Is anti-Zionism hate?

Yes. It is more dangerous than anti-Semitism, threatening lives and peace in the Middle East.

By Judea Pearl
March 15, 2009

In January, at a symposium at UCLA (choreographed by the Center for Near East Studies), four longtime Israel bashers were invited to analyze the human rights conditions in Gaza, and used the stage to attack the legitimacy of Zionism and its vision of a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.

They criminalized Israel's existence, distorted its motives and maligned its character, its birth, even its conception. At one point, the excited audience reportedly chanted "Zionism is Nazism" and worse.

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Jewish leaders condemned this hate-fest as a dangerous invitation to anti-Semitic hysteria, and pointed to the chilling effect it had on UCLA students and faculty on a campus known for its open and civil atmosphere. The organizers, some of them Jewish, took refuge in "academic freedom" and the argument that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.

I fully support this mantra, not because it exonerates anti-Zionists from charges of anti-Semitism but because the distinction helps us focus attention on the discriminatory, immoral and more dangerous character of anti-Zionism.

Anti-Zionism rejects the very notion that Jews are a nation -- a collective bonded by a common history -- and, accordingly, denies Jews the right to self-determination in their historical birthplace. It seeks the dismantling of the Jewish nation-state: Israel.

Anti-Zionism earns its discriminatory character by denying the Jewish people what it grants to other historically bonded collectives (e.g. French, Spanish, Palestinians), namely, the right to nationhood, self-determination and legitimate coexistence with other indigenous claimants.

Anti-Semitism rejects Jews as equal members of the human race; anti-Zionism rejects Israel as an equal member in the family of nations.

Are Jews a nation? Some philosophers would argue Jews are a nation first and religion second. Indeed, the narrative of Exodus and the vision of the impending journey to the land of Canaan were etched in the minds of the Jewish people before they received the Torah at Mt. Sinai. But, philosophy aside, the unshaken conviction in their eventual repatriation to the birthplace of their history has been the engine behind Jewish endurance and hopes throughout their turbulent journey that started with the Roman expulsion in AD 70.

More important, shared history, not religion, is today the primary uniting force behind the secular, multiethnic society of Israel. The majority of its members do not practice religious laws and do not believe in divine supervision or the afterlife. The same applies to American Jewry, which is likewise largely secular. Identification with a common historical ethos, culminating in the reestablishment of the state of Israel, is the central bond of Jewish collectivity in America.

There are of course Jews who are non-Zionists and even anti-Zionists. The ultra-Orthodox cult of Neturei Karta and the leftist cult of Noam Chomsky are notable examples. The former rejects any earthly attempt to interfere with God's messianic plan, while the latter abhors all forms of nationalism, especially successful ones.

There are also Jews who find it difficult to defend their identity against the growing viciousness of anti-Israel propaganda, and eventually hide, disown or denounce their historical roots in favor of social acceptance and other expediencies.

But these are marginal minorities at best; the vital tissues of Jewish identity today feed on Jewish history and its natural derivatives -- the state of Israel, its struggle for survival, its cultural and scientific achievements and its relentless drive for peace.

Given this understanding of Jewish nationhood, anti-Zionism is in many ways more dangerous than anti-Semitism.

First, anti-Zionism targets the most vulnerable part of the Jewish people, namely, the Jewish population of Israel, whose physical safety and personal dignity depend crucially on maintaining Israel's sovereignty. Put bluntly, the anti-Zionist plan to do away with Israel condemns 5 1/2 million human beings, mostly refugees or children of refugees, to eternal defenselessness in a region where genocidal designs are not uncommon.

Secondly, modern society has developed antibodies against anti-Semitism but not against anti-Zionism. Today, anti-Semitic stereotypes evoke revulsion in most people of conscience, while anti-Zionist rhetoric has become a mark of academic sophistication and social acceptance in certain extreme yet vocal circles of U.S. academia and media elite. Anti-Zionism disguises itself in the cloak of political debate, exempt from sensitivities and rules of civility that govern inter-religious discourse, to attack the most cherished symbol of Jewish identity.

Finally, anti-Zionist rhetoric is a stab in the back to the Israeli peace camp, which overwhelmingly stands for a two-state solution. It also gives credence to enemies of coexistence who claim that the eventual elimination of Israel is the hidden agenda of every Palestinian.

It is anti-Zionism, then, not anti-Semitism that poses a more dangerous threat to lives, historical justice and the prospects of peace in the Middle East.

Judea Pearl is a professor at UCLA and the president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation.

The Freedom To Be Religious: Wins and Losses

The Freedom To Be Religious: Wins and Losses
July 31st, 2008by Gershom Gorenberg · 1 Comment · Judaism and Religion
Gershom Gorenberg

Religious freedom is often confused in our parts with freedom from religion, and atheism is mistakenly equated with liberalism. For the state to be secular - so goes the thinking - everyone who lives in it should secular too. As political scientist Yaron Ezrahi once said to me, “The Israeli secular community lacks the understanding that you don’t have to secularize individual identity to evolve a secular state.”

Ezrahi made the comment to me when I was writing a story on Gil Kopatch, a stand-up comedian who for several months in the late 90s appeared on a Friday night TV show and presented a pointed, often-ribald commentary on the weekly Torah portion. Kopatch was attacked by the ultra-Orthodox for his supposed blasphemy. But he confused his secular supporters when he insisted “I’m a believing Jew” and expressed “love of Torah.” Secular MKs presumed that in defending Kopatch’s freedom of expression, they were also attacking religion as such. The idea that freedom of expression includes religious expression was beyond them.

Ezrahi’s comment fit the American model: secular state, religious society. But “liberal” Israelis aren’t alone in assuming that for the state should impose secularism. Here are several recent stories, starting with the most important:

Turkey’s top court voted narrowly yesterday against banning the country’s ruling party. The alleged offense of the Justice and Development Party was that it engaged in “anti-secular” activity, as proven by its attempt to allow women attending state universities to wear headscarves. Six out of 11 judges voted to shut down the party, but a majority of seven was needed. But the court did cut half of the party’s state funding. The court and the prosecutor represent Turkey’s old nationalist establishment, based in the military, viligantly loyal to Kemal Ataturk’s program of forced secularism.In its defense, the Justice and Development Party cited European Union principles of democracy. That fit its basic European orientation. (So much for the clash of civilizations: The pro-Islam party is also pro-Western and pro-democracy.)

A British court ruled yesterday that a school could not suspend a Sikh girl for wearing the bracelet required by her religion. Fourteen-year-old Sarika Singh of South Wales said the bracelet should be exempt from a school ban on jewelry; her school disagreed. In this case, at least on the surface, the school wasn’t trying to crush religion as such, but it didn’t understand that there was a difference between fashion and faith. But were it not for the assumption that people should give up their irritatingly non-conformist attachments to their religion in favor of fitting in, the school authorities would have seen this. Fortunately, the judge righted the wrong.

A French court turned down an immigrant’s application for citizenship because she wears the veil, in accordance with her understanding of Islam. According to the New York Times, “France’s highest administrative court upheld a decision to deny citizenship to Ms. Silmi, 32, on the ground that her ‘radical’ practice of Islam was incompatible with French values like equality of the sexes.” Now Faiza Silmi’s “radicalism” did not express itself by seeking to overthrow the state by force and violence, and there’s no report that she discriminated in any way against other women. Rather, the state decided in a somewhat patriarchal manner that by failing to dress as other women do, she was violating the principle of equality. Put differently, one can’t be too religious and also be French.

As my friend and mentor Marc Howard Ross wrote in his book, Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict, the battles over scarves and veils in France aren’t only about Islam (The word “Republican” in the following quote refers to French belief in the republic; it’s got nothing to do with the American party.):

In the hard-core Republican narrative, the French emphasize the individual citizen’s relationship to the unitary state that has historically rejected the relevance of intermediate group identities. It is the product of a centuries-long struggle to limit the power of the Catholic Church in the public domain. For its adherents, the secular state [is]… not all that is at risk - so is French culture.

In other words, a Frenchman is supposed to identify with the state, and the state is secular. Identifying with a religion as well is virtually an act of civic adultery. The Turkish generals feel just the same.

So do a good many Israelis, who see Zionism as having replaced religion as the way to express being Jewish. Their ultra-Orthodox opponents agree that one can be religious or Zionist, but not both. The classic religious Zionist position sought to solve the problem by making the state religious, at least in some ways. That way you could identify with both the state and religion without a conflict.

What all three positions miss is that the state can be the neutral protector of one’s right to have multiple, overlapping identities. It can be secular, and protect the right of a citizen to be religious.

Virtually Normal: Is Israel like any other country?

Virtually Normal
Is Israel like any other country?

David Hazony, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, June 11, 2008



Courtesy Central Zionist ArchivesJerusalem

In 2006, after the Lebanon war, Israel's foreign ministry decided that the country had a p.r. problem on its hands. The solution? Let the world know that Israel, far from being a place of war and terror, was in fact a land of sunny beaches and beautiful women: in other words, a country that was fundamentally normal. And, so, Israel retained the p.r. firm Saatchi and Saatchi, which promised a campaign to help the Jewish state build a "narrative of normalcy." Then, last July, the Israeli consulate in New York arranged for the men's magazine Maxim to publish a spread of minimally dressed Israeli women. When feminists and Orthodox Jews protested, the consulate's spokesman explained that his aim was "to promote Israel as a normal country, particularly among the magazine's young male readership."

A normal country? Israel? That idea may sound far-fetched to Americans. Yet, as anyone who has ever lived here knows, the desire for normalcy is deeply etched in Israel's national psyche. For 60 years, the Jewish state has struggled to attain a "place among the nations," to quote Benjamin Netanyahu's book by the same name, in which Israelis would live harmoniously with their surroundings the way other, "normal" countries do.

And, in some respects, Israel does seem to be edging toward normalcy. The year 2007 saw a lull in attacks, with only one suicide bombing and fewer Israelis killed than in any year since 2000. Freed from fighting terrorists, Israel's police have turned to ordinary crime, resulting in a 20 percent drop in both homicides and robberies. Tourism is up, as is immigration. The economy remains strong.

The picture, however, is not all rosy. For one thing, normalcy has come with an ugly downside: As terrorism has waned, Israelis have begun focusing on domestic politics--and what they have found is not a pretty sight. The past 18 months saw the resignation of the country's president over rape charges; major criminal investigations against a former finance minister and the head of Israel's tax authority; the imprisonment of Ariel Sharon's eldest son on corruption charges; and crippling strikes by high school teachers and university professors. Most recently, Israelis learned that their scandal- plagued prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was under investigation yet again, this time on suspicion of accepting bribes from a New York businessman.

But not only has this measure of normalcy been deeply disappointing, it has also been far from complete; in many respects, Israel remains the abnormal country it has always been. International bodies condemn Israel's human rights record while ignoring far worse atrocities around the world; anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel continue to occupy much of the global discourse; Iran still appears bent on Israel's destruction.

And so, as the country marks its sixtieth anniversary, one begins to wonder: What, exactly, would it mean for Israel to be a normal country? Is such a thing really desirable? And, even if it is desirable, is it actually possible?

The Jewish people's complicated relationship with normalcy goes all the way back to the Bible. In Genesis, God tells Abraham that his descendents will be a chosen people, and it is already clear that their unique status in the world will carry a steep price: isolation among humanity, beginning with slavery under the pharaohs. When Moses leads his people out of Egypt and into the wilderness of Sinai, the Israelites' ambivalence about their uniqueness becomes clear, as they immediately beg him to return them to civilization, to forget the hardships of slavery and bring them back to Egypt. In the biblical narrative, this longing for normalcy is at first seen as unequivocally a bad thing.

But, later, when the Israelites demand to be ruled by a king--"that we may be a nation like all other nations"--the biblical rejection of normalcy becomes more tempered. It is soon clear that normalcy has benefits: Samuel anoints Saul as king, setting the stage for the reigns of David and Solomon, a kind of golden age in Jewish history. The chosen people might have something special to give the world--might become, as Isaiah put it, a "light unto nations"--but to do so would require that they live like a nation, addressing the same issues of war and politics that every people must face in order to survive.

This kind of normal life for a self-defined abnormal people was maintained, more or less, for a thousand years, until the dawn of the Common Era, when Judea was a vassal state under the thumb of the Roman Empire. When the Romans tried to force the Jews to abandon their unique practices, the Jews launched an impossible rebellion to preserve their uniqueness. The Romans crushed the revolt, and, ultimately, the Jews were dispersed into exile.

For the next 2,000 years, Jews would be the least normal people on earth. Refusing to assimilate into other cultures, they were expelled from countries across Europe, forever needing to regroup in another host nation. The Jew was always different, never normal. "For the living," wrote early Zionist thinker Leo Pinsker in 1882, "the Jew is a dead man; for the natives, an alien and a vagrant; for property holders, a beggar; for the poor, an exploiter and a millionaire; for patriots, a man without a country; for all classes, a hated rival."

This, of course, was the only possible outcome for a people that insisted on maintaining its uniqueness but possessed none of the normal tools for survival--such as land and power--that other groups had. By the late nineteenth century, however, nationalist movements had given birth to independent states for any number of peoples. It was only a matter of time before the Jews would search for an end to exile, and a return to some measure of normalcy.

Zionism was not the first modern movement that sought normalcy for the Jews. Throughout the nineteenth century, many Jews tried to take advantage of Europe's new liberal spirit. In droves, they shaved their beards, donned modern clothing, and endeavored to participate in the life of their host countries.

The failure of this tack was apparent by the late nineteenth century, as enduring anti-Semitism prevented Jews from enjoying anything like the equality they had hoped for. In 1894, the trial in France of Jewish army captain Alfred Dreyfus laid bare the inability of gentiles, even in the most enlightened of countries, to accept the Jew as normal. Present at the trial was the journalist and playwright Theodor Herzl, who was so stunned by the failure of assimilation that he began work on The Jewish State, in which he argued for a very different solution to the Jewish problem, a different kind of normal. "Let sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe adequate to meet our rightful national requirements," he wrote. "We will attend to the rest."

The Zionist movement that Herzl helped found contained something of a paradox on the question of normalcy. On the one hand, the Jews would be normalized through relocation to their own sovereign homeland. On the other hand, this normalization would enable Jews to fully express their uniqueness-- just as they had in the biblical kingdom. "The world will be liberated by our freedom, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness," Herzl wrote. According to this view, the only thing preventing Jews from realizing their potential as a moral and creative force in the world was their severe abnormality in exile. Jean-Jacques Rousseau once wrote that "I shall never believe I have heard the arguments of the Jews until they have a free state, schools, and universities, where they can speak and dispute without risk. Only then will we know what they have to say." One of the most influential Zionist writers, Ahad Ha'am, called on Jews to shed their traditional dependence on texts--their identity as the "people of the book"--and embrace normal human life. Only by doing so, he wrote, could "the Jewish soul be freed from its shackles and regain contact with the broad stream of human life without having to pay for its freedom by the sacrifice of its individuality."

Thus, from its inception, Zionism embodied two conflicting moods: the need for normalcy and the longing for uniqueness. The Jews who went to Palestine sought both. But, perhaps because the dream of normalizing was so grand and the work required so consuming, no one really noticed the inner tension between normalcy and uniqueness, or at least the need to figure out what, exactly, needed to be normal, and what special. For the time being, the most the Jew could hope for was a national life like that of other people.

The Holocaust removed all doubt as to the precariousness of Jewish abnormality. Both Jews and non-Jews saw in the creation of a Jewish state a kind of consolation, but also a belated effort to normalize the Jews. It soon became apparent, however, that the new state would be anything but normal. A nation made up mostly of immigrants; a republic founded by secularists but absorbing hundreds of thousands of religious Jews; a democracy for a people with almost no tradition of democratic self-government; a refuge under physical attack--for decades, one could not be blamed for feeling that the Jewish dream of normalization still had a long way to go.

And yet, given where it started, the Zionist project of normalizing the Jews today seems to have been an astonishing success. Israel is now a modern, developed state, with a strong economy that has, among other achievements, helped to drive forward the Internet revolution. It ranks thirteenth in the world in life expectancy--just below Australia and well above the United States. In sports, the country has become a player despite its size: Israeli soccer standouts compete for top teams in Europe, and Tel Aviv's basketball team has won three European championships in the past seven years. Israel's presence has been felt in the artistic fields as well. The architect for the World Trade Center Memorial, Michael Arad, is Israeli. Supermodel Bar Refaeli made headlines last year thanks to her on-again off-again romance with Leonardo DiCaprio, and an Israeli movie, Beaufort, was recently nominated for best foreign film at the Oscars. Compared to the conditions that prevailed when Herzl was writing, who can argue that the Jews have not normalized?

Yet, despite all this, the demon of normalcy still haunts the Israeli conscience. It appears most often in the context of Israel's struggle for security and international legitimacy--especially with regard to the ongoing fight against the Palestinians. In politics in recent years, the call for normalcy has become a touchstone of the left. Yossi Beilin, the head of Israel's far-left Meretz Party and an architect of the Oslo accords, described in a speech in 2002 how he felt during the 1990s, when a chain of diplomatic advances gave many Israelis hope of imminent peace: "The world smiles, we gain entry into clubs where previously the bouncers had stood at the doors and said 'No' to Israel. ... We have new friends, as though they had allowed us to touch something else, to savor the taste of a normal country, which has familiar neighbors. For the first time." When asked in 2006 to describe his vision for Israel, Ophir Pines-Paz, a contender for the leadership of the Labor Party, said this: "Nowhere does it say that we are supposed to be abnormal. I believe in a Jewish state that is democratic and normal. Now we are going through a rough period, true. But, in the end, we want to arrive at peace. In the end, we want to arrive at normalcy here."

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that "normalcy" is merely a stand- in for peace with the Arabs. The ease with which Israeli leaders unsheathe the dagger of "normal" in political sparring suggests a public fear of the abnormal that crosses political lines and runs much deeper than the conflict with Palestinians. Ehud Barak's claim in 2005 that Ariel Sharon should resign on corruption charges included the assertion that, "in any normal country, Sharon would have no longer been in power." And, when Michael Kleiner, a Knesset member for the right-wing Herut Party, said in 2001 that Arab MK Azmi Bishara had flouted Israeli law in visiting Syria, Kleiner could not help but add that, "in any normal country, they'd put him before a firing squad."

At the same time, there is a conflicting impulse in contemporary Israeli life: the impulse not to be too normal. Zionism's complicated relationship to normalcy stems in part from a particularly skewed view of history: a history of looking at the world from within the dark tomb of exile, in which the nations of the world are both alluring and threatening, living a life of agriculture and war, of sovereign power and brutality, of freedom and menace. For the Jew, the cry for normal is a cry for a life denied to him for centuries--a life, however, that he is never fully sure he really wants.

No Israeli, after all, wants to adopt the brutal, Hobbesian rules of normal peoples in history--the willingness to use force indiscriminately, to commit atrocities for the sake of securing their existence. Political movements advocating expelling the Palestinians have not simply failed electorally, but have been banned as racist. Israel has had limitless opportunities to be on the darkest side of "normal," yet, with few exceptions, it has refrained from doing so. "Woe unto us," wrote the Zionist philosopher Eliezer Berkovits in 1943, "if the degeneration of the exile should lead us to a Hebrew nationalism along the European pattern. ... Not every form of [a Jewish state] is worth the trouble, and many a form could be unworthy of Judaism."

This particular sensitivity, of course, is the button that opponents of Israel inevitably push in their rhetoric against the Jewish state. The occupation, the recourse to violence against its neighbors--these are cited as proof that Israel has failed in preserving the Jews' character as a moral people. The critic George Steiner, for instance, asserts that the Zionist drive to normalize Jews has meant repudiating the entire point of Judaism: "It would, I sense, be somehow scandalous ... if the millennia of revelation, of summons to suffering, if the agony of Abraham and of Isaac, from Mount Moria to Auschwitz, had as its last consequence the establishment of a nation state, armed to the teeth, a land for the bourse and of the mafiosi, as are all other lands. 'Normalcy' would, for the Jew, be just another mode of disappearance."

Steiner pushes his point even further, invoking the trope of Nazism in attacking Zionism. In his novel The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H., he puts his fiercest attacks against Israel into the mouth of a mythicized Adolf Hitler, who, after hiding in Argentina for decades, has finally been caught by Israeli commandoes and spends time with them pontificating about Herzl's The Jewish State: "That strange book. I read it carefully. Straight out of Bismarck. The language, the ideas, the tone of it. A clever book, I agree. Shaping Zionism in the image of the new German nation. But did Herzl create Israel, or did I? ...Should you not honor me, who has made you into men of war, who has made of the long vacuous daydream of Zion a reality?"

Comparisons to Nazi Germany are, of course, absurd in every respect. Yet such comparisons continue to be made, principally because they hurt--not just because Nazism represents the extreme of Jewish victimhood, but because the Israeli wants to see himself as a repudiation of the darkness of mankind. In this context, to be normal--to be as cavalier with human life as nation-states throughout history, not to mention many states in today's Middle East--suddenly becomes a powerful insult.

Perhaps Israel's critics, despite their warped historical analogies, are right about one thing: Maybe normalcy really is overrated. In the wake of the 2006 Lebanon war, the influential Israeli journalist Ari Shavit suggested that Israel's preoccupation with normalcy had gone too far. The country's lackluster military performance, he argued, was the result of years of neglect stemming from the belief that, with the Oslo accords, Israel had finally entered the long-desired stage of normalcy. "We were poisoned with an illusion of normalcy, " he wrote.

But the constant hunt for normalcy does more than undermine Israel's ability to defend itself; it may also undermine Israel's ability to be genuinely unique. Natan Sharansky, who survived nine years in the gulag without acceding to his captors' demands that he become a normal Soviet citizen, sees the drive for normalcy as a narcotic, which could make Israel irrelevant to Jewish life: "The more 'normal' our nation is, the less appeal it has to Jews everywhere, both in Israel and in the diaspora; on the other hand, the more exceptional we allow Israel to become, the more powerful the idea of the Jewish state will be, in the eyes of all of our people."

There is also the sheer difficulty of defining what, exactly, normalcy means. Normalcy by the standards of Western nations? Normalcy by the standards of the Middle East? Germany and France once butchered each other with a brutality that makes Israeli roadblocks and the Gaza blockade look like dessert service at the Prime Grill; what makes it possible for them to live in peace today is that both nations chose to abandon violence--a decision much of the Arab world has yet to make. To survive in these conditions, Israel has no choice but to continue investing resources in its defense. Perhaps that makes it abnormal by the standards of Western democracies. But the Middle East, as we all should by now have learned, is not always fertile ground for Western conceptions of normalcy.

The final problem with the Israeli quest for normalcy is that it is--well, abnormal. Every country has a national narrative that seeks to explain itself as special in some way. (In the United States, it is the widely shared belief in American Exceptionalism.) Why should Israel insist on being any different?

Given all this, maybe it is time for Israelis to finally accept their country for what it is--extremely normal and perplexingly abnormal, both at the same time. This, after all, is exactly the sort of state that early Zionists had in mind: a homeland for an exiled people who would be allowed to defend themselves, as normal people do, while also showing the world what unique things they had to say, as Rousseau predicted they might. To go on demanding ever-higher degrees of normalcy of themselves will do little to address the problems the country faces, and Israelis might be better off dropping the issue altogether. Maybe then they would feel a little more normal.

David Hazony is a writer living in Jerusalem.

The Jewish Nation was reborn in Auschwitz

What is the Jewish nation? What constitutes a nation? Does Religious Zionism have a chance? Does it matter? What of separation of the Jews from the state? Is that violative of Zionism? What do we make of 60 years of Charedi dominance in the religious affairs of Israel? What are the results of that dominance today? This article raises about as many questions as hair on my arms.

Randy Shiner


The Jewish Nation was reborn in Auschwitz

http://zionism-israel.com/ezine/Jewish_Nation_Auschwitz.htm

By

Arie S. Issar

During the last few months I received repeated e-mail letters, in English, Hebrew and even in Esperanto, with an article called "Europe Died in Auschwitz". In all these letters it was claimed that the article is translated from an article written by a Spanish journalist, Sebastian Vivar (or Villar) Rodriguez. All of my efforts and my friends' efforts to identify the journalist failed. Thus, until otherwise proven we can assume that the article is some sort of artful propaganda trick.[1]

I would not have bothered my friends with this article if not for the peculiar chain of events interwoven with the receipt of the e-mails containing it, all associated in this way or the other with its title. This chain of associations, in the first place, raised a chain of personal memories which pushed me to sit down and write this article. In the second place it confirmed the "First Law of unexpected certainty", which I formulated, saying that "The most unexpected is the most certain to occur".

Just in order to familiarize the reader who was not fortunate to get the series of e-mails mentioned above, I will tell in brief that this "journalist" claims that the Europeans "…assassinated 6 million Jews in order to end up bringing in 20 million Muslims! The Europeans he claims….burnt in Auschwitz the culture, intelligence and power to create…… people who gave to humanity the symbolic figures who were capable of changing history (Christ, Marx, Einstein, Freud...) and who is the origin of progress and wellbeing."

The peculiar occurrence, from my point of view, was that just when I got the first e-mail with the title mentioning Auschwitz I was collecting material for an essay, from which I got to learn about the origin of the gas 'Zyklon B.' This gas was used by the Germans in the gas chambers of the above mentioned infamous concentration camp. The essay I was writing was about the question: "Whose forecast will be verified in 2025: Malthus’ or Condorcet’s?[2] In this essay I examined the new prophecies of thirst and hunger to come mainly upon the Third World as a result of the Global Climate Change. One of these prophecies was that of the World Water Forum (WWF), which convened during March 2006 in Mexico City and which stated that an estimated 2.7 billion people, or one third of the world’s population, will face major water shortages by 2025, also foretelling a shortage of food, since irrigation for agriculture is the most important use of water. In my article, I argued that in order that this prophecy should be falsified like that of Malthus, two hundred years ago. In order that Condorcet’s prophecy of abundance, which Malthus disagreed with, will be verified, the world has to invest in progressing the population threatened by the WWF prophecy on the dimensions of democracy, education and science. Progress on these dimensions produced the innovations that brought a surplus of food to the world.

Condorcet argued that liberalism will bring enlightenment and advance in education and science, and even voluntary birth control. These stages of progress will guarantee ample food. The verification of Condorcet's prophecy was the "Green Revolution," one of its major steps was made by the chemist Fritz Haber, A German Jew, who found a way to synthesize ammonia from the nitrogen in the air. This led to the industrial production of fertilizers, which won him the Nobel Prize in 1918. The same Fritz Haber initiated modern chemical warfare by promoting and organizing the use of chlorine gas by the German army during the First World War. When Hitler came to power in Germany, Haber had to leave this country because of his Jewish origin. A byproduct of his invention was the insecticide Zyklon B gas, which the German army used for the extermination of Jews in the concentration camps, among them Auschwitz.

The second association came while I was writing, a few weeks later, another article on the subject of "Progressive Development", which in my opinion should replace "Sustainable Development" in the semi-arid regions, which are going to dry up due to Global Change.[3] The writing of this article involved the study of the successes, as well as failures, of the various projects in which I was involved in the dry countries of the world. Here came the associations of my first steps in this field which were made in the Negev Desert, as a student of Prof. Leo Picard and his assistant Zeev Shiftan.

Both of them were born in Germany, but unlike Fritz Haber, they did not try to assimilate into the German nation, but joined the Zionist movement and migrated to Palestine. Leo Picard, who got his geological education in Germany, was a pioneer in all that relates to groundwater development in Palestine. After the State of Israel was formed, he insisted that exploration wells should be drilled in the Negev Desert, as according to his theory groundwater must exist there. He was backed up by Engineer Simcha Blass, later the inventor of the drip irrigation system, who convinced David Ben Gurion, the first prime-minister of Israel, to supply a budget for buying a few British army surplus percussion drilling machines. With the help of veteran drillers who volunteered for this project, the first wells were drilled along the western escarpment of the Arava Valley. Indeed groundwater was found and since then many wells were drilled. Their water makes possible the thriving special winter agriculture of this valley.

As a student I accompanied my instructors when they sited the wells and later I served as the well sitter, which meant going down to the drilling sites every few days, bringing back the drilled rock samples and reporting the advance, success or failure. During the long days of travel with Picard and Shiftan, I learned about the reasons for their decision to leave Germany and immigrate to Israel. Picard, who first immigrated to Palestine in 1924, then returned to Germany for his Ph.D. studies and in 1934 started his academic career as lecturer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, told me that because of various experiences as a young men, he came to the decision that anti-Semitism is ingrained in the German population, general as well as academic and there is no future for the Jewish people in this country. The same story I heard from Shiftan, who was detained in Buchenwald concentration camp, after the Nazis gained power, but got a certificate from Palestine, enabling his immigration.[4]

Here comes the next association, namely Iran. In 1960 Picard and Shiftan were invited by the FAO and the Iranian Government to start a project of groundwater development in Iran. As neither could not take on this project, they suggested me as the head of the project, this was accepted and in 1961 I left with my family for Iran, where we stayed for more than three years. One of my tasks was to locate a well for supplying fresh water for the building of the electric power station at Busheir, at that time a conventional power station. After I left Iran I was invited o come back by the UN Atomic Energy Agency to advise the Iranian Government on the application of environmental isotopes in hydro-geologic investigation. I left Iran just a few weeks before the Ayatollas gained power.

The above mentioned e-mails continued to arrive while I was listening to the spiteful orations by Iran's president Ahmedinajad promising the destruction of Israel, and his boast of turning Iran into a nuclear powered state (Not mentioning that atomic power is a brain child of mostly Jewish theoretical physicists, especially a Jewish lady scientist named Lisa Meitner, and was implemented by a team including many Jewish physicists headed by Robert Oppenheimer) and hearing about the conversion of the Bousheir power station to a nuclear station with the help of Russia, the vicious circle closed. This brought to mind Abdul Nasser's boasting speeches in the days before the Six Days War in 1967.

I was mobilized to my reserve artillery unit in Jerusalem (the guns, were positioned on a field a few hundred meters from my home) and we were sitting and waiting. The radio was tuned to Cairo from whence the voice of Abdul Nasser was heard. A fellow soldier in our battery,[5] a refugee from Egypt, translated the speeches from which we learned that the destruction of Israel is near, by the coalition of Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Iraqi armies, equipped by arms manufactured by the USSR. Hearing these promises, one of the fellows got up pulled up his sleeve and pointed at the number tattooed on his arm in Auschwitz and cried out in Hebrew: 'Ya Abdul Nasser. Never Again! No more killing of Jews, one Auschwitz was enough, we have learnt the lesson". As a matter of fact, this fellow gave vent to the feeling of all us and of most Israelis. The burden of anxiety from another stage of extermination, exploded in an outburst of bravery which washed away the Arab armies in the shortest war in our history.

After a day or two the war started, after the Jordanian Arab Legion broke down, we advanced north towards Ramallah, but before reaching it we were informed that it surrendered, so we turned east towards Jericho. We stopped for a while north of Jerusalem. We could see the Old City and hear the fighting. Then there was silence and on the army radio net we could hear the voice of Motta Gur the parachutes division commander: "The Temple Mount is in our hands, the Temple Mount is in our hands". We continued to Jericho, and found out that it surrendered too. We continued northward, participated in silencing Syrian guns which shelled the valley of Genessaret, climbed the escarpment above Kibbutz Shamir and stopped our advance on the Golan Heights facing Damascus, when the cease fire was declared. On our way back we heard that Abdul Nasser resigned and saw convoys of Palestinian refugees returning to their homes, from which they fled when they heard that the Israeli army is advancing.

Notes

[1] I am especially grateful to Ami Isseroff and his friends for ringing the alarm about the identity of the writer. The Spanish original of the article is evidently at http://www.gentiuno.com/articulo.asp?articulo=1865 but the author is unknown except for that article.
[2] The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com Hydrogeology Journal, 2007, 15(2):419-422
[3]"Progressive development in arid environments: adapting the concept of sustainable development to a changing world", Hydrogeology Journal 1431-2174 (Print) 1435-0157 (Online) Springer Berlin / Heidelberg
[4] Was murdered by Arab terrorists in 1990
[5] Later on became one of the senior economists and general director of one of the leading banks of Israel



Arie Issar pioneered hydrogeology in Israel and is a world-recognized authority on the subject. He is an emeritus professor at the J. Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and has authored several books on geology, climate change and philosophy.

Copyright ©2008 by the author. All rights reserved.

Book Review: Zionism and the Biology of the Jews

The only genetic connection I am aware of that correlates in any respect is the drastic climb in rates among Ashkenazi Jews of the incidence of Crohn's disease as well as certain forms of rare blood cancer (polycythemia vera, e.g.). From my admittedly limited understanding of Jewish genetics (which have absolutely nothing to do with Zionism), Ashkenazi Jews have been studied because of the relative homogeneity of the gene pool. But I firmly agree that the positing of the question of genetics (race) and Zionism is wrong-headed but betrays a lack of understanding of the history of Zionism, especially of racial theories that spawned the first Zionist thinkers like Max Nordau, Herzl and Jabotinsky. Nordau especially was a magnificent example of a Social Darwinist. But to hold such fin de siecle racial theories as applicable today is just not understandable based on what we know about the Zionism as envisioned originally and what we know about its actual history as formed in 1948 - an artificial construct that did not put into practice the theory of a Jewish people in a Jewish nation. What we have now are Israelis, not necessarily Jews.

Randy Shiner

Book Review: Zionism and the Biology of the Jews, Raphael Falk

22.06. 2008 http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000575.htmlOriginal content copyright by the author Zionism & Israel Center http://zionism-israel.com/

Falk, Raphael Tziyonut vehabiologia shel hayehudim, Ressler, Tel Aviv 2006 (Hebrew Only)

Genetics and Zionism is a much abused topic. There is always room to create mischief by harnessing "science" to prove or disprove political ideas. Increasing attention is paid to questions such as "Are the Jews all genetically related, and are they all descended from Abraham and the inhabitants of ancient Israel?"

The question itself is wrongheaded. The goal of those who ask it is either to disinherit the Jews because we are not all descendants of Abraham, or to "prove" the validity of the Zionist claim to Israel by proving that we are all descendants of Abraham. Those who raised the issue are racists themselves, because no other nation has ever been asked to prove any such thing in order to qualify for self-determination. Those who try to defend the idea that every Jew is descended from Abraham are fools falling into a trap. We saw one such effort, in the hands of an amateur, when we considered the theories of professor Shlomo Zand about the origin of the Jews. Zand is primarily an ideologue, and invented facts to fit his fancy. He wove a fairy tale that can be believed by the ignorant to support intellectual impudence. The book before us is of an entirely different caliber.

Raphael Falk is an acknowledged expert in human genetics and a reasonably careful scientist. His careful reasoning brings sanity, logic and decency to counter the demagoguery of political argumentation. It is not a perfect book, but Hebrew readers will find it entertaining, informative and insightful. What a pity that Zand's book, but not this one, is being published in English!

Falk has a reputation for being an excellent science teacher. Apparently it is well-earned. The attentive non-scientific reader will learn quite a bit about the power - and the limitations - of scientific inference. Nobody who reads and understands this book will ever again fall for claims of "absolute proof" of this or that claim about human genetics and the Jews. Falk gives us two important principles that should always be born in mind. Mixing science and politics is perilous, and can result in bad science and worse politics. Scientific theories are always "underdetermined" - that is, there can never be enough evidence to establish a theory as "absolute truth." We can only say that evidence supports or contradicts a theory or prediction.

That is very unsatisfactory for demagogues, and it tends to make the bad "science" - the absolutist quack pronouncements - drive out the good science for audiences that seek certain knowledge to prove a point. The book consists of two parts. It is not always easy reading for enthusiastic Zionists. The first part of the book is devoted to a historical review of the role of race theories in 19th and 20th century European politics, and their influence on the Zionist movement, which is often embarrassing. Falk denies (in a single sentence) that Zionism was based on racist theories, or requires that the Jews be considered a "race," but the great bulk of his argumentation and evidence tends to leave a very bad impression. Falk set up a straw man, and then proceeds to knock it down. But it is not just his straw man. It is a straw man that many accept.

Falk is careful to note, but again only in one brief remark, that the early Zionists who held these theories were not racists, and that their notions must be viewed in the intellectual context of their times. Everyone, especially educated people, spoke of "race" in the 19th century, just as everyone believed in the electromagnetic ether. "Race science" was advanced by the most respected biologists and anthropologists and the terminology found its way into every day life. Nobody could foresee that the more or less harmless notions of the 19th century would degenerate into the driving force of genocidal Nazism, and few could understand that the racist notions underlying colonialism were pernicious in themselves. In fact, though some of their ideas may sound "racist" to modern ears, Zionists like Jabotinsky were among the first to understand that colonial peoples were the equals of colonizers and would demand their rights - and that is why he and a few others understood and foresaw the coming conflict between Arab and Jewish nationalism. Nonetheless, the material Falk has assembled is likely to be abused by the usual intellectual vultures who manufacture "Zionist quotes."

The second major part of the book is a fairly meticulous and conscientious presentation and examination of the modern genetic evidence regarding genetics of the Jewish people. The best evidence, as well as reconstruction of what must have happened, is that the ancient Jewish population represented a genetic matrix, not all descended from a single founder. We know that this must be true from the Bible and Jewish tradition as well. The current population of Jews in their different communities have a genetic makeup that reflects, to a lesser or greater degree, inheritance from this ancient community, which itself shared genes with other Middle Eastern groups, and genetic contributions from intermarriage in their various local Diasporas.

The Jewish people, like all peoples, are a cultural and social group, held together both by kinship bonds and by shared traditions and national feelings. Every human carries a pair of sex-determinant chromosomes. Women have two X chromosomes. Men have a Y chromosome and an X chromosome. The Y chromosome, for technical reasons, is also relatively easy to study. Had we all been descendants of father Abraham, and assuming that genes never mutate, we should all carry similar genetic markers in our Y chromosomes. But the studies do not show that. They show some common factors for many communities of Jewish men, including many Cohanim, who may be highly interrelated, but the kinship relation is very far from perfect. Ashkenazy Jews are more like each other than they are like Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews, and Ashkenazy and Sephardic Jews are more like each other genetically than they are like Welsh people or Khazars.

But for any individual, and for some groups such as Yemenites or Ethiopian Jews, we cannot say with certainty that they are Jews or not Jews based on genetic markers alone, or that they are definitely not Cohanim because they lack a particular allele. Consider where racial criteria and theories of Judaism would lead us. If it is definitely proved, for example, that every "real Jew" must have a certain allele (gene variant), do we exclude from Israel and the Jewish community all those who do not have this allele? What if it turns out that Jabotinsky or Maimonides or Ben Gurion did not have this gene? Do we exclude communities that suffered unspeakable horrors to uphold their Judaism because their Y chromosomes were born on the wrong side of the track?

And if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ismail Hanniyeh turn out to have the magic gene (and perhaps one or two million Palestinian Arabs or Africans or others who have no ties to the Jewish people also have this magic set of alleles), should they be given the right to become Israeli citizens and members of the Jewish people? Suppose Mahmoud Abbas has the genes of a Cohen, should we make him Chief Rabbi?

In a sense, Raphael Falk's project in writing this book violates his own dictum against mixing science and politics. He tells us that he was uncomfortable with genetic studies that appeared to be trying to give Zionism a genetic or "racial" basis, and wanted to find a way to reconcile his own Zionism with his understanding of genetics. The outcome, the proposition to be proved, is therefore known in advance. That is not a good way to do science. He needn't have bothered.

There is no way to prove a political thesis from biological science and no need to do so. Political theories and ideology must prove themselves in the realm of politics, ideology and history. Zionism appears to have done so, in a unique way that is not true of any other 19th century ideology except perhaps democratic liberalism. Zionism proved itself in the way that is accepted for scientific theories: by making and fulfilling a series of counter-intuitive and unlikely predictions: Assimilation in Europe is not possible, despite appearances.The Jews of Europe are about to suffer a catastrophe. The Jews are a people and can organize themselves as a people and an nation. It is possible to create a viable Jewish state. All of the above seemed improbable a hundred and ten years ago, and were bitterly contested.

Even today, anti-Zionists deny the evidence of their senses and insist that the Jewish state must fall apart because of internal divisions and that the only future for the Jews is in assimilation or in the most reactionary forms of religious practice. Whatever a nation must be, we are one, and we have proved it. Falk sees the genetic research from the perspective of an Israeli looking out.

He apparently missed the point that as much as some Israelis are trying to prove the impossible thesis that all Jews are literally brothers and sisters or their descendants, anti-Zionists are trying to disinherit us with absurd theories like those of Shlomo Zand and the Khazar hypothesis popularized by Koestler. While no theories can be absolutely proved or disproved, some can be shown to be highly unlikely based on the evidence. If it matters, there is not much evidence that modern Ashkenazy Jews are all descended from Khazars, nor is it possible to support the view that most Palestinian Arabs are the rightful genetic inheritors of the land from Abraham.

Research on Jewish genetics has important medical and scientific implications. Not all the studies of inheritance of "Jewish diseases" and other traits has been motivated by political considerations. Studies of genetics to trace migrations of populations in ancient times are also of interest. We all want to know about our human as well as our national roots. The same researchers who have been doing Jewish genetics studies have also been studying other populations with the same innocent and apolitical goals. We can all learn from this ongoing effort and watch it unfold, but it is wise to do so without expecting that it must have a particular outcome or provide a particular "correct" answer. The Jewish people cannot mortgage their birthright to some gel electrophoresis experiment.

Ami Isseroff

Original content is Copyright by the author 2008. Posted at ZioNation-Zionism and Israel Web Log, http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000575.htmlwhere your intelligent and constructive comments are welcome. Disributed by ZNN list. Subscribe by sending a message to ZNN-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Please forward by e-mail with this notice, cite this article and link to it. Other uses by permission only.

Obama on Zionism and Hamas

Obama on Zionism and Hamas
12 May 2008 11:58 am

The Hamas leader Ahmed Yousef did Barack Obama no favor recently when he said: “We like Mr. Obama and we hope that he will win the election.” John McCain jumped on this statement, calling it a “legitimate point of discussion,” and tied it to Obama’s putative softness on Iran, whose ever-charming president last week called Israel a “stinking corpse” and predicted its “annihilation.”

The Hamas episode won’t help Obama’s attempts to win over Jewish voters, particularly those in such places as –- to pull an example from the air –- Palm Beach County, Florida, whose Jewish residents tend to appreciate robust American support for Israel, and worry about whether presidential candidates feel the importance of Israel in their kishkes, or guts.

Obama and I spoke over the weekend about Hamas, about Jimmy Carter, and about the future of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. He seemed eager to talk about his ties to the Jewish community, and about the influence Jews have had on his life. Among other things, he told me that he learned the art of moral anguish from Jews. We spoke as well about my Atlantic cover story on Israel’s future. He mentioned his interest in the opinions of the writer David Grossman, who is featured in the article. “I remember reading The Yellow Wind when it came out, and reading about Grossman now is powerful, painful stuff.” And, speaking in a kind of code Jews readily understand, Obama also made sure to mention that he was fond of the writer Leon Uris, the author of Exodus.

Here are excerpts from our conversation:

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I’m curious to hear you talk about the Zionist idea. Do you believe that it has justice on its side?

BARACK OBAMA: You know, when I think about the Zionist idea, I think about how my feelings about Israel were shaped as a young man -- as a child, in fact. I had a camp counselor when I was in sixth grade who was Jewish-American but who had spent time in Israel, and during the course of this two-week camp he shared with me the idea of returning to a homeland and what that meant for people who had suffered from the Holocaust, and he talked about the idea of preserving a culture when a people had been uprooted with the view of eventually returning home. There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted. That was part of my upbringing, to be traveling and always having a sense of values and culture but wanting a place. So that is my first memory of thinking about Israel.

And then that mixed with a great affinity for the idea of social justice that was embodied in the early Zionist movement and the kibbutz, and the notion that not only do you find a place but you also have this opportunity to start over and to repair the breaches of the past. I found this very appealing.

JG: You’ve talked about the role of Jews in the development of your thinking

BO: I always joke that my intellectual formation was through Jewish scholars and writers, even though I didn’t know it at the time. Whether it was theologians or Philip Roth who helped shape my sensibility, or some of the more popular writers like Leon Uris. So when I became more politically conscious, my starting point when I think about the Middle East is this enormous emotional attachment and sympathy for Israel, mindful of its history, mindful of the hardship and pain and suffering that the Jewish people have undergone, but also mindful of the incredible opportunity that is presented when people finally return to a land and are able to try to excavate their best traditions and their best selves. And obviously it’s something that has great resonance with the African-American experience.

One of the things that is frustrating about the recent conversations on Israel is the loss of what I think is the natural affinity between the African-American community and the Jewish community, one that was deeply understood by Jewish and black leaders in the early civil-rights movement but has been estranged for a whole host of reasons that you and I don’t need to elaborate.

JG: Do you think that justice is still on Israel’s side?

BO: I think that the idea of a secure Jewish state is a fundamentally just idea, and a necessary idea, given not only world history but the active existence of anti-Semitism, the potential vulnerability that the Jewish people could still experience. I know that that there are those who would argue that in some ways America has become a safe refuge for the Jewish people, but if you’ve gone through the Holocaust, then that does not offer the same sense of confidence and security as the idea that the Jewish people can take care of themselves no matter what happens. That makes it a fundamentally just idea.

That does not mean that I would agree with every action of the state of Israel, because it’s a government and it has politicians, and as a politician myself I am deeply mindful that we are imperfect creatures and don’t always act with justice uppermost on our minds. But the fundamental premise of Israel and the need to preserve a Jewish state that is secure is, I think, a just idea and one that should be supported here in the United States and around the world.

JG: Go to the kishke question, the gut question: the idea that if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don’t know you –- Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski –- then everything is suspect. There seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it.

BO: I find that really interesting. I think the idea of Israel and the reality of Israel is one that I find important to me personally. Because it speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus, it describes the history of overcoming great odds and a courage and a commitment to carving out a democracy and prosperity in the midst of hardscrabble land. One of the things I loved about Israel when I went there is that the land itself is a metaphor for rebirth, for what’s been accomplished. What I also love about Israel is the fact that people argue about these issues, and that they’re asking themselves moral questions.

Sometimes I’m attacked in the press for maybe being too deliberative. My staff teases me sometimes about anguishing over moral questions. I think I learned that partly from Jewish thought, that your actions have consequences and that they matter and that we have moral imperatives. The point is, if you look at my writings and my history, my commitment to Israel and the Jewish people is more than skin-deep and it’s more than political expediency. When it comes to the gut issue, I have such ardent defenders among my Jewish friends in Chicago. I don’t think people have noticed how fiercely they defend me, and how central they are to my success, because they’ve interacted with me long enough to know that I've got it in my gut. During the Wright episode, they didn’t flinch for a minute, because they know me and trust me, and they’ve seen me operate in difficult political situations.

The other irony in this whole process is that in my early political life in Chicago, one of the raps against me in the black community is that I was too close to the Jews. When I ran against Bobby Rush [for Congress], the perception was that I was Hyde Park, I’m University of Chicago, I’ve got all these Jewish friends. When I started organizing, the two fellow organizers in Chicago were Jews, and I was attacked for associating with them. So I’ve been in the foxhole with my Jewish friends, so when I find on the national level my commitment being questioned, it’s curious.

JG: Why do you think Ahmed Yousef of Hamas said what he said about you?

BO: My position on Hamas is indistinguishable from the position of Hillary Clinton or John McCain. I said they are a terrorist organization and I’ve repeatedly condemned them. I’ve repeatedly said, and I mean what I say: since they are a terrorist organization, we should not be dealing with them until they recognize Israel, renounce terrorism, and abide by previous agreements.

JG: Were you flummoxed by it?

BO: I wasn’t flummoxed. I think what is going on there is the same reason why there are some suspicions of me in the Jewish community. Look, we don’t do nuance well in politics and especially don’t do it well on Middle East policy. We look at things as black and white, and not gray. It’s conceivable that there are those in the Arab world who say to themselves, “This is a guy who spent some time in the Muslim world, has a middle name of Hussein, and appears more worldly and has called for talks with people, and so he’s not going to be engaging in the same sort of cowboy diplomacy as George Bush,” and that’s something they’re hopeful about. I think that’s a perfectly legitimate perception as long as they’re not confused about my unyielding support for Israel’s security.

When I visited Ramallah, among a group of Palestinian students, one of the things that I said to those students was: “Look, I am sympathetic to you and the need for you guys to have a country that can function, but understand this: if you’re waiting for America to distance itself from Israel, you are delusional. Because my commitment, our commitment, to Israel’s security is non-negotiable.” I’ve said this in front of audiences where, if there were any doubts about my position, that’d be a place where you’d hear it.

When Israel invaded Lebanon two summers ago, I was in South Africa, a place where, obviously, when you get outside the United States, you can hear much more critical commentary about Israel’s actions, and I was asked about this in a press conference, and that time, and for the entire summer, I was very adamant about Israel’s right to defend itself. I said that there’s not a nation-state on Earth that would tolerate having two of its soldiers kidnapped and just let it go. So I welcome the Muslim world’s accurate perception that I am interested in opening up dialogue and interested in moving away from the unilateral policies of George Bush, but nobody should mistake that for a softer stance when it comes to terrorism or when it comes to protecting Israel’s security or making sure that the alliance is strong and firm. You will not see, under my presidency, any slackening in commitment to Israel’s security.

JG: What do you make of Jimmy Carter’s suggestion that Israel resembles an apartheid state?

BO: I strongly reject the characterization. Israel is a vibrant democracy, the only one in the Middle East, and there’s no doubt that Israel and the Palestinians have tough issues to work out to get to the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security, but injecting a term like apartheid into the discussion doesn’t advance that goal. It’s emotionally loaded, historically inaccurate, and it’s not what I believe.

JG: If you become President, will you denounce settlements publicly?

BO: What I will say is what I’ve said previously. Settlements at this juncture are not helpful. Look, my interest is in solving this problem not only for Israel but for the United States.

JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?

BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable. I am absolutely convinced of that, and some of the tensions that might arise between me and some of the more hawkish elements in the Jewish community in the United States might stem from the fact that I’m not going to blindly adhere to whatever the most hawkish position is just because that’s the safest ground politically.

I want to solve the problem, and so my job in being a friend to Israel is partly to hold up a mirror and tell the truth and say if Israel is building settlements without any regard to the effects that this has on the peace process, then we’re going to be stuck in the same status quo that we’ve been stuck in for decades now, and that won’t lift that existential dread that David Grossman described in your article.

The notion that a vibrant, successful society with incredible economic growth and incredible cultural vitality is still plagued by this notion that this could all end at any moment -- you know, I don’t know what that feels like, but I can use my imagination to understand it. I would not want to raise my children in those circumstances. I want to make sure that the people of Israel, when they kiss their kids and put them on that bus, feel at least no more existential dread than any parent does whenever their kids leave their sight. So that then becomes the question: is settlement policy conducive to relieving that over the long term, or is it just making the situation worse? That’s the question that has to be asked.

Israeli Independence: Looking Back and Looking Forward

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Israeli Independence: Looking back and looking forward

08.05. 2008 http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000541.htmlOriginal content copyright by the author

Zionism & Israel Center http://zionism-israel.com/

I saw an Israel Independence day celebration for the first time in 1958, Israel's tenth anniversary. It was quite a bit different from the slick, choreographed production of today, where soldiers in dress uniform formed impressive patterns that spell out Israel or form a Jewish star or the symbol of the state, and choirs and electric instrument bands played Euro-pop vulgarized versions of Zionist pioneering songs.

The 1958 ceremony was held in the amphitheater at Givat Ram, then in the process of becoming the new campus of the Hebrew University. Soldiers in dusty uniforms stood at attention for hours, some fainting in the sun, waiting for government officials who were, characteristically, several hours late. David Ben Gurion a Prime Minister in shirt sleeves, represented a government and a people whose attitude was symbolized by the reverse ethnic chic of his slightly beat up four year old Mercury "state car." His remarks may have been significant, but the public address system garbled them beyond recognition.

It was a military parade, displaying Israel's best and finest. The soldiers in their khaki "b" uniforms, those who hadn't fainted, had a determined look, but their drill left something to be desired. The military hardware on display consisted chiefly of refurbished third hand World War II Sherman tanks and French AMX-III anti-tank vehicles, which looked like baby tanks next to the "real" tanks. Only true believer Zionists could believe in the deterrent power of this army, despite the Sinai Campaign victory of 1956.

Only a few of us in the audience knew about the "textile plant" (the French-supplied nuclear reactor) that was already under construction in Dimona, a secret that we kept for many years. In 1958, Israel had a total population of slightly over two million - less than two million Jews.

Then as now, there were plenty of Arabs in the surrounding states, and then as now, most of them did not wish us well. Not a single Arab state had signed a peace treaty with Israel. Egypt had a huge army equipped with modern Soviet weapons. Egyptian President Nasser, the Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of those days, threatened Israel with destruction. Of the major powers, only the French were allies of Israel. The USSR was actively hostile, the British were aloof after the international imbroglio caused by the Sinai campaign, and the Americans continued the pro-Arab policies of the Eisenhower administration. Jerusalem was divided by barbed wire. Jews could not even visit the wailing wall. Diaspora Jews were largely indifferent to the existence of Israel. In the USSR, Jews were barely aware of it. In the United States, most Jews viewed Israel as a convenient repository for those of their brethren who were not fortunate enough or presentable enough to be worthy of American citizenship. Some new immigrants still lived in Maabarot slums, Israeli Arabs lived under a military administration. Israeli industry was virtually non-existent, and commerce consisted mostly of buying items for 4 cents and selling them for 2 cents at a one cent profit, the difference being made up by government subsidies. Just beneath the surface, the Lavon affair was eating away at the Israeli political establishment.

Nonetheless, almost nobody who witnessed that celebration would have expressed the slightest doubt about Israel's viability or Israeli determination. To be sure, there were always those who ridiculed the Zionist project from its inception, and they continued to express their doubts in 1958 and thereafter, as they had done before. An endless stream of Cassandra pronouncements has accompanied the Zionist movement and Israel from their inception: The Zionists could never get the Turks to relinquish Palestine, the Zionists could never get significant numbers of Jews to come to the country, the Jewish community in Palestine would be overwhelmed by the Arabs, the new state would be rent asunder by Ashkenazi-Sephardi divisions, Israel would be bankrupt by 1975... None of these prophecies ever came to pass, but that has never prevented so-called analysts from generating new ones.

Today, on the sixtieth anniversary of Israeli independence, there are, as usual, those who can "prove" that Israel's demise is imminent Arab demography, or low Jewish immigration and birth rates, the rise of radical Islam, Iran and its atomic bomb, corruption in the Israeli political establishment, the downfall of the IDF and indifference of Diaspora Jews can be, and are, cited as causes in the predicted inevitable downfall of Israel. The supposedly objective prediction of what will happen is usually confounded and confused with the moral judgment of what ought to happen. The reasons why Israel should not be supported can be adapted to changed circumstances. Fifty or sixty years ago it was argued that Israel should not be supported because it is too weak to survive - an "unviable client state." Now it seems that people like Jeffrey Goldberg, in the Atlantic, want people to infer that Israel should not be supported because it is too strong. It is moral to side with the underdog, you see... Just because the doomsayers have always been wrong in the past, doesn't mean they won't be right in the future, but somehow it doesn't seem likely.

The doomsayer articles have produced a number of replies that explain why they are wrong, notably the worthy effort of Caroline Glick, who is, for once, not insisting that the sky is falling. But words on paper will only convince those who want to be convinced. They will not change facts either way.

The important articles to write about Israel at 60 are neither self-congratulatory encomiums that list our numerous achievements, nor refutations of the Greek chorus of anti-Zionists that has accompanied the Zionist drama from its inception. The important articles to write are those that soberly examine the challenges and examine what Israel has to be doing in the next decades to survive. In this connection, I recommend, for example, Amnon Rubenstein's How to survive in a sea of rejection. We should also be constantly on the lookout for changes and favorable opportunities.

For our sixtieth anniversary, Israel has gotten several little gifts. The first is an astounding, if as yet isolated, reversal of European leftist antipathy to Israel expressed by German Linkspartei leader Gregor Gysi, who maintains that support for Israel must be an integral part of German policy, and that acquiescence in radical Islam is incompatible with progressive ideology. If this is more than the view of one man, it could signal a return of the historic bond beyond progressive opinion and Zionism. We must do everything possible to reach out to the left, who are our natural allies against Islamist reaction. A second gift, which went almost unheralded for some reason, is the rejection of divestment initiatives by the United Methodist Church. Several such motions were rejected unanimously in Legislative Committee and defeated by General Conference delegates voting on a special consent calendar. In the heyday of Intifadah stimulated anti-Zionism, just a few years ago, such divestment decisions, often reversed subsequently, were routine. Perhaps it would be better if these petitions and motions never happened, but every such defeat signals once again that attacks on the legitimacy of Israel are rejected by the US political mainstream.

Another gift is the still unanimous support for Israel that is declared again and again by US Presidential candidates, despite differences in their approach to the Middle East. Pro-Arab supporters of Barack Obama are beginning to complain that he "sold out" to the "Israel Lobby." Realistically, it doesn't seem likely that any major U.S. politician is going to turn their back on pro-US, democratic Israel, and favor reactionary and dictatorial anti-American Arab and Muslim regimes. That has less to do with the "Israel lobby" and the "Jewish vote" than with common sense and US interest.

None of these little gifts, nor the lavish praise that will be heaped on Israel by foreign dignitaries in honor of our sixtieth anniversary, should hide the real challenges and dangers ahead. But what matters is not what the destructive critics say, or the numbers of our enemies. There are plenty of threats and pitfalls. The important thing, as always, is to find the unexpected opportunities and innovative approaches that will allow us, again and again, to surprise ourselves and confound our critics. The Jewish people has been facing extinction from approximately 73 AD, and the Jewish commonwealth, when it existed, was always a fragile thing beset by enemies and subject to forces beyond its control.

The great advantage of the Zionist movement and the Jewish state is that they provide us with an organization and a physical basis to advance our cause and confront our enemies. As Ben Gurion once admonished, what matters more than what the doomsayers say, what always has mattered, is what we plan and what we do. That has only been true since there was a Zionist organization and an organized Jewish community in our own land. We have always faced "insurmountable" challenges. The doomsayers point out the challenges, but they miss the most important factor: What Israel gives us, for the first time in 2000 years, is a means of organizing our salvation and overcoming the problems.

Ami Isseroff

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