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Jewish Journal

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April 22, 2004

Pro-Life, Pro Choice, Pro-Healing

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

I was a teenage pro-choice fanatic.

My car’s license plate read CHOICE 8. Apparently, I shared my enthusiasm with at least seven other people in Illinois. But life’s wisdom comes slowly. Once, when a neighbor three times my age told me she agreed that abortion should be legal, I didn’t miss a beat: "I can’t believe those pro-lifers. It’s not even a baby! It’s a blob of tissue that is totally dependent on the woman’s body."

I will never forget the pain in her eyes when she responded quietly, "Lamelle, I was pregnant once and I had a miscarriage. And let me tell you, it was a baby."

I knew immediately that I had made a dreadful mistake, but it took me 10 years to figure out what it was: I had confused being pro-choice with being hostile toward pregnancy. The kind of woman that I was busy fighting for did not want to be pregnant. I wanted to protect her right to make decisions about her body. I hadn’t yet realized that caring about women in this way and caring about unborn babies were not mutually exclusive.

My understanding began to evolve in college, when I chose abortion as the topic for my senior thesis. As I compared the ways in which pro-choice and pro-life advocates approach the issue, I was troubled. Pro-life "crisis pregnancy centers" appeal to women facing unplanned pregnancies, offering help and support (often masking their pro-life stance). But clinics offering abortion services as part of a gamut of reproductive health care fail to market their help and support as aggressively as their pro-life counterparts. Why? I began to realize that the political climate had backed pro-choicers against a wall: They were so busy defending the right to choose, protecting clinics besieged by protesters and the occasional murderous pro-lifer, that little space was left on the agenda for responding to the trauma of unplanned pregnancy.

I began to feel alienated from the mainstream pro-choice movement, as much as I endorsed its political goals. I began to wonder whether I needed a new framework for understanding the issue.

That framework came a few years later, after I experienced my own early pregnancy loss.

At six weeks, the embryo that left my body was a tiny "blob of tissue," the phrase I had once used when debating pro-lifers. But this little one was so much more — I had talked to it, imagined it growing, developing, moving, being born. I had loved it as someone separate from and yet a part of me. Its untimely exit flooded me with shock, disbelief, bitterness and anger. I was angry with my body, angry with God and had never felt so alone. I’d barely had time to revel in being pregnant. How could it be over? Was this all a bad dream?

Slowly, the numbness receded. I immersed myself in the outpouring of love I received from my husband and close friends. A few friends created a healing circle; we sat in candlelight one evening as I shared my pain and received their blessings and prayers for healing. The anger I had directed at my body melted away, and I was left with gratitude — my body had been taking care of me, after all; the embryo I had briefly hosted would never have developed into a healthy baby. The anger I had directed at God gave way to an understanding that God shared my grief.

The bitter edge softened each day. My mother-in-law cried with me on the phone. Precious friends left flowers and a comforting note, while others brought food. I went to the mikvah. I noticed that talking about the miscarriage was therapeutic. As I talked with more women, a theme emerged: Many, many women have early miscarriages, but very few choose to talk about it. When it happens, we feel alone and afraid, despite the fact that early miscarriage is often a totally normal part of reproduction.

I realized that my own initial reluctance to talk about my experience stemmed from my discomfort with the words I was choosing to describe it. I found myself reclaiming words that I had previously labeled as part of the pro-life lexicon. Was the "life" that had been growing inside me a "baby?" Could I have really become so attached so quickly? Now in her 70s, my aunt was one who shared her own miscarriage story with me. At the end of our phone call, her parting words were, "I’m so sorry about the baby."

Those simple words resonated, and I felt my heart beginning to mend. Of course, there are still moments of pain — I’m told that getting pregnant again is the only remedy for that, and I hope to find out.

Perhaps the pro-choice movement is reluctant to break the language barrier and use pro-life words out of fear that the opposition will turn their words against them. Perhaps they struggle with simplifying a complex issue into soundbites and slogans. But I am tired of slogans, and I am tired of ceding the language of life to those who want to outlaw abortion. Pro-life slogans fall flat in the face of a 20-year-old California woman who recently bled to death from a botched abortion because she was too ashamed to ask for help. Pro-choice slogans feel hollow at the bedside of babies in the neonatal intensive care unit where I volunteer. Many of the babies are but a few days older than fetuses that are routinely aborted. Moving beyond slogans, I am searching for alternative ways to think about abortion that encompass both my experiences as an activist and as a mom-to-be.

Where do we turn in order to make sense of this miserably complex issue? For me, any moral question — and abortion surely is a moral question — is by its very nature a religious question. So I have turned to Judaism for an answer.

When delving into the abortion issue in a Jewish context, many of us first examine traditional halachic (legal) sources. We may note that within the framework of Jewish law, abortion to save the life of a woman is not only permissible, but required. While anything but monolithic (this is Judaism, after all!), modern rabbinic decisions emphasize the psychological as well as the physical aspects of the decision.

But there is more to the abortion question than whether it is legal according to Jewish law or the laws of the United States. The abortion issue rests at the fulcrum of the balance between life and death, situated deep within the sacred space of the womb. Looking at abortion through a Jewish lens requires that we probe our tradition’s fundamental orientation toward matters of life and death. As we probe, our guiding principle is compassion, rachamim, linguistically linked to the word for womb, rechem.

In the broadest sense, it is clear that Judaism is a life-loving religion. We are virtually obsessed with affirming the sanctity of life. Our sages were passionate about saving lives: The Talmud says in tractate Sanhedrin that saving one life is the equivalent of saving the entire world. Our holiday calendar celebrates the life’s renewal, from the opportunity for repentance and rebirth during the Days of Awe to the lights of Chanukah in the dark of winter to the redemptive narrative of Pesach. Our historical narrative, from the Exodus from Egypt to the Shoah to the challenges faced by the State of Israel today, is a story of our love for life and our grief and outrage at the destruction of the innocent.

As Jews, then, we have cause for ambivalence when it comes to elective abortion. We who celebrate pregnancy and the beginning of life with so much joy cannot hold that it is trivial to end a pregnancy. In a 1995 article in the New Republic, Naomi Wolf (who is both Jewish and pro-choice) wrote that we often fail to acknowledge "the death of the fetus" during an abortion. Many women who choose abortion are not given support to grieve. It is assumed that there is no loss to mourn. Wolf says: "Abortion should be legal; it is sometimes even necessary. Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die. But it is never right or necessary to minimize the value of the lives involved or the sacrifice incurred in letting them go."

In other words, by steering clear of the meaning of the act itself and focusing exclusively on concepts like the "freedom to choose," the mainstream pro-choice movement falls short of the Jewish ideal. Our life-loving religious tradition understands that the cycle of life is punctuated by joys and sorrows, by exhilaration and grief. We care as much about comforting the mourner as we do about celebrating with the bride and groom. Judaism recognizes the wholeness of life and gives us the tools to embrace it while accepting its challenging moments. To envision abortion in a Jewish context is to understand abortion as a heartbreaking choice.

Our next step is to figure out how to respond to heartbreak with rachamim. No one wants to experience an unwanted pregnancy. No one delights in ending fetal life. Acknowledging that many women (though perhaps not all) experience abortion as a heartbreaking choice spurs us to validate the complexity of a woman’s experience and implores us to aid in her healing. Most important, Judaism offers a loving God, HaRachaman, to console her.

A number of resources have emerged for women and men who want to explore Jewish perspectives on fetal death, including abortion and miscarriage. "Seeds of Sorrow, Tears of Hope" by Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin is an invaluable resource for anyone struggling with miscarriage and infertility. Many of its suggested new rituals for healing can be adapted for abortion, as well. Fortunately, "Talking to God" by Rabbi Naomi Levy provides a model of a tender prayer to be said following an abortion.

Perhaps the most powerful (and underutilized) source of healing for Jewish women is the mikvah. Those of us who visit the mikvah on a monthly basis can attest to its healing nature. The laws of niddah require abstinence from sexual relations during one’s period and for seven days after, followed by immersion in the mikvah. Observant feminists have long theorized that the origin of this mitzvah may be connected with the loss of potential life that occurs with each menstrual cycle. If so, this practice, in which we are commanded to ritually enact rebirth and renewal, may be Judaism’s most overt commentary on pregnancy loss or termination. For those who have chosen abortion — as well as for those who have experienced childbirth, miscarriage or, simply, the loss of the chance to create a new life this month — the living waters of the mikvah, symbolizing the womb of God, are ready and waiting.

Dr. Rachel Remen writes that each person’s healing process is as different as a fingerprint. An embryo that has been in a womb for three weeks can be the bearer of infinite promise and possibility or it can be just another heavy period. One woman’s mind-numbing loss is the answer to another woman’s prayers. Because the realm of reproductive health is so intensely personal and case specific, we must protect the legality of abortion while striving to prevent unwanted pregnancies. (Judaism’s emphasis on sexual relations in the context of marriage provides some guidance on the latter point!)

The future of access to safe and legal abortion in the United States is far from certain. Who wants to return to the bad old days when abortion was a crime and women died from back-alley and self-induced abortions? On April 25, thousands will converge on Washington, D.C., for the March for Women’s Lives. They will call for protecting the legality of abortion here in the United States and decry U.S. policies that inhibit women’s access to basic reproductive care (including prenatal care) in countries receiving U.S. foreign aid. Hopefully, the March will raise awareness of the direness of the current political climate surrounding women’s reproductive rights.

As Jews, many of us find ourselves straddling the line: We believe that abortion should be legal, but we also know it to be a complex moral issue that belies simple answers. But all of us — even those Jews who may self-define as emphatically pro-choice or pro-life — should strive to accept the ambiguity and the uncertainty inherent in the abortion issue. Most important, as we raise our voices about the legality of abortion, we must reach out to those who make this heartbreaking choice, offering our rachamim and prayers for healing.


Lamelle Ryman is completing post-baccalaureate studies in science with the goal of one day becoming an ob/gyn-midwife.

Pro-Life, Pro Choice, Pro-Healing Read More »

Egyptian Woman Speaks Out for Israel

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Nonie Darwish spreads an Egyptian newspaper across her knees and points to an old black-and-white photograph of a family. She identifies her father, mother and siblings in the photo.

“I am 8 years old here,” she says and gestures to the image of a serious little girl. The photo was taken in the early 1950s, while her father was working as the head of the Egyptian administration stationed in Gaza, shortly before he was killed — reportedly in an Israeli attack.

The article, which appeared in the Egyptian newspaper in 2001, is a two-page profile of Darwish’s father being celebrated as one of the first martyrs to die in the ongoing battle between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Now, sitting in her suburban home in the San Fernando Valley, 56-year-old Darwish regards the article with anger.

“Immediately after my father’s death, everybody was congratulating us that we are the children of a hero,” she recalls in a gentle voice still tinged with an Arabic accent. “We were given such honor like we were now valuable, because my father died in the process of jihad. However, I resented this idea of jihad. It was, in my mind, what took my father away.”

Thus began a journey that took Darwish from the Middle East to the United States, where she now travels around the country lecturing at universities about her Muslim childhood and current position as an ardent supporter of Israel.

In this post-Sept. 11 world of polarized politics, it’s rare to find Muslims speaking out against their people. Irshad Manji, author of “The Trouble With Islam” (St. Martin Press, 2004), has come under fire for her outspoken views. Yet it’s even rarer to find Muslims who are publicly pro-Israel, like Darwish. How did the daughter of a revered martyr come to support his alleged killers?

As a child, Darwish attended Palestinian elementary schools, where, she says, she was taught to hate Jews and Israel.

“I grew up with the idea that Jews are evil people, who came from nowhere to occupy the area,” she says. “We were never told the historic truths about Judaism in the area, and we were led to believe that Jews were cursed.”

Darwish says that when she questioned this indoctrination, the answer was, “Aren’t you a good Muslim?”

“It’s almost like if I am a good Muslim, I shouldn’t even ask why, and if I don’t follow the traditional views about Jews, I’ll be outcast,” she explains. “So we had to obey.”

But something about this unexplained hatred felt wrong to Darwish, and the chain of events that followed proved to be a turning point in her life. Despite the fact that her father was in the Egyptian army, her mother never taught hatred of Jews in the home.

Darwish recalls a story about how her grandmother’s best friend was a Jewish Egyptian woman who was forced to leave Cairo during the 1954 revolution, when Abdel Nasser claimed power over Egypt and expelled the country’s Jews. Her grandmother never fully recovered from the loss.

Perhaps the event that most altered Darwish’s perception of Israel was when her brother became deathly ill, and her mother was given the choice to either transport him to a hospital in Cairo or to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.

“He was completely unconscious, and the people around him from the Egyptian Embassy said, ‘Do you want him to live? — send him to Hadassah,'” she remembers. “So here they trusted their enemy hospital more than their own hospitals.”

By the time Darwish immigrated to the United States in 1978, she had completely rejected the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel lessons of her youth, but it was not until the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, 2001, that she decided to publicly speak about her experiences.

“Sept. 11 was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me,” she says.

Repelled by the high-profile actions of violent extremist groups, Darwish decided it was her responsibility to speak out on behalf of her culture of origin. She has since traveled across the country, speaking mostly to university students, denouncing intolerance and violence.

Roz Rothstein, executive director of StandWithUs, a pro-Israel educational organization, has made Darwish one of the group’s permanent speakers.

“I think that there are a lot of professors and well-meaning progressives who do not have the information and do not believe the information until they hear it from someone like Nonie,” Rothstein said. “It is very powerful to hear from someone who grew up around all of this hatred.”

While the reception among Jewish audiences to her lectures has been very positive, Darwish says she has also met with opposition to her views. At a March 4 lecture at UC Santa Barbara, there was a protest staged by the school’s Muslim Student Association. But despite the opposition that Darwish has encountered during her lectures, she says she will continue to speak out against violence and intolerance.

“I am a supporter of Israel,” she says. “I believe Israel deserves respect in the area. I am totally against one religion, one culture in the area. I believe in the diversity of the Middle East.”

And she thinks this message is more important now than ever before. In her home, Darwish points out another article from a recent Egyptian newspaper. She translates the headline, which reads in English, “The Nation Is More Dear Than Motherhood.”

The article details the last morning of one of the few female Palestinian suicide bombers. The mother wakes, kisses her babies goodbye, straps herself with explosives and leaves the house — forever.

Darwish is outraged that the article honors such a violent act. In her opinion, to love a country is to love the children of that culture.

“I am the one who loves this culture better than any of these people,” she says, shaking her head sadly.

Nonie Darwish will speak at UC Riverside on April 27 at
6:30 p.m. For more information visit Darwish’s Web site at Egyptian Woman Speaks Out for Israel Read More »

These Soldiers We Remember

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Yigal Shaked warned his mother that if she told the enlisting officers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that he should be excused from service because of his asthma, he would never speak to her again.

“And be it as it may, he never did,” said Miriam Nash, Shaked’s first cousin. “He was killed the first day of the Yom Kippur War. He was 19. He was the commander of a tank and he was called to give two other tanks cover. The other two tanks were able to survive, but he was blown up along with the rest of his friends who were serving with him.”

Nash, a child of Holocaust survivors, considered Yigal to be “the brother she never had.” She is now the executive director of the Southern California Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. According to estimates from the Israeli consulate, hers is one of at least 50 Los Angeles families that have lost close relatives in one of the Arab-Israeli wars. On Yom HaZikaron, the Day of Rememberance (April 25, 4 Iyar), Israel, a country that conscripts its youth and calls up its older men for compulsory reservist duty, will commemorate the soldiers who died fighting for its existence with a three-minute silence. In Los Angeles the fallen will be remembered, too, in various ceremonies throughout the city.

“There is a reason why we commemorate Yom HaZikaron, and the next day we celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut [Day of Independence, April 26, 5 Iyar],” said Shoshana Milstein, a Westside nurse who lost a brother in the Israeli navy in 1968. “We wouldn’t have Yom HaAtzmaut without Yom HaZikaron, and for me that it not just a saying, but I really feel that way.”

Milstein’s brother, Yosef Zohar, was part of a 69-person crew that was working to update the World War II-era submarine, Dakar, which Israel purchased from the British in 1968. While returning to Israel, the Dakar disappeared — without warning or subsequent explanation.

“On the way back to Israel [from England] they had communications with the Israeli navy in Haifa, then all of a sudden the communication was broken and they didn’t know what happened,” Milstein said. “I was in school then and we were supposed to go Haifa for parties and celebrations to welcome them home. Nobody knows what happened to [the submarine]. Thirty years later in 1999 the remains were found near the Island of Crete.”

Milstein was 18 when her brother died. She said he was a “phenomenal person” who was called “the rabbi” by his unit because he was Orthodox, serious and felt he had the whole world on his shoulders. For years she and others speculated about what might have happened to him, imagining that he might have been kidnapped and was still alive somewhere.

“When you don’t have a dead body you develop all of these wishful theories,” she said. “Of course affected my parents terribly — they were Holocaust survivors. They were so proud that they could make it to Israel. So on Yom HaZikaron I feel sad. It is a very meaningful day for me. I think about my brother a lot, and on Yom HaZikaron everybody joins in with me.”

But others who lost relatives in the wars feel less connected to Yom HaZikaron.

“I think Yom HaZikaron is mainly for people who didn’t lose their close relatives,” said Tzvi Vapni, the deputy consul general of Israel, who was 3 when his father was killed fighting in the Six-Day War in 1967. “For the bereaved family, we don’t need this day to remind us of the loss or the tragedy. When you lose a father or any close relative the loss is with you every day of the year. On Yom HaZikaron, the rest of the society joins you for one day.”

Vapni’s father, Moshe, was 31 when he was killed. Outside of the army, he was a schoolteacher, and now a school in Ramat Gan is named after him. In the army he was part of a small armed battalion fighting in the Sinai Desert the day before the war ended. Egyptian forces surrounded his unit, and Moshe Vapni died during the fierce battle that ensued.

“In Israel it is not an unusual thing [to have a relative who died fighting],” Nash said. “When the sirens go off on Yom HaZikaron, no matter where you are, and what you are doing, you stand still. And when you look around you and see the tears of the people, whether it is for their father, their husband or their best friend, there is always someone who knows someone who was killed. It is a small, tightly knit family.”

The Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles’ Yom
HaZikaron service will be held April 25 at 5:30 p.m. at Temple Adat Ari El,
12020 Burbank Blvd., Valley Village. For information, visit www.israeliconsulatela.org .

These Soldiers We Remember Read More »

Young and Old Recall Shoah Rites

Leave a Comment / Community /

Southern California Jews and non-Jews marked Holocaust Remembrance Day together at numerous events, including one that saw German teenagers and Jewish and Hispanic schoolchildren under the same tent, listening to their peers recite the words of Anne Frank.

"It is very emotional," said Frederick Just, 17, one of 12 German teens visiting Los Angeles this week who joined 2,500 Catholic, Jewish and public school students at the April 20 Holocaust remembrance event at the Los Angeles Holocaust Monument at Pan Pacific Park. "I felt treated fairly, because you don’t blame us for the mistakes of others, and you include us in your service. That touched me."

The youth remembrance concluded several days marking Yom HaShoah at synagogues, cemeteries and parks throughout Southern California, most of them on Sunday, April 18, the global Holocaust Remembrance Day. That Sunday saw a Hillside Memorial Park morning service honoring Hungarian Jewish resistance fighter Hannah Senesh, while in the evening there was a reading of the poem, "Babi Yar," before about 150 people in a West Hollywood auditorium, with gay and lesbian couples sitting near elderly Russian Jews.

The Los Angeles citywide Yom HaShoah event attracted about 5,000 people to the Fairfax District’s Pan Pacific Park on a cool Sunday afternoon. The remembrance combined pro-Israel speeches with memories of the 60th anniversary of the Nazi deportations of 600,000 Hungarian Jews.

"Wherever a seed of hate is planted, its growth can be stunted with a message of growth and compassion," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who inspired the crowd when he said his first foreign trip as governor will be to Jerusalem for the May groundbreaking of a new Museum of Tolerance.

After speaking, Schwarzenegger spent several minutes shaking hands in the event’s seating area, where he met 74-year-old Auschwitz survivor Helen Gorelik. "I felt very comfortable with him," said Gorelik.

Hungarian Jewish survivors who spoke at the two-hour remembrance included Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), who praised Israel’s targeted killing last weekend of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi.

"They [terrorists] are on the losing end of this battle, and don’t you forget it," said Lantos, who added that Holocaust observances must honor Judaism’s past by preserving its future. "We don’t just want commemoration. We want the right of the people of the State of Israel to live in security and peace, which is all they want."

Israeli Consul General Yuval Rotem also fused Yom HaShoah themes with Israel’s defense needs and the global rise of anti-Semitism.

"We are reminded that once again, the Jews can be abandoned to their own fate," Rotem said. "During the Holocaust, our fate rested with others. Today and for the future … we will unilaterally defend ourselves."

Prior to the Los Angeles remembrance, Lantos attended Hungary’s extensive 60th anniversary Jewish deportation remembrances. Listening to Lantos at Pan Pacific Park were local politicians, including Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn, as well as Austrian and Hungarian diplomats, including Hungarian Ambassador András Simonyi and Hungarian Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs. Kovacs also spoke at the April 19 Yom HaShoah service at the Museum of Tolerance, which posthumously honored Iranian diplomat Abdol Hossein Sardari, who rescued Jews in Paris.

The April 20 youth remembrance had students from 25 schools who were brought by 60 buses hired by survivor, philanthropist and real estate developer Jona Goldrich.

The 90-minute event tested the students’ short attention spans, but they became silent listening to Goldrich, who said of the Holocaust, "I sometimes don’t believe that it happened myself."

Young and Old Recall Shoah Rites Read More »

7 Days In Arts

Leave a Comment / Picks and Clicks /

Saturday

The urban world beats of Hyim and the Fat Foakland
Orchestra travel south from Oakland in honor of UC Santa Barbara’s Earth Day
festivities today. Leave the smog behind in favor of the daylong celebration at
Isla Vista’s Anisq’ Oyo’ Park, which features Hyim and his crew as well as other
bands, cultural performances and info booths aplenty. 11:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m. At
Embarcadero del Mar and Seville Road, Isla Vista. (805) 893-5165. Bookish types
looking to stay a little closer to home this weekend find literary paradise at
the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. The annual fest features conversations,
readings and signings with some of the most celebrated writers, as well as
booths by booksellers or other reading enthusiasts, like the one shared by The
Jewish Journal and KOREH L.A. literacy program. Tribemembers expected to make
appearances include Larry King, Laura Schlesinger, Henry Winkler, Ayelet
Waldman, Aimee Bender, Bruce Kimmel and Jonathan Safran Foer. Free. 10 a.m.-6
p.m. (Sat.), 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (Sun.). UCLA, Westwood. 7 Days In Arts Read More »

Disengagement

Leave a Comment / Rob Eshman /

A while back, I was taking a taxi through Jerusalem when sirens went off all over the city. In an instant the home of the Wailing Wall became a Wailing City. My taxi driver pulled over and turned off his engine. So did all the other cars on the road. Quickly, an entire unruly society came to a standstill. My driver’s other passenger began to light a cigarette, but the driver said, "Not now," and the man put the pack back in his coat pocket.

It was the Day of Remembrance, and this was the minute when the country stopped to honor the casualties of Israel’s many conflicts. I looked down the street and the mixture of longing and unease and sadness on people’s faces was absolutely visible. For one entire minute, people were drained of their impatience. I have been to countries far more exotic, but have never experienced anything quite as remarkable as the moment of silence on Yom HaZikaron in Israel.

One effect of witnessing that minute of silence on Remembrance Day is to give those of us who support Israel but live outside it an extra dose of humility. A lot has been written about how the cost of America’s decision to go to war in Iraq has been disproportionately paid by the relatively few families who have seen loved ones killed or wounded there. For the great majority of Americans, the check seems to be on someone else’s table.

That’s not the case in Israel, where sorrow and suffering spread quickly throughout a much smaller society. This is especially true since the second intifada began. I have met Israelis from all walks of life, and I haven’t met one whose life hasn’t been radically, sometimes tragically, altered by the ongoing violence there. The stakes of decision-making in Israel are not just huge, but hugely felt.

I thought of this fact again this week while gauging reactions to President George W. Bush’s embrace of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan.

In an exchange of letters last week, Bush endorsed Israel’s claim to several settlements in the West Bank and rejected Palestinian demands for a "right of return" to Israel.

The Palestinians and the Arab world went haywire at the news. More than the content of Bush’s letter, what galls the Palestinians is their being left out of the lead up to the intensive U.S.-Israel negotiations. But, uh, what do they expect? You can’t bomb cafes one day and hope to meet for coffee the next.

"This shows terrorism doesn’t pay," said professor Steven Spiegel, associate director of the Burkle Center for International Relations. "The Palestinians really blew it with this intifada."

More interesting and certainly less predictable than Palestinian umbrage is the reaction of the Jews.

"It’s a good thing," Americans for Peace Now founder Mark Rosenblum said of the plan. "If Sharon implements it and the Palestinians see material benefits, then the Palestinians might say this isn’t so bad after all."

Rosenblum and many on the left see Sharon’s plan, and Bush’s embrace of it, as a step forward. The key is a letter from Dov Weisglass, Sharon’s bureau chief, to national security adviser Condoleeza Rice that outlines and clarifies a series of pledges Israel will undertake in conjunction with the agreement. These include disbanding settlement outposts and freezing settlement growth in most, if not all, of the West Bank. These steps would happen following a Likud vote of support for Sharon’s plan on May 2 — a vote Bush certainly hoped to influence.

"These steps could demonstrate to the Palestinians that this initiative is not all barrier, but also a bridge," Rosenblum said.

Even more striking, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, called Sharon "my hero" for the withdrawal plan. Yoffie, a liberal leader and frequent Sharon critic, made the comment in an op-ed piece in The Forward newspaper.

Meanwhile the right, or at least those to the right of right-wing centrists, is livid with their leader, Sharon. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky canceled his visit to Los Angeles in order to vote against Sharon. Zionist Organization of America head Morton Klein wrote that the withdrawal from Gaza, the primary piece of Sharon’s plan, "will only increase terrorism because it will prove to [Palestinians] that violence pays." Others on the right have said Bush’s letter undermines his stance against terrorism, since it rewards the Palestinian Authority with territory.

It is as if two people on a seesaw suddenly crossed sides mid-motion. Sharon and Bush have pried the center and left away from a strict adherence to Oslo and an antipathy to the two leaders themselves, and forced the right to swallow the substance of three decades of leftist arguments over land, security and the Palestinians.

It would be tempting for either side to gloat, but Yom HaZikaron is upon us, and the costs of these momentous decisions, in lives lost or lives saved, should be sobering to us all.

Disengagement Read More »

Sex in the Holy City

Leave a Comment / Singles /

Jerusalem. City of gold. City of white stone, winding streets, rolling hills and pleasant breeze. City of covered heads, baby strollers and family picnics. Where do the singles fit in here?

I made aliyah nine months ago. After several months of pointless affairs and disastrous blind dates, I had a powerful realization. Here I am in this holy city, the holiest city in the holiest part of the world, where God commanded us to be fruitful and multiply — and I am alone. Sure, I have friends. I even have a newly discovered cousin in Jerusalem, and other distant family in the North and along the coast. Ultimately, however, I am single. Alone. In this town, I am an anomaly.

I do not think that this city has an inherent intolerance for singles, yet Jerusalem is known throughout the country for its family culture. While the newspapers publish articles about the rise in baby bigotry in Tel Aviv (restaurant owners banning babies, mounting papoose prejudice in the streets), Jerusalem kids run the show. I hear their youthful yelps from the nearby park late at night, their parents safe in the knowledge that this is a family town and that children are always invited. On a Shabbat afternoon stroll, I see twice as many families out walking as I do single people. A friend of mine and her newborn, rarely separated, attend plays together and no one blinks twice when the baby gurgles along with the actors: of course her presence is welcome. Parents mall-crawl late into the night with their tots in tow, pushing prams from shop to shop while onlookers cheerfully flirt with their little ones. Jerusalem embodies Marlo Thomas’ vision of "a land where the children are free."

Sigh. The question remains: Where do I fit in? Without husband, children, family, I am nothing here. I am merely a baby flirt, smiling, teasing and baby-talking with other people’s offspring. I am a family crasher, leeching onto other people’s family structures in an effort to feel connected. I am the single woman at every dinner party. I am the friend everyone wants to match up.

"You should meet my friend/cousin/neighbor so-and-so. I think the two of you would really hit it off…."

It’s always the same story. Single in the Holy City is a curse.

The "oleh outlook" may perpetuate this feeling, so to speak. Jerusalem, city of new immigrants, is a place of lost souls. All of these young, new transplants are roaming around without any grounding. No parents, no direct family, no ties. We all came here for various reasons and chose, in a way, to marry Israel — to make Israel our home. But without a family to come home to each night, life is unstable. We are plants without roots, nomads and homeless in our homeland.

I have attended more weddings and engagement parties in these first nine months as an Israeli than in the whole of the rest of my life in the States. Part of that, undoubtedly, has to do with my age. The mid-20s are a natural time for coupling and commitment. To be completely honest though, I often yearn for the singles atmosphere of Los Angeles. My relationships there felt more relaxed and less desperate. Perhaps that is, to a certain extent, because I was a temporary resident. I opened a California bank account, bought a car and furniture, and registered to vote, all knowing that my time there was limited. Ultimately, I planned to make aliyah, so I was not looking to settle or put down roots. I was not trying to make connections or feel at home.

Sark, the wonderful San Fransisco artist and cartoonist, makes a bold suggestion. "Marry yourself first," she encourages. "Promise to never leave you."

When I was in Israel for my junior year of college, I had a silver ring made for myself with my name engraved in Hebrew and in Arabic. It is simple, and beautiful, and full of deep personal significance. It holds meaning for me that connects to my most daring dreams, my highest ambitions and my reasons for making aliyah. Sometimes, I jokingly refer to the ring as my wedding ring, particularly when I am avoiding unwanted advances. Recently, I realized that my ring is in fact a wedding ring, and that, in the spirit of Sark, I should focus more on being a good self-spouse, on being a good partner to myself.

The true challenge of living in Jerusalem is to not let the pressure take over. I have to be able to stop the series of awful blind dates. I have to come to terms with my singleness. Accept it. Embrace it. Love me for my single self.

Or else, I’ll move to Tel Aviv.


Miriam Lewis is a freelance writer, designer, performer and stage director in Jerusalem. Originally from Michigan, she lived in Los Angeles for a year recruiting for long-term Israel programs.

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Killings May Backfire on Security Issue

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As international peacekeepers flowed into Beirut and PLO fighters withdrew from the city, then-Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was confident that the Israeli siege of Beirut had been a success.

"I believe," he said in late August 1982, "Palestinians will come forward prepared to negotiate with Israel on the autonomy plan proposed by Prime Minister [Menachem] Begin."

Palestinians would now have to deal with Israel on Israel’s terms.

As we know, it did not work out the way in which Sharon predicted. No Palestinians came forward to negotiate Begin’s autonomy plan.

Even based in distant Tunisia, Yasser Arafat and the PLO remained the leaders of the Palestinian national movement. Israel was bogged down in Lebanon for nearly 20 years. A new, more effective opponent, Hezbollah (Party of God), filled the political vacuum resulting from the PLO’s flight from southern Lebanon.

In short, Israel’s effort led by Sharon to destroy the PLO and control Arab politics led to the opposite outcome, a resilient PLO and wider opposition to Israel, including Hezbollah. Israel’s triumphal rhetoric was merely wishful thinking.

Israel’s recent assassinations of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi and Sheikh Ahmad Yassin should be seen in a similar light. Looking back at Lebanon and many other Israeli attempts to determine the identity of its adversary serves as a reminder that such efforts have usually backfired and worsened Israel’s security situation. From the invasion of Lebanon to the village leagues to targeted assassinations, Israeli policies designed to replace Arab leaders and organizations have, at best, failed miserably, and, at worst, cost Israeli and Arab lives.

Killing established Palestinian leaders, anointing new ones and acting as an uberarbiter for Palestinian organizations has neither brought an improvement in Israel’s security situation nor increased its diplomatic leverage.

In April 1988, Israel silenced the PLO’s Khalil al-Wazir who was seen by some as a proponent of a compromise two-state solution. In February 1992, Israel killed Hezbollah’s secretary general, Abbas Musawi, but his replacement, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has been a strong and more radical leader.

Ironically, Yassin was freed from a life term in an Israeli prison as a result of a botched Israeli assassination attempt of another Hamas official, Khaled Mashal, in Jordan in September 1997.

Israeli manipulation at the organizational level has also hurt Israel’s security. Hezbollah’s rise to prominence in Lebanon is only one example. In the occupied territories, Israel assumed that the rise of Islamist forces in the 1980s would serve as a much-needed counterweight to PLO dominance.

It did — to the point that the outgrowth of these Islamist forces, Hamas, is well-funded and supported by many Palestinians. Although in part, Hamas gains support from Palestinians looking for an alternative to the Palestinian Authority, other Hamas supporters are attracted to the idea of the destruction of Israel.

While eliminating some Palestinian leaders and organizations, Israel has also sought to cultivate new, pliant ones. This approach, too, has failed. In the early 1980s, Israel created the village leagues in the West Bank in an effort to bypass the PLO.

Very few Palestinians took the bait and served as leaders in the village leagues. Apparently, the Palestinian silent majority was not silent because it wanted to live under Israeli rule.

Given the stigma of doing political work for Israel, these leaders tended to be from the margins of Palestinian society and were derided as collaborators. By the mid-1980s, the leagues had gone nowhere.

In taking Al-Rantisi and Yassin’s lives, Israel was playing God in a literal sense. But at a much larger level, Israel has long thought it could play God with regard to Arab and Palestinian politics.

The historical record, however, suggests that such attempts, ranging from targeted assassinations to organizational favoritism, hurt Israeli security much more than they help.


Jeremy Pressman, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Connecticut, is co-author of “Point of No Return: the Deadly Struggle for Middle East Peace.”

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Assassinations Keep Hamas Off Balance

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The March 22 targeted assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin was designed by the Israelis to strike a major blow to Hamas. Many nations condemned the attack, however, and critics further claimed that the missile strike against Hamas’ paraplegic spiritual leader only strengthened the hand of Hamas.

A few weeks later, despite an outpouring of support from around the Arab world, Hamas does not appear any stronger. In fact, after the subsequent assassination on April 17 of Yassin’s successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, Hamas appears even more off balance.

Identity Crisis. As a splinter from the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’ ideological blend of nationalism and Islamism has, since 1987, attracted thousands of followers. The Hamas charter, published in 1989, was seeped in Islamist ideology, stating that “jihad becomes a duty binding on all Muslims” to destroy Israel.

Yassin legitimized the Hamas charter with credentials as a popular community leader and religious scholar. Now that Hamas has lost Yassin, it may also find that it has lost legitimacy.

The group does not have a religious leader to fill the vacuum, and none of its stronger leaders have an ecumenical background. While Hamas was traditionally seen as fighting with a gun in one hand and a Quran in the other, the group is now fighting with a gun in each hand. Thus, Hamas will soon learn whether it can maintain its standing without Yassin.

Locality Crisis. Al-Rantisi, a well-known mouthpiece for Hamas, was named the group’s new leader shortly after Yassin’s demise. His ascension was no surprise; he was perhaps the only local leader known to Gazans who could carry Yassin’s message into the future. His designation was also important in that it kept the leadership of Hamas in Gaza, where the group’s power base lies.

With the assassination of Rantisi, however, Hamas is experiencing a locality crisis. While the group named a new secret leader so that Israel would not be able to easily assassinate him, the public face of Hamas will be Khaled Meshal in Syria. From Syria, Meshal authorizes activities from Hamas’ armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, dispenses Hamas funds and is in regular contact with the mullahs of Iran.

The longer Hamas is run from Syria, the higher the likelihood of fragmentation between local Gaza fighters and the decision makers abroad, including Syria and Iran. Moreover, it will be a challenge for Hamas to call itself a local and legitimate resistance organization, when it is based out of Syria, a known state sponsor of terrorism.

Operational Challenges. With the assassinations of Yassin and Rantisi, the remaining Hamas leadership recognizes that Israel has almost complete freedom in its operations against Hamas. International expressions of disapproval have had little impact on Israel’s actions.

In the last three years, Israel has taken out dozens of top Hamas operatives in the West Bank, and it vows to hit more. Following the Yassin and Rantisi executions, a number of Hamas leaders in Gaza went underground, fearing for their lives.

Hamas is further frustrated by successful Israeli efforts to stymie attacks. Specifically, the West Bank security fence has prevented suicide attacks from former Hamas strongholds in the northern West Bank towns of Jenin and Nablus.

Whereas these two towns were once a common launch point for suicide operations in Israel, the new barrier has all but reduced Hamas’ ability to attack from there. According to Israeli intelligence sources, the inability to attack, in addition to the targeted assassinations of a number of Hamas leaders, has actually led recently to a small decline in popularity for Hamas in the West Bank.

Caught Off Guard. Politically speaking, the attacks on Yassin and Rantisi came at the right time, as Israel prepares to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. Without its top thinkers, the group must now consider what its role will be when Israel leaves. Will Hamas attempt to take control of the Gaza Strip and pose a direct challenge to the Palestinian Authority, sparking internecine violence?

If it chooses to do so, it will have to work assiduously to augment the militia it has cultivated on the streets of Gaza. It will also have to bolster its social services network, which is ill-equipped for the needs of 1.3 million Gazans, now weakly governed by the Palestinian Authority

Endgame. To be sure, Hamas will continue to be the most dangerous terrorist organization in the Palestinian territories. The group, comprised of numerous, autonomous terror cells, exists solely to destroy the State of Israel.

According to Hezbollah radio, Hamas now seeks to dispatch “100 retaliations” against Israel in retribution for the Yassin assassination. Israelis are still bracing for this.

Interestingly, it is rumored that Hamas has been considering a hudna, or temporary cease-fire, with Israel. Clearly, its difficult decisions would be more easily made without painful Israeli strikes and other counterterrorism activity. A hudna would also preserve the remaining Hamas leadership during a time of transition and crisis.

If Israel gives Hamas time to regain its composure, however, the assassinations of Rantisi and Yassin will have been for naught. Conversely, continued counterterror operations by the Israelis against Hamas leaders, cells and infrastructure will ensure that Hamas has little time to regroup.

Keeping Hamas on the defensive will translate to increased security for Israel. Effective counterterrorism, after all, amounts to consistently restricting the operating environment of a terrorist organization, its operatives and its leaders.


Jonathan Schanzer is a Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

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The Soldier I Could Have Saved

Leave a Comment / Israel, Personal Voice, Personals, Politics /

Thirty-three years ago an Israeli soldier was killed during the War of Attrition in Fort Kantara on the Suez Canal. The soldier’s name was Kobi; he was 19. I think about Kobi every day, and sometimes I don’t sleep at night. Thirty-three years have passed, and I still live with it like it happened recently.

Do you think I am insane? Disturbed? Suffering from post-war trauma?

I don’t know, I was never treated by a doctor for it.

During the war I was a staff sergeant at Fort Kantara. I was there for more than a year. I saw young Israeli soldiers come and go. In Hebrew we called them “cannon meat.” They came to us from boot camp, 18 years old. Wanting to see the blue water of the Suez Canal, they raised their heads above the sandbags and were killed instantly by Russian snipers. The next day they were sent back home in caskets. Just like that, within seconds, they were alive and suddenly gone. We told you not to raise your heads. You didn’t listen to us. By then it was too late.

But this is not what happened to Kobi. Kobi could have been saved, but something else happened. A short time after Kobi arrived at Fort Kantara, a new officer joined us — Lt. Moti. Moti came directly from officers school, with a lot of energy, and let us feel that he was the new boss of the place. We didn’t make a big deal of it at first. He seemed to be a nice guy from from a good family. He was from the town of Hadera, wanted to go up the ranks fast and acted a little like an oyber chuchem (smart ass).

Time passed, and except for a few disputes Moti got along with most of us, including myself — until the horrible day came. It was Kobi’s shift to watch the Egyptians on the other side of the canal from the observation post. Moti and I were in the war room below. The phone from Kobi’s post rang.

“The Egyptians are looking at me with binoculars and aiming a bazooka at me,” Kobi said.

“Get off your post right now,” I yelled to him. I knew what was going to happen, and a gush of fear went though me.

Moti yelled, “Stay there and keep looking. Do not get off your post.”

I yelled again, “Get off right now, let’s go, now, now, now. There is no time.”

Moti yelled, “If you get off, you are going straight go jail.”

I yelled, “Kobi, please come down. Moti doesn’t know what’s happening here, I’ve been there before. Do me and yourself a favor, come down now.”

Moti kept going: “If you come down now, you will be in trouble for the rest of your service, I am the officer in charge, do not listen to Yoram.”

It was too late. The bazooka from the other side was launched. Kobi was dead. Another 19-year-old kid was gone. Moti and I looked at each other for five solid minutes and did not say a word. We froze. Afterward I told Moti, “You will pay for this someday.”

I went to the post and collected what was left from this cute kid from Ashkelon who wanted to be a doctor.

The newspaper wrote that Kobi was killed by heavy Egyptian artillery. His grandfather was killed in the Warsaw Ghetto. His parents were Holocaust survivors. His uncle was killed in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948.

Kobi’s parents didn’t know the truth of how he died. Maybe it’s better that way.

Moti completed his service in the army after three years. He did not want to be a big shot in the army anymore. He attended the Technion. I saw him a few times in Haifa. We never talked about what happened. It was more like “Hi” and “Bye.”

Thirty-three years have passed since then. Even today I say to myself “Why didn’t I go to his post and drag him down?”

I could have called him today in Israel and say “Doctor, how are ya? How’s the family? Remember that day on the Suez Canal? Wow, what a mess. You almost got killed. Luckily you got off the post.”

I heard that the Israeli Department of Defense decided to give the soldiers who served during the War of Attrition a new medal of courage.

Suddenly, just like that, they want to give a medal to the “cannon meat?”

We served there from 1967 to 1973, and every day 20 to 40 soldiers, just kids, were killed. My medal will arrive at my last address in Israel — Kiryat Tivon. Maybe I should ask Jojo, the mail carrier, to forward it to Moti’s family in Ashkelon.


Yoram Samuel lives in Los Angeles.

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