Kesher Talk: 06/30/2002

Friday, July 05, 2002

The Hometown Paper Blows It: The Seattle Times, my hometown rag is not exactly known for its support of Israel. But in today's letters to the editor they print a letter that refers to "Palestine" and then take the same tack calling the section "Picture from Palestine." This affront to my Seattlite sensibilities could not stand so I sent this letter to the editor:

To the editor:

On the July 5th page of letters to the editor, you printed a letter from Carla Fisher of Kirkland who says that the picture of a toddler dressed as a Hamas suicide bomber "was used by Israel to build animosity toward Palestine." If I were to speak with Ms. Fisher I would respectfully point out that there is currently no state, provisional or otherwise, called Palestine. Her purpose in referencing the geographically non-existent "Palestine" was most likely to grant the Palestinians a greater claim of legitimacy, an understandable, though self-deceptive motive.

But for the Seattle Times to have printed her letter and two other under the heading "Picture from Palestine" must mean something different. An accurate, impartial, and professional newspaper would never print a factual untruth such as the existence of a phantom country. In this case, I can only think of two possible explanations.
Either the Times is using maps from before 1948, when the British ruled a country called Palestine, or they are using maps from Arab/Muslim Madrassahs which consider all of Israel "Palestine."

Sarcasm aside, it is crucial that accurate terms be used in a situation where both sides lunge for the slightest edge in media coverage. With claims of bias being tossed back and forth, the use of outright falsehoods only serves to fan the flames. The Times should take extra care to avoid this. And should get some new maps.

The original version of the letter had a request that they also refer to other former countries like the USSR, Ceylon, and Rhodesia or refer to Tel Aviv as "Occupied Palestine" just to be consistent with the maps. Unfortunately, I had to cut that stuff out so they'd print it. But it's there in spirit.

Revisionist Zionism: Hillel Halkin reviews the new book by Tom Segev, Elvis in Jerusalem: Post-Zionism and the Americanization of Israel. Segev distorts history by describing 5 Zionist "myths." My commentary is interwoven with Segev's points, followed by a few points from Halkin's review.

1. Zionism claimed, in the years in which it was struggling to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, to speak for the needs and the desires of the world's Jews and to be able to mobilize them. And yet in actual fact most of the world's Jews opposed it or were indifferent to it. "Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Israel today," Segev writes, "the Zionist movement's principal opponents were Jews. The movement did not succeed in convincing most of the Jewish people that it was viable." Furthermore, "Most Jews who settled in Israel did not do so because they were Zionists. They came as refugees ... reluctantly."

But Segev misunderstands. Israel was a Jewish refuge of last resort, a place to escape to as a matter of survival -- mostly physical, but spiritual as well. Sure, Israel could not have provided great jobs with the right 401K plans... but what the hell does Segev think went on in Nazi Germany?! Does he think Jews were trying to leave for a few sheckels better salary? They were running for their lives!

Halkin helpfully points out that it is impossible to map out Jewish opinion from the time, as Segev claims to do.

2. Even had it established a Jewish state in Palestine sooner, Zionism could never have solved the Jewish problem as it aspired to solve it. On the contrary: the worse this problem became in the Hitler years, the more helpless the Zionist movement was revealed to be. The severe British restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine in the 1930s merely hid the fact that the country could not economically have absorbed large numbers of European Jews anyway. Hence a Jewish state in these years could not have prevented the Holocaust. Indeed, the "tragedy of Zionism" was that, "while it may have foreseen the catastrophe, the solution it offered was irrelevant.... The Zionists certainly could not have rescued millions."

Segev seems to think that all Israelis were working in factories or the service sector in the pre-state years. Kibbutz, anyone? Many Israelis were busy transforming the land from a desert wasteland into a fertile nation. Any escapees that could have gotten through would have found something productive to do, I guarantee it. But no one would let them do so. That was the problem, not Israel's minute economy.

3. Israel did not rescue those who reached its shores after the Holocaust either. The million Jews from Arab lands who flocked to it after 1948 were not the beneficiaries of Zionism but its victims. Indeed, it was Zionism's conflict with the Muslim world that forced them to flee their homes. "At this point in its history [too]," Segev argues, "the Zionist movement did not serve as a solution to the Jewish problem. On the contrary, it led to the uprooting of entire Jewish communities."

This is a valid point, but derivative of point #1. Jews were either expelled or came under threat because of the mere existence of Israel. Israel prompted the rise of Jewish persecution from simple societal cruise control to major policy goal. But Jews in Arab states were not exactly thriving there... In retrospect, it is hard to imagine more than a handful of Sephardim who truly regret their exodus from the Arab autocracies.

4. Both culturally and economically, Israel has failed utterly to fulfill Zionism's dreams for Jewish independence. Culturally, it has been totally Americanized while at the same time becoming "more [religiously] Jewish," so that the Zionist vision of a vibrant Hebrew society, secular yet firmly rooted in the Jewish past, has come to naught. Economically, Israel is so dependent on American aid as to have become "much like the old, pre-Zionist Jewish community in the Holy Land, which also lived off charity from the United States." The Zionist project of de-urbanizing the Jewish people and returning them to the land has also ended in failure, for whereas "in the mid-1950s, 16 percent of Israelis worked in agriculture, in the mid-1990s only 3 percent did." The new Jew that the Zionist revolution proudly boasted of creating has turned out to be nothing more than a Hebrew-speaking version of any Jew.

Israel was originally very European and socialist. That part of the Zionist ideology is hurting - so much the better.

As for reliance on U.S. aid, this is more a sign of the rotten disposition demonstrated by the rest of the world than a particular weakness of the Jewish state. It also shows the cultural and religious bonds (Europe shares some of the culture, but thinks little of the religion).

(It also might reflect Israel's screwy socialist economy, which needs reform)

As for "the new Jew", he/she works in the manufacturing and service sectors, the new economy. He/she no longer has to plow the field and so forth. Welcome to modern scientific agriculture and the technological world, Mr. Segev!

5. The most central of all Zionist narratives, the hallowed one according to which Zionism was not a colonial movement but a saga of an ancient people returning to its biblical land, has foundered, too, on the hard rock of modern science. The Bible itself can now be viewed as a mythical document with no basis in historical reality. Segev quotes with approval the Tel Aviv professor of archaeology Ze'ev Herzog, who writes: "Biblical historiography was one of the foundation stones in the construction of Israeli Jewish society's national identity.... Challenging the reliability of the Biblical accounts is [therefore] shattering the myth of the nation."

Halkin counters #5 by noting that "the notion that the Jewish people did not have a real biblical past in the historic land of Israel is today more a tool of anti-Israel propaganda than a proposition taken seriously by responsible scholars."

Halkin says that, according to Segev, "Israel is something worse than sinful. It is quite simply unnecessary, an incalculable waste of energy, money, sacrifice, and blood that has increased the sum total of human suffering while luring the Jewish people down a side alley of history to create a redundant copy of America in the Middle East."

One would never know from Elvis in Jerusalem that Israel--a hopeless charity case, according to Segev--is, despite a current economic downturn largely caused by the Palestinian intifada, one of the world's twenty-five most affluent societies as ranked by standard of living, per capita income, and productivity, infant mortality and longevity rates, and overall quality of life. Nor would one know that it boasts, after the United States, the world's highest number of annual high-tech start-ups (in which many billions of dollars of foreign venture capital have been invested, often with spectacular returns). Moreover, as its economy has grown and American aid has not, Israel has become progressively less dependent on the latter, which today forms a tiny fraction of its gross national product and could easily be--American military assistance excepted--dispensed with. Far from a story of failure, Israel's development in fifty years from an insolvent postcolonial state with few natural resources to an international technological power has been, under conditions of economic siege and intermittent warfare, a remarkable tale of success.

Militants or terrorists: Zion Blog chuckles at the Guardian on Wednesday. While Irish terrorists are terrorists:

Republican terrorists in Northern Ireland are planning to carry out either a political assassination or a major bomb attack, unionist politician Ian Paisley Junior claimed today.

Palestinian terrorists are militants:

The militant Palestinian group Hamas vowed yesterday to redouble its suicide bombing attacks after a raid by Israeli special forces killed its most senior bomb-maker.

What if it happened here? Ha'aretz columnist Doron Rosenblum ponders the hypothetical scenario of coordinated Islamo-terrorist strikes in London and Paris. It is chillingly realistic.

Iraqi invasion plans: An American military planning document calls for air, land and sea-based forces to attack Iraq from three directions — the north, south and west — in a campaign to topple President Saddam Hussein, according to a person familiar with the document. The document envisions tens of thousands of marines and soldiers probably invading from Kuwait. Hundreds of warplanes based in as many as eight countries, possibly including Turkey and Qatar, would unleash a huge air assault against thousands of targets, including airfields, roadways and fiber-optics communications sites.

Special operations forces or covert C.I.A. operatives would strike at depots or laboratories storing or manufacturing Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to launch them.

See the full New York Times report...

UPDATE: As OpinionJournal noted today, "Just one question: If the document is "highly classified," who leaked its contents to the New York Times?"

Israel has taken care of Most-Wanted Terrorist list: Israel has arrested or killed nearly all Palestinians on its most-wanted list and now is focusing on capturing low-level militants thought to be rapidly moving up the ranks in militant cells, a senior Israeli official said Thursday.

"There's no doubt the top brass of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Tanzim [militias] by and large are either in custody or have been eliminated," the official said on condition of anonymity. Most of the terrorists were killed or nabbed during the March-April maneuvers.

On Sunday, Israeli special forces killed Mohaned Tahir, 26 and a prominent Hamas bombmaker in Nablus. The army said he was responsible for killing some 120 people in several suicide bombings. The Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, said he was the last chief Hamas activist in the West Bank wanted by Israel.

The Israeli army has reported arrests of several "suspected terrorists" nearly every day since it entered seven West Bank towns two weeks ago and placed some 700,000 Palestinians under curfew. (with files from the AP)

UPDATE: Ha'aretz covers this as well.

Thursday, July 04, 2002

Our Friends the Pakistanis: An AP story reports that there is growing outrage at the gang rape of an 18 year old girl whose 11 year old brother was seen walking unchaperoned with a girl from a tribe considered higher-caste. But check out this quote from the story:

"Pakistan has a tradition of tribal justice in which crimes or affronts to dignity are punished outside the framework of Pakistani law. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has demanded an end to punishments by tribal councils. Police say the tribal verdict was illegal, and that they have detained eight relatives of the suspects to pressure the perpetrators into surrendering."

HELLO? If it's wrong to punish an innocent girl for the crime(?) of her brother, isn't it also wrong to imprison eight innocent relatives of the suspects? Why hasn't the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan protested the penal system in their country? It's called moral clarity and the Pakistanis had better figure out what it is.But read a little further in the article. They paid the girl's family off and:

"Attiya Inayatullah, Pakistan's women's' affairs minister, visited the family Thursday to hand over the compensation check. She said President Pervez Musharraf had ordered that an Islamic religious school be built in the village in the victim's name."

Islamic school? I wonder if they'll teach the part of Islam that sentences rape victims to death by stoning, like this woman. Shame on every person involved in this. Except the rape victim, she's been shamed enough.

UPDATE: The New York Times reported on July 12: "The public gang rape of a woman in Punjab province appears to have begun with another crime: three higher-caste tribesman sodomized her 11-year-old brother, then tried to cover up what they had done, an investigation shows. The boy had even been locked up in a cell by the police to prevent him from reporting on the three men, according to an investigation from the province's governor, Lt. Gen. Khalid Maqbool."

Wednesday, July 03, 2002

Happy Independence Day: It is time to head home. Posting has been erratic thanks to my computer requiring a reformatting, but it is purring along nicely now. I'll be back on Friday, as well.

Friedman talking some sense today:

There is a message in this bottle for America: For too many years we've treated the Arab world as just a big dumb gas station, and as long as the top leader kept the oil flowing, or was nice to Israel, we didn't really care what was happening to the women and children out back — where bad governance, rising unemployment and a stifled intellectual life were killing the Arab future.

It's time to stop kidding ourselves. Getting rid of the Osamas, Saddams and Arafats is necessary to change this situation, but it's hardly sufficient. We also need to roll up our sleeves and help the Arabs address all the problems out back. The bad news is that they've dug themselves a mighty deep hole there. The good news, as this report shows, is that we have liberal Arab partners for change. It's time we teamed up with them, and not just with the bums who got them into this mess.

How exactly we are supposed to "team" up with these "liberal Arabs" is not explained. If Thomas Friedman actually knew, I'm sure he would share.

So Friedman endorses American support for the Iraqi National Congress? I dobut it. TF talks big, but I can't see him committing to anything much... and yet, he's changed his stance dramatically since 9/11, so who can predict?

Israeli academics booted for being Israeli: Gideon Toury, a professor at Tel Aviv University, writes in the Wall Street Journal Europe (link requires subscription) about his experience: "I was fired for being Israeli."

By now many people are aware that two Israeli scholars have been removed from positions in Britain not for any transgression they have committed but simply for being Israeli. The dismissals were intended as a statement of protest against Israel's policies in the Palestinian territories. That a boycott of Israelis could be organized with impunity in Europe only half a century after the boycott of Jewish businesses is at least newsworthy. Since I am one of the scholars so dismissed, I thought I would explain some things. One is that I'm very happy to be an Israeli. Indeed I owe my life to this fact.

My dismissal from the board of consulting editors of the British journal Translation Studies Abstracts had been imminent for some time. Although I never committed any crime, I had been fearing the bad news ever since my friend, colleague and former student, Miriam Shlesinger, was removed from the editorial board of the journal The Translator, also for being an Israeli. Two weeks after that, on June 8, I received my notification.

... One of the suggestions made in the e-mails that reached me was to retaliate by banning the periodicals and books published by St. Jerome. In full accordance with my principles, I feel strongly opposed to any such reaction. For me, a boycott is a boycott is a boycott -- even if it is just a counter-boycott. Anyone indulging in it will in fact be blending science and politics again, which is precisely what they wish to condemn in their protest.

Have I really refrained from academic boycotting myself? I'm afraid the answer is no: Some 20 years ago, I was offered an important post at Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg. You will recall that, in those days, it was contacts with that country that were severed, even though -- in the circles I move in, at least -- precautions were taken not to hurt individual academics. My reaction was to reject the invitation; a kind of personal boycott in its own way, no doubt, which didn't even have the slightest impact on the war against Apartheid. In fact, more than anything else, I may have been punishing myself, not the University, the government or, God forbid, the people of South Africa.

I cannot but think that Professor Baker [the Egyptian editor that dismissed Gideon] might have been doing something very similar; namely, punishing herself rather than Israeli academia, the Israeli government, the people of Israel, or even Ms. Shlesinger and myself as individuals. We have remained unchanged; she now has editorial boards that are smaller and weaker.

UPDATE: Guy Gavriel Kay asks, "It's 'the Jews' at work again, is it?"

Human rights group fiddles terrorist fatality statistics: Zion Blog notes that the human rights group B’Tselem counts dead terrorists in the intifada as civillian casualties. Zion Blog uses several entries as example, and tears the report to shreds.

Tuesday, July 02, 2002

Oil company boycotts Arab oil?

THERE IS DOCUMENTED EVIDENCE THAT COMPANIES LIKE EXXON, MOBIL, SHELL AND MANY OTHERS BUY THEIR OIL FROM THE ARAB COUNTRIES THAT SUPPORT TERRORISM LIKE IRAQ AND SAUDI ARABIA.

BUT.....THERE IS A COMPANY CALLED HESS GAS. NOT ONLY HAVE I CHECKED THEM OUT WITH A CHEMICAL ENGINEER I MET ON A PLANE BUT HE TOLD ME HESS PRODUCES A QUALITY PRODUCT BASED ON THE CALIBER OF OIL HESS BUYS.

NOW THE "PUNCHLINE" YOU ARE SAYING WHY WOULDN'T HESS BUY FROM THOSE COMPANIES. BECAUSE... HESS GAS IS OWNED BY HESS OIL COMPANY AND HESS OIL COMPANY IS OWNED BY A JEWISH FAMILY THAT SUPPORTS ISRAEL AND ITS BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL. TELL YOUR FRIENDS TO CHECK OUT THE CLOSEST HESS STATION TO THEIR RESIDENCE OR BUSINESS AND PATRONIZE THEM. SEND THIS MESSAGE ON TO YOUR FRIENDS THAT SYMPATHIZE WITH ISRAEL AND OPPOSE TERRORISM.

This e-mail has been making the rounds for a while. Is it accurate? Snopes says that it is only partially true:

Hess Oil (technically known as the Amerada Hess Corporation since a 1971 merger between Hess Oil & Chemical Corp. and Amerada Petroleum) was founded by Leon Hess, the son of a Jewish Hungarian immigrant. In 1933, Hess sold a tow truck given to him by his father, bought a 615-gallon Chevrolet truck, and began selling heating oil in Asbury Park, New Jersey. From those humble beginnings, Hess and his father established the Hess Oil & Chemical Corp., which by 1999 had become a $6.6 billion corporation and the 12th-largest U.S. oil company and now includes among its operations about 1,000 retail gasoline stations, primarily in New York, New Jersey, and Florida. Leon Hess (who was also the sole owner of the New York Jets football team) died in 1999 at age 85, and his son, John B. Hess, now serves as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Amerada Hess.

It is true that Hess has little or no dealings with Middle Eastern countries, as their exploration and production activities take place primarily in the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Algeria, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Brazil and Colombia. However, it is not quite accurate to claim that Hess "doesn't buy" from Middle Eastern companies because it is "owned by a Jewish family." Although John Hess serves as chairman and CEO of Amerada Hess, the company is publicly traded and therefore is "owned" by a variety of stockholders, not a single family. Moreover, Amerada Hess does not have a policy of not dealing with Middle Eastern companies as a show of support or sympathy for Israel, but simply because they have no established exploration or production facilities in that part of the world. (The same is true of some other large oil companies, such as Sinclair and Sunoco).

Consumers wishing to purchase gasoline from retailers whose product does not originate in Middle Eastern countries can accomplish their goal by patronizing Hess service stations, of course, but not because Hess has a corporate policy of supporting Israel.

The Khazars: Chuck of the Jewish Internet Association offers the opportunity to research the "Khazars":

1. Do not confuse a) the Khazars, a Turkic tribe of far Eastern Europe that was ruled by Jewish kings about 1000 years ago, and b) the Kazakhs, residents of Kazakhstan, formerly a Soviet Republic and now an independent country in Central Asia.

2. Antisemites claim that the Khazars are the ancestors of most, or all, Russian Jews or even the Ashkenazi Jews. This claim has the purpose of breaking the link between modern Jews and the Jews of Biblical history. In particular, since the Zionists who came to Israel in the 19th and 20th centuries were largely Ashkenazi, and included large numbers of Russian Jews before and after Israel's founding, it becomes very convenient for Palestinian Arabs and others to say modern Jews have no historic claim on Eretz Yisrael.

What is the truth of these claims? False! They have been completely refuted by both scholarly investigation of the history of the Khazars and, recently, by genetic evidence showing that Jews from all parts of the world are genetically closely related to Middle Eastern Jews and not so closely related to non-Jewish Russians, Eastern Europeans, or others.

According to Dr. Bryan Griffith Dobbs, the best site on the web regarding all aspects of the Khazars is Kevin Brook's "The Khazaria Info Center."

Dr. Dobbs also points to his group "European Jewish History, Religion and Culture" on Yahoo. EEJH deals with Jewish History and Culture from ancient times to the present. Many distinguished authors are members of EEJH and provide Internet exclusives of their work there. You can search their message history by clicking on Messages, then put Khazars (or any other topic) in the "Search Archives" box.

Another fine Internet resource is "JewishGen: The Home of Jewish Genealogy."

As Dorothy Kohanski points out, you can go to their Discussion Group Archives and search the archives using the box provided toward the bottom of the page.

Jimmy Carter does it again: Josh Kraushaar got a bit hot under the collar when he saw Jimmy Carter's USA Today op-ed on Monday. He thinks it was the silliest piece of claptrap... since Carter's last op-ed. Funny that.

UPDATE: Honest Reporting also has a go at Carter.

Monday, July 01, 2002

Jewish Aliens Revisited: I saw this in the comments section with regards to Howard's post on the possibility of alien life existing within the framework of Jewish thought:

I've often wondered about this...is the earth not for us and the Heavens to be left for G-d?
-Laurence Grafstein

This reminded me of a transcript of a speech given by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan in the 1970's (I think). The topic was the age of the universe (and his theory is fascinating), but to begin, he addressed the question of extra terrestrials. His position was just like that of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. To say that alien life is impossible is to limit G-d. His major problem with coming out either for or against the possibility of extra terrestrial life was of "painting yourself into an intellectual corner." He specifically brought the example of theologians that said that space travel was impossible because of the verse "The heavens are for G-d, and the Earth was given to Man." These people believed that the instant a space craft exited our atmosphere it would burst into flames or something, because man was not allowed to travel to "the heavens." You could imagine the egg on these people's faces when Gagarin went into space. It was therefore Rabbi Kaplan's position that it is unwise to say that something is impossible as long as it doesn't contradict any fundamental tenets of Judaism, which space travel and intelligent extra terrestrial life certainly do not. I hope this has answered Laurence's question.

Someone was listening! A columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette took note of my Jun. 21 TechCentralStation piece on the New York Times fowl-up of a climate change story. And he quoted me in his story yesterday.

Buying for Israel: My fiancee and I went to the "Ben Yehuda Street Fair" at the Maryland JCC last Sunday. The place was packed to the gills, but not with much that seemed worth buying. We were quite disappointed with the offerings, but it did explain why so few people coming out were carrying any bags. Yet, she came home with a new pendant, so we did our little part. Despite few of our friends buying anything, and the general impression that few sales were made, the Washington Jewish Week reports that some 10,000 people came to the event (it seemed like they were all in the damned room with us when we were there) and the sale made as much as 100,000 dollars for the Israeli merchants. Not bad after all!

Hamas fundraiser at the head of Albany's biggest Mosque?: The Albany Times-Union reported yesterday that Sheikh Muhammad Al-Hanooti, the "spiritual leader of the Capital Region's largest Muslim mosque, allegedly raised more than $6 million for a Middle Eastern terrorist organization and was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, according to court records, interviews and a classified FBI memorandum." But Al-Hanooti, "the 65-year-old imam at the Islamic Center of the Capital District for the past year and a half, denies the allegations and insisted he has not been a fundraiser for Hamas." No "criminal charges have ever been filed against Al-Hanooti, and federal court records do not outline how he allegedly participated in any conspiracy or terrorist attacks. But a classified memorandum written by the FBI's counterterrorism director less than a month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks describes Al-Hanooti as a 'big supporter' of Hamas."

Rabbinical position on the search for extraterrestrial life: Not quite what I was expecting:

Dr. Velvl Greene is a biologist who was enlisted by NASA in their project to determine if there was life on Mars. He asked the Lubavitcher Rebbe privately if this was something he should be doing.

The Rebbe replied, "Dr. Greene, look for life on Mars! And if you don't find it there, look somewhere else in the universe for it. Because for you to sit here and say there is no life outside of planet earth is to put limitations on the Creator, and that is not something any of His creatures can do!"

College students and the war against terror: Media coverage of a recent poll had pundits and bloggers in hysterics -- it seemed that today's college students were a bunch of draft-dodging America-hating losers. But as I demonstrate in my Techcentralstation column today, the media got this one dead wrong. There are more than enough positive findings from this poll to outweigh the negatives. The respondents were overwhelmingly in favor of deposing Sadaam. They feel that America is the best country in the world, despite any of its flaws. And the negatives were overblown. Check it out!

Kesher Talk

Friday, July 05, 2002

Thursday, July 04, 2002

Wednesday, July 03, 2002

Tuesday, July 02, 2002

Monday, July 01, 2002

Navigate this site

Previous Posts

Links

Archives