Phyllis Goldstein's A Convenient Hatred: A Short History of Antisemitism Reviewed

Impervious to Truth

With some one-thousand books currently in print on the subject, does the world desperately need another tome on anti-Semitism? Who will read it and what difference will it make? After all, in Europe prejudice against Jews persists in its historic ebb and flow with anti-Israelism joining the roster of "reasons" why Jews are held in contempt. Across the Atlantic, 35 million Americans reportedly hold deeply anti-Semitic views. And worldwide 90 percent of Muslims surveyed by the Pew Research Center hold negative attitudes toward Jews.

What makes the appearance of Phyllis Goldstein's A Convenient Hatred: A Short History of Antisemitism nevertheless timely is that she writes not primarily as a historian or polemicist but as a teacher of tolerance. It is left to Sir Harold Evans's foreword to acknowledge outright that anti-Semitism "is a mental condition conducive to paranoia and impervious to truth." Still, the hope seems to be that the book, published by the liberal-minded "Facing History And Ourselves" educational foundation, can inoculate against incipient anti-Semitism among high-school and college students. On the premise that human beings are capable of both good and evil there is every incentive to continue this battle no matter the odds of victory.

Writing in a lucid style that is accessible without being condescending, Goldstein synthesizes and contextualizes the history of the Jews as she describes the relentless hatred they have confronted. Did anti-Semitism begin because Jews stood apart refusing to embrace the same Gods that more powerful civilizations did? Or did it start when they lost their sovereignty and were scattered onside the boundaries of the Land of Israel in the Diaspora? Both possibilities are proffered.

This much the author makes clear: anti-Semitism is as ancient as the Jewish people. The first pogrom – or regime orchestrated rioting against Jews – dates to Greek-dominated ancient Alexandria which also has the distinction of spawning the first blood libel. Soon enough Greek and Roman stereotypes "dehumanized and demonized Jews as a group."

By 325 C.E. as Roman Christianity solidified its hegemony, Church fathers taught their flock to detest the Jews. St. Augustine initially preached they should not be destroyed completely so that they might serve as an example for Christians about the consequences of rejecting Jesus. With the birth of Islam in Arabia (circa. 570), Jews found themselves at the mercy of yet another imperial empire which mostly tolerated them so long as they accepted their place of dhimmi inferiority and paid tribute. Within 200 years of the religion's emergence, 90% of all Jews lived under Islamic rule. "How Jews were treated in a particular place always depended on who was king or caliph. A ruler who was tolerant of Jews …might be followed by one who was greedy, cruel, or just weak," writes Goldstein.

Later, when Christian crusaders sought to roll back Islamic advances Jews invariably paid the price. Between 1096-1149 scores of Jewish communities in Europe were decimated by Christians on their way to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims. For Christian civilization subjugating the Jews wasn't enough. Over a 300-year period beginning in 1144, Christians in England, France and Germany promulgated the calumny that Jews needed the blood of Christians for ritual purposes. When in 1347 bubonic plague struck in Italy the Jews were blamed for poisoning the wells. Without a country of their own, a perpetual defenseless minority, thousands of Jews were scapegoated and murdered. Take the French Christians who marked St. Valentine's Day in 1349 by burning Jews alive. Barred from owning land and with many professions prohibited to them all Jews were demonized because a minority turned to the "sin" of money lending. All the while, fanatical Dominican, Franciscan and Jesuit orders competed in their cruelty against the Jews.

In the rogues gallery of haters, Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella go down in history as having ordered the forced deportation in 1492 of the Jews from an Iberian Peninsula newly liberated from Muslim control. Yet, as Goldstein shows, this expulsion was by no means unique; Jews were repeatedly expelled from France, Germany, Hungary and Lithuania and once from England. They headed for the Muslim countries or toward Eastern Europe. Neither offered safe haven for long.

In Europe, by 1537 the founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther only deepened Christianity's teaching of contempt against the Jews. Paradoxically, there were interludes when the Catholic Church found it expedient to protect Jews under its domination. And yet when Polish rulers in 1200 invited Jews to settle in their towns hoping their presence would bring economic prosperity, it was the Church that preached against granting them even limited rights. Jews who settled further east in rural areas of the Ukraine faced a no less malicious and violence-prone Orthodox Church.

With modernity came the prospect of acceptance. If only Jews would acculturate, even assimilate, anti-Semitism might atrophy. Yet, to paraphrase Napoleon, even where Jews abjured claims of nationhood they were nevertheless not fully accepted as individuals. European Jews who converted to Christianity in hopes of blending in discovered that "the 'age of enlightenment' ended some of the isolation, discrimination, and humiliation Jews had experienced" even as new obstacles surfaced. Nationalisms emerged that viewed the Jews, conversions notwithstanding, as foreign within the body politic.

Goldstein paints on a broad historical canvas though with welcome vignettes of human interest. We meet Wilhelm Marr who invented the term "antisemitism" not to describe pathology, but to explain his hostility to the Jews. Economics, too, played its role then as now. The dislocation engendered by the industrial revolution made Jews the target of antagonism. And readers are reminded that Jews are hated for fomenting capitalism and communism; for being clannish and cosmopolitan.

Old lies never fade away they just metastasize. Though the Russian Czar's secret police fabricated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1907 this nefarious conspiracy falsehood has thrived ever since first under the Nazis (and with a small push from Henry Ford in the United States) and today remains widely fashionable in the Muslim Mideast. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt hardly invented the insinuation that Jews are culpable of dual-loyalty. That falsehood was in vogue already by the end of World War I when German Jews were charged with helping the enemy and stabbing the Fatherland in the back.

Wisely, Goldstein does not dwell on the Final Solution beyond reporting what is necessary in the context of the overall narrative. While not overlooking the alliance between the Palestinian Arab mufti of Jerusalem and Hitler, she moves swiftly on to post-Holocaust anti-Semitism. Her capsule history of the Arabs' rejection of Israel is meticulously fair-minded reporting that in the course of the 1948 fighting Palestinian Arabs became refugees while noting that "less attention" has been paid to the 875,000 Jews in the Arab world who were forced from their homes. Nor does she gloss over the continuing Muslim penchant for anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories including the cant that Jews carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The torture murders of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and Ilan Halimi in a Paris suburb are given their due.

Goldstein also covers left-wing anti-Semitism born in Stalin's USSR at the start of the Cold War and now morphed into the "progressive" anti-Zionism most glaringly on display at the 2001 UN's Durban Conference. "Nearly every slander hurled at Jews over the centuries was expressed," at that forum she writes. Anti-globalization sentiment on the right is explained by its xenophobic opposition to "the opening of national borders to ideas, people, and investments." The author might have said more about the no less dangerous left-wing strain.

This is a remarkably concise work (360 pages) covering an extensive period so there is room to quibble. About, for instance, Goldstein's kumbayah description of the Soviet Jewry movement in the United States as a largely ecumenical affair; her view that the movement enjoyed the support of American officialdom is at variance with secretary of state Henry Kissinger's determination to put détente first. Goldstein's rather facile description of the five-year first intifada as "dominated by young Palestinians who threw stones at soldiers" underplays a violent frenzy that claimed 160 Israeli lives and over 1,000 Arab dead (many murdered as "collaborators" in internecine slaughter).

None of this detracts from Goldstein's central thesis: "Words have power, and the link between the language of extremism and actual violence remains as strong as ever." Ultimately, she argues, what has made anti-Semitism "a convenient hatred" is that it serves to mobilize and unite otherwise disparate haters behind a common cause diverting attention away from their own shortcomings.

Over the millennia, anti-Semitism has taken on a metaphysical character making it "impervious to truth." It may be hoisting hope over experience, but let A Convenient Hatred be read worldwide in schools committed to teaching broadmindedness and combating bigotry. Even the jaded have a right to wish that this worthy book will contribute to overcoming the terrible lies told about the Jews.

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How Jewish are Israelis?

Stick an average alumnus of the Israeli public school system into a synagogue during morning prayers and chances are they'd be bewildered. Even if they could, what good would it do them to recollect an arid Bible class they might have been required to sit through?

Israel's secular founders were on the whole Jewishly literate. But for all their practicality they supposed that somehow through osmosis their progeny would be equally versed in the Jewish canon. Few secular politicians pushed for teaching Judaism broadly defined in the public schools. As for the Orthodox political parties, they are happy to direct monies for Jewish education to the network of parochial schools their children attend.

The result has been that what many Israelis know about Judaism and specifically the Jewish religion is refracted through the prism of ignorance, folklore and the handiwork of the taxpayer funded obscurantist religious establishment. Yet despite these self-inflicted wounds, the findings of the latest "Portrait of Israeli Jews" report, produced jointly by the Avi Chai Israel Foundation and the Israel Democracy Institute, confirms that Israelis appreciate in overwhelming numbers that the religion of Israel is a cornerstone of Jewish statehood. Media coverage of the report has spotlighted the findings that 80 percent say they believe in God; 56% believe in an afterlife; 51% in the coming of the messiah and, more curiously, 24% have sought spiritual solace at the graves of righteous figures.

On closer examination, and as the study makes explicit, the data is replete with internal contradictions. For one, secular Israelis are probably not becoming more observant. Of course, even carefully crafted surveys – this one was done in 2009 and released only now after thorough analysis – are only snapshots frozen in time; surveys taken in 1991 and 1999 revealed slightly different attitudes. Moreover, this survey was conducted before the latest swell in tensions between the ultra-Orthodox and the rest of Israeli society. Its nomenclature is necessarily imperfect; insular haredim and those who are scrupulously observant are basically lopped together under the rubric of "ultra-Orthodox." Demographically, the ultra-Orthodox and haredi population is growing while the numbers of secular Israelis is declining.

That said the 121-page survey profitably illuminates Israeli attitudes on identity, religious affiliation, ritual behavior and attitudes toward peoplehood. Among the findings, about half of Israelis of all ethnic backgrounds says their Jewishness trumps any other identity. Though there are sectoral divisions with secular Israelis attributing greater value to their Israeliness and haredim attaching virtually none. Those who define themselves as traditional attach the most importance to their Jewish identity. Broadmindedly, 92% of Israelis agree that level of observance does not equal being a good Jew. Despite cultural differences and a clear sense that Jews in Israel are a different nation, 73% of Israelis express a sense of common destiny with Diaspora Jews.

Unsurprisingly in a country where only state certified Orthodox rabbis can conduct weddings, half of the respondents want to see a civil marriage alternative. A majority also want non-Orthodox streams to enjoy equal status under the law. Most appear able to live with the Orthodox Rabbinate's monopoly on conversions yet would not necessarily expect the converts to live Orthodox lifestyles – though this is precisely what is required by the conversion authorities. Some 48% would even accept Jews who convert through the liberal streams were this legal.

In terms of religious affiliation, 46% of Israelis including most immigrants from the former Soviet Union think of themselves as secular; though only 16% say tradition plays no role in their lives and a miniscule 3% are anti-religious. Seven percent said they were haredi; 15% Orthodox; and 32% broadly traditional. In practice, 14% assert they "meticulously" observe tradition; 26% say they do so "to a great extent" while 44% do so "to some extent."

Yet contradictions abound. Almost all Jewish Israelis attach value to religious life-cycle events from circumcision to Shiva. Similarly, 85% like that traditional Jewish festivals are observed even if they are selective in their own practice. For instance, Israelis cherish Shabbat as a day of rest though not necessarily in ways that are meaningful to the Orthodox. With school on Fridays and Sunday a regular workday, Shabbat is the weekend, so Israelis seem to favor a Golden Mean. Most watch television or listen to radio and dedicate the day to family; many have a special Friday night meal and light Sabbath candles. But they by and large don't want their cinemas and cafes shuttered on Shabbat or for public transportation to come to a halt, or have restrictions placed on cultural or sporting events.

Here's a further indication of Israelis' traditional bent: most eat only kosher food -- at home and outside -- and 72% never let pork cross their lips. This does not mean they approve of the rabbinate's policy of withholding kashrut certificates from technically "kosher" restaurants that are open on Shabbat.

What does all this add up to? It suggests that if we want Israelis to have a deeper appreciation for Judaism – as religion and as a civilization – greater investment is required. The Israeli advantage of Hebrew literacy does not offset a disturbing lack of Jewish learning. There is small comfort in knowing that most Israelis believe in God if they are woefully ignorant about the sacred history that should inform that belief. The good news is that most Israelis are Zionists and most want Israel to be both a Jewish and democratic state. One way to pull all these strands together and strengthen them is to rethink the way Israelis are exposed to Judaism. The survey found that Israelis are not fond of the country's either-or school systems of being forced to categorize their children as either "Orthodox" or "secular" from kindergarten. Many want the option of sending their children to integrated schools. The good news is that demand for pluralistic, traditional public education is real. Too bad, then, that such curricula receive precious little government backing.
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Links:


http://www.idi.org.il/sites/english/events/Other_Events/Documents/GuttmanAviChaiReport2012_EngFinal.pdf
A Portrait of Israeli Jews Asher Arian and Aayala Keissar-Sugerman, Avi Chai and Israel Democracy Institute.
Most Israeli Jews feel a sense of affinity to their country and the Jewish people.

Israel's Knesset at 63 - How it works - Why it needs Reform

Order in the House

On a bad day, Israeli parliamentarians have been known to hurl water at political adversaries, denigrate immigrants over their Hebrew accents and even bow their heads in the memory of Palestinian suicide bombers. On a good day, though, they mostly go about the nuts and bolts task of crafting legislation with bipartisan support for the benefit of all Israelis.

Israel's Knesset celebrates its 63rd anniversary on February 8 which coincides with Tu B'shvat on the Hebrew calendar -- errant members notwithstanding -- with a celebratory plenum session and its first ever open house. Nowhere is Israel's political system more starkly on display -- for better and worse -- than in its unicameral legislature. None of whose members are elected as individuals; none represent constituency districts, and not a few whom have been catapulted to positions of influence way beyond their intellectual abilities. All operate in a hyper-pluralist environment where old-fashioned interest group politics has run amok.

It all began even before the 1949 Armistice Agreement when Israelis went to the polls to elect a Constituent Assembly. Chaim Weizmann, as president of the Provisional State Council, opened the Assembly's session in Tel Aviv with the idea that it would frame a constitution. Instead, the Assembly transformed itself into a legislature and decided that constitution-building could take place only a little at a time through a series of Basic Laws.

When the security situation allowed, the Knesset was relocated to Jerusalem in a former bank building on King George Street (now the home of the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court). By 1966, thanks to the generosity of James de-Rothschild, the Knesset moved to a purpose-built edifice designed by J.Klarwein and Dov Karmi near the Israel Museum and the Edmond J. Safra Campus of the Hebrew University in Givat Ram. Over the years a new wing has been completed and another is under construction.

Given Israel's proportional system of representation which increasingly fosters small, ideologically-driven or sectoral parties, no one party in history has ever won an outright majority in the 120-seat house. In the first Knesset Ben-Gurion's Mapai Party won what today seems like a staggering 46 mandates. By contrast, opinion polls suggest that Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party would "win" a new election with around 28 seats.

The rules are no more arcane than elsewhere. Since a quorum is not required for plenum business, it is not uncommon for an MK to be seen addressing a practically empty chamber. While members work throughout the week, the plenum generally meets Monday-Wednesday. The Speaker, currently Likud's Reuven Rivlin, can influence the legislative process but mostly upholds the institutional prerogatives of the legislature. In the most streamlined of circumstances, government-sponsored legislation approved by the cabinet is sent to the Knesset for a first reading. Surviving bills then go to committee for discussion and are returned (invariably with amendments) to the plenum for a second reading. Bills require a third and final reading for passage into law. There are endless permutations of these procedures. Israel also leads the word exponentially in bills proposed without party sponsorship by individual members.

Like the U.S. Congress most of the real work gets done by committee. The Knesset has 12 Permanent Committees and three ad hoc committees; all told there are roughly 20 active panels including caucuses. This may be too many, according to Haifa University political scientist Eran Vigoda-Gadot who has supported streamlining the division of labor. The committees, which are professionally staffed, enable the Knesset to fulfill its governmental oversight responsibilities, according to attorney Rachel Gur, the legislative director for Likud coalition chairman MK Ze'ev Elkin.

Of course, elected officials not staff provide the public persona of the committees. One recent early morning, for instance, the Economics Committee gathered television crews in tow to tour commuter rail stations. The members were riding the crest of attention generated by a controversy involving Israel Railways' decision to do away with free transportation for soldiers returning to their bases during the Sunday rush hour. Meanwhile, back in the Knesset itself the Justice Committee was meeting quite unremarkably to discuss… patent legislation.

No one disputes that it is hard to get things done foremost because of the way political power is distributed within Israel's coalition system. Beyond that, dozens of MKs are also cabinet members or have cabinet-level responsibilities pulling them away from their parliamentary duties. In fact, Liat Collins, a veteran Jerusalem Post journalist who covered the Knesset for many years notes that after every election there is talk of passing the so-called Norwegian Law under which ministers would have to leave their Knesset seats when joining the cabinet to make room for legislators who can devote themselves exclusively to parliamentary work.

There are still more reasons why it's hard to get things done. Vigoda-Gadot argued that unlike legislatures in more established democracies the Knesset is still building the façade of Israel's law-making infrastructure even as its work is constrained by the need to operate within a rickety coalition system and, moreover, within a polity where diversity of opinion is, shall we say, sharp.

Still, any institutional sluggishness has its upside; it hinders irresponsible majorities from railroading through bad legislation, Vigoda-Gadot pointed out. Collins thinks many MKs simply find it frustrating not to be in power. She has proposed creating a shadow government along the British model so opposition members can have a greater sense of purpose. While there is no formal "question time for the prime minister" along the lines of the British House of Commons, members may submit inquiries to ministers who routinely appear at the rostrum to provide answers.

To improve efficiency and professionalize its operations, the Knesset established a bipartisan Office of Research and Information in 2000. But Gur argued that the office is understaffed and often lacks the expertise members need especially to help them comprehend complex fiscal legislation. Understaffing is no less a problem in members' own offices; an MK is limited to two overworked and underpaid parliamentary aides, said Gur. Collins agreed: the hardest working people in the Knesset are often the staffers.

Of course, MKs themselves are well-compensated. At least a dozen started out as hard-driving journalists used to meeting deadlines. In truth, there are some queitly hardworking legislators across the political spectrum and comparatively few slouches. Collins pointed to Yisrael Beitenu's Orly Levi-Abekasis as someone who works productively for children's rights without grabbing headlines. Both Collins and Gur agreed that it helps for MKs to find a niche. Elkin, for example, has authored laws aimed at helping the country's elderly population though his specialized area public policy work draws little press coverage, said Gur.

Despite its mostly hardworking lawmakers the bad behavior, outrageous pronouncements and mud-slinging by a minority of members has sullied the Knesset's image. This helps explain the electorate's insatiable craving for a political messiah and the, probably, fleeting popularity of television personality Yair Lapid, who recently announced his political ambitions. Add to the mix the unhelpful deportment of a number of Arab members affiliated with radical anti-Zionist parties who seem more committed to exacerbating tensions with the country's Jewish majority than building bipartisan support for legislation that might benefit Israel's Arab citizens.

To put the Knesset – and Israel's political system more generally – in better order politicians need to find the courage to carry forward with David Ben-Gurion's circa 1950 proposal to divide the country into 120 constituencies with a winner take all system. Others have proposed having 60 members elected in constituencies with the rest along the existing system. Whatever the specifics, reforms should be aimed at making MKs primarily beholden to their constituents.

Even in its present imperfect incarnation Israel's legislature remains a beacon of liberty. In a Mideast that has not yet proven its ability to go beyond "one man, one vote, one time" Israel can boast the only democratically elected legislature that is part of an integral political system that measures success by how well it delivers majority rule while protecting minority interests.

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"Red" Ken Livingstone v. Boris Johnson - The 2012 Race for London Mayor and the Larger Implications for the Jewish Community

London Mayoralty

London, Europe's biggest city with 5.8 million eligible voters, goes to the polls on May 3rd to elect a mayor. The contest is primarily a rematch pitting the former Old Labor mayor "Red" Ken Livingstone against the quirky Conservative incumbent Boris Johnson.

Like any Big City mayoral campaign, the issues revolve mostly around crime rates, affordable housing, commuter fare increases and how best to help Londoners weather the economic downturn. London's mayor has limited authority with power dispersed among the municipality's 32 borough councils. Still, the job comes with plenty of responsibility and, moreover, offers a bully pulpit. A Livingstone victory would return City Hall to a vitriolic anti-Zionist whose relationship with the city's 195,000-stong Jewish community has long been fraught.

Until recently, polls had been showing Johnson with a slight advantage over Livingstone – no small achievement in a city that has a reputation for voting left even if Tory parliamentary candidates have actually done remarkably well. Now, however, Livingstone appears on the ascendant. To solidify his lead Livingstone will need to hold on to his natural base among Black and Muslim voters while appealing to other voters who abandoned him four years ago. Johnson's unenviable job is to convince an electorate battered by Conservative government service cuts and dreadful economic times – one in 10 Londoners is out of work – that he is actually their best advocate with No. 10 Downing Street and the business sector. Johnson has been pushing corporations to offer apprenticeships, paid internships and graduate training schemes as cost effective ways for businesses to tap into London's talent pool.

Livingstone has been reminding voters that under his stewardship the city became cleaner and safer; that he helped bring the Olympics to London; made major improvements in the Tube and implemented a traffic congestion scheme in central London that has unclogged streets and made the air cleaner. He charges Johnson with raising commuter fares well beyond what is reasonable (though fares went up dramatically in his administration too). Livingstone further promises to advocate for rent control and to be wiser than Johnson in implementing billions of pounds in budget cuts.

For his part, Johnson has frozen municipal taxes and argued that his 5.6 percent Tube fare increase is essential for infrastructure upkeep. After the Olympics, he acknowledges that he might have to cut the police budget (unless Prime Minister David Cameron's government steps in). Some categories of crime are up, Johnson admits, but serious youth violence and crime overall is down. And he takes pride in delivering the Olympic Games on time and on budget.

Of course, the Johnson-Livingstone race has wider implications. For one, Livingstone has a history of being a thorn in the side of his own Labor Party. He did not get on with prime ministers Tony Blair or Gordon Brown though insists that for the first time in a very long time "there's a Labour leader who actually likes me." Still, if elected the charismatic Livingstone may ram the untested Labor leader Ed Miliband further to the left simply by outshining him. Miliband's own comfort level with Israel is debatable but to his credit he's asserted that "It is not left-wing or progressive to ally oneself with those that seek Israel's destruction…"
Livingstone would beg to differ.

His "Red" moniker comes well earned. One close adviser is John Ross his Trotskyite ex-chief of staff whom he described in his memoirs as a "workaholic professional revolutionary." Nowadays, of course, being "red" is synonymous with campaigning for Palestinian Arab cause and aligning with its Islamist champions.

The ex-mayor's commitment to "Palestine" and to anti-Israel agitation is second to none. He believes the creation of the Jewish state was an Original Sin and that "it would be easier to achieve peace if Israel comes to terms with the crimes committed at its birth." He is close to the Egyptian Islamist Yusuf al-Qaradawi whom he defends this way: "The one thing he has always said is that Palestinians have the right to fight and to kill in the struggle round Israel. But he's always been absolutely clear that that was the only area in which violence could be justified." And Livingstone's idea of hurling an insult is, for instance, to call Education Secretary Michael Gove – one of Israel's very view friends in the Cameron cabinet -- a "fervent Zionist."

Journalist Andrew Gilligan who blogs on the mayoral race for London's Daily Telegraph read through an advance copy of Livingstone's autobiography and came up with some interesting statistics: There are 64 mentions of “Israel” or “Israelis;” 32 mentions of “Zionists” or “Zionism.” In contrast, there are only 30 references to public transportation. Gilligan writes: "Ken’s famous obsession with the Third Reich is on full display – there are 23 references to “Nazis” or “Nazism” and a further 16 mentions of Hitler!"

It comes as no surprise that Livingstone has taken thousands of pounds to anchor a program for Iran’s English-language Press TV. Say this about the man he has an arch sense of humor. He jokes that the choice between him and Johnson is one of "good and evil" adding, "I don't think it's been so clear since the great struggle between Churchill and Hitler."

Livingstone's Israel-phobia goes further. In February 2005 , annoyed by persistent questioning from Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold he instinctively reacted by telling the journalist that he was "behaving like a concentration camp guard." In his book, Livingstone disingenuously explains that no offense was intended. In fact, "the phrase 'behaving like a concentration camp guard'…is a common jibe in Britain."
Jewish voters are not without clout. Most of Britain's 260,000 plus Jews are concentrated in London. Obviously, not all vote in solidarity with Jewish interests and Israel. Many, however, will. That might explain why Valerie Shawcross, Livingstone's running mate, campaigned for him at last month's Limmud conference. Jewish voters helped push Johnson over the top in 2008 and in 2010 "punished" Labour for its perceived bias against Israel, according to Prof. Geoffrey Alderman.

While there would be cheers in Teheran and Gaza, a Livingstone victory would be a setback for London's anyway fraying image as a cosmopolitan, pluralist and tolerant city.
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HAMAS & FATAH, PALESTINIAN RECONCILIATION

Two Palestines, Complete

Some saw history in the making. With jubilation and fanfare Fatah and Hamas agreed last spring in Cairo to form an interim technocratic administration, hold parliamentary and presidential elections by May 2012 and, ultimately, to establish a national unity government. What's more, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal announced that his movement intended to adopt the strategy of "popular resistance."

The announcement was received as "historic" by Haaretz: "Palestine" would soon have a unified government pushing for peace while, in the view of the newspaper, Israel's "belligerent" army and government would continue to bury itself in a "foxhole." Now, after squandering the better part of four years refusing to come to the negotiating table, Fatah officials have consented to hold exploratory talks and exchange position papers with Israeli officials at the Jordanian Foreign Ministry in Amman.

How are we to understand this seemingly promising triad: Palestinian unity, Hamas flexibility and a renewed Fatah commitment to genuine peacemaking?

A good place to begin is by examining what distinguishes the two Palestinian camps. Fatah, which means "conquest" or "victory," was founded in the 1950s well before Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza. While vaguely nationalist in orientation Fatah never placed ideology at its forefront focusing instead on "armed struggle."

Since 1993, it professes to have abandoned annihilating Israel as its raison d'être though its "militants" did engage in terrorism during the second intifada (2000-2005).

Hamas came into existence in 1987 (during the first intifada) as a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. It considers "Palestine" an Islamic trust and is inalterably opposed to the existence of Israel. For tactical purposes Hamas too has flirted with its own form of moderation sometimes advocating a temporary truce or hudna with Israel and lately claiming to have embraced "popular struggle" – meaning violent protests without the use of firearms in conjunction with ongoing political efforts in the pursuit of Israel's destruction. In any case, Hamas steadfastly adheres to its "right" to utilize terror as circumstances dictate.

Under pressure from the Bush administration, the Palestinian Authority held elections in 2006 which were won by Hamas. The Islamists had quite credibly accused Fatah of corruption in its administration of the PA and tarred them as kowtowing to Israel. In victory the Islamists refused to meet international demands to recognize Israel, honor agreements signed between the PLO and Israel and to end terrorism. In March 2007, suspecting that Fatah was about to make a U.S.-supported putsch for Gaza, Hamas struck first, defeated Fatah and ousted its gunmen from the Strip. Fatah was left in control of the PA in the West Bank; Hamas solidified its hold on Gaza.

Since then, when Arab countries are not playing off the Palestinian camps against one other, they have sought to reconcile them. Most recently the post-Mubarak military rulers of Egypt brought Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas and Mashaal together in Cairo.

But for all the talk of unity, Hamas banned Fatah supporters in Gaza from celebrating its 47th anniversary in December and Fatah did not bother to tell Hamas it had plans to meet with Israel in Amman earlier this month. Hamas interpreted this affront as a blow to "national reconciliation." At the same time, the PLO expressed exasperation that Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh did not coordinate his recent tour of the Mideast with local PLO legations.

Senior PLO figure Nabil Shaath visited Gaza earlier this month returning to Ramallah to announce that the two "Palestines" were poised to set up a joint technocratic administration within weeks. Yet immediately afterwards Hamas barred other Fatah representatives from entering the Strip for reconciliation talks, presumably as an expression of Islamist displeasure over the Amman meetings. The banned officials complained of being humiliated at the Hamas checkpoint connecting Egypt and the Palestinian statelet. Hamas countered by accusing Fatah envoy Sakher Bseisso of blasphemy. Abbas himself remains persona non grata in Gaza; even public screening of his September 2011 announcement of the Palestinians' U.N. membership bid is forbidden.

Palestinian unity is not the only chimera. Plainly, from an Israeli viewpoint, a shift in Hamas's creed away from doctrinaire bellicosity would be desirable. For even if Fatah (which dominates the PLO) were sincere about wanting peace with Israel it could not legitimately act independent of Hamas. As a supposed concession to Abbas, Mashaal publicly embraced (with provisos) the PLO's cease-fire with Israel along with its political onslaught at the U.N. However, Hamas is itself divided between the "inside" leadership based in Gaza and "outsiders" such as Mashaal who until recently were headquartered in Damascus; it's also split inside Gaza between the "military" branch led by Ahmed al-Jabari and political leaders such as Haniyeh. All this explains why Mashaal's excruciatingly hedged comparative moderation was received by the party's senior theoretician in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar, with distain. Hamas, he hissed, would continue its "armed resistance."

Since Palestinian unity is as much a fantasy as Hamas moderation, it is too bad that, on top of it all, even Fatah isn't wholly committed to peace. It is pushing the UN to create a Palestinian state without recognizing Israel as a Jewish state using "continued settlement building" as its pretence. Of course, the settlement issue would become moot were Abbas willing to negotiate permanent boundaries.

Moreover, Abbas has taken no steps to psychologically prepare his people for the painful compromises entailed in any peace agreement. Instead, his mantra is that "peace" will provide the Palestinian refugees and their descendants -- by the millions – with the right to "return" to a truncated Israel one that will have withdrawn to the indefensible 1949 Armistice Lines. Rather than preach reconciliation, Abbas tells his people that Israel is a "colonial" power; that it has besieged Jerusalem – as if the city had ever been the capital of any people but the Jews – and that it capriciously murders Palestinian innocents. His recent U.N. address did not contain one good word for Israelis and had nothing to say about coexistence.

The truth is that Fatah's own fidelity to the Oslo Accords is wobbly, characterized further by its willingness to pave the way for Hamas and Islamic Jihad to join the PLO without their committing to keeping its international obligations. While Abbas is personally scrupulous in opposing "armed struggle" he has enabled the glorification of terrorism within the polity he directs.

The Fatah-Hamas schism has only intensified the intransigence, fanaticism and obduracy that have long characterized the Palestinian polity. Two "Palestines" do not equal one partner for Israel to build a viable two-state solution.

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Syria, Alawite, Israel -- & Assad

Whither the Alawites


All indications are that time is not on the side of Syria's minority Alawite-led regime. There are reports that President Bashar Assad has been offered asylum in Moscow which has an interest in a smooth transition that will preserve Russian strategic interests. Other stories have Assad and his loyalists preparing mountain strongholds for a last-ditch stand fortified by Syria's arsenal of WMDs.

If Assad falls it is clear that the Arab world's Sunni majority and Muslim Brotherhood along with Turkey will all gain. Qatar has been financing the rebels and using Al-Jazeera to delegitimize the Damascus regime, according to Mordechai Kedar of the BESA Center at Bar-Ilan University. There has also been no love lost between the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Assad family; King Abdullah was the first Arab ruler to urge Assad to step down. (Senior Arab League officials may have been co-opted by Damascus but rank-in-file observers sent to Syria to monitor the violence practically became part of the uprising.)

The biggest losers to an Assad departure would be the Alawites. In a worst case scenario, they face the prospect of massacre. Christian, Druze and Ismaili minorities could also suffer. The Alawites may perhaps be forced to retreat en masse to their historic mountain region above the coastal city of Latakia, according to W. Andrew Terrill of the U.S. Army War College.

Persian Shi'ite Iran would also lose. The mullahs have bolstered Assad's regime and used it to enable their Hezbollah proxies in neighboring Lebanon. Syria has also provided Iran an ecumenical bridge to the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood operating as Hamas bringing Sunni Arab Hamas into Shi'ite Persian Iran’s orbit. Now, Hamas has had to abandon its administrative headquarters in Damascus rather than side with Assad against the Sunni protesters, though its leaders will not likely regret the decision.

Who are the Alawites who have drawn such foreboding and attention? For one, they are, arguably, neither Moslem nor Arab yet their regime has embraced both Islam and Arab nationalism. Out of 22 million Syrians, 74 percent Sunni, there are perhaps 2 million Alawites (12%) the remainder of the population is Druze, Ismaili, Kurd, Turkoman, Armenian and Circassian and Christians. Several hundred thousand more Alawites live in Turkey, Iraq and Jordan (there is a tiny community in Israel).

The Alawites (also known as Nusairi) are an ancient indigenous Middle Eastern tribe. Their secret religion with it seemingly pagan elements was founded in the tenth or eleventh century. For most of their history they held themselves apart from the Arabs. Historically, their position under Sunni domination was one of social and economic inferiority.

They are distinct theologically from Islam by a set of tenets that include belief in reincarnation, in a Trinity and in the deification of Ali (Muhammad's paternal nephew and son-in-law) whom they revere as the greatest manifestation of God. One of God’s lesser incarnations was Joshua Ben-Nun, the biblical Hebrew hero who conquered the Land of Israel, according to John Myhill of Haifa University. Moreover, Alawites hold certain Christian holy days and symbols to be holy. No wonder, then, that Orthodox Sunnis view them as heretical.

Under the Assad dynasty the Alawites have shown themselves theologically pragmatic. Hafez Assad made the hajj to Mecca in 1974, though pilgrimage is not part of the Alawite creed. Nor is fasting during Ramadan or, for that matter praying at a mosque – though that did not stop him from dedicating one in his mother's memory.

He also sought an Islamic imprimatur of Alawite theological legitimacy from malleable Shi'ite clergymen; Alawites have been sent to Iran for religious studies. At the same time, Alawite pupils are exposed to Sunni religious teachings in Syria's public school system. It is as if the Assad dynasty stood ready to modify the Alawite system of belief in virtually any direction to survive, researcher Eli Eshed hypothesized in a recent Mekor Rishon article.

Syria's history may be a key. The territory known as Syria today was under Ottoman rule between 1516 and the end of World War I. The Turks intermittently encouraged ethnic strife to solidify their control. Then the League of Nations put the area under French mandate and Paris essentially followed a similar divide and rule course. Which brings us to the Alawite attitude toward Jews and Arabs: Suleiman al-Assad, Bashar's grandfather is said to have lobbied French Prime Minister Léon Blum against the establishment of a united Syria: "The spirit of hatred and fanaticism imbedded in the hearts of the Arab Muslims against everything that is non-Muslim has been perpetually nurtured by the Islamic religion."

In the event, Syria became nominally independent in 1936-37 though only gained real independence in 1946 in the wake of World War II. But one coup followed another as Sunni-led governments came and went. The Alawites observed these political convulsions from the sidelines. All the while, colonialism, independence and modernity were having their impact on the Alawites as increasing numbers of their sons were being educated and going into the army. The community's elite, meanwhile, was attracted to the Ba'ath Party with its secular policies and concern for the rural peasantry. The party had been founded in 1940 by two Sorbonne-educated Arabs, Michael Aflaq, a Christian and Salah al-Din al-Bitarm a Sunni Moslem.

In 1963, the Ba'ath led their own coup and in1966, following a party schism, another overthrow headed by Salah al Jadid (the 13th sudden change of government in 17 years) for the first time propelled an Alawite to the presidency. Finally, in 1970, General Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father consolidated control of the regime while also becoming a sort of super-chief of the four Alawite clans.

For the subsequent four decades the Alawites were able to control the Syrian polity thanks to their religio-tribal unity, discipline, patrimonial structure, not to mention their shared experience as an oppressed minority. In contrast, the Sunni majority, fundamentalists included, was politically fragmented over social, geographic and ideological lines. Even today as violence roils the country, the Sunnis remain fragmented despite the fact that Islam has provided a new rallying point.

As for Israel, the Syrian regime's animus toward Jerusalem notwithstanding, it is not entirely clear an Assad departure would be a net plus. True to form, Damascus had sought to blame the popular uprising on Israel, initially claiming the "Free Syrian Army" is a Mossad front for otherwise "not a single Alawite would be willing to kill a Sunni, and vice versa..." Still, the fate of the Alawites cannot but evoke disquiet among Israelis for what it says about the lack of toleration toward minority peoples in the region.

If he is destined to go, how Assad leaves the scene is as important as when. Tel Aviv University's Itamar Rabinovich has raised the possibility that Assad might lash out against Israel if he reckoned his end was near. Plainly, a smooth transition that secures Syria's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) would be preferable to an anarchical end. It is probably not in Israel's interest to watch Syria fail as a state in the Lebanese fashion with competing terror chieftains lording over fiefdoms and no "central address" for regime decision making. Of course, Syria could disintegrate into a Kurdish North, Alawite West, Druze South, Bedouin East and Sunni core, a possibility not ruled out by Bar-Ilan University's Mordechai Kedar. Obviously, a power vacuum in which Palestinian Arab and Hezbollah gunmen might use the Golan to launch attacks on Israel would be destabilizing – as would Syria's WMDs falling into terrorist hands. Myhill goes so far as to argue that "the fall of the current regime would greatly increase the likelihood that Syria will precipitate a war against Israel" concluding categorically that "it is far better for the Alawites to maintain power in Syria than for a Sunni regime to take control there."

In any case, Israel cannot influence the outcome of events in Syria. By tying the fate of the Alawite community to the regime, and by using brutality today and mass murder in the past (Hama, February 1982) to quash any threat, Assad has set in motion the terrible prospect of a merciless Sunni retribution against the Alawites. So far 5,000 Syrians have reportedly been killed in the uprising though no one knows how many are regime opponents, innocent Alawites, or members of the security services.

Whatever Assad's personal fate, it is hard to see the Alawites surrendering themselves to the Sunni opposition under present circumstances. Veteran political observers divide popular Syrian opinion into those who support the regime; those who fiercely oppose it and a significant sector that wants political reform but does not believe it will come out of the current instability.

Israeli leaders including Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu had all been rebuffed by the Assads – father and son – in their attempts to exchange the Golan Heights for a genuine peace. The dynasty needed to maintain an enemy in Israel to distract their Sunni masses. Perhaps it was for the best. Would any successor Syrian regime have honored a treaty signed by an Alawite ruler? Possibly – in the same fashion as Egypt's Moslem Brotherhood plans to honor the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty: by putting it to a popular referendum.

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WHY JEWS SHOULD BE INTERESTED IN THE 'STATE OF CHRISTIANITY'

On a sun-drenched day the week before Christmas, Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre was crowded with pilgrims from Nigeria taking turns kneeling and praying at the marker where sacred history has it that Jesus was crucified, entombed and resurrected. (Other Christians consider the place to be the nearby Garden Tomb.) Back in Nigeria, on Christmas Day a wave of murderous bombings by Muslim extremists hit several churches. Plainly, the faith is at once thriving and struggling as a new report on Global Christianity from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life makes clear.

Jews have more than a passing interest in the state of Christianity not only because of the religion's origins and its fraught relationship with Judaism but also because nowadays many believing Christians consider themselves friends of the Jewish people and Israel. Consider, for instance, that growing numbers of Hispanic Americans are embracing Israel-friendly evangelical Christianity. And that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans in the coming months to visit several African countries with substantial Christian populations.

Given trends in Muslim civilization, it certainly matters to Jews that there are more Christians than Muslims and that demographically Christianity makes up about the same portion of the global population today (32%) as it did a century ago. Almost 80 percent of Americans are of Christian heritage. Post-modern Europe has become the second largest bastion of Christianity. It cannot claim to have the most Catholics or Protestants though it remains home to the majority of Orthodox Christians (thanks to believers in Russia, Ukraine, Greece, and Romania). The report does not address the continent's declining commitment to its heritage which led Prime Minister David Cameron to tell Britons not be afraid to assert their country's Christianity.

Around the world, half of all Christians are Catholic; Protestants, broadly defined, make up 37%; Orthodox Christians comprise 12%. Catholicism is strong in Brazil, Mexico, Philippines and United States (where about one in-four is Catholic). Italy ranks fifth.

As for Protestantism, the U.S. is home to the most Protestants followed by Nigeria and – somewhat surprisingly – China. Germany is evenly divided between Protestants and Catholics totaling about 70% of the population (five percent are Muslim). The percentage of Protestants is greater in the Congo than where Luther launched the Reformation in the 16th century. Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa appears robust.
While the CIA places the Christian population of Nigeria at 40%, Pew figures it at 50%.

The picture is quite different in the Middle East where Christianity was born – it is now home to less than 1% of believers. Put another way, just 4% of Middle Easterners today are Christian (mostly Catholic or Orthodox). The country with the largest percentage of the population that is Christian is Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon (38%).

Further afield, newly independent South Sudan is 60% Christian. In raw numbers, however, about half of all Christians in the Mideast reside in Egypt and the Sudan even if they comprise just 5% of those countries' respective populations. These figures contrast with CIA data which places the percentage of Coptic Christians in Egypt at 9%. Pew's numbers crunchers said Egypt's Christian population is actually less than half of that estimate and shrinking. The reason may not be hard to deduce: Egypt's Sunni Muslim majority has not been particularly tolerant of Christianity. With Hosni Mubarak's fall and the rise of Islamist parties the prospects for Christianity in an Islamist Egypt hardly leave room for optimism.

Intriguingly, the Pew study counts substantial numbers of Christians in Saudi Arabia: 1,200,000 or 4.4 percent of population. Left unsaid, however, is that these are mostly Filipino and Indian expatriates not Arabs. And they may not openly practice their faith. Curiously, the U.N. does not seem preoccupied by such state-sanctioned intolerance.

Pew reports that the number of Christians living in the West Bank under Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority is 100,000 almost all Arabs. Those who speak for them such as the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, tend to be PLO marionettes. This time of year, for instance, the Sunni-dominated PLO cynically promulgates the fairy tale that Christmas is a Palestinian holiday and that Jesus was a "Palestinian." Over in Hamas-run Gaza live just several thousand besieged Christians. Israeli authorities granted West Bank and Gaza Christians passage into Israel to visit family for the holidays and 400 separate permits to travel abroad from Ben-Gurion Airport.

As for Christians in Israel proper, Pew places their numbers at 150,000 (up from 34,000 when the state was founded but down 10,000 from the Central Bureau of Statistics 2008 figure). Eighty percent are Arabs and the remainder emigrants from the former Soviet Union. Israeli Christians naturally enjoy full freedom of worship.
By tradition, the Jerusalem municipality even distributes free Christmas trees to all comers. The Pew figures do not count thousands of foreign workers (Filipino and African caregivers; Romanian laborers) or foreign clerics assigned to the country.

Life is not always easy for Christian evangelicals, many of whom have been treated shabbily by officious bureaucrats at the Shas Party-controlled Ministry of Interior. The ostensible justification is (mostly) unfounded dread of missionary activity; actually, most Christian fundamentalists are in Israel as part of their personal spiritual journeys or expressly to build support for the Jewish state in the larger Christian world.

Making strange bedfellows, many liberal and ultra-Orthodox Jews – insecure in their different ways – have demonstrated an unseemly intolerance toward fervently believing Christians. Though from time immemorial Jews have been treated with contempt by the Christian world, it seems myopic and counterproductive to view 21st century Christianity (and its 2.18 billion adherents) as if it was continuing robot-like that benighted legacy. In fact, as fate would have it, Christian and Jewish civilizations at the present time have every reason to seek possibilities for collaboration.

Strangely enough, what's "good for the Jews" – and the Jewish state – is to see Christianity thriving.

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Further Reading:

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2010/3/9/main-feature/1/marranos-in-reverse
Marranos in Reverse? Elliot Jager, Jewish Ideas Daily.
Though ardent in their faith, Jewish followers of Jesus in Israel are usually discreet about sharing their beliefs.

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MITT ROMNEY, MORMONS & JEWS

Should Jews Have a Mormon Problem?

The religious values of presidents seldom satisfactorily explain their attitudes toward the Jews. Franklin Roosevelt's Episcopalian faith could not have reasonably foretold his hard-hearted policies during the Holocaust. Baptists both Harry S Truman and Jimmy Carter went their separate ways with Truman quick to grant Israel diplomatic recognition and Carter conspicuous in his anti-Israelism. Who knows to what extent President Barack Obama's affiliation with the United Church of Christ provides any insight into his administration's erratic often disquieting policies toward Jerusalem?

Still, it is hard to completely disregard the religious and moral values of the leading presidential candidates. The narrowing of the Republican nomination field to Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich (with the latter's lead dwindling) has made barely a ripple in Israel. Israel's media dutifully covered Romney's complaint that Obama has been too quick to chasten the Jewish state and his pledge to make Israel his first foreign destination if elected. Likewise the flak Gingrich took for noting that Palestinian Arab identity was a comparatively recent historical phenomenon.

Israeli attitudes toward Obama have fluctuated. Preferences are sure to jell once the Republican nominee is determined. For now, Israelis know little about Gingrich's personal foibles, political baggage or his religious outlook. In any event, his spiritual journey from Lutheranism to Southern Baptist and now Catholicism has little resonance for Israelis. However, should Romney manage to capture the nomination, Israelis – like Americans before them – will probably find themselves getting a crash course on his Mormon faith.

They might begin at the strikingly handsome campus of the Jerusalem Center of Brigham Young University belonging to Mormons (formerly known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) situated on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. Over the Christmas holiday the school is even more sedate than usual. The Sunday evening classical concerts and Thursday night jazz divertimentos that take place in the congenial auditorium -- which offers panoramic Jerusalem views -- are in hiatus until the New Year. Even during the regular semester, the well-bred Mormon students and staff do not draw much attention -- and that is the way everyone likes it.

Mormonism has not been spotlighted in a big way in Israel since 1985 when Brigham Young first sought to establish a presence and drew vociferous hostility from the ultra-Orthodox sector over the Mormons' earlier missionary activities in Israel. Ultimately, the facility, which had the support of the late mayor Teddy Kollek and then-prime minister Shimon Peres, opened to students in 1988 after Church authorities pledged in writing not to engage in missionary activities in Israel. There is every reason to believe that they have honored their commitment to "show Israeli Jews what the Church is about by example rather than by proselytizing."

Within a few decades of its founding by Joseph Smith in New York State, in 1841 the Church dispatched Apostle Orson Hyde to Jerusalem on a fact-finding tour. Only with the city's liberation in 1967, however, did the Church begin to routinely send believers to the Holy Land for religious studies. Nowadays, 160 students can be accommodated at the Jerusalem campus. (The school closed for six years during the second intifada due to safety concerns.)

Mormon theology is philo-Semitic. Metaphorically --if not literally --the faithful consider their Church to be part of the House of Israel and themselves spiritual descendants of the Israelite tribe of Ephraim who escaped Babylonian captivity by migrating (circa. 586 BCE) to North America. The Book of Mormon has them fleeing Jerusalem prior to the Babylonian conquest. Mormons believe their scripture was revealed to Smith by an angel and that it contains the writings of ancient prophets including Lehi whom God commanded to lead those Israelites to America. This civilization disappeared in 400 CE. Smith was assassinated when he was only 39 in 1844 while running a quixotic campaign for U.S. president.

Mormons attribute significance to the Jewish calendar. Not only was their founder born on the eighth day of Hanukkah other spiritual milestones parallel the Jewish festivals. Worship services are conducted according to the local work week. There are also dietary laws; eating meat is restricted; alcohol, tobacco, and coffee are prohibited. The cross does not commonly adorn a Mormon house of worship. And like Christian Zionists they believe that the Jewish return to the Land of Israel is a precursor to the second coming of the Christian messiah. Polygamy has been forbidden since 1890.

Mormonism is emphatically a missionary faith. Indeed, Romney was almost killed while a missionary in France in a bizarre traffic accident that involved a head-on collision with a vehicle driven by a Catholic priest. To this day, Mormons take – what will strike some Israelis as – an unnerving delight in converting American Jews. Moreover, in a rite that looks odd to outsiders and has drawn Jewish ire the Church formerly engaged in virtual baptisms of Jews murdered in the Shoah (to provide their souls with post-mortem salvation). To be fair, "Baptism for the Dead" is not limited to Jews and once Mormons learned of the depth of Jewish objections to this practice they agreed to stop it.

At the same time, to the consternation of Christian fundamentalists, Mormons see themselves as Christians though some of them identify Jesus with the God of the Hebrew Bible and hold a schismatic view of the trinity in which God (the Father), Jesus, and the Holy Ghost are held to be three distinct deities. Unlike Christianity or Judaism, Mormons believe that the canon remains open and that God still communicates directly with the righteous.

Not of this should present a problem for Jews comfortable with their Judaism. Theologically, Jews anyway tend to be libertarian about other faiths while politically, a third of Jewish voters were disposed already by September 2011to vote for Romney over Obama.

What might this mean for the pragmatic Romney? Utah State University historian Philip Barlow has argued that Romney's faith might inform but would not presage his Middle East policies. "His character was in part shaped by Mormonism, but one only needs to compare Romney, Jon Huntsman and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to note that Mormons are not made from cookie cutters."

Regarding Romney's profession of friendship to Israel, Barlow pointed out that, "Mormons' history, popular culture, and theology really do give them a sense of regard for Israel's role in history and world affairs, and a sense of" --from their perspective – "shared identity."

As a former governor Romney has no real foreign policy track record. How does he understand the Islamist threat to Western values? What are his thoughts on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's approach to a two state solution? Does he back President George Bush's 1967-plus approach to Israel's boundaries? This and much more remains to be revealed.

Other presidents have entered the White House with an innate sympathy for Israel only to see their policies towed in an opposite direction. The righteous live by their faith, but a statesman operating in the real world also needs to be guided by a conceptual framework. In the course of the unfolding presidential campaign, Americans – and Israelis observing from afar – may learn more about Romney's politics, values and the way he understands the world.

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BEN-GURION: A POLITICAL LIFE BY SHIMON PERES IN CONVERSATION WITH DAVID LANDAU

Apologia for Ben-Gurion

At the yahrzeit ceremony for David Ben-Gurion (1886 -1973) held earlier this month at Sde Boker and with Iran clearly on his mind, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked -- no fewer than eight times -- Ben-Gurion's faculty for making hard decisions. It's a theme that also permeates Ben-Gurion: A Political Life, a "conversation" – a "fusion of memory and history and multiple competing narratives" – between President Shimon Peres and advocacy journalist David Landau. Here we have truth in labeling. For this slim volume is neither reliable history nor dependable biography.

Peres's first consequential encounter with Ben-Gurion took place on the sidelines of the 1946 Zionist Congress. In a huff over Chaim Weizmann reticence to insist on the immediate fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration, Ben-Gurion was fixing to walk-out. Pere seizes his opportunity: "I had incredible chutzpah. Ben-Gurion hardly knew me, but I said, 'Yes, we'll go with you…'" From then on, Peres was Ben-Gurion's indispensable man.

Peres had made a smart bet. Even before the creation of the state and his subsequent long premiership, Ben-Gurion would come to control a powerful politico-military machine that encompassed the Histadrut Labor Federation, Jewish Agency government-in-waiting and Haganah.

Moreover, the two men were kindred spirits. The Old Man had arrived in Palestine in 1906. Young Peres came in 1934. Both were opinionated, conceited, single-mindedly ambitious and coldly pragmatic. Though not observant, they hearkened back to lineages of piety and learning. They ruthlessly battled foes within their own political camp though Ben-Gurion was arguably the more vindictive. Where Ben-Gurion was feared Peres was despised. Moshe Sharett, Israel's second prime minister found him revolting; Yitzhak Rabin untrustworthy; Yigal Yadin insolent, and Gold Meir found him an unwanted nuisance.

Guru and acolyte were both voracious readers and polymaths. Both ultimately rebranded themselves. Ben-Gurion shifted his socialist Mapai Party toward the center. Peres, defeated for Labor's leadership, aligned with Ariel Sharon in the formation of Kadima. Both were Big Idea men: Ben-Gurion wanted to fashion the ethos of renascent Israel along vaguely biblical principles; Peres, more ambitious still, sought to create an entirely "new Middle East." Both men knew how to turn a phrase. With the doors to Palestine slammed shut by Mandate Britain making escape from Hitler impossible, Ben-Gurion famously pledged: "We must help the British in their war as though there were no White Paper, and we must resist the White Paper as though there were no war." Peres's variation on a theme – as Hamas bombers detonated themselves on Israeli busses in the wake of the Oslo Accords – was: "We must fight terrorism as if there was no peace process, and we must continue the peace process" with Yasir Arafat "despite the acts of terrorism." Needless to say, neither man had much capacity for self-criticism.

It's not always obvious where Peres's voice trails off and Landau's takes over. Synthesizing some of the voluminous history available on Ben-Gurion, the authors move from BG's early (and brief) days laboring in Palestine's fields to his emergence as a socialist Zionist polemicist and politician focusing on his disputations with Weizmann and Ze'ev Jabotinsky.

Even as he consolidated his power, BG travelled widely spending time in England, America and Russia. There he became infatuated with Vladimir Lenin (though he would loath Stalin). He esteemed Lenin's "decisiveness" which made up for the fact that Leon Trotsky was the more intellectually gifted, he told Peres. There is no question that Ben-Gurion was often wise and decisive, for example, in accepting the flawed 1947 UN Partition Plan. With equal aplomb, he disregarded the 1949 General Assembly resolution that called for the internationalization of metropolitan Jerusalem (meaning Jewish west Jerusalem to Ein Karim and the Arab-occupied east from the Old City to Abu Dis and south to Bethlehem).

Ben-Gurion made the unpopular but economically responsible call to accept reparations from West Germany against Menachem Begin's fierce and principled opposition. He showed hesitation against preemptive military strikes. And he ordered the capture of Adolf Eichmann and disregarded resultant UN criticism. Perhaps his most long-lasting contribution to Israel's survival was that he gave Peres the green light to build Israel's nuclear capacity; though Peres implies that he mostly left Ben-Gurion in the dark about all that.

The more he concentrated power in his own hands, the more he accused his opponents of anti-democratic tendencies. As if channeling his own subconscious wishes, he slammed Jabotinsky as a fascist who had dictatorial ambitions. In practice, when the IDF supplanted the Haganah BG ensured that all command decisions would be in the hands of his loyalists not the politically suspect Yigal Yadin or Israel Galili. Years later, well out of office BG schemed to replace his party comrade Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in the lead up to the 1967 Six Day War. Those altogether outside his socialist orbit including Menachem Begin and his Irgun would be violently quashed. The sinking of the Irgun arms ship Altalena typified the Old Man's capacity to conflate his political needs with the national interest. Rather archly, the reader presumes, Peres tells Landau that Ben-Gurion did not engage in political patronage.

It's hard to know if Ben-Gurion abhorred Jabotinsky more than Weizmann. True, differences of principle separated these Zionist founders. Ben-Gurion had been enamored with class struggle and building an agrarian economy; Jabotinsky was a classical liberal who wanted to foster an urban middle class. Peres grants that the two men saw eye-to-eye on many social welfare issues. But Ben-Gurion scorned Jabotinsky's demand for the territorial integrity of Eretz Israel as much as Weizmann's hesitation to move boldly. He schemed with Weizmann against Jabotinsky then sidelined the elder statesman. He professed to "love" Weizmann and pledged "genuine friendship" to Jabotinsky. Peres takes him at his word. The Ben-Gurion-Jabotinsky dispute was cut short when Jabotinsky died of a heart attack in 1940 in upstate New York. As premier, Ben-Gurion mean spiritedly refused to allow Jabotinsky's remains to be reinterred in Israel. Among those, according to Peres, that Ben-Gurion also didn't hate "personally" was Menachem Begin. Odd then that he could not bring himself to utter Begin's name for most of the years they served together in the Knesset.

The most unsettling pages of this book are Peres's (and Landau's) paroxysms of partisanship in covering the Holocaust era. They would have the reader know that in 1933 – the year the Nazis came to power – Jabotinsky had pooh-poohed Hitler's Mein Kampf while the prophetic Ben-Gurion by 1934 had warned of the enormity of the threat to Europe's Jews. There is half-truth in that. The fuller truth, according to Jabotinsky scholar Yisrael Medad, is that already in August 1933; Jabotinsky's men on the World Zionist Organization were defeated and sabotaged by the Ben-Gurion clique in every attempt to force a "vigorous attitude on the German situation." The same year, Jabotinsky told the 18th Zionist Congress in Prague, "The present Congress is duty-bound to put the Jewish problem in Germany before the entire world…We are conducting a war with murderers. [We must] destroy, destroy, destroy, them – not only with the boycott…"but also politically.

At one point Landau to his credit challenges Peres on whether Ben-Gurion as leader of the Yishuv throughout the war had really done enough on behalf of European Jewry? Peres does not waver: We didn't know; there was nothing we could have done. As for the Jabotinsky loyalists operating in the U.S. during the war who tried to shake heaven and earth, Peres's cold-hearted assessment is: "What did they achieve? Nothing."

It is in their conversation about the pre-state Jewish underground that Peres and Landau achieve a moral nadir, disgracefully embracing what is essentially the Palestinian Arab narrative which blamed Begin's Irgun for a litany of "outrages" such as "deliberately killing civilians" in Deir Yassin and "helping to spark the Palestinian refugee crisis."

So it is a relief that toward the end of Ben-Gurion: A Political Life the authors turn to other matters including the intriguing claim that Ben-Gurion had wanted to reform Israel's electoral system away from proportional representation. There is also the historically tone deaf Peres taking "credit" for having been Ben-Gurion's emissary to the ultra-Orthodox world in institutionalizing IDF exemptions for yeshiva students.

Peres and Landau close by acknowledging that Ben-Gurion would under no circumstances agree to have Israel pullback to the 1949 Armistice Lines. If anything, he favored extensive settlement in metropolitan Jerusalem and in Hebron. Maybe their point is that Ben-Gurion had no interest in ruling over the Palestinian Arabs; though Peres and Landau can't bring themselves to say so, neither does Netanyahu. His dilemma is that the same Arab rejectionism that made peace unreachable in Ben-Gurion's day continues to grip the contemporary Palestinian leadership.
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Israel's High Court of Justice, Supreme Court and the Political System

Full Court Press

Israel Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch recently excoriated legislators critical of the judiciary as "robbed Cossacks" who were guilty of "incitement" and waging a "campaign of delegitimation" against the court. An unnamed associate close to the justice told reporters that Israel was heading down the same path as Germany in the 1930s.

What accounts for this tirade? Beinisch was reacting to a political backlash that has buffeted her institution that's been engineered mostly – but by no means exclusively – by Orthodox and populist right-wing politicians fed up with the court's left-wing judicial activism. In fact, however, the issues go beyond left and right, liberal and conservative, Orthodox and secular. The political system as structured is finding it difficult to deliver civil liberties and democratic values in a way that is perceived as legitimate by all sectors of society.

The immediate impetus for the controversies swirling around Beinisch relates to a slew of proposed legislative initiatives in the Knesset that – taken together – has unnerved many who are not considered garden-variety leftists.

The first involves how three soon-to-be open seats on the Supreme Court, including Beinisch's own when she retires in February, will be filled. Another would limit the legal standing of foreign pressure groups before the court; there is also a bill that would restrict the ability of European governments to bankroll proxy groups staffed by secular left-wingers and which EU countries have used to sway Israeli policies via the court; still another would rescind a relatively recent eligibility requirement that prevents a justice from being appointed president of the court unless he is within three years of the mandatory retirement age of 70. This backtracking seems tailored made for Justice Asher Grunis who is five weeks short of meeting the current requirement. Some on the right would be glad if Grunis, a proponent of judicial restraint became the court's next president.

Yet another bill would have dramatically increased the fines a mostly left-leaning media would have to pay for publishing patently false stories about a person or group. Like the existing libel law, compensation would be allowed even if damage isn’t proven.

Arguably the most important bill, however, in the view of veteran court observer Evelyn Gordon is one to let the Knesset Constitution Committee vet Supreme Court candidates, "like every other democracy in the world does."

More is involved here than a rightist push back against a perennially assertive leftist institution. At its most raw, this is a power play pitting irresponsible liberal elites against no less irresponsible illiberal counter-elites. It reflects a sense that Israelis are questioning the legitimacy – the worthiness – of their political system. It's been long in coming. As Israel has become less secular and more inward looking, especially since 1977 when the Labor Party lost its lock hold on the state, the court has evolved into the ultimate bastion not just of liberal values but for the exercise of left-wing political power.

The problem therefore is not that the court does not reflect the passions of the majority – that is how high courts in representative democracies are intended to function – but in the way the court has frittered away its political legitimacy. In short, the court has permitted its natural mandate the protection of democratic values, to be undermined by relentlessly enabling leftist interest groups to co-opt and, in the public's mind's eye, dominate its agenda.

Israel's 16-member Supreme Court (unlike Beinisch most justices are quite anonymous) typically operates in panels of three justices, primarily hearing appeals from the lower courts. More potently, sitting as the High Court of Justice (known as Bagatz) and operating as a court of first instance, not an appellate court, the justices exercise judicial review over Knesset and governmental authorities applying Israel's still-in-the-making "constitution." The court's ethos established by former Chief Justice Aharon Barak that "everything is justiciable" infuriates not only right-wingers and not only because the court generally leans Left. Judicial review is a worthwhile principle whose legitimacy is best protected when exercised with comparative restraint and when judges are not perceived as blatantly partisan. Neither is true in Israel.

In contrast to the US Supreme Court which hears fewer than 100 cases annually, Israel's High Court of Justice handles over a thousand petitions each year. There is essentially no need to establish legal standing in order to bring a case, a peculiarity exploited by EU-funded pressure groups that aim to thwart government policies. In this way, the court has lost any appearance of standing above the fray.
The court's critics complain that it is comprised mostly of like-minded types: politically, socially, academically and religiously. Gordon noted that one study found that minority opinions were handed down in only three percent of all Israeli Supreme Court cases from 1948-1994 compared to about 60% in the United States. Not only are the justices homogenous, they basically replicate themselves through a nine-member Judges Selection Committee that is chaired by the Minister of Justice (who in the current instance happens not to be a Knesset member) and is comprised of one cabinet member, three sitting justices (including President Beinisch), two Bar Association delegates and two Knesset members.

Indeed, yet another contentious bill under Knesset consideration would require Bar Association representatives to be chosen in a manner that would reflect rank-and-file sentiment instead of its top echelon. The current selection process has meant that candidates who do not neatly fit the mold – Prof. Ruth Gavison for instance – do not stand a chance of becoming justices on the grounds that they have an "agenda."

Liberals counter that in Israel's fractious society, where the Knesset frequently shirks its responsibilities on such matters as protecting religious pluralism, civil liberties, and providing a legal umbrella for the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria, the court has no choice but to fill the moral and legal vacuum. The court, they say, has become the last bastion for democratic values of tolerance and respect for minority rights. Pure majority rule, they say, could well result in a fundamentally intolerant outcome. And giving politicians a greater role in vetting justices put forth by the selection committee would destroy this albeit imperfect division of powers.

Furthermore, the court's defenders point out, on genuine national security issues the justices rarely intervene and when they do tend to back the government.

Where does all this leave classical liberals in the Jabotinsky mold who are unhappy with the court's overreaching and its codependent relationship with foreign funded leftist pressure groups? At least some of them would rather accept a flawed hyperactive court than a runaway populist Knesset.

The Likud's Dan Meridor, for instance, has stridently supported judicial prerogatives against political criticism of the judiciary which, he pointed out, originated not in Likud but during the tenure of Daniel Friedmann as Justice Minister in Ehud Olmert's Kadima government. Benny Begin, another member of the inner cabinet, referred to the Knesset majority's effort to hamstring the court as "political gluttony" and called on them to show restraint. And even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who allowed the issue to fester, ultimately announced that he sided with Meridor and Begin against opponents of the court within his own party and beyond.

Netanyahu made the right call. Israelis can't convincingly disparage pure democracy in the Arab world – as it catapults one Islamist party to power after another – as being inimical to authentic democratic values while carrying the banner of majority rule "no matter what" in Israel. Indeed, given the machinations of the Knesset, there is today no majority to block separate sidewalks and buses for men and women or prevent women from being marginalized in the IDF by religious obscurantists. It is questionable whether there would be a Knesset majority to stand behind Education Minister's Gideon Sa’ar's decision to forbid separate and unequal elementary schools for Ethiopians in Petah Tikva or to overturn the segregation of Sephardi ultra-Orthodox girls from their Hassidic classmates in Emmanuel. And the list goes on.

As in most democracies, tolerance, pluralism and respect for minority rights can't always be left to "the people" or, exclusively, to their elected officials.
Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, noted that "Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question." Similarly in Israel, the issue is not that the court is called upon to make tough and controversial decisions but that it is politically tone deaf in going about its work. If Israel's Supreme Court is to restore badly needed legitimacy --like its critics -- it too must abjure political gluttony. The country's judicial elites and their supporters need to internalize rather than delegitimize pervasive criticism.

Ultimately, however, Israel's High Court can only be safely revamped not salami-style by the Knesset but as part of an overall reform of the political system.

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ROMANIA & ISRAEL -- DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS

From Bucharest to Jerusalem


The cabinet of Romania headed by Prime Minister Emil Boc came to Jerusalem on November 24 to hold a joint session with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. Boc spoke eloquently of the two countries' common security concerns and shared views on peace and security. In February 2011 Poland's cabinet held a similar joint meeting in Jerusalem – a further indication of the close ties between post-Communist East Europe and the Jewish state.

Still, Romania is a unique case. Firstly, Israel and Romania have had continuous diplomatic relations since 1948.

Whatever the other sins of the country's Communist ruler Nicolae Ceausescu, who reveled in a cult of personality along with his wife Elena, Romania did not join other Soviet satellites, Arab and so-called non-aligned nations in their efforts to isolate Israel. If anything, Ceausescu -- who came to power in 1965 and met his bitter end in 1989 -- heightened diplomatic ties and even established air and sea links with Israel. That this decision was coordinated with the Kremlin and had ulterior motives does not detract from its significance, according to Israel's former ambassador to Romania, Yosef Govrin. To complicate the picture, Bucharest had recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1974 and provided it with training and logistical support.

In recent years, Romania, with its population of 22 million (mostly Eastern Orthodox) and an EU member since 2007, seems to have moved even closer toward Israel. In July 2011, Netanyahu became the first Israeli leader to visit Bucharest since Ceausescu's fall. Security cooperation between Jerusalem and Bucharest came under scrutiny in July 2010 when an IDF helicopter practicing flying over unfamiliar, steep terrain (not unlike Iran) crashed in thick fog into a Carpathian mountain ravine killing six IDF and one Romania soldiers.

Romania is also distinguished by the fact that alone among East European countries during the Soviet period, it did not engage in state-sponsored anti-Israelism or anti-Semitism. Its Jews were allowed to openly study their heritage and (for a price) to make aliya. "Romania never voted in the U.N. for equating 'Zionism with Racism' nor for negating Israel's participation in the General Assembly, as did other Soviet satellites," said Govrin. The 400,000 Israelis of Romanian heritage also contribute to a sense of mutual affinity.

The country has had an outsized part on the international stage dating back to the enlightened role played by Nicolae Titulescu (1882-1941) at the League of Nations, according to historian Rafi Vago of Tel Aviv University. It had sought to bridge East and West and to broker an Arab-Israel peace. Well-intentioned or not, Ceausescu helped convince Israel's Labor Party leaders that Yasir Arafat had the capacity to moderate his views. In this sense, Ceausescu helped pave the way for the ill-fated Madrid Conference (1991) and in the (1993) Oslo debacle. More constructively, he helped encourage Egypt's Anwar Sadat (1977) to make peace with Menachem Begin. Then as now, Romania steadfastly opposed an imposed solution preferring direct negotiations between the parties.

Bucharest's backing for Israel remains adroitly modulated. In a U.S.-vetoed Security Council resolution in 2004 condemning Israel for targeting Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Romania joined other EU countries in abstaining. In November's UNESCO vote in favor of full membership for "Palestine," Romania abstained (after having cast a negative vote in a preliminary round of voting). With less gusto than some other EU countries, Romania continues to help stoke Iran's economy even as it takes criticism for being a jumping off point for Iranian-run global narcotics being moved to Western Europe.

On balance, however, Romania is tallied among Israel's allies. Its opposition to a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood within the EU favorably counters erstwhile friends like Denmark and Sweden who exhibit scant patience for Israeli diplomatic and security concerns. Romanian-Israeli bilateral relations have progressively improved. In January 2001, at the start of the second intifada, the two countries signed a free trade agreement. Annual commerce in 2010 stood at $428 million though ties go far deeper as Israeli investment in Romania – not all of it trouble-free -- reportedly runs at $3 billion.

Part of what motivates Romania's desire for closer relations with Israel today is its long failure under Ceausescu to come to grips with the Holocaust. "During World War II no country except Germany was involved on such a scale in the massacre of its Jews as was Romania," according to Walter Laqueur's Holocaust Encyclopedia. Between 1941 and 1945 under the fascist Iron Guard rule of General Ion Antonescu Jews in many parts of the country were savagely persecuted. Of the 757,000 Jews who lived there in 1930 -- 4.5% of the population -- some 420,000 was killed (not counting the multitudes murdered in territory ceded to the Soviets as part of the Nazi-Communist Pact). Many other thousands were conscripted into forced labor battalions.

Now, there is a remnant community, mostly elderly, of between 6,000-12,000 souls; of whom fewer than a thousand are under the age of 25. Then again, the head of the community Aurel Vainer sits in the Romanian parliament representing the Jewish minority and a modern Jewish Community Center serves the population concentrated in the capital. In fact, the community is presently marking the 130th anniversary of Romania's Zionist movement.

Despite a strong residue of anti-Semitism still prevalent scholars familiar with the country tend to agree that the current political leadership – including President Traian Basescu -- is doing a mostly satisfactory job to dampen that oldest of hatreds. Indeed, the government helps fund the Elie Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania and is cooperating with Israel in training Romanian teachers in Holocaust education. While in Jerusalem, Boc and his ministers also visited Yad Vashem. All this, said Vago, reflected the regime's way of grappling with the country's sordid history during the Shoah.

Beyond assuaging its historical conscience and maintaining a Ceausescu legacy that it can be singularly proud of, Romania derives other benefits from its relations with Israel. Though in the EU, Romania leans more toward Washington than Brussels (it is not yet part of the Euro currency zone). It has signed a deal with Washington to base an array of interceptor missiles intended to protect Europe from Iran. Bucharest not unreasonably hopes that its ties with Jerusalem abet its credentials on Capitol Hill. On a purely practical level, thousands of Romanian workers have found employment in Israel doing mostly construction.

As distinct from Israel's fair-weather friends in Western Europe, Romania like Poland and other East European nations share a sense of responsibility for the decimation of their Jewish communities; tend to be pro-American; reject the anti-Zionist legacy of the Soviet empire and, tellingly, lack a significant Muslim population (66,000 in Romania). Moreover, the local media is less swept up in anti-Israelism so public opinion is less poisoned against the Jewish state.

None of this should be taken for granted, as Ambassador Mark Sofer, a former deputy director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry responsible for Central Europe and Eurasia, told scholar Manfred Gerstenfeld of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: "The goodwill exists on both sides and it is up to us all to capitalize on it.”

A New Book About Abraham Stern and Lehi's campaign against Britain

Terror Out of Zion


There is no love lost between the British Foreign Office and Israel. London's consideration for Israel's politico-security interests seems ever more limited. In a report to parliament earlier this month Foreign Minister William Hague condemned Israel for building in Jerusalem, being in the West Bank and for treating Hamas-controlled Gaza like the enemy it is. His only mention of Hamas was to blame Israel for the Islamist group's obduracy. Meantime, Britain's ambassador in Tel Aviv Matthew Gould, who has tried to put the best possible face on his government's harsh line, recently warned the Knesset not to pass legislation that would constrain London from funding pressure groups such as Peace Now as a way of influencing Israeli policies.

A long list of factors helps explain official Britain's less than fraternal attitude toward the Jewish state, but no inventory would be complete without reference to the bad blood left by the legacy of the Mandate and particularly the violent struggle waged against British rule by the pre-State underground Lehi (Freedom Fighters for Israel or Stern Group) and Irgun. Nations have interests; they also have long memories.

Now, a new book by Zev Golan, Stern: the Man and His Gang, brings into fresh focus the nasty fight waged by the Lehi against British policymakers and security personnel. Lehi fought Britain beginning in 1940, against the wishes of the Zionist establishment and the dissident Jabotinsky movement which supported Britain's war effort against Nazi Germany. "In this war, it is clear we want England to win, regardless of all her crimes against Zionism; she is decidedly the lesser of two evils," said Ze'ev Jabotinsky. Not so for Abraham Stern and his FFI followers who broke with the Irgun because he did not want the Jewish underground reporting to Jabotinsky or any political overlord.

Golan's sympathetic narrative, of what was an extremist and fringe movement that never numbered more than 900 members, begins with Stern's arrival in Palestine (1926). It concisely covers his student life at Hebrew University; love affair with his future wife; developing commitment to Jewish observance, and break with the Haganah over its policy of "restraint" in the face of murderous Arab riots against the Yishuv as well as Britain's breach -- more than ever in the 1939 White paper -- of its League of Nations commitment to foster a Jewish homeland.

Golan's book comes precisely 65 years after the FFI's bloody November 1946 offensive that claimed a score of mostly British lives. Take for example November 17 when Lehi operatives detonated a mine that killed three policemen, one airman and wounded several others. The next day's Palestine Post reported that the victims had been returning from a night at the cinema when their truck was blown up. In the course of the month, Lehi gunmen sabotaged rail lines, shot at trains, blew up military vehicles, destroyed international telegraph lines, attacked police stations, robbed Barclays Bank in Tel Aviv and set off an explosion at a British military base.

British authorities retaliated with a heavy hand while renegade British soldiers ran riot shooting and assaulting Jewish passerby and even murdering a Jewish constable. Zionist officialdom condemned the Sternists as terrorist "gangs" and called for their "liquidation," according to a November 18, 1946 JTA dispatch from Tel Aviv.

While the Stern Group's tactics were clear and its motivations comprehensible, it is debatable whether Stern had a rational strategy. He sent overtures to German intelligence in Beirut in the naive hope that Berlin would permit Europe's Jews to leave for Eretz Israel in return for Lehi's continued war against England. He further assumed England could not afford to fight in Palestine while it waged a war for its survival when in fact it had little alternative but to hunker down. And after World War Two, the group's strategy unwisely sought to align the Zionists with Stalin's "anti-imperialistic" Soviet Union.

As Golan tells it, Stern's "Revolutionary Zionism" did not dwell on the persecution of the individual Jew – not even by the Nazis – because Lehi's struggle was for the militant liberation of the homeland and political redemption of the Jewish people in its entirety. Stern could not have known details of Hitler's plan for the total annihilation of European Jewry (which had not been systematized until January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference), yet he knew that the Jews' plight was hanging by a thread. And still he pursued his campaign to eject the British from Palestine as if it "had nothing to do with the Holocaust."

Stern's bombastic vision was for a Greater Israel (from the Nile to the Euphrates!) whose legitimacy would be grounded in having been conquered by force. This Israel would nevertheless take neutral and pragmatic positions in its foreign relations. As for the Arab population, it would be "exchanged" -- presumably for Jews in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Stern was hunted down and executed in Tel Aviv by British security men in 1942. Thereafter, FFI's leadership was assumed by the more methodical Yitzhak Shamir (later to become Israel's prime minister) who undertook its painstaking renewal. He ordered the November 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne, the top British official in the Middle East responsible for keeping the doors to Palestine closed to Jews fleeing Hitler. And in mid-1948, with Shamir's approval, Lehi also assassinated UN envoy Count Folke Bernadotte who had promoted a scheme to neutralize the 1947 Partition Plan which had codified the creation of Israel.

The Lehi leadership ran the political gamut from old-line socialist to hard line nationalists. In common, they believed that a small vanguard group could achieve the liberation of the entire Jewish people. "It is permitted to liberate a people even against its will, or against the will of the majority," Shamir would say many years later.

In practice, Zionist unity did not seem to be a paramount value for Stern and the FFI. "The Sternists rejected the idea of obeisance to Jewish leaders not committed to independence in the name of unity," according to Golan. Only during the War of Independence would the Sternists be incorporated into the IDF. After the war, FFI's bickering leaders unsuccessfully sought to create a political platform; Shamir and several others eventually aligned with the Likud.

Golan provides capsule biographies of other key Lehi figures – whom he calls "people of principles" – including Nathan Yalin-Mor, the movement's top propagandist and Israel Eldad, its foremost theoretician. This workmanlike book is neither a hagiography nor a critical treatment of Stern and his movement. The author, who directs the Center for Public Policy at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies and has written books on history, philosophy and economics, has instead provided us with a narrative told from the unique perspectives of former Lehi fighters (including Shamir and Eldad) as well as Stern's brother and widow, all of whom he interviewed.

As for all the bad blood engendered by their anti-British struggle, Golan insists that Lehi for the most part – and certainly before 1947 -- did not authorize attacks against British civilians who were not "official" representatives of the regime. Yes, its credo was "terror," Golan argued, but unlike today's Palestinian Arab terror groups Lehi's targets were not primarily innocent civilians.

Stern was a maximalist who maintained that even Jabotinsky was insufficiently committed to Jewish independence. Today, on the radical fringes of Israel's extreme right, there are those who reject loyalty to the state and IDF on the grounds that the nation's leaders are insufficiently committed to the Land and Torah of Israel. Would Stern – who at age 35, six years before the state came into being, sacrificed his life – have rejected such fanaticism on the grounds that it jeopardizes the Third Commonwealth? We will never know.

My Rather Civilized Conversation with Larry Derfner About Iran

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/39838

Balfour & Weizmann Remembered

In November the Arabs Said 'No'


There are no uneventful months in the tortured history of the Arab-Israel conflict. November is no exception. It was on November 2, 1917 that Chaim Weizmann won the backing of the British government for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" famously codified by Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930) in his letter to Lord Rothschild, titular head of the British Jewish community, as the Balfour Declaration. And as if to bookend the month, November 29th will mark the 64th anniversary of the UN General Assembly's adoption of the 1947 Partition Plan: the two-state solution that was recklessly spurned by the Arabs; a rebuff that has embodied Arab rejection of a Jewish homeland ever since.

On November 9th the Israel Britain and Commonwealth Association held a gala anniversary dinner in Tel Aviv to mark Balfour's pronouncement. Guests included Britain's ambassador to Israel, the EU head of delegation and ambassadors from several commonwealth countries (including those who reflexively vote against Jerusalem at the U.N.). The Israeli government does not make too much of the occasion though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made passing reference to the Balfour Declaration in his September 2011 remarks to the UN General Assembly and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon did address the Tel Aviv banquet.

For its part, Hamas makes it a point to issue an annual denunciation of the declaration accompanied this year by a blood-curdling montage. Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official daily newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, routinely condemns Balfour claiming his declaration granted rights to "those who had no connection" to the land – meaning the Jewish people.

Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), then a distinguished chemist living in London, was instrumental in fashioning the Zionist-British alliance that resulted in the declaration. Fittingly, it was in November 60 years ago that Weizmann was re-elected to the presidency of Israel despite failing health. In fact, both Weizmann's 59th yahrzeit and the 137th anniversary of his birth are also commemorated this month.

Weizmann's achievement was never preordained, as Jonathan Schneer, by no means a Zionist sympathizer, notes in his The Balfour Declaration. The early Zionist leader had to overcome influential assimilationists Jews, including Edwin Montagu, who strenuously lobbied their government against cooperating with the Zionists, as well as Grand Sharif Hussein of Mecca and his sons the emirs Abdullah and Feisal who lobbied through British proxies. (The family ultimately lost control of Arabia to the Saudis.)

While the Palestinian Arabs had scarcely any unique identity at the time, Arab intellectuals in Syria pressured against Zionism on the grounds that Palestine was an integral part of Syria and could therefore not be delinked from Britain's magnanimous territorial bequest to the Arabs.

At the end of the day Britain, the preeminent power during and in the aftermath of World War One (1914–1918), promised the Jews a sliver of the Middle East, while the Arabs would get everything else. Even these commitments to the Jews and Arabs would have come to naught had secret talks conducted between Britain and the Ottoman Empire led to a separate peace, according to Schneer.

After World War I, both the Paris Peace Conference (1919) and the San Remo Conference (1920) ratified Britain's mandate for Palestine. France's presence in Syria notwithstanding, Britain's role assured that both Arabs and Jews would be on their way to self-determination. Balfour's expectation was that the Arabs would be willing to share a small sliver of the vast Mideast landscape with the Jews. Indeed, on March 3, 1919 Faisal encouragingly wrote Zionist leader Felix Frankfurter: "We Arabs, especially the educated among us look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement."

Tragically, pragmatists like Faisal did not carry the day. Instead, anti-Zionist Arab riots instigated by the fanatical Husseini clan were launched in 1920. London immediately went wobbly and embarked on a series of moves that first backtracked and then reversed its Balfour Declaration commitments.

To assuage Arab demands, Britain brought Abdullah from Arabia to Eastern Palestine in November 1920. This immense area – today's Jordan – comprising four-fifths of the Palestine mandate promised to the Jews by Balfour was ceded to the Arabs by 1921. Put another way, 80 percent of Palestine as defined by the League of Nations was lopped off leaving the Jews only the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean.

In 1937, in response to intensified Arab violence, Britain's Peel Commission called for further splitting the remaining 20% of Palestine to create an additional Arab state within what was supposed to be Jewish Palestine. The Zionists reluctantly acquiesced; the Arabs said no. By 1939, Neville Chamberlain had completely reneged on the Balfour Declaration and blocked Jewish immigration to Palestine just as the Nazi killing machine was going into lethal gear.

None of this can be blamed on Balfour who deserves to be remembered as a friend of the Jews. Statesmen do not act purely out of altruism and he like other British politicians were partly motivated by an exaggerated sense of Zionist influence in the international arena which they hoped to exploit for the war effort. At the same time, Balfour believed that Christian anti-Semitism had been a "disgrace" and wanted to make amends by providing the Jews with a "small notch" of territory, according to his biographer R.J.Q. Adams. In 1925, he famously helped dedicate the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. Like Theodor Herzl, Balfour may have assumed that British Jews would either thoroughly assimilate or choose to live in the Jewish homeland.

Ninety-four years after Balfour's declaration the right of the Jewish people to re-establish their national homeland is still rejected by even Palestinian Arab "moderates." The unremitting threat of renewed violence remains the Arabs' default position. Emboldened by the Gilad Schalit deal, Arab violence in Judea, Samaria and Gaza has seen an upswing. Cairo's renewed efforts to bring Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas together will perforce necessitate more militancy from Fatah rather than greater flexibility from Hamas. In the words of Mahmoud Zahhar, the notion that Hamas will ever make peace with Israel is "insane."

Sixty-four years after Palestinian Arabs rejected the partition plan, Abbas claims to be having second thoughts. Yet instead of negotiating with the Jewish state he is forging ahead at the UN for unilateral statehood without making peace with Israel.

Sadly, Abba Eban's 1973 quip that the Arabs "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" holds stubbornly true. To be fair, time does not stand completely still. Abbas-like moderates are operating only 64 years behind real time though for the "militants" of Hamas it's perpetually 1917.