: > “With enough low-enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon, and more centrifuges spinning each day, Iran is dangerously close to crossing the nuclear threshold. A nuclear Iran would particularly threaten Israel and our moderate Arab allies, and would destabilize the Middle East and threaten the security of the entire globe.”

“The security of the entire globe.” Why is hasbara so melodramatic? A nuclear Iran would indeed spell the last days of Israel’s nuclear hegemony but, according to Ehud Barak last week, “Israel is strong, I don’t see anyone who could pose an existential threat.” The Iran War will be all about Israel’s ability to remain the only nuclear power in the immediate region.

The nation’s synagogues have also apparently been enlisted in the Iran War by former American Michael Oren, now the Israeli Ambassador to the United States. Oren sent a letter to most American congregations, including mine, to be read during services at Rosh Hashanah. The instructions read: > “We are facing a critical juncture in our history. The Jewish community must confront this unprecedented threat before it is too late. I urge you as leaders of the Jewish community to impress this situation on your congregations. It is imperative to act now, at the start of a new year, and to join our voices in doing what [is] absolutely necessary to stop the Iranian nuclear threat.”

Meanwhile, hardly a peep from the mainstream media on Israel’s nuclear weapons program, which now has an estimated 150 to 400 nuclear weapons. The AJC letter sounds like we’d all be doing the Saudis and Egyptians a favor by defending Israeli nuclear hegemony. But those familiar with Israel’s history of violence are buying none of it. Egypt, for one, has categorically rejected this notion: > “The Middle East does not need any nuclear powers, be they Iran or Israel – what we need is peace, security, stability and development.”

The Saudis are equally unenthusiastic about Israeli nuclear capabilities and regard them as the most pressing security threat in the region: > “The existing Israeli nuclear capability is the most dangerous strategic threat to Gulf security in the short and medium term,” Saudi Prince Muqrin told the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

What Israel is doing now in Congress and within the Jewish community is reckless: drumming up support for bombing Iran and laying the groundwork for American military and economic support for this needless piece of aggression. One thing the United States does not need right now, and cannot afford, is a third war in the Middle East. If Israel wants to initiate the Iran War, it should be prepared to accept all costs and all consequences itself.

If nuclear non-proliferation is truly an American goal, then a nuclear-free Middle East should be the objective. And that includes Israel. Selectively choosing countries for the nuclear club, particularly those with a history of violence in the region, is a bad idea. And going to war to defend a foreign nation’s exclusive nuclear capabilities is not only a bad idea, it’s a dangerous game that risks pulling us into a third war.

The Iran War.

Dear friends and colleagues working for peace,

I will not be in shul today trying to get in a contemplative groove while listening to a special political program cooked up by the Conservative movement’s rabbinical assembly, defending the invasion of Gaza, demonizing the Goldstone report, and calling for an escalation with Iran.

The cardboard villains and victims, the unrecognizable portrayal of reality, the false piety and the contrived martyrdom would all just make my blood boil. Besides, defiling the sanctity of a practice that for centuries has called on us to look inward and change our behavior – by instead rejecting that call of conscience, rejecting repentance, rejecting justice, being exhorted to actually harden our hearts – all this is diametrically opposed to the spirit of the High Holidays. Maybe I’ll join the rest of my community for taschlich on Sunday.

Many American congregations like ours have chosen this year to make Rosh Hashanah one big Israel defense rally. But Gaza must remain one of our central moral concerns this year because it represents the most horrific aspect of an already horrific occupation by a nation in the Middle East that we so uncritically support and identify with. And by “we” I mean both Jews and Americans.

This imperfect, temporal nation like any other, governed by mortals, defended by fallible soldiers, and guided by the usual mix of both decent and immoral men, heroes and ideologues alike, has been elevated in the Jewish and Western imagination during the last century to being the actual Land of Moses, the land that G-d (and not the United Nations) gave to the Jews. With this gilded baggage, how could Moses’ land ever be corrupt or guilty of wrongdoing?

Discarding inconvenient Jewish history and the admonitions of prophets easily found in any Tanakh, the new Israel remains equally unblemished in sermons during Jewish High Holiday services – perhaps the one place one would expect the Neviim to actually be read. And who but a self-hating Jew like Richard Goldstone would dare to enumerate this nation’s crimes?

This is a tough year for the Jewish conscience. Tshuvah or salve? That’s the stark choice. Organized religion as usual peddles the latter.

So this year I thought I’d recall that very first “self-hating” Jew, the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is actually believed to be not a single person but several in a tradition of conscience and self-correction within Judaism itself. He had much to say on injustice, violence, bloodshed, outright evil, and the spinning of a web of lies to deny it all. This prophetic tradition continues today with men and women of less greatness, but Isaiah was there first. If the Goldstone report hit a nerve today, imagine the impact that Isaiah 59 did “back in the day”:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Isaiah59.html

L’Shana Tovah!

David

Dear President Obama,

The Jewish Telegraph Agency is reporting that your UN ambassador, Susan Rice, has slammed the United Nations’ Goldstone Report, which investigated claims of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead by both Israel and Hamas. She is quoted as saying: > “We have long expressed our very serious concern with the mandate that was given” to the Goldstone commission by the U.N. Human Right Council “prior to our joining the Council, which we viewed as unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable.”

I had hoped when I voted for you that your administration would be the first in some time to uphold international law and not simply the law of the jungle. If the JTA’s report is true, this is a disappointing development. The United Nations and the ICC most certainly do have a mandate to investigate these alleged crimes. I expect the United States to respect, not dismiss, international law.

Judge Goldstone, himself a South African Jew, led a commission that accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes and potential crimes against humanity. The commission will forward its recommendations to the International Criminal Court in the Hague if independent investigations by Israel and Hamas do not occur within 6 months. This face-saving opportunity provides a way for Israel to deal with these crimes itself. Your administration should encourage Israel to proceed with a serious investigation of its own, not simply torpedo the commission’s findings.

The Goldstone report follows two others by Human Rights Watch, one issued on September 13th on the killing of unarmed civilians, another on the 6th concerning Qassam rocket attacks on Israelis. Both the UN and HRW findings are similar.

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, carefully documented cases of IDF killings of unarmed civilians, the bombing of ambulances, of the IDF preventing medical personnel from helping the wounded, the use of white phosphorus on civilians, and called on Israel to permit the UN to investigate these allegations. Israel consistently refused, choosing to impede investigations. It is interesting that this is precisely the approach Iran has taken with investigations of its nuclear program.

Israeli Defense Forces soldiers who participated in the Gaza operation recounted the use of the “Johnny procedure” (using Palestinians as human shields) and the shooting of unarmed civilians, 70 cases of which were documented by B’Tselem. Similar findings were released by a group of soldiers called “Breaking the Silence,” whom the government attempted to intimidate in the months after Cast Lead. On September 9th B’Tselem released its report analyzing the number of civilian casualties which again were consistent with the UN results.

Another joint report by Israel Physicians for Human Rights and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society documented cases of shooting unarmed civilians and widespread attacks on hospitals and ambulances by the IDF. Employees of the World Health Organization, the World Food Program, and the UN numbered among IDF victims – again corroborating the others.

All of these reports, and several others, have been remarkably consistent. I have followed these events for the last nine months and have read the Goldstone report myself. For your administration to summarily swat these finding down is an affront to reality, to human rights, and to the obligations of civilized nations.

The day after the Goldstone report was issued, Israel immediately went on the offensive. It flew Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon to New York to kick off a number of meetings with Jewish and pro-Israel organizations. Ayalon reportedly told the American Jewish Congress they had to commit to “removing … and torpedoing” the report. The AJC dutifully condemned the findings as “grotesquely distorted” and attacked Human Rights Watch as well. Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League labeled the investigation an “initiative born of bigotry.” NGO Monitor, CAMERA, UN Watch, and other pro-Zionist “watch” groups all ratcheted up their attacks on the United Nations and most of the established human rights organizations. And then there is AIPAC.

I hope you are not buying into this public relations campaign at a time when Israel is thumbing its nose at your own administration’s call for an end of settlements and has added racial and religious profiling to Americans’ travel visas within Israel and the West Bank. I ask you: what do you intend to do about this latter issue? I expect your administration to defend my rights as a citizen a bit more zealously than a military ally.

Given what has happened at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and with illegal “renditions,” the United States is not in a position to take the moral high road and condemn Israel. But the US also does not need to summarily exonerate Israel either. Such an act would simply be regarded as a mutual defense pact between violators of international law. It would be better that both countries investigate their own actions. Here in the US, Attorney General Eric Holder has work to do in investigating violations of the Constitution and civil and human rights abuses here and abroad. Frankly, he needs much more support from your administration. In Israel the Knesset should convene a special investigator to examine the IDF’s excesses or crimes during Operation Cast Lead. For either nation to try to sweep its misdeeds under the rug would simply constitute criminal behavior followed by criminal neglect.

I look forward to a reply to these concerns.

The American Jewish Committee’s David Harris claims in an article in the Wall Street Journal that travel between Caracas and Teheran without visas represents a threat to the Western Hemisphere.

There are many countries which have reciprocal agreements that make visas unnecessary for unrestricted travel. Israel and the United States were once examples of this.

Until recently.

Israel now applies racial and religious profiling to American tourists. The AJC hasn’t uttered a word about this.

Harris is a good example of the aging “Israel first” mentality which, until the last few years, has had no serious competition in speaking for Jews in America.

American Jews are overwhelmingly committed to democratic institutions, but organizations like AIPAC, ZOA and Harris’ AJC can’t seem to stay out of bed with neoconservatives, Christian fundamentalists, and right wing racists when Israel is involved. Or they simply ignore American interests altogether, as the issue of visas demonstrates.

This has created an opening for dozens of Jewish peace groups, including the new lobbying organization JStreet, whose members prefer American democratic values where Israel and American foreign policy are concerned.

“Israel first” groups like the AJC would do well to ponder for a moment why it is that they put the word “American” in their names. They are increasingly mere mouthpieces for Israeli hasbara campaigns and have ceased to represent either American or Jewish values.

Shimon Peres, in his letter to the Diaspora, asks Jews to:

• seek peace, even as he insults Palestinians
• fight for Israeli nuclear hegemony
• oppose BDS by investing in Israel
• keep indoctrinating your children
• stand united with Israel, quoting scripture for political ends

This is all increasingly a tough sell from a state that consistently betrays Jewish values while appealing to them: > Message from the President of the State of Israel, HE Shimon Peres, to the Jewish communities in the Diaspora, on the occasion of the Jewish New Year 5770 > > Hopefully, the coming New Year will be marked by the realization of our aspirations: attaining peace, increasing security, promoting economic growth, safeguarding the future of the Jewish people and strengthening the ties between Israel and our Jewish brothers in the Diaspora. > > The opportunity to attain peace is beckoning, and must be seized, even at the cost of painful concessions. The Arab world’s intractable position to say “No” to negotiations, “No” to recognition of Israel and “No” to peace, has today been replaced by the three-fold “Yes” to the Saudi Initiative. The international community is keen to support endeavors to move the peace process forward, and I am confident that, with concerted efforts, the vision of a comprehensive peace can be realized. This will create stability, tranquility, security and prosperity for our children and their children after them. > > Nuclear arms in the possession of extremist fundamentalist hands pose a danger to the whole of humanity and not only to Israel. A broad and consolidated stand by the international community against Iran is called for. I pray that this terrible threat be removed from all of humanity and that the world may enjoy a new era of peace and security. > > Israel’s economy is showing the first sparks of recovery from the global economic crisis. The macro-economic signs are promising, and these indications are reflected in a growing scope of investments, the hi-tech industry is reviving and start-up companies are again sprouting. This is the time to seize the opportunity. This is the time to invest in Israel in fields such as alternative energy, water production, homeland security infrastructures, educational and learning-related tools, and in the stem-cell industry. This constitutes the future and it is in our hands. > > It is vital to build with our brethren in the Diaspora ties based on solid foundations of partnership and education. Indeed, the role of Jewish education in the Diaspora cannot be overestimated. It serves as the very building-blocks of the bridges that connect the Jewish communities abroad and Israel. It serves as the terms of engagement between the young generation of Jewish youth and our nation and as the stepping stones to a greater awareness of the significance of Israel-Diaspora relations. It will serve to preserve our rich heritage and traditions. > > The spirit of partnership must be enhanced in every area of Israel-Diaspora relations. We face dramatic challenges, which again underscore the necessity to stand united in moments of trial, responsible one for the other, as dictated by our Prophets. Indeed, a threat to the well-being of Jewish communities in the world equates a threat to Israel itself, and the fate of Diaspora Jewry is at the very core of Israel’s heart. > > Dear Friends, as we embark on this New Year, I want to convey my heartfelt good wishes to all of the Jewish people in the Diaspora, in the hope that it will be a year of joy and good tidings to all. > > And let us pray for the safe return home of the hostages and missing soldiers. > > Shana Tova U’Metukah, > > Shimon Peres

This story is just treif on so many levels…

Jews in Chestnut Hill who were faithful to their spouses, good to their kids, honest in all business dealings, and who paid every cent of the taxes they owed may have been wondering what there was to repent as they entered the Jewish High Holidays. So the leaders at the Conservative Congregation Mishkan Tefila in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts decided to defile the sabbath and usher in the High Holy Days by promoting hate speech against Muslims and a neo-conservative message.

[Don’t Boston area synagogues get tired of having talks on the same 3 topics: (1) the Holocaust, (2) Why We Must support Israel, and (3) Evil Islam? What ever happened to Judaism? But I digress…]

On September 12, 2009 David Dalin spoke on the topic of “Icon of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti and the rise of Radical Islam.” The synagogue’s events calendar described the talk:

DR DALIN will speak at 9:00pm. This spiritually enriching prelude to the High Holy Days will conclude with a dessert reception at 10:00pm.

Rabbi Dalin is no stranger to controversy over his scholarship, he is a neo-conservative like his friend and co-author Irving Kristol, and his book, “Icon of Evil: Hajj Amin al-Husseini: Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam” has also drawn criticism for its questionable scholarship. One reviewer described it:

… unfortunately, this book is a ridiculous polemic that tries to paint al-Husseini as a major figure in the Holocaust and claims that secular Arab dictators like Saddam Hussein were radical Islamists who are part of a vast terrorist conspiracy…maybe Dick Cheney was a ghost writer for this piece of fiction. Oh and speaking of fiction, one whole chapter is a crazy “what if” scenario that has the Germans defeating the British in WWII and al-Husseini leading the Holocaust in “Londonistan” where prominent U.S. Jewish figures, like Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter, are unable to escape the onrushing German army and die in concentration camps. This is just way over the top.

Dalin is currently a professor of history and political science at Ave Maria University, a right-wing Catholic university in Southwest Florida founded in 2003 by former Domino’s Pizza founder and owner Tom Monaghan.

Congregation Mishkan Tefila,
300 Hammond Pond Pkwy.,
Chestnut Hill, MA, 02467
http://www.mishkantefila.org
+1 (617) 332-7770
ExecutiveDirector@mishkantefila.org

The Jewish Telegraph Agency reports that a Holocaust education bill (Senate bill 2651 and Congressional H.R. 4604) sponsored by the Simon Wiesenthal Center is making its way through Congress. The bill provides $2 million in cash grants and is intended to be used for education in 9 states with requirements to teach about the systematic murder of 6 million Jews in Nazi Germany. Only this group of genocide victims is mentioned in the bill. I’m sure, with a topic so untouchable, a price tag so cheap, and political advantages so great, the bill will be passed without a single objection.

But here’s what’s wrong with it.

Before the Nazi’s Final Solution there was the Armenian genocide which destroyed 1.5 million human lives, the Rape of Nanking in which 300,000 were killed, and many others – including the murder of approximately 12 million Native Americans between 1500 and 1900.

In our own lifetimes we have seen genocides in Rwanda, which killed almost one million, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where almost a quarter of a million perished. Unimaginable mass-murder motivated by politics has been an even greater feature of the Twentieth Century. Mengistu killed millions in Ethiopia, then there was Pol Pot’s murder of 1.7 million, Stalin’s purges and forced collectivization which killed over 10 million, Kim Il Sung’s 1.6 million concentration camp victims, and Mao’s cultural revolution, which was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions.

And even the Nazi atrocities were not limited to 6,000,000 Jews. Hannah Arendt in “Eichmann in Jerusalem” makes the case that all Poles were “next” on the Nazi’s list of extermination victims. Besides homosexuals, gypsies, Communists, and other enemies of the state, the Nazis actually ended up extinguishing over 10 million human souls. Timothy Snyder’s article in the New York Review of Books provides a startling account of the much greater scope of Nazi genocide.

The grand total for our century is well over 120 million victims of sinat chinam, the Jewish word for baseless hatred.

To memorialize only this one group is immoral. And not only does the bill trivialize genocide, which is manifestly greater than the bill’s scope, it will only serve political purposes for the constituency that promoted it and will do nothing to actually combat the human urge to hate or destroy the “other.”

Years ago I read an essay by Theodor Adorno entitled “Erziehung nach Auschwitz” (Education after Auschwitz). In it Adorno warns of the relapse into barbarism and cautions that the most important way to prevent this relapse is by looking at root causes: > One speaks of the threat of a relapse into barbarism. But it is not a threat – Auschwitz was this relapse, and barbarism continues as long as the fundamental conditions that favored that relapse continue largely unchanged. That is the whole horror.

Adorno also warns about creating saccharine caricatures of the victims, of nostalgic images of a world destroyed. Instead, Adorno wants us to scrutinize society itself and – specifically – how we raise our children: > I also do not believe that enlightenment about the positive qualities possessed by persecuted minorities would be of much use. The roots must be sought in the persecutors, not in the victims who are murdered under the paltriest of pretenses. What is necessary is what I once in this respect called the turn to the subject. One must come to know the mechanisms that render people capable of such deeds, must reveal these mechanisms to them, and strive, by awakening a general awareness of those mechanisms, to prevent people from becoming so again. > > It is not the victims who are guilty, not even in the sophistic and caricatured sense in which still today many like to construe it. Only those who unreflectingly vented their hate and aggression upon them are guilty. One must labor against this lack of reflection, must dissuade people from striking outward without reflecting upon themselves. The only education that has any sense at all is an education toward critical self-reflection. But since according to the findings of depth psychology, all personalities, even those who commit atrocities in later life, are formed in early childhood, education seeking to prevent the repetition must concentrate upon early childhood.

In other words, stopping baseless hatred requires a totally different approach than using grant money to produce materials that will certainly “explain” the need for a Jewish state. It’s a more difficult process of a society looking at itself and its institutions.

Finally, Adorno doesn’t let the “peaceful” superpower off the hook: > Furthermore, one cannot dismiss the thought that the invention of the atomic bomb, which can obliterate hundreds of thousands of people literally in one blow, belongs in the same historical context as genocide.

The cost of self-reflection and coming up short in one’s own estimation is probably what will actually keep modern society from following Adorno’s advice. $2 million for slick Zionist brochures is a bargain in comparison.

A year ago, columnist David Ignatius dismissed the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran. But, like a bad penny, it’s a story that keeps coming back.

Pundit M. J. Rosenberg’s last posting on Talking Points warns that the Fall will bring renewed calls for liberals to support a military attack on Iran – not necessarily a U.S. attack, but one by Israel. Rosenberg points to hasbara efforts by Jewish organizations to soften up public acceptance of an Israeli military strike on Iran. And there are many: AIPAC statements, the view from Israel that contradicts the State Department’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear readiness, the American Jewish Committee, the Zionist Organization of America, the World Jewish Congress, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, and a poll commissioned by the Israel Project which purports to show a massive increase in public support for a specifically Jewish state and concern over Iran’s nuclear program. But not a peep about Israel’s own nuclear program.

And those are the measured statements. Joshua Muravchik and John Bolton of the American Enterprise Institute, openly calls for bombing Iran. As do Michael Freund of Shavei Israel, Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman, Norman Podhoretz, and many others.

But this is not an altogether new story.

A year ago Israel conducted war games U.S. officials said were intended to send Iran a threatening message. The BBC reported the same story as “Israelis ‘rehearse Iran Attack’.”

In February Reuters reported that Israel claimed that time was running out and it had only about another year to attack Iran.

In May Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak offered to give up settlement outposts in exchange for the U.S. letting Israel “focus its attention on the Iranian nuclear threat”. Make your own inferences about what that means.

In July, the Jerusalem Post reported that a deal between European nations and Israel was evolving, which would permit Israel to attack Iran in exchange for unspecified “concessions in peace negotiations with the Palestinians and Arab neighbors.”

But back to Rosenberg. His particular insights are within American halls of Congress: > Anyway, this fall will be critical. While we’re sweating the health care issue, the usual suspects will be ignoring all that and trying hard to set us up for a third war in the Muslim world. And, I hear, that it will be a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans who will join in opposition to President Obama to sneak this one by us. Why not? Both parties want to please the pro-war crowd in advance of the 2010 elections. Watch your favorite liberal. I expect that if you pay attention, you will hear things that you haven’t heard come out of a Democrat’s mouth since the run-up to Iraq. […] If we go to war or give Israel a permission slip, it will be the Democrats who bear prime responsibility. Pay attention.

Participating in, or permitting, an attack on Iran would have frightful consequences. The Christian Science Monitor ran an article last June entitled ‘How Iran would retaliate if it comes to war.’ The Atlantic Monthly ran one titled ‘What if the Israelis bomb Iran’ War colleges, foreign policy wonks, and even Fleet Street and Wall Street have begun speculating on the results of such an attack.

Rosenberg has it partly correct: the current administration and a Democrat majority will bear responsibility for either condoning or providing support for an Israeli attack. Who now blames the Viet Nam war on anyone but LBJ and the Democrats?

But judging by the number of Zionist organizations rooting for war with Iran, this constituency should also be held accountable. American Zionist organizations may resent the claim that Jews are being unfairly associated with neoconservative politics and Israel advocacy at odds with American interests. But if this were true, then they would stop wallowing in that swamp and dragging American Jews, whom they claim to represent, into the muck with them.

Both Democrats and American Jews will be blamed for any war on Iran.

And finally, if anyone has any doubts that the United States would not be pulled into this war, look at a map: