A floating circus

I got an email from my adoring mother earlier today urging me to write a piece for the Jerusalem Post or the New York Times or SOME newspaper, putting the latest Middle East circus—in this case, the Gaza-bound “freedom flotilla”—into perspective.

While I’m touched at her confidence in my erudition, and the fact that she thinks someone might actually publish a political piece by an unknown 40-something mom whose main qualification for the job is that she’s read lots of books, lives here, reads the paper, and has her head screwed on right, I probably won’t follow her suggestion.  There are plenty of people much better qualified than I to write for the Post (and already have, actually—there was a very good editorial called “Sailing for Hamas” in last Friday’s Post).  And besides, for now at least, my forum is really here at Shimshonit.com.

But if perspective is required in this situation, I will do my best to provide it.

To begin with, a number of questions should be asked about this incident:

• Who organized and carried out the flotilla?
• What goods were they attempting to deliver?
• What was their purpose?
• Why is there a blockade of Gaza?
• Is the Israeli blockade of Gaza legal?
• Are Gazans denied basic goods and services as a result of the blockade?

Once the facts are established about this incident, perspective should be easily arrived at.

The answers to the questions as I’ve been able to find them are the following:

It seems the organizers of the flotilla, rather than being peace activists and Western kumbaya-singers, are the IHH, a Turkish “humanitarian” organization that sometimes funnels humanitarian relief to “areas of war and conflict,” and in addition has close ties to Islamist terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda and Hamas.  (Support for this definition can be found here and here.)  In other words, Bono and Bianca Jagger are not on board.  Before the flotilla set sail, the family of Gilad Schalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped nearly four years ago and held by Hamas since, contacted the organizers and asked them to deliver packages from the family to their son.  The refusal of the organizers to accept anything meant for Schalit only reinforces the suspicions one should have of this group’s true “humanitarian” mission.

The Israeli Navy, on boarding the ships, discovered that the cargo these “humanitarians” were carrying included known arms smugglers and weapons.  Their outward purpose was to aid Gazans, but their true purpose was to carry out a violent confrontation with the Israeli Navy.  Hours before they were due to meet on the high seas, the Israelis contacted the ships’ crews, offering to deliver any humanitarian goods through normal channels, including regular land convoys into Gaza from Israel.  They were refused.  The “activists” were correct in guessing that arms and explosives do not count as “humanitarian” goods in Israel’s book.

The purpose of this circus?  To stage a dramatic but pointless exercise in order to garner attention as part of the media war being waged against Israel by Islamists and their sympathizers.  (Indeed, Ismail Haniyeh said before the mission set sail, “If the ships reach Gaza, it is a victory; if they are intercepted, it will be a victory too.”)  No friends of Hamas could seriously imagine successfully delivering a shipment of “supplies” (much less weapons) through the blockade without facing a showdown with the Israeli Navy.  Such a mission was totally unnecessary, except as a publicity stunt.  And I would say that it will probably prove successful as such, given that few who read the news are going to get the whole story or ask too many questions, and instead will walk away with the image in their minds of a bunch of GI Yossi’s being lowered from helicopters onto the ships with (if you believe the accounts of Al Jazeera and the Turks) guns blazing.  (What actually happened, according to the film footage and the accounts of the Israeli sailors who boarded the boats, was closer to what happened to the Israelis in Ramallah in 2000, with “activists” assaulting Israeli seamen with knives, metal pipes, firebombs, and other implements.  Attacks can be seen on film here and here.)

Why is there a blockade of Gaza in the first place?  Because Gaza is currently governed by a terrorist organization, Hamas, which is recognized as such by most of the civilized countries in the world, and whose charter states one of its primary goals as that of destroying Israel.  It orchestrated a bloody coup (meaning nearly 250 Hamas and Fatah party members were killed, and 98 civilians, including 7 children) to oust democratically elected Fatah representatives from Gaza and establish an Islamist, terrorist government against the will of its own electorate.  This led to an increase in the number of mortars fired across the border into Israel (almost daily, and sometimes several a day), terrorizing Israeli civilians in farms and cities located near Gaza.  Hamas has shown no interest in participating in the peace process, it has held an Israeli soldier for nearly four years without allowing the International Red Cross any access to him (in violation of international law), and has continued to arm itself in preparation for future conflicts with Israel.  While Israel does allow medical supplies and food into the Strip, it is sparing in the amount of construction materials it allows, since those can be used to build bunkers and explosives which are naturally intended for Hamas’s dedicated harassment and terror war against Israel.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza, isolating a terrorist organization openly bent on destroying it, is perfectly legal in every way.  The argument of collective punishment falls flat when coming from nations who accept the validity of sanctions against other rogue governments, especially when those governments were not elected through any democratic process whatsoever, and even more when those critics live next to other peaceable nations.  If Hamas and the people of Gaza were interested in building a nation for themselves, and were willing to renounce violence and terror, Israel would be the first nation to offer to give them assistance.  But alas, this seems unlikely at this time.

Gazans receive regular supplies from Israel necessary for their survival under the neglectful governance of Hamas.  This was provided even during Operation Cast Lead, when a cease-fire was called on a daily basis to allow convoys of trucks to enter the Strip to ease the suffering of the Arabs there.  It is true that Gazans are not thriving as well as they might be under the governance of a more civic-oriented government.  This is unfortunate, but it is not Israel’s fault.  By withdrawing all military presence and uprooting 8000 of its own citizens, Israel attempted to give the Arabs a fresh start in a (judenrein) state of their own.  Through their own ignorance and monomaniacal hatred of Israel, they chose to elect a ruthless cadre of despots whose violence toward those of the other political party, stranglehold of the press, servitude to the agenda of an sponsor state dedicated to worldwide terror (Iran), and appalling neglect of its own citizens make it one of the worst possible regimes to have taken hold of what might have been a free and independent Palestinian State.  The primary responsibility for the welfare of the citizens of Gaza lies with Hamas, not Israel.

I’m not sure what other perspective is needed here.  Those who will cry foul at the boarding and diverting of this flotilla of felons will either be those who have not bothered to ask the questions above, or to seek out the answers beyond the exciting images and scanty articles (with few facts and no background) put out by a similarly ignorant and hostile press.  Those who try hard to rally around Israel, especially in its defense, will—unless they inform themselves—find themselves backing into a corner and stammering rather than making a strong and simple case for Israel.  In a nutshell, those who organized this act of piracy and those who (ignorantly or with full knowledge of the group’s intentions) support them, are supporters of terrorism, are against peace between Israel and the Arabs, and care no more about the civilians of Gaza than its own government.  Those who view the fracas as a cheap media stunt and an unlawful act against a sovereign nation are the true humanitarians here—people who believe in the rule of law, in the right of nations to secure borders, and in peace.

"Humanitarian aid worker" brandishes the Dagger of Peace

Additional details about the day’s events can also be found on The Muqata blog.  And the Jewish Federation of North America has compiled a number of facts (reproduced below) relating to the incident and disseminated them via email.  (Perhaps they’ll even get around to putting them on their website.)  The facts themselves are informative (such as the fact that what was on the boats was only about 2/3 of what Israel itself sends the Gazans on a weekly basis; was it worth it?), but what I find particularly striking is the warning by the National Security Council Counter-Terrorism Bureau to Israelis in Turkey to stay inside their hotel rooms and homes and avoid public places and areas where demonstrations are taking place.  While I’m sure this is sound advice, it does put me in mind of the practice of Jews in Europe in the Middle Ages to confine themselves to their houses on Christmas and Easter to avoid becoming the unfortunate victims of Yule- or Eastertide lynching parties.  (Ah, the bad old days.)

NEWS ALERT: BACKGROUND ON FLOTILLA INCIDENT

As many of you may be aware, a major confrontation took place off Israel’s coast earlier today. We wanted to bring you the most up-to-date information from JFNA’s Israel office, for your background. We have summarized the major points below. This is followed by additional facts and links to other important materials on this incident.

• Early this morning (May 31), Israel Defense Forces naval forces intercepted six ships attempting to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.
• The intercept took place after numerous warnings from Israel and the Israel Navy that were issued prior to the action. The Israel Navy requested the ships to redirect toward Ashdod, where they would be able to unload their cargo which would then be transferred to Gaza over land after undergoing security inspections. The IDF stressed that the passengers could then return to their point of departure on the same vessels.
• During the interception of the ships, the demonstrators onboard attacked the IDF naval personnel with live gunfire as well as light weaponry including knives, crowbars and clubs. The demonstrators had clearly prepared weapons in advance for this specific purpose.
• According to reports from sea, on board the flotilla that was seeking to break the maritime closure on the Gaza Strip, IDF forces apprehended two violent activists holding pistols. These militants apparently grabbed the pistols from IDF forces and opened fire on the soldiers.
• The activists were carrying 10,000 tons of reported aid to Gaza. Israel provides 15,000 tons of aid weekly to Gaza.
• As a result of this life-threatening activity, naval forces employed riot dispersal means, including, when they determined that their lives were in immediate danger, live fire. According to initial reports, these events resulted in over 10 deaths among the demonstrators and numerous injured.
• A number of Israeli naval personnel were injured, some from gunfire and others from knives and crowbars. Two of the soldiers are moderately wounded and the remainder sustained light injuries.
• All of the injured, Israelis and foreigners, are currently being evacuated by a fleet of IDF helicopters to hospitals in Israel.
• Reports from IDF forces on the scene are that some of the participants onboard the ships had planned a lynch-mob attack, using lethal force on the boarding forces.
• The events are still unfolding. Israeli Naval commander, Vice Admiral Eliezer Marom is overseeing the activities.
• In the coming hours, the ships will be directed to the Ashdod port, while IDF naval forces will perform security checks in order to identify the people on board the ships and their equipment.
• The IDF naval operation was carried out under orders from the political leadership to halt the flotilla from reaching the Gaza Strip and breaching the naval blockade.

Other important facts:

• The provocateurs were organized by an Islamist organization that has links to fundamentalist jihadi groups.
• The extremists brought small children on board knowing that they intended to violate international maritime law.
• The activists were carrying 10,000 tons of what they said was aid. Israel transfers about 15,000 tons of supplies and humanitarian aid every week to the people of Gaza.
• “We fully intend to go to Gaza regardless of any intimidation or threats of violence against us, they are going to have to forcefully stop us,” said one of the flotilla’s organizers.
• Using the Arabic term ‘intifada,’ Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said “We call on all Arabs and Muslims to rise up in front of Zionist embassies across the whole world.
• Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said this week: “If the ships reach Gaza it is a victory; if they are intercepted, it will be a victory too.
• Israel left Gaza in hopes of peace in 2005 and in return received more than 10,000 rockets and terrorist attacks.
• Israel has said that it will deliver any humanitarian aid to Gaza, as it does daily.
• No country would allow illegal entry of any vessel into their waters without a security check.
• Earlier this week, Noam Shalit, father of Hamas-held Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, approached the flotilla’s organizers asking them to take supplies to Gilad. He was refused.

Here are additional resources for further background on this issue:

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon’s press conference on the flotilla incident:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137785

Israel Goes on High Alert in the Wake of Flotilla Incident:

http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=28979

IDF Met with Pre-Planned Violence When Boarding Ship:

http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/News/today/10/05/3101.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU12KW-XyZE&playnext_from=TL&videos=KoyKrtEKHmY&feature=sub

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon’s Statement: Activists Had Weapons:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3896588,00.html

Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement about the humanitarian situation in Gaza:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wlWcNXzstI

MFA legal expert Sarah Weiss Maudi explains why the flotilla was not allowed to dock at Gaza:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2W457Ot6qw&feature=channel

Legal Backgrounder on maritime law and other related issues, from MFA:

http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?id=221580

A fascinating Al-Jazeera report on the flotilla before they left that offers insight into who was on board. One says: “We are now waiting for one of two good things — either to achieve martyrdom or to reach Gaza:”

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2489.htm

Video of a “peace activist” stabbing an Israeli soldier as he boards the boat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buzOWKxN2co

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Expresses Full Backing for the IDF:

Prime Minister Netanyahu today spoke by telephone with the relevant security ministers and officials, and was updated on the action and subsequent developments.  In his discussions with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, Minister Moshe Yaalon, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi and ISA Director Yuval Diskin, the Prime Minister issued security, diplomatic and information directives, reiterated his full backing for the IDF and inquired about the well-being of the wounded.

The National Security Council Counter-Terrorism Bureau (NSCCTB) has released the following statement:

“In response to the events surrounding the protest flotilla, there are growing protests by the government and public in Turkey.  At this stage, relatively quiet demonstrations are taking place around the Israeli Consulate General in Istanbul and the Israeli Embassy in Ankara.  This delicate state of affairs is liable to deteriorate into violent outbreaks against Israelis in Turkey.

The NSCCTB’s recommendations are as follows:

Israelis due to leave for Turkey should – at this stage – refrain from travelling until the situation becomes clear.

Israelis currently in Turkey should remain in their places of residence, avoid city centers and sites in which demonstrations are being held, and monitor developments out of concern that the situation could worsen.

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Christopher Hitchens on anti-Semitism

Some months ago I posted on my thoughts about the origins of anti-Semitism.  Since then, though, in conversation with others and my own thinking, I have reached the conclusion that modern anti-Semitism is much broader-based.  Where once it was spawned by fanatical Christians and Muslims, nowadays it’s embraced by secular people.  Where it was once the province of fascists and ultra-conservatives, nowadays the Left spouts it as much as anyone.  I concede that my post was woefully inadequate to describe the full force and pervasiveness of it.

Recently, a friend of mine (thanks, Yair) posted a link to Christopher Hitchens’s speech at the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at UCLA on 3 March 2010.  I found it fascinating, and wanted to share some of it on the blog.  (The lecture can be found here, the Q & A session here, and a mostly accurate transcript here.)

Hitchens’s Wiki page labels him an “author, journalist, activist, [and] pundit.”  He’s been labeled a neo-conservative by some critics, while Forbes magazine listed him in 2009 as one of the “25 most influential liberals in the US media.”  Reading how comfortable he can be on either end of the spectrum (though rather than a conservative I might call him instead a non-politically correct libertarian, if that’s not already redundant), he seems to me to call things what they are, and to be more moved by facts than emotions or dogma.

Addressing the nature of anti-Semitism, and whether it ever really disappears, Hitchens says,

[N]o one who pays any attention to the news from the Muslim ghettoes in Europe to the proclamations in the Middle East to the pronouncements of the Russian Orthodox Church, now the black cowled bodyguard of Putin’s new Russian nationalist authoritarianism (Question: Is Russian nationalist authoritarianism ever good for the Jews?) to Ratzinger himself, now Pope, restoring to the ranks the formerly excommunicated members of the Society of Pope Pius—the anti-Semites, the Holocaust deniers, the people who believe that the Church should never have said that Jews were not collectively responsible for the murder of Christ—it’s all coming back and needs to be confronted.  … This plague is very Protean, and very durable and very volatile.  It occurs in all ages and in practically all societies; the only one I know where the Jewish people have not been persecuted is India.  [Although a friend just informed me that the Portuguese Inquisition followed the Jews to Goa, so there goes that exception.  —S]  Just when you think it’s been eradicated, up it pops again; it surges.  It’s exploded with or without the State of Israel, with or without Zionism, with or without finance—capitalism—for which Jews were blamed, and with or without communism, for which amazingly Jews were simultaneously blamed; and, of course, in parts of Poland and elsewhere, with or without any Jews at all, there were outbreaks of pernicious anti-Semitism.

In answer to the question, Is monotheism anti-Semitic, he answers,

Yes, at least two-thirds of it is, more or less by definition.  In numbers, that means a lot of people.  The two that are plagiarized from Judaism—from the worst bits of Judaism, I would add.  Why do I say this?  Because any real Christian, any seriously believing Christian would give everything he owned to have a personal meeting with Jesus of Nazareth.  Nothing more could be desired than that moment.  They yearn for it; they thirst for it; they hunger for it.  No serious Muslim could want anything more than to have met himself the messenger of God, the prophet Mohammed.  But there were no Ukrainians around at that time; there were no Poles at the crucifixion; there were no Irish people in Mecca or Medina.  There’s only one people that’s still around that met both these imposters and said, “No.  No sale.  Don’t believe it.”  Do you think that’s ever going to be forgiven?  Of course it’s not.  Of course it’ll never be forgiven.  They saw Jesus of Nazareth and they spat in his face.  They saw the prophet Mohammed and they said, “This guy is just a warlord.”  Of Jesus they said, “He’s just a crackpot rabbi,” and also great blasphemer.  Maimonides says, in one of his sharper passages, “The sages never did a better thing than when they got rid of that rabble-rousing imposter.”  Well, it makes you proud, I hope.  You shouldn’t want to be forgiven for getting a thing like that right.

Answering a question from a member of the audience about whether Hitchens thinks the American Left views the Middle East as the host of the latest Civil Rights movement, Hitchens agrees that that plays a role in the Left’s anti-Zionism, but takes it a step further (and vindicates some of my irritation with underinformed commenters on this blog).

What’s happened with a lot of the Left is that they genuinely think that Islamic jihadism is a movement of brown-skinned disempowered people who’ve had a hard time.  If they’re against the United States empire, they must be doing something right.   And most of these people are fantastically ignorant; they know nothing about it; they’ve cared nothing at all to inform themselves.   So if you say to them, “Actually, Al-Qaeda begins in India-Pakistan as an attempt to destroy the brown-skinned, multi-ethnic democracy of India by wrenching Kashmir out of the Indian State and starting a civil war, that it makes war on the other Asian democracies of the Philippines, Indonesia, in all cases trying to build a separate, ultra-fundamentalist Muslim state,” they don’t know that at all.  They just feel it must be owed something and in several cases, including my old publisher, New Left Books, explicit texts have been produced, saying that since the world proletariat turned out to be a bit of a disappointment—it never did what we asked of it—at least now there is an alternative source of power, a mass disenfranchised movement of resentment against it.

Hitchens closes with an incisive observation about the role Jews play in the world, and the meaning of anti-Semitism for all societies:

Now, if I had to pick any one special trait of Judaism or the Jewish personality or character, I think I would pick irony. No other religion has a prophet like Maimonides who says, “Yes, the Messiah will come, but he may tarry.” Though no Woody Allen, theologians and Christianity say things like that. For all the fetishization in Judaism of unleavened bread, the Jewish people have in fact been the yeast in enormous number of societies and countries, the leaven in the lump. Benny Morris’s new book on the origins of the Israeli-Palestine crisis quotes one of the Mufti’s people writing from the Imam’s headquarters in Jerusalem to the British saying, “You can’t be bringing Jews to this country. They’re all subversives. It’s nothing but trouble.” Again, take compliments where you can get them. So natural disturbance of the natural order. Everything was fine, every peasant knew to expect only one meal a day, everyone knew who owned what and where, everyone obeyed the priests and the mullahs, but now look. These scrofulous trouble makers from Poland and Latvia.

Rabbi Tarfon was a great hater of Christians and had an even greater hatred of Jewish heretics, and I’ve always thought it’s wonderful that the Jewish word for heretic is Apikoros, follower of Epicurus and student of Greek. That’s a nice way to be called a heretic. Anyway, I’m not a great admirer of Rabbi Tarfon, but he had it right when he said… “You are not obliged to complete the task, but neither are you free to give it up or to evade it.” To be Jewish is to be involved in a continual struggle, a continual test, to be at continual risk, to be always aware of anxiety and danger and angst, just as there could be despite the best efforts of its enemies no Final Solution to the so-called Jewish problem, or Jewish question, in Europe. So one has to say there’s no ultimate security or salvation for the Jewish people or any other. More and more, for example, to me Israel begins to resemble a part of the Diaspora, not a solution to it or an alternative to it, just another place where a large number of Jewish people live in great insecurity and constant doubt. Jews will always continue to be identified as malcontents, doubters, unsound, cosmopolitan, and yes, if you like, ruthless.

And I’ll close by saying this. Because anti-Semitism is the godfather of racism and the gateway to tyranny and fascism and war, it is to be regarded not as the enemy of the Jewish people, but as the common enemy of humanity and of civilization and has to be fought against very tenaciously for that reason, most especially in its current, most virulent form of Islamic jihad. Daniel Pearl’s revolting murderer was educated at the London School of Economics. Our Christmas bomber over Detroit was from a neighboring London college, the chair of the Islamic Students’ Society. Many pogroms against Jewish people have been reported from all over Europe today as I’m talking, and we can only expect this to get worse, and we must make sure our own defenses are not neglected. Our task is to call this filthy thing, this plague, this pest, by its right name, to make unceasing resistance to it, knowing all the time that it’s probably ultimately ineradicable, and bearing in mind that its hatred towards us is a compliment and resolving some of the time at any rate to do a bit more to deserve it. Thank you.

There is much more good stuff in Hitchens’s lecture.  His identification with the Jews, despite not embracing its theology (he’s an atheist), is because of the Jews’ tradition of questioning, their opposition to fatalism and stubborn unwillingness to accept tyranny, poverty, ignorance, and injustice in the world, and their constant efforts to further the progress, knowledge, and condition of mankind.  I may not admire everything he has done in his career, but I’m with him on these points.

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Guest post: Hair: Not the musical

The following is a guest post by my friend, B., another Orthodox convert who lives in the US and recently stopped covering her hair.  It’s something with which I’ve grappled for much of my married life, both in the US and in Israel (and posted on here).  But I asked B. to let me post her thoughts on my blog because she goes into the subject in much more detail, addressing every aspect of her life affected by the choice to cover or uncover her hair.  Thank you, B.

She sits with her chavrusa at Starbucks. He walks over, the father of a child in her son’s class. They’ve chatted any number of times in the last three years. But today he merely glances at her, starts up a conversation with the chavrusa, then turns to her and offers his hand. “Hi, I’m R—,” he says. “Uh, yeah,” she says. “Hi, R—.” Puzzled, he withdraws his hand, continues chatting with the chavrusa for a few more moments, throwing her sidelong glances. Still confused, he says goodbye and wanders off.

She realizes, and a few days later confirms — he hadn’t recognized her. “Holy crap,” she thinks. “He’s never seen me. He’s only ever seen my hat.”

I was somewhat surprised when a friend posted her thoughts about uncovering her hair [Not me, by the way.  —Shimshonit], since I myself had been thinking along the same lines for a while. Folks who know I usually get a crew cut (or a Chelsea ) for the summer will know that last summer, when I let my hair grow (and grow, and grow), it was different. It’s now back nearly to the length—and color—it was when I married. The length and color of my sheitel.

She pushes her carriage around the bakery section at Shop & Shop. T— from shul stops next to her, glances at her, and picks up a loaf of specialty bread. “Hi, T—,” she says. T— looks up, startled. “Um? Oh —“ her eyes widening. “B.! I — I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you. Um… new haircut? Oh wait, I don’t think I’ve ever seen your hair before…”

The first question was of course a halachic one. Or two. (1) Is it halachically required for a married woman to cover her hair? (2) Is it halachically permissible for a married woman to un-cover her hair?

Now, when I have a halachic question, I first think, “Ask a rabbi.” But this is not an ask-the-rabbi question, because I no longer have any faith in the rabbeim and their ability to provide real answers to questions like this. Is this stain a tamei color, so that I’m in niddah? No problem. Is my pot treif? No problem. But a question like this is so colored by politics, by considerations not only of what the halacha is or what is best for me as a Jew (i.e. pastoral considerations), but by what other rabbeim will think of this one, should he provide a lenient answer, that I cannot trust him, or any “him” I know of. I don’t need to suggest a cynical “afraid to buck his peers” attitude here — every one of these rabbis has signed a teudat gerut or a get. In the current Hareidi-dominated Orthodox Judaism, his liberal answer on my hair could jeopardize someone’s status as a Jew, could create mamzerim.

So I turn to the literature. Again, no Orthodox rabbi will give a definitive liberal opinion in print, but there are numerous survey papers discussing — academically, of course — the halachic status of women’s hair covering. From my reading — see here and here — it seems fair to say that women’s haircovering is daat Yehudit (Jewish customary law, which can flex with changing situations and customs) rather than daat Moshe (immutable Torah law). It may be that the Torah requires a woman to braid or gather her hair. There is considerable discussion about what exactly the language in the sotah passage means. There is also considerable discussion acknowledging that at this point in the history of civilization, anyone who argues that a woman must cover her hair because of lifnei ever — lest she tempt a man — has to know that he comes across like a total idiot. Tznius is likewise a weak concept here: bare hair is ervah only on a married woman. It is true that we have two established legal concepts — not swerving to the right or left of Torah authorities, and that custom has the force of law. As to the first concept, I cannot at this point name a trustworthy Torah authority currently living, alas for us. Our shul rabbi, responding to a different question, once told me that if a rabbi holds thus-and-such opinion (which in my mind was a reasonably arguable position) then he had misused his learning to reason inappropriately and was not to be considered Orthodox. Oh. OK. For the second legal concept, we can then say that the vanguard of custom-changers have then broken the law, but eventually enough folks follow the new behavior in spite of the law to create a new custom. I do not have even an inkling of how minhag and halacha interplay under those circumstances. I have heard the argument that the behavior of those Modern Orthodox and those to their left can’t count for changing custom because the women involved are not Torah-observant, but when push comes to shove, “not Torah-observant” seems to be defined as “they don’t cover their hair,” though in one instance I was told that so-and-so doesn’t count as someone who keeps kosher because she uses chalav stam.

It seems to me that a woman who marries and decides not to cover her hair is in a strong position to justify her behavior.  For a woman who has covered her hair and wishes no longer to do so, there are two additional issues: has she gone down in kedusha (not permitted!) by uncovering her hair? And if it is permitted, need she do hatarat nedarim?

In the first case, I can give only my personal answer, which is that I do not see sufficient value in covered hair as a marker of kedusha to say that uncovering it is a descent. If it is a descent, it’s for the sake of ascent: covering my hair has for a number of reasons made me increasingly uncomfortable as a Jew and as a person. Physically, my hot, itching head is unbearable, particularly if I don’t have full faith that it’s actually required by G-d, and psychologically, the thoughts of why it’s covered and what that means are disturbing.

As to the hatarat nedarim issue, I suspect that a woman deciding to stop covering her hair does need to do it. But practically speaking, I am not sure in what context I could pull together a bet din for this — see my above comment regarding my sense that I cannot get reliable advice from a rabbi on the issue of hair covering.

I covered my hair in the first place because it was presented to me as the halacha, though I was never taught it as such by the rabbi who handled my conversion, nor was it specifically mentioned by the woman who did my taharat hamishpacha “class.” It was just… expected. And the bet din, while it never put a hat on me as a formal requirement, asked about it so many times that I had to see it as part of the “contract,” as it were. That said, I have heard of two other and more recent converts through that same bet din who were explicitly excused from agreeing to cover their hair as a condition of conversion, and know two others who said that the bet din never asked about it.

As I learned more even before marriage I had serious doubts that it was the halacha that a woman must cover her hair — too many of my Orthodox friends insisted that it was not, too many observant older women didn’t, and in both cases some could even justify their behavior. (“That’s ridiculous,” one said to me. “The Rav’s wife didn’t cover her hair!”) But that’s the freedom of a born Jew. One reason I covered my hair was that I didn’t want anyone pointing to it and questioning my sincerity. Over the past few years that sense has changed as well, because I now realize that there will be some portion of the Jewish community that will point at anything, anything, to reject someone’s status as a Jew. My bare head is only one of many things that could be used against me — and yet, I insist that I am a Torah-observant Jew. Just not their “Torah.”

A final quasi-halachic issue is that because bareheadedness is a characteristic of a single woman, a married woman who bares her head is identifying herself as available, which is fraud and transgresses on the kedusha of her marriage. This is related to the argument that her hair is reserved for her husband alone, something special between them, as if the space from collarbone to knee weren’t enough. These all refer to an untrue social context. (As to the question of the kedusha of my marriage, I have discussed the matter with my husband, and he’s OK with it, does not feel that I’m advertising myself as available when I’m not.)

She heads into the shul building, suddenly conscious that she is bare-headed. Rummaging through her bag, she realizes that the black cotton beret that was more and more often in the bag rather than on her head is missing. She glances at the time, considers. This is really the only chance she’d have to jot down notes for the bathroom renovation project. There isn’t time to run home for a hat, as she needs to go be menachem avel this afternoon as well. She thinks of all the frum women she knows who wear a hat for services but enter the building bareheaded for other activities. “Oh, well,” she thinks. “It was going to happen eventually.”
Inside, the Torah Academy girls look her over. Long skirt, dull-colored sweater, bare head. Two sheiteled teachers glance her way. One is a friend: C. lent her wedding dress, C. has rebuked her for swimming at the same time as men, C. has suggested that she teach at the Bais Yaakov. Now C. glances up, and back down at her papers. The other teacher approaches, talks to her. Now C. looks up again, startled. “Oh! B.? B.! Um. Oh.” Staring. Looking away.

In the frum community a married woman’s wearing a hat indicates her belonging, her commitment to halacha and trustworthiness in areas as diverse as “Can I eat in her kitchen?”, “Should I give her the frum discount?” and “Is my kid OK with her?” Oh, and it indicates her married status. If I want to fit in with the frum community I have to cover my hair.

Beyond that, the current state of affairs in the right-wing Orthodox world that is increasingly the Jewish world is that some day my children may find their marriage prospects stymied by a negative answer to “Does your mom cover her hair?” It may even influence what yeshiva they can study at. I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb to say that a negative answer to that might lead to their being written out of the Jewish community entirely if the Hareidim have their way. (“Oh, your mom didn’t cover her hair, starting fourteen years after her conversion? Um, well, then you need gerus l’chumra.”)
As I thought about doffing my hat — and as I indicated above, I’ve been growing my hair back since last summer because of this thought process — I asked around. Friends who cover their hair, and those who don’t: Why (not)? The answers? “I never learned it as halacha; I only do it because of peer pressure.” “If I want people to eat in my house I have to cover my hair, otherwise they assume I don’t keep kosher or Shabbat.” Among those who don’t cover: “It’s not the halacha,” “It’s uncomfortable, and it’s not required,” “My mother didn’t, and she was frummer than most of the women who do!”

Community sets the standard. Who is my community? If “the Jewish women in my geographic area” — i.e. standard Shabbat-invitation distance — then the majority don’t cover their hair. How about “frum women in my geographic area”? Well, except that “frum” tends to get defined by clothing, so it’s circular. How about “women in my geographic area at whose houses I would eat”? Now we’re at about 60 covered / 40 uncovered. Refine it more: “women in my geographic area at whose house I would eat and who would eat at my house (removing the issue of haircovering).” Because community is defined by food exchange, at least in my book (and with the exception of chalav yisrael, which I think is evil — and I don’t mean that rhetorically — I’ll bend over backwards to make it possible for someone to eat in my house). Among those who participate in reciprocal social relations with me it’s 30 covered / 70 uncovered. That ratio doesn’t change much if I instead define my community as “women whose observance level over a broad range of mitzvot is similar to mine” (40 covered / 60 uncovered) or a more restrictive “women whom I admire qua Jews” (10 covered / 90 uncovered. Sadly). On that last, I do have to say that between the behavior and attitudes I’ve personally seen or heard expressed, and the neverending dishonor roll of Orthodox “leaders” in the news, I don’t want to be associated with the frum community. My favorite phrase this year is “tumat ha-goyyim.” But I digress.

She turns off the hair dryer. “Hi, S—, you always seem to be arriving just as I’m leaving.” S. asks whether the pool was crowded when she left. She brushes her hair, ties up the ponytail, and heads out of the locker room. “No hat?” S— calls after her. “No, I’ve stopped covering my head. Well, mostly,” she replies. “Yeah,” S— responds. “I lasted about two years after I got married. It’s too uncomfortable, and it’s not the way I was brought up.”

Talking about my Shabbat community, though, is simplistic. I’m a member of many (Jewish) communities and I have to consider the impact a change in behavior will make on my standing in each community. In shul, the people I actually care about don’t cover their hair themselves, and won’t care if I stop. There are of course some busybodies, some of whom don’t themselves cover their hair, who will be nasty, but they’re nasty about everything. In the broader frum community, I expect that a few women I consider actual friends will be distressed by the change and will stop considering me a real (frum) Jew. The biggest concern is at my son’s school, not only because at least one man has never noticed me except as a hat moving along five feet from the ground for the last three years, but because in a school that touts its pluralism and that is one-third Orthodox, I’m one of the very few women who cover their hair. I don’t want to be anyone’s poster child, but if I have to be, I’d rather be the poster child for “See? We even have women who cover their hair here” than for “She sent her child here and now she’s frei’d out.” And regardless of the community in question, people get very uncomfortable when someone changes a behavior. If I am unreliable in this, what else has changed? What else may change?

The woman with the South African accent but who actually turns out to be from London sighs. “I wear a sheitel because that’s what you’re supposed to do,” the woman said. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s halacha or not, it’s what Jewish women do. If they care about Torah.”
Later in the conversation she says, “You realize it’s a slippery slope. You send your kids to a public school, then you’re thinking it’s OK to be swimming co-ed, now you’re talking about your hair. Next it’ll be women reading from the Torah and after that, McDonalds.”
She shifts uncomfortably, feeling naked. Well, she is. It started as a quick, friendly question following a friendly compliment on the lost weight, on the long hair. It was an attempt for a bit of international perspective. Now she wonders if she’ll be shunned on the playground. More than she is already, with her plaid-shirted, colorful shrugie-kippahed boys, with her bare toes sticking out of her Tevas beneath her ankle-length skirt. She starts to answer, shrugs, heads down the stairs. “Kosher!” “Kosher!” “Kosher!” says the not-South African woman.

Moving inward, the next question is, what does my husband think about this. “It’s your head,” he says, but it’s more than that. Within certain contexts, my bare head suggests my availability for marriage. Even outside those contexts, we could turn the hat upside-down: while my bare head does not, in non-frum contexts, necessarily imply my availability, my hat makes me less attractive to men (and women). Do I have a positive obligation to my husband, to be specifically unattractive to other men?

Atop that, within a Jewish context, my bare head may be understood as diluting the “frum” branding of our family. It reflects not only on my observance but on his: it turns him into the type of Jew whose wife doesn’t cover her hair. For some fools, it implies things about our observance level. My husband says he isn’t concerned about that issue. And after all, two of our kids are in a *gasp* public school without having a good reason (i.e. severe learning disability) to be there, and one’s in a pluralistic one. And we drink regular milk, and dress the boys in colored shirts on Shabbat. So we’re already kind of beyond the pale. Still, this is a community that, alas, focuses on the outside: my validity as a Jew (and as a convert: “See, she’s abandoned observance, after a mere decade! This is why we need to be tough on potential converts”) depends on that hat.

Except that, frankly, I’m not part of that community. Not really, not anymore, probably not ever. And the more I see of them, in the streets, at the playground, on the news, the more disgusted I am by them. Them, not us.

For myself, covering my hair makes me physically uncomfortable. Outdoors in the winter is fine, but indoors it’s hot, never mind summers. My head itches: I have horrible dandruff (which has magically disappeared in the last few months hat I’ve been bareheaded, something no amount of Head & Shoulders shampoo could manage). The damn hat is why I’ve been getting buzz cuts every summer for over half my marriage. No one sees my hair anyhow, so who cares what it looks like to be a thirty-some-year-old woman with a crew cut?

The “ugly” reason is not small. Covering my hair was OK when I hated the way I looked anyhow. But there was a certain point in the last two or so years, as I’ve gotten further and further from my birth family and in particular from my mother, that I’ve actually looked at myself in a mirror. What I see is different from what I’ve been told is there. (“Homely. Ugly. Fat. Stupid Polack-face, just like your grandmother. Can’t believe you’re still a zit-face at your age.”) What I see is worth not uglifying with a hat. In a certain sense, then, one of the concerns of poskim is right: by taking off my hat I’d be making myself more attractive to other men. But that’s not my intent here: it’s to make myself more attractive to myself. I hate the way I look in a hat. Is that a small matter in halacha? Of course it is, at least in the post-Hareidi, post-Chassidim-infect-everything-with-barely-judaized-christian-paganism world: If it’s the body, it’s bad; if it’s female, it’s evil. But anyone who knows me knows that I reject Chassidism utterly. It’s what I came from, without the organ music.

She gathers the kids back into the car after ten minutes at home— bathrooms and getting the groceries into the freezer and fridge. Time to pick up the oldest kid, zoom zoom! Halfway there she realizes that she is bareheaded. At a light she searches her bag, the car: no backup beret. In the rearview mirror she sees her friend’s car, pulling into the school lot after her. She gets out: “Do you have a hat I can borrow?” Nope. “Oh well, I guess it had to happen sooner or later.” She squares her shoulders and walks into the school.
By the time the fourth person comments, asks a question — this is a school with a weak sense of personal boundaries — she blurts out, “OK, I’ve frei’d out, OK?” Her son’s chiloni Israeli teacher grins. “Now I know why your kids are so light,” she says. Actually, she thinks, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Wait till the summer sun bleaches it out, back to its pre-marriage color. A friend tells her later that someone has inquired quietly: Has there been a status change? “What do you want me to say?” the friend asks. “Well, you can point out I’m still wearing my ring,” she responds.
Two mornings later she makes a point of being seen close by her husband at the boy’s “milestone celebration.” Hopefully body language — Do we LOOK like a divorced couple?— will answer anyone’s questions on the status point.

I had worried about the transition, but in the end it wasn’t so bad. The friend who had been asked about my marital status pointed out that showing up bareheaded mid-year is better than showing up, as I had planned, after the summer break. Still, where and in what contexts do I keep it covered still? In shul, obviously (what about times that aren’t services?). But where else? When I go to mikvah? At the local Jewish book store? (Whoops, there goes my frum discount!). The whole of Jewish Main Street? And what elements should go into the ten-second explanation, for those who actually ask (and aren’t close enough friends for a real answer)?

There are practical issues as well. I have to comb my hair now. I have to use a hair dryer now. I don’t remember how to braid behind my head anymore. I don’t even remember: How do I keep it from sticking up all over?

She walks into the library, sees the first little boy with the velvet kippah, knew which mom she’d see, would see her (hair). She thinks: “Grab the hat out of my bag? Is it even there?… Nah. It’s gotta happen eventually.” R—, viciously right-wing, recognizes her, or maybe just recognizes the children and infers her identity. Greets her. She braces for the next comment, but it’s mild. “I’ve never seen your hair,” R— says. “Yeah,” she says. “I’ve stopped covering it, mostly.” Braces herself again, but what follows is a respectful discussion. The woman accepts without argument that she doesn’t think it’s actually required in halacha. R—’s points: (1) She knows other Modern Orthodox women who do cover their hair, and (2) If you don’t do it what message are you giving the kids? What legacy of Jewish identity do they have if you don’t toe this line (and every other — because once you step over one, where does it stop?). We went on to discuss where her kids are in school (learning disabilities that the local frum school can’t handle: in spite of severe language issues even in English, plus behavioral problems and mild retardation, they’re being forced along the learn-full-time track, the only acceptable one in her world). She wished me a good Shabbas as I left, no shunning, no shock.

The last issue I considered was spiritual (as distinct from halacha). Is this in fact a slippery slope, as the not-South African woman said? She has a point regarding trajectory. But the money question is this: Do I behave any differently because my hair is covered (or uncovered)? Is my behavior more modest when my hat’s on, am I more aware of my identifiable Jewishness (frum-ness) and thus less likely to do or say something inappropriate, either in the halachic or derech eretz categories?

Well, yes, I do behave differently, actually. I feel different. I’m no longer so keenly aware, because of the physical discomfort, of this thing sitting on my head all the time. I’m more comfortable therefore. I feel less ugly, less… marked. Less like I need somehow to try to express the notion that I’m a person, rather than a walking hat, like I need less to work against what everyone thinks they know about me and my life, simply because they see that I’m one of those women who cover their hair. I am no longer publicly identifiable as Jewish, it’s true — at least in those contexts where people knew what the deal was with the hat — but that also means that I’m no longer so sensitive to what everyone else is thinking, and therefore I’m no longer so outraged, when an identifiably frum person does something repulsive out of a who-cares-what-goyyim-think attitude. I’m even more comfortable changing the topic away from the inappropriate, since my hat is no longer declaring me to have a “frummer than thou” attitude.

Over my lifetime I have worn many hats, and will wear still more. For now, though, the literal ones are going into the closet. Maybe they’ll return in a few years: They’re in the closet, not the Goodwill box.

I was nervous as I pulled up. What was K., a Reform Jew of sorts, going to say when she saw I had stopped covering my hair? She said nothing. Finally I broached the subject: “So as you can see, I’ve stopped covering my hair.”
“It’s about time,” she responded. She paused. “So now, when are you going to stop keeping kosher?”
Same thing a frum woman asked me. Hmm.

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Integration, Israeli-style, in 2010 (or, welcoming haredi Jews into the rest of society)

I usually look at the State of Israel as a modern wonder, something that in the history of humankind is unprecedented.  And other times, I look at Israel and find myself deeply disappointed by its failure to live up to its considerable potential.

There are lots of reasons for Israel’s many failings.  Widespread government corruption is one.  A lingering socialist ethic that views customer service as bourgeois and government protectionism (in the form of prohibitive tariffs on most imports) as necessary is another.  One, though, that profoundly disturbs me are the many conflicts within Israeli society created and perpetuated by haredi Judaism.

This is not a haredi-bashing post.  I have long had sympathy for the haredi movement (because it’s every bit as much a movement as Reform Judaism) with its goals of repopulating the world with Jews after the great losses in the Shoah and returning Torah study to the center of Jewish life.  However, it is impossible to ignore the fact that many of the stories in the Israeli news these days have as their source problems with the haredi sector of society.  Here are but a few:

• Rioting in Meah Shearim over plans to move pagan graves (which haredim insist are Jewish graves) in order to build an emergency medical center as part of Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center;
• Tight restrictions placed on those who wish to visit the newly completed Hurva Synagogue in the Old City to allow a handful of haredi Torah scholars to sit and learn during the non-prayer hours of the shul;
• The continued problems encountered by non-Jews and non-halachic Jews in trying to live here and dealing with a haredi-controlled rabbinate which converts only a small percentage of those who seek halachic conversion and full participation in Israeli society;
• An increasingly wide swathe of Jerusalem city employees (some of them haredim) being arrested for the corruption that allowed the Holyland housing monstrosity to be built, and the reaction of many in the haredi community that it’s all because the haredim arrested had spent too much time around secular Jews;
• The alarming statistics which show a continued drain on Israel’s society, workforce, and coffers over the next generation or two if haredim continue to receive substandard educations (at state expense), evade military service and work, and live below the poverty line.

I could go on, but I think that’s enough.  In the dozens of interactions I’ve had with haredi Jews, the negative ones (perhaps 1 in 4 of my encounters with them) have been centered around strict sexual taboos (such as a man and woman sitting next to each other on a bus) and a belief that I’m barely even Jewish, much less religious.  Much of what drives religious Jews (and not just those in the haredi world) is fear: fear of God, fear of screwing up in their ritual practice, fear of being led astray.  These fears lead to the enforcement of sex-segregation on buses by violence, the rejection of potential converts because they might not keep all 613 commandments all the time (despite the fact that Jewish law itself does not require that), the refusal to teach subjects such as math, science, and English in haredi schools which lay the foundation for employability later because those subjects are seen as irrelevant to Torah study, and the strict code of conformity as to dress, behavior, and life prospects for young haredim.  Those who don’t fit the mold of the ideal haredi Jew in those communities—who aren’t gifted Torah scholars, who have talents in other areas, who try to venture into the non-haredi world—are cause for worry for their families.  Some are given tentative support; others are rejected by their family and community and forced to make their way in the outside world without useful skills or even an ability to function behaviorally in a normal environment with men and women together.

Some in the haredi community have made significant contributions to Israeli society.  Haredim were the first to create educational frameworks in Israel for autistic and Down’s syndrome children.  ZAKA, an organization whose 1000 volunteers perform many post-disaster functions, including identifying the victims, was founded by Yehudah Meshi-Zahav who, along with many of the volunteers, is haredi.  David Zilbershlag, another haredi Jew, is the founder of Meir Panim, a network of soup kitchens and relief centers across Israel whose goal is not only to feed and clothe the needy, but to bridge the gap between religious and secular Jews.  It seems that where the combination of communal conformity and intensive Torah study lead some Jews to retreat from greater society, others feel moved by what they learn to venture outside the walls of the study hall and bring Jews together to create something that benefits all of Israeli society.

But every bit as important as the accomplishments of these haredim is the fact that they have shown themselves able to work with haredi and non-haredi Jews alike, and not stray from the path of Torah.  Their contact with non-haredi Israelis, and embrace of ahavat Yisrael (love of fellow Jews), are not abstract concepts to be discussed and debated over a volume of Talmud; they are real and meant to be lived on a daily basis.  They are fully observant Torah Jews, and fully functioning members of Israeli society and the human race.  The anger, mistrust, and even hatred that exists between haredi and secular Jews (and the modern Orthodox in between, who seem to each extreme to be part of the other extreme) could be eradicated, or at least drastically reduced, if haredi Jews were to come out of their Torah cocoons and see the presence of Torah values outside their own communities, the caring Jews have for other Jews, and the spiritual and ethical commitment to Jewish ideals even among those who don’t keep kosher or observe Shabbat.

The answers to the increasing divide between the haredi world and the rest of the world need to come both from outside and from inside.  The Israeli government needs to take a stand about the quality of education it is willing to support for all Israeli students.  Paying 80% of the cost of haredi education that only teaches 80% of the government’s require curriculum is not a solution to the certain brain drain that is to result.  Haredi children can and should be brought up with the values of Torah and family.  But they should also be given the opportunity to work as well as learn Torah all day.  They should be given an education that leaves them with choices.  Their military service, like that of non-haredi Jews, should entitle them to tuition assistance at either a university or yeshiva, based on their qualifications and aptitudes.  If haredi Jews believe their interpretation of the Torah is true and valid, there should be no need for them to fear being led astray by secular society.  Their adherence to haredi values should be based on knowledge by comparison that they are the ideal, and not by fear, isolation, and ignorance.

The accomplishments of many haredi Jews have improved life for Israelis and people around the world.  But still, the rest of the haredi world is a vast, untapped resource.  It is to their benefit, and that of all of Israeli society, to have them participate fully in it.

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Book review: Abba Eban’s My People: The Story of the Jews

Jewish histories seem to have a theme to them.  I remember reading Solomon Grayzel’s History of the Jews and his beautiful introduction in which he states clearly his thesis, that whenever a door was closed on the Jews somewhere in the world, another was opened.

Abba Eban too has a theme in My People—that no matter where the Jewish people found themselves, no matter how well or how ill things were going for them, deep down their spiritual life was still rooted in Eretz Yisrael.  This is not surprising given Eban’s contribution to the founding of the State of Israel and his service in many capacities, including as Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Ambassador to the US while simultaneously serving as a liaison officer to UNSCOP (United Nations Special Committee on Palestine).  He was a master of the English language (and nine others besides), a fact which becomes clear in this fluid, incisively written history.  It also accounts for the facts he chooses to include in his uncluttered, well-digested narrative.  He stresses the dignity, ethical foundations, flexibility, work ethic, diplomatic skill, and worldwide network of fellow Hebrew-speakers that allowed Jews to move from place to place and re-establish themselves, create successful business ventures, and act as diplomatic and economic liaisons between countries and societies (e.g. European Christians and Arab Muslims).  He also makes clear the Jewish claims to return to the land of Israel and the evolution of Arab attitudes toward this claim, from a willingness to compromise (Palestine only having been in Arab hands for 400 of the past 4000 years of historical record) to a rejection of their former support for a Jewish National Home and insistence on being awarded Palestine to compensate for the lands Britain and France refused to give them after World War I, and an attitude that persists to this day “that sovereignty belonged to Arabs wherever they were and to Jews nowhere at all.”  He also spells out in detail the chipping away of Britain’s post-Balfour promises to the Jews, including “the exclusion of Transjordan from those provisions of the Mandate which referred to the establishment of the Jewish National Home,” the closing off of Palestine to Jewish immigration in the Jews’ greatest hour of need (the Shoah), and its refusal to protect the Jews during Arab riots and massacres, or even to let the Jews protect themselves.

Jewish histories are often hard to read because of the necessary exploration of the destruction of Jewish life in the Holy Land, the expulsions, the Inquisition, the Shoah, and the seeds of the current conflict over Israel’s existence.  To live as a Jew in the 21^st century is to study the alternately glorious and horrific past, and to hope tentatively for a glorious, more secure future.  It’s to be told to quit whining over the Shoah, that it never happened, that it wasn’t as bad as it’s made out to be, or that an even bigger, better one is on the way, so get ready.  Eban writes something about the Shoah that I think describes well how it fits into the modern Jewish psyche:

Jewish history and consciousness will be dominated for many generations by the traumatic memories of the Holocaust.  No people in history has undergone an experience of such violence and depth.  Israel’s obsession with physical security; the sharp Jewish reaction to movements of discrimination and prejudice; an intoxicated awareness of life, not as something to be taken for granted but as a treasure to be fostered and nourished with eager vitality, a residual distrust of what lies beyond the Jewish wall, a mystic belief in the undying forces of Jewish history, which ensure survival when all appears lost, all these together with the intimacy of more personal pains and agonies, are the legacy which the Holocaust transmits to the generation of Jews grown up under its shadow.

Much has been written about the possibility of creating a single state here, democratic, with Arabs and Jews participating fully in the political process.  I think it is easy to imagine that from a distance.  Doesn’t that happen, and with Christians and others besides, in the US?  Isn’t that happening (albeit with some serious problems) in Europe as we speak?  Why not in the Middle East?  Eban writes of the Jewish and Arab nationalist movements following in the steps of the nationalist movements that created much of the European landscape in the 19^th century, and as the Middle East was redrawn following World War I and the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire.  Neither the Arabs nor the Jews envisioned the other as full participants in their own society: the Arabs because the Jews would once again be relegated to dhimmi status as infidels (if indeed they were allowed to remain, which is not part of the current Arab Palestinian dream), and the Jews because after living for nearly 2000 years as guests in other countries, being tolerated when they were needed and either expelled or killed when they were not, it was time to return Home, to have a small—but to them significant—piece of land on which to build a state where they were welcome, not tolerated; in which immigration quotas which had spelled the doom of millions in Europe were lifted forever; where they could build a society centered around their language, their religious roots, their history, their ethical values.  Addressing the impression given by Arabs that this land is rightfully Arab, Eban writes, “[T]o be Middle Eastern does not involve being Arab or Moslem.  It is not an offense against the Middle Eastern tradition for a non-Arab and non-Moslem sovereignty to live and flourish in the original home of Hebrew memory and thought.  The question is not whether Israel will change its special nature, but whether the Arabs will come to terms with Israel as it is.”

It sometimes seems, especially from an Israeli vantage point, that the discourse on the Arab-Israeli conflict is really a way of voting, populating, or recognizing Israel out of existence.  (All this because open war and terrorism have not succeeded in eradicating it.)  And yet, UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted unanimously on 22 November 1967, made clear that “[w]ithdrawal from occupied territories was made conditional on the establishment of peace, the total abolition of belligerency, and the establishment of secure and recognized boundaries.”   Absenting the conditions laid down—i.e. establishment of peace, cessation of violence, and creation of secure borders—withdrawal is not an expectation.  Nowadays, as then, Israel’s friends and not-so-friendly acquaintances have pushed it to take “risks” for peace (many of which Israel has taken, and gotten bloodshed instead of peace).  Indeed, Eban’s following words could have been written as easily today as decades ago: “[A]dvice tendered to [Israel] from safe distances on how to be secure without resisting Arab assaults was received with robust skepticism.  Popularity was important; but it was more important to be alive than to be popular.  A weakened, vulnerable Israel attracted more affection than a strong and resistant Israel.”

Eban’s telling of the story of the Jews follows their fortunes as they were forged as a people, established themselves in their own land, dealt with the tensions of their location as powers rose up and jockeyed for position around them on all sides, the loss of their land, their sojourns in other countries among other peoples, and their eventual return to their homeland.  Given what the Jewish people endured, achieved, and—uniquely among dispersed peoples—survived, their return to the Land of Israel is a great gift—a miracle, a mitzvah to perform, and a tremendous relief.  Never again to have to depend on the whimsy of governments and hostile majorities, and to be reunited with the land of our birth, are not something the Jews should be expected to give up.  Part way through the War of Independence in 1948, Eban writes, “While Arab armies invaded Palestine, the Security Council met to debate whether a breach of peace had taken place, as the Americans charged.  The Americans demanded sanctions and a cease-fire; Britain opposed.  Arab delegates promised peace only if Israel’s independence were rescinded.  The Israeli answer was brief.  ‘If the Arab states want peace they can have it.  If they want war they can have that too.  But whether they want peace or war, they can only have it with the State of Israel.’”  Later, he states, “Israel would have preferred to flourish in peace with her neighbors.  But she was also capable of flourishing without it.  Behind the shield of strong military defenses, with an eye vigilantly fixed on hostile frontiers, Israel went on with its work.”

The saddest thing about reading history?  One might just as well be reading a newspaper.

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Conspicuous consumption

A few months ago, the Cap’n and I were sitting and talking to friends on a Shabbat afternoon.  We and they had mutual acquaintances, a young family in a well-to-do coastal city in Israel, where the husband/father is a successful businessman with a palatial house, company car, and a nanny for the children.

We were alternately intrigued and horrified when we considered what it would be like to live like that.  Intrigued because—let’s face it—who doesn’t dream of having a large house, servants, full-time childcare, and all the rest?  But on some level, we were also horrified.  The expense of such a house in Israel where land is so costly, even modest housing is becoming difficult to afford, and the cost of heating, cleaning, and maintaining a large house is considerable, made us wonder at anyone “needing” to live like that.

McMansions are available almost everywhere now.  I remember a few years ago when a McMansion in Ramat Beit Shemesh (surrounded closely on three sides by the houses around it, and a view of the road going by and a weed-covered bank on the other) sold to a Canadian businessman for $2 million.  Pricey, large houses overlooking the smog and dirt of Bethlehem in Efrat (in a neighborhood I fondly refer to as Ramat Beit Lechem) are also available for purchase.  The people who buy them are those headed by high-powered, single- or dual-career couples, families who sold their house in Teaneck for a fortune, or perhaps heirs to wealthy deceased parents.  They were accustomed, no doubt, to having a large house before making aliyah, and were not keen to downsize when they came to Israel.  A large house and garden, even if they may not have quite the square footage and acreage that they had in the Goldene Medina, is their expected standard now.

I don’t feel much resentment toward people who live in such circumstances.  First of all, while it would seem that people who live in a small house in the country leave less of a carbon footprint on the earth compared to city-dwellers in larger houses, that’s untrue; cities are by far less of an infringement on Nature than those who live on farms or in small settlements outside the cities.  And McMansions, while their architecture may lack originality and the houses appear indistinct from one another, are usually in cities.  And in countries like the US, where rainfall is plentiful and other resources not lacking, such apparent waste is even less reprehensible.  Where Israel is concerned, however—a desert country with little rainfall, little land, and an extremely hot climate (against which most people have air conditioning installed)—McMansions make me less comfortable.  The government is ginger about instituting penalties for excessive water use, and the water needed to clean the house, water the garden, and the fact that many people who live in posh circumstances are less disciplined about their personal water use (taking baths or long showers, for example) drain the country’s limited resources.  (And even if the penalties for water overuse are assessed, those in McMansions can easily afford the penalties.)  The strain on the power grid in the summer with everyone’s air conditioning running day and night necessitates rolling blackouts in the country, and the environmental impact of air conditioning a large house is greater than that of an apartment.

I don’t deign to tell anyone else how to live.  On the other hand, our choices about how we live speak volumes about us.  In America, the cultural norm is to have one’s life very self-contained: every family with its own house, garden, and swing set.  In Israel, it is much more common for people to live in close quarters and take their children to the local park or playground to play on shared equipment.  To choose to live in a larger house than we need shows an lack of awareness, or insensitivity, to a country’s limited resources.  To choose to live in a house or apartment with the minimum amount of space needed for a family (with children sharing bedrooms, multi-use common space, a garden planned with low water needs) is more economical and environmentally friendly, and is an admission that perhaps what we want and what we need are not one and the same.

I traveled through Asia and Europe for six months after college graduation (here’s a little description of what I learned) and after seeing how people in other parts of the world live, I realized that to have running water, indoor plumbing, a roof over one’s head, and all the other stuff that we have in the West, gives us a standard of living not even dreamt of by most of the world’s population.  In A Night To Remember: A Haggadah of Contemporary Voices, Mishael Zion and Noam Zion include a sidebar to the text which includes some of the findings of the 2000 Statistics on the Distribution of Wealth.  The Zions write, “If we could reduce the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this: 80 live in substandard housing; 24 don’t have any electricity; 50 [are] malnourished and 1 dying of starvation and 1 with HIV; 1 with a college education and 7 with internet access; 5 control 32% of the entire world’s wealth, all are US citizens. …If there is food in your refrigerator, if you have shoes, a bed and a roof above your head, you are better off than 75% of people in this world.”

The difference in quality of life between what I enjoy and what someone in a McMansion enjoys is minimal.  But the difference between what someone CAN live with elsewhere in the world (e.g. in a bamboo hut, outdoor latrine, shared well rather than running water) should give the rest of us—either in apartments or in McMansions—pause.

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A mosque at Ground Zero

I read a recent op-ed by Rav Shmuely Boteach in which he shares his thoughts regarding the proposed plans to build a $100 million, 13-story Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero in New York City.  Not surprisingly, the families of the dead from the mass murder of 9/11 are displeased.

Ever an optimist, however, Rav Shmuely thinks it could work.  His suggestion is to allow the construction to proceed, but to require that the cultural center include a museum charting the rise of militant, extremist Islam, its “hate-based agenda,” and how it is an evil perversion of Islam.  This, he believes, would be a “simple, elegant, and deeply moral solution” to the question of whether or not to build a monument to Islam next to the graves of 3000 people who died because of it.

I cannot quibble with his argument that America is a land where people are allowed to worship freely and—by extension—that it is well nigh impossible to legislate good taste.  Had the events of 9/11 not taken place a mere few blocks from the proposed site of the center, there would probably be no discussion of this matter at all.

But the fact is, Ground Zero and its environs are inextricable from what happened there nearly 10 years ago (the 10th anniversary of which is the chosen date to inaugurate the new Islamic center—in yet another gesture of dubious taste).  One may request or insist that Muslims build a museum that is sharply critical of Islamist terrorism, but even if they were to agree to comply (and there’s nothing to suggest that a Saudi-funded Muslim group is anything approaching critical of the events of 9/11), one man’s extremism is another’s glorified martyrdom.  Muslims may attend such an exhibition and indeed feel horror and anger at the way their religion has been hijacked by hate-mongers and blood-thirsty fanatics; others, however, either overtly or covertly, will view a detailed, gruesome account of their religion’s death-cult and its campaign of murder and mayhem with approval and satisfaction.  Because the truth is, Islam does lend itself easily to those who interpret it violently.  Their dichotomy of the world is the “House of Islam” and the “House of War” (i.e. everyone else).  Those who are not Muslims are to be despised as inferior beings, or dhimmis (unless, of course, they embrace Islam).  For a Muslim, the only time to negotiate with the Infidel is when the Muslim is weak; when the Muslim gains in strength, all bets are off and the Muslim is entitled to renege on his agreements with the Infidel.  For particularly crazed, farbrennter Muslims like Mahmoud Ahmedinejad who entertain violent eschatological fantasies, anticipating the 12th imam (the Mahdi, whose arrival marks their End of Days) can be shortened by creating havoc and destruction in the world.  The mentality described here is not concerned with creating peace in the world, with introspection, or with honoring the wishes or feelings of non-Muslims.  The reports from around the world in cities where the Muslim population is growing and gaining in influence tell of a people whose own feelings and sensitivities must be respected, but who have little regard for the feelings or sensitivities of others.

Unlike Rav Shmuely, I don’t think there is any “simple, elegant, [or] deeply moral solution” to this proposal, except perhaps to divvy up the money raised for the center and distribute it to the families of the victims.  Let’s have less submission (“Islam”) and more contrition.

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The Jane Austen (video) companion

I’ve been a devoted Jane Austen fan since I was 13, when the BBC aired its version of “Pride and Prejudice” on Masterpiece Theatre.  Since then, I have read most of her novels, and seen at least one dramatized form of each of them.  My favorite of her novels (which for me means the one that rivals Pride and Prejudice most closely) is Persuasion; Anne is so passionate, yet so sensible (a rare combination in the Austen world), and all the girls love a sailor.

Over the intervening decades (nearly three) since then, it has been interesting to see the many movies and series that have come out attempting to capture Austenland.  I have not seen every one, but I’ve seen enough, I think, to provide some thoughts and recommendations (or pans, as the case may be) about what has crossed my screen.

Pride and Prejudice

This is the one everyone loves to make, and the jewel in the crown of Jane Austen’s repertoire.  To this day I remain in love with the first “P&P” I saw on television, the 1980 version with Elizabeth Garvie as Elizabeth and David Rintoul as Darcy.  Garvie is plucky and pretty without being beautiful.  She personifies Lizzie’s vanity and sense of indignity perfectly, and Rintoul is tall, dashing, and although quite wooden in his demeanor, not excessively so for one of his character and social position in the story.  Fay Weldon’s screenplay sticks closely to the novel and does it justice.  Mrs. Bennet is flighty and nervous without being hysterical, very close to Austen’s portrayal of her in the novel.  Lady Catherine is played by the deliciously snooty Judy Parfitt, a natural for the part.  To give this haughty character a sharper edge than even Jane Austen gave her, Fay Weldon gave her an excellent speech.  When she is entertaining Lizzie and the Collinses at Rosings, she asks Lizzie about her family.  “Five children?  And all girls?  What can your mother have been thinking?  If I’d had more than one child, they would all have been boys, and remarkably well-favored!”

A&E’s much better-known 1995 version, starring Colin Firth as Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Lizzie, to my mind, came nowhere near the Fay Weldon version for screenplay quality.  This one was written by Andrew Davies, who usually nails English novels for the screen.  (His “Middlemarch” [1995], “Moll Flanders” [1996], and “The Way We Live Now” [2001] are only a few of his screenwriting triumphs.)  Davies missed the mark with this screenplay by repeating salient points in the plot throughout the story, making me as a viewer feel annoyingly patronized.  It’s difficult to describe exactly how he does this, since it’s been some time since I’ve seen the series, and could not bring myself to see it a second time.  I’ll just say that in my opinion, the acting is not an improvement on the 1980 version (Julia Sawalha’s Lydia appears to be on crack and Jennifer Ehle spoke so fast at times I couldn’t understand her—despite the fact that she’s American) and the writing is significantly poorer.

The 2005 version, with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen in the principal roles, also left me cold.  It strayed from the story more than the others, Knightley was more giggly than I thought Lizzie should be, Macfadyen’s haircut for the film was the worst, most distracting clip job I’ve ever seen, and while Donald Sutherland did a creditable job as Mr. Bennet, it was very strange to see him in a role as an England country gentleman.  This version also, I felt, patronized the viewer by making Lizzie have a great epiphany at the end, and shout, “I misjudged him!”  The writing in this film did not lead me to that same conclusion at the time, and I found it overall to be awkward and unpersuasive.  While I recognize that its portrayal of Mrs. Bennet (played beautifully by Brenda Blethyn) is more sympathetic than I think Austen intended, I appreciated her being given the line, when Lizzie asks why she can’t think about anything but marrying off her daughters, “You have five unmarried daughters and see what else you can find to think about!”  However, I have one thing to praise in this movie, and it is not a small thing: the buildings look worn, the grounds muddy, and the characters truly unwashed.  While my favorite is still the 1980 version, the characters in that one look as clean and scrubbed, and the sets all as clean as in a soap opera.  Not so realistic, methinks.

As for the other versions, including the 2003 “Pride and Prejudice: A Latter Day Comedy” (is it about Mormons?), and all the TV series made in the 1950s and 1960s, I haven’t seen them.  I was forced once to watch the version made in 1940, starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, and written by none other than Aldous Huxley.  The costumes, following the success of 1939’s “Gone With the Wind” no doubt, were American ante-bellum style rather than Empire; the actresses shrieked their lines rather than spoke them and acted more like hens running around a barnyard than Englishwomen in the early 19^th century; and the very un-Austenian plot twist, where Lady Catherine actually schemes to ensure that Lizzie and Darcy marry was unforgivable.  I do not recommend this version.

Sense and Sensibility

This is my least favorite novel and I have to admit, in the interest of full disclosure, that I began it but never finished it.  This may in part have been because my first experience of it was seeing Emma Thompson’s award-winning version in 1995, with her and Kate Winslet as the sisters Elinor and Marianne.  I liked the casting of this film, with Hugh Grant as a beautifully awkward Edward Ferrars, Alan Rickman as an older, but still smoldering, Colonel Brandon, and Greg Wise as the lively but seriously shady Willoughby.  Emma Thompson was 10 years too old to play Elinor, but I forgave her for that because of her great performance.

This made me dubious about how I would feel at watching the newer (2008) version with Hattie Morahan and Charity Wakefield as the sisters.  I ended up loving it.  Andrew Davies came through beautifully on the screenplay, and while I found the Colonel Brandon completely unappealing (which may be how Austen preferred him to be, actually) and Dominic Cooper too much of a boy to be the rake that Willoughby turned out to be, the two principal actresses were magnificent, and I may prefer Hattie Morahan’s Elinor to Thompson’s after all.  The locations were beautiful and the other performances steady (though I couldn’t help thinking that the Edward looked more like a lumberjack from Colorado than an heir to an English family fortune).  As of now, I think I like both versions equally, though if I want to see the whole story in one sitting, I need to go back to the Emma Thompson version; the Davies must be watched in two or three sittings.

Emma

I have seen three versions of this.  Despite its popularity, I do not care for the 1996 Gwyneth Paltrow version.  I found her Emma to be pretty and vain, a creditable performance if a little overacted.  I adore Jeremy Northam and found his Mr. Knightley adequate.  But something about the whole movie bothered me.  Perhaps it was the lighting, which was inexplicably dark, obscuring the actors’ faces during scenes of intense conversation.  Perhaps it was the casting of familiar faces (Phyllida Law, Greta Scacchi, Jeremy Northam) who frequently appear in British costume dramas.  Or perhaps I’d just seen too much of Gwyneth Paltrow at the time, and was tired of her (just as I grew tired of Julia Roberts when she made six movies in two years in the early 1990s.)

I welcomed the other version of “Emma,” released the same year but eclipsed by the glitz and marketing of the Paltrow version.  This quieter version starred Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong in the principal roles.  The other names were less well-known, and Andrew Davies’s writing satisfying.

But I have a new favorite.  My mother-in-law, who snaps up anything Austen for me when she sees it, gave me the newest (2009) version starring Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller.  Garai was also in “Atonement” and Kenneth Branagh’s awful, awful “As You Like It.”  She also had a bit part in “Amazing Grace,” which I watched primarily for another glimpse of Ioan Gruffudd.  I was unsure what to expect: another “Emma”?  The series was written by Sandy Welch, whose “Jane Eyre” and “North and South” I loved.  Jonny Lee Miller conveys intelligence, warmth, ruggedness, and noblesse oblige as Mr. Knightley.  (He is one of my new favorite actors.)  Michael Gambon plays her wonderfully doddering and nervous father, to whom she and Mr. Knightley are given time to show their devotion in this version.  And Garai’s Emma is marvelous.  Pretty and vain, like Paltrow, she appears more nuanced in this version (a credit both to her acting and to Welch’s writing).  The more leisurely pace of this series over the Paltrow film also allows for much more development of character and subtlety of relationships.  While I love Toni Collette’s acting, she played Harriet as stupid compared to Louise Dylan’s innocent, indecisive Harriet.  Where the Paltrow version overall felt like a sledge hammer, this was a fine, well-balanced chef’s knife.  Writing this review, I’m tempted to go back and watch it again tonight.  Man, it was good.

Persuasion

I have only seen one version of this novel on film.  The mid-1990s saw a flurry of Austen novels made into films.  This one in 1995 starred Amanda Root, best known at the time for her Shakespeare roles, and Ciaran Hinds as Anne Eliot and Captain Wentworth, respectively.  The writing by Nick Dear was beautiful, and the performances by actors well-known (Sophie Thompson, Corin Redgrave, and Fiona Shaw) and lesser-known superb.  Root and Hinds have plainer faces than viewers, especially American ones, are used to seeing.  But the Irish Hinds is dashing nonetheless, and Root is made up and coiffed prettier as the story goes on, reflecting the re-warming of her relationship with Wentworth, whom she was pressured to refuse nine years earlier.  I love Anne’s character for its steadiness despite being surrounded by a flaky, dandified father and a snooty, bitchy elder sister.  Except for outbursts of reason, she seems to blend into the woodwork for much of the novel, until the end where she not only surprises and upsets others, but is assured of getting exactly what she wants and living happily ever after.  (I don’t think that’s giving the end of an Austen novel away too much, is it?)

Mansfield Park

I first saw the 1983 version many years ago.  It starred Sylvestra Le Touzel as Fanny and Nicholas Farrell (of “Chariots of Fire” fame) as Edmund.  I don’t remember much of the 6-episode series except that the story was not my favorite, and it seemed somehow washed-out, uninspired.  I think the BBC had a period in the past of being a factory for transferring novels and plays to film.  As an English major, I saw many Shakespeare plays on film a la BBC and found them serviceable but very much of a uniform style and stamp.  Without recalling much more detail, this is how I felt about the first version of “Mansfield Park” I saw.

I was never entirely satisfied to leave Mansfield Park in that unelevated state in my mind.  A colleague of mine in my teaching days was a great fan of Jane Austen, and Mansfield Park was his favorite of her novels.  I decided to give it another try.

I was pleased to see it had been remade in 1999, with Frances O’Connor (whose title role in the 2000 “Madame Bovary” I thought excellent) as Fanny and Jonny Lee Miller (see glowing praise above for “Emma”) as Edmund.  The characters in this version had more depth, the mystery in the house was darker, and the danger to Fanny more palpable.  For me, this film redeemed the story.

Northanger Abbey

If the 1990s were the decade of dramatizing all of Jane Austen’s novels, it seems the 2000s are remaking all of them.  Northanger Abbey is a smaller-scale novel than most of the others, with fewer characters, less adult involvement, and a much less clever heroine.  The BBC came out with its stock version decades ago, but there is a new one made in 2007 that I found quite good when I saw it recently.  Catherine, while not the sharpest tool in the shed, has a clear moral compass, and was acted well by Felicity Jones.  The other actors are (to Americans, at least) unfamiliar.  (Sylvestra Le Touzel is back, playing the older Austen generation now.)

There are a few subjects on which I’m a DVD junkie: English novels, Elizabeth I, and anything by Mike Leigh.  As long as they keep makin’ ’em, I’ll keep watchin’ ’em.

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Kosher Cooking Carnival: Dairy, Meat OR Pareve

The Kosher Cooking Carnival for the month of Sivan (and in advance of Shavuot) is up at Leora’s blog.  Bon appetit!

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Some of my questions about the Arabs answered… Part IV

This is the final post in a series of four in which I pose a question I’ve had about Arab culture and the Arab world for some time, and the information I was able to glean from Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind, which I finished reading recently.

What challenges must the Arab world overcome to live at peace and improve their quality of life and standing in the world?

The Arab Mind offers the viewpoints of many Arab critics regarding the steps necessary to overcome the Arab world’s backwardness of the past many hundreds of years.  The theme that keeps recurring—and this will not fall lightly on the ears of traditional or Islamist Arabs or their politically correct leftist friends in the West—is that of emulating Israel.  How can it be that Israel—the greatest enemy of the Arab world—their whipping boy—the country they love to hate—has the answers to their stagnation woes?

On a linguistic level, Patai points out the development of ancient Hebrew to the much more grammatically precise modern form of the language.  He claims that this same development is necessary to Arabic if it is to function as a clear mode of communication with those outside the Arab world, to “become more factual, rid itself of its traditional rhetoricism, its exaggeration and overassertion, and transform its perfect and imperfect verb forms into semantic equivalents of the past and future tenses respectively of Standard Average European.”

Socially speaking, according to Patai and some other Arab critics he cites, the position of women in Arab society needs to be improved.  Female infant mortality rates, in contrast to that in non-Arab nations, is higher than that for males.  Patai posits that factors contributing to this may include poorer care of girls as a result of the disappointment that accompanies their birth (since boys are favored markedly in Arab society), the continued practice in some places of clitoridectormy and its accompanying risk of infection and complications, and the high birth rate of Arab women, increasing the chance of death in childbirth (to 30 times higher than that of Western women).  Education of girls, and access to work for women are also factors that need to be addressed.  Even some Arab men have recognized that the continued physical, psychological, and educational impoverishment of women is unacceptable.  Patai quotes Arab author Jurj Tarabishi as saying “that while people are wont to say that there are 100 million Arabs, this is wrong, for in fact there are only 50 million since the women are prevented from taking part in social responsibilities.”  Patai himself writes that “as long as the mental faculties of the mother are hemmed in, encysted, and stunted by the illiteracy, ignorance, and superstition in which she is kept by the male-centered ethos of Arab culture, she will go on instilling into the minds of her sons and daughters the very same character traits, values, concepts, and ideals that have been so bitterly excoriated by Arab critics of the Arab personality…”  Colonel DeAtkine, who penned the foreward to the book, writes, “There is no doubt that the cultural bondage in which women are held is one of the main causes of the stagnation of Arab society.”  From his experience in Iraq, DeAtkine concludes that, “[f]ar more sensible and realistic than the men, [Arab women] are the key to cultural and political change in their world.”

Another area in which Patai and others observe that Arab society must improve is in the embrace of democracy, with its tenets of freedom including free speech and press, and the rule of law.   Patai writes, “In an address in Kuwait, [Abdul Rahman Salim al-Atiqi, former Kuwaiti minister of finance and subsequently adviser to the Amir of Kuwait] deplored the ‘constant oppression’ in the Arab countries, and ‘regretfully’ noted that, by contrast, the Israelis enjoy freedom of opinion to the extent of being able to criticize their own leader.” Patai also records that “The correspondent of The New York Times in Kuwait, who reported the above speech, noted that it was remarkable ‘how many people, not only intellectuals, but mainstream government bureaucrats, say openly that the reason Israel keeps defeating the Arabs is not that the Arabs don’t have the resources but that their societies are not organized along democratic lines like Israel’s.  Israel’s secret weapon, they say, is the strength that comes out of democratic action.’”  While Israelis have been disgusted and discouraged over so many of their public figures and leaders in government being hauled into court in handcuffs for charges of corruption, graft, and even rape, many Arabs have watched the circus with envy and admiration for the Israelis’ system of justice which holds their leaders to account for their misdeeds.  Israel’s freedom of the press is also not lost on our Arab neighbors.  Khaled Abu Toameh, who writes for the Jerusalem Post, has commented that he has never once been told what to write by the Post’s editor, whereas journalists’ work is heavily monitored and censored by Hamas and the PA in Arab-occupied territory.

Scores of Arab critics of Arab society and culture have grudgingly admitted that for the Arab world to succeed in the modern world, it must learn from the Jews.  One such critic, Dr. Salah al-Din al-Munajjid, in a book analyzing the reasons for the Israelis’ defeat of the Arabs in the Six Day War, writes that “‘[t]he Jews adhere to reality, study it in an objective, scientific manner, and act to adapt themselves to reality or to adapt reality to themselves.  But we cling to fantasy, delusions delight us, and we passionately love to talk; but soon, how painfully and bitterly reality hits us in the face!’”

Observers of European history note that with the advent of the Renaissance, the embrace of science, and the humanistic writings of John Locke and others like him, religion was slowly fractured, and eventually eroded.  While religion has not been eradicated, it has been weakened to the point that it no longer exercises nearly the influence it once did over government or human behavior.  While many modern Arabs have relaxed the hold Islam has over them, most Muslim Arabs remain dedicated to the beliefs and practices of Islam.  For them, the challenge lies in finding a way to balance their cultural and religious identity with the skills and knowledge necessary to take their place in the modern world.

As a personal observation, I have heard many in the Western world voice the opinion that Arabs are not ready for democracy, and are unsuited to it culturally.  Such people regarded George W. Bush’s military engagements in Iraq as wasteful, futile, and motivated by unbecoming evangelical zeal.  Its prosecution is worthy of scrutiny and sharp criticism, but I wonder if the attempt to spread democracy is really such an evil.  Throughout the Arab world the level of poverty, ignorance, and isolation from the outside world is perpetuated among the poorer classes, while the oil-rich enjoy all that the modern world has to offer.  The ruling class blames the West for its own failure to provide a life for its people, and the people, unaware of the true cause of their isolation and poverty (and culturally inclined to believe what their fellow Arabs tell them) take the bait.  Those among the wealthy and (sometimes Western-) educated sector of society (e.g. the 9/11 bombers) blame the West for their feeling of ambivalence in Arab society, i.e. their elevated status and disengagement from the poor populace, but their inability to truly “fit in” with the Western society they have learned so much about.  Jihadist Islam provides a violent, cathartic outlet for the rage this ambivalence sometimes engenders.  To perpetuate the ignorance of the majority of the Arab population is to encourage the continued sense of alienation of the more educated in that society.  The freedoms brought by democracy can be learned, just as they were by the colonists in America who knew them only from books of philosophy, but had never before experienced them.  It is true that the societal norm in most Arab countries is marked by traditional values, strict separation of the sexes, where men have access to little education and women almost none, and where a culturally seeded fatalism preserves the status quo.  But if that norm were to change, and opportunities for education and self-determination were to increase, then the demonstrations we have seen in Iran against their leadership, the joy of the Iraqis in tearing down the statue of Saddam Hussein, and the fear and resentment of the Lebanese at being taken over by Hizbullah could be transformed into the kind of society the Arabs themselves admit to wishing for, where their leaders are held accountable for their crimes, where the press is free to print what it wants, even if it is not flattering to the government, and people are free to take to the streets without fear of being shot or beaten to death by the government’s thugs-for-hire.

This discussion of Raphael Patai’s book by no means acts as a thorough review of the book.  There are dozens of other topics he discusses in detail, providing historical examples and the views of a range of Arab apologists and critics.  For its sweeping examination of Arab culture and attitudes, and a window on why the Arabs have, as a group, chosen to adopt certain attitudes and behaviors toward each other, Israel, and the West, I found it invaluable.  For its value to soldiers serving in the Middle East, Colonel DeAtkine praises it as a “field tested” book.  He writes, “My former students, who were officers engaged on a daily basis with the Iraqis, found their cultural instruction to be invaluable and related to me many examples of Iraqi cultural traits described by Patai.  The instruction helped them work with Arab leaders and better understand their ambivalence, methods of conflict resolution, sensitivities to loss of face, proclivities to excessive rhetoric and habit of substituting words for action, disinclination to accept responsibility as well as their traits of hospitality and generosity.  These officers conducted thousands of successful meetings, settling disputes and averting crisis situations at village, tribal, and urban neighborhood levels—all of this unreported by the Western media.  Such successes are, apparently, not sufficiently dramatic to garner media attention.  Nevertheless, in the long run these positive incidents will have lasting influence on the people with whom they dealt, and will pay dividends long after this conflict has ended.”

This does not mean that Patai, while possessing a firm grasp of trends in Arab society and psychology, could anticipate every twist and turn history would make.  When he wrote his last edition of this book, he saw slow progress in the Arab world, encouraged by small changes in education of women, in the example of Kuwait’s use of its oil money to create a successful welfare state (in the best sense of the word), and in the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.  He apparently did not sense the undercurrents of hatred which have stirred those with extreme interpretations of Islam into a worldwide network of jihadist Islamic terrorists.  That the defeat in 1967 (and again, if you look at the big picture, in 1973) should be the last open war declared against Israel, and that the struggle against both the Jewish State and the West should assume a new form with snipers shooting at motorists, suicide bombers, and Western-educated middle-class men flying planes into skyscrapers, clearly did not suggest itself to him.  But perhaps like many Westerners, he was unable to connect the dots between attacks on the West by Arabs and see not the isolated actions of a few disturbed individuals, but a trend which was escalating over time in both scale and sophistication.  Or perhaps as a passionate scholar of the Arabs, he chose not to see it.  (He died in 1996.)  Yet despite its limitations, I think this book is an excellent starting-point for those who wish to understand the Arab world better.

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Some of my questions about the Arabs answered… Part III

This is part III in a series of four.  Each post contains a question I’ve had about Arab culture and the Arab world for some time, and the information I was able to glean from Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind, which I finished reading recently.

Why can’t we in the West resolve our differences with the Arab/Muslim world simply by talking?  Why will Obama fail in his rapprochement to the Arab world?  And why is he a poor mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict?

Arabs have a strong code of honor that they believe has been violated by the West.  Whether it’s the West’s ultimate triumph over the Arab Muslims who successfully conquered the Middle East and North Africa, the arbitrary creation of Arab states in the Middle East following the First World War with governments that suited the Europeans, Israel’s foundation, or the long period of stagnation in the Arab world for which Arabs blame the West, an Arab’s sense of lost honor can usually only be restored by violence.  The blood feud is still alive and well in the Arab world, and while it does not often lead to large-scale bloodshed, there is a belief that there are circumstances in which only killing can restore lost honor.  One circumstance is the rivalry between two principal tribes in a given region which periodically breaks out in violence.  Another is when a woman or girl is suspected of having violated the strict sexual mores of Arab society, and hence brought dishonor on the men in her family.  In these situations, it is up to her father and brothers to kill her, and then her paramour (to retaliate for the loss of a member of their family).

It is important to understand this sense of shame and the actions needed to overcome it in order to begin to understand the diplomatic decisions made by Arab nations and their leaders.  Patai notes that “[i]n every conflict those involved tend to feel that their honor is at stake, and that to give in, even as little as an inch, would diminish their self-respect and dignity.  Even to take the first step toward ending a conflict would be regarded as a sign of weakness which, in turn, would greatly damage one’s honor.  Hence, it is almost impossible for an Arab to come to an agreement in direct confrontation with an opponent.  Given the Arab tradition of invective and proclivity to boasting and verbal exaggeration, any face-to-face encounter between two adversaries is likely to aggravate the dispute rather than constitute a step toward its settlement.”  In one marked exception to this, Patai explains Egypt’s willingness to make peace with Israel by describing the positive effect on Egyptian society of Egypt’s strong showing on the first day and a half of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.  While they were ultimately beaten and seriously threatened by a successful Israeli crossing of the Suez Canal by the end of the war, the fact that the Egyptians crossed the Suez in the early days of the war and penetrated the Sinai, threatening the Israelis’ weak defenses there, restored in Egyptian minds their sense of honor that had been robbed of them by serial defeats by Israel up to that point.  (To this day, Egyptian schoolchildren are taught that the war in 1973 was a great military victory over Israel.)  This tipping of the balance of honor back in their favor put the Egyptians in a position where they could feel more magnanimous than humiliated, and could open the necessary channels to negotiate a peace with Israel.

Mediation is something Arabs are open to, but this requires not only a feeling of parity with their enemy, as described above, but also a mediator qualified for the job.  Patai describes a trusted mediator thus: “It goes without saying that the mediator must be a person whose impartiality is beyond question, and this means that he must not be more closely related to one side in the dispute than to the other.  He also must enjoy such a high status that neither of the two disputants can in any way exert pressure on him.  Preferably, he should also be a wealthy man, so as to preclude any suspicion of being accessible to bribery.  In sum, the ideal mediator is a man who is in a position, because of his personality, status, respect, wealth, influence, and so on to created in the litigants the desire to conform with his wishes.”  One other quality, which Patai says is present in mediators among the Kabyles (Algerian Berbers) is that of trying “to find fault with the party from whom pardon is being sought, so that a balance can be established and the supplicating party avoid complete humiliation.”  This, I think, is one of the most important qualities a mediator can have, since creating a sense of equality between the litigants has shown itself so crucial, as in that of the Egyptians prior to their peace treaty with Israel.

Obama is not an ideal mediator according to this formula.  As the leader of the free world, he possesses unquestionable status, and bribery is unlikely to be a threat to negotiations done through him.  As the son of a Muslim, and a Westerner, he is both related and not related to the parties.  And he has done much to distance himself from the Israelis, which seems intended to make him more trustworthy to the Arabs.  But he still appears biased to both sides: to the Arabs for his anticipated continued military support for Israel, and to Israelis for not making any demands on the Arabs to relinquish their commitment to destroy Israel, to prepare themselves domestically for peace, and to renounce terror to “build trust” with the Jews.

For many reasons (some already addressed in the earlier posts) Arabs do not trust Westerners, and if the choice is between forfeiting their honor by making peace with and via Westerners, or continuing to fight through their Arab/Muslim alliances forever, they will choose the latter.  PA President Mahmoud Abbass has run from US Vice President Joe Biden’s visit back to the Arab League to get their approval to continue negotiations.  This shows that the real movers and shakers who will (or won’t) give the green light to an Arab-Israeli peace process are not the Americans, but Abbass’s fellow Arabs.  Similarly, Obama’s attempt to woo Syria (evidenced by his sending John Kerry to Damascus and reopening diplomatic relations with hereditary President Bashar Assad) in an effort to lure it from the influence of Iran has already failed.  No sooner did Kerry return to the US than Assad announced that Syria is and always will be a staunch ally (read: client state) of Iran.

One additional point that I  think is worth noting is the difference in style of communication between Westerners and Arabs.  (Without a familiarity with this discrepancy, successful negotiations are unlikely.)  Patai goes into great detail about some of the vagaries of the Arabic language that contribute to Westerners’ sense of Arabic statements as verbal bluster.  He also quotes Arabist Edwin T. Prothro, who suggests that “persons interested in presenting the Arab point of view to Americans and the American point of view to Arabs … ‘should keep in mind that statements which seem to Arabs to be mere statements of fact will seem to Americans to be extreme or even violent assertions.  Statements which Arabs view as showing firmness and strength on a negative or positive issue may sound to Americans as exaggerated.’”  The opposite is also the case: “a statement which seems to be a firm assertion to the Americans may sound weak and even doubtful to the Arabs who read it.  If communications are to take place between peoples of different cultures, then attention must be given not only to problems of language codification but also to problems of culture and cognition.”

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Some of my questions about the Arabs answered… Part II

This is part II in a series of four.  Each post contains a question I’ve had about Arab culture and the Arab world for some time, and the information I was able to glean from Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind, which I finished reading recently.

Why does the Arab world nourish such an obsessive hatred of Israel?

There seem to be several interesting paradoxes alive in the Arab world.  One of them is the tendency to view the West’s technological edge as both ruthlessly imposed and selfishly withheld, as mentioned above.  Another is a fatalistic attitude imposed by Islam on the Muslim Arab.  Where Islam demands that the faithful accept their lot as determined by Allah, good or bad, and any attempt to change that fate set by Allah comes with a punishment, on the other hand, there is a tendency to blame forces outside themselves for their misfortunes.  So while Israel has been a thorn in the side of Arabs for as long as the Jews have been here in any significant numbers (beginning in the 1880s—sixty years before the founding of the State), and Israel’s presence and victories over the Arabs could well be interpreted as the will of Allah, Arabs nonetheless also embrace the custom of revenge and blood feud, and as long as they believe they have been dishonored and humiliated in the eyes of the world, they will pursue vengeance.

First by coming into existence, by threatening what the Arabs viewed as their rightful sovereignty over this land (debate on this subject will be suspended for this post), and ultimately by beating them on the battlefield, Israel has inflicted a wound to the Arabs’ honor, and “blackened” their faces, in their own terminology.  Believing that that honor must be recovered, Arabs have (in general) refused to negotiate or even open channels of direct communication with Israel.  When, at the conclusion of the Six Day War in 1967, Israel attempted to return the lands conquered to their former occupying powers (Syria, Jordan, Egypt) in exchange for peace, the response from the Arab world at the Khartoum Conference was the “Three No’s”: no recognition, no negotiation, no peace.  To suffer a crushing defeat as these nations just had, and to turn around and grant the Jewish State the same honor they themselves possessed by their mutual recognition in order to recover their land would, in their minds, only have compounded their sense of humiliation.  Patai writes that “there is no greater shame than defeat by an enemy, and especially an enemy such as Israel, the Jews, who ever since the days of Muhammad have been looked down upon by the Arabs as dhimmis, a people brought low and subjected as well as protected by Islam.  If it is Allah’s will that the Arabs be defeated by such an enemy, or any enemy, it is up to them to plan patiently for the revenge which alone can restore their honor, even if they have to wait for it for years, or if need be, decades.  When the attainment of such a supreme value is the goal, the pressure to achieve it mounts until it is strong enough to overcome the threat-inaction pattern.”

This observation by Patai raises another important point.  It should be noted that Arabs are often prone to exaggerated statements and substituting words for actions.  (This tendency may account for the unwillingness of Westerners ever to take Arab threats seriously.)  While Patai describes the psychological value of these verbal habits, he does note that there are exceptions, when violent words may well be followed by violent deeds, and that should not be ignored.  Since “[d]efeat and domination by an adversary who had been weaker than the Muslim armed might are thus more painful to the Arabs than for nations who throughout their historical contacts with the West have always experienced it as superior in military power.”  The fragmentation and fall of Muslim domination in Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East at the hands of the Ottomans and Europeans saddled them with a sense of shame at their economic, intellectual, and cultural impoverishment compared with the West.  So while in personal encounters and even some contacts between national leaders and the press, there can be dramatic or violent threats made which never come to execution, on a pan-Arab level, in conflict with Israel and the West, most threats from shame-faced, angry Arabs may not be immediately forthcoming, but they can be assured to be genuine.

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Some of my questions about the Arabs answered… Part I

I recently finished a book entitled The Arab Mind by Raphael Patai.  Originally published in 1976, it was revised in 1983, and re-published in 2002 (after the terrorist assault on the United States on 11 September 2001).  The book includes a valuable foreward by Norvell B. DeAtkine, a retired US Army colonel who possesses a graduate degree in Arab studies from the American University in Beirut, served for 8 years in the Middle East, taught for 18 years at the JFK Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and is now an independent Middle East consultant.  DeAtkine offers a glowing assessment of the value of this book to Westerners working and serving in the armed forces in the Middle East.  While it took me some time to get through the book in its entirety (it is at times a bit dry and academic), its thoroughness in exploring every aspect of Arab culture and society, from the sense of honor to the Arabic language to the love of conferences and summits gave me a better understanding of the people I’m surrounded by where I live in Yehudah.  Patai’s examination of trends in Arab thinking and society stem both from the point of view of a Western Arabist who was welcomed into that society by Arab friends, and from the point of view of Arab defenders and critics of Arab customs.

I am by no means an Arabist myself after reading this one book.  But I discovered answers to many questions I have had about Arabs, and have a better grasp of why American foreign policy under Barack Obama is doomed to failure.  Over the next few days, I will be presenting some of my questions (not all; that would be the book itself) and the information gleaned from Patai’s book that I think helps to answer them.

As the West catapults forward in the progress of science, medicine, technology, and every other field, why does the Arab world seem to recede into the past?

Where Westerners value innovation and are constantly trying to make things smaller, more powerful, faster, and cheaper, Arabs value what is ancient over what is modern—and the older the better.  Patai states that “in a culture in which traditionalism is pronounced, change and innovation in every area of culture are inhibited.  Moreover, in such a culture, the greater the antiquity of a feature, the greater its traditional value, and, hence, the greater the resistance to changing it.”  There has been an attitude of incuriosity in the Arab world for some time to the progress the West has embarked on in the last almost 500 years.  When Arab author Omar A. Farrukh set out to write his book The Arab Genius in Science and Philosophy, he intended to extol the Arab contribution to theology, mathematics, natural sciences, and philosophy.  However, “none of the outstanding Arab scientists and philosophers he discusses lived later than the fourteenth century.”

Arabs have also not shown themselves culturally inclined to embrace manual labor the way Westerners do.  The notion of a homeowner proudly fixing his own lawnmower (or using it, even) is foreign to Arab culture, where getting one’s hands dirty is not something to be desired or praised.  This has also resulted in a resistance to some of the industrialization (though not all) that the West has undergone in the last 150 years or so.

Perhaps the most important thing that contributes to stagnation of contemporary Arab society is the debate—internal and external—concerning Western knowledge and technology.  Some Arabs choose to see these innovations as evil and imposed on Arab society without Arab approval, while other Arabs burn with resentment that these valuable tools of modernization are being kept from them by self-interested Westerners who desire to humiliate the Arab world.  Whichever point of view an Arab adopts regarding Western knowledge, many Arabs are concerned about the impact of that information and influence on their traditional culture which does not lend itself to such forces of innovation.  While there are some in the Arab world who would like to perpetuate the maintenance and worship of the old over the new, the unavoidable example of (mostly hated) Israel cannot but represent a reproach to many Arab critics of Arab society.  Patai notes that “there is indeed a strong desire among thoughtful Arabs to introduce far-reaching changes into the traditional texture of their society, and to reshape the Arab man in a new mold.  They also show that the enemy, Israel, is being considered by many highly articulate spokesmen as the exemplar which the Arabs must emulate, primarily in order to be able to defeat Israel, but also in order to become progressive, to advance themselves, and to occupy a place of honor in the modern world.”

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An interview

Ilana-Davita kindly requested to interview me as part of a series she is featuring on her blog.  Check it out at Ilana-Davita.

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O Cap’n, my Cap’n

As of the 5^th of Iyar (or May 10 on the secular calendar), the Cap’n and I have been married 10 years.  Through boom economy and unemployment, health and sickness, four kids, aliyah, and a year when the only time we were ever alone together was when we’d hire a babysitter on Sunday nights (our first year in Israel), we have survived, and even thrived.   This is due to a number of factors, but perhaps the strongest is our communication.  Over the years, our ability to communicate has been helped enormously by two principal resources: Deborah Tannen’s book, You Just Don’t Understand and a video of a workshop given by Barbara DeAngelis on how couples can fight (i.e. argue) constructively.

When the Cap’n and I were first getting acquainted, we were often amused to discover that we had both read a particularly obscure book.  (To this day, we cannot get over having both read the awful spy novel Shibumi by Trevanian.)  But one particularly helpful obscure book we had in common was Georgetown linguist Deborah Tannen’s book on the differences between how men and women communicate.  A bestseller in the early 1990s, its novelty had faded by the time we met.  And yet I remain eternally grateful that we’ve both read it.  Written for a popular audience (rather than one dedicated to the obscurities of academic linguistics), it discusses in fascinating detail the differences between how men and women communicate.  Thanks to this book, the Cap’n knows that when I am griping about something, I’m often doing it to connect emotionally with him or to elicit sympathy.  (Or because I haven’t eaten breakfast yet, something the book doesn’t get into but which the Cap’n knows by now.)  Where a man would normally suggest ways for me to solve my problems or give general advice on the subject, the Cap’n (because he’s read this book) knows not to do that.

The DeAngelis workshop is something I brought to the relationship, and in which I still have greater skill (though I’m encouraging the Cap’n to continue to make progress in this area).  I don’t remember every single phase she took couples through in her seminar on communication, but I remember watching couples she had coached carry out fights, with the stages of the fight subtitled on the screen.  She encouraged both partners to take a few minutes to process their feelings aloud for the other partner, beginning with what was upsetting them, why it bothered them, how it made them feel, what past experiences it reminded them of, and what they would like the other partner to do differently next time a similar situation arises.  Each partner would take a turn, and the end result was an exploration of the problem with proposed solutions.  (This does not mean that the couple will only fight about a given situation once, but it certainly puts them on the road to solving the problem, if both are willing to give each other a hearing and try to break out of old behavior patterns.)

Thanks to these two resources, the Cap’n also knows that when he screws up, he needs only to wait until my ire has subsided, then approach and ask what he should say next time.  (I’m very good about feeding him his lines in advance.)  This fosters frank communication and prevents endless repetition of verbal gaffes.  But most of all, instead of getting frustrated, angry, or clamming up when we don’t seem to be understanding one another, he is willing to sit down and discuss it.  (Sometimes with help from me, but still…)

Thank you, Cap’n, for 10 years of love, laughs, and good fellowship.

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A plague on both their houses

I’ve been following the news about Obama and his plans for the Middle East for months.  With every passing week, I get more and more discouraged.

I was a good Massachusetts voter for years (read: loyal Democrat), and before that, a true Oregonian (also usually a Democrat).  I preferred the tax-and-spend mentality to the spend-and-let-the-next-guy-worry-about-how-to-pay-for-it plan.  I preferred the Democrats’ concern for the poor, the working class, the environment, women, racial minorities, education, health care, and pretty much everything else.

I did not vote in the last election.  As an Israeli, I no longer feel like I have the right to vote in American elections since I don’t live there anymore; that’s for US residents to do.  (I feel the same way about Israelis abroad not being allowed to vote absentee in Israeli elections.)

I am also not a one-issue voter.  Some American Jews care so passionately about Israel (despite choosing not to live here) that they cast their votes based on who they think will be better for Israel.  When I lived in America, I would weigh all of the issues in my decision-making process.  Who can create a stronger America?  Who has a sound economic policy?  Who has a better plan for weaning the US off of its oil dependency?  Who can balance good relations with the rest of the world’s nations while maintaining a strong identity as an American?  The question of who is a greater supporter of Israel’s right to its own sovereignty and defense is only one of many questions I would consider.

I hoped Obama would be as practical as he was reported to be brainy.  I hoped he would continue the support of Israel in the world-wide war on terror that his predecessors generally (though not exclusively) pursued.  I hoped he would cast a cold, clear eye on the state of the world, stack the priorities, and pursue a foreign policy based on how the world actually is rather than on how he would like to believe the world is.  Instead, he’s shown himself to be a poor judge of national character, a bad student of history, and a leader who would rather dream than face reality.  His belief that making peace (or forcing it, it would seem) between Israel and the Arabs will put Hamas and Hizbullah out of business is entirely unfounded.  His view that once he has successfully made peace between Israel and the Arabs, he will have greater traction in his attempt to arrest Iran’s nuclear ambitions is similarly absurd.  The man who ran such a brilliant campaign can’t seem to grasp the simplest economic reality: that by halting Iran’s nuclear plans and crippling it financially, he can cut off the monetary flow to world-wide terror cells and organizations like Hamas and Hizbullah, and once those have been crippled, peace becomes just a little bit more possible.  His administration’s desperation to find even the faintest glimmer of progress toward peace in the Arab Palestinian world is also sad: PM Salaam Fayyad’s aim to improve the Arab economy is notable, but his refusal to discuss making peace with Israel should be cause for concern.  PA President Mahmoud Abbass’s intransigence in the last few years, despite being offered nearly everything he asked for, should also raise red flags.  And the PA’s recent naming of a square in memory of a woman terrorist who killed 37 civilians (falsely identified by Hillary Clinton as the work of Hamas) should indicate about how inclined toward peace with Israel the Arabs really are.

My being Israeli was the main reason I didn’t vote in the last election.  The other one was that I just couldn’t bring myself to back either candidate.  I hoped that Obama would prove promising; I couldn’t deceive even myself that a ticket with a Republican veteran with an appalling voting record in the Senate and heart disease, paired with an ignorant, fundamentalist Christian Barbie doll would be successful.

I have considered myself to be party-less in American politics for some time.  The last election did nothing to change that.  And with the mid-term election coming up in November in which the Republicans seem poised to retake the House, I can’t say I’m disappointed.  A plague on both their houses, I say, but especially on the party I thought represented human rights, fairness, and the struggle to do what’s right.

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90th anniversary of San Remo Conference

April 24-25 of this year was the 90th anniversary of the San Remo Conference which took place in 1920 and established the right of the Jews of Israel to settle (hear that? SETTLE) anywhere in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

A statement issued following the commemoration ceremony included the following declarations:

“Emphasizing that the San Remo Resolution of 1920 recognized the exclusive national Jewish rights to the Land of Israel under international law, on the strength of the historical connection of the Jewish people to the territory previously known as Palestine.

“Recalling that such a seminal event as the San Remo Conference of 1920 has been forgotten or ignored by the community of nations, and that the rights it conferred upon the Jewish people have been unlawfully dismissed, curtailed and denied.

“Asserting that a just and lasting peace, leading to the acceptance of secure and recognized borders between all States in the region, can only be achieved by recognizing the long established rights of the Jewish people under international law.”

I have observed that both individuals and nations possess the faculty of “selective memory.”  I will bet a pound to a penny that every Israel-bashing individual who claims that by possessing and settling Yehudah and Shomron Israel is violating “international law” is unaware that the San Remo Conference’s agreement has never been legally superseded, and that despite the current UN’s — and President Obama’s — unwillingness to recognize the Jewish people’s ancient claim to this land, the entire League of Nations, on 22 July 1922 declared, “Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

Those in the world so deeply concerned with international law (who, I would add, are NEVER able to cite me the laws that Israel is allegedly breaking) would do well to learn one or two of them.

(And also take note of the map above: “Palestine,” yes.  Green Line?  No.  From the Jordan to the Mediterranean: “Area Remaining for Jewish National Home.”)

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