The barrier built a decade ago to protect the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo from Fatah fire is being dismantled.Some residents are worried: today's tranquility is welcome, said one, but why tempt fate when there is still no peace agreement with the Palestinians, and not even direct negotiations?
Actually, direct negotiations, or a semblance of them, may be in the offing. Under intense American and EU pressure, Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority is expected grudgingly to end its year-long boycott and return to the bargaining table. But there is no sign that Abbas has any intention of seizing the moment to engage Israel in a fruitful give-and-take. Rather, the Palestinian leadership, its electoral legitimacy long expired, appears simply to have run out of excuses.
Abbas had insisted he would not talk with Benjamin Netanyahu unless Israel stopped housing construction over the Green Line. When Israel duly instituted a building moratorium, he said it was not enough since the freeze did not include Jerusalem. A further, unfulfillable precondition then followed: Israel had to commit itself in advance to withdrawing to the 1949 armistice lines. Then Abbas insisted that talks begin where they had left off with former premier Ehud Olmert, whose final magnanimous offer he had simply pocketed without comment.
Now, even as the Palestinians are being dragged back to the table, they are demanding that the construction moratorium they have denigrated for the past eleven months be extended beyond its September sunset date. If not, in the words of chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, the talks will be "buried" before they can be re-launched.
Jerusalem appears unlikely to accede to this, though the cabinet might agree to limit new building to settlement blocs: i.e., strategic areas that all agree must remain within Israel in any deal. Meanwhile, the international Quartet—consisting of the U.S., the EU, Russia, and the UN—may set parameters for direct negotiations framed by its earlier statement catering to Palestinian preconditions while giving short shrift to Israel's sensibilities. If so, Jerusalem is expected to take part only in response to a separate invitation from Washington, and without preconditions. As for the other half of the Palestinian polity, the one autocratically run by Hamas in Gaza, it refuses either to entertain an accommodation with Abbas or to accept Israel's legitimacy under any circumstances.
If the fractious Palestinian polity is in no way ready for a viable deal, and if imposing a solution on Israel is politically unfeasible and strategically self-defeating, what explains the full-court press to cajole Abbas to the table? The answer appears to be this: George Mitchell (for the American administration), Tony Blair (for the Quartet), and Catherine Ashton (for the EU) are deeply invested in the notion that Abbas is prepared to deliver on a historic two-state solution, and therefore even the illusion of momentum trumps the status quo.
But does it? Yes, Israel wants to achieve a breakthrough through direct talks. But ill-conceived negotiations, in which Abbas is encouraged to advance maximalist demands regarding refugees, borders, Jerusalem, and security, could prove as counterproductive this time around as at Camp David in 2000—when, unprepared for compromise, the Palestinians unleashed a years-long paroxysm of violence.
Getting Abbas to the table, like dismantling the concrete slabs protecting Gilo, is the easy part.
--
August 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
Getting Abbas to the Table
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Rank Rivalries In the IDF
A bare majority of Americans know that David Petraeus commands U.S. forces in Afghanistan. It's anyone's guess how many can name Navy Adm. Mike Mullen as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In contrast, the IDF chief of staff is a household name in Israel, has operational control over the armed services and is an ex-officio cabinet member.
That is why the current friction between Defense Minister Ehud Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi is making headlines in Israel. Barak decided against extending Ashkenazi's term beyond February 2011 and has embarked on a highly-publicized – some say premature and humiliating – course of finding a replacement. With no dazzling general waiting in the wings the three main contenders are Yoav Galant, chief of the southern command and rumored to be Barak's favored candidate, Benny Gantz, deputy chief of staff, and Gadi Eizenkot, head of the northern command. As the unpopular leader of the waning Labor party, with his own political fortunes uncertain, Barak would not mind having Ashkenazi take early retirement and have his man ensconced sooner rather than later.
Lacking institutional processes, the quest for the chief of staff job has characteristically involved behind-the-scenes scheming. In this instance the curtain has been clumsily lifted. Thus someone – perhaps with Barak's interests at heart – leaked top secret testimony from the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that laid blame for the IDF's poorly-executed interdiction of the Gaza-bound Turkish on Ashkenazi's shoulders. Then came the bombshell that Galant had engaged wily political strategist Eyal Arad – a nemesis of Premier Benjamin Netanyahu -- to help him elbow out the incumbent. Television pundit Amnon Abramowitz broke the story based on a leaked strategy paper containing Arad's logo. Galant says he knows nothing about the paper; Arad denies authorship. The matter is now being investigated by the attorney-general.
Genuine or forged the document is a jarring reminder that the IDF chief of staff role is hardly above the political fray.
There are no ex-generals in the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives. Since 1900, only one general, Dwight Eisenhower, reached White House. In Israel, however, a generalship is a stepping stone to politics. Prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak were former chiefs of staff; Ariel Sharon was a major-general. Since the 1967 War, only a handful of chiefs of staff have opted against a political career.
Yet, as an institution, Israel's military is by and large apolitical just as David Ben-Gurion wanted it to be. The supremacy of the civilian echelon is sacrosanct. Still, the political leanings of prospective chiefs of staff plays a role in their selection. Moreover, influence runs both ways. In 1949 active army generals associated with the left-wing Mapai party appeared on its Knesset candidate's list – nowadays there is a cooling off period before officers can enter politics. In 1956, then chief of staff Moshe Dayan donned civilian clothes to lobby the ruling Mapai party on a sensitive security matter. General Mordechai Gur bickered with Dayan over policy when he served as Golda Meir's defense minister after the Yom Kippur War. More recently, Sharon refused to extend General Moshe Ya'alon's term as chief of staff because he was unenthusiastic about the Gaza disengagement.
That said, jingoism is not a feature of the high command's ranks. When generals formally enter politics their positions are anything but monolithic; some like Amnon Lipkin-Shahak turn left, while others like Ya'alon head right. Tel Aviv University professor Yoram Peri, a former editor of the now defunct Labor newspaper Dvar, maintains that with Israeli politics stalemated, politicians find it convenient to push ex-generals who share their security orientation -- whether hawks or doves -- into the front ranks of politics.
As Israelis gloomily observe the spectacle of their top generals and defense minister being investigated over the leaked strategy paper, and with the process of picking Ashkenazi's replacement now on hold, they can only trust that the cutthroat competition for the military's top spot and the lack of esprit de corps exposed by this episode will not impact life-and-death national security decision making.
That is why the current friction between Defense Minister Ehud Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi is making headlines in Israel. Barak decided against extending Ashkenazi's term beyond February 2011 and has embarked on a highly-publicized – some say premature and humiliating – course of finding a replacement. With no dazzling general waiting in the wings the three main contenders are Yoav Galant, chief of the southern command and rumored to be Barak's favored candidate, Benny Gantz, deputy chief of staff, and Gadi Eizenkot, head of the northern command. As the unpopular leader of the waning Labor party, with his own political fortunes uncertain, Barak would not mind having Ashkenazi take early retirement and have his man ensconced sooner rather than later.
Lacking institutional processes, the quest for the chief of staff job has characteristically involved behind-the-scenes scheming. In this instance the curtain has been clumsily lifted. Thus someone – perhaps with Barak's interests at heart – leaked top secret testimony from the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that laid blame for the IDF's poorly-executed interdiction of the Gaza-bound Turkish on Ashkenazi's shoulders. Then came the bombshell that Galant had engaged wily political strategist Eyal Arad – a nemesis of Premier Benjamin Netanyahu -- to help him elbow out the incumbent. Television pundit Amnon Abramowitz broke the story based on a leaked strategy paper containing Arad's logo. Galant says he knows nothing about the paper; Arad denies authorship. The matter is now being investigated by the attorney-general.
Genuine or forged the document is a jarring reminder that the IDF chief of staff role is hardly above the political fray.
There are no ex-generals in the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives. Since 1900, only one general, Dwight Eisenhower, reached White House. In Israel, however, a generalship is a stepping stone to politics. Prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak were former chiefs of staff; Ariel Sharon was a major-general. Since the 1967 War, only a handful of chiefs of staff have opted against a political career.
Yet, as an institution, Israel's military is by and large apolitical just as David Ben-Gurion wanted it to be. The supremacy of the civilian echelon is sacrosanct. Still, the political leanings of prospective chiefs of staff plays a role in their selection. Moreover, influence runs both ways. In 1949 active army generals associated with the left-wing Mapai party appeared on its Knesset candidate's list – nowadays there is a cooling off period before officers can enter politics. In 1956, then chief of staff Moshe Dayan donned civilian clothes to lobby the ruling Mapai party on a sensitive security matter. General Mordechai Gur bickered with Dayan over policy when he served as Golda Meir's defense minister after the Yom Kippur War. More recently, Sharon refused to extend General Moshe Ya'alon's term as chief of staff because he was unenthusiastic about the Gaza disengagement.
That said, jingoism is not a feature of the high command's ranks. When generals formally enter politics their positions are anything but monolithic; some like Amnon Lipkin-Shahak turn left, while others like Ya'alon head right. Tel Aviv University professor Yoram Peri, a former editor of the now defunct Labor newspaper Dvar, maintains that with Israeli politics stalemated, politicians find it convenient to push ex-generals who share their security orientation -- whether hawks or doves -- into the front ranks of politics.
As Israelis gloomily observe the spectacle of their top generals and defense minister being investigated over the leaked strategy paper, and with the process of picking Ashkenazi's replacement now on hold, they can only trust that the cutthroat competition for the military's top spot and the lack of esprit de corps exposed by this episode will not impact life-and-death national security decision making.
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Meeting Elhanan Yakira
Elhanan Yakira, professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has all the credentials of a man of the Israeli Left: born and raised in Tel Aviv as a Zionist and socialist , a lifelong secular Jew, an opponent of West Bank settlements, an advocate of government intervention in economic policy. Yet many of his colleagues on the Left denounce him as a right-winger and a traitor.
Why? Because he maintains that Israel was not born in sin at the expense of the Palestinians Arabs and that it has a right to exist as a Jewish state. Yakira's critique of his fellow leftists, Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust (subtitle: "Three Essays on Denial, Forgetting, and the Delegitimation of Israel"), was rejected by five Israeli publishers before finally being brought out in 2007-- only to be greeted in the Hebrew press by a months-long silence. The controversy, when it at last erupted, was fierce; Yakir, a philosopher who did not set out to be a polemicist, had started a debate on the Left.
In April, Elhanan Yakira will be speaking in the United States about the English-language edition of his iconoclastic work, just published by Cambridge University Press and carrying endorsements by, among others, Michael Walzer and Fouad Ajami. We talked in the living room of his Jerusalem home .
In Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust, you coin a phrase, "the community of opprobrium." Members of this community maintain that Israel exploits the Holocaust to justify its illegitimate existence, and that the Jews have been doing to the Palestinian Arabs what the Nazis did to the Jews. In brief: blame Israel and the Jews first.
Well, I should explain that the Hebrew essays- only later did they become a book - were intended as a polemic against the Israeli community of opprobrium. As I worked on the English edition, it became clear that the Israelis are nurtured by an international community: a huge subculture devoted to the de-legitimation of Israel, the Zionist idea, and the Jewish nation. What I did in the book was essentially to take one element of this campaign-the manipulation of the Holocaust-and show how it was morally and intellectually wrong.
Who are the big names in the Israeli community of opprobrium?
There are so many, and no doubt most of them are unfamiliar to English readers. Haifa-born Ilan Pappe, who now teaches in England, completely embraces the Palestinian narrative. There is Yehuda Shenhav, who has a new book out challenging the right of Israel to exist even within the 1967 "Green Line." I devote part of my book to Adi Ophir, former editor of the post-modernist Hebrew journal Theory and Criticism and an academic at Tel Aviv University and the Shalom Hartman Institute. There is also Oren Yiftachel at Ben-Gurion University, who speaks of Zionism as a "colonialism of refugees" and "creeping apartheid." Then there is the Haaretz crowd, including Amira Hass and Gideon Levy. Outside Israel, a key name is the historian Tony Judt, with his advocacy of a bi-national state.
The community refers to Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria as, in your words, "occupation with a capital O."
To be perfectly frank, I accept much of their criticism: the settlement situation is catastrophic. But what the capital-O crowd advocates is the now fashionable "one-state solution." It's completely unworkable. Daft! They also refer to Zionism as guilty of "original sin." Their opposition to Israeli policies is so visceral that it carries them to the point where they support policies that are, in effect, annihilationist.
You write that "there is not much point in talking with the anti-Zionists."
That's right. There is no point. They can't be swayed by facts. Their anti-Zionism has a structural affinity to anti-Semitism. It is irrational. I don't want to speculate or indulge in psychoanalytic explanations. Instead, what I do in the book is to talk about anti-Zionism.
It is a condition that seems to have permeated the Israel Left.
It's actually a complicated picture. I am convinced that the silent majority on the Israeli Left is not anti-Zionist. That is certainly the case in my department at the university. But the anti-Zionists are highly mobilized. They combine ideological zeal with academic pretense—or, rather, their academic work is placed at the service of their ideology. These instructors have created an uncomfortable climate in the classroom. I myself never use my lectures as an excuse to propound my political views.
Over time, not only have the academic anti-Zionists had a devastating influence in the universities, but everything they say is nurtured and amplified by the media and the international community of opprobrium. It's a vicious circle. The non-Israelis point to the Israelis in justifying their own anti-Zionist line. For their part, the Israelis basically direct their efforts toward the outside world, which rewards them by inviting them to travel, speak, and publish their academically worthless rubbish.
Let's talk about Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), to whom you devote an entire chapter in your book. By coincidence, the first Hebrew translation of her magnum opus, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), is just out in Hebrew. In reviewing it, Shlomo Avineri has said that she was not tainted by Jewish self-hatred but was "a proud Jew."
I agree; she was a proud Jew. She was also a complicated Jew, and extremely ambivalent about her own Jewish identity. Though at times in her life she operated in a very Jewish milieu, she knew very little about Judaism. She grappled especially with, on the one hand, the need for Jewish political expression through a state and, on the other hand, her opposition to Jewish particularism. Still, until her death—we can't speculate beyond that—I don't believe she would have challenged the right to Jewish self-determination or countenanced calls to dismantle the state of Israel.
You refer to her Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) "a bad book" and "morally scandalous."
Well, she talks about things she doesn't understand. Her portrait of Adolf Eichmann was harnessed to her larger polemical aims. The concept of the "banality of evil," which she made famous, wasn't even hers. It originated with the German philosopher Karl Jaspers—who by the way stood courageously by his Jewish wife against the Nazis. Jaspers went on to write a book about German guilt, which Arendt read. The term "banality" appears in his letters to her.
Moreover, the Eichmann book does not propound a real theory. What she said about the "banality of evil" was intellectual gymnastics, pathetic nonsense.
In the controversy over Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt was accused by her friend Gershom Scholem of lacking ahavat Yisrael, fidelity to the Jewish people.
Yes, she had this inner conflict about her Judaism and about Israel. She grappled with the place of the Jew in European culture. Her writings are often interpreted as relating to the place of Jews and of Israel on the global stage, but in fact she was addressing the dilemma of how others, particularly Westerners, understand Jews and Jewish identity. Her life was the embodiment of this dilemma—which has now been transferred to Israel and within Israel.
So what was her answer to the Jewish problem?
Integration. But I am not sure she had a coherent position. About Zionism, as I say, she was always ambivalent. That ambivalence was Hannah Arendt.
An ambivalent thinker with an incoherent position, yet an icon whose writings are constantly invoked by the community of opprobrium.
Exactly. An entire Arendt hagiography has evolved. My feeling is she would not appreciate being so used, but it is mind-boggling how many anti-Zionist Jews and Israelis, relying partially on her work, play such an important role in the campaign against Israel.
What impels some Diaspora Jews to lead the charge against Israel? You contrast them with the Chinese Diaspora, which appears to react with equanimity to the truly egregious human-rights violations of Beijing.
Yes, the Jews, unlike the Chinese, somehow feel pressured to dissociate themselves from their ancestral homeland. You'd have to ask the one-state proponent Tony Judt or the philosopher Judith Butler, who is pushing the anti-Israel boycott, to explain what motivates them and why they are emotionally invested with Israel to such an unhealthy degree.
-- March 2010
Why? Because he maintains that Israel was not born in sin at the expense of the Palestinians Arabs and that it has a right to exist as a Jewish state. Yakira's critique of his fellow leftists, Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust (subtitle: "Three Essays on Denial, Forgetting, and the Delegitimation of Israel"), was rejected by five Israeli publishers before finally being brought out in 2007-- only to be greeted in the Hebrew press by a months-long silence. The controversy, when it at last erupted, was fierce; Yakir, a philosopher who did not set out to be a polemicist, had started a debate on the Left.
In April, Elhanan Yakira will be speaking in the United States about the English-language edition of his iconoclastic work, just published by Cambridge University Press and carrying endorsements by, among others, Michael Walzer and Fouad Ajami. We talked in the living room of his Jerusalem home .
In Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust, you coin a phrase, "the community of opprobrium." Members of this community maintain that Israel exploits the Holocaust to justify its illegitimate existence, and that the Jews have been doing to the Palestinian Arabs what the Nazis did to the Jews. In brief: blame Israel and the Jews first.
Well, I should explain that the Hebrew essays- only later did they become a book - were intended as a polemic against the Israeli community of opprobrium. As I worked on the English edition, it became clear that the Israelis are nurtured by an international community: a huge subculture devoted to the de-legitimation of Israel, the Zionist idea, and the Jewish nation. What I did in the book was essentially to take one element of this campaign-the manipulation of the Holocaust-and show how it was morally and intellectually wrong.
Who are the big names in the Israeli community of opprobrium?
There are so many, and no doubt most of them are unfamiliar to English readers. Haifa-born Ilan Pappe, who now teaches in England, completely embraces the Palestinian narrative. There is Yehuda Shenhav, who has a new book out challenging the right of Israel to exist even within the 1967 "Green Line." I devote part of my book to Adi Ophir, former editor of the post-modernist Hebrew journal Theory and Criticism and an academic at Tel Aviv University and the Shalom Hartman Institute. There is also Oren Yiftachel at Ben-Gurion University, who speaks of Zionism as a "colonialism of refugees" and "creeping apartheid." Then there is the Haaretz crowd, including Amira Hass and Gideon Levy. Outside Israel, a key name is the historian Tony Judt, with his advocacy of a bi-national state.
The community refers to Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria as, in your words, "occupation with a capital O."
To be perfectly frank, I accept much of their criticism: the settlement situation is catastrophic. But what the capital-O crowd advocates is the now fashionable "one-state solution." It's completely unworkable. Daft! They also refer to Zionism as guilty of "original sin." Their opposition to Israeli policies is so visceral that it carries them to the point where they support policies that are, in effect, annihilationist.
You write that "there is not much point in talking with the anti-Zionists."
That's right. There is no point. They can't be swayed by facts. Their anti-Zionism has a structural affinity to anti-Semitism. It is irrational. I don't want to speculate or indulge in psychoanalytic explanations. Instead, what I do in the book is to talk about anti-Zionism.
It is a condition that seems to have permeated the Israel Left.
It's actually a complicated picture. I am convinced that the silent majority on the Israeli Left is not anti-Zionist. That is certainly the case in my department at the university. But the anti-Zionists are highly mobilized. They combine ideological zeal with academic pretense—or, rather, their academic work is placed at the service of their ideology. These instructors have created an uncomfortable climate in the classroom. I myself never use my lectures as an excuse to propound my political views.
Over time, not only have the academic anti-Zionists had a devastating influence in the universities, but everything they say is nurtured and amplified by the media and the international community of opprobrium. It's a vicious circle. The non-Israelis point to the Israelis in justifying their own anti-Zionist line. For their part, the Israelis basically direct their efforts toward the outside world, which rewards them by inviting them to travel, speak, and publish their academically worthless rubbish.
Let's talk about Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), to whom you devote an entire chapter in your book. By coincidence, the first Hebrew translation of her magnum opus, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), is just out in Hebrew. In reviewing it, Shlomo Avineri has said that she was not tainted by Jewish self-hatred but was "a proud Jew."
I agree; she was a proud Jew. She was also a complicated Jew, and extremely ambivalent about her own Jewish identity. Though at times in her life she operated in a very Jewish milieu, she knew very little about Judaism. She grappled especially with, on the one hand, the need for Jewish political expression through a state and, on the other hand, her opposition to Jewish particularism. Still, until her death—we can't speculate beyond that—I don't believe she would have challenged the right to Jewish self-determination or countenanced calls to dismantle the state of Israel.
You refer to her Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) "a bad book" and "morally scandalous."
Well, she talks about things she doesn't understand. Her portrait of Adolf Eichmann was harnessed to her larger polemical aims. The concept of the "banality of evil," which she made famous, wasn't even hers. It originated with the German philosopher Karl Jaspers—who by the way stood courageously by his Jewish wife against the Nazis. Jaspers went on to write a book about German guilt, which Arendt read. The term "banality" appears in his letters to her.
Moreover, the Eichmann book does not propound a real theory. What she said about the "banality of evil" was intellectual gymnastics, pathetic nonsense.
In the controversy over Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt was accused by her friend Gershom Scholem of lacking ahavat Yisrael, fidelity to the Jewish people.
Yes, she had this inner conflict about her Judaism and about Israel. She grappled with the place of the Jew in European culture. Her writings are often interpreted as relating to the place of Jews and of Israel on the global stage, but in fact she was addressing the dilemma of how others, particularly Westerners, understand Jews and Jewish identity. Her life was the embodiment of this dilemma—which has now been transferred to Israel and within Israel.
So what was her answer to the Jewish problem?
Integration. But I am not sure she had a coherent position. About Zionism, as I say, she was always ambivalent. That ambivalence was Hannah Arendt.
An ambivalent thinker with an incoherent position, yet an icon whose writings are constantly invoked by the community of opprobrium.
Exactly. An entire Arendt hagiography has evolved. My feeling is she would not appreciate being so used, but it is mind-boggling how many anti-Zionist Jews and Israelis, relying partially on her work, play such an important role in the campaign against Israel.
What impels some Diaspora Jews to lead the charge against Israel? You contrast them with the Chinese Diaspora, which appears to react with equanimity to the truly egregious human-rights violations of Beijing.
Yes, the Jews, unlike the Chinese, somehow feel pressured to dissociate themselves from their ancestral homeland. You'd have to ask the one-state proponent Tony Judt or the philosopher Judith Butler, who is pushing the anti-Israel boycott, to explain what motivates them and why they are emotionally invested with Israel to such an unhealthy degree.
-- March 2010
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Marranos in Reverse
At first blush, the blog reads like any modish commentary on the weekly Torah portion, complete with knowing references to the Mishnah and the building of the Tabernacle in the desert. Only upon closer examination does it become evident that the discussion of the tabernacle as a medium for drawing nearer to God is a precursor to the claim that, nowadays, God can be worshipped "directly." The blogger is a follower of "Yeshua"—a Jewish believer in Jesus.
In Jewish eyes they are apostates, but a group of "Messianic Jews" living in Israel say they follow authentic Jewish lives in the footsteps of Jesus. Spiritually akin to the Jews for Jesus movement, they differ in one salient respect: they tend not to engage in overt proselytizing. They are also much more informally organized, consisting mostly of local leaders and followers who maintain their faith through personal relationships and e-mail lists.
No one knows how many believers live in Israel—estimates vary from 5,000 to 15,000; there are said to be a hundred congregations. Many immigrated under the Law of Return or underwent Orthodox conversions upon arrival; some are native-born, and some are married to Christian spouses.
Though ardent in their faith, Messianic Jews are usually discreet about sharing their beliefs. The immigrants especially have every reason to be cautious, fearing loss of livelihood or citizenship if exposed. As for those who are "out of the closet," they face open and sometimes violent opposition. In December, police charged an Orthodox extremist with bombing the home and gravely wounding the son of a Messianic family in the West Bank town of Ariel. Last month in northern Israel, police arrested two men for setting fire to a car belonging to a Messianic Jew. In Beersheba, after years of harassment, Messianic Jews took the city's Sephardi rabbi and an anti-missionary group to court. Today a judge is scheduled to hear final testimony and closing arguments.
During the 14th and 15th centuries, the bona fides of conversos, Jews forced to embrace Christianity in Spain and Portugal, was always suspect; they were denigrated as Marranos (swine). Some number of them did live double lives: outwardly Christian while secretly adhering to Judaism. In cloaking their own faith, some Messianic Jews today feel, incongruously enough, that they are Marranos in reverse.
The logic is questionable at best. Little if anything connects the situation of Jews forced to convert to Christianity upon pain of expulsion or death with Jews who have found salvation through Jesus and yet—perversely, to their fellow Jews—insist on adhering to their identity as Jews. The courts will sort out the issues of law and civil liberties. In the meantime, in a country where identity, citizenship, and religious affiliation are intertwined with still-vivid historical memories, the presence of these Messianic Jews poses a unique challenge to the broadmindedness of Israeli society.
-- / March 2010
In Jewish eyes they are apostates, but a group of "Messianic Jews" living in Israel say they follow authentic Jewish lives in the footsteps of Jesus. Spiritually akin to the Jews for Jesus movement, they differ in one salient respect: they tend not to engage in overt proselytizing. They are also much more informally organized, consisting mostly of local leaders and followers who maintain their faith through personal relationships and e-mail lists.
No one knows how many believers live in Israel—estimates vary from 5,000 to 15,000; there are said to be a hundred congregations. Many immigrated under the Law of Return or underwent Orthodox conversions upon arrival; some are native-born, and some are married to Christian spouses.
Though ardent in their faith, Messianic Jews are usually discreet about sharing their beliefs. The immigrants especially have every reason to be cautious, fearing loss of livelihood or citizenship if exposed. As for those who are "out of the closet," they face open and sometimes violent opposition. In December, police charged an Orthodox extremist with bombing the home and gravely wounding the son of a Messianic family in the West Bank town of Ariel. Last month in northern Israel, police arrested two men for setting fire to a car belonging to a Messianic Jew. In Beersheba, after years of harassment, Messianic Jews took the city's Sephardi rabbi and an anti-missionary group to court. Today a judge is scheduled to hear final testimony and closing arguments.
During the 14th and 15th centuries, the bona fides of conversos, Jews forced to embrace Christianity in Spain and Portugal, was always suspect; they were denigrated as Marranos (swine). Some number of them did live double lives: outwardly Christian while secretly adhering to Judaism. In cloaking their own faith, some Messianic Jews today feel, incongruously enough, that they are Marranos in reverse.
The logic is questionable at best. Little if anything connects the situation of Jews forced to convert to Christianity upon pain of expulsion or death with Jews who have found salvation through Jesus and yet—perversely, to their fellow Jews—insist on adhering to their identity as Jews. The courts will sort out the issues of law and civil liberties. In the meantime, in a country where identity, citizenship, and religious affiliation are intertwined with still-vivid historical memories, the presence of these Messianic Jews poses a unique challenge to the broadmindedness of Israeli society.
-- / March 2010
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Allon's Legacy
It was fitting that Benny Begin, son of the late Likud-party prime minister Menachem Begin, should have been the cabinet minister representing Israel's government at the annual memorial service on Monday for Labor-party icon Yigal Allon. On the Zionist political spectrum, the Begins are stalwarts of the Right, whereas Allon was decidedly a man of the Left. Yet the inheritors of their respective legacies share a sense of clarity about Jewish rights in Israel, a desire for genuine accommodation with the Arabs, and an emphatic insistence on defensible borders.
Allon was born in 1918 in the Lower Galilee and died 30 years ago. A leading figure in the Haganah—the pre-state self-defense underground operated by the left-wing Zionist establishment—he was a founder of its Palmah special-operations unit. The experience made him a lifelong proponent of preemptive military action.
During the 1948 War of Independence, Allon, by now a general, participated in many fateful campaigns, including the liberation of the Negev. Although he left the armed forces in 1950, he continued to be widely viewed as Israel's foremost strategic thinker. Allon never forgave David Ben-Gurion for not having ordered the IDF to capture the Old City and the West Bank during the war. The 1949 armistice lines, he said, failed to provide Israel with strategic depth.
After Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day war, Allon helped form a social-democratic movement that would evolve into today's Labor party. He supported settlement-building where militarily justified while opposing construction near Arab population centers. In 1968 he facilitated the Jewish return to Hebron on both security and religious-cultural grounds. At the same time, he warned that failure either to annex or to disengage from most of the Arab-populated territories would transform Israel into a colonial power.
Allon addressed Israel's topographic and demographic dilemmas in what became known as the Allon Plan. It proposed setting the country's border with Jordan at the Jordan River, fostering a belt of Israeli settlements in a 12-mile strip of land along the Jordan Valley rift, and handing over the rest of the West Bank with its Arab-population centers to Jordan. The plan was never adopted, but Allon's argument that the West Bank needed to be demilitarized, and that Israel ought to control access from the east, is today an essential plank in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's support for a two-state solution.
-- March 2010
Allon was born in 1918 in the Lower Galilee and died 30 years ago. A leading figure in the Haganah—the pre-state self-defense underground operated by the left-wing Zionist establishment—he was a founder of its Palmah special-operations unit. The experience made him a lifelong proponent of preemptive military action.
During the 1948 War of Independence, Allon, by now a general, participated in many fateful campaigns, including the liberation of the Negev. Although he left the armed forces in 1950, he continued to be widely viewed as Israel's foremost strategic thinker. Allon never forgave David Ben-Gurion for not having ordered the IDF to capture the Old City and the West Bank during the war. The 1949 armistice lines, he said, failed to provide Israel with strategic depth.
After Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day war, Allon helped form a social-democratic movement that would evolve into today's Labor party. He supported settlement-building where militarily justified while opposing construction near Arab population centers. In 1968 he facilitated the Jewish return to Hebron on both security and religious-cultural grounds. At the same time, he warned that failure either to annex or to disengage from most of the Arab-populated territories would transform Israel into a colonial power.
Allon addressed Israel's topographic and demographic dilemmas in what became known as the Allon Plan. It proposed setting the country's border with Jordan at the Jordan River, fostering a belt of Israeli settlements in a 12-mile strip of land along the Jordan Valley rift, and handing over the rest of the West Bank with its Arab-population centers to Jordan. The plan was never adopted, but Allon's argument that the West Bank needed to be demilitarized, and that Israel ought to control access from the east, is today an essential plank in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's support for a two-state solution.
-- March 2010
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
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