Hebrew U Professor Who Thinks Non-Rape is Racism Gets Busted for Rape

Hebrew University academic practices what he preaches?

What was left of the academic reputation of Hebrew University was demolished altogether July 30, 08. The reason was the arrest of the leftist professor of sociology who had been one of the theses advisors of that notorious thesis claiming that Jews are racists because Jewish soldiers do not rape Arab women.

In recent days, headlines have reported the stories of the Hebrew University president joining a call of endorsement for the activities of a far-leftist anti-Zionist group that claims Israel is an apartheid land, Arab students at Hebrew University being arrested for membership in al Qaeda, and a Hebrew University professor of pharmacy insisting on hiring a convicted terrorist to work in his chemistry lab. But these were relatively minor disgraces compared with that now infamous "rape thesis."

To remind you, a Hebrew University graduate student claimed in her thesis that the absence of any history of rapes of Arab women by Israeli soldiers proves that Jews are racists and oppressors, people who do not even regard Arab women as worthy of being sexually abused. The student at the Mount Scopus campus and her "research" were then awarded a university honor for these impressive "discoveries" by the Shaine Center, a Hebrew University sociology "research" center dominated by far leftists. Nitzan had argued that abstaining from rape is just as inhumane and oppressive as "symptomatically raping" and in fact replaces it, because it just serves to reinforce the intolerance felt toward Arabs by Jewish soldiers. These racist soldiers think of Arabs as so inferior and horrid that they do not even feel a compulsion to rape them. While giving some shallow lip service to how the "question" of rape refusal is "very complex," Nitzan's own "answer" is quite simple and straightforward - it reflects Jewish racism against Arabs.

Israel, she claimed, is so racist and anti-Arab that abstaining from rape is part and parcel of its determination to enforce rigid "lines of division." She asserted that individual soldiers who refuse to rape represent an intentional policy of oppression roughly similar to when governments order mass rape, because in both cases the "policy" serves to subordinate and dehumanize the oppressed victim population. The thesis drew its "scientific" conclusions from interviews with 25 reserve soldiers, ages 23-32, who served as combat troops in the "occupied territories" during the intifada. None of the comments by any of these soldiers supports or provides any confirmation, even the most indirect, to any of the lunatic "conclusions" reached by Nitzan.

Facing a storm of public outrage, the president of Hebrew University, Prof. Menachem Magidor, and the Rector, Prof. Haim D. Rabinowitch, jointly issued an announcement defending the student and dismissing those who expressed outrage over the contents of the thesis.

The "Non-Rape as Racism" thesis was co-supervised by one Eyal Ben-Ari, a Hebrew University professor of sociology, who claims to know something about the sociology of the military. Ben-Ari is a far leftist with a track record of turning out anti-Israel propaganda, such as claims that Israel is an ultra-militarist society, and much of his propaganda is misrepresented as scholarly research. The other co-supervisor of the rape thesis was Ben-Ari's co-author in a book about Israeli "militarism." Israeli feminist groups never had a word to say about that "thesis" nor about Ben-Ari's role in inventing the "No rape as Racism" hypothesis.

From his role in the rape thesis, it was already known that Ben-Ari had goofy ideas about sexual (mis-)behavior. But now it turns out that the ultra-feminist Israel-bashing professor of sociology practices what he preaches.

The very same Professor Eyal Ben-Ari was arrested yesterday for suspected rape and sexual abuse of his students, and arraigned before the Jerusalem magistrate's court. It seems that Ben-Ari made it a habit to condition giving nice grades to and getting research grants for his female students on their sleeping with him. He was clearly not being racist though, because he is the same guy who discovered the academic finding that raping proves you are not racist. The police claim Ben-Ari had been behaving thus for the past fifteen years! This was not the first Hebrew University professor arrested for sexual misbehavior.

The Jerusalem weekly Yediot Yerushalayim broke the story and claimed Ben-Ari routinely attacked his female students sexually and violently. It cited two students who claimed they had been violently raped by Ben-Ari. He is also accused of using university funds to take his female students on trips for sexual trysts. He purchased for one of them a vibrator and then submitted the bill for reimbursement to the Hebrew University's Shaine Center (the very same Center that granted an award to the "Non-Rape is Racism" thesis!).

While awaiting trial Ben-Ari is subject to a restraining order preventing him from entering the Hebrew University campus, as well as an order not to leave the country. The same ultra-feminists in Israel who insisted that an (unmarried) cabinet minister be indicted because he gave a French kiss to a woman in his office have yet to say a word about the behavior of this member of the Tenured Left.

Haaretz (July 31) reports that female students in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University, which claims to specialize in feminism and social justice, allege that Ben-Ari is not the only tenured lecher in the department who abuses them sexually, and that these faculty members walk about boasting of their "conquests" of the PhD students. Strangely, the university authorities never looked into their behavior.

Ben-Ari had also served as a consultant to the Israeli army over the role of women in the military.

Obama the Innocent?

Still only a candidate for President, Mr. Obama spent last week being treated like a head of state throughout the Middle East and Europe. While that in itself may give be disconcerting, it was his speeches which gave The Jewish Press editorial board some cause for concern.

In his much-heralded speech in Berlin, Sen. Obama at times sounded like an undergraduate Marxist who had just attended a lecture on the joys of one-worldism. He repeatedly spoke of the interconnectedness of nations and the need for all, especially America and Europe, to band together to meet the challenges of the 21st century. While that in itself is not really troubling, he talked about fundamentally changing the way nation-states do business, not just tweaking policy on specific issues:

“This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably”; “Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few and not the many”; “Together, we must forge trade that truly rewards the work that creates wealth....”

Spreading the wealth may sound nice, but it is not the way America became a major economic and military power, bailing out Europe and the rest of the world in World War II and facing down the Soviets in the Cold War. Besides, is the American economy so strong these days that the country can abjure intense competition? Is Sen. Obama really suggesting that China and India will share in his Kumbaya moment and abandon their drive for economic preeminence?

There was more:

“People of the world,” he said, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.…When you, the German people, tore down that wall – a wall that divided East and West; freedom and tyranny; fear and hope – walls came tumbling down around the world....”

Putting aside the extravagant rhetoric, wasn’t it Ronald Reagan, as president of the world's only superpower, who helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union by pursuing policies that were antithetical to the Obama mindset?

Is Sen. Obama suggesting the U.S. abandon any thought of maintaining its preeminent power and join instead in a consortium of lesser powers? Does he really believe an America that is not militarily and economically dominant can counter a surging Russian military build up? Does he really think an Iran bent on regional hegemony or Islamic fundamentalists seeking to reinstate the caliphate can be addressed by anything less than an America with a first-rate military capacity and superpower status?

Read more by clicking here.

Voices of Hasidic Women

A story in the Times Herald-Record, a Hudson Valley newspaper, features a handful of Hasidic women speaking out against the portrayal of their lifestyle in the much-talked about recent New York Magazine article.

The latter, for anyone who’s been away in Siberia or absent from this blog, focused on a young woman who fled the Satmar enclave of Kiryas Joel along with her young daughter, and is now fighting for custody. The woman, Gitty Grunwald, is now completely irreligious, and she had some pretty negative things to say about the Satmar, especially about the treatment of women.

So now, a Times Herald-Record reporter has found five Hasidic women willing to go on the record (pardon the pun) to condemn the New York Magazine article and defend their way of life. The talkback was apparently organized by Rachel Freier, a Hasidic female attorney from Boro Park—and the subject of a previous Herald-Record article—who has an office near the KJ community. (I wonder what sect Freier belongs to—she certainly can’t be Satmar if she is a practicing J.D.)

Unfortunately, the sample here is hardly large enough to represent a critical mass, and the article too short to provide much insight into the status of Hasidic women. Comments like “[e]verything written was a total distortion”—which may well be a fair statement—are too general to be able to set the public straight on specific misrepresentations.

It would have been fascinating to hear more from these women and from others inside KJ itself. Of course, even if KJ women would speak to the media, one would have to take their comments with a dose of salt. To revisit a comparison I made in an earlier piece, to the FLDS sect in Texas, could these women really speak freely (that is, without repercussion) and independently (that is, without coaching)?

Israeli University Heads Join Leftist anti-Israel Group in Demanding that All Controls be Removed on Palestinians entering Campuses

Israeli universities are the occupied territories of the Far Left. The cartel that oversees and controls the universities is known as the Council on Higher Education, whose main appendage is the VATAT or Budget and Planning Committee, which allots all public funds to Israeli universities, using arbitrary and curious criteria. The VATAT consists of university professors who divvy up among their own institutions the loot taken from the taxpayer.

The Israeli university system is not only corrupt and mediocre but dominated by leftist politicization. While university officials often shrug their shoulders when listening to complaints about the many tenured traitors operating out of their campuses, insisting that it is all just a price that needs to be paid if academic freedom is to be preserved, they generally insist disingenuously that politicization of the campus leadership and officialdom by the Left does not exist at all.

Oh no? Consider the petition to the Israeli Minister of Defense sent by the members of the Council of University Presidents this week, as reported on the YNET news web site. These are university PRESIDENTS, not rank and file Post-Zionist academic quacks!

It was part of their efforts in support of a court petition filed by "Gisha," one of the countless leftist pro-Palestinian political groups operating in Israel. "Gisha" is one of the extremist groups monitored for its anti-Israel activities by the NGO-Monitor web site. Funded by the extremist New Israel Fund and other anti-Zionist groups, it likes to denounce Israel as an "apartheid" regime that violates international law (see this and this).

The University presidents denounced the Ministry of Defense for interfering with the right of Palestinians to enter freely and study in Israeli universities. It seems that the Ministry of Defense would like to restrict entry to the universities to Palestinians who are not known terrorists. After all, there have been terrorist attacks within the Hebrew University campus in which students and other living things were murdered.
To Right, Hebrew University cafeteria after Arab terrorist bombing that murdered students.
The Ministry also wants Palestinian students prevented from entering certain fields, like nuclear engineering or similar fields in which Palestinians can learn to murder Jews more effectively.

The University chiefs think otherwise, and see nothing wrong with teaching Palestinians the basics of constructing nuclear warheads. We are reminded of the recent story of a leftist professor of pharmacy at the Hebrew University insisting that a convicted Palestinian terrorist be granted access to lab chemicals. The University chiefs also seem to think that the six Hebrew University students recently arrested for membership in Al-Qaeda represent a protest movement that needs to be expanded.

The chiefs openly endorsed the Gisha court petition. Besides the University chiefs, those who asked to join the petition were astronomy Professor Zvi Mazeh of Tel Aviv University, who complained that Jews were subject to quotas for centuries and so quotas should not be applied to Arabs in Israel (see this). You would never know from his statement that Arab applicants to all Israeli universities enjoy affirmative action preferences and reduced admissions standards. Other signatories included Professor Moshe Ron, a retiree from the Hebrew University's general literature department and long an advocate of insurrection and mutiny among Israeli soldiers (see this), and Ehud De Shalit, a Hebrew University mathematician.

IBL Wheezes Back To Life?

"Hey, Steve! Did you hear about the new IBL All-Star tournament in Petach Tikva in a few weeks? I'm so excited that I've already bought tickets for friends of mine, who will be visiting from the U.S."

Well, before I could order my morning cafe hafuch (Israeli style capuccino with frothy steamed milk), my baseball friend from Modiin surprised me with his breaking sports news. Just a few days earlier, the Jerusalem Post and a scatological Internet site had outlined the life, death, resurrection and semi-comatose state of the Israel Baseball League. Based on the impeccable insider info I had been receiving from one of the IBL's original owners and general managers, it appeared the IBL was going to collapse under the weight of its own shekarim (lies), which were emanating from the on again, off again new management team.

And then my Modiin buddy, who last year during a critical playoff game could be heard yelling at the top of his lungs toward flame-throwing Modiin Miracle ace Maximo Nelson, "Let's go Maximo," stopped me in my tracks with the news of a new IBL.

Right after Tisha B'Av, the IBL, which is now being run by a Florida attorney and an alleged
Massachusetts investment team, with input from ex-Major Legaue Baseball executive Dan Duquette, will try and make a comeback with a 7-day event that will pit an IBL All-Star team against the rapidly improving Israeli National squad.

The All-Star team has invited several players back from last year's adventure and announced that Ari Kafka, "who pitched for the Seattle Mariners," will join the Israeli team. Problem is, Kafka NEVER made it to the Major Leagues. He was drafted by Seattle and played two abbreviated seasons in the lower minor leagues before being released in 2007. The IBL has had problems telling fans the truth for the past year. Nevertheless, a Jewish minor leaguer pitching for Israel would be a plus.

The Israeli National team, led by 19 year old pitcher Alon Leichman actually did pretty well in a recent European tourney, which was written up in a new Israeli financial paper. In fact, the Israelis nearly gained a spot in the European championships but couldn't hold late inning leads. The Israeli National squad is looking to bolster its roster with Jewish former minor and major leaguers ahead of the 2009 World Baseball Championships.

This was the original goal of the IBL when it was created by Larry Baras and a phalanx of big name American baseball executives. But Baras's alleged financial miscues, which resulted in the mass resignation of the IBL Board, nearly killed off the great Israeli baseball experiment.

Whether the weeklong All-Star program will bring back fans is an open question, since there has been almost ZERO promotion about the new effort. Professional baseball in Israel deserves a chance. The IBL, National team and the burgeoning Little Leagues, which boast talented American and Israeli youngsters, are worthy of honest investors, not fly by night operators

Stop the Mass Murder - Defend Self-Esteem of the Downtrodden!

What about HIS rights?
The JP recently ran an editorial about the jihad of the animal rights nuts, led by PETA, a group that wants humans to become extinct if that helps raise the self-esteem of barnyard animals. PETA is against kosher butchering and eating. The PETA nuts have been joined by some leaders in the Tikkunized wing of the "Conservative" synagogue movement for whom "Thou shalt be trendy" seems to serve as the 11th Commandment:

'Conservative movement came up with the notion of a “Hechsher Tzedek” which would add to the definition of “kosher” by determining what hourly wage, vacation time, shift scheduling, coffee breaks, lunch breaks, etc., were “just” and then coupling the performance of a company in those areas with its adherence to kosher food standards in order to round out a new, comprehensive standard of kashrut.'

Can't you seen Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai with a new tablet that reads, "Thou Shalt Let Workers have enough Coffee Breaks!"? And last time we looked, no one was being coerced into working as a kosher butcher, which means the wages there must be more than enough to persuade workers to forego other job options to come to work in the kosher butcher facilities. We think some overpaid Conservative movement leaders have too much leisure time on their own hands!

In their desire to join forces with the animal rights nuts, the assimilationist bleeding hearts seem to be overlooking the long history of anti-Semitism of PETA. See this.

But being helpful sorts, we thought we should formulate a call to action that the animal rights nuts, including those assimilationist liberals (asslibs) who have joined them from the Jewish community, can issue, with a clarion call for recreational compassion:

Appeal from the Jewish Animalists:

We, the American Association of Politically Correct Jewish Bleeding Hearts, including those calling themselves Tikkunites, "Renewal Rabbis," Conservatives for "righteous eating," and the deconstructionist Reconstructionists, have issued a new Rabbinic ruling, drawn up by our leader and guru Rabbi Artie Woodstock, head of the Jewish Ecology Center of Germantown, Philadelphia and ecologist-at-large.

As you know, we believe that the most fundamental Jewish value is the protection of animal rights at all costs. Animals and plants have souls in need of protection, unlike Jewish settlers, and no one claiming to be a Jew can overlook the commandment to avoid eating meat and killing cuddly critters or trees.

Accordingly, we have issued a Psika that will obligate all loving and caring Jewish leaders to organize at once and end the genocide.

We cannot sit by while such mass extermination takes place. We demand that all Jewish leaders of conscience and open-heartedness come at once to the aid of the streptococci. We have discovered that evil neoconservatives have been mass murdering streptococci using a particularly vicious and cruel form of chemical weapon known as antibiotics. But the streptococci have as much right to live as anyone else. Jewish tradition teaches us that we cannot murder one organism in order to spare another. Murder is murder. A dog is a boy is a bacterium. Bacteria also have self-esteem.

We demand an end to the indifference. We demand that people return to true Jewish roots. Humans must not think that their own selfish interests supercede those of the other species. All species are the creations of The Force and are created with equal rights and responsibilities. Including the right to self-esteem.

The Dude upstairs gave the earth to us all to preserve, and we must stop the heartlessness and the senseless murder of innocent streptococci. Join us in PETA and in the progressive animal rights community this weekend for a vegan kiddush and for prayer on behalf of the embattled and suffering streptococci. End speciesism now!

Pass the corned beef...

Obamamania--Will It Ever End?

What do you call a man running for president who acts like he’s already won the election?

Obama’s overseas tour has showcased a new level of arrogance and patent camera-pandering in this already swell-headed candidate. A New York Sun editorial yesterday nicely deconstructed Obama’s “Citizen of the World” declaration, noting Obama’s apparent confusion about the fact that the president is elected by Americans, not Germans.

But with the media in such a thrall about Obama, it’s hard to determine who is wagging the tail. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s Campaign Coverage Index , Obama has consistently received more media coverage than John McCain in the more than 300 newspapers, magazines, and television reviewed each week. From January 1 through May 1, for example, John McCain was a “significant figure” has been a significant figure in 25% of stories—less than half than Obama’s 52%. Meanwhile, the New York Times recently refused to print McCain’s rebuttal to an op-ed by Obama. (The New York Post published McCain’s piece instead.)

As Pamela Meister writes in the American Thinker, these journalists wear the cloak of objectivity, and explain their lopsided coverage of Obama by claiming that he simply generates more “excitement” than that other guy, whatever his name is.

This state of affairs bothers me as a matter of principle, of course. But the more practical concern is that so far, it’s working—Obama is coasting, and the backlash I am waiting for has yet to occur.

End the Illegal Occupation! Give back the lands, you colonialist dogs!

Let's see the Neturei Karters try to get THESE folks to deny the Holocaust!

Now that the heads of Iran are openly calling for Israel's annihilation, and Iran's "president" suggests that Europe create a Zionist state some place inside Germany or maybe in Alaska, I think we should all promote a REAL solution to the problems of the Middle East and end the REAL illegal occupation.

I refer of course to the illegal Iranian occupation of lands that properly belong to the Mongols.

Meaning all of Iran.

True, Iran was conquered or liberated from the Persians by the Mongols militarily starting in 1219. Iran then became a legitimate part of the Mongol homeland. Tamerlane, who was part Mongol, also ran the place. All in all, the Mongol liberation of Persia lasted for two and a half centuries, not much different from the length of the period of Arab rule over "Palestine," after which Mongol Iran was lost to Turkic tribes. I guess that means the Turks also have a legitimate claim to a homeland there!

Now if the fact that some Arab armies once conquered the Land of Israel is thought to confer upon them rights of sovereignty and even statehood, why should not the Mongol conquest of Iran do the same? Besides, Iran was once a Mongol state, as recent as 550 years ago, whereas the last time the Land of Israel was an Arab Palestinian state was, well, never!

Not only should Mongol rule be restored to Iran as the only legitimate rulers of the place, but these days the Mongols make far better neighbors than the ayatollahs. The Mongols have no nuclear ambitions and have never met with the pagans from the Neturei Karta. The Mongols would surely put the Persian Gulf petroleum to better use than the Holocaust Deniers in Iran these days, like developing yak milk production capacities. Let's have a two-state solution: Iran and Mongolia both as independent Mongol countries! (Those pesky Persians can take refuge in Antartica or Venezuela.)

So, I say, end the illegal occupation once and for all. Liberate Iran from the imperialist colonialist occupation of the Iranians! Restore it to its proper owners - the Mongols!

Biladi biladi!
Biladi ya ardi ya arda al-judoud
Fida'i Fida'i

(That is the Mongolian song of national liberation: Its lyrics continue: "Az der rebe zingt Zingn ale chasidim Az der rebe tantzt Tantzn ale chasidim." Alas, I do not know enough Mongolian to tell you what it means.)

The Kashrus of Kosher

The Jewish Press lead editorial of AgriProcessors and the elasticity of kashrus:

But in pursuing some of the threads running through the AgriProcessors controversy, one is struck by how the basic concepts of shechita and kashrut -- the laws governing the slaughter and consumption of animals – have been appropriated and rendered well nigh unrecognizable by those with a rather elastic (and in some case agenda-driven) view of what kashrut should entail.

It will be recalled that several years ago, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sent in some private investigators to shoot video footage of the slaughtering process at the AgriProcessors plant in Postville, Iowa. The images they produced were obviously gory -- animal slaughter is not a pleasant thing.

Given that AgriProcessors is the largest kosher slaughterer in the U.S., the videos became a cause celebre. And while some violations were subsequently found and corrected, the matter did not end there. The AgriProcessors story was spun not so much as the alleged violations of an individual company but as an indictment of the kosher slaughter enterprise in its entirety. Questions were raised as to how the work product of a company could be deemed "kosher" if the animals were treated in a way that offended PETA’s sensibilities.

Some time later, the Forward did an “expose” on AgriProcessors’ alleged mistreatment of employees. The story was based largely on interviews with workers and union organizers who were in the midst of a bitter fight to unionize the plant. Again there was questioning as to how the AgriProcessors product could be considered “kosher” if there was worker abuse -- which was accepted as fact.

At that point the Conservative movement came up with the notion of a “Hechsher Tzedek” which would add to the definition of “kosher” by determining what hourly wage, vacation time, shift scheduling, coffee breaks, lunch breaks, etc., were “just” and then coupling the performance of a company in those areas with its adherence to kosher food standards in order to round out a new, comprehensive standard of kashrut.

Read more here

Golden Oldie: Lorne Lipowitz's Jewish Problem

(Pictured: Lorne Lipowitz Michaels)

I've been in a nostalgic frame of mind lately, celebrating the 10th anniversary of my weekly "Media Monitor" column. Several readers, responding to my July 4 front-page essay, “A Decade of Media Monitoring,” asked whether there was one particular column I counted as a personal favorite.

It's always difficult to pick one of anything out of nearly 500 as a personal favorite, but I could do worse than the following, which still holds pretty much true nearly nine years later and is not available in the Jewish Press's online archives:

NBC Peacock’s True Colors? [Dec. 31. 1999]

Incidents like this can make even the reasonably sane among us wish for a Jewish Al Sharpton: Despite complaints from offended viewers and the Anti-Defamation League, NBC has reneged on an earlier written promise and now says that a blatantly anti-Semitic “Saturday Night Live” Chanukah skit will not be removed from future telecasts of the original program.

The skit, which aired on Dec. 4, included a scene in which SNL regular Ana Gesteyer and the actress Christina Ricci, portraying a pair of popular female singers, discoursed on such subjects as Jewish control of the country’s banks and the forgiveness Christians have granted Jews “for having killed” Jesus.

According to news reports, the skit’s negative fallout prompted Roz Weinman, an NBC executive, to write an apologetic letter to the ADL which contained a pledge that the skit would “be excised from all future broadcasts.”

Immediately, strenuous objection to Weinman’s words was raised by SNL executive producer and guiding light Lorne Michaels – born Lorne Lipowitz – who huffed through a spokesman, “As far as I’m concerned, it’s still under discussion.”

Lipowitz’s attitude set the network’s tone for the next few days as NBC officials increasingly distanced themselves from Weinman’s letter. A network source went so far as to disparage Weinman’s motives, suggesting that “in her rush to go on vacation and appease these folks, she said, ‘Fine, here’s what I’m going to do.’ ”

And then came the announcement that NBC executives had “reviewed the viewer response to the SNL sketch and have decided that it will air again unedited.”

It was a curious statement, to say the least, and the reference to viewer response seemed at odds with the assessment offered by ADL National Director Abe Foxman, who said his organization’s switchboards were “lit up” by outraged callers. (Foxman castigated SNL’s Chanukah skit for promulgating “two canards [that] are the basis for anti-Semitism for which we’ve paid a very, very high price.”)

This is hardly the first time “Saturday Night Live” has come under scrutiny for pushing the envelope in its references to Jews and depiction of Jewish characters. In fact, in the 25 years that Lipowitz and SNL have been on the air, the show has routinely turned to Jewish themes, with results that have ranged from the silly to the reprehensible.

A short list would include an early parody-commercial of a mohel attempting a back-seat circumcision as his car careened wildly through an obstacle course; the late Gilda Radner portraying a gum-popping, vacuous Jewish American Princess; a dating video sketch starring former series regular Gary Kroeger as a perverted dentist named “Ira Needleman”; a faux home-shopping program featuring a cheesy, underhanded Israeli electronics salesman (played by guest host Tom Hanks, who even signed off with a hearty “lehitrayot”); the “Minkman brothers,” Al and Herb, a pair of less than scrupulous merchandisers played by cast members Christopher Guest and Billy Crystal in 1984; the endlessly recurring segments involving the Linda Richman “Coffee Talk” yenta; and an infamous skit combining guest host Jerry Seinfeld, a Passover seder and an unbelievably boorish Jewish family.

Speaking of Seinfeld, his NBC sitcom may have been one of the most successful in TV history, but it had a definite Jewish problem all its own.

Maybe it was because the late NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff initially dismissed the show as “too Jewish,” but the writers on “Seinfeld” went to near-ridiculous lengths to blur the ethnicity of three of the four main characters.

Even worse was what happened whenever the show attempted to deal with Jewish subjects. Washington Post television critic Tom Shales wrote that "Seinfeld," far from being too Jewish, was "too self-hatingly Jewish."

As Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum observed, “The episodes with the blabby, buffoonish rabbi are uncomfortable and notably unfunny. And the story about a bris is as painful as the procedure.” Schwarzbaum also pointed out that in an episode where “Jerry dates a girlfriend who eats only kosher, [Jerry’s friend] George meanly tricks her into eating trayf.”

Hmmm ... you don’t suppose Lorne Lipowitz Michaels could have been sitting in on some of those “Seinfeld” production meetings, do you?

I Do the Strangest Things a Man Could Ever Do

The Jewish Press reported this week on a federal court upholding a condo board's ban on mezuzot. Michelle Nevada at Israel Jewish News blog correctly points out that it is very difficult for non-Jews to understand our laws and customs. They have no "frame of reference," as she says.

She writes, "No other religion has a requirement to disengage from the world for 25 hours a week, not answering the phone or flipping a light switch; no other religion in the world goes beyond what you eat and concerns itself with your dishes and pots and pans and makes you wait between different types of food; no other religion in the world requires the hanging of a mezuzah."

Her post reminds me of the Country Yossi song--"Because I'm a Jew, I do that too."

However, at the end of her post she writes, "A very sad day. At least there are Jews on the Supreme Court if it gets that far . . ." Unfortunately, if it gets to the Supreme Court, the Jewish justices are likely to be the most against it. In many of these cases, it is the secular Jews who most often have a problem with Jewish public displays of religion. In fact, my money is on Justice William Bauer--one of the two to rule against the mezuzah--being Jewish.

From the eruv in Tenafly to the classical battles in towns from Lawrence to Beachwood, Ohio, as written about in "Jew vs. Jew," secular Jews have taken the most offense to the public practice of Judaism by their Orthodox neighbors.

A Jewish Tragedy

The loss of a child is always heart-wrenching. Imagine however, the grief a parent experiences when their child is physically alive but lost to them forever. In this week's Jewish Press front-page essay, Dr. Ervin Birnbaum dramatically recounts the story of Edgardo Mortara and its affect on Jewish -Catholic relations.

It took several days for the grieving family and the stunned Jewish community to learn the cause of the kidnapping. Four years earlier the child had been ill. A fourteen-year-old Catholic girl was left with him while the family was away. The girl became acutely concerned lest the sick child die without having secured entry into the paradise of the saved. She therefore proceeded to sprinkle water on him while pronouncing a sacramental formula that would christen the child and guarantee his salvation.

Four years later she related her act to her priest. (According to another version, she told a friend, who brought it to the attention of a priest.) The priest viewed it as his duty to inform his superiors and before long the story reached Pope Pius IX himself.

The pope was determined to uphold the teaching of the Church that no Christian child could be raised by Jewish parents. Once a child was baptized he became a Christian. It did not matter that the baptized person in this case was only two at the time, or that he had no ability of voicing interest or displeasure in the procedure and no way of knowing the significance of the drops of water touching his forehead. It did not matter that the girl who handled the water was herself a child who overreacted on impulse. It did not matter that the boy’s family knew nothing of what had transpired during their brief absence years earlier.

By Church dogma the only thing that mattered was the contact of the sacramental drops with the individual. Once contact was ascertained, the pontiff maintained that the person elonged irretrievably to the Church and that it became the Church’s undisputed responsibility and legal obligation to safeguard him for Catholicism. In the words of a Catholic daily at the time, the boy entered the House of Catechumens "with extraordinary happiness," recognizing "the singular grace he had received through baptism and, by contrast, the immense misfortune for his parents of being and wanting to remain Jews."

Edgardo was showered with affectionate attention in his new environment. It was reputed, and confirmed by numerous sources, that the pope treated him as if he were his very own child.

Sometime later, when the boy’s Church guardians felt he was ready for an encounter, he was permitted to meet with his parents. Edgardo by then was thoroughly indoctrinated and as a good son of the Church endeavored to convince his parents to abandon their Jewish ways. Edgardo would be reminded of his roots on several occasions in his life and even offered the opportunity to return to his family, but he consistently refused as long as his parents chose not to embrace Catholicism.

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Israeli Academics Honored by Holocaust Denier Web Site

You will all be pleased to hear that an American Holocaust Denier and Neo-Nazi has set up a web site to honor what he regards as "Righteous Jews," meaning anti-Semitic self-hating Jews and those working against Israel.

It is supposed to imitate the "Righteous Gentiles" honors by Yad Vashem. Many of those so honored are Israeli leftist academics.

The "Righteous Jews" web site is run by one Daniel McGowan, a notorious Holocaust Denier (see this for details). Gowen was once a lecturer at Hobart and William Smith College in Geneva, New York, now retired. For more on McGowen's Nazi activities see this, this, and this.

The test for inclusion in the list is supposed to be that the recipient of the "award" helped to "Commemorate Palestinians who have been depopulated, dispossessed, humiliated, tortured, and murdered by the Zionists."

Among Israeli academics so honored by the Neo-Nazi web site are Adi Ophir, Aharon Shabtai, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Anat Biletzki, Ariella Azulay, Avishai Ehrlich, Avraham Oz, Boaz Evron, Daphna Golan, Haim Bresheeth, Haim Yacobi, Ilan Pappe, Moshe Machover, Moshe Zuckermann, Nurit Peled Elhanan, Oren Ben-Dor, Oren Yiftachel, Orit Kamir, Yigal Arens, Uri Davis, Shimshon Bichler, Uri Hadar, Ruchama Marton, Yitzhak Laor, Zalman Amit.

The full list of the laureates appears here.

Who says no one admires Israel's leftist academics?

The Pain of Exchange

Tomorrow Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser will be laid to rest on Israeli soil, two years after being kidnapped by Hizbullah. Today, a vicious murderer was treated to a hero's welcome in Lebanon.

Many wonder what price Israel will pay for this exchange. If we are willing to release murderers in exchange for the bodies of dead soldiers, what is the incentive for our enemies to keep prisoners alive?

Maybe there isn't one. And maybe Israel has made a grave mistake. But there is one thought that should give us comfort -- the Guardian of Israel never sleeps or slumbers. While today's exchange was made by a government that never seems to think long-term, their hands were guided by the One is all-knowing and all-seeing.

May the Regev and Goldwasser families be comforted amongst all the mourners of Tzion and Yerushalayim.

Liberal/Conservative Media Divide Over Israel

(Pictured: The New York Post, a liberal paper when this headline ran in 1948, has maintained its staunchly pro-Israel editorial outlook under a series of conservative editorial-page editors. Whether the Post would be as pro-Israel if it were still a liberal paper is open to question.)

There is one question readers have asked me with with far greater frequency than any other. It’s a simple one, and it goes basically like this: What is the most important thing you can say about the media after doing The Jewish Press's Media Monitor column for the past ten years?

The answer is easy, and it reflects the general direction of American politics in recent decades. With the rarest of exceptions, liberal pundits and liberal publications are less likely to be supportive of Israel than their conservative counterparts. As a matter of fact, it’s not even a close call.

Readers who find that statement to be simplistic or inaccurate can try to refute it, but the evidence is overwhelming: Whereas conservatives, with the exception of some relatively marginal paleoconservatives writing for a handful of mostly obscure web and print outlets, tend to be strongly supportive of Israel and highly skeptical of Arab intentions, almost the exact reverse is true among liberals and leftists.

On the one hand, the most staunchly pro-Israel newspapers, magazines and cable networks -- Wall Street Journal, New York Sun, New York Post, National Review, Weekly Standard, Commentary, American Spectator, Fox News -- are virtually all on the right side of the political divide. (The New Republic is a unique case: a moderately liberal publication with a generally positive disposition toward Israel.)

On the other hand, those outlets with the most reliably ambivalent or actively hostile take on Israel are almost all found on the liberal-left end of the spectrum -- New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Nation, The American Prospect, Harper’s, CNN, etc.

Similarly on the web, just compare conservative sites like Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, FrontPageMag, WorldNetDaily and the like with liberal favorites such as The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Salon, Slate (to a somewhat lesser degree) and others of similar mind. The articles posted on the latter sites, and even more so the responses from readers, invariably blame Israel -- often in terms so vituperative they seem to have been lifted from neo-Nazi and Islamist sources -- for everything that goes wrong in the Middle East while portraying the Palestinians as eternal victims of aggressive, imperialist Israeli policies.

In terms of columnists and commentators, any list of the most consistent supporters of Israel (and by “supporters” the Monitor refuses to take seriously those who affect a pro-Israel label – Tom Friedman, Richard Cohen, et al -- while never missing an opportunity to criticize Israel) would include the names of George Will, Cal Thomas, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., Joseph Farah, William Kristol, Ralph Peters, John Podhoretz, Jeff Jacoby, Jonah Goldberg, David Horowitz, Rich Lowry, Jay Nordlinger, and others too numerous to mention here.

There are, of course, liberal pundits whom one can fairly characterize as supportive of Israel, but, as is the case with the aforementioned Friedman and Cohen, that support almost always comes with at least a caveat and criticism or two, an assumption that most if not all criticism of Israel has a basis in fact, and an almost plaintive wish that Israel would act with more understanding and greater restraint.

That such a sharp liberal/conservative media divide exists on the issue of Israel should hardly come as a surprise. For years now, polls have shown conservatives to be much more supportive of Israel than liberals (likewise those Americans who identify themselves as Republicans poll significantly higher than self-described Democrats on support of Israel).

The most reliable indicator of support for Israel, then, is not whether one is Jewish or gentile, or where one lives, or what one does for a living. It’s whether one is conservative or liberal (again, with the proverbial exceptions that prove the rule). Why should journalists and other media types be any different?

Only Jews, by the way, seem not to be in on this open secret, as the vast majority still proudly answer to the liberal label and no doubt will once again pull the Democratic lever this November.

A Hatchet Job on the Satmar

The July 13 issue of New York magazine offers up a seamy tale that the city’s liberal, everything-goes-except-observing-our-religion Jews will eat up. Escape from the Holy Shtetl tells the story of Gitty Grunwald, a 23-year-old who last year fled from Kiryas Joel, the tightly run Satmar microcosm just off the New York State Thruway—leaving her husband and mother behind, but taking her young daughter with her.

Gitty, as author Mark Jacobson adoringly calls her, not only cast off the Hasidic way of life: She swore off skirts, got as many piercings as her earlobes could carry, and discovered drugs and cigarettes while hanging out with a ragtag group of lost sheep like herself.

Earlier this year, however, Gitty’s carefree new life hit a snag when her four-year-old daughter, Esther Miriam, was taken from a Brooklyn street—re-kidnapped, you might say—back to Kiryas Joel. Gitty is now fighting for custody while she explores the treif pleasures (literally and figuratively) of the world and looks for a job.

It’s no secret whom Jacobson is rooting for in this story. His woefully lopsided article paints Gitty as a tragic heroine and the Satmar as a bunch of psychotic monsters. He seems to have gotten all his “information” about Jewish law and about this particular pocket of Orthodoxy from Gitty herself—hardly a reliable source. There is much to take issue with in this story; it’s already generated heated debate on the magazine’s website. As a frum person, I cringe to see intra-communal dysfunction being aired in a public forum.

Jacobson’s portrayal of the Satmar reminded me of the recent media coverage of the polygamous fundamentalist Mormon compounds raided by Texas authorities. How sick these people are! How power-crazed and irrational the men! How oppressed and yet unknowing the women! I couldn’t blame anyone reading this article for thinking that the Satmar community in Kiryas Joel is just the same. I know that it isn’t, yet I can’t quite articulate how and why. And that scares me. Almost as much as the horrible impression readers of Jacobson’s article will get of the Hasidic world.

The Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament for the Mentally Defective

I realize this sounds like one of those spoofs I regularly post and that sometimes confused readers. But this time it is for real. Yes, some terrorists are organizing a benefit for the mentally ill in Gaza in the form of a Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament. For details, go here. The group doing the organizing is a Hamas front group pretending to be concerning with mental illness.

Rachel Corrie, you may recall, was the clueless Israel hater and American flag burning student from Washington state who was recruited by the pro-terror "International Solidarity Movement" or ISM (which really stands for "I Support Murder") to go to Gaza and serve as a human shield for terrorists. She tried to interfere with an Israeli bulldozer digging up a terrorist smuggling tunnel. She placed herself in a position where the 'dozer driver could not see her, she was hit, and later died in a Palestinian Authority medical facility, probably from incompetence of the medical staff. Corrie for all effects and purposes committed suicde as part of her campaign on behalf of Palestinian terrorism. Ever since, she has been the matron saint of anti-Semites all over the globe.

The Corrie parents have been leading the Smear-Israel campaign and, in particular, have been pressuring the Caterpiller company into boycotting Israel. They were thunderously silent when a Palestinian terrorist used a bulldozer recently to murder three people and injure dozens in Jerusalem.

Organizing a Rachel Corrie event to help the mentally defective may be conveying a message far more important and revealing than the terrorist organizers of the event realize!

Does No Mean Yes?

From this week's Jewish Press editorial on the latest terrorist attack in Israel:

Bear in mind that the incident occurred in an area that is not a military base or "occupied territory" or a settlement. And, as is clear from the circumstances, the targets were not military or security personnel of any sort -- they were simply Jews going about their daily lives.

Yet an official Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, told the press in response to questions about the murderous rampage, "We consider it as a natural reaction to the daily aggression and crimes committed against our people in the West Bank and all over the occupied lands."

Let us not forget that the Hamas statement was delivered in the midst of what is supposed to be a cease-fire. So for Hamas, apparently, it is perfectly acceptable, as a legitimate expression of “resistance,” to kill Jews regardless of any agreements to the contrary.

The bottom line for rational people is that dealing with this ilk is suicidal. For them, killing Jews is no big deal. And a word is never really a word -- only something to get you from here to there. Sadly, the only solution, if there is one, is to disable the Palestinians in order to prevent them from doing what they, at all events, want to do.

How is it, then, that the Israeli government would even contemplate turning over any part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians? From both past and recent experience we know that even the most far-reaching and painful concessions on Israel’s part will scarcely assuage Palestinian bloodlust and anger. And concessions on Jerusalem will only serve to bring Palestinian terror all that closer to the spiritual and geographical heart of the Jewish faith.

The late Abba Eban, referring to their serial recalcitrance in the face of repeated Israeli peace overtures, famously observed of the Palestinians that they “can’t seem to take yes for an answer.” One can now say of successive Israeli governments that they can’t seem to take no for an answer.

Why Can't Ben Gurion University be as Principled as DePaul University?

DePaul's fired Finkelstein (left), and Ben Gurion University's own Finkelstein, with friend (above)

You remember Norman Finkelstein? The Jewish-born anti-Semite who made a career out of supporting Hezbollah terror and trivializing the Holocaust, the darling of the Neo-Nazis, the guy who claims that all Holocaust survivors are cheats, liars, thieves, and that Germany is the victim of Jewish extortionists?

Brooklyn-born Finkelstein, best known for his horrific "Holocaust Industry," a "book" he crayoned devoted to insulting Holocaust survivors and long celebrated by Islamofascists, Holocaust Deniers, and Neo-Nazis, has been fired from every academic position he ever held. Last year, DePaul University, a large Catholic school in Chicago, took the courageous step of firing Finkelstein. Finkelstein is regarded by some to be a Holocaust Denier. In spite of the propaganda juggernaut that operated on his behalf by the anti-Israel lobby when he was up for tenure, DePaul recognized that Finkelstein is a vulgar hate propagandist pretending to be a scholar, that he has never engaged in serious academic research, that he is regarded as a "scholar" only by the same sorts of people who regard David Irving and Ward Churchill to be scholars.

Ever since getting the boot out of DePaul, Finkelstein has been unemployed. This week the Chronicles of Higher Education reports that the Fink cannot even get a job as an adjunct in any institution of higher learning - the bottom of the academic barrel.

It writes:

"In an article, Mr. Finkelstein said he had lectured at 40 campuses in the last year. 'I would ask faculty there about a position and was told it was out of the question,' he said. 'I can’t even get an adjunct appointment for one semester.' Mr. Finkelstein is living in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he grew up, in the apartment of his deceased father. He told The Jewish Week, a local newspaper, that he doubted he could get even a job teaching high school. 'The way they do background checks is to Google your name,' he said. 'With me, they would get 30,000 Web sites, one-third of them saying I am a Holocaust denier, a supporter of terrorism, a crackpot, and a lunatic.' Mr. Finkelstein said he was working on a new book, A Farewell to Israel: The Coming Break-Up of American Zionism, although he does not yet have a publisher."

Now as happy as the above news must be for every Jew, the dealing with Finkelstein should be compared with the complain failure on the part of Ben Gurion University to act with the same sort of principled integrity with respect to its own groupie of Norman Finkelstein, the guy who is the main Israeli apologist for Finkelstein's shenanigans, Neve Gordon, who is himself an anti-Israel propagandist who has built a career on turning out hate propaganda misrepresented as scholarship. Whereas a Catholic university in Chicago had the courage to dump its anti-Israel pseudo-academic, Ben Gurion University decided to give ITS Norman Finkelstein tenure. Campus officials there have gone out of their way to falsely paint Gordon as a serious academic and scholar, praising his "research," just like the Destroy-Israel Lobby paints Finkelstein as a scholar.

Both Gordon and Finkelstein have built careers on demonizing Israel and painting it as a fascist racist evil colonialist entity that should not exist. Both publish propaganda "books," in some cases with the same publisher (the University of California Press, which can never find enough Denounce-Israel books to print), and misrepresent these as scholarship.

Yet DePaul University has restored its reputation as a serious center of academic learning by firing Finkelstein. Ben Gurion University's failure to do the same regarding Neve Gordon tells the world that IT is NOT a serious institution of academic excellence and integrity.

The Celebrity Vote

Many of us are familiar with ads featuring celebrities telling us to "Go Out and Vote". These campaigns usually target the nations youth. I presume the thought is if Sean 'Diddy' Combs or Scarlett Johansson tells them to vote, the 18-25 year old crowd will run to the election booth.

What happens though when celebrities take their campaigns out of the country? Or what about when celebrities with a powerful platform, whether because of a movie or television show, spout irresponsible nonsense across the airwaves?

In this week's front page essay, Aaron Klein addresses both of these issues in Celebrity Airheads and the Terrorists Who Love Them:

Abu Abdullah, considered one of the most important members of Hamas’s so-called military wing, told me of Gere’s appearance, "We thank Richard Gere for his efforts in the historic election of the Palestinian Islamic resistance [Hamas]."

Since I don’t know Gere personally, I can’t determine whether he realized he was urging voter turnout in elections between terror groups in one of the most terror-saturated societies the world has ever known or whether he knew Hamas would utilize the legitimacy granted it by the international community’s support of elections, urged on by Gere himself, to demand foreign aid and worldwide diplomatic status for its terror organization.

When I was a kid growing up in a Modern Orthodox household in Philadelphia, I used to observe Hollywood and the music industry with quiet amusement, watching as lamebrain celebrities involved themselves in causes they probably couldn’t spell and made all sorts of pronouncements about issues they largely didn’t have the capacity to understand.

But it wasn’t until I moved to the Middle East in February 2005 and started talking to terrorists that I fully realized just how much damage some of our "antiwar" celebrities are causing.

A lot of terrorists have satellite televisions and advanced communication equipment and are quite adept at browsing the Internet. In today’s wired world, it’s very easy for anyone speaking any language to be updated almost immediately about all kinds of events.

This includes America’s terror enemies, who pay particularly close attention to news of U.S. domestic opinion regarding our government’s Mideast policies. They understand that in the U.S. the fight for public opinion is everything – change public opinion, get American citizens to lose their drive to fight, and the government and military ultimately must change as well. The terrorists time their attacks in part on the status of our national debate and on the American news cycle.

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This week Rabbi Yitzchak Adlerstein shares with Jewish Press readers why he is Proud to be a Hirschian:

I reject the notion that his hashkafa cannot be implemented without someone of his stature here to guide us. Every hashkafa, bar none, can be (and has been) misapplied. Every hashkafa requires guidance by accomplished Torah personalities. There are no easy or safe ways to avoid perverting the intent of a valid hashkafa. Hashem gives us the guidance we need in every generation. Among contemporary luminaries are those who may not call themselves Hirschian but are not hostile to the yearnings and aspirations of the Hirschian personality.

I am a Hirschian (at least in my own non-authoritative and perhaps highly personal way of understanding the term) for all of the following reasons.

In three decades of trying to explain Torah Judaism to brighter frum students, to non-frum skeptics, and to non-Jews, the works of no other thinker have been as valuable as those of RSRH in explaining the overall telos of Torah life. Without Ramchal and Maharal, I could not explain the Torah universe; without RSRH, I cannot convey the individual.

Only in the works of RSRH are major themes of modernity – free will vs. scientific materialism; nationalism; universalism; sensuality; the esthetic; totalitarianism – not only discussed, but shown to be focal points of the Torah’s instruction.

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"Rabbi Bellyache" Claims to Speak for Jews

Quick, how does the Gemara Call Pepto Bismol for Bellyaches in Aramaic?
'Rabbi' Haim Dov Beliak is a far-leftist anti-Israel activist of the Norman Finkelstein variety, who is probably best known for having led a campaign of vicious Lashon Hara and smears against a prominent Los Angeles philanthropist, attacking him in ad hominem ways, because Beliak did not like the fact that the philanthropist was financing some housing in Jerusalem on what Beliak thinks is the wrong side of the 1967 Green Line.

Beliak, widely known by his nickname "Bellyache," holds a Reform movement ordination and used to be the congregational clergyperson at a synagogue in Whittier, California (once home of Richard Nixon).

Beliak has a letter in Haaretz today in which he pretends to speak on behalf of American Jewry, reprinted in Hebrew below. He claims that American Jews are convinced that their own security is threatened by the fact that Israel has so far refused to create a Palestinian state, capitulate to Arab demands, and return to its "Green Line." He also insists that American Jews think that pro-Israel Christians threaten Jewry when they support Israel. He concludes that American Jews need to be pro-Palestinian. Bellyache really represents the most self-hating and extremist one hundredth of one percent of American Jews.

Beliak runs a tiny group, really just a web site, which may have one or two members besides himself, called "Jews on First," devoted to promoting the political agenda of the Far Left and also to demonizing conservative Christians. The group probably does more than any other nominally Jewish group in North America, other than Neturei Karta, to create Christian anti-Semitism. Among other "Jewish" causes that it promotes is the prohibition of public school choice and vouchers, and the prohibition of any discussion of "intelligent design." The banner causes for this "group" include “Sex Education is a Mitzvah”, and of course promoting gay marriage and abortion. Beliak is a rabbi in the same sense that Ward Churchill is an Indian.

Beliak's sidekick in the group is one Jane Hunter. She is an anti-Israel activist and a groupie of Israel's convicted traitor and nuclear spy Mordecai Vanunu. She collaborates with people like Noam Chomsky and with the Swedish neo-nazi calling himself Israel Shamir in generating anti-Israel propaganda. She has worked hard to spread the claim that Islamic terrorists are actually backed by the Israeli Mossad. She claims Israel runs cocaine smuggling networks, operates mass murder networks in Central America, and she has attacked proposed funding freezes aginst the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, while endorsing fringe conspiracy theories of the Far Left.

Jews on First is the newest, but not the only, project of Beliak, a favorite speaker of American Muslims Standing up for Freedom and Security, sponsored by the pro-terror Muslim Public Affairs Council .

Beliak also runs or ran www.stopmoskowitz.org, a smear group that attacks the family of Irving Mockowitz, who has been a developer of Jerusalem neighborhoods. Beliak is a foul basher of Israel, who has campaigned for divestment from Israel (see this). He opposes the US campaign against Islamofascist terror as a “war machine” and wants to defend the al-Qaeda detainees in Gitmo. He is a close associate of pro-terror anti-Semite Ramsey Clark. He is part of the anti-Israel “Progressive Jewish Alliance”, so anti-Israel that even Tikkun's Mikey Lerner will not join it. He is the LA rep for the loony, drug-touting “Shalom Center” of “Rabbi Woodstock,” Arthur Waskow. He also is nominally associated with the “Rabbis for Human Rights”, the group in Israel that fabricates the stories about settlers chopping down Arab trees.

Want to tell Temple Beth Shalom of Whittier what you think of their clergyperson? They are at Fax: 562-941-8745

Beliak's letter in Haaretz:

צדק יביא שלום

אני מאמין שרוב הנוצרים נושאים עיניהם לתגובה מוסרית לכיבוש. הם מייחלים להתנהלות בונה שמטרתה סיום המצב שבו לפלשתינאים אין מדינה, וזאת תוך כדי דאגה לביטחון הישראלים והפלשתינאים כאחד. הדרך המעשית ביותר להשיג זאת היא באמצעות פתרון של שתי מדינות לשני עמים.

הגיעה העת שהיהודים יאמצו בזרועות פתוחות את הנוצרים שמבקשים לסיים את הכיבוש הישראלי, בהם הכנסייה הפרסבטריאנית של ארצות הברית, שקיימה את האסיפה הכללית שלה בסן-חוזה לפני כמה ימים.

יחס צודק למיעוט הפלשתינאי שבגבולות ישראל ולפלשתינאים - הנוצרים והמוסלמים - בשטחים הכבושים, ישפר גם את מצבם של יהודים בגולה. לכן חשוב מאוד שהיהודים ידאגו גם לעתידם של הפלשתינאים.

הרב חיים דב בליאק

ממנהלי ארגון Jews On First

אוקלנד, קליפורניה

Too Jewish? A Proposed Makeover for Israel

A letter I wrote (but have not yet sent) in response to Adam LeBor's review of "The Hebrew Republic" by Bernard Avishai in the New York Times Book Review:

If you’ll allow me, here’s a proposal for changing America’s system of government: Instead of the constitutional democracy and representative republic political system that have defined the United States till now, let’s change to something more executive-oriented. I think that we’ve had balance between the three branches of government for a quite enough time, and we’re ready for something else – something more dynamic and decisive, especially in these times of war. Let’s give the president far more power to decide when to go to war, how to conduct wars, when and how to stimulate the economy, all trade deals, environmental treaties, decisions on abortion, gun control, etc., etc. I don’t advocate removing the other two branches. But I’m sure we can find a rubber stamp somewhere.

What’s that you say? I’m being naive, idiotic, someone who has no sense of what values and history this nation is predicated on. Oh please, lay it on thick. And then do me another favor. Explain how my modest proposal is different from Bernard Avishai’s in his new book, which is hailed by Adam LeBor’s review (June 29) as “wise, humane and important,” and whose central thesis is hailed as “brilliantly argued.” In a nutshell, that central thesis, as presented by LeBor, is to rid Israel of its Jewish identity and embrace a “modern, egalitarian democracy.”

The problem, of course, is that the whole point of the creation of Israel was to serve as a Jewish state—a haven from the two millennia of Jewish anti-Semitism that Jews have faced without a homeland. By its very definition, Avishai’s proposal would eliminate the Jewish state, a radical notion that is more than just naive and idiotic. It’s treacherous.