24-Sep-15: In the name of human rights, silencing those discomforting voices

Bassem Eid [Image Source]

It's the day after Judaism's Yom Kippur. In some ways, it's a shame the Jewish practice of focusing energy and thoughts on wrong-doings on one long (very long) day once a year - no eating, no drinking - and sincerely repenting for them has not been adopted outside the Jewish world in the way that we Jews do.

Even those not very observant of Judaism's detailed code of conduct do this both as individuals and as a community. Does this make "us" holier than other people? No, of course not, though observant Jews do have a fairly concrete sense of the sacred and what holy means. and strive to bring it into our lives. And are we doing better now that the Day of Atonement is behind us? Only time will tell, but the day does end on a distinctly optimistic note.

We're thinking about this after reading a little-noticed report about a proud, eloquent Palestinian Arab with a passion for human rights and the courage (as we have seen from up close ourselves) to speak out in defence of the values in which he believes even when his audiences are not too sympathetic.

He has just been visiting New Zealand. And according to a seriously disturbing report we have just seen from there, Bassem Eid was treated despicably.

Some readers might be surprised to know that the sharpest of the disgraceful responses to which he was treated came from some of the very people who posture and trumpet themselves as respectful defenders of free, open speech.

His bio says that Bassem Eid spent the first 33 years of his life, starting from birth, in the UNRWA-run Shuafat refugee camp on the edge of Jerusalem. His formative years probably resembled those of hundreds of thousands of other Palestinian Arabs. He went on to work for B'Tselem, an Israeli NGO that claims to "document human rights violations in the occupied territories, combat denial and help to create a human rights culture in Israel". B'Tselem is one of the perennial darlings of the hypercritical "activists" who obsess over Israel's shortcomings. Then he left them to create his own human rights body to advance the interests of his people.

The article [here] by a New Zealand friend of Israel, Miriam Bell, is upfront about the challenge of bringing a man like Eid to the South Pacific. He has a history of being outspokenly critical of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) "movement" "and all that it represents". This, she says at the outset, "may have played a part in the hostility that greeted his recent visit..." The evidence suggests she's right.

The Astor Foundation, named for a prominent New Zealander whom we met in the 1970's, and focusing on human rights issues, sponsored Eid's trip to New Zealand. It's a worthy new body that seeks to promote "human dignity for people of all faiths, cultures and ethnicities", and addresses "issues that threaten the peace and harmony of New Zealand" including "extremism and ethnic and religious hate".

As frequently happens when zealots grab the steering wheel of social movements, the local NZ advocates for the Palestinian Arabs got alarmed at the idea of an independent thinker - even one raised in a Pal Arab refugee camp - and reached for the mute button. What could have worried them?

Eid's perspective on Palestinian affairs is a bit different to most Palestinian activists. He is very critical of the Palestinian leadership - citing corruption as one of the leading causes of ongoing Palestinian suffering - and believes it is wrong to focus solely on the Israeli side of the conflict. These views are not embraced by pro-Palestinian groups. One in New Zealand accused Eid of "hysterical, anti-Palestinian ranting" and of being an "asset for racist, Zionist organisations dedicated to undermining Palestinian rights." [AIJAC, September 22, 2015]

Plainly seeing themselves as the guardians of the Palestinian Arab mission in that far-off island nation, they busied themselves with undercutting, demonizing and silencing the voice of a Palestinian Arab for whom human rights is considerably more than a political slogan. And while they successfully demand for themselves and their cause the right to be heard at every possible opportunity, they had no difficulty pulling insider strings and aggressively hostile rhetoric to silence Eid's unique voice.

Bell quotes Dr. Love Chile, an associate professor of sociology at Auckland University of Technology, a graduate of Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, and previously a consultant to the New Zealand government's Human Rights Commission. He spoke out against Eid getting an audience because he disagreed "with Eid's philosophical/political position and was not prepared to expose his students to that sort of individual."

We think a person could write a thesis about the condescension and hypocrisy of that viewpoint.

Perhaps the students are supremely grateful for Dr. Chile's fatherly concern. or perhaps AUT, which describes itself as a place where they "challenge routine thinking", a "university for the changing world", "committed to global engagement" with "a culturally diverse community", simply doesn't know how much of an opponent of the right of culturally-diverse people to be heard they have in Dr Love Chile.

Eid's lectures at the University of Auckland were going to be co-hosted by AUT's Mira Szászy Research Centre for Māori and Pacific Economic Development and the New Zealand Fabian Society (that exists to "be at the forefront of education and debate about progressive ideas and policy reforms" though, to be fair, it doesn't specify when):

Then, just two days before the first lecture, the Fabian Society pulled out, citing "the degree of tension in this issue and how the Palestinian view is represented." The Fabian Society's tradition is one of promoting free and open debate. Its vision is "the advancement of New Zealand Society through progressive education and debate." How its actions in this situation support these goals is a mystery. [AIJAC]

Eid's university campus lectures went ahead:

Essentially, his message was that there is absolute corruption within the Palestinian Authority and there is a need for genuine support of the Palestinians - as opposed to the sort of grand-standing and politicising that we currently see. [AIJAC]

But the speaker first had to endure a gaggle of New Zealand protestors who handed out hostile material inside the venue and accused Eid of being a "traitor" and (worse, we assume) a Zionist. Perhaps they also argued with the points he made. If so, we haven't seen those contentions reported. The impression we have is that they ignored his views, preventing them from being heard to the greatest extent possible by intimidation and demonization. Eid's human rights don't seem to be on anyone's agenda.

New Zealand's mainstream media were scarcely more open. An article about the Eid visit, by Sheree Trotter, a Māori New Zealander and advocate for Israel, gives the context:

It is perhaps not surprising that Eid’s visit was largely ignored by the New Zealand media. His message to the international community goes against the grain of the dominant narrative on the Israel/Palestinian conflict. Eid is quick to point out uncomfortable realities, such as the role of UN funded groups in perpetuating the misery of the Palestinians whilst gaining power and money on the backs of their suffering; the bias of a media which has lost its way and become politically motivated; the apartheid lie which can only be explained as yet another manifestation of antisemitism. Bassem Eid identifies proudly as Palestinian. From his perspective identity is not the primary concern for most Palestinians.  They know who they are. At the core of Eid’s message is his concern for the future well-being of his own: “We are people who want to survive. We are people who are looking for a better level of life. We are a people that want to ensure the future of our children. ["A Palestinian voice of realism", September 8, 2015, Times of Israel]

A bookseller's site

We're hardly the first to notice how touchy certain groups can get when they sense their sacred cows are under threat. The inimitable Nick Cohen [his "What's Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way", 2007, is a gem], a columnist and author from the left who not so long ago ran into the full bullying force of Fabian opinion-suppression in the UK, encountered an audience at King's College London some months ago that might have resembled the AUT's:

I’ve argued with racists and Putinists in my time and – to put it as mildly as I can – these little bastions of academia were up there with them in their contempt for basic freedoms. Contempt is perhaps not quite the right word. Most simply did not understand what freedom was, and could not grasp the need for universal human rights. They could not see themselves as others saw them, or understand that by giving up on basic principles, because they are difficult to live with, they had left themselves naked before their enemies... ["Britain's hypocritical universities are naked before their enemies", The Spectator, April 21, 2015"]

It's a growing problem, in case anyone's not noticing.

But all is not lost, as we reminded ourselves this morning. That's when we learned about a YouTube video, originating in Egypt, that has restored some of our faith in the ability of determined individuals, willing to risk what it takes in the pursuit of truth and freedom to speak out and say what they believe to be true.

It's ten and a half minutes long, almost entirely spoken in Arabic, and entitled Why do you hate Israel? But the clip maker, Sherif Gaber Abdelzim Bakr, just 22 years old, provides almost-English subtitles. And for his guts and clear thinking alone, he deserves a wide audience. As we write this, the clip has had 58,000 views since it went up three days ago.

Support probably means something to him since he's currently in hiding after being convicted seven months ago by an Egyptian court on multiple charges that include contempt of religion, spreading immoral values, and abnormal thoughts that provoke and disturb the public peace and the national security of Egypt. (The background is here.)

Bassem Eid is not in hiding, and not in danger of going to jail, at least not in Israel. But (and we have not heard this from him), it might be some time before he willingly exposes himself again to Western (or at least South Pacific) academics or audiences with some specific sub-set of human-rights on their minds, or self-proclaimed advocates of free speech. At a certain point, a person just gets sick of the empty slogans and pines for a world where values and opinions can count on getting a certain degree of respect and exposure.

Ah, you're asking about that optimistic note we mentioned that marks the end of Yom Kippur? Right. The very last words of the day-long prayers are Leshana Haba Biyerushalayim. Next year in Jerusalem. It's not paradise here, but when someone we don't agree with gets up and wants to speak, Israel's very robust democratic spirit pretty much ensures his or her voice will be heard. Anything less would be a sin.

24-Sep-15: A day of violence - perhaps not as violent as feared

Hebron, moments before the shooting by an IDF soldier of
a woman whose knife was detected by a security machine and
who evidently pulled it to launch a stabbing attack [Image Source: Reuters] 

There's nothing quite as potent as holidays to expose our neighbours' passion for the sort of lethal violence we described yesterday ["22-Sep-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?"]

Tonight is the night after Yom Kippur, the 25 hour day of fasting, introspection and prayer that ended here in Jerusalem about 6 hours ago, and is drawing to a close right now in North and South America. It's also the start of the Muslim festival of Eid el-Adha.

Here's a selective, non-chronological summary of how the day (and the evening before it) passed for those charged with keeping Israelis (of every sort) safe.

• A young woman of about 18 attempted Tuesday to stab a Border Police officer at the Kikar Hashoter security checkpoint in Hevron. She was promptly shot and seriously wounded, and eventually succumbed to her injuries later in the day. No Israelis were harmed. [Israel National News, September 23, 2015]. Haaretz reports that the woman, Hadeel al-Hashlamun (in some places, written as Hadeel al-Hashlamon, was shot after launching a stabbing attack on a soldier. It quotes a preliminary investigation into the incident conducted by the IDF's Judea Regional Brigade commander: he found that a metal detector went off when the Palestinian Arab women walked through the security checkpoint; the soldiers manning the post called on her to stop. She failed to do so, and they then fired warning rounds into the ground in front of her. Then "the soldiers claim she pulled out a knife, and that's when they fired shots at her legs. The soldiers said they opened fire for a second time after the woman tried again to raise the knife."
• Just after midnight on Tuesday, the body of an Arab was found near Beit Haggai, south of Hevron. An initial investigation shows that he was killed while attempting to throw a bomb at a military vehicle. Security forces had been alerted to the scene when local residents spotted an improvised roadblock on the highway. As they combed the area, they heard an explosion and later found the body of the terrorist. He was apparently killed while trying to deploy the bomb against the soldiers. [Israel National News, September 23, 2015] The Reuters version: A Palestinian militant died when a bomb he was trying to throw at Israeli forces blew up near the West Bank city of Hebron overnight, officials from both sides said on Tuesday" [Reuters]
• Rocks were thrown Monday evening at Egged's Line 140 bus to the Samarian community of Beit El. The vehicle's windshield was smashed. Thankfully, no injuries. [Israel National News, September 23, 2015]
• Israel Defense Forces troops manning a post in the Jordan Valley arrested a Palestinian man who approached their position carrying an explosive device, the military said Wednesday. The incident occurred hours after the Yom Kippur holiday ended. The suspect was taken in for interrogation, the army said. [Times of Israel, September 23, 2015]
• Two firebombs were hurled at the at the fence of the Samaria community of Psagot, near Ramallah. Palestinian Arabs were suspected, Israel Radio reported. The explosives failed to ignite and no injuries are reported. [Times of Israel, September 23, 2015]
• Rocks were hurled yet again at a Jerusalem Light Rail tram by Arabs in the North Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat. Damage was caused to the vehicle but no injuries. Police are searching for suspects. [Times of Israel, September 23, 2015]
• A car was struck by rocks and damaged on Highway 75. [Israel National News, September 23, 2015]
• Several fires were reported to have been set in Jerusalem during Yom Kippur. Arson is suspected. [Times of Israel, September 23, 2015]
• A firebomb caused damage to the balcony and garden of a home in the Jerusalem mixed (Jewish and Arab) neighborhood of Abu Tor after midnight on Wednesday morning (Yom Kippur). [Times of Israel, September 23, 2015]
• A brush fire in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze’ev, close to Moshe Dayan Boulevard, a major thoroughfare - but almost empty on Yom Kippur - is believed to have been deliberately set. [Times of Israel, September 23, 2015]
• A fire in scrubland near Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo is also believed to have been caused by an act of arson. [Times of Israel, September 23, 2015]
• A fire was set on Cassuto Street, in the intensely-populated Jerusalem neighborhood of Bayit Vagan, close to a synagogue. Fortunately, no injuries were reported [Times of Israel, September 23, 2015]
• Multiple reports of Arab rock-throwers targeting Israeli Jews in their vehicles during the past 36 hours, including Yom Kippur, in parts of northern Israel ["Arab Violence Erupts in Northern Israel During Yom Kippur", Israel National News, September 23, 2015]: Arabs youths placing boulders in the road to block the entrance to the northern community of Dovav on Monday night after Yom Kippur began. Police detained them for questioning. [Israel National News, September 23, 2015]
• Also: Arab youths threw rocks at a passing car near Hosen Junction on Route 89. No one was injured and there was no damage to the vehicle, though police have still opened an investigation. [Israel National News, September 23, 2015]
• Also: An Israeli vehicle traveling near Golani Junction, a major northern intersection, was hit by rocks. Tiberias police are investigating. [Israel National News, September 23, 2015]

Overall, the enlarged police presence in Jerusalem, along with the closing of security checkpoints between Judea-Samaria and Jerusalem to mark Yom Kippur, have had a positive effect on keeping the violence level relatively subdued.

13-Sep-13: Jews, Jerusalem and Yom Kippur

The Palestinian Arabs were handed control of the sacred Temple

Mount by Israel's Minister of Defence, Moshe Dayan in 1967. Football-playing

Moslem Arab children are a very visible part of

what is there today. [Image Source]

Most Israelis, by far, want to see peace with the Arabs in general, with the Palestinian Arabs in particular, and are willing to make sacrifices and compromises so that it can happen. We're not open to disagreement on this. Anyone who knows Israelis in whatever degree knows this is true. The arguments about it are all in relation to detail.

This being so, we are endlessly astonished at how little criticism (relatively speaking) the Mahmoud Abbas-operated Palestinian Authority gets. It is a terrorism-friendly, corrupt and hateful political organization, led by a man whose academic career was built on Holocaust-denial. Review its activities in the two decades since the Oslo Agreement and you grasp why people continue to suffer and die in the course of the war the PA has waged against Israel's.

Now keep those two preceding paragraphs in mind while we put them into a specific context.

At sunset today, the Jewish world goes into Yom Kippur mode. While there are many people, and some Jews among them, who mistakenly believe its significance is in being the anniversary of a war of the same name, Yom Kippur is in reality the centerpiece of Jewish synagogue life - and has been for as long as there have been Jews. It's a day marked by holiness. 

Even Jews with relatively weak connections to their people's roots know about and respect Yom Kippur at some level. In religious terms, it's one of the great equalizers of the Jewish people: almost all of us do it.

Temple Mount Arab football-playing child [Image Source]

Paging through the mahzor, the book of Yom Kippur prayers, it's hard to not notice (among several interwoven dominant themes) the major role played by what's termed in English "the Service". Avodah, in Hebrew. Wikipedia says this:

A recitation of the sacrificial service of the Temple in Jerusalem traditionally features prominently in both the liturgy and the religious thought of the holiday. Specifically, the Avodah ("service") in the Musaf prayer recounts in great detail the sacrificial ceremonies of the Yom Kippur Korbanot (sacrificial offerings) that are recited in the prayers but have not been performed for 2,000 years, since the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans. [Wikipedia]

We mention this for entirely non-religious reasons. 

As JJ Goldberg points out in this week's Forward ["A Clarifying Moment of Disunity on Yom Kippur | The Ritual That Divides Us On the Day We Are Most United"], the Avodah is "one of those things that either you get or you don’t". In our words, what he means is: Jews have views, and the range of opinions about what we ought to be thinking when we remember the sacrificial service conducted by the Jewish priests (the Cohanim, plural of Cohen) is wide.

But whether you see the ritual killing of animals for religious purposes in positive terms or negative, one aspect is beyond controversy. Jews did this for as long as the two Temples in Jerusalem stood. In ancient times, when Jews were the sovereign power in Jerusalem, this is what we Jews did there.

Temple Mount: It's a holy site sacred to two religions, or it's a

football pitch. The PA invites you to take your pick [Image Source]

The Palestinian Authority sees things very, very differently. Far from there being an undoubted, documented, historical connection of the most intimate kind between the Jews and Jerusalem (and of course the larger land in which Jerusalem is situated), the PA propagates an increasingly extremist culture of denial/hatred concerning Jews, Jerusalem and this land.

The Temple? Never existed. Unbroken Jewish connection to Jerusalem from the earliest ancient times? A modern invention, based on a hoax. Jewish entitlement to walk peacefully in 2013 on the grounds of the Temple Mount which, beyond any reasonable doubt even of the extremely cynical kind, was and is the single most holy place on earth for adherents of the Jewish faith? A provocation.

Now let's hear Khaled Abu Toameh, who knows the inner workings of the PA better than any other serious journalist, bring us up-to-date in the Jerusalem Post:

Analysis: PA campaigns against Jews at Temple Mount
KHALED ABU TOAMEH | Jerusalem Post | September 11, 2013
The Palestinian Authority on Wednesday stepped up its rhetorical attacks on Israel concerning the Temple Mount, condemning visits by Jews to the holy site as a provocation. Permitting Jews to enter the Temple Mount was a “green light to settlers to escalate their assaults against Palestinians and their holy sites and properties,” a spokesman for the PA government in Ramallah warned.
The PA claims that the visits by Jews to the Temple Mount are part of an Israeli scheme to “Judaize and divide” the site with the ultimate goal of rebuilding a Jewish Temple.
The visits are described by the PA-controlled media as attempts by “hordes of settlers and Jewish extremists to storm and desecrate the Aksa Mosque.” The PA campaign against Jewish visitors has triggered several violent protests at the Temple Mount over the past few months. Jerusalem Police have arrested dozens of Palestinians involved in the rioting and incitement and some have been served with court orders to stay away from the Temple Mount. But these measures have hardly contributed to easing tensions as the PA leadership appears to be intent on escalating its campaign.
On Tuesday, a group linked to PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction went as far as calling for “fedayeen [guerrilla] operations” against Israel on Friday in protest against the visits by Jews to the Temple Mount.
The PA leadership has yet to distance itself from this call by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades to launch terrorist attacks.
It’s not clear if the group’s threat to renew terrorist attacks is real. But the latest threat should be seen in the context of the Palestinians’ drive to prevent Jews from entering the Temple Mount.
What is the PA trying to achieve through this campaign? First, the PA leadership is trying to show Palestinians and all Muslims that it is keen on defending Islamic holy sites against Israeli “conspiracies” at a time when the Arab and Islamic countries are doing nothing.
Second, the PA is probably trying to divert attention from its controversial decision to resume the peace talks with Israel. The PA has come under heavy criticism for dropping its preconditions for returning to the negotiations, including a full cessation of settlement construction.

Temple Mount, Arab child, football [Image Source]

Third, the campaign is designed to depict Israel as a country that has no respect for other people’s religion and holy sites. This would make it easier for the PA to demand control not only over the Temple Mount, but also over east Jerusalem, under the pretext that Israel is violating international laws and conventions in the city.
This campaign surrounding one of Islam’s most holiest sites could also result in another wave of violence or, even worse, a third intifada. The second uprising, called the Aksa Intifada, erupted in late 2000 after the PA leadership waged a similar campaign, telling Palestinians that Israel was seeking to destroy the Aksa Mosque.

The PA's campaign of lies, distortions and historical invention is no random thing. It belongs to a strategy. And as strategies go, it's effective. Think when you last heard a commentator or read an analyst who dismissed with the requisite scorn what Abbas and the imams who serve him say about the Jewish connection to Jerusalem. Most people either don't know history, don't understand Jewish culture and religion, and/or simply lack the rigour and courage to stand up to those, like the PA, who have consigned to the dust-heap some of the most significant historical accounts known to mankind.

Tomorrow in synagogues throughout the world, Jews will be remembering again (as we do constantly, daily) Jerusalem and its central role in our lives, exactly as they have for thousands of Days of Atonement before this year's. Perhaps we ought to invite along some analysts and journalists. 

Or some PA officials.

13-Sep-13: Atoning, not forgiving

Isidor Kaufmann, "Day of Atonement" (painted ~1900)

Yom Kippur, the once-in-a-year Day of Atoning for sins, is just a few hours way.

It's a typical late summer Jerusalem day: intensely hot and sunny, but much quieter outside than Fridays usually are, here. The sun is soon going to descend and 25 hours of introspection and fasting will begin.

A close and dear friend who serves as a wonderful educator and a community rabbi shared some thoughts and questions with us about forgiveness earlier in the month. Most people know it's one of the themes that characterizes this day, and it's one on which he and many Jewish leaders will be delivering sermons tonight and tomorrow.

He asked for some comments from us about the idea of dealing with people who have hurt you, as he put it, "to the point of no return". The response that follows is from Arnold.

In February 2005, I was an invited speaker at an international gathering of victims of terrorism in Bogota, Colombia. Right after checking into my hotel, several messages were handed to me from TV news reporters asking to do on-camera interviews. I did several.

Colombians have had a long, bitter and ongoing experience with terror. It is based on a lethal combination of politics and drug trafficking. I knew next to nothing at that point about how it had impacted on the lives of ordinary Colombians. I came face to face with aspects of that impact time after time in the course of the following two days and learned much.

For the interviewers, I felt safe about giving answers that reflected on my own family's life and our experiences. Our daughter Malki's murder in a Hamas terrorist attack in 2001 has caused me to do a lot of reflecting about how terrorism changes your society and you.

At the end of one of these sessions, after the cameras had stopped rolling (if that's what digital devices do), the young, attractive journalist asked me to comment on something a prominent visitor to Bogota had said to her and the cameras just a few days earlier. He was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.

As the reporter conveyed it to me (and as I remember it now), his message to the Colombians had been: I am willing to help bring the Colombian authorities and the rebels to the negotiating table, but it must be clear that forgiveness by the victims must be part of the process.

What, the reporter asked me, did I think of that as a formula for peace in the Israel/Palestine conflict? Could it work?

I said I have a deep resistance to the idea that you ever sit down at the negotiating table with terrorists. (I can expand, but will skip that part.) I said the conflict had less to do with the fact that there is no state of Palestine than with the fact that there is an Israel: existing, vibrant, thriving.

Then I added, with some heat, that the Middle East conflict would have an entirely different character if the terrorists were ever to seek the forgiveness of their victims. In fact, I said, if we ever get to that stage, then most of the conflict will be behind us.

The reporter smiled warmly and said she felt the same was true of the Colombian situation and that Tutu's advice was not very welcome.

Later that same year, I was asked by Israel's Foreign Ministry to meet with a visiting Christian delegation here in Jerusalem. This turned out to be a deeper, much more meaningful encounter for me than the exchanges I had with reporters in South America. In fact, it has flowered and continued up until the present.

The group is connected to an unusual US-based Christian group with its origins in Germany. Since I have a genuine regard for the individuals, I will skip some details. Their group's philosophy mainly focused on violence in United States schools and urban settings and on the redeeming power of forgiveness. In bringing a dozen or so members to Israel, it seems they wanted to address a much larger issue. (My impression is this visit eventually persuaded them to focus their energies in other places, though I might be wrong.)

Their message to the parties at conflict here involved encouraging what I would call radical Christian forgiveness. I addressed them over a dinner at their hotel. We inevitably got to the little matter of Israel and the Arabs, and one of them delivered a not-unexpected suggestion. Their suggestion but my words, since I don't have a record:

The Jews and the Israelis ought to develop a deeper willingness to forgive and this is bound to produce good results. As victims of a deep injury, recovery will come to us only when we allowed ourselves to forgive the other.

I believed then, and am more convinced today, of the sincerity of these people. At the same time, I sincerely wonder at how they arrive at their practical solutions.

I think I answered with care. As I recall now what I said eight years ago, I described what had been done to Malki and the other victims in the Sbarro massacre. I referred to the replica of the death scene that had been mounted at An Najah University soon afterwards, as an especially odious form of celebration. I spoke of the ongoing glorification of the killers, the bombers, the shooters, the stabbers by all  parts of Palestinian Arab society.

I said the matter of forgiveness posed a practical difficulty for me, to which I had no answer, and it was this. Malki was the middle child of our seven. Assuming I find a way to forgive what was done to her, where does that leave me when it comes to protecting my other children, my wife, my home? Is forgiveness an ongoing repetitive process, I asked rhetorically, something you have to do over and again, weekly or daily, knowing that the terrorists who have never expressed anything remotely resembling regret are busy at this very moment preparing their next attempted murder?

Where does forgiveness fit into the ongoing war that, I believed then and am certain about today, is being waged against us and our children and our children's children's children? And has been for generations?

I said we haven't reached an intermission when the various sides take stock, review their plans and prepare an alternative approach. We are in an existential crisis, with the emphasis on personal existential danger.

I said it would be unthinkably irresponsible for Israelis to lower their guard, knowing what we know about the theological drivers behind the appalling death industry they have cultivated.

Bottom line: their proposed approach just cannot work.

Our discussion did not converge on a shared hashkafat olam (outlook on life), but I am pleased to say we parted as friends, and have an active and rewarding ongoing dialogue.

For all who observe the Day of Atonement, Gmar Hatima Tova and our wishes for a meaningful and effective fast day.

12-Sep-13: That far-away war, forty years ago

Australian Jewish News, September 13, 2013

The editors at the Australian Jewish News asked Arnold Roth to reflect on his memories of the Yom Kippur war whose fortieth anniversary is now being marked. A version of the piece below is published in today's AJN.

The War of Atonement and the Australian Campuses

Arnold Roth

A version of this article appears in the Australian Jewish News, September 13, 2013

My family and I have made our home in Jerusalem for twenty-five years. Aliyah for us meant the complicated events of a previously-distant Middle East merged with our own lives over the years. They morphed with time into neighborhood issues and family matters and were no longer the remote and distant news events that they had been in the Australian chapter of our lives.

I was a Monash law student and active in Jewish student circles when the Yom Kippur war erupted. Three weeks earlier, I had visited Jerusalem to take part in the once-in-four-years congress of the World Union of Jewish Students. I remember it as a buoyant time when people spoke expansively, ambitiously, confidently. There was no inkling of the deaths, destruction and waste that were shortly to unfold.

If I was preoccupied with anything other than the mundane matter of studies, it was with very local politics. AUS, the national union of Australian tertiary students, had just pulled off a nasty stunt, narrowly (by a vote of 74 to 62) adopting a resolution at its August 1973 council meeting that was a harbinger of a much more comprehensive and equally nasty campaign of demonization and delegitimization of Israel that was about to unfold. The assembly of senior university union officials in their wisdom called for Israel’s national student union to be no longer recognized by the Australian student unions, and requested that it be expelled from the Asian Students Association. Israel’s place was to be taken by a Palestinian Arab group.

Others will undoubtedly be recounting in this edition of the AJN the historical aspects of those tumultuous days. In terms of my subjective recollections, the first war news from Israel was jarring and bad, though with the distance and clarity of time we understand that it was nowhere near as bad as the reality.

Egypt and Syria had managed to assemble, and to hurl against Israel’s defences, a force equal in size to NATO’s entire European deployment. Israel’s 150 tanks came under attack from no fewer than 1,400 Syria tanks. The ferocity of that fighting can be guessed at by the video clips we see on our news screens in the 2013 Syrian-on-Syrian bloodbath.

Few ordinary citizens outside Israel can have had any inkling at the time that things looked so diabolical for Israel. On the Suez canal and in Sinai, the odds were staggeringly unbalanced. What would have been the level of morale of Jewish communities around the world had they known that 500 Israeli soldiers were confronting some 80,000 Egyptian troops. Iraq sent 18,000 soldiers into the war, along with a squadron of jet fighter planes that had been relocated to Egypt some months earlier. Saudi Arabia, which had bankrolled the refurbishment of Egypt’s military troops, delivered 3,000 of its men to the battle.  We now know that the Arab side included material aid from Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, Morocco and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Twitter and breaking news reports in their various forms can provide a degree of accuracy that is as good as the source supplying the information. But forty years ago, the channels that sent text and images to the world’s television stations and newspapers operated according to a different paradigm. A Sunday newspaper that has long ceased to operate, the Melbourne Observer, devoted its entire front page two weeks into the war to a single screaming headline: “Syrian Jews Swoop | Haifa Burns”. The report below it said Haifa’s oil installations were burning and witnesses said the city was “a blazing inferno” with “many people”, meaning Israelis, killed. It was 100% total nonsense.

I kept that page in my files [and posted online] as a reminder to myself of something that has gotten more evident over the years: the people packaging and delivering news to us ordinary people, far from the scene, will rarely if ever disclose that they actually have little – and sometimes no – idea whether their reports are accurate or even true. They publish what they receive from their “sources”; until proven otherwise, this is the reality to which they choose to align themselves. Consumers today, no less than four decades ago, cannot afford to read or view the news without a significant degree of discernment.

Something similar was happening inside the leadership of the utterly non-transparent, ideologically extreme Australian Union of Students at about the same time. Their reality, the one with which they chose to align themselves, evolved by January 1974, at the time of their annual conference in Canberra, into one in which Israel, the state, was not something the AUS any longer “recognized”.

AUS grandly demanded the release of “all members of the Palestinian resistance” from “jails in occupied Palestine” and so on. I attended that conference and spoke for a pro-Israel viewpoint. Though relatively few participants gave any sign of having strong views on the Middle East issues, the extremely vocal minority who stood behind the anti-Israel resolutions and spoke in their favour were venomous.

In the first months of 1974, we began to be aware of how perilously close Israel’s lines of defence had come to failing. During exactly that same period, we Australian Jewish students fought for, and then engaged in, a campus-by-campus process of awareness-arousing about Israel intended to overturn the massively-hostile list of AUS resolutions. Pro-Israel students prepared, and distributed across Australia, a four-page document [I posted that online] stating the AUS anti-Israel manifesto, and making a strong argument against it.

While this debate went on, I learned that several of the Israelis I had met in Jerusalem in that previous September’s WUJS event had been killed in the Yom Kippur fighting. It seemed absurd that an actual life-and-death struggle being conducted in the Sinai and on the Golan was being echoed in far-away Australia’s coffee shops and campus quadrangles.

The end-result of the Australian campus debate about Israel’s right to exist was decided overwhelmingly in favour of our side, the pro Israel side. Another clipping from that period (from the AJN edition of April 19, 1974] quotes me as president of AUJS saying that the key anti-Israel resolutions “were rejected at every Australian campus without exception”. A Melbourne Age report from April 16, 1974 is headed "Student vote rejects pro-Arab poll". 

Though I (and of course others) spoke in the debates at campuses in several cities, the experience for me is mostly a blur four decades on. The impression that accompanies me today is that, apart from a hard core of ideologically-motivated activists who were few in number but well organized and dedicated, the rank and file of Australian tertiary students were intuitively on the side of Israel.  

In the years since then, and particularly during this past decade, the discourse over Israel and its conflict with the Arabs has changed shape considerably, compared with 1973. The language of those debates in the seventies featured such terms as imperialism, liberation and colonialism. Today the argument centers, to a great extent on human rights. The conflict itself, once framed as the Arab states versus Israel, a kind of Arab Goliath against the Jewish David, today it is much more characterized as Israel against the Palestinians. It’s still David versus Goliath, but for reasons worth pondering, and beyond the scope of this comment, Israel is perceived – absurdly - as the Goliath.

Some things have not changed in all these years. As I sit here, preparing these lines, my family’s upgraded gas masks have just been delivered to our door. And while the news media have gone through a Facebook/Twitter/Youtube revolution, on the ground, the tensions and dangers are as old-fashioned and serious as they ever were.

2-Oct-11: Signs that our neighbours know we're in the middle of High Holyday season

Israeli servicemen on duty during the High
Holyday season enjoy a platter of apples dipped in honey,
a traditional symbol of the Jewish people's constant hopes
for a better, sweeter, more peaceful year. [Source]

Israel almost entirely shut down over the past three days. Wednesday night through Friday night were Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year and a time devoted to family, prayers and introspection. And the Sabbath followed immediately on Friday night, making for a three-day interlude of holiness or vacation, depending on your outlook.

Our Palestinian Arab neighbours along with the Arab states surrounding Israel have never shown any inclination for respecting the Jewish people's religious sensitivities (remember the co-ordinated massive attacks by multiple Arab armies on Israel on Yom Kippur 1973?). Hardly a surprise then that the past several days have seen several civilian-focused rocket attacks by the terrorist gangs of the Gaza Strip.

• Tuesday, two rockets fired from Gaza exploded in the Sha'ar Hanegev region of southern Israel. One exploded next to an electricity line, causing damage to property. The second landed in an open field. [Source] Both were intended to kill civilian Israelis and cause maximum damage to non-military targets. 
• Thursday evening, yet another Qassam rocket fired by the jihadist terrorists of the Gaza Strip landed in an unspecified open area inside Israel. No injuries or damages are reported. [Source] 
• Saturday: In Beit Hanun, in the northern Gaza Strip, a gang of Palestinian Gazan Arab terrorist jihadists was spotted by Israeli intelligence in the act of preparing to launch multiple long-range rockets into Israel. The Israelis called in Israel Air Force fire of the pinpoint variety for which the IDF is famous. Though the potential for collateral damage in the heavily populated area from which the terrorists love to fire is great, the IAF achieved a direct hit on the gang members. Ynet says they are connected with Hamas. There are three of them, and all are injured, one critically. The IDF says the same three were behind the Thursday rocket firing and previous such terror attacks. The official Chinese newsagency rather ingenuously says the three (it calls them "a group of people") were attacked by "an Israeli reconnaissance drone [that] fired at least one missile". Reconnaissance drones carry sensors but no weapons, but if the terrorist thugs were stopped, we're more than happy to accept the Chinese distortions.

Daily rocket fire directed at Israeli civilians is not exactly what we have been praying for these past three days. But if an alert, rapid, accurate and effective defence force is part of the divine plan for protecting our land and our people from the barbarian practitioners of terror in the coming year, we'll accept that as a blessing too.  

22-Sep-07: Postscript to capture of Pal-Arab murder cell

This note is an important postscript to yesterday's report here about Israeli forces arresting a terror gang in Nablus after a well-publicized three day search which attracted wall-to-wall criticism outside Israel.

Today, Yom Kippur, Israeli security forces located the explosive belt intended to be used in the gang's terror attack. Haaretz says on its website tonight that the belt was found in a Tel-Aviv apartment occupied by Palestinians residing there illegally. They had smuggled it in parts from Nablus. Sappers blew it up in a controlled explosion. 

The location of the gang and of its weapons were based on intelligence information that a cell was intending to carry out a mass murder in central Israel during the High Holydays which are now underway. A similar report on the Yediot Aharanot website tonight (but, at this moment, sadly nowhere else) says one of the Palestinian Arabs arrested in this week's Nablus operation, Mahadi Ashur, had been working in Tel Aviv. Under interrogation, he provided Israeli security with the location of the bomb.

The BBC, which true to form, has reported in detail on the inconvenience caused to the curfewed residents of Nablus in the past few days by the pre-emptive actions of the Israeli authorities without making any effort to give the context, is today publishing an article lauding the IDF for the surgical precision of its intelligence-based intervention, and the remarkable outcome which saved dozens of innocent lives. Israeli authorities are also said to be despatching an urgent note tonight to the 72 dark-eyed virgins waiting in paradise, explaining the unavoidably-delayed arrival of their jihadist client.

The previous paragraph is of course pure fantasy except for the part about the BBC's failure to report accurately, fairly or with appropriate context.

21-Sep-07: Your lives, our lives, their lives

People who use the expression “war against terror” normally believe they are being clear about what they mean. Our experience is that different people often mean very different things. And when a real shooting war against terror is underway, you might be surprised at how confused and confusing the reporting can be. So allow us to analyze a specific chain of incidents that is unfolding as we write.

Mid-week, Israeli papers carried alarming headline reports that the intelligence establishment had identified a specific gang of terrorists with so-called 'suicide-bombing' (in unambiguous terms: murder) in their plans. The gang was being pursued by the army in the Nablus area following a concrete, focused tip-off. We know from living through this sort of thing in the past that intelligence tips, while never 100% certain, are reliable indicators of events taking place far from the media spotlight.

Persuaded by the accuracy of the intelligence, the IDF and the Border Police mounted a serious operation in Nablus, focused on the city’s Ein Beit Ilma neighborhood and placing residents under curfew. (The Palestinian Arabs and most of the media call it a refugee camp, though it's plainly not a camp - see photo. And if the residents are refugees then the word needs an overhaul.) Israeli forces stayed in place for three violent days, carrying out many arrests (at last count, 49 Palestinian Arabs believed to be involved in terror activities) and engaging in fire-fights with heavily armed locals while coming under frequent sniper attack.

The outcome was important for us. Israeli soldiers located and apprehended a complete four-person cell of Palestinian Arab terrorists planning a suicide bombing – the cell identified in the intelligence reports. In the alphabet soup of Palestinian Arab terror, these barbarians were affiliated with Hamas (i.e. the government of the Pal. Arabs) and with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Their names are Haled Nuri, Mustafa Nuri, Yusuf Nadi and Nihad Rashid Hasan Shakirat. In a report headlined "IDF captures head of Nablus cell planning suicide bombing", Haaretz says today, referring to Shakirat, that he was the head of a joint Hamas and PFLP terror cell in the city and terror fugitive number one on Israel's list in Nablus.

Under interrogation, the cell-members admitted to planning a terrorist attack which the security forces below was set to happen today – the eve of Yom Kippur. Confession is a routine part of the terrorist modus operandi and psychology.

In an invaluable contribution to solving the problem, Mahmoud Abbas spoke at a press conference with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday, and called on Israel to withdraw from Nablus. He complained that the counter-terror operations amounted to a “policy of invasion”. For most rational people, this reaction is more or less expected. When you attack the agents of terror and then you interview their elegantly-suited spokespeople, they will tend to complain about counter-terrorist activity. Sadly, most journalists and their editors will report this with a straight face, afraid or incapable of trying to figure the complex situation out and reach appropriate conclusions.

We’ll point out that if you happen not to be Abbas, and you believe (as we do) that there ought to be constant, all-out war by all available means against the barbarians who bring terrorism and hatred into our lives, then the outcome was an excellent one – as good as it gets.

Now we'll add that the army also arrested two senior terrorists from Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah in this operation: Ibrahim Ismail and Jamal Ismail. But it happens that the names of the two Ismails are on the list of individuals granted amnesty last month by Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. The deal – criticized bitterly by many in this country, including the authors of this blog – involved Al-Aksa Brigades terrorists allegedly laying down their arms and the IDF agreeing to stop pursuing them. (See our blog article "17-Jul-07: The Joke's On Us", in which we quote Palestinian terrorists accurately characterizing the charade of handing their weapons to Abbas's official militias with this blunt assertion: "It's all a joke".)

Sadly, the joke goes on. Yediot Aharanot’s web edition says the Fatah men were released early this morning, mere hours after being arrested in that IDF counter-terror operation. Why? Because their arrest drew criticism from Fatah "higher echelons". These men, it's said, were active in kidnapping Hamas members following Fatah’s defeat in Gaza. Their arrest would jeopardize the entire amnesty deal whereby Al-Aksa Brigades terrorists are supposed to hand in their arms and be given jobs with the Palestinian Authority. Hence the release.

Understand? Neither do we.

Yesterday (Thursday) the Palestinian Authority said – and they ought to be believed on things like this – that Israel has now agreed to add 41 more Fatah terrorist fugitives to the current amnesty list of 300 in what’s dubbed a “goodwill gesture.” It’s of course possible that there are rational politicians and civil servants, fully in possession of the relevant facts, who make decisions like this intelligently and with the best interests of the people of this country in mind. We can hope. Right now, we’re deeply worried.

Back in Nablus, Palestinian sources are quoted in the media downplaying the IDF's operation and saying none of the arrested are terror suspects. In their version, senior figures from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in fact left town before the Israeli army forces entered. They also assert the city is subject to starvation (“Famine hits Al Ein camp”) and their claims are faithfully carried in the media. So is an Iranian story that "Israeli troops kidnap 20 Palestinians". The BBC manages to report "Two killed in West Bank clashes". Clashes - that's just the way the BBC likes this war against Palestinian Arab terror to be depicted.

The one headline we haven't seen yet, the one which might accurately sum up what's happened here this week, would be: "Terror massacre averted by proportionate, pro-active intervention; hundreds of innocent lives saved on eve of Day of Atonement".

Time to go and pray that the new year will be much better than the one just ended.

30-Sep-06: An Eve-of-Yom-Kippur Suggestion

For most of the Jewish readers of this blog, the concept of Kapparot is not new. For those to whom it's less familiar, here's a brief description, followed by a practical suggestion.

Kapparot is an ancient and very widely-observed Jewish custom performed on the eve of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. In its classical traditional form, a live chicken was taken in one's hand, held above a person's head and swung in a circle three times, while the following was spoken: "This is my exchange, my substitute, my atonement; this rooster (or hen) shall go to its death, but I shall go to a good, long life, and to peace." The hope was that the fowl, which was then donated to the poor for food, would take on any misfortune that might otherwise occur to the one who has taken part in the ritual, in punishment for his or her sins.

This custom is not mentioned in the Torah or the Talmud. The first references to it in Jewish literature come only in the ninth century, and already by the middle ages it was the focus of some criticism. The Ramban (Nachmanides), for instance, did not like it but Kabbalists led by the Holy Ari-zal (Harav Yitzhak Luria) saw in it considerable mystical significance. Some scholars and prominent leaders felt that some people would misunderstand the significance of the ritual - the idea that the kapparot ceremony could transfer a person's sins to a bird, and that those sins would then be completely eradicated. They asked: if a ritual can remove a person's sins, what would be the need for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement? The Mishneh Brurah, a very authoritative twentieth-century codification of Jewish law, reminds us that there is no substitute for sincere repentance. By substituting the death of a fowl, one will (hopefully) appreciate G-d's mercy and be stirred to repentance. By no means, however, does the ritual eradicate one's misdeeds, even though the bird is donated to the poor.

Sensitivity to the needs of animals plays a prominent role in traditional Jewish thought. Rabbi Israel Salanter, one of the most distinguished Orthodox Rabbis of the nineteenth century, failed to appear one Yom Kippur eve to chant the sacred Kol Nidre Prayer. His congregation became concerned, for it was inconceivable that their saintly rabbi would be late or absent on this very holy day. They sent out a search party to look for him. After much time, their rabbi was found in the barn of a Christian neighbor. On his way to the synagogue, Rabbi Salanter had come upon one of his neighbor's calves, lost and tangled in the brush. Seeing that the animal was in distress, he freed it and led it home through many fields and over many hills. His act of mercy represented the rabbi's prayers on that Yom Kippur evening.

While there are some Jews today who will carry out the Kapparot custom with a chicken, controversy or not, most Torah-observant Jews will satisfy their obligation by doing the ritual with money and not with a fowl. 

Money, perhaps equal to the monetary value of the fowl, is put into a handkerchief which the person swings three times around his or her head while reciting a modified saying :"This money shall go to charity, and I shall go to a good, long life, and to peace." Hence, the heightened sense of repentance can be kept, and perhaps even enhanced, since no bird has to lose its life or suffer for our sake. This substitution, which maintains the tradition of giving charity (the substituted money) to the poor, has been endorsed by many rabbis and is mentioned in many prayer books, including the highly regarded Artscroll Siddur.

This year, as part of its fund-raising efforts, the Malki Foundation printed Kapparot collection boxes to be placed in synagogues on the eve of Yom Kippur, which this year falls on Sunday (tomorrow). The boxes are collapsible, simple, light and easily mailed. Synagogues all over Israel will have such collection boxes, thanks to the positive response of members of the Friends of the Malki Foundation who responded to a letter from Liat Behr, the foundation's executive director, in the past two weeks.

But it's not too late - even if you live outside of Israel. If you are going to be in synagogue on Sunday afternoon for pre-Yom Kippur Mincha, and are willing to place a collection box or pushke where charity-minded people can easily drop their Kapparot money, then please be in touch with the Malki Foundation today or tomorrow. Unless you are in Jerusalem, it's too late for them to send you a printed collection box. But they can email you a nicely designed Word or PDF document, one single page, which you can print on your desktop printer, and then stick it on to a shoe box, a pushke or any other appropriate receptacle. We hope you will agree that this is a simple and painless way to contribute to the very positive work which the Malki Foundation does every day for the benefit of families who care at home for a seriously disabled child. The Malki Foundation is the only organization in Israel who do this work, and they do it with an uncommon degree of efficiency and responsibility.

This being the last days of the Ten Days of Penitence when acts of charity are especially respected, you are also invited to donate directly to Keren Malki. You can do this online right now by credit card. Credit card donations are tax-deductible under Israeli and United States law. Donations by check/cheque are also most welcome, and in many cases are also tax-deductible. All the details of how and where are here on our website. You can also email Liat Behr for more information.

With sincere wishes for a much better year than the one we have just left behind.