On Monday, at Hebrew University, I
attended a talk by Dr. Mansour Abbas, the Arab Knesset member who – remarkably
– sits in the Zionist government and Knesset while heading the Islamist party
RAM. The discussion was smartly moderated by Channel 12 journalist Rina
Matzliach and sponsored by the dovish-leaning Truman Institute headed by Prof.
Vered Vinisky-Seroussi. Matzliach, who on TV sometimes comes over as a prima
donna did not make the event about herself.
Mansour Abbas’s argument, in a nutshell, is that the conflict between Palestinian Arabs and the Zionist
enterprise is intractable. We need to live with that and find workarounds to
make day-to-day life better for every citizen.
Abbas mentioned the influence the late
Rabbi Menachem Froman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Froman had
on him. Rabbi Froman was among the first in the settler movement to articulate the
need for coexistence rooted in religious grounds and to reach out to Muslim religious
leaders to convince them to embrace the idea of tolerance and coexistence. Now,
Abbas works together with the principled and admired Rabbi Michael
Melchior https://www.rabbimichaelmelchior.org/welcome
a strictly Orthodox Jerusalem rabbi of dovish leanings.
Abbas is an HU alum and expressed his
gratitude to the university not only for the opportunity to learn dentistry but
for doing so in a Hebrew-speaking environment. He said mastering Hebrew was an
essential tool in his campaign to improve conditions for Israel’s Palestinian
Arab citizens.
To the crux of the matter. I don’t
think the message of coexistence and tolerance is much promulgated by Arab
leaders to an Arab audience in Arabic. I am unaware of any coexistence group
that is not funded by foreigners. So when a home-grown Arab leader who has
street creds comes to promulgate coexistence and tolerance I put my cynicism on
hold.
There has never been a reformation
in Islam. There are no reform mosques. Muslim civilization does not find it
easy to play second fiddle to any other civilization. Hence the partition of
India, for example. Palestinian Arab society is socially conservative. Arab
leaders tend not to come from the world of the humanities and liberal arts. Indeed,
Abbas is, as noted, a dentist. His political nemesis is the crafty,
charismatic, and uncompromising gynecologist and Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi.
Parenthetically, beyond the Green
Line, Hamas was co-founded by the now-departed pediatrician Abdel Aziz
al-Rantisi. One of its current leaders, Khaled Mashal, studied physics. Granted, Yehiya
Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh were educated more as Arabists, but I doubt in any
liberal arts sense.
The Arab educational emphasis is
practical. Naturally, there are social workers and teachers. However, pedagogically,
the best and the brightest students tend to gravitate to the hard sciences.
These are useful professions but don’t offer much space to inculcate the
message of tolerance. The Palestinian Arabs we Israelis generally encounter are
on the one hand pharmacists, doctors, nurses, and on the other construction workers,
and unskilled laborers.
Something tells me most imams are
not preaching acceptance of the other from the minbar.
Thus, having Mansour Abbas preach
tolerance – not of the vacuous Kumbaya “why-can’t-we-all-get-along" sort – but a
pragmatic self-interested broadmindedness legitimized by his authoritative reading
of the Koran is hugely valuable.
“I don’t speak in coexistence
jargon,” he granted – but I live coexistence, he implied.
As for the Islamic Sharia Council
that his party supposedly answers to – he said it is elected and that there are
term limits. This gives his stance for coexistence unique legitimacy. He
characterized the Sharia Council of his Islamist stream as a democratic model
for religious politics.
His coexistence impulse came early.
Abbas told his HU audience that he grew up in a mixed Arab town with Druze and
Christians. This was where he learned real-world broadmindedness — which
presumably predisposed him to embrace Froman’s line.
He also reminded us that the Arabs
in this Land are deeply fragmented – maybe even more than the Jews. Nonetheless,
RAM’s decision to join the Israeli government has substantial popular support.
So, Mansour Abbas’s line is: I have
my views, but I am prepared to accept that you don’t share them. And religion just
might be a bridge for everyday coexistence where secularism has failed.
He acknowledges that Israelis
distrust and suspect him of ulterior motives. Abbas said we all have
multiple, maybe even contradictory, identities. He explained that he expresses
his loyalty to Israel simply by participating in the system and swearing
allegiance to the Knesset and state.
To my mind, this is a big deal.
Consider that here in Jerusalem most Palestinian Arabs, 40 percent of the
population at least, refuse to vote in municipal elections. So they do not have
any representation on the city council. They reject the existence of Israel and
its control over the city. In the past municipal election, one Arab slate bucked
this trend to compete but Jerusalem Arabs obstinately did not go to the polls.
So I am pleased to take allegiance
where I can get it.
Mansour Abbas is also a
sociological ambassador – both ways. He instructs Arabs who want to figure out Jewish
politics to factor in Jewish existential fears. Unlike PLO and Hamas leaders,
Abbas is no Holocaust denier.
Most importantly, his recurrent
theme is there is no point in emphasizing our very real – I would add zero-sum –
differences since doing so leads to a dead end. His constituents want real
services and tangible results. That requires engaging in politics, which
necessarily involves compromise.
Speaking of tolerance, as deputy
Knesset speaker, Abbas says he has been shocked by the lack of civility – especially
between Jewish members. Anyone who watches Channel 99 (Israel’s C-SPAN) knows precisely
what he means.
On a personal level, Abbas is dismayed
at being denounced by ultra-right Jews as a Hamasnik and by the anti-Zionist
firebrands such as Ayman Odeh (a supposed progressive) and the aforementioned Ahmad
Tibi (a nationalist) as a collaborator.
He says we are all changing and evolving.
He even wants Jewish votes if he can get
them. The audience at HU was mostly Jewish even though there are loads of Arab students on campus.
I can’t help but think of Abbas in
the context of Palestinian Arab history. In the 1930s and 1940s, some Arab
clans and leaders grudgingly accepted the Zionist enterprise as an
unhappy fait accompli. They thought it best for their people to cooperate, to
be practical. They were all silenced or murdered. So when people ask where the Arab moderates are, the answer is – in the cemeteries. See https://www.amazon.com/Army-Shadows-Hillel-Cohen/dp/0520259890
Abbas’s line also recalled somewhat
of the West Bank Village Leagues leaders Menachem Begin sought to cultivate https://www.memri.org/reports/story-palestinian-village-leagues
They might have delivered autonomy to
West Bank Arabs had the PLO not bullied them out of existence.
So in a sense, Abbas may just be the
inheritor of a Palestinian Arab stream of realpolitik presumed extinct. He is
not abandoning any aspect of his identity or political, religious, or cultural beliefs
and demands but is open to compartmentalizing them, willing to be nuanced. Ready
to find workarounds.
He told us what we already knew: that Netanyahu begged him to throw his support to him and Likud and he would
have wanted to, but the ultra-right blocked Netanyahu, and moreover Abu Yair lost
all credibility – so Abbas took his chances with Naftali Bennett.
On a human level, Abbas presents as
respectful and warm exhibiting a winning self-deprecating humor.
May Allah continue to guide him on
the path of coexistence and tolerance and keep him safe.
I did it. I just canceled my subscription to The New York
Times.
I have been a reader of the NYT since high school. Yes, I
was aware of the paper’s hostility toward Zionism and its non-coverage of the
Holocaust.
And over the years, no matter my distaste for some of its Israel
coverage and the tendentious columns by Tom Friedman, Roger Cohen, and Anthony
Lewis, I did not want to stop getting the paper.
Overall the scope and breadth, and elegance of its coverage
were unsurpassed. Moreover, I wanted to expose myself to views that made me
question my positions.
However, in recent years the Times has deteriorated as a
serious newspaper/outlet.
I can cope with grossly slanted coverage.
I can even
cope with the condescending and relentless “how-to” pieces … of the how-to peel
a banana or wipe your ass variety.
But when the newspaper/outlet presents principally as a viewspaper,
when editors dictate that woke rule virtually every facet of coverage from books
to soft features – it is time to stop being a chump subscriber.
At some stage, The Times embarked on a didactic endeavor to program,
North Korean-style, a generation of readers to imbibe the propaganda of intolerance
and the myopia of woke. Newer readers probably don’t even know they are being
manipulated. Veteran readers may be too sluggish to make a move.
The American Political Science Association is now holding its 117th Annual Meeting
in Seattle, Washington even as woke values continue to permeate not just popular culture and the media but also academia.
My
own field of political science seems to have fallen prey to the woke canon. I am
not suggesting that political science is unique. Many university departments in
sociology and anthropology, not to mention Middle East Studies, in Israel, the UK,
the US, and elsewhere, have been hijacked by anti-Zionist
campaigners. Many US campuses have become hostile
environments to visibly Jewish and pro-Zionist students.
More
and more lecturers seem to
be using the classroom to push their opinions and assign readings to promote only
one point of view—theirs. When I went to university in the 1970s and 1980s, though
most professors were liberal-leaning, dissent and dialogue were tolerated,
sometimes even welcomed, and required readings were often balanced.
As old school liberal baby boomers
retire from academia, dogmatic wokers fill their places. Yesteryear’s liberal partiality
has become today’s rigid progressive convention. As a result, the social
sciences and humanities in the US, and Israel too, are often bastions of unabashedly
one-sided curricula. Witch-hunts often instigated by woke students against those traduced as racists or gender
offenders, are common occurrences on campus.
Academic literature more and more mirrors
woke convention. The May 2021 edition of Political Science Today, a
magazine of the American Political Science Association, reflected the editors’
obeisance to woke values. Obfuscation is a core element in woke-speak.
Nonetheless, I was able to decipher the editors’ intention by scrutinizing this
magazine. A theme that comes through is their concern that there are still too
many white male political scientists about (40 percent). The editors inventoried
all APSA journal authors by “Gender Self-Identification,” Again, white men
dominated while non-binary persons were way down in the rankings.
An article about the often chauvinistic
Black Lives Matter movement is uncritical except to question whether it fully
articulates the interests of “Black LGBTQIA+ individuals.” There is no mention
of antisemitism or anti-Zionism.
Another article bemoans the small
numbers of “underrepresented students” in mathematically-oriented political
science subfields. Turn the page, and a headline shouts: “Does Your Online
Course Perpetuate Institutional Discrimination?”
A piece on “Strategies for
Teaching the Insurrection and Impeachment” urges instructors to name “the
insurrection for what it was.” I make no secret of my disdain for Donald Trump,
nor do I play down the danger posed by the assault on the Capitol. Yet, a
political science classroom is not a New York Times op-ed. Teachers should
use less loaded terminology and make their lecture halls a safe space even for
Trump-supporting students.
The May 2021 edition of Political
Science Today also had brief agitprop about anti-Asian violence asserting
these crimes were inspired by America’s white colonialist past. Boloney.
In New York City, almost all
attacks in the first three months of 2021 against Chinese people were carried
out by Blacks or Hispanics.
Nationwide, between 1992-2014, hate crimes against Asian Americans were more
likely to be committed by Blacks and Hispanics, not
whites.
Further along in the magazine, a
multi-page spread gives readers biographical sketches of “diversity fellows,”
all of whom would appear to be students of color. Diversity? Finally, and I fear indicative of the
discipline’s future, skimming the list of 2020 doctoral dissertations, I found
only one by a Jewish American scholar on an Israel-related topic, and it was
devoted to “settler violence.” An entire generation of students has now grown up
oblivious to the fundamental issues of the Palestinian-Israel conflict. All
they can do is repeat the “occupation” mantra unthinkingly. What a shame.
It is even painful to watch parodies of campus woke because they are so…real.
Poli Sci should neither be boringly abstract nor hostage to
pop-political-trends. Your students need to know current events -- beyond what they come away with by scrolling through their social media feeds. Courageous teachers of politics need to inculcate tolerance and Madisonian -- not woke -- values.
My father Asher Anshel Mordechai Yager Tziad זכרונו לברכהdied at home in B'nei
Brak on Wednesday, August 25, 2021 (17 Ellul 5781) at age 98. He was eulogized at
the Spinka Synagogue in B'nai Brak where, as a Spinka Hassid, מזקני וחשובי חסידי ספינקא, he had worshipped particularly on Shabbat
and the festivals.
In Jerusalem, he davened at שומרי
אמונים ירושלים.
Born in Spinka, Rumania, in 1923, Anshel attended
local cheder and yeshiva. His mother, Risa, died when he was young. During World
War II, he was conscripted into forced labor by the Romanians allied with Nazi
Germany. His sisters Golda and Sarah were sent to Auschwitz, where Sarah died
of malnutrition. His father, Eliahu, died in the course of the war under
circumstances unknown. Close to liberation time, at Passover, Anshel could trade
his bread ration for a potato, he recalled years later. When the war was over,
he discovered that his sister Golda and brother Chaim Yitzhak had survived
(Chaim most likely had made it to Soviet lines).
From a DP camp in Germany, my father ultimately
arrived in the US, was introduced to and married my dear mother Yvette עליה השלוםin 1952. After I was
born, we lived in the Jacob Riis Housing Projects on the Lower East Side of
Manhattan.
He was traumatized and haunted by his war experiences.
Nonetheless, he tried to acclimate and learned English. He held down a series
of jobs, including butcher's assistant and eventually – with my mother's savvy intervention
– mail handler for the US Post Office.
By then he had discovered Reb Hershele's stiebel, a
Spinka enclave, between Avenue D and C where he found a “safe space.”
Outside the stiebel, Anshel never found his place in
New York and ultimately departed for Israel when I was about seven. In due course, he divorced my mother. For the
next 30 years, I did not see or speak with my father.
In Israel, he married Rivka, an immigrant from Iran,
and had two daughters. He worked as a butcher's assistant in Tel Aviv's Shuk
HaCarmel, rising well before dawn to catch a transport van to work. The work
was hard and the noise piercing which may have contributed to his early hearing
loss.
When we reconnected in the 1990s, I discovered a
father who had found a way to give full expression to his life through deepened
religiosity and ever stronger commitment to the ultra-Orthodox and Hassidic
lifestyle in the Holy Land.
A man of few words, he was Haredi in the term's
original meaning – trembling before God. He was that rare and genuine article: an
authentic Haredi.
It was told to me that when he glimpsed a Torah scholar
enter the study hall while studying the Talmud, my father would inconspicuously
close his volume so that it would not look like he had pretensions to scholarship.
In retirement - by then we had reacquainted - he continued his
early morning routine of rising at 3 am. Yet, instead of waiting for transport
to Tel Aviv, he could go to the mikva before morning prayers. He spent as much
time as possible in the beit midrash praying, reciting psalms, learning Talmud
and listening to Musar.
His Siddur and Psalms at home were well-worn. His
favorite Psalm, the one he always insisted I say when I sat with him, was 124 –
appropriate for a Holocaust survivor and a haunted man. When he felt in a
lighter mood he would tell a favorite story of the Baal Shem Tov. He tried to
attend a rebbe’s tish or simcha when possible so that his eating
would be connected to a mitzvah. Food was an opportunity to make a blessing as
much as for nourishment.
The Pater - this authentic Haredi, poor as can be – took
pleasure from mitzvot, gave charity (zealously), and constantly developed his
faith.
He would never make small talk. There was no chitchat.
Every minute counted in preparation for the World to Come. Our “conversation”
was to review the opening section of the parsha of the week.
In his later years, he allowed me to help him when he donned
his tefillin including רבינו תם.
His way of saying goodbye was to prompt me to say יחיד ורבים הלכה כרביםso that “we had
learned together.”
In addition to me, he is survived by his daughter Miri,
her husband Avishai, and their family with whom he lived for the six or so
years after Rivka passed away. Until his final day, he shared a room with his not-yet-bar-mitzva
grandson. He lived to see grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Miri, an
ultra-Orthodox Florence Nightingale, would not entrust any outside caregiver and
personally attended to his needs with an assist from Avishai. He was also
beloved by our sister Ditza of Mea Shearim and her family and by Rivka's son
Yossi.
May the memory of הרה"ח אשר
אנשל בן אליהוbe for a blessing.
אבא שלנו היה איש של מעט מילים. אבל סביר
להניח -- ואני
בטוח שאחותי דיצה ואני בהסכמה -- שהוא היה רוצה להודות לאחותנו מירי ולגיס שלנו
אבישי על המסירות נפש והטיפול שלהם, במיוחד בשנים האחרונות.
בפועל אבישי לא היה חתן אלא בן אמיתי ונאמן.
כמו כן יוסי תמיד נתן הרבה כבוד לאבא.
אנחנו כמובן זוכרים גם את רבקה ע'ה שבנה יחד
עם אשר אנשל בית נאמן בישראל.
אבא היה רוצה גם להודות לילדי משפחה שגם
הם היו חלק אינטגרלי של האווירה של אהבה וכבוד בבית. הם נתנו למירי ולאבישי לטפל באבא
בחמלה.
כמובן יוסף חיים ודיצה ובני משפחותיהםנתנו אהבה וכבוד לאבאבכל הזדמנות.
אשר אנשל היה איש של מעט מילים אבל עם
הרבה יראת שמיים.
עבור אבינו, היידישקייט
היהמַמָשִׁי ואוֹתֶנְטִי ללא פוזות בכלל.
בפרטיות בבית
בדיוק כמו בציבורהיראת אלוהים היה בדיוק אותו הדבר.
ללא ספק
יש אלו שחשבו שהוא היה איש נאיבי.אבל ללא ספק הוא
בחר להיות תמים – תפילה, תורה, מקווה, צדקה ומעשים טוביםהיו החיים שלו.
קשה להאמין בימינו, כאשר דרך ארץ כל כך
חסרה בכל מקום, שאנשל נתן דרך ארץ לכולם.
הוא אהב מצוות ומסורת. אֱמוּנָה הייתה
דרך חייו.
הוא נהנה להיות כמה שיותר בבית מדרש ובבית
הכנסת.
הוא עבד קשה שנים רבות -- קם מוקדם מאוד
-- וכשפרש מהעבודה הוא השקיע אפילו יותר זמן בתפילה ולימוד ומעשים טובים וצדקה.
צדקה הייתה התשוקה שלו.
אבא נולד בשנת אלף תשעה מאות עשרים ושלושבספינקה, היום ברומניה בהרי הקרפטים באזור של אוקראינה, רומניה והונגריה.
מדינות שאינו ידועות כידידים של העם היהודי.
להורים של אבא – סבא אליהו וסבתא ריסהזכרונו לברכה -- נולדו אנשל, חיים יצחק, ושתי אחיות גולדה ושרה.
אמה ריסה נפטרה בטרם עת.
החיים לא היו פשוטים -- ואז השואה הגיעה
לרומניהעם
מלחמת העולם השנייה.
אנשל נשלח לעבודות כפייה תחת הרומנים. גולדה ושרה נשלחו לאושוויץ – שרה נהרגה
שם, גולדה נוצלה. אבא אליהו נהרג אבל לא ברור מתי ואיפו. האח חיים יצחק שרד -- אני
לא יודע איך.
לא היה שום סיבה להישאר באירופה אחרי. חיים
יצחק עלה לארץ. אחרי שנים של המתנה במחנות פליטים באירופה,גולדה ואנשל הגרו לארצות הברית. לא היה
לו קל בארצות הברית -- הוא סבל מטראומה מכל מה שעבר באירופה.
ואז אנשל עלה לארץ בתחילת שנות ה-60.
למרות שאבא ואני לא ראינו אחד את השני
במשך 30 שנה,מירי
תמיד מספרת לי שאבא תמיד דאג לי והתפלל בשבילי. אני מאמין בזה.
כמו משפחות רבות, הנרטיב של המשפחה שלנו
מורכבת ומסובכת.
אבל ברור לכולם במאה אחוז: אבא היה יהודי
יראת שמים והוא
עשה כמיטב יכולתו למען משפחתו.
ועכשיו הוא יכול
להיות מליץ ישר עבור כל משפחתו.
*******
אבינו קיבל הרבה
נחמה מתהילים. תמיד ביקש ממני לומר ביחד איתו את הפרק הכי אהוב עליו.
When Israeli news outlet editors (many of whom
are not Orthodox) are looking for a Tisha B’Av image, they invariably pick one
of men somewhere on the ultra-Orthodox spectrum praying at the Western Wall.
Maybe next year, picture editors might consider
an image that shows ordinary observant Israelis reciting Lamentations perhaps
in non-Haredi synagogues or those in Jerusalem who gather family-style on the
Promenade overlooking the Old City.
Israel Hayom ......
Haaretz .....
I for one was buoyed by this GPO image of Prime
Minister Bennett reciting Lamentations with his son. It was at least a step
closer to how things really are, though few print outlets made room for the
picture.
When editors are on deadline especially on a
Saturday night it is easy to go for a “central casting” image, yet portraying
ordinary Israelis engaging in Jewish observance would be no less a reflection
of reality while also reinforcing the message that Tisha B’Av is a
commemoration for all Jewish Israelis — particularly the Zionist majority.
On May 26, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar let it be known that Gaza was ready to renew attacks on Israel. “What has happened is but a drill for what will come if Israel violates the al-Aksa Mosque” – whatever that means. “The occupation must know – al-Aksa has men who will defend it.”
I imagine The New York Times will get around to reporting these jingoistic remarks. First, though, the editors want to imprint in the minds of their readers https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/26/world/middleeast/gaza-israel-children.html a pictorial spread featuring capsule histories of the “at least 68 children” killed because of “indiscriminate and disproportionate” bombing by Israel. The Times’ partner paper Haaretz dutifully carries the same piece in Hebrew.
It is a damming, stinging photo-heavy indictment. What’s our defense? That some of these poor youngsters were killed by Hamas rockets that fell short or because the Islamists used them as human shields or because in war, sweet children die? Any such explanations would offend even deaf ears.
Operation Guardian of the Walls, this month’s IDF drive to counter Palestine-Gaza-Hamas aggression, is now in the history books and I am exasperated. It has happened before, this sense that I have to do something because the media is against Israel, the Diaspora is not responding adequately, and some Jewish young people are championing the Palestinian Arab side.The Times is here restating its off-reiterated argument that Israel has a “right to defend itself,” but in the name of God, not with bombs or bullets or sharp implements.
Yet I am a jaded US-born baby boomer. The media’s negative portrayal of Israel is not new to me. I think back to the 1982 Lebanon War–Operation Peace for Galilee – aimed at stopping Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization from launching attacks on Israel from Southern Lebanon (where the PLO had set up a mini-state). The 1982 media coverage confirmed in my mind that Israel would never get a fair shake from the press. This was in the days before social media, when CNN was in its infancy, and old media ruled the day. CBS, NBC, The New York Times were then in the Israel-bashing vanguard, as well as other influential papers such as The Christian Science Monitor.
JOHN CHANCELLOR OF NBC
There’s a TV image in my head. Against a smoldering Beirut skyline, NBC network news anchor John Chancellor shamelessly told viewers, “Nothing like it has ever happened in this part of the world, I kept thinking yesterday of the bombing of Madrid [an arch reference to 1936 and Franco’s Fascists] during the Spanish Civil War. What in the world is going on? Israel’s security problem on its border is fifty miles to the south. What’s an Israeli army doing here in Beirut? The answer is that we are dealing with an imperial Israel…world opinion be dammed.”
In 1982, Chancellor could have anchored from Eritrea, where 90,000 civilians were killed in some forgotten war, or from Hama in Syria, where perhaps 40,000 were slaughtered in fighting between Islamists and the regime led by Hafez al-Assad (father of the present ruler).
What did I want? For Chancellor to provide context? To emphatically denounce the PLOs intentions. To not hold Israel to standards no other country is expected to meet.
So, while I am today intensely irritated and frustrated, I have no expectations that Israel will get positive media coverage under any circumstances. What does it even mean these days that an outlet is NOT anti-Israel?
Over a piece of herring at Kiddush last Shabbes, a neighbor wondered out loud, “what’s wrong with Israel’s hasbara?”
Friend, nothing, or nothing that justifies relentless, unyielding, myopic negative coverage. There is literally nothing Israel could point out that would persuade someone predisposed against us to change their mind. Especially ashamed, smug Diaspora Jews.
Tell them the IDF sends SMSs to innocents in targeted buildings warning them to get out? Yeah, check. Point out that Hamas uses civilian, media, and NGO facilities – hospitals even – for military purposes? Check. Respond to claims Gaza is one big prison by pointing out that it shares a border with Egypt? Check. That COGAT transports thousands of lorries of food, fuel, and medicine from Israel even while Hamas is shooting at us? Yep. Done that. That we supply water and electricity to our enemies? Check. That cement and other dual-use materials were redirected by Hamas from the civilian sector? Yes, we have shown the world this is so. None of it matters.
We could point out that not many years ago, Gaza Arab motorists could be seen stuck in Tel Aviv traffic jams – that barriers then went up and movements were restricted because Israel had no other way of protecting itself from suicide bombers targeting buses and cafes. None of it matters.
Israeli hasbara has never been better. That’s a fact.
The IDF is skillful and ubiquitous on social media thanks to a strong and talented group of young people. So is the Office of the Prime Minister. In English, Hebrew, and Arabic. Even our Foreign Ministry, starved of resources by the PMO and Treasury, is nonetheless doing a yeoman’s job. On top of that, pro-Israel student and media monitoring groups that in my day had been run chiefly by busy people on a volunteer basis are today professionalized and well-funded. And they’re doing everything that can be done. Everything I would have wanted to do back in my day had we only had the resources.
We used to say that if only the world knew what the Arabs said in Arabic when they thought the West was not listening, public opinion would come our way. Nowadays, NGOs are disseminating translations from Arabic and Persian so that everyone can discover what our foes are saying almost as soon as the words come out of their mouths. It matters not a whit.
Supplementing all these efforts are hundreds of pro-Israel campaigners active on social media, with years of experience — some financed, others paying their way — tirelessly putting out tweets and posts and blogs to make the pro-Israel case.
In all these spheres, despite our best efforts, the enemy’s presence in English is overwhelming. A deluge. Scores of state and government-funded news agencies – like the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan mouthpiece TRT – craftily make the anti-Israel argument. As do Woke news sites like NowThis. Also, Palestinian Arab voices now have a powerful, multifaceted social media presence (partly thanks to EU monies). Then add the unfriendly mainstream press.
Still, I don’t think us Zionists being swamped is ultimately determinative because anyone open to what we are saying can easily find our messages. Many outsiders following the conflict have already had their blink moment. Their instincts are either with us or against us. We are broadcasting: “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America. Hello Europe and all the ships at sea…this is Israel. This is our case. Hello?”
Maybe it is simply too much to expect ordinary casual consumers of social media – Diaspora Jews particularly – to judiciously weigh the evidence and, hopefully, side with us.
Faced with pervasive media distortions and concerted messaging from seemingly credible personalities, most people will have no clue they’re being manipulated to close their minds to Israel’s position. They take at face value the bill of particulars they’ve been fed:
That Palestinians have lived in Palestine for centuries. Jesus was a Palestinian. Zionism is like maybe 100 years old. European Jewish settlers are capriciously evicting indigenous Arabs from their Jerusalem homes and elsewhere in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Jews are Judaizing and subjugating Arabs who fell under the Zionist boot with the 1948 occupation. Oh, and really, it is racial. White Jews against Black Lives Matter Arabs. Israel is an Apartheid state. Apartheid roads. Apartheid wines. Apartheid supermarkets and pharmacies. Apartheid hummus.
My conclusion is that Israel’s image problem can’t be fixed. The problem isn’t media bias — it is that we are operating in a toxic hostile environment. It doesn’t mean we should not try to do the right thing or put our message out there – but let’s temper our expectations.
One paper that doesn’t have to apologize for any history of philo-Zionism is The New York Times. The paper was owned by assimilated German Jews who, in the wake of the Holocaust, moved its stance from anti to non-Zionist. Now, under A.G. Sulzberger, Jewish only in the homeopathic trace element sense, the outlet is back to its original clenched-teeth hostility toward the Zionist idea.
With Times collaboration Haaretz began publishing a post-Zionist English edition of its Hebrew paper. The paper’s often slanted pieces provide a hechsher for censorious Diaspora Jews to side with the Palestinians. My attitude toward the BBC, Al Jazeera, the NY Times, The Washington Post, the gamut of prestige British media, Haaretz (and the various Haaretz wannabes in the Anglo-Jewish Diaspora) is to roll my eyes, take a deep breath, turn the page, or scroll on.
Moreover, media is only an element of the picture. We are up against a Diaspora Jewish establishment that, with some exceptions, finds defending Israel burdensome and onerous. Somehow a myth developed that Jewish leaders did not criticize Israel or that it took courage to speak out against “settlements” or other Israeli policies. That view is out of focus. For many organizations, a pre-Holocaust indifference or antagonism toward Zionism evolved to acceptance and even soft embrace after 1948. The US Jewish establishment was indeed a bastion of wholehearted pro-Israelism, but only between the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
However, from 1973 onwards, establishment support for Israeli policies became brittle, with organizational leaders and public intellectuals — among them Edgar Bronfman, Nachum Goldmann, Philip Klutznick, Bert Gold, Henry Siegman, Leonard Fein, Seymour Martin Lipset, Joachim Prinz, Menachem Rosensaft, Albert Vorspan, and Arthur Hertzberg (a historian of Zionism but not a Zionist historian) — remaining wishy-washy non-Zionists while noisily advocating for Israeli withdrawal to more or less the 1949 Armistice Lines.
These staunch advocates of Diaspora Judaism saw Israel – the Israel of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir – as unpredictable or uncontrolled, potentially putting Diaspora Jewry at risk (“What will the goyim say?”)
Beginning in the 1980s, Jewish personages with ties of one kind or another to US officialdom embarked on a campaign to transform the image of Yasser Arafat and the PLO. They messaged the Palestinians to stop yapping about driving the Jews into the sea. It was this change to non-zero-sum messaging that made it impossible to dissociate US Jewish support for Israeli retention of the West Bank on security grounds. Delinking rank-and-file US Jews from Judea and Samaria was essential to give various administrations a free hand to pressure for an Israeli withdrawal to the Green Line (more or less).
The Arabs needed to be cajoled into making the rhetorical change. Jerome Segal, for instance, drafted Arafat’s first declaration of Palestinian statehood in 1988 insinuating the PLO’s unstated readiness for land for peace and a two state solution. It set the stage for a fuller cosmetic makeover of the PLO undertaken by Rita Hauser, Stanley Sheinbaum, and others in 1993 that gave birth to Oslo. The goal was to create the perception – false, to my mind – that the nature of the conflict had shifted. Funding for these efforts came from dark money sources. But it wasn’t money that carried the day. These US Jews embraced gullibility about Arafat, the PLO, and Palestinian intentions, with eyes wide open.
In 1973, a group of connected but radical intellectuals, including Eugene Borowitz, founded Breira to champion Palestinian statehood without conditioning it on the Palestinians ending terror and accepting Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. A college student named Tom Friedman became active in Breira as it emerged as a pro-PLO lobby. When Breira became noxious, it essentially morphed into the New Jewish Agenda in 1980 led by Gerald Serotta. Organizationally, these were amateurish shoestring operations. But they paved the way for something bigger.
In 2007 J Street sprouted (follow the initial money trail if you’re so inclined, but as I say, message not money is the main explanation of their success) as a professional, super-well-funded agency designed to displace parve but pro-Israel AIPAC. J Street sold Diaspora Jews what they wanted to buy: you can be pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel. Pro-Israel-Pro-Peace. You can believe the Iran Nuke Deal is good. That settlements are the core problem. That Israel’s intransigence is blocking peace. Repeat: Pro-Israel-Pro-Peace.
In contrast to J Street, which claims to offer “tough love,” IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace offer a kick in the groin. A new generation of unabashed Zionism-bashers has arisen. They pay no lip service to the pro-Israel and pro-peace mantra. Historically, Jewish opposition to political Zionism is as old as Herzlian Zionism itself and there have always been anti-Zionist Jews whether ultra-Orthodox or red who didn’t pretend they were anything else. Hence no need to get our knickers totally in a twist over the latest mutant strain.
Every generation has its Alie Lilienthals and Noam Chomskys. Some, like Peter Beinart, wait until they are nearly 50 to come out as flaming anti-Zionists. These public intellectuals afford an avenue of expression for AsAJew young adults to dissociate from the Zionist enterprise and perversely feel they are doing something Jewish. Emily Wilder, the Associated Press staffer who lost her job because of her ongoing anti-Zionist campaigning, is part of the AsAJew cohort. You can lead a Jewess to water, but you can’t make her embrace her birthright. By the time young people like Wilder leave university, too many are farbissina and farbrente anti-Zionists who are unlikely to be swayed by a sentimental stroll through Yad Vashem.
Let’s put another myth to sleep. Israel was never the alpha and omega for American Jews. However, now support for Israel is tepid and thinning. Tinkering with Israel’s image in the media (even if we could influence coverage) will not win over an American Jewish community that was never wholly comfortable with the Zionist enterprise. With the US and UK Diaspora demographically shrinking and increasingly illiterate about Jewish civilization, there is only so much Zionists can do.
Being vastly outgunned on social media and in old media, the pro-Israel community needs to target its efforts where there is potential to influence. And that probably means our Zionist millennials need to challenge their fellow Diaspora millennials to swim against the tide of moral relativism and Woke Group Think.
All I am saying is that we should be realistic about what can be accomplished in the face of a Diaspora that does not have our back and a media that didn’t suddenly come to be biased, but has been historically hostile.
