Not.

But that’s what Haaretz seems to think. A front-page investigative report in this morning’s edition (December 1 2009) finds that Machanaim a US 501c3 tax exempt charity is funding the Task Force to Save the Nation and the Land (TFSNL aka SOS Israel)

the organization that offered every soldier refusing to evacuate a settlement, and the Kfir Brigade soldiers who publicly demonstrated their opposition to evacuation, NIS 1,000 for every day they spend in military prison

After asking Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, why he has not asked the US government to desist from indirectly funding sedition in the IDF and questioning why an NGO engaged in blatantly illegal activity enjoys a “clean bill of health” from the Registrar of Associations, the article ends with

The Knesset will hold a discussion on the subject of transparency of contributions that non-profit organizations receive from abroad. The event, which will be hosted by Improvement of Government Services Minister Michael Eitan, is being organized by the NGO Monitor organization, which is based in Jerusalem.

Stunning. Gerald Steinberg is not the partisan hack I claimed he was. The Knesset conference will demand transparency for all NGOs. Perhaps we can also expect that the agenda will also include a discussion of the sovereignty-threatening instance of right-wing NGO “lawfare” reported in this morning’s Jerusalem Post, the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel’s High Court of Justice petition against the settlement “freeze.”

A quick look at the Hebrew version of the report, however, reveals that hell has yet to freeze over. It questions NGO Monitor on what action its has taken on Machanaim/SOS Israel and gets a vague response.

Disappointing but revealing: The night editor at the English edition, forced to abridge the report, actually assumed that the conference would deal with this issue. After all, its organizer is a group calling itself  an “NGO monitor.”

RELATED POSTS: Exposing Gerald Steinberg and NGO Monitor | Israel Harel, Zionist Strategist (on NGO Monitor’s fundamentalist allies) |Globes on the hypocrisy of right-wing “democrats” |

“Si tratta di una decisione razzista, forse la più grave dalla fine della seconda guerra mondiale”. “Piuttosto che confrontarsi con il contenuto delle prediche nelle moschee ha preferito concentrarsi sull’architettura”.

Svizzera rimandata in applicazione della democrazia. Ma quel che stupisce è il “docente”: Israele. I quotidiani di oggi hanno dedicato tanto spazio al referendum elvetico che boccia la costruzione di nuovi minareti. Perchè se cambia la prospettiva nella vicina Europa, il riflesso tocca direttamente anche Gerusalemme.

Haaretz e Ma’ariv non scherzano. E vanno giù duro. Dimostrando, ancora una volta, che le vere democrazie non transigono su certe regole. Anche se, com’è nel caso israeliano, il nemico che ti tiene in scacco da mezzo secolo è proprio di religione musulmana, porta lunghi vestiti e, soprattutto, prega in moschee con alti minareti.

On November 25 2009, Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group that monitors law enforcement on settler violence in the West Bank, published a data sheet, demonstrating that 69 documented cases of Palestinian olive tree destruction by settlers in the first ten months of 2009 had resulted in zero indictments.

Matti Golan is a veteran Israeli journalist not known for being a bleeding heart, to say the least. He has a daily column in Globes, an evening business daily, read by the Israeli financial elite. Apparently Golan read an Haaretz report on the issue and had this to say

Anyone who reads this column knows I don’t have much patience for the complaints and grievances of Arabs…

[But] I thought we, especially the people of faith among us, maintained that we are “not like them,” that we are “better than them.” Yet here we have the settlers, people of faith, saying that actually we are like them. So what was all that talk about the supremacy of Jewish spirit and values?…

And a question to the police: you have to answer the charge that for four years you did not manage to prove even one of dozens of incidents of cutting down trees that the Arabs complained about. How is that possible? Would you handle complaints by Jews the same way?

A full translation of the column can be read after the jump. You can see the original clipping here.

Incidentally, Human Rights in Yesha, whose media release Golan references, is another pro-settler group engaged in what NGO Monitor defines as “lawfare”, but which Gerald Steinberg’s organization mysteriously fails to monitor. More about Steinberg’s hypocrisy here.

Woodcutters and values

Column, Matti Golan, Globes, November 26 2009

Anyone who reads this column knows I don’t have much patience for the complaints and grievances of Arabs about their situation and supposed discrimination, and I don’t only mean the Arabs of this region. There is a sort of helplessness in their mentality, claiming everyone is at fault for our condition: the US, Israel and the West in general. Not the oil barons, not our dictators, not our clerics, not us — and therefore they, not we, have to do something to improve our condition.

But I equally have no sympathy for cruel and evil harassment from any side. I am talking about a report published yesterday by the Yesh Din human rights organization, according to which police did not file indictments in connection with the 70 complaints it received about the cutting down of Palestinian olive trees in the occupied territories. We are not talking about ornamental trees but trees that support their owners, and in any case cutting down trees without a justified reason is vandalism and barbarism.

It turns out that Yesha has its own organization for “human rights,” and this is its reaction to the report: “There is selective enforcement. The authorities go out of their way to defend the Arab farmer. Meanwhile, complaints by Jews are not even investigated. Jews receive restraining orders during the olive harvest and nothing is done against the Arabs.”

They do it too

Did you notice what the reaction does not contain? A denial. Which is to say, true, Jews cut down Arab olive trees, but they do it too. Like in kindergarten, “they do it too.” And I thought we, especially the people of faith among us, maintained that we are “not like them,” that we are “better than them.” Yet here we have the settlers, people of faith, saying that actually we are like them. So what was all that talk about the supremacy of Jewish spirit and values?

And where is the police?

And a question to the police: you have to answer the charge that for four years you did not manage to prove even one of dozens of incidents of cutting down trees that the Arabs complained about. How is that possible? Would you handle complaints by Jews the same way? Or are you simply helpless and maybe you have given up? Either way, we have the right to know and you have the obligation to make sure we will never again see the painful site of a tree that was cut down for no reason.

Der Gag, den sich jeder halbwegs bei Verstand wissende Zeitgenosse bislang mit Bedacht von der Backe putzte, ist nun in Gestalt eines Schreibfehlers in die Welt und unter die Leser der taz gekommen:

Die US-Armee hätte Osama Bin Laden nach einem Bericht des Senats bereits vor acht Jahren haben können. Danach haben es die Streitkräfte unter der Regierung von George W. Bush aufgrund militärischer Fehlentscheidungen verpasst, den El-Kaida-Führer in Afghanistan zu schnappen. Obama sei praktisch vor ihrer Nase über die Grenze nach Pakistan entwischt, heißt es in dem am Samstag veröffentlichten Report des auswärtigen Ausschusses der Kongresskammer. [Hervorhebungen von mir]

Bestimmte Teile etwa des israel-freundlichen Fanwesens bzw. Politiker des Likud-Blocks mögen sich indes bestätigt fühlen: Obama war ja schon immer ganz ein unsicherer Kantonist:

“The Obama administration is an enemy of the Jews and the worst regime there ever was for the State of Israel,” said Yossi Naim, the head of the Beit Aryeh regional council, at the Ra’ana meeting. “I announce to Obama: You won’t be able to stop us.”

Wer mit zweitem Vornamen Hussein heißt, muss sich ohnehin nicht wundern über den antiarabischen Rassismus in der Welt, oder wie? Wie sagt uns ein “Don Geilo”, ein aufs verdiente Abstellgleis gesperrter User aus einem Polit-Forum:

Es ist allzu offenkundig, dass der Mullah-Versteher Hussein Obama
grundlegend anders zum Judenstaat Israel aber auch zu den Islamofaschisten
in Teheran bzw. deren Lakaien und Ableger Hamas und Hizbollah steht.

Und ich hatte schon an Obama gezweifelt…

“Stop di dieci mesi alle nuove costruzioni tra i coloni della West Bank”. Parola di Benyamin Netanyahu, primo ministro israeliano.  Gioia nel mondo diplomatico. Scetticismo in quello palestinese.

Solo che il quotidiano israeliano progressista Haaretz ha scoperto questo.

The Shaya family in their Jaffa home

Despite this blog’s title, this post is on something you can read about in Haaretz. I do add some analysis and access to additional materials, but the primary reason for the divergence is emotional. Not only is this a story of extraordinary injustice, it is also about the family of a friend and colleague, Mary Koussa.

You can read the entire saga of the Shaya family in this Haaretz article, but the gist is fairly simple. In the 1920’s, Salim Khoury Shaya, head of Jaffa’s once prosperous Greek Orthodox Palestinian community, built a house for his family. He had seven children. In 1948, a census was taken of the remnants of Jaffa’s Palestinian community. Empty houses were taken over by the State of Israel, according to the Absentee Property Law (more about that at the bottom of this post). The Shaya house was a unique case. Three of the siblings were absent (in Lebanon), but four were present. So the State proclaimed itself “partner” and legally took over 40% of the house.

Decades passed and, except for a number of failed attempts in the 50’s and 60’s, to sue for full property rights, the Shaya family didn’t hear much from the government. Their area of Jaffa (near Ajami) was a slum no one was really interested in. That all changed about four years ago. The Jaffa coast went through accelerated gentrification and property prices skyrocketed. Amidar, the government owned housing company that administrates most Absentee Properties, saw an opportunity for a windfall. Contrary to popular perception, most of the Palestinians living in the area are not descendants of the pre-1948 residents, but descendants of refugees displaced during the war from other parts of the country, and are now tenants of Amidar. Therefore, their eviction, on a variety of pretexts, was relatively simple. In 2007-2008 alone, Amidar issued at least 400 eviction notices in the Ajami neighborhood.

The few Palestinian owners were more of a problem. But in 2007, some bureaucrat looking through old case files discovered the Shaya family’s vulnerability and hatched a plan — slap them with an exorbitant demand for years of back rent for the 40% of the house “owned” by the government and then demand that the “partnership” be dissolved through sale of the house to a third party. The Shayas don’t want to leave their ancestral home, but their attempts to buy out the State were rebuffed, and now Amidar and the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) have taken them to court. They want them out.

Even from the perspective of Lieberman’s Jewish-Nationalist school of thought there is much that is wrong with this story.  As a devil’s advocate, I would ask his disciples in the government, why persecute “good Arabs?”  The Shaya’s are fully integrated in Israeli society. One of the second generation siblings worked at the Tel-Aviv municipality for his entire life. An uncle was the first Palestinian policeman recruited in Jaffa by the Israeli government in 1949. A visitor at the Sunday family gatherings hears a mix of Arabic and Hebrew. Why is Israel taking them back to the Nakba that it wants to force them to forget through legislation?

For Israelis who still believe in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and for genuinely “pro-Israel” Jews abroad, this kind of reopening of 1948, which is also happening in Jerusalem and Haifa, is no less than suicidal. It severely undermines the premise of 1967 as the starting point for a diplomatic solution, with its implications regarding the 1948 refugees.

For all Jews, or at least those that see Judaism as a culture and a moral code, rather than an ethnic filter, the story of the persecution of the Shaya family presents a grave injustice for which we, as a collective, are responsible. It often seems to me that the apparatus of our government has lost any sense of justice and morality. Indeed it took a Palestinian citizen of Israel, the family’s lawyer, Adv. Hicham Chabaita of Tel-Aviv University’s Human Rights Clinic, to point out the immorality of suit.

This is how Chabaita opens his defense (Hebrew original here):

Adv. Hicham Chabaita

As in the story of the ‘Pauper’s Lamb,’ the plaintiff, a government authority, is cynically requesting, with no shame whatsoever, to dispossess the defendants of the home that has been their property since it was built by their grandfather decades before the State was founded, and thus to expel them…This case is not a regular civil suit, despite attempts of the State to present it as such…We are speaking about hard, uncommon facts, an outcome of the unique context of the 1948 War.”

Right above is  an excerpt from Samuel II, chapter 12, verses 1-4. Here it is, English translation alongside Hebrew original.

So the Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to David, Nathan said, “There were two men in a certain city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a great many flocks and herds. But the pauper had nothing except for a little lamb he had acquired. He raised it, and it grew up alongside him and his children. It used to eat his food, drink from his cup, and sleep in his arms. It was just like a daughter to him. When a traveler arrived at the rich man’s home, he did not want to use one of his own sheep or cattle to feed the traveler who had come to visit him. Instead, he took the pauper’s lamb and cooked it for the man who had come to visit him.”

Chabaita also reminds the court that the Israeli Supreme Court described the Absentee Property Law as “meant to fill a temporary role: to preserve absentee properties lest they become abandoned and open to looting.”  He also dug up the protocols of the Knesset debate around the enactment of the law and quotes the Members of the First Knesset, keenly aware of the circumstances of their own people, so recently displaced and dispossessed, describing its purpose in the same way.

The Tel-Aviv Magistrate will hear the case in January.

[You can write the Shaya family at shaya.house@gmail.com]

According to Haaretz, Israeli President Shimon Peres announced Yesterday (November 22 2009) after his meeting with Mubarak that once Israeli-Palestinian negotiations restart, Israel will freeze settlements. A closer look revealsthat he is promising something Israel is presently committed to — no new settlements, no land confiscation and evacuation of “outposts”. The headline may, however, may be indicative of a new Israeli messaging strategy — “we will freeze settlements but the Palestinians are refusing resume negotiations” — aimed at moving the ball to Palestinian court.

See this morning’s (November 23 2009) Yediot article below describing how the IDF is preparing for a settlement freeze “as part of Israel’s political preparations for a resumption of the talks with the Palestinians” and that this move “went hand in hand with President Shimon Peres’s statement yesterday in Cairo to the effect that Israel would cease all construction in the settlements upon the resumption of talks with the Palestinians.”

IDF prepares for construction freeze in settlements

Alex Fishman, Yediot, November 23 2009 [page 9]

The Defense Ministry’s legal counsel has recently finalized the preparation of military orders that enjoin a full moratorium on construction everywhere in Judea and Samaria.

The military orders were drafted in coordination with the Prime Minister’s Office as part of Israel’s political preparations for a resumption of the talks with the Palestinians. The orders that were drafted by the Defense Ministry will become “orders by the OC Central Command,” who is the sovereign over the West Bank, immediately upon a decision by the Israeli political echelon to resume talks with the Palestinian Authority.

In the course of their most recent visit to the United States, the defense minister and prime minister apprised senior American officials with whom they met, including President Barack Obama and special US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell, of the preparations Israel was making in advance of the possibility that talks with the Palestinians would be renewed. In the course of those meetings an Israeli commitment was made to impose a complete moratorium on construction in the settlements.

In the past number of months there has been an unprecedented boom of both legal and illegal construction across Judea and Samaria. The legal construction involves construction work on the basis of old permits that were not acted on, as well as the approximately 3,000 permits that were issued by the Defense Ministry legalizing the completion of buildings that were already in the process of being built. The settlers’ various settlement apparatuses had also prepared well in advance for the possibility of a construction freeze and for the past number of months have been making a concerted effort to build as much as possible before the OC Central Command’s order goes into effect.

Informed sources said that Israel was likely to find itself facing a strongly-worded American protest once the latter realized, by means of aerial photographs and inspections on the ground, that the actual scope of construction in Judea and Samaria exceeded the scope that had been authorized by the Israeli government as it had been reported to the them. Informed sources in the security establishment said that issuing orders enjoining a construction freeze upon the resumption of the political negotiations went hand in hand with President Shimon Peres’s statement yesterday in Cairo to the effect that Israel would cease all construction in the settlements upon the resumption of talks with the Palestinians.

UPDATES

• Novemeber 24 2009 — Haaretz’s Akiva Eldar: Netanyahu new exactly what was going on.

ORIGINAL POST

Last week’s US-Israeli crisis following the announcement of new construction in Gilo was analyzed by three of Israel’s leading political and diplomatic commentators in the Friday Political Supplements. Haaretz’s Verter and Yediot’s Barnea see bungling. Maariv’s Ben Kaspit hints at a premeditated provocation.

Haaretz’s senior political analyst, Yossi Verter writes that Netanyahu was taken completely by surprise.

On Monday evening Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat contentedly in his office at the Knesset…and then Yedioth Ahronoth journalist Shimon Schiffer called, seeking the reaction of the Prime Minister’s Bureau to the Americans’ statement of opposition to some building project in East Jerusalem.

What’s this about, Netanyahu asked his people. No one knew. Netanyahu asked them to call in Interior Minister Eli Yishai, whose purview includes Jerusalem. Yishai ran over from his office. That’s when they figured it out: It was about the northwestern part of the Gilo neighborhood. Netanyahu called several of the relevant players. He was told that this was strictly a technical matter, that on the following day, the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Commission would be approving the construction of 900 new housing units in the neighborhood.

He knew he was about to get slapped, but it is doubtful he imagined the barrage of condemnation: from U.S. President Barack Obama, who said the construction in Gilo did not contribute to Israel’s security

[...]

Yediot’s Nahum Barnea says basically the same, but blames Netanyahu fro bad staffing decisions (full translation here.)

Netanyahu was surprised to discover this week how little he knows about what is taking place in the state he heads. He did not know about the demolition of houses in East Jerusalem. He did not know about the Jerusalem municipality decision to approve the construction of 900 housing units in Gilo. He did not know about the request of special US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell to delay the approval.

When Shimon Shiffer, Yedioth Ahronoth’s political affairs correspondent, asked the Prime Minister’s Bureau to comment on Tuesday evening, Netanyahu said he had no idea. Attorney Yitzhak Molcho, who was in the middle of a meeting with Mitchell in London, said that he heard of the American request only minutes earlier. He told Mitchell that he had no idea. He was concerned lest he get into trouble: Netanyahu had promised Obama full transparency, and what was emerging was muddy water.

Then it turned out that Mara Rudman, a top member of Mitchell’s team, that same day, had asked the Israeli embassy in Washington about the construction in Gilo. The request was relayed to the Prime Minister’s Bureau, but got stuck on the way. It turned out that Interior Minister Eli Yishai knew. He did not think he had to inform the prime minister.

The immediate reason for this failure is that the people with whom Netanyahu has manned his bureau are fine and good, but none of them is actually connected to the Israeli experience. They have no sources. They have no antenna. They live in a bubble, an aquarium. When Dov Weissglas was Sharon’s bureau chief, he managed by means of an interdisciplinary committee whose goal was to respond quickly and efficiently to any call from the American administration. Yoram Turbowicz, Olmert’s bureau chief, had a similar arrangement.

Maariv’s Ben Kaspit suggests that Netanyahu was purposely trying to provoke Obama.

What is really happening is that Netanyahu is trying to promote the political process with one hand, while attempting to delay it with the other.  This is a new version of a remark Ariel Sharon once made, speaking from the Likud Central Committee podium.  I am willing to help him, he said, but I do not know which of Bibi’s hands I should be helping, the right or the left.

Against this backdrop, suspicions emerged that the fact that the Americans protested the Gilo construction plan was actually leaked to Yedioth Ahronoth by members of Netanyahu’s inner circles in an attempt to make the Palestinians explode, to embarrass the Americans, and to slightly damage progress.  And thus, while Netanyahu of the big speeches talks about peace, Netanyahu of the back rooms engages in guerilla warfare.  “Only Bibi can,” Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said in a fascinating interview with Maariv’s Sofshavua Supplement.  He is right, of course.  Indeed, only Bibi can.  The only question is:  Does he want to?

Abu Mazen will nicht mehr oberster palästinensischer Wachtposten für israelische Siedlungen sein, Marwan Barghouti schon gar nicht. Der Oslo-Prozess ist tot, und ein Friedensprozess könnte an seine Stelle treten – verkörpert durch Akteure wie Marwan Barghouti:

“Betting on negotiations alone was never our choice. I have always called for a constructive mix of negotiation, resistance, political, diplomatic and popular action,” Barghouti said.

He called for a “popular campaign” against settlement activity, what he described as the Judaization of occupied parts of Jerusalem, the blockade of Gaza, land appropriation and the construction of the “racist, separation wall”.

Il dialogo con Hamas? Possibile. Ma solo a certe condizioni. E’ l’opinione del 57% degli israeliani coinvolti nel sondaggio del quotidiano Haaretz. L’idea di trattare con l’organizzazione terroristica che tiene in ostaggio il soldato-simbolo Gilad Shalit è venuta la scorsa settimana all’esponente di Kadima, Shaul Mofaz. Ed è proprio all’interno dei simpatizzanti del partito guidato da Tzipi Livni che l’adesione all’idea di parlare col “nemico” è maggiore: 72%.

Quanto al gradimento del governo guidato da Bibi Netanyahu (Likud), uno dei ministri meno apprezzati è proprio quello più esposto alle trattative con la controparte palestinese: Avigdor “Yvette” Lieberman, leader del partito ultranazionalista Israel Beitenu.

This year Haaretz did not translate their 2009 Rosh Hashanah Jewish culture supplement with its book reviews. The Hebrew edition had some interesting articles, including one by Etkes and a funky one by Haviva Pedaya. But this week they did translate their November 2009 literary supplement. There was a certain gentleness to all their choices. Here are three of the reviews.

The first review is on the new edition of Pirkei Avot that has been a runaway bestseller this Fall. It reminds us of the Israeli project of creating a Jewish cultural heritage, when the books by Dvir and Bialek Presses: Sefer HaAgadah, Sefer HaZemanin on the holidays, Mishnat HaZohar Sifrei Dorot, were on every shelf. They let the Jewish reader approach the Jewish classics outside of yeshiva, orthodoxy, and authority, the way we approach penguin paperback classics. So it is nice to know that the Pirkei Avot is a best seller. Dinur, creator of the Israeli educational curriculum, Beit Hatefuzot, and Yad VaShem, created the older edition. The review has a nice sense of the role of Avot and rabbinic literature on our proverbs and wisdom.

The art of succinct statements By Zvia Walden

Pirkei Avot: Perush Yisraeli Hadash , edited and annotated by Avigdor Shinan Yedioth Ahronoth Books and the Avi Chai Foundation,

“A fundamental challenge facing our generation — living in a country that also happens to be our ances­tral homeland — is figuring out the proper ways to preserve the spiritual and moral image of the individual and society in Israel.” Does this not sound very contemporary and disturbingly relevant? Yet these words were written in 1972 by Prof. Ben-Zion Dinur, who served as Israel’s third minister of education (1951-1955 ) and who initiated the draft­ing of the Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Law in 1953, which officially established Yad Vashem. That same year, Dinur was also responsible for the law that established public education in Israel, in the wake of which the various ideological streams were united into a single school system.

Dinur made the preceding observation in the introduction to his annotated and explicated edition of Tractate Avot of the Mishna, that is, Pirkei Avot (Sayings of the Fathers ). He noted that he had begun work on the edition back in 1917-18, when he was teaching at the Tarbut teachers training college in Kiev. He continued his efforts when he served as a lecturer at the Hebrew teachers seminar in Jerusalem (today the David Yellin Teachers College). Which is to say that Israel once had a liberal-minded education minis­ter, one who had actually taught (for years ) in teachers training schools. He diligently prepared his commentaries from a his­torical perspective, because he believed that knowledge of their context was crucial for under­standing their content. Imagine if we had cabinet ministers like that today.

Shinan’s new commentary on Pirkei Avot has featured prom­inently on the Israeli bestseller lists for weeks.

How can one explain the suc­cess of a volume such as Shinan’s? Is it due to the ever-growing thirst to “preserve the spiritual and moral image of the individual and society in Israel,” as Dinur had it? Or is it due to the acces­sible writing style of the editor, a professor of Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University? Or, per­haps native Hebrew speakers are attracted to this edition because Shinan chose to devote much at­tention to the Hebrew text and to connecting the tractate to names, places and landscapes in Israel, while sufficing with only a brief survey of Pirkei Avot’s tradi­tional commentators?

Phrases from Pirkei Avot have penetrated deep into modern Hebrew, even if many of those doing the quoting are unaware of where they first appeared.. Many Hebrew speakers in Israel might quote the phrase, “Love work, and hate lordship,” but few know its continuation, “and make not thyself known to the government” (chapter 1:10 )

The late Levi Eshkol be­longed to the generation that was familiar with the phrase, “The ledger is open and the hand is writing,” but many of the Young Turks working at the Finance Ministry today, who may well believe that “the workmen are sluggish,” have no idea that “the master of the house is urgent” (2:18). We are part of a generation that has become cut off from its cultural roots; we must carry out the difficult work to amend the situation.

The second book reviewed is the Yesod Mora, a perennial Jewish classic on the need to have a broad education and the nature of mizvot. The book has fallen out of fashion in our era. Science, linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy were integrated into Torah. Ibn Ezra rejects the number 613 for the mizvot. He also criticizes the various Biblical and Talmudic scholars of his era for a too provincial education and worldview. Hananel Mack offers us the hypothetical of conjuring up the book that Ibn Ezra would write against the scholars of 2009.

Thirteen gates to infinity By Hananel Mack

Yesod Mora Abraham Ibn Ezra, edited by Uriel Simon Bar-Ilan University Press (Hebrew ), 272 pages, NIS 115

One of Ibn Ezra’s late works is “Yesod Mora Vesod Hatorah” (“Foundation of Awe and the Secret of the Torah” ), commonly called by the first two words of its name, a book dedicated to examining the essence of the commandments and their place in religious thought and at the foundation of Jewish belief.

According to the editor, Prof. Uriel Simon, an expert in research of the Bible and its com­mentaries, particularly the works of Ibn Ezra: ” His thinking is disjointed and jumpy, his arguments emotional, argumentative and associative, and his phrasing too abbrevi­ated, tending toward suggestion.”

According to him, a wise per­son’s approach to the holy writings and to religious philosophy requires a broad edu­cation encompassing all the branches of science, and must reject narrow-minded expertise in specific fields at the expense of others. This cosmopolitan position pre­vents those who do not share the breadth of Ibn Ezra’s perspective from properly understanding his writings, particularly those pertaining to philosophy and sci­ence.

According to Simon, “The first chapter is dedicated to a detailed proof of the re­ligious need for multidisciplinary educa­tion.” Toward that end, Ibn Ezra describes four types of “learned men of Israel” who specialize in narrow and defined fields of Torah and wisdom study but are unable to see the whole ensemble, and for whom, for this reason, even their fields of specializa­tion are found wanting.

Most of the remaining chapters deal with the Jewish religious mitzvot and their place in the system of belief and knowledge. Unlike other medieval books on the commandments, such as those of Rabbis Saadia Gaon, Maimonides and Nachmanides, here there is no discussion of halakha — religious law — and its minu­tiae; rather, the discussion is entirely on a theoretical level. Chapter two deals with the numbering of the commandments, wherein the scholar presents and criti­cizes the systems of several earlier “com­mandment-counters.”

Especially interesting is the status of the number 613, the traditional total number of all the commandments. The source of that enumeration is the homi­letical sermon of the Talmudic sage Rabbi Shamlai…Unlike many other homiletical sermons, this one was accepted with great serious­ness, although there were some who saw in Shamlai’s words a tale not to be taken too seriously; Ibn Ezra belonged to the lat­ter.

The afterword added to the new edition deals with the text’s polemical side. Simon draws to­gether the main points of criticism, some of it bitter, leveled by Ibn Ezra against the majority of learned scholars in Israel and Christian Europe, and to a lesser extent also those in Spain, for their tendency to over-specialization and for their lack of systematic education in the sciences.

Contemporary readers are invited to imagine the criticism, tongue-lashing and overt disdain that would have been elicit­ed from Ibn Ezra had he foreseen current trends in the world of Torah and yeshiva study.

Finally, an interview with Michael Wex, author of “Born to Kvetch.” “Just Say Nu,” and this fall “How to Be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck ) (Harper, 224 pages, $24 ). Wex discusses how Yiddish culture valued character, being a mentch, and being.ehrliche.  They use to say frumkeit is for the galah, a yid is ehrliche. And a litvish lamdan was called a “tzelemer kop.” Wax points out the role of Pirkei Avot, that the average Jew was not learned and to avoid khnoykishkay.

Questions & Answers: A conversation with Michael Wex

Judaism is all about refinement of character and becoming a better person; if performing ritual or ceremonial com­mandments or studying all day is not mak­ing you a better person, then there’s some­thing wrong with the way you’re doing it. And we’ve got a couple of thousand years of popular ethical manuals, starting with Pirkei Avot, to help show average people the right way to do things.

Post-Holocaust we’ve been given a rosy picture of pre-Hitler life in Europe, in which every Jew was a talmid haham [learned person]. That just wasn’t the case. People stammered out the prayers, but didn’t necessarily know that they meant. Much of the joke with Sholom Aleichem’s Tevye is that he’s always mistranslating biblical verses and rabbinic sayings, and people still argue about whether or not he — Tevye, I mean — was supposed to be doing so on purpose. What you got as a sort of counterbalance to the traditional exaltation of scholarship, was this idea that character is as important as anything else. This is re­ally just an idea that was re-expressed, that regained prominence, in early Hasidism. I talk a little about earlier instances of it, and the way people looked at things. In part it’s the idea about having the basic Jewish common sense to know when something of anything is too much. You look at some­thing like the story in the Talmud about the destruction of Jerusalem, about Kamtso and Bar Kamtso. Ultimately it turned on a piece of khnoykishkayt [hypocritical sanc­timoniousness], about being punctilious about the wrong things at the wrong time.

Dagbladet opplyser om at en del grupper i samfunnet i Israel blir diskriminert bevisst av myndighetene i landet. Kristne, muslimer og kvinner blir utsatt for systematisk diskriminering. De av oss som har kjennskap til denne konflikten fra før av, vet at dette kommer ikke som en overraskelse. Det som er interessant er at Dagbladets referanse er det amerikanske utenriksdepartementet som fremla en rapport for noen par uker siden. Rapporten handler om religionsfriheten (og menneskerettigheter) i Israel. Den grad av religionsfrihet som finnes i landet og hvilke utfordringer som religiøse minoriteter møter på.

“Muslimer, kristne, konverterte jøder og medlemmer av andre religiøse minoriteter i Israel, nektes de samme rettighetene som jøder, heter det i den årlige rapporten om religionsfrihet i verden.”

I rapporten så kommer det for eksempel fram at den påståtte religionsfriheten som skal stå sterkt i det som ansees for å være Midtøsten eneste “demokrati” ifølge enkelte, gjør ikke det i realiteten. Det blir nevnt flere eksempler hvor myndighetene bevisst diskriminerer ikke bare 20 % av befolkningen i Israel som er ikke-jøder, men også sekulære jøder og kvinner.

I den israelske avisen Haaretz kan vi lese følgende respons til innholdet i rapporten:

“Despite boasting religious freedom and protection of all holy sites, Israel falls short in tolerance toward minorities, equal treatment of ethnic groups, openness toward various streams within society, and respect for holy and other sites.”

Spørsmålet man sitter igjen med er følgende. Vil det i det hele tatt være noe reaksjoner til disse menneskerettighetsbruddene som Israel begår mot sin egen befolkning? Vil det være noe form av oppfølgning av rapporten? Det er for lite å håpe om at det vil bli det. På lik linje med en hel haug andre regimer i Midtøsten som bryter hele tiden bevisst menneskerettigheter så vil ikke det innholdet som står i rapporten få noe som helst reaksjon (fra de som står bak det – dvs USA). Det ser ut som menneskerettigheter er nedprioritert for USA når det er snakk om å kritisere allierte eller ens “kamerater” i Midtøsten (som for eksempel Saudi Arabia)

In response to an absurd article by Isi Leibler in the Jerusalem Post brandishing Jewish liberals as apostates, Carlo Strenger warned in Haaretz:

In calling for excommunication of those who disagree with him, Leibler seems to endow himself with papal infallibility in knowing what is good for Israel – but in Jewish tradition nobody can claim infallibility. I want to remind Mr. Leibler of the rules of plugta, of civilized argument and disagreement that have been held dear in Jewish tradition, and I will gladly meet with him and talk.

I want to make it clear: Leibler does not call for physical violence. Yet terms like “apostates” and “excommunication” are a clear way of delegitimizing the large proportion of the Jewish people, who disagree with him. He should not forget that there might always be somebody like Yaakov Teitel who takes him more seriously than I assume he wants to be taken. I hope that Mr. Leibler condemns such acts unequivocally as every civilized human being, Jewish or not, should.

Like Strenger, I have argued previously that the brandishing of Jewish minority voices as ‘apostate’ is rooted in medieval polemics.

None of this has deterred Mat Hausman, who writes in Israpundit:

However, just as the messianic movement employs the superficial use of Jewish ritual practices to suggest disingenuously that it is Jewish, so too J Street uses shallow statements of support for Israel to obscure its true agenda and to attract those who don’t know any better.

Hausman’s utter contempt for Jews who believe in Yeshua is palpable:

Their co-option and misuse of Jewish customs and traditions, their attempts – largely unsuccessful – to ingratiate themselves to local federations, and their bogus claims to represent a legitimate segment of the Jewish community despite their lack of halachic standing or Jewish ancestry, are simply the cynical and deceitful means to a dishonest end. Any inroads they make are blazed almost exclusively amongst Jews with weak backgrounds and little education who don’t have the tools to understand that the cult is not Judaism.

Unsurprisingly, Hausman’s bile spills over into liberal Jews:

Unfortunately, like the messianic movement, J Street has been very adept at garnering support from those who are poorly grounded in Jewish history, tradition and values, and who therefore are ill-equipped to challenge the veracity of its sales pitch. It has also been successful in attracting those who were raised to believe that progressive politics inherently subsume Jewish values. Consequently, J Street’s ultimate success will depend to a large extent on the ignorance of its prospective constituents – or their knowing rejectionism – and their willingness to accept the revisionist narrative with a religious-like faith.

Of course, if Hausman has a monopoly on what Jewish politics or religion must be, then any deviation from this must be considered apostasy. What Hausman is doing here, however, is tribalism of the most mindless variety. Instead of imploring his readers to consider the facts by themselves, he is trying to push J-Street into the taboos of Jewish life by comparing them to most controversial of all Jews: Messianic Jews.

Mat Hausman: knows an apostate when he sees one

Hausman uses Messianic Jews’ comfort with mainstream Christianity as evidence to damn them, and attempts to use J-Street’s left-wing status and its political connections as damning evidence as well. Of course  it is right and proper to critique J-Street’s political connections, just as it is right to criticise AIPAC’s, yet this is not the key issue being discussed by Mat Hausman, who seems determined to label J-Street and Messianic Jews both as enemies of the Jewish people as defined by him.

Yet the irony here is that Hausman seems determined to make his argument a self-fulfilling prophecy. By implying that liberal Jews and Messianic Jews are enemies of mainstream Jews, Hausman’s argument effectively bullies his readers not to digress or turn off the path, or they too may find themselves excommunicated by Hausman’s Papal Bull.

Posted by Yeze.

Glenn Beck’s hotline to nowhere by Thomas Frank

Pentagon pursuing new investigation into domestic propaganda

Israel preparing public for new Gaza war from Haaretz

State Dept fumbles Blackwater Iraq ouster from Newsweek

Guy Fawkes protesters finally celebrate right way by Allison Kilkenny

Obama’s negotiators collude with big business on copyright treaty

Utility regulators challenge Frontier-Verizon deal

HonestReporting Media BackSpin, 5. November 2009

Nicht nur hat Donald Bostrom seine Leichenklau-Vorwürfe gegen die IDF ständig wiederholt – die Sonntagsausgabe von Aftonbladet berichtete zudem (und Haaretz griff es auf), dass die schwedische Tageszeitung in Kontakt mit

“einer Frau in Genf getreten ist, die, zusammen mit einem Rechtsanwalt, einen Brief an die UNO vorbereitet, in dem von 15 illegal obduzierten Palästinensern die Rede ist, von denen bei 8 bis 2008 das Fehlen von Organen nachgewiesen worden war.“

Haaretz befasst sich damit:

Der Beitrag, geschrieben von der Kulturredakteurin Åsa Linderborg, kommt mit der Behauptung daher, dass das Material noch nicht freigegeben werden konnte, da die fraglichen palästinensischen Familien aufgrund israelischer Repressalien Todesängste bekommen hätten.

Linderborg bezog sich einen kürzlich passierten Fall eines illegalen Organhandels in Haifa, bei dem zwei Männer inhaftiert worden waren, dazu auf den Fall Yehuda Hiss, Israels führenden staatlichen Pathologen und ehemaligen Leiter des forensischen Instituts Abu Kabir, der zugegeben hatte, im Jahr 2001 Gewebe von einem verstorbenen israelischen Soldaten entnommen zu haben.

“Zwei Monate nach Veröffentlichung durch Aftonbladet trifft das erste Urteil [in der israelischen Organ-Affäre]. Es gibt mehr”, so die Intention des Stückes.

Der Haifa-Vorfall war in der Tat beschämend und jener um Yehuda Hiss umso mehr. Aber Aftonbladets Versuch, diese Fälle (und den New Jersey-Skandal) mit der IDF zu verbinden, entbehrt jeder Beweiskraft.

Derselbe Haaretz-Bericht beschreibt auch einen Disput zwischen Bostrom und einer schwedischen Kritikerin:

Die Wirtschaftswissenschaftlerin Anna Vider hatte ebenfalls Boströms Arbeitsmethoden kritisiert, wenn sie seine Verwendung von Zeugenaussagen allein von Palästinensern anführt, seine Unfähigkeit, mit den israelischen Behörden zusammenzuarbeiten und das Fehlen von Interviews und Nachforschungen. Sie kritisierte ihn auch scharf wegen seiner konstruierten Verbindung eines Vorfalls im Jahr 1992 mit Vorwürfen bezüglich des illegalen Organhandels in New Jersey 2009.

“Es erfordert viel Nachforschung, und es ist nicht etwas, was in einer Woche abzuhandeln ist“, sagte Vider: “Als Journalist hätte er [Bostrom] sich mehr bemühen müssen. Ich denke, das ist nicht aufrichtig.”

Bostrom wies die Kritik an seiner Vorgehensweise zurück: “Ich bin Reporter, nicht Ermittler.”

“Er verbindet die Ereignisse, weigert sich aber, die Verbindung zu diskutieren” fuhr Vider fort. “Es ist unanständig, den Skandal in New Jersey  abzuwarten und dann erst zu veröffentlichen. Warum hat er es nicht 1992 getan? Dieser Artikel hat eine große Auswirkung darauf, wie Israels Schweden und unsere Einmischung in den Konflikt beurteilt.”

Wow! Bostrom weist eine grundlegende Verantwortung des Reporters für Faktenchecks von sich. Wie aber jeder Student im Einmaleins des Journalismus lernt: “Wenn deine Mutter sagt, dass sie dich liebt, überprüfe es.“

by Scott Hirst, for The Harvard Law School Forum at Harvard Law School, November 4, 2009.

At the request of one of Israel’s largest institutional investors, Professor Lucian Bebchuk submitted a report on whether the reorganization proposal of Africa-Israel Investments Ltd. would adequately protect the interests and contractual rights of public bondholders. Africa-Israel Investment Ltd., a conglomerate with business operations around the world (including the US where one of its subsidiaries owns the New York Times building), is the largest business firm to have undergone a reorganization process in Israel’s history. Given the importance of the reorganization of Africa-Israel Investments for investors, and the possibility that this reorganization might affect the structure of other reorganizations of financially distressed firms in Israel, Bebchuk carried out his review and analysis on a pro bono basis. Bebchuk’s report concluded that the proposal made by the company failed to provide adequate protection for the bondholders’ rights and interests and discussed ways in which the plan should be revised to provide bondholders with adequate protection…(continue reading)

HonestReporting Media BackSpin, 2. November 2009

Palästinenser und Mainstream-Medien vergleichen den Tempelberg gerne mit einem Pulverfass und sagen, dass israelische Aktionen eine neue Intifada oder einen regionalen Konflikt auslösen könnten. Zwei israelische Medienberichte verursachen Risse in dieser gängigen Meinung.

Zum einen Haaretz, die berichtet, dass die Fatah bei der Organisation der jüngst stattgefundenen Gewalttätigkeiten an Jerusalems heiliger Stätte beteiligt war:

Wie auch bei seinen Fatah-Kollegen ist zu bezweifeln, dass [Hatem] Abdel Qader wirklich eine Eskalation auf dem Tempelberg wünscht, um in den PA-Gebieten  einen Flächenbrand zu entfachen. Ihre Hauptabsicht scheint darin zu bestehen, nachhaltigen Eindruck zu hinterlassen, sich abzureagieren und danach wieder zur alltäglichen Routine zurückzukehren. Aber das politische Umfeld und besonders die Medien stacheln sie dazu an , extrem aggressive Statements gegen Israel abzugeben, darunter Vorwürfe, Juden würden die Al-Aqsa Moschee beschädigen wollen, obwohl sich dort seit Wochen nichts geändert hat.

Unterdessen berichtet die Jerusalem Post, dass Waqf-Offizielle, die den Tempelberg verwalten, sich befriedigt darüber zeigen, dass Israel nun endlich resoluter gegen Qader und Scheich Raed Salah vorging. Wie Vered Levine vor zwei Jahren anführte, ist Salah ein weiterer Unruhestifter, dessen Medienbekanntheit in umgekehrter Proportionalität zur tatsächlichen Zahl seiner Sympathisanten steht.

Wenn also eine weitere “zweite Al-Aqsa-Intifada” ausbricht, erinnern Sie sich nur daran, wie Palästinenser und Massenmedien zuvor gezündelt haben.

Turkish Nobel Prize recipient Orhan Pamuk expounds on the need for literature to address basic human fears, and the “tension between modernity and tradition,” a preoccupation common to China, Japan, Russia, India, and Turkey.

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