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July 14, 2013

July 14, 2013

Leave a Comment / Israel, Must Reads /

The US

Headline:  ‘US to step up pressure on Iran, seek direct talks'

To Read:  Fred Kaplan writes about President Obama's lack of leverage in Egypt-

The fact is, if Washington wants to maintain some influence in Cairo, if U.S. officials and generals and potential investors want someone in Egypt to pick up the phone when they call, they have to ante up. This has been the dilemma facing the Obama administration for the past year of turbulence: It must maintain some relations with the Egyptian government, whoever is in power and however unpleasant they may be. (The administration abandoned Mubarak only when it became clear that he was going to be shoved out, regardless of the U.S. stance.) Staying on the inside allows the United States to nudge Egyptians with advice, inducements, or incentives to take steps that promote U.S. interests—and what westerners regard as Egyptian interests. But this is about all that any American president—any outside leader—can do. To think otherwise is to engage in dangerous nostalgia.

Quote: “Gosh sakes, we won the vote 407 to 5. These guys are only focused on Afghanistan and couldn’t care less what is happening in Syria”, Rep. James P. Moran (D-Va.) commenting on the Pentagon's decision to purchase Russian Helicopters despite the Congress' disapprobation.

Number: 70, the percent chance that the GOP has of holding the house, the presidency and the Senate after 2016, according to Megan McArdle.

 

Israel

Headline: Report: Attack in Syria conducted by Israeli submarine

To Read: The Middle East Institute's Paul Scham believes that Israel should use the current instability in the Middle East and start talking to the Hamas-

Hence, Morsi’s misfortunes could provide the impetus for Palestinian reconciliation for the purpose of making peace. But for this to happen, Israel and the United States must be willing to play along and not simply rejoice in Hamas’s isolation. The United States, which has resolutely ignored Hamas’s signals of moderation (which have admittedly been equivocal) and highlighted its hard-line statements, would have to quickly adopt a more nuanced approach—and show Israel why it should do the same. It is not a matter of negotiating with Hamas or recognizing it; the question will be whether Hamas would allow a PA-led government to accept a peace based on the 1967 borders. Will the United States seize the opportunity to put Hamas in that position? Or will it allow Hamas to reap the benefit of a failure of Kerry’s current negotiations?

Quote:  “To my regret, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has yet to reach a prominent place at the top of our list of priorities, nor has it become the second-, even third-most important issue. However, this subject has a place in our essence, in our identity, in our souls, in our security, and in our perception of morality – as a society or nation that has come to rule another nation”, former Shin Bet chief, Yuval Diskin, supporting peace negotiations.

Number: 2000, the number of Arab Israelis who attended a rally in support of President Morsi.

 

The Middle East

Headline: Deposed Egyptian president to be investigated

To Read: Egyptian political scientist Hicham Mourad gives his interesting take on why the Egyptian army overthrew Morsi-

The army command remained nevertheless suspicious of the intentions of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood and opposed to their policies. This involved attempts to infiltrate or to “Brotherhoodise” the army. The rumour was so persistent that Al-Sisi had to reply on 14 February stressing that he would not allow the Muslim Brotherhood, or any other political group, to dominate the army. The command was also unhappy with criticism from leaders of the Brotherhood, including Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, on past military support for the Mubarak regime.

On the other hand, the religious and sectarian dimension of President Morsi's policies was inconsistent with the strategic thinking of the army on national security issues. This involved first the rapprochement, by religious affinities, with the Islamic resistance movement Hamas in Palestine, which controls the Gaza Strip and adopts armed struggle against the Israeli occupation. For the army, this rapprochement is extremely dangerous for the security of Egypt, especially for that of the Sinai Peninsula, which occupies a particularly important place in the strategic thinking of the army, because it borders Israel and the Gaza Strip.  

Quote:  “Defending the Turkish nation against external threats and dangers, and maintaining and strengthening military powers to ensure deterrence”, the new definition of the Turkish army's responsibilities, amended by the Turkish parliament to avoid coups.

Number: 200, the number of civilians trapped in a mosque in a Damascus suburb as fighting rages outside between rebels and soldiers.

 

The Jewish World

Headline: Portugal becomes 2nd country, after Israel, with a Jewish law of return

To Read: Tablet's James Loeffler believes that labeling music as 'holocaust music' inevitably reduces it and dishonors the composers who wrote it-

The late Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim spoke of the 614th commandment: not to grant Hitler posthumous victories. Yet one of Hitler’s lasting achievements was to leave behind an anti-Semitic myth, acquired from Richard Wagner, that Jews possess no music of their own. Not only did the Holocaust send many composers into exile and worse, it also killed a decades-long effort to build a Jewish school in modern classical music.

Now, by labeling certain works of art as “Holocaust music,” we risk creating a genre that turns the details of history and the complex meanings of music into one saccharine lesson in universalist tolerance. It may sound like heresy to criticize a pious act of Holocaust remembrance. But the true heresy is to turn Jewish composers into shadow images defined only by their status as Hitler’s victims.

Quote:  “Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef is an adjudicator of Jewish law whose rulings are accepted in Israel and abroad”, Shas leader, Arye Deri, announcing his party's endorsement of Rabbi Ovadia Yossef's son Yitzhak as chief Sephardic Rabbi.  

Number: 20, the number of Haredi women participating in a training course for medical coding.

July 14, 2013 Read More »

The Intermarriage Exchange, Part 2: What Jews Can Learn from Mormons

Leave a Comment / Domain's Guest, Is Featured?, Israel, News, Rosners Domain-mobile, Worldwide /

Naomi Schaefer Riley is a former Wall Street Journal editor and writer whose work focuses on higher education, religion, philanthropy and culture. She is the author of God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America (St. Martin's, 2005) and The Faculty Lounges … And Other Reasons Why You Won't Get the College Education You Pay For (Ivan Dee, 2011). Riley is also the co-editor of Acculturated (Templeton Press, 2010), a book of essays on pop culture and virtue. Ms. Riley's writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, and the Washington Post, among other publications. She appears regularly on FoxNews and FoxBusiness.

In part two of this exchange about her new book “'Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America” (Oxford University Press, 2013), we take a look at the interesting differences which Riley examines in her book between Jewish and Mormon attitudes to faith and inmarriage. 

(part one of this exchange can be found here)

 

Dear Naomi, 

Thank you for your honest response. I'd like to dwell on the subject a little more and quote what I thought was one of your most illuminating (and to some degree damning) paragraphs on Jews and interfaith marriages. Here's what you wrote:

More than one Jew I interviewed told their spouse that they had to raise their children Jewish because of the impact of the Holocaust on the Jewish people. It’s possible that this will induce enough guilt in the non-Jew for it to work. But what has been gained? How does the Holocaust turn into a lesson or a value that a non-Jew or a convert to Judaism can pass on to his or her children?

So assimilation is an integral part of the American way of life and fighting with guilt won't do. Yet, in an interesting chapter you dedicate to a comparison between Jews and Mormons, you give the reader the impression that the Mormons are more successful in their battle to keep their children (or grandchildren) within the faith. So what is it that makes them more successful, and can their strategies work for other groups as well (Jews included)?

 

Thank you for your thoughts,

Shmuel.

 

Dear Shmuel,

I do think that assimilation is a fact of American life, but not all assimilation. The United States, it turns out, is much more accepting of religious diversity than cultural diversity. As Will Herberg suggested in his book “Protestant, Catholic, Jew,” we are not really one big melting pot. We are a number of separate ones. Over time the Irish Catholics and the Italian Catholics all simply became Catholics and the Polish Jews and the German Jews all became Jews and soon Pakistani Muslims and Egyptian Muslims will all be Muslims here.

Religious diversity, though, flourishes. America has what people call a vibrant religious marketplace. The Mormons have learned how to compete in that marketplace. When it comes to marriage, the most striking demographic difference between Jews and Mormons is the age at which they get married. The average age of a first marriage for Mormons is, according to my study, 23, and for Jews it’s 27. The importance placed on marriage in the LDS church cannot be overestimated and the Mormon elders realize that they cannot afford to let young men and women enter this phase we now call “emerging adulthood.” The drifting that often occurs then causes young people to lose sight of the importance of their faith.

Besides marriage, the pinnacle Mormon experience is probably the mission trip. When men and women have just finished high school they are asked to leave family and friends for up to two years and “own” the faith. They go knocking on doors trying to explain the faith to strangers. American Jews tend to have their pinnacle experience at age 13, not exactly a time they are likely to think about a faith or a religious community as their own. 

Many of the Jews I interviewed for my book had been told by their parents that they should marry in the faith because of the Holocaust. For people who are two or more generations removed, this reason simply does not work. The flip side of the Holocaust argument is a kind of cultural pride, or a sense of peoplehood. Again, this has not historically been a very successful way to keep ethnic groups in America marrying in the fold. After all, you can still eat chopped liver and even celebrate the existence of Israel without being married to another Jew. 

Finally, it's not unheard of for Mormons to marry out. But the spouses, anecdotally speaking, often convert, sometimes after years or decades of marriage. The church regularly presents conversion as an option to non-members. It's not a hard sell, but periodically members of the congregation will come and talk to the nonmember about the church. It relieves some pressure from the Mormon spouse. But it also makes it clear that the community is confident in its message and has a certain amount of faith that nonmembers will eventually come around. Conservative and Reform Jews have nothing like this confidence and conversion is rarely mentioned. There are good historical and theological reasons for that. But if Jews want to compete in the marketplace, they have to get their message out.

Best Regards,

Naomi

The Intermarriage Exchange, Part 2: What Jews Can Learn from Mormons Read More »

American Jews: Expel Yourselves

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Israel, Mobile, Mobile Sections, News /

The majority of American Jews, if one can judge by presidential voting records and policy statements by AIPAC and other major Jewish organizations, believe that the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict involves evacuating Israeli Jews from Judea and Samaria (aka the “West Bank”) to pave the way for two states: Israel and “Palestine.”

Here are some basic premises guiding this view:

  1. Israel was created so that Jews could live as a political majority under Jewish sovereignty, unlike Jews in the US.
  2. The demographic “time bomb” (which is challenged by actual statistics) forces Jews to physically separate themselves from the Arabs, by walls if necessary.
  3. Only Jews are allowed to ruin other Jews' lives, i.e. the Jewish government is allowed to expel Jews from their homes and destroy their livelihoods, as it did in Gush Katif, Gaza, for the greater Jewish collective. Jews are not allowed to ruin Arab lives. The Jewish government would be slammed as racist if it dares expel Arabs. The US would likewise be slammed as anti-Semitic if it engaged in ethnic cleansing of Jews.
  4. American Jews can dictate Israeli policy since Israel is the “Jewish” state, and all Jews get a vote on its future, no matter they don't live in Israel and just come for inspirational, fun vacations. As major funders of Zionist causes, some believe that Israel must answer to them.

Sure, most American Jewish organizations state that their position is to support policies of the Israeli government, lest they be perceived as interfering with Israel's democratic process. In practice, that is not the case. Most major organizations don't send their missions beyond the green line, even as the Israeli government supports building there. In fact, most members of PM Binyamin Netanyahu's coalition do not support the creation of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu actually goes against Likud constituency when he pays lip service to the two-state “solution,” which makes one wonder: who is he answering to?

What's so ironic is that American Jews who push hard for the expulsion of Jews by Jews are advocating the composition of a state they do not choose for themselves. Referring to the premises above:

  1. They choose not to live in a state with a Jewish majority and probably have no intention of making aliyah to Israel, which involves many material sacrifices. They're more concerned with Israel as a symbol of Jewish sovereignty, granted with world approval, not to mention one they can enjoy on High Holidays, always a wonderful time to visit the Jewish state.
  2. They're concerned with Jewish demographics, but, in practice, prefer living among non-Jews, often in homes that few Israelis can afford.
  3. They choose to live in a country with separation between religion and state. However, in Israel they want Jews to live at the mercy of a Jewish political system, a system they would not deign to live under.
  4. They often justify their permanence in the US by donating large sums to Zionist causes and to the Jewish state. Unless an Israeli is some high tech genius, it's almost impossible for Israelis to amass in such a small, beleaguered country the kind of wealth one can amass in the US. Israelis work tirelessly just to make the month, which makes them, in fact, feel bound to American financial support and hence their dictates, even if those dictates go against Israelis' long-term interests.

This analysis leads to several interesting conclusions. If American Jews truly seek to live according to their values—and if one of their ultimate values is a state with a Jewish majority—then they should move to Israel, not just own a summer apartment that jacks up the rental prices for actual residents.

If they truly want to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict out of demographic concerns, they should advocate a more Zionist humanitarian solution: mass aliyah of Jews, particularly into Judea and Samaria, the historical Jewish heartland. About 1 out of the 7 million of Jews in the Diaspora should do the trick. If the multi-millions that Jewish organizations raise to defend Israel—and better yet— if the expenses of removing Jews ($2.6 billion per 9,000 Jews, if judging from Gaza) are diverted to support this new wave of aliyah, the problem is SOLVED.

Speaking from experience, it's difficult yet very rewarding to make aliyah. It's much easier for Diaspora Jews to impose their vision of a state with a Jewish majority, living alongside a new Arab state, when they don't suffer the direct consequences. Instead of aliyah, they push for destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews who live across the “green line,” a place the “settlers” chose, often at great sacrifice and personal risk, so that Jews everywhere are free.

American Jews by and large don't want to be inconvenienced or to downgrade their lifestyle, but they'd dare push the Israeli government to cause more than just inconvenience to “settlers.” A two-state “solution” would involve an army turning on its people, the uprooting of families from their hometowns, their livelihoods, their spirits. And would American Jewry pick up the bill for rebuilding lives that, if Gush Katif serves as an example, could never truly be rebuilt?

Any solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict must ensure that expelling Jews from their homes is not an option. This might actually involve—and what a concept—Jews living peacefully among non-Jews, particularly Palestinian Arabs, in the “West Bank.” Such a solution demands the pain of creative thought, true tolerance, hard work, and above all, integrity. After all, American Jews have shown that their ultimate value is not a state with a Jewish majority; otherwise, they'd live here.

So the real, humanitarian solution is simple. American Jews: Expel yourselves.

Orit is author of American Jews: Expel Yourselves Read More »

Netanyahu says Iran closer to nuclear ‘red line’

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Iran was getting closer to the “red line” he set for its nuclear program and warned the international community not to be distracted by the crises in Syria and Egypt.

Tehran was continuing enrichment activities and building inter-continental ballistic missiles, which could give it a military nuclear capability, he said on CBS' “Face the Nation.”

At the United Nations in September, Netanyahu drew a red line across a cartoon bomb to illustrate the point at which Iran will have amassed enough uranium to fuel one nuclear bomb. He said Iran could reach that threshold by mid-2013.

“They haven't yet reached it but they're getting closer to it and they have to be stopped,” Netanyahu told CBS. He said the West's sanctions against Tehran needed to be intensified and backed up with the threat of a credible military option.

Netanyahu also said Iran was building faster centrifuges that could allow it to speed up its enrichment activities.

Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, has issued veiled warnings for years that it might attack Iran if international sanctions and diplomacy fail to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Israel has long insisted on the need for a convincing military threat and setting clear lines beyond which Iran's nuclear activity should not advance.

“I think it's important to note that we (Israel) can't allow it to happen. Our clocks are ticking at a different pace. We're closer than the United States, we're more vulnerable, and therefore we'll have to address this question of whether to stop Iran before the United States does,” Netanyahu said.

The Israeli prime minister said he was concerned that the military conflict in Syria and the political crisis in Egypt had pushed the Iran nuclear issue lower on the international agenda.

“There are many important issues that we have to deal with and I have a sense that there is no sense of urgency on Iran and yet Iran is the most important and the most urgent matter of all,” he said.

Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Paul Simao; Editing by Doina Chiacu

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