American Jews strongly believe in Israel\’s commitment to peace, and largely think the Palestinian leadership and people are opposed to it, according to a new poll.
Just 11 minutes after its independence was declared, the State of Israel was recognized by the United States. But up until the last moment, President Harry Truman had opposed the establishment of a Jewish state. For months, a battle waged between the State Department and Zionist leaders for Truman’s allegiance, and he was weary of the issue. The State Department had persuaded him that a Jewish state in Palestine would never survive the threatened Arab invasion and advocated shelving the partition plan and turning Palestine over to U.N. trusteeship. When New York’s pro-Zionist senators met with him, Truman erupted: “You cannot satisfy the Jews anyway.
So, why was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu steaming when he came out of his tête-á-tête with President Barack Obama on May 20? The president’s inherently pro-Palestinian, con-Israeli stance may have been another rude awakening for the prime minister, but the handwriting’s been on the wall for some time now. Take, for example, candidate Obama’s statement in March 2007 that “nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people.” How about the Israeli people, who have had to live with the daily threat of terrorist attacks and bombings and hostile Arab armies on their borders since the inception of the Jewish state in 1948?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his speech to the U.S. Congress on May 24, was like a battered fighter entering the final round of a championship bout. He knows his only chance to win is by a knockout. With nothing to lose, Bibi got up, and with the “Rocky” music blazing in his ears, fought the fight of his life.
Levi Eshkol was one of the greatest Israeli heroes you never heard of. Eshkol was Israel’s prime minister during the Six Day War, which began 44 years ago this week, on June 5, 1967.\n
Danielle Berrin did the Jewish community a great service by showing why Lars von Trier should be singled out as the lone exception from a rogue’s gallery of anti-Semites, including Mel Gibson, Oliver Stone, John Galliano and Charlie Sheen (“Not Mel Gibson,” May 27). Both Berrin and Marvin Hier went beyond reactionary, black-and-white thinking to express their sense that it was ghosts in von Trier’s soul that had him behave in such a peculiar way at Cannes, and again as he sought there and in The New York Times to cajole his ghosts back into his tormented psyche. At least von Trier is struggling with his ghosts while the others have surrendered to them. Surrendering is the reason for anti-Semitism and all the other -isms that emerge from like minds.
Earlier this year, I got a call from an old friend, Rabbi Juan Mejia. Juan asked me if I’d be willing to accompany him and Rabbi Felipe Goodman to San Miguel de Allende for a couple of days in early February. Juan, Felipe and I have a lot in common: We laugh at the same jokes, we all speak Spanish, and we’re all rabbis. A little getaway to Mexico in the middle of winter? Sure, I could fit that into my schedule — no problem, I said.
Senior European rabbis urged the European Union to ensure that the burgeoning democratic movements sweeping across the Arab world also guarantee religious freedom in the region. During a meeting Monday at the European Commission in Brussels, the four-member Conference of European Rabbis delegation stressed the importance of reversing decades of dictatorship and human rights abuses in some Middle Eastern countries.
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