On Nov. 30th, we published a post noting that Columbia Sportswear, a Portland-based manufacturer of fairly high-end outerwear, was running ads in The Jerusalem Post and Makor Rishon touting the value of their jackets “for active work in various regions, including outposts.” The post was  picked up and republished the same day by Adam Horowitz of Mondoweiss.

This morning (December 4 2009,) Ron Parham of Columbia Sportswear left this message, promising to discontinue the ads

Thank you and your readers for bringing this advertisement to our attention and for voicing your concerns to us via this site and numerous e-mails.

We investigated and determined that neither the original Hebrew text of the ad created by our independent Israeli distributor, nor the erroneous English translation supplied by the newspaper, was submitted to or approved by Columbia Sportswear as called for by our standard practices.

Columbia Sportswear and our Israeli distributor have agreed to immediately and permanently discontinue the ad, as well as to reinforce our standard pre-approval practices pertaining to all marketing materials in order to avoid such unfortunate errors in the future.

We take all customer feedback seriously and sincerely regret the offense inadvertently created by this ad.

Ron Parham
Sr. Director Investor Relations and Corporate Communications
Columbia Sportswear Company

I checked and the ads in both this morning’s Jerusalem Post and Makor Rishon no longer mention the outposts (I’ll put the scans up on Sunday.)

Big deal? I’m not sure. Helena Cobban thinks it is

Some people might consider this to be a trivial issue.  But the “normalization” of the whole idea of Israeli settlements and settlement-building– let alone the whole idea of the “outposts” that even the Israeli government considers to be illegal– is by no means trivial to the Palestinians, or to the causes of justice or peacemaking.

I think the bottom line is that when you see a grave wrong being committed in the world, speak your conscience.  Your voice– my voice– any of our voices–can indeed make a difference.  You never know what a difference your voice, or my voice, can make.

What you do know, is that if you remain silent, then your silence may well be understood as complicity in the wrong that’s being committed.

UPDATE: Adam Horowitz at Mondoweiss has more details on the grassroots pressure Columbia Sportswear encountered over the past few days.

Israeli Writers Set the Record Straight about Obama | NJDC Blog.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince – I love it! Who doesn’t succumb to the Little Prince’s charm and that of his friends? ‘Words are the source of misunderstandings.’  ‘It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.’ ‘All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they are wealth. But all these stars are silent. You – you alone – will have the stars as no one else has them – […] In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars are laughing, when you look at the sky at night … You – only you – will have stars that can laugh!’ These are simple truths eloquently put down on paper.

But this apparent, superficial simplicity might also be their inbuilt failure as shown by the use of a quote from the book by Moshe Feiglin in his op-ed contribution in today’s Jerusalem Post: IDF Insubordination can save Israel to underline his point that disobedience and insubordination are really a duty of a good citizen. Cut from the context and standing for itself the dialogue of the king and the Little Prince it seems just fine.

Of course Saint-Exupery let’s the king say that the ruler can only order what can be fulfilled by the subjects as rule has to be based on reason. And the fact itself can’t be argued. Heart and brain have to come together in those who rule a country to secure it and propel it ahead. Yet, the king who speaks is a caricature, a king without subjects who is blown around by the one subject that shows up like a blade of grass in a hurricane. It shows that it has nothing to do with reason or good ruling to turn around in one’s decisions as a government with every ailing of every subject at every time.

I’ve been born and raised in East Berlin and I’ve seen a peaceful revolution by means of disobedience, obstinacy and simple misunderstandings or lack of communication. I grew up in a country were in it most recent history the most evil things happened because people just followed their orders and later used this as an excuse. Hence, I can follow Mr. Feigling’s remarks that some laws just need to be disobeyed and some orders rejected as they completely violate any rule of moral, humanity or reason.

Yet, as long as Israel regards itself as a democracy and hasn’t yet turned in a monarchy or even dictatorship, anarchy is not the right thing to promote. The individual has his/her chance to participate in the decision making process in many ways. The individual can vote or be voted for, can involve in parties, challenge laws in courts, express his/her opinion on the street in peaceful demonstrations, participate in the system of checks and balances and use the media for his/her ends… It’s not perfect but it is from all the bad choices around the best we have.

I already have my problems with a direct democracy a la Switzerland where the people can express their nebulous fears of a raise of Islam in their country in a vote about minarets. I could write a whole article alone about the psychology behind the phallus symbolism of minarets and church towers and what a fear of minarets obstructing the sight of church towers could say about the libido of the common Swiss. Yet I leave it at the remark that a less fear driven approach by a smaller, pre-elected group of rulers with more insight and more foresightedness might have come to less striking and reputation-damaging solutions (restrictions in building regulations anyone?) with better prospect of success with the actual problem of a creeping Islamization of Europe. A per se permission to disobey rules and laws set up by a government voted into office with the majority of votes because they don’t fit the own ends and deeds is out of question for me.

And to finish this off – an army is an army and not a political party or movement. You get drafted and you serve because it is the duty of each citizen as long as the country needs protection. It is a limited time in which the soldier enters a special relationship status with the state where s/he is charge and guard of the state at the same time with special rights (payment, safeguarding etc.) but especially a special duty to loyalty. Because as the word ‘to serve’ implies already the soldier or the army made up of soldiers is not the ruler but the servant. As hard as it would be on me as well to obey someone just because s/he has more stripes (and here we are at the phallus symbols again) it’s the only way the army can fulfill the only reason it is around – protection of the state. Hence, disobedience in an army, though there might be cases where it is asked for, will never save someone but rather endanger the whole people.

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” | NGO Monitor to examine US charity supporting sedition in the IDF (not) |

David Newman, a professor of political geography at Ben-Gurion University and editor of the International Journal of Geopolitics, demolishes NGO Monitor and Gerald Steinberg, and its Knesset supporters, in a Jerusalem Post op-ed this morning  (December 1 2009). The full text with links to supporting documentation is after the jump. Some excerpts

Despite many requests for NGO Monitor to investigate, on an equal basis, the activities and funding of right-wing NGOs, many of which support illegal activities in the West Bank, it has consistently refused to do so…

It is indeed a sad day for Israeli democracy when Israel joins the elite group of states – Syria and Algeria – which make constant complaints to the EU over its funding of human rights activities within their countries…

It would appear that the EU is a good cow to milk as long as it doesn’t make any political statement…

NGO Monitor’s activities have become so blatantly political that it is indeed hard to understand how such a reputable politician as Michael Eitan could have agreed to host today’s conference. It is a black day for Israeli democracy and will only bring even greater international disrepute and criticism to the country which packages itself as the “only” democracy in the Middle East. NGO Monitor will no longer be able to point all the blame for Israel’s bad press at the door of the Durban convention – it will have to look in the mirror for the real harbinger of bad news.

Who’s monitoring the monitor?

Column, David Newman, The Jerusalem Post, December 1 2009

The Knesset on Tuesday will host a conference which will bring it into disgrace. Instead of upholding the traditions of democracy and free speech, it will be responsible for an attempt to trample on the principles of freedom of expression by those who hold divergent views to those of the government. Most surprising of all is the fact that the event is to be hosted and chaired by Government Services Minister Michael Eitan, a parliamentarian who has become known for his staunch defense of democratic values – most recently leading the counterassault on the attempt to have all citizens registered with biometric identity cards.

The conference has been put together by two right-wing organizations – NGO Monitor headed by Prof. Gerald Steinberg at Bar-Ilan University, and the Institute of Zionist Strategies headed by West Bank settlement leader Yisrael Harel. The invitation to the event shows that, with the single exception of MK Daniel Ben-Simon, only right-wing MKs will be attending, while the list of invited NGOs is no more than fiction. Adding their names to the list of unconfirmed attendees was no more than a publicity stunt aimed at making the event appear to be more balanced than it really is. They will be absent and never had any intention of participating in this latest round of NGO bashing. And even Ben-Simon cancelled his participation at the last moment after finding out about the true nature of the meeting.

Reading its publications, it is very clear that NGO Monitor has, for a number of years, had a dual objective. Its reports deal almost entirely with a critique of peace-related NGOs and especially those which focus on human rights, as though there were no other NGOs to examine. The second is to point the blame for the funding of these NGOs at the door of the European Union in what has become a very blatant anti-Europe policy.

In an unprecedented move, NGO Monitor requested detailed information from the EU on 105 projects which were funded under the auspices of either the Partnership for Peace (PFP) or the European Instrument for Development and Human Rights (EIDHR) programs as though they were carrying out a police investigation for fraud. And despite the fact that the EU provided copious material in response, over and beyond what it normally releases, NGO Monitor has not allowed the facts to get in the way of its preconceived conclusions.

NGO Monitor itself does not practice the same degree of transparency that it demands from others. It constantly refuses to disclose its own funding sources, over and beyond the minimal amounts which are registered with the official register of nonprofit organizations and which account for but a small percentage of its actual income.

And despite many requests for NGO Monitor to investigate, on an equal basis, the activities and funding of right-wing NGOs, many of which support illegal activities in the West Bank, it has consistently refused to do so. Many of these NGOs are North American-based and fund activities in settlements which are deemed illegal by both international and US law, while others support hesder yeshivot whose leaders, just a week or so ago, supported the illegal call for soldiers to refuse orders aimed at future settlement evacuation. It would appear that what is sauce for the goose is certainly not sauce for the gander as far as NGO Monitor is concerned.

The EU funds human rights projects throughout the world, including in its own member countries, as well as Russia and China. It is indeed a sad day for Israeli democracy when Israel joins the elite group of states – Syria and Algeria – which make constant complaints to the EU over its funding of human rights activities within their countries. This is the family of Middle Eastern democracies to which we now join forces as the Knesset attempts to legislate against legitimate human rights activity.

Instead of being proud that under intense conditions of conflict, the best of Jewish tradition and humanistic values enables it to set up organizations which are concerned with the human rights even of its enemies, is to be commended, not attacked. Organizations such as B’Tselem, Adalah, Bimkom and Ir Amim, to name but a few of those attacked in the NGO Monitor report, are a credit to Israel and its values of democracy and are one of the few beacons of light that Israel is able to show to an increasingly sceptical international community.

It is indeed possible that today’s attempt to push legislation through the Knesset aimed at preventing further funding of such organizations has little to do with values but a lot to do with realpolitik. There has been anger among many politicians during the past year because of Europe’s decision to freeze the upgrade of the already highly developed relations between the EU and Israel. Notwithstanding, Israel continues to be the second largest recipient of R&D from the EU, partly through the Seventh Framework, well beyond the proportional amount which Israel pays into the common fund.

So it would appear that the EU is a good cow to milk as long as it doesn’t make any political statement. This is the sort of attitude which Israel used to display to its Jewish supporters in the Diaspora – sign the check and shut up. Only give to what we tell you to give but don’t exercise your own independent judgement what to do with your philanthropic endeavors.

NGO Monitor’s activities have become so blatantly political that it is indeed hard to understand how such a reputable politician as Michael Eitan could have agreed to host today’s conference. It is a black day for Israeli democracy and will only bring even greater international disrepute and criticism to the country which packages itself as the “only” democracy in the Middle East. NGO Monitor will no longer be able to point all the blame for Israel’s bad press at the door of the Durban convention – it will have to look in the mirror for the real harbinger of bad news.

UPDATE: Columbia Sportswear halts marketing to settlers

The Israeli franchisee of Columbia Sportswear, a large Portland-based manufacturer of outdoor clothing, with an impressive Corporate Social Responsibility portfolio and what appears to be a rather progressive domestic client base, ran the following ad in the November 27 edition of the Jerusalem Post’s Friday Magazine.

Note the description at the bottom “for active work in various regions, including outposts.” If we have any doubt what “outposts” the ad is referring to, see the same ad in Hebrew, which ran on the same day in the Friday Political Supplement of Makor Rishon, a right-wing weekly. The Hebrew translation of “outposts” there is “gvaot” (hills) a euphemism for the illegal outposts populated by the “hilltop youth”, notorious for their violence against Palestinian civilians.

HonestReporting Media BackSpin, 26. November 2009

Kompliment  an die Jerusalem Post wegen ihrer Anfrage, die dazu führte, dass Facebook eine Gruppe vom Server entfernte, die dazu aufgehetzt hatte, „Juden zu töten“.

Die von einer Gruppe mit dem Namen „Anti-Semitism“ geführte Seite listete in einer Newsgroup Dutzende von Mitgliedern mit dem Slogan „Wir hassen Juden, also müssen wir sie umbringen“ auf.

Sie enthielt auch ein Fotoalbum mit dem Label „Wir müssen die Juden umbringen“, darin zahllose antisemitische Abbildungen.

Darauf von der Jerusalem Post am Montag angesprochen, nahm Facebook die Seite innerhalb weniger Stunden vom Server.

שועל!

שם הטוב יודע לשלוח ברכה לכל אדם אשר דורש ברכה אפילו אם זה בבוקר של יום כיפור ואלוקים הקדוש ברוך בוא (אדושם) יושב בסלון שלו ולא מתאים לו להריץ דיבורים כי הוא מת לג’חנון ומחכה שהמקו הזה בז’בוטינסקי יפתח.

אלוקים אוהב פרנסה טובה, בריאות, נשמה, נשימה, מים, ים, אגם, אוכל, קמח, פסטרמה, מיכל ינאי, מי זה, אוכלים ונהנים, צ’יפופו, אולגה, רנו פסקל, יואב סגל, קוקו מאילת, אבו צ’יצ’ו, חומוס, הכל בסדר, כן, גידי גוב, ואפילו דברים טעימים שמצופים בשוקולד.

אלוקים אוהב את כל השועלים והשועות והחיות הקטנות ואפילו הרסק עגבניות הזה שהילדים שמים ליד המלאווח וליד הפתות ועל הצ’יפס, נו, הדבר האדום הזה שנראה כמו דם של ווסת, נראה לי קוראים לזה קיצ’יפ, קיטשיפ, קיטשופ?

יהיה בסדר, כי כולנו ילדים של החיים.

שועלות!

The Jerusalem Post has just published a fascinating in-depth interview with Aziz Abu Sarah, Palestinian writer and peace activist. In it, Abu Sarah speaks candidly about the difficult journey he has undergone from a boy consumed by hatred and revenge to a man guided by empathy, compassion and justice. Abu Sarah’s words should be read by anyone who reduces Palestinian/human agency to outside forces – i.e. those who blame Islam, or those who blame the occupation. I have no doubt that if we could clone Abu Sarah a thousand times (split evenly between Israel and Palestine) there will be an end to this conflict.

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 11-19-09

The great Israeli disconnect is the chasm between what you experience living in Israel day to day and what you read about Israel in headlines day after day. Life in Israel is far calmer, safer, smoother and lovelier than the media coverage - pro or con - suggests.

The constant bleating about peace or war, Palestinians and Israelis, legitimacy or illegitimacy, religious and non-religious, fails to convey the realities most Israelis experience while living their lives. Even pro-Israel activists must be wary not to succumb to journalists’ and diplomats’ pathologization of Israel. It is far too easy to see Israel as a case to be defended, a society embattled by cruel Palestinian terror, biased UN reports, and absurd Shabbat riots. In fact, 68% of 500 adult Israelis surveyed last week by Sderot’s Sapir College deemed Israel the best place in the world to live.

For those from abroad who cannot hop on a plane and see, hear, taste, feel and smell Israel, in normal repose at work and play, try watching Israeli television via the Internet. But do it right. Resist the lure of the hypnotizing, “beep, beep, beep” that has conditioned Israelis and their supporters to turn on the radio or watch the news at the top of the hour. Instead, watch the second half of news shows, the lighter-than-air morning shows, and the sitcoms, reality shows and dramas cluttering the airwaves.

If, because of many Diaspora communities’ stunning failure to teach Hebrew, language is a problem, it is never too late to learn. Moreover, television is a visual medium usually programmed for easy viewing, transcending language.

Anyone watching Channel 10’s morning show this Sunday would have experienced an Israel unfamiliar even to many Israel jocks in the Israel advocacy community. The day’s big story was the wave of motorcyclists jamming the highways to protest the Finance Ministry’s license fee boost. I remember during the days of Arafat’s wave of terror how Israelis yearned for a time when traffic jams - or weather - would dominate their headlines.

One story, called “love without borders,” showed Israel has entered the Age of Oprah along with its sister democracies. It featured a wife 19 years older than her husband. She said they met when he was 17 and a half. He felt compelled to note he was only 17 and a month, but had already experienced three “very serious” relationships. As we would witness anywhere else today on Western TV-land, the pretty-boy-and-girl anchor duo mastered that Oprah-esque earnestness necessary to facilitate viewers’ voyeurism. The interviewers appeared sympathetic, even fawning, while leering at the spectacle and clearly hoping their empathetic postures would coax hotter revelations from the renegade lovers.

Another story covered the auction of some of Bernard Madoff’s possessions. Here, the anchors offered that characteristic media mix of apparent social criticism leavened by envy, greed and materialism. Cluck-clucking at each Rolex on display, at every indulgence now for sale, it was clear that they - and the viewers back home - understood their script. Social conventions demanded they disdain Madoff’s materialism, while secretly craving such luxuries. From a Zionist perspective, it was striking that the story did not mention that Madoff was Jewish. This was a deliciously non-neurotic moment, focusing on Madoff the amoral money-maker without feeling compelled to distance this crook defensively from the Jewish community.

My favorite story that day, however, covered the Israeli town of Shfaram’s effort to make the world’s largest tabbouleh salad. Tabbouleh is a wheat-and-herb salad of Lebanese origin. Treated on Channel 10 as simply a typical Israeli town, Shfaram consists of approximately 10% Druse residents, 35% Christians, and 55% Muslims.

Recently, rumors about a video disparaging a Druse leader triggered Christian-Druse violence. Two community leaders, seeking to heal, indulged in a form of culinary therapy. Hoping to get everyone working together, they decided to outdo the Lebanese, who recently made a three and a half ton tabbouleh salad. The result was a record-breaking tabbouleh of more than 4 tons - with 700 kilograms of cucumbers, 700 kilograms of tomatoes and vast quantities of bulgur wheat, parsley and olive oil.

The hundreds of residents who participated took this very seriously. The process was documented to the Guinness Book of World Records’ specifications - a decision is pending. All cooks wore gloves and face masks. Once they finished the salad, the residents ate about 3 tons of it - before donating most of what remained to charities.

This kind of conflict promised a taste of normalcy with just the right Middle East flavor. The town residents saw themselves as competing with the Lebanese on this - and on other, recent competitions - regarding the world’s biggest hummus and the world’s biggest kebbe (a mix of minced meat and cracked meat). The anchors expressed Israelis’ “national pride” in these citizens’ triumph - without ever calling these non-Jewish Israelis anything but Israelis.

True, the story of the more than 4-ton tabbouleh, like the other morning show segments, walked that fine line between depressing idiocy and charming normalcy. But this daily carnival of the offbeat was so refreshingly benign, so wonderfully non-political, it was downright therapeutic.

Despite the world’s obsession with the Middle East, few journalists reported this scoop of the great tabbouleh showdown. A Google search of the terms tabbouleh, tons and Shfaram yielded 25 hits; searching the terms weapons, tons, Israel and Iran yielded 1,610,000 hits - most referring to the Israeli navy’s recent seizure of 500 tons of Iranian weapons being smuggled to Hizbullah.

Journalists and citizens must monitor stories about serious threats like the arms shipments. But these stories must be put in context. The media is a great validator, not just a great magnifier. We should hear more about efforts at gastronomic diplomacy - and culinary showdowns - remembering that Israel is a normal, functioning state, not a state of siege.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University on leave in Jerusalem. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. His latest book The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, was recently published by Oxford University Press.

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By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 11-12-09

November 10 marked the 34th anniversary of the UN General Assembly’s passage of the infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution. That day, noting that it was the 37th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazis’ countrywide pogrom on “the night of broken glass,” UN ambassador Chaim Herzog denounced the resolution.

“I stand here not as a supplicant… For the issue is neither Israel nor Zionism,” Herzog said. “The issue is the continued existence of this organization, which has been dragged to its lowest point of discredit by a
coalition of despots and racists. The vote of each delegation will record in history its country’s stand on anti-Semitic racism and anti-Judaism. You yourselves bear the responsibility for your stand before history, for as
such will you be viewed in history. We, the Jewish people, will not forget.”

As he concluded, remembering how his father, Palestine’s chief rabbi in the 1930s, protested the British White Paper restricting Jewish immigration, Herzog ripped up his copy of the resolution.

Herzog could tear the resolution to tatters. The UN could rescind it in 1991. Yet 34 years later this new Big Lie, the Soviet and Nazi roots of which historian Bernard Lewis uncovered­, sitll persists. Jews, long victimized by racists and disgusted by racism, have been tagged as racists.

Israel, the Jewish people’s collective entity, has been compared to apartheid South Africa, with the Palestinian-Israeli national conflict cast falsely as a racial conflict. And just as anti-apartheid activists once
nobly agitated to boycott South African products, divest from South African companies and sanction South African racists, an ignoble BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions for Palestine) seeks to impose similar punishments on Israel.

BDS sounds like a new communicable disease – in many ways it is. It is viral and pathological; we ignore it at our peril.

One of the first sessions held as the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities convened this Sunday in Washington featured speakers who understand what Herzog understood, that this campaign reflects on its perpetuators its perpetrators. It reflects their bias, their double standards, their blindness to the sins of others and their myopic obsession with Israel’s imperfections.

Herzog understood something else too. Israel’s adversaries have given it a gift of sorts by drawing a clear line in the sand. The BDS debate is not about “occupation” or borders or peace processes. It is not about Likud vs. Labor or Meretz vs. Shas. The BDS campaign assails Israel’s legitimacy, declaring it so odious that no one should drink any Israeli wine, no one should enjoy any Israeli film, no one should collaborate with any Israeli academic. This BDS movement is an obscene campaign of blacklisting,
demonizing and slandering, as activists in Toronto have redefined it, understanding we must name, shame and reframe.

So far, the warfare has been asymmetrical. Facing the systematic BDS campaign to delegitimize Israel, Jewish groups have responded sporadically, haphazardly. But there is a growing awareness that the Jewish community needs a sophisticated, coordinated strategy. As Herzog’s UN colleague Daniel Patrick Moynihan would later write:

It would be tempting to see in this propaganda nothing more than bigotry of a quite traditional sort that can,
sooner or later, be overcome. But the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist campaign is not uninformed bigotry, it is conscious politics… It is not merely that our adversaries have commenced an effort to destroy the legitimacy of a kindred democracy through the incessant repetition of the Zionist-racist lie. It is that others can come to believe it also. Americans among them.”

At the session, which I moderated and which attracted an overflow crowd, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, called this fight “the defining issue of our time.” He said the Jewish people, despite our pride in being a tolerant people, must have “zero tolerance for this intolerance.”

Professor Irwin Cotler, the former Canadian minister of justice and attorney-general, analyzed the anti-Israel “lawfare,” showing how the language of human rights,­ the important infrastructure of international law,
­ is hijacked to legalize and legitimize Israel’s delegitimization.

He showed how this unrighteous assault using righteous concepts sought to make Israel today’s “new anti-Christ.” Cotler, a noted human rights activist, also reported that when he was invited to join a UN human rights inquiry whose biased anti-Israel mandate predetermined a guilty verdict, he said no. Cotler refused to be “a Jewish fig leaf” for a corrupted, anti-Israel, human rights-lynching, unlike his colleague Richard Goldstone.

The remainder of the session provided reports from the field of useful tactics to combat the Israel-haters. The Jewish community cannot do this alone. Relationships must be nurtured, grassroots must be tended to
establish common cause against the forces of hatred. We must be proactive not reactive, nimble and subtle, mastering the insider lingo of each special interest group involved in a particular fight.

When boycotters targeted the Toronto International Film Festival, Hollywood heavyweights mobilized, not just to defend Israel, but to fight blacklists, which are anathema in that community. Corporations must realize how much money they will lose if the world market becomes a politically correct, divestment-strewn battlefield on which the world’s despots target Israel, the perennial whipping boy, or some other perceived enemy.

And soldiers fighting terror all over the world must realize that if Israel’s anti-terror squads are prosecuted in international courts one day, America’s or England’s or Canada’s war heroes could be next.

The pro-Israel community can make lemonade from these BDS lemons. In Toronto, when the BDSers boycotted Israeli wine merchants, they triggered a wave of Israeli wine purchases; when they protested a Dead Sea Scroll exhibit and the Toronto International Film Festival’s tribute to Tel Aviv, they guaranteed sold-out events.

More broadly, we should seize this opportunity to reframe the debate away from the messy complexities of Israeli politics and Israeli-Palestinian disputes to the simple question the blacklisters-demonizers-slanderers raise about accepting or repudiating Israel’s right to exist. And we should recall, that just as 40 years ago the prospects of freeing Soviet Jewry seemed dim, just as a century ago the dream of a Jewish state
seemed impossible, sometimes the good guys win, conditions improve, grassroots movements shape historical earthquakes.

The time to forge coalitions of the righteous against the hypocritically self-righteous has come. We need a sustained, effective, movement against the delegitimization of Israel, understanding that in defeating this
Orwellian inversion of all that is good, we will restore the world’s moral balance while defending the Jewish state, the Jewish people, and democracy from despots and terrorists.

The writer is professor of history at McGill University on leave in Jerusalem and the author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today and The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction.

KEHILAT ARIEL – ARIEL CONGREGATION

~~~~~~~~ AMI UPDATE NOVEMBER 10, 2009~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Greetings! When the terror attack in our home first happened, there was a verse given to us from Isaiah 54:15-17:

15 If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing; whoever attacks you will surrender to you. 16 “See, it is I who created the blacksmith who fans the coals into flame and forges a weapon fit for its work. And it is I who have created the destroyer to work havoc; 17 no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me,” declares the LORD.

There was something there that I didn’t realize until now – that God puts the power of the weapon and the tongue on the same level. They both have the same destructive power. Someone said as I was sharing this verse that the power of the tongue is even stronger today than in the days of Isaiah because today we have the internet and mass media, and these can destroy more quickly. Of course, someone else said, the pen is mightier than the sword. So it is in this case. From the time that Teitel was arrested, we have noticed, and numerous people have written to us who were bewildered why our case and the words “Messianic Jews” are not being mentioned. Sometimes the way we are described in the papers is by the word “cult” or as by ABC news put it, “so-called Messianic Jews” and other condescending or manipulative terms that disrespect the name of Yeshua indirectly and directly. Now many news sources and especially the Jerusalem Post to name one, are omitting our case completely and saying only that the attacks were against homosexuals, and left-wing people. Of course this is not journalism. There seems to be a man-made intentional design to ignore the name of Yeshua and Messianic Jews in the media.

PRACTICAL HELP ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, we come to the practical. We need you to again storm heaven and to continue to lift up our hands in the heat of the battle to break the power of the tongue until we have total victory. Secondly, we need the power of the keyboard and to put our faith in action as the Book of James tells us to do. (James 2:14-20). If you could write to the editor of the Jerusalem Post (editors@Jpost.com) and tell him that you are an Israel supporter but at the same time true friends tell the truth (Prov.27:6) . Ironically, the Jerusalem Post has the most subscribers of Evangelical Christians and congregations among the English-speaking world. They also have a Christian edition of their paper, tailor made for Evangelical Christians. In light of this, they should not continue to omit the Ortiz case from their reporting. It’s not right for the victim or victims, and even though we don’t want them to add to the truth, we don’t want them to take away from it. This type of reporting is not ethical and is not journalism, but is a deliberate attempt to undermine the attack against our family as Messianic Jews. Soon we will go to court for the indictment and then the case will proceed onward from there. We need your help so that this won’t set a pattern for others to follow. We are imparting this burden that troubles not only us but also the majority of the Messianic leaders in Israel. Please take this seriously, and help us. (Judges 61-16)

16And the LORD said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites (the world system, the flesh and the devil) as one man.

Yours in Messiah, David Ortiz

TWO EXAMPLES OF SUCH ARTICLES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Teitel’s remand extended by three days Nov. 10, 2009

Ben Hartman , THE JERUSALEM POST

Police on Tuesday presented the Petah Tikva Magistrate’s court with a request to indict suspected “Jewish terrorist” Yaacov “Jake” Teitel on a litany of offenses including first degree murder, weapons charges, unlawful possession of explosives, and racist incitement.

A prosecution statement is a precursor to an indictment. The court decided to extend Teitel’s remand by an additional three days, pending an indictment which is expected to be issued on Thursday.

Teitel’s lawyer Adi Keidar told The Jerusalem Post Tuesday that his client had undergone a psychological exam he had arranged but they were still awaiting the results. An earlier exam performed by a court-appointed psychiatrist had determined that Teitel was fit to stand trial.

Keidar also said that his client is kept restrained in his cell 24 hours a day and is not given the same treatment other inmates receive. Keidar said the judge on Tuesday promised to examine the conditions of Teitel’s detention.

 The same court last Wednesday extended Teitel’s remand by seven days. Teitel, an American-Israeli Shvut Rahel, is suspected of waging a campaign of terror attacks against Palestinians as well as left-wing and homosexual Israelis.

This article can also be read at

http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1257770030252&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

SECOND ARTICLE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

JERUSALEM POST

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1256799089168&pagename=JPost

Teitel court hearing closed to public

Nov. 3, 2009

BEN HARTMAN , THE JERUSALEM POST

A Petah Tikva court on Wednesday extended by seven days the remand of Ya’akov “Jake” Teitel, an American-Israeli settler suspected of waging a campaign of terror attacks against Palestinians as well as left-wing and homosexual Israelis.

Judge Einat Ron decided to hold the hearing behind closed doors, barring the press and family members of the accused from viewing the proceedings. Ron’s decision came after police investigators made the request, saying they feared Teitel would use the proceedings to pass secret messages to his alleged co-conspirators.

After the judge announced her decision to bar the media, veteran Israeli journalist Moshe Nussbaum rose, and speaking on behalf of the media, called the decision to bar reporters and photographers “ridiculous,” telling police, “This guy sent messages for 12 years before you noticed anything, and you’re afraid now?” Teitel’s lawyer Adi Keidar also criticized the decision, saying it harmed the public’s right to information and the right of Teitel’s relatives to appear in court and observe his proceedings.

The media circus was thus pushed outside the confines of the courtroom, as was Teitel’s wife Rivka, who sat smiling and cradling the couple’s three-month-old baby as a horde of photographers and journalists swarmed her in a crescent of camera flashes and thrusting microphones.

Teitel’s parents, Mark (Mordechai) and Dianne (Devorah) Teitel were not present at the courthouse Wednesday. Keidar told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday that his client had confessed to most of the charges, but said that Teitel had rescinded any confession to the shooting at the Tel Aviv gay center that left two dead, saying there was no connection between him and the crime. A court appointed psychiatrist ruled earlier this week that Teitel was fit to stand trial, but the defense has hired a psychiatrist to perform another examination of Teitel tomorrow.

Keidar said that his client does not feel well and that it will be up to doctors to determine what his mental health is. “He said he felt he was doing God’s work, but we will leave it up to doctors to decide if he is well or not.” Keidar added that Teitel “could be normal, but if he’s crazy, it’s inside – he’s not the type who you would see it on the outside.” Keidar added that although he is not a doctor, Teitel did tell him some strange things that made it clear to him that something is not right with his client.

After Teitel’s hearing, Keidar accused police of railroading his client in an attempt to implicate him in a series of unsolved crimes. “It is obvious that police are seeking to exploit the momentum from Teitel’s arrest, and use the case to help close other outstanding cases.” Keidar was reportedly provided to Teitel by “Honenu” an organization that seeks to protect Israeli Jews accused of serious crimes. On the English version of the Honenu Web site, the organization says it “provides aid for the ‘indirect victims’ of continued Arab terrorism – those who have been forced to respond in real-time to genuine threats on their own or on others’ lives.”

A towering representative of Honenu, Shmuel Meidad, and a colleague from Honenu stalked the hallway outside the courtroom, occasionally stopping to speak to Rivka Teitel. Later the three were seen holding a private meeting in the courthouse cafeteria. Meidad said he does not know Teitel personally, but he believes fully that Teitel is not mentally well and needs help. “This man is sick, but the state [of Israel] is sicker,” Meidad said.

Yosef Espinoza, an alleged co-conspirator of Teitel’s, was also brought for a remand extension on Wednesday, a day after he was arrested by the Shin Bet for the second time. The court extended Espinoza’s remand by seven days. Espinoza, 47, a father of two and Teitel’s neighbor in Shvut Rachel, was represented in his hearing by celebrity Israeli lawyer Zion Amir, who once represented former president Moshe Katsav and deceased television star Dudu Topaz. Honenu reportedly helped procure Amir for Espinoza’s defense, and after the hearing, the high-profile attorney was seen leaving the courthouse with Meidad.

Espinoza is said to be a close friend of Teitel, who had trouble speaking Hebrew and reportedly became close to the fellow English-speaker. Amir told reporters outside the courtroom that he doesn’t understand why police arrested his client, and added that the accusations presented in the closed-door hearing revolved around weapons charges. Amir did not say whether police are seeking charges against Espinoza or Teitel in relation to the deadly shooting of two traffic policemen in the Jordan Valley this year. Police are reportedly examining whether there is a link between Teitel and the murders of the two policemen. Amir also didn’t say if his client is accused of assisting Teitel in perpetrating the attacks, or if he is suspected of having known about them beforehand.

Amir added that his client has cooperated fully with investigators and denies all charges against him. He said he expects Espinoza to be released soon. Teitel’s attorney Keidar said that the judge refused his request to represent Espinoza, saying it could present a conflict of interest, leading to speculation that police may try to convince Espinoza to testify against his friend and neighbor.

This article can also be read at

http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1256799089168&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

Isaiah 1:17 17

Learn to do good;

Seek justice,

Rebuke the oppressor;

Defend the fatherless,

Plead for the widow

Posted by Gever.

Microphones for Shabbat?

I had no idea there was a debate regarding using these on Shabbat – amongst orthodox minds. So my question is… if the battery goes in one’s hearing aid on Shabbat? Can’t switch it on?

A close friend forwarded a link to me some time ago now on the topic. Interesting stuff. The halachic debate on electricity is peppered with politics (apparently a desire to make a clear separation between traditional Judaism and Conservative leading to probably a more chumra-dic, insular, uncompromising, blanket, sledgehammer approach to the topic), a lack of proper understanding of the then burgeoning technologies on the part of major halachic decisors, and much more. The extraneous noise surrounding the topic has made it harder to get to the bottom of things. A smokescreen of “NO!” shuts up the average honest questioner.

Jerusalem Post recently reported that certain poskim in a specific area (where there are apparently no multi-storey buildings) have now banned Shabbat elevators, after years and years of them being acceptable. However the move might be supported, it certainly makes life harder for a lot of people, especially our precious elderly, and will prevent visits to the sick or injured. Electricity is always relevant, and each Jew would do well to learn more about it.

Ask the Rabbi: Speak up!

Nov. 5, 2009
SHLOMO BRODY , THE JERUSALEM POST
The propriety of using microphones during synagogue Shabbat services generated major disputes within and between the Orthodox and Conservative movements. While this debate has partially abated, its larger implications, both for hearing aids and the halachic process as a whole, remain poignantly relevant.

A microphone operates by converting sound waves into electric signals. In earlier generations, some decisors raised concerns that microphones heat metal and cause sparks, thereby violating the prohibition of lighting a fire (Minhat Yitzhak 3:38). These concerns, which at times were based on misinformation, might have applied to old amplifiers like the radio tube, but have no bearing on contemporary systems. Further concerns might apply to lights created on panel displays that indicate volume and create an entertaining sound-and-light effect. While rabbinic restrictions might forbid illuminating LCD or LED displays, one can easily purchase microphones that do not have such panels. As such, the use of microphones relates directly to the permissibility of creating or increasing electric currents on Shabbat.

Categorizing electricity in legal terms was one of the 20th century’s great halachic quandaries. On the one hand, electric power, which revolutionized modern culture, clearly facilitates creative activity. Nonetheless, it remains difficult to define this action under any of the usual activities categorically prohibited on the Sabbath (melachot).

One prominent scholar, Rabbi Yitzhak Shmelkes (Beit Yitzhak 2:31, addendum) contended that creating an electric current violates the talmudic prohibition of producing new entities (molid), such as creating a new fragrant scent in one’s clothing (Beitza 23a).

Rabbi Abraham I. Karelitz alternatively asserted that the completion of a live circuit violates Shabbat proscription of building (boneh), since it transforms something completely useless into a functioning wire, much like completing a wall (Hazon Ish OC 50:9). Others suggested a third potential prohibition of makeh bepatish (lit. “the final blow of the hammer”), the biblical proscription of completing any item in a way that now renders it beneficial (Heichal Yitzhak OC 43).

The consensus of rabbinic opinion, however, deems these theories as legitimate yet not entirely compelling (Encyclopedia Talmudit XVIII). While many poked holes in these theories, the most strident critic was the eminent decisor Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (b. 1910), who constantly researched and published on this topic from 1935 until his 1995 passing. In addition to a number of more specific points, Rabbi Auerbach generally claimed that none of the aforementioned prohibitions apply to activities, like opening circuits, which are regularly done and undone throughout the day (Minhat Shlomo 1:11). Nonetheless, he himself adopted the rabbinic consensus that opening or closing electric circuits, even without the involvement of light, remains prohibited, for one reason or another.

This entire discussion, however, would seemingly only apply to turning on or off a microphone. Using a microphone left on before Shabbat, or initiated by a timer, would only increase or decrease the existing current. While Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (Igrot Moshe OC 4:84) believed that increasing current remains prohibited, the preponderance of scholars agreed that merely changing the current violates no Sabbath restrictions (Minhat Shlomo 1:9). Possibly based on this understanding, several mid-20th-century American synagogues, Orthodox and Conservative alike, used microphones on Shabbat.

Most Orthodox decisors, however, believe that microphones violate other Sabbath restrictions, unrelated to electricity per se. The major concern stems from a rabbinic decree forbidding that activities that cause excessive noise (hashma’at kol), even if the action was initiated before Shabbat (Shabbat 18a). These actions were prohibited either because they denigrate the spirit of the day, or alternatively lead to the wrong impression that a prohibited action occurred (OC 252:5). Lesser concerns included the fear of people unwittingly fixing a broken amplifier (Tzitz Eliezer 4:26).

While hearing aids amplify sound in a similar manner to microphones, they obviously do not create excessive noise and operate quite smoothly. As such, it remains permissible to wear them and speak directly into them, especially given the need to preserve a safe and dignified lifestyle for the hearing-impaired (Shmirat Shabbat 34:28).

Over time, the overwhelming majority of Orthodox synagogues came to ban all microphone use, drawing a distinct line from the Conservative movement, whose leaders frequently adopted a more lenient position regarding all electric appliances to facilitate greater synagogue participation.

However, one prominent Orthodox rabbi, Yisrael Rozen, has argued that interdenominational polemics led to excessive stringency, with potential problems surmountable through clearly labeled, automated condenser microphone systems installed with precautionary tools (Techumin 15). Supported by the permissive rulings of Rabbis Shaul Yisraeli and Haim D. Halevi, and following a similar mechanism previously advocated by Israeli chief rabbi Isser Unterman (Shevet Meyehuda II), the Tzomet Institute continues to arrange such amplification systems for synagogues, highlighting the complex interaction between technology, Shabbat and denominational divides.

The writer, on-line editor of Tradition and its Text and Texture blog (text.rcarabbis.org), teaches at Yeshivat Hakotel.
Submit questions to JPostRabbi@yahoo.com

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.

Today, the United Nations approved, by a narrow vote of  114-18, with 44 nations abstaining, an Arab supported resolution that endorses the Goldstone Report. This paves the way for the UN Security Council to consider the matter. What did we do, voted no, along with Canada and obviously  only a handful of other countries.

The aforementioned report calls on Israel and the Palestinians to investigate the allegations of war crimes during last winter’s Gaza  incursion.( The report is named for South African jurist and UN investigator Richard Goldstone.) Deputy US ambassador to the UN, Alexander Wolff, called  the report”deeply flawed”. His main concerns were  the lack of attention or  mention of Hamas and the unbalanced focus on Israel.

Doubtless, the US would veto any Security council action. So, why is Israel concerned enough to say, via its UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalav, that granting any legitimate status to the report would essentially deny Israel “the right to defend ourselves.”  That is quite important to them, existing as they do in the world’s toughest neighborhood, as its most isolated member.

Perhaps they watch events and listen to statements with increasing nervousness, some of these from their heretofore staunchest ally.

What do Israelis think about us and them? Prior to January, 2009, some 88% of  them  believe Bush wa s pro-Israel. In May, a Jerusalem Post poll discovered that 31% of  them believed that about  Obama. A similar poll  just 3 months later showed  a figure of  4%. Quite  a precipitous drop. Joel Rosenberg referred to US Israel relations  as a coming “train wreck”, just 7 months ago. Now, he thinks the situation has only worsened. Even if one is not very pro Israel, the above numbers represent a significant concern. Are we tending to tilt more Arab, seems to be so. Is  that a good thing? I wonder.

I stumbled on the following article at the Jerusalem Post regarding ecotourism in Israel.  I’ve got to be honest, Israel is not the first country I think of when I think “eco-tourism“.  Ecotourism, as I wrote about in the post immediately preceding this one, means communing in a natural environment with both flora and fauna in their natural habitats, and Israel doesn’t seem to have much of either, from what I can tell (I’ve never been there), but they also have other problems, do they not?  I’m aware of the kibbutz concept, and it looks like the government is trying to use the previous success of Israeli farms to push tourism into Israel farther.

At any rate, seeking to help farmers diversify their income, the Agriculture Ministry has launched a course to train farmers in eco-tourism. The pilot class started this week and includes 20 farmers from the Galilee and the Golan. As it becomes more difficult to make a living off agriculture, more farmers have turned to tourism to supplement their income. Taking advantage of their rural setting, the farmers want to cash in on the world’s hunger for ecologically friendly enterprises. The ministry hopes that by combining environmentally sound agriculture with green tourism, farmers will be able to remain on the land. “Agri-rural tourism is one of the major leverages that the rural regions have to offer,” said Shai Dotan, director of the ministry’s agricultural-tourism development project. “The goals of the course are to assist the residents of Israel’s rural areas to adjust to the changes that are taking place in Israel’s agricultural sector.” The course has seven full-day sessions, each taking place in one of the participants’ farms. The participants learn about different methods to make their farm an eco-friendly environment, focusing on things such as water conservation, energy production, organic gardening and recycling. “In the past I’ve attended many courses that taught the principles of environmental farming, but I always left with the feeling that I don’t know how to begin,” said Miri Falach, counseling director of the ministry’s Galilee and Golan districts. “This course is different, because it doesn’t only teach the principles, it gives participants the opportunity to gain hands-on experience of the things they learn. Next week, for example, we will be teaching the participants how to set up and maintain an organic garden. The week after that we will work on installing a water-recycling plant.”

Falach came up with the idea to offer the course, and many of the topics covered are already in practice on her farm on Moshav Had-Nes in the Golan Heights. “I have several cottages on my property and I felt terrible about the amount of water that goes to waste,” Falach said. “My home overlooks the Kinneret, and I can plainly see what the water shortage has done to the lake level. “To think that every tourist who comes to stay fills the Jacuzzi, and that the water then goes to waste, seemed like a real shame,” she said. “So I decided to collect the drained water and water my garden with it.” Falach said she often gets funny looks for her sustainability-promoting actions, but she hopes that others will catch on soon. “There are 120 farms on my moshav, and I’m the only one to take any action on this front,” she said. “But I believe that there is a real potential here for growth.” While environmental tourism may not be a top priority for Israelis, Falach said, when it comes to the international market, there is a growing demand. “I can only hope that Israel follows this trend the same as it does others,” she said. “Maybe in a few years people here will also take environmental considerations into account when choosing a place to spend their vacations. We think this course will help prepare people for that day.” The ministry’s rural-development branch hopes to eventually set up a ranking system to evaluate the levels of sustainability of each farm, Falach said, adding: “In the same way hotels have star rankings, we’ll have leaf rankings or something like that.” The course is also being supported by the Israel Farmers Federation. Federation chairman Avshalom Vilan, a former Meretz MK, said he supports the ministry’s efforts to promote tourism in the rural areas because farmers can no longer rely on agricultural production alone. “This doesn’t replace agriculture, but it can definitely supplement it,” Vilan said. “We have seen this phenomenon pick up momentum in the last 10 years and have been involved in similar efforts ourselves.” The course is being subsidized by the ministry and costs NIS 850. If the pilot proves successful, there are plan to hold the course in other parts of the country.

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הבטחתי לעצמי שאבדוק את הנושא ויצאתי די מרוצה. להלן הביקורת שלי על עיתון הג’רוסלם פוסט לייט מבית הJerusalem Post.

העיתון עצמו נעים לעין ולמגע, נקרא היטב, ומנוסח בצורה קלילה שאיפשרה אפילו לבני הקטן ביותר לקרוא ולהבין, והפשוש הזה רק בכיתה ד’. הוא קרא, ולמרות שפוליטיקה ואקטואליה לא דיברה אליו – הוא צלח את החלק הקליל בהצלחה, ונהנה מעצם הקריאה.

הייתי גאה בבני החמוד, אבל אז – כמו כל אב תחרותי, העברתי את העיתון לילדיי האחרים, ולשמחתי הם קראו, נהנו, ואפילו הפגינו ידע באקטואליה. מה שנקרא “בנים גידלתי ורוממתי”, אבל בדיוק ההיפך

לסיכום: אני מרוצה מאוד, ובהחלט אמשיך את המנוי שלי. זה עוזר שהוא זול מאוד, ומגיע עד הדלת.

החיים נעימים כשהילדים שלך יודעים ומבינים אנגלית, ואפשר להתרווח מול הטלויזיה ולתת עוד ביס במשולש הפיצה שלך.

המשך יום נעים

ג'רוזלם פוסט לייט

נ.ב.

הנה לינק למי שרוצה לעשת מנוי לג’רוזלם פוסט לייט.

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 11-3-09

In her recent Jerusalem Post Magazine column, in which she gave Israel a ”Democracy Check” fourteen years after Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, Naomi Chazan ominously failed her own test.

In analyzing Israel’s “ongoing democratic malfunctioning,” Professor Chazan offered such one-sided and exaggerated examples that her article was actually detrimental to democracy. Faced with, alas, far too many examples of violence, intolerance, hysteria, or insensitivity from across the Israeli political spectrum, she only saw the Right’s abuses. I am always amazed at partisans’ inability, both Left and Right, to engage in self-criticism - even to build credibility. But preaching about democracy in such a myopic manner deforms democracy, reducing this delicately balanced mechanism to just another bludgeon for bashing your enemies.

Most outrageously, in lamenting the “persistent inability to distinguish between freedom of speech and incitement,” Professor Chazan failed to distinguish between violent crimes and honest disagreements regarding strategy or policy. “Peace movements and activists have been a favorite target” of unhealthy incitement, she observed, correctly. But then she added: “The bombing of Prof. Ze’ev Sternhell’s home, Moshe Ya’alon’s depiction of Peace Now as a virus and Ambassador Michael Oren’s innuendo that J Street is promoting positions that are not in Israel’s interest are just three recent examples.”

Say what? I read that obscene absurdity three times to make sure I wasn’t misreading it. Equating, in any way, Ambassador Oren’s decision not to address a lobbying group - but to send an observer - with the evil violence perpetrated against Professor Sternhell is unconscionable. And using a term like “innuendo,” reeking as it does of McCarthyism, is itself a McCarthyite technique. It suggests that Professor Chazan failed to understand the argument she advanced so eloquently; that democracy requires what she called “self-restraint” that accepts “diversity” along with civil “disagreement” - acceptance of the idea that fair-minded, intelligent people may arrive at different conclusions. And such failure, under the guise of honoring Yitzhak Rabin’s memory, profanes that tragedy’s profound lessons with partisan bile.

In an overlooked lesson from his thought-provoking new book, one of America’s towering intellectuals, Norman Podhoretz, explains the myopia Chazan - and so many partisans both Left and Right - display. Podhoretz asks Why are Jews Liberals – a query that from an Israeli perspective should read, “Why are American Jews Liberals?”

I hate Podhoretz’s answer - because he may be right.

American Jewish liberals’ self-justifying myth preaches that American Jews are liberals because Judaism IS liberalism - if you have any doubts, study Isaiah, or learn about Tikun Olam. Podhoretz, who of course is no longer a liberal, rejects that argument, especially because the most pious Jews tend to be less liberal, and today’s less committed Jews frequently place their liberalism ahead of their people’s self-interest.

Podhoretz explains that over the last two centuries, as American Jews passed from the Old Country’s oppressions and deprivations to the New World’s freedom and prosperity, liberals were the good guys - and conservatives were the bad guys. In his book’s first part, “How the Jews Became Liberals,” Podhoretz’s lightening-quick guided tour illuminates the intertwined histories of anti-Semitism and enlightenment, delighting the reader with his skill despite the depressing picture he paints. For decades, anti-Semitism festered on the Right more than the Left, culminating with Hitler. As a result, Podhoretz argues, in Part II, “Why the Jews Are Still Liberals,” American Jews remain wired to love liberalism, even as today’s ugly anti-Semitism finds too welcoming a home with too much of the Left.

Seeing American Jewish political behavior through the historic prism of anti-Semitism explains why for decades the American Jewish Committee survey has found Americans Jews far more worried about American anti-Semitism than necessary. Applying the argument globally, one could say that in Israel, the Left is so insanely Left, and the Right so insanely Right, because each draws strength from its own reading of the Jewish encounter with Jew hatred.

I hate the argument. As a post-Auschwitz Jew, born a decade and a half after the Holocaust, I want to believe that the world - and my people - have moved beyond anti-Semitism. I wish the ADL was anachronistic. Alas, recent events have proved that the new, post-Auschwitz strain of anti-Zionist anti-Semitism is invigorated by the dangerous toxin of left-wing self-righteousness.

The profound - and mostly overlooked – part of Podhoretz’s argument gets to the essence of what political identity is - and why partisans like Professor Chazan can view the world in such warped ways. With his atavistic, essentialist explanation for liberalism, Podhoretz suggests our political stands are not transactional positions we arrive at rationally and adjust casually. The depth and dimensionality of our political identities explains the visceral disgust too many partisans feel for those who dare disagree with them.

In a recent New York Times column, “The Young and the Neuro,” the always thoughtful David Brooks introduced readers to the burgeoning field of “social cognitive neuroscience,” meaning how “biology, in the form of genes, influences behavior” and “how social behavior changes biology.” Brooks implicitly pushed Podhoretz’s historical explanation into the realms of psychology and biology. Lo and behold, Brooks noted, Reem Yahya and a team from the University of Haifa discovered that “Jews were more sensitive to pain suffered by members of a group other than their own.”

As an historian, I recoil from monocausal or deterministic explanations. I draw on the first book of Podhoretz’s I ever read, Making It, to explain American Jewish liberalism further. Beyond whatever scars we may carry from centuries of anti-Semitism, American Jews are also driven to “make it.” The sociological corner in America wherein we have most thrived is the Ivy-covered, bicoastal liberal cosmopolitan post-modern “shtetl.” No wonder most of us embrace the identity of our new best friends who have allowed us not just to become one with them but define them.

Podhoretz - and Brooks - help explain how Chazan and so many partisans are frequently so unreasonable even when preaching about being reasonable. Still, no matter how far “social cognitive neuroscience” advances, no matter how resonant we find the insights of Podhoretz or others, we should never get so bound to our atavistic or scientific models we forget humans’ near divine ability to transcend.

Democracy trumps biology and history. Civility can calm the collective soul and send the individual soaring. We must strive harder to achieve such transcendent leaps of faith, for all our sakes, in Israel and America, on the day we commemorate Yitzhak Rabin - and every other day, too.

Dan Senor (Council on Foreign Relations) and Saul Singer (Jerusalem Post) write:

For all the press coverage of the Middle East, there is one side of Israel that gets scant attention: the country’s economy has the highest concentration of innovation and entrepreneurialism in the world today. For years, multinational technology companies and global investors have been beating a path to Israel. Even in 2008—a year of global economic turmoil—per capita venture investments in Israel were 2.5 times greater than in the United States, more than 30 times greater than in Europe, 80 times greater than in China, and 350 times greater than in India. And Israel still boasts the highest density of start-ups in the world (a total of 3,850 start-ups, one for every 1,844 Israelis). More Israeli companies are on NASDAQ than companies from all of Europe, China, India, Korea, and Japan combined.

…In fact, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 45 percent of Israelis are university-educated, which is among the highest percentages in the world. And according to a recent IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, Israel was ranked second among sixty developed nations on the criterion of whether “university education meets the needs of a competitive economy.”

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