Letter from Jerusalem -- Survival Strategies for Ordinary Living

When your hometown happens to also be a spiritual and political powder keg – a point of pilgrimage as well as strife – it's easy to find yourself struggling to maintain some emotional equilibrium. Don't get me wrong, it's a privilege to live in Zion. Jerusalem is a beautiful city on innumerable levels.

And yet, sometimes, plain ordinary life can get, well, intense. Besides being at the epicenter of the Arab-Israel conflict, what also wear down Jerusalemites like me are the intra-communal tensions – between Jewish people of different religious persuasions, traditional and non-observant Jews on the one hand against the ultra-Orthodox on the other.

And it's not only the big issues that can be wearying. Like any major city, prosaic worries dominate day-to-day life: high taxes, choking traffic, dirty streets, deficient schools and a dearth of public spaces – making it seem that the veneer of civilization is running thin.

So my wife Lisa and I have come up with five strategies that help us maintain our perspective.

Shopping – We found a great place to do our grocery shopping. For visitors I recommend shopping at the Mahane Yehuda outdoor market in downtown. I like it for its bustling and zesty ambiance, fresh produce and low prices. Fishmongers and spice merchants now compete with boutique fashion and ceramic shops, mom-and-pop Ethiopian eateries, gourmet cheese and wine shops and even a London-style fish and chips shop.
When we need to do a "big shop" to stock-up on household staples (cleaning supplies, paper towels and tuna fish) we skip our favorite – more about that later – supermarket (too expensive) and Mahane Yehuda (inconvenient because of parking and congestion) and head to one of several big hurly-burly discount supermarkets in the industrial part of our southern Jerusalem neighborhood usually Rami Levy discount supermarket.

Some Israelis treat shopping (and driving) like a competitive sport. Like the time we waited in line behind a man with just three items in his shopping cart, only to see him joined by his wife pushing an overloaded wagon just as he got to the checkout clerk. He had been "holding" her spot on line. Thursday nights – when what passes for the Israeli weekend begins – the big supermarkets tend to be jumping with pre-Sabbath shoppers.

Fortunately, for ordinary grocery shopping we discovered a small retrograde supermarket that caters to Israelis from English-speaking countries (called "Anglos" here), diplomats and UN-personnel. It is called SuperDeal (28 Hebron Road, near the Old Train Station).

It's not particularly fancy or nicely lit up and it doesn't offer the variety of the bigger supermarkets. The bargains are few and the prices, well let's just say they’re not cheap. Still, SuperDeal stocks many Anglo favorites not widely available in the country like Aunt Jemima pancake mix, ground coffee and Gatorade for the Americans; and Marmite, English tea and shortbread biscuits for the Brits. (Did I mention that Lisa is London born?) And when the lines at SuperDeal get long, the management pulls out all stops to speed things up; opening up more lanes and putting on more packers. If you spend over 300 shekels (about $80) you get a free bottle of soda pop.

Last Thanksgiving it seemed as if Super Deal's kosher butcher shop (which is professionally staffed by Palestinian Arab butchers) seemed to be supplying the entire ex-pat community in Jerusalem with turkeys.
Thank goodness for Super Deal.

Shabbat – Israelis lead hectic lives. What with Fridays being a school day and Sunday the start of the new work week – that leaves only Saturday to unwind. For those of us who are traditional and sanctify the Sabbath, that means no work, travel or even cooking from Friday night at sunset until after dark Saturday. A real "day of rest" as the Sabbath is called.

Yet Lisa and I often wonder how our fellow Israelis who don't observe Shabbat stay sane. At our place, off go the Blackberry, the Internet and television – and unless there is some kind of crisis afoot, we don't take phone calls or listen to the radio news. What we do instead is spend quality time with family and friends.
On Friday night we try to get to synagogue services. Lately we discovered a new congregation called Mizmar Le'David (Song of David) that welcomes the Sabbath Bride with song and joyful prayer. After services we either host or are invited for a traditional Shabbat meal. The meal always begins with a song welcoming the Sabbath bride and the benediction over wine. Lisa's a great cook (always experimenting with a new recipe) so if we're hosting guests can count on the food being delicious and ample. Sitting around the Shabbat table – whether on Friday evening or Saturday afternoon or both – gives us an opportunity to enjoy camaraderie with friends (usually from the neighborhood). It's a way of putting life on pause. We always sing Grace After Meals before leaving the table for conversation in the living room.
Thank goodness for Shabbat.

Walking – On Saturday mornings there is comparatively little traffic in Jerusalem. Most businesses, restaurants and shops are closed as are schools. The City recently created a new urban trail along the old railroad track (this historic line once connected Beirut to Cairo via Palestine). Nowadays it's a bike path and pedestrian mall making it a lovely place for a Shabbat walk.

Alternatively, we stroll along the Sherover - Haas Promenade which offers panoramic views of Jerusalem, the Old City and the Mount of Olives from the south. We just never tire of this outlook. For weekday sanity, I usually hike up to Kibbutz Ramat Rachel which sits astride Israel's 1949 Armistice Lines (what people confusingly call the 1967 boundaries). From the lookout point you can see the outskirts of Bethlehem (now controlled by the Palestinian Authority). When the weather is good, I bicycle up to the kibbutz and then have a quick swim in the pool.

Thank goodness that Jerusalem, though hilly, is a walking city.

Eating – Anyone who knows me knows I enjoy a good meal and Jerusalem is blessed with excellent restaurants. Since we adhere to Jewish dietary traditions the restaurants we frequent are either kosher "meat" or "dairy."

I'm partial to a simple mom and pop place called Ima (Mom's) at 189 Agrippas Street not far from the Central Bus Station and the Mahane Yehuda market which specializes in Israeli-Oriental-Kurdish style home cooking. Nothing fancy but I always feel revived after the Kubbeh soup of small pockets made of semolina dough stuffed with ground beef and pine nuts. Lisa and I would eat there a couple times a week after I finished my shift at the Jerusalem Post. Back during the dark days of the Second Intifada we were sometimes the only ones in the place. Now, it's best to make a reservation.

Our favorite special occasion restaurant is Angelica at 7 Shatz Street in the center of town. I've seen famous authors and politicians eat there. The food is usually very good -- I tend to order Entrecote steak or lamb-- and service is typically good. For "dairy" we take our chances at a small hole in the wall called Al Dente at 50 Ussishkin Street. The pasta is freshly made, the food almost always delicious, but the service can be painfully inept. A few months back when the renovated Israel Museum (11 Rupin Street) reopened we discovered their fancy European-style meat restaurant, called Modern (overlooking the Valley of the Cross). We like going there on a Tuesday night when the museum is also open late. The food is first-rate and the service is well-meaning.

Thank goodness for good food.

Culture – As you may have guessed we love the Israel Museum. For occasional visitors there is a long list of must-sees such as the Shrine of the Book which houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and the enthralling 1:50 scale model of Jerusalem during the Second Temple period.
Lisa and I tend to go for the temporary exhibits. My recent favorite was Christian Marclay's mesmerizing The Clock which we saw twice. If it comes to your town be sure to see it. I also never tire of experiencing the lovingly reconstructed synagogues in the museum including the 18th-century sanctuary from Suriname (white sand floor); one from the 16th century called Kadavumbagam (“by the side of the landing place”) Synagogue from Cochin, India; and a 1735 synagogue from the market town of Horb in Southern Germany. I'm fond of the museum at night when you can see the nearby Knesset all lit up.

We've finally gotten into the habit of going to the Cinematheque – the most civilized place in Jerusalem to see a film not counting the Jerusalem Theater and Performing Arts Center near the Prime Minister's Residence. The Cinematheque, situated near the Old City walls, is trendier. It's a Mecca for Jerusalem's secular population and tends to offer a heavy fare of left-wing European films and it's a bit too artsy for me though I'm not ashamed to confess that we've enjoyed live HD simulcasts of some great Metropolitan Opera performances from New York.

Of course there are a variety of lectures and classes in Jerusalem on any given evening. For instance, on Thursday evening the Menachem Begin Heritage Center offers a popular free lecture on the weekly Bible reading (in Hebrew) that has people lining up 20 minutes before the doors open. During winter 2012, Pardes, the Jewish creative learning institute, presented a series of lectures by the brilliant Bible scholar James L. Kugel.

When Lisa and I go abroad we like to get a sense of what life is like for regular folks. What's a grocery store like? How do they spend their down time? Where is a nice place to stroll? What cultural attractions appeal to locals? Where do locals eat?

If you feel the same way when you travel, make time to experience some of Jerusalem's local flavor on your next visit. Ride our new light-rail train; stroll inside the new Hamoshbir department store at Zion Square; visit a supermarket – it doesn't have to be ours. A journey to Jerusalem should leave you fascinated and uplifted. Living here is that too though also a challenge. It's a living breathing city warts and all – just as it was in the days of the Bible.


-- Published in "Israel My Glory" magazine

Absentee Ballot -- Voting in U.S. presidential election 2012 from Israel

A Vote Not Cast

When my Labor Zionist cousins made aliya from New York City in the 1950s to an agricultural moshav outside Raanana they cast off comfort, kin and familiarity for the yoke of pioneering Zionism. It was inevitable that they'd lose touch with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Joe DiMaggio's love life and the fate of the Third Avenue El. Just getting hold of a delayed copy of the Herald Tribune would have been a coup. And the thought of casting an absentee ballot in the presidential contest between Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower and Democrat Adlai Stevenson did not even cross their minds .

Nowadays, Americans living in Israel will find voting in the 2012 presidential elections no trickier than keeping up with Season Five of Mad Men. As an ex-New Yorker, I am able to apply to vote via a Federal website or through my local board of elections. It seems I am eligible to vote in municipal contests and, for all I know, in school board races.

Having downloaded and filled out an application, all I need do is affix my signatures and airmail the forms to the Board of Elections on Ninth Avenue. Anticipating approval of my submission, the board has already emailed to wish me "a great voting experience this year!"

Filing overseas tax returns is a legal obligation, holding a second passport may simply be prudent, and feeling devotion to America is only natural. But as someone who has no expectations of returning to live in the United States I see voting as an exploitation rather than an exercise of my rights, and as a betrayal of my Zionist bona fides.

Did Herzl and Jabotinsky go to their early graves so that I could exercise my right to vote in America?

That's not the way Kory Bardash of Republicans Abroad sees it. A strong America, he argues, helps secure a strong and independent Israel. "By helping to elect officials that understand and support Israel’s struggle against an ever increasing hostile world that looks to delegitimize it, those that vote in the US election can help support [the Zionist] dream."

Advocates of absentee balloting also argue that with taxation comes representation. Ex-pats living in London have no compunction about voting in U.S. elections so why should those living in Tel Aviv feel differently? Israel's 300,000 Americans make it the fifth largest expat community, according to Bardash. And isn't it true that many maintain deep connections through family, friends and frequent visits. Moreover, 115 countries allow absentee voting and they can't all be wrong.

All true, but Israel doesn't allow absentee balloting. And there is no groundswell of sentiment to give 500,000 ex-pat Israelis (about 10 percent of the population) whose lives are permanently centered in America, Russia or Germany the right to vote.

On the other hand, Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser did lately direct a quasi-public think tank to explore whether and to what extent to enfranchise Israelis abroad.

He is weighing one option in particular that – if endorsed by the cabinet and passed by the Knesset – would extend limited voting rights to some 42,000 Israelis on a one-off basis who have been abroad for no more than four years among them university students, post-army trekkers, visiting academics, business people, tourists and airline crews. Given Israel's size that could be enough, cumulatively, to influence the outcome of two Knesset seats.

Historically, however, any reforms have been opposed by strange bedfellows: the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, some national-religious factions, the Arab bloc, and the leftist Haaretz newspaper.

While sensible reforms extending the vote to those temporarily out of the country could make it through the Knesset no one expects the franchise to be handed broadly to ex-Israelis permanently living overseas.

The consensus seems to be that those who have permanently made their lives elsewhere have ceded their say in life-and-death decisions affecting the Jewish state. Plainly, for ex-pat U.S. citizens the circumstances are quite different.

Some Israeli-Americans will vote out of a sense of patriotism; of those many will weigh to the moral dilemma of exercising power without personally having to pay the consequences.

There will be those who will not cast absentee ballots out of lethargy. And still others will consciously refrain from voting because for them answering the Zionist call for the ingathering of the Jewish people in Eretz Israel necessitates, perforce, abdication of involvement in the political affairs of one's former homeland.

The Others Among Us - Two New Books About The Lower East Side

What most American Jews know about New York's Lower East Side comes from books like Irving Howe's World of our Fathers, memories of family shopping excursions to Orchard Street or tours of the Tenement Museum. My claim to fame is that I was born and raised in the neighborhood making my appearance when there were still pushcarts along Avenue C, street corner vendors selling knishes or ice cream (depending on the season) and shuls on practically every block. By the 1950s, just as the Lower East Side's Jewish heyday was behind it, a wave of post-World War II Holocaust refugees breathed new life into the area. The respite would be brief. Jews in the Alphabet City section (Avenues A, B, C, and D)would be forced out during the 1960s and 1970s by black and Puerto Rican violence while Jews south of Delancey Street would be incrementally bought out by the Chinese by the dawn of the 21st century. Hard to believe that a hundred years earlier there had been half a million Jews living in tenements from 14th Street down toward the southern tip of Manhattan. And that these denizens – immigrants and old-timers – were not alone. They shared the "Jewish Lower East Side" with other hyphenated Americans: Italian, Irish, German and Chinese. In An Immigrant Neighborhood Shirley J. Yee, a professor of Gender Studies at the University of Washington, focuses on the Chinese who settled on the LES before 1930 in what would become Chinatown. Once the reader gets beyond Yee's unselfconscious political correctness – talk of "normative white heterosexuality," "systems of power relations" and "patriarchal and heternormative assumptions" – there is what to be mined. Yee's basic discovery is that the various ethnic groups interacted "unglamorously" more than is generally appreciated. Chinese businesses employed non-Chinese workers and served a mixed clientele. Irish funeral parlors served the Chinese until the community was sufficiently established to provide for itself. Similarly, the Visiting Nurse Service co-founded by the German Jewish Lillian Wald ministered to the Chinese. Jewish physicians (there were 1,000 by 1907 despite medical school quota policies) such as Abraham Jacobi attended Chinese patients. Jewish plumbers unclogged Chinese drains. Her research even turned up the existence of "interracial households." Yee devotes a chapter to the Oldest Profession which was thriving in the neighborhood viewing anti-vice organizations as trying to impose "middle-class values on poor and immigrant people." In any event, the Chinese did not have it easy, trapped by policies intended to segregate the newcomers and facing hostility and prejudice from the authorities and from their neighbors particularly the Irish. Most Jewish historians note that the Educational Alliance on East Broadway was established by uptown German Jews to acculturate the East European Lower East Side Jews. Yee's somewhat censorious take is that the Edgies' ultimate purpose was to provide a venue for Jews to meet and marry other Jews. A good thing too because, as she remarks, settlement houses founded by Christian groups sought to proselytize Jews. Turns out that Orthodox rabbis opposed Jewish settlement houses fearing the immigrants would become too assimilated into the American mainstream; while some uptown Jews worried that outright opposition to the Christian settlement houses would stoke anti-Semitism, according to Yee. Gil Ribak in Gentile New York sets out to capture how Lower East Side Jews, between 1881 and 1920, perceived their non-Jewish neighbors. A postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona, Ribak fells even more straw men than Yee. The biggest revelation being that Lower East Side Jews were not innately liberal. Many arrived prejudiced and stayed that way. Dislocated, poor and struggling Jews did not straight away identify with people more marginalized than themselves. They stereotyped goyim – particularly the Irish – as Jew-haters, coarse and dangerous. On the other hand, they idealized blueblood Americans, Yankees they called them, as culturally and socially refined embodying cherished middle class values. By the end of the First World War some of these Yankees persecuted the Jews, celebrating the overthrow of the Russian czar, for their socialist and communist sympathies. Ribak provides a history of New York Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in order to contextualize the images Jewish immigrants held of non-Jews. "The first real-life encounter with Americans was unquestionably a harrowing experience for many an immigrant. It typically occurred at the port of entry, which in New York was at Castle Garden, at the southern tip of Manhattan, until 1892, and after that at Ellis Island." By the 1920s, once ensconced on the Lower East Side, a Jew could purportedly live for many years "without encountering a Christian," or so a Yiddish journalist then claimed. While dreadful reports from the Old World served as a stark reminder of what they had escaped, daily life drove home that anti-Semitism was endemic even on the Lower East Side. German union bosses blocked Jews from jobs, Italian ruffians broke labor strikes, but the Irish were by far the worst. In 1902, as the funeral procession of Grand Rabbi Jacob Joseph made its way along Grand Street past their factory building Irish workers "rained down iron bolts, screws, oil-soaked rags. Melon rinds, and sheets of water" on the mourners. When the police arrived they clubbed the Jew who had entered the building in pursuit of the hooligans leaving more than 200 people in need of medical attention. One Yiddish paper lamented: "Chinese carry their deceased through the streets of New York and no one assaults them. We are treated worse than the Chinese." Whatever the inference of those sentiments, Jews found common cause with Asians in opposing immigration restrictions. They saw the Chinese as hardworking and mostly law abiding like themselves. The Irish were another matter; they were referred to as "vile savages" or simply "Christians" in the Yiddish press. Incessant street violence hardened Jewish prejudices against them and the Germans. Irish louts could get away with a lot because their co-religionists dominated New York's corrupt police force. Even when the attacks were not physical they left their sting as when shouts of "Kill the Jews" rang in the ears of spectators at a 1915 basketball game between the YMCA and the YMHA. Is it any surprise then that immigrant Jews had a low opinion of their Irish neighbors? As for African Americans, contacts with them were sporadic and attitudes ambivalent. Speaking among themselves in the Yiddish press Jews consistently opposed discrimination against blacks. Yet as Ribak says, "identification coexisted with distance." Jewish property owners worried that the arrival of blacks would lower real estate values. Just like other whites, Jews sought out black domestic workers at so-called slave markets in the Bronx "sometimes offering them very low wages." For their part, black demagogues in Harlem such as "Sufi Abdul Hamid," active in the 1930s, virulently scapegoated Jews urging boycott and jihad. "Antipathy and attraction frequently coexisted," Ribak concludes. Mutual distrust competed with instinctive Jewish sympathy. Gentile in New York concludes with the thesis that immigrant Jews joined the mainstream by embracing universalism, liberalism, sometimes Marxism, and by elevating the defense of others over parochial self-interest, essentially trading assimilation for acceptance. So what remains today of a definable Jewish Lower East Side? Only a remnant, compact, lower middle-class, rather Orthodox, comparatively elderly enclave in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge. Traces of the Irish have disappeared. Little Italy has become a restaurant district. Only Chinatown, throbbing and vibrant has expanded to encompass much of the neighborhood. Gentrification has cleared the slums around Alphabet City, including St. Mark's Place where I first lived, and public housing projects abutting the East River erected in the 1960s remain the preserve of the working poor. Back in 1907 when the Jewish Lower East Side was at its zenith, Oscar Solomon Straus, America's first Jewish cabinet secretary, astutely wrote in The American Spirit that "An unprejudiced study of immigration justifies me in saying that the evils are temporary and local, while the benefits are permanent and national." So it was. ###

Getting Hitler -Andrew Nagorski's "Hitlerland"

Some cataclysmic events occur with the speed of a train wreck; others unfold over a period of months or even years. Nassim Nicholas Taleb's 2007 sardonic bestseller The Black Swan put forth the proposition that the more earth shattering the event the less likely are news outlets to provide their readers with an early warning. A less condescending take on why journalists – and diplomats for that matter – are caught off-guard is that they are not fortunetellers. It is reasonable though to insist they accurately observe, astutely contextualize and plainly transmit that which they witness. The subject of Andrew Nagorski's exasperatingly non-judgmental new book Hitlerland is how well reporters and diplomats stationed in Germany after the First World War did in correctly assessing the path embarked upon by Hitler and Germany?

The main draw of Hitlerland is in its voyeuristic quality. We meet Hitler before he comes to power and can fantasize about myriad ways the monster might have met an early demise. For "without Hitler, the Nazis would never have succeeded in their drive for absolute power." Nagorski, a former Newsweek reporter and now policy director for the EastWest Institute think-tank, gives us a sense of what life was like for American diplomats and journalists and their ex-pat families. Though many newspapers and radio stations did not outlive the Great Depression that began in 1929 those that did managed to send over time some 50 journalists to cover Hitler's rise to power. Judged by their contemporaneous experiences – not 20/20 hindsight – Nagorski shows that some proved clueless; several became Nazi apologists, while only a handful proved sagacious in their reporting.

The story begins circa 1920 in post-World War I Weimer Germany which the Americans mostly found to be carefree, civilized, sexually racy and U.S.-friendly. Under the Treaty of Versailles (1919) Germany had been required to pay reparations to the victorious allies, disarm its military and give up its colonies. By attacking these stipulations, the Nazis were able to exploit the sentiments of a country that felt humiliated. When the Depression came, Germany's socialist government could no longer pay its bills. The bad economy gave the Nazis enormous traction and stoked claims by fascists such as General Eric Ludendorff that Jews and communists had stabbed the country-in-the-back and were responsible for Germany's rout. He joined Hitler's 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.

Among those who make cameo appearances in Nagorski's narrative of the interwar period are Ben Hecht, who spent two years in Berlin starting in 1918 as a cub reporter for the Chicago Daily News well before anti-Semitism had metastasized. Charles Lindbergh made his first visit to Germany in 1936, and at the request of the U.S. military attaché toured German airbases with Hermann Goering. The men hit it off and Lindbergh became an advocate for accommodation with the Nazis and an outspoken proponent of U.S. isolationism. John F. Kennedy came in 1937 after a "rowdy" European road trip recording in his diary an appreciation for the Nordic beauties he encountered. Former president Herbert Hoover arrived in 1938 to meet Goering and Hitler. The führer ranted against Jews, communists and democracy, leading Hoover to conclude that Hitler might possibly be insane but was his own man and not the puppet of some reactionary cabal. Returning home, Hoover lectured Americans not to interfere in how Germans ran their internal affairs. Then there was the irascible George Kennan who had volunteered for a Berlin embassy assignment, but when the time came for U.S. diplomats to be are evacuated in 1939 whined impatiently about the many places that had been inopportunely reserved for Jewish refugees on the ship sailing for neutral Lisbon.

Nagorski's descriptions of early meetings with Hitler are most intriguing. Karl Wiegand, the German-born Hearst correspondent who had grown up in Iowa, first met Hitler in 1921, and began writing about him a year later – fully 11 years before Hitler came to power. Wiegand initially characterized him as a new politician, "a man of the people" and a "magnetic speaker." Here he eerily introduced the future führer to his readers: "Aged thirty-four, medium-tall, wiry, slender, dark hair, cropped toothbrush mustache, eyes that seem at times to spurt fire, straight nose, finely chiseled features with a complexion so remarkably delicate that many a woman would be proud to possess it, and possessing a bearing that creates an impression of dynamic energy well under control…" The first U.S. diplomat to meet Hitler was Truman Smith a military attaché in 1922: "A marvelous demagogue. I have rarely listened to such a logical and fanatical man. His power over the mob must be immense."

Helen Hanfstaengl, the American wife of Ernst, a German industrialists and Nazi sympathizer, frequently hosted Hitler in her Berlin home. She described him as a "slim, shy [asexual] young man with a far-away look in his very blue eyes" who liked children. In adult company Hitler did the talking "his voice had a mesmeric quality." Her guest fancied black coffee and chocolates not to mention Wagner's music which affected him "physically."

Twist of fate: After Hitler's failed lurch for power in the 1923 putsch he and Ludendorff barely escaped in a hail of police bullets that claimed 14 Nazi lives. Devastated, about to be arrested, Hitler intended to kill himself with a revolver when Helen grabbed his arm and took the weapon away from him, "What do you think you are doing?" Thus was Hitler given a new lease on life. He thrived on the publicity he received during his trial and addressed the court with "humor, irony and passion." He ultimately served nine months under pampered conditions while dictating Mein Kampf. As for Helen, she would divorce Ernst and return to America.

Reportage made while Hitler was already a major figure but before he became chancellor is no less fascinating. Wiegand continued to cover Hitler quoting him in 1930 in the New York American saying, "I am not for curtailing the rights of the Jews in Germany, but I insist that we others who are not Jews shall not have less rights than they." Annetta Antona of the Detroit News interviewed Hitler in 1931 in Munich and remarked on the large portrait of Henry Ford over his desk. "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," Hitler told her of the anti-Semitic car magnet. Dorothy Thompson, wife of Sinclar Lewis, writing in 1931 also noted his "almost feminine charm" and his eyes. But "take the Jews out of Hitler's program and the whole thing collapse," she concluded. Thompson was eventually expelled by the Nazis.

Hugh Wilson, first assigned to the Berlin Embassy 1916, would become the last U.S. ambassador before WWII. He described Hitler as "a man who does not look at you steadily but gives you an occasional glance as he talks." He felt Hitler made policy according to his "artistic" instincts yet with efficiency. Parenthetically, in 1938, Wilson was briefly recalled by the Roosevelt administration for "consultations" to protest Germany's treatment of the Jews. Back in Washington, that same year cabinet member Harold Ickes also attacked "German Barbarism." But it was Sumner Wells, the undersecretary of state, who in March 1940 was the last major U.S. figure to see Hitler: "He had in real life none of the ludicrous features so often shown in his photographs…he was dignified, both in speech and in movement." With the US gripped by isolationism Wells did not even insinuate that Washington might join the war England was already waging against Hitler, Nagorski writes. Perhaps not incidentally, Wells proved particularly adept at giving U.S. Jewish leaders the runaround during the Shoah.

There were a few who did see Hitler plain. Among them were US counsel-general George Messersmith who early on assessed the Nazis as extremely dangerous and in internal State Department discussion revealed himself to be a hawk. Another was journalist William Shirer who found himself physically revolted while observing storm troopers marching below his window. Of Germans under Hitler's spell he wrote: "As an individual he will give his rationed bread to feed the squirrels in the Tiergarten [park] on a Sunday morning…but as a unit in the Germanic mass he can persecute Jews [and] torture and murder his fellow men in a concentration camp…" He recalled his reaction after meeting Hitler: "There is something glassy about his eyes, the strongest thing in his face [but] for the life of me I could not quite comprehend what hidden springs he undoubtedly unloosed in the hysterical mob." Perhaps, he opined, it was because the Nazis employed quasi-religious rites that turned their rallies into fervent, mystical-like experiences.

There were others, too, who were "rarely fooled" by Hitler. Nagorski points to Edgar Mowrer, winner of the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Hitler and author of Germany Puts The Clock Back. Challenging an exasperated Nazi yob over the blind irrationality of his tirade, the reporter extracted the retort: "The Fuhrer himself says true Nazis think with their blood." Another discerning observer was Sigrid Schultz who became the Chicago Tribune's bureau chief who spotlighted the Nazi propaganda machine and how it had warped the thinking of ordinary Germans. There was also Joseph Harsch of the Christian Science Monitor who recognized that the US would either have to eventually join England in fighting or become a satellite of "Hitlerland" – hence the book's title.

History never repeats itself literally. But what of those now shaping our views about events in Pyongyang, Tehran, Beijing, Moscow, Islamabad and Ankara? They probably have less expertise and less access to decision makers than Shirer, Mowrer and Schultz had in their day. With fewer foreign bureaus, many news outlets rely on local stringers who lack American sensibilities and professionalism. This deficit is hardly offset by parachuting in American pundits or letting lose armchair bloggers to influence perceptions of burning issues. Absent the gift of prophecy, there is no substitute for living in the place you write about, understanding the language and being attuned to its culture.

###

The Shin Bet Law - 10 Years On

The Unseen Shield

The news report hardly makes much of an impression on most Israelis: a checkpoint search in the West Bank, this one in the Jenin area, another discovery of explosives and weapons and the familiar finale "the suspect was taken in for questioning by the Shin Bet."
The Shin Bet (also known as the Israel Security Agency, the General Security Service and "Shabak") is tasked with protecting Israeli officials and containing Jewish extremists. Its main responsibility, however, is defending Israel in the Arabs' long war against the Zionist enterprise. As "moderate" Palestinian leaders urge their followers to deny the Jewish people their right to sovereignty anywhere in the Middle East and "militant" leaders preach "resistance" and "armed struggle," Shin Bet commanders need to constantly calibrate strategies and perfect operational tactics. No less taxing, they must operate within the rule of law and cognizant of the moral imperatives embodied in Jewish tradition and Western civilization.
One might expect an agency charged with staving off murderous fanatics to bristle under such constraints. Not so. The Shin Bet's institutional commitment to law and morality was on display earlier in the month when members of the Israeli intelligence community, academics and students gathered at the law school of the College of Management in Rishon Lezion to mark the tenth anniversary of the Knesset's passage of the "Shin Bet Law."
With this legislation that clarified its function and jurisdiction, Israel's domestic security agency came in from the cold. The prime minister was confirmed as its ultimate authority, the tenure of its chief (whose name is no longer a state secret) was set at five years, and procedures were put in place for intra-agency, governmental, and ministerial oversight. The law further required the agency's internal auditor to submit an annual report to officials charged with monitoring its classified work. The law codified the Shin Bet's authority to routinely collect information and question suspects. No longer did the Shin Bet need to operate in a legal twilight zone with the scope of its work was left vague.
Even today no one would claim that the Shabak offers tea and biscuits to those it suspects of enabling the murder of Israelis. The Shin Bet Law has emphatically not addressed every legal and ethical question; and as Yoram Rabin, the College of Management's law dean acknowledged, it has not erased the inherent tensions between the need to gather domestic intelligence and the protection of civil liberties. In parts, the legislation is purposely vague. It mandates that the Shin Bet preserve national security though it fails to define what constitutes "essential state interests," Prof. Suzie Navot noted.
Its deficiencies notwithstanding, former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter (2000–2005) believes the legislation advances both security and the rule of law. He traced the law's impetus to questionable conduct by some Shin Bet agents during the 1980s. In 1984 for example, agents summarily executed two terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who had hijacked passengers on route from Tel Aviv to Ashkelon in what came to be known as the Bus Number 300 Affair. Most egregiously, the Shin Bet sought to cover-up its actions. In 1987, the Supreme Court ordered the release – after seven years of wrongful imprisonment – of IDF Lt. Izzat Nafsu, a member of the Circassian minority, who had been tortured into confessing to espionage he did not commit. Israel's president at the time, Chaim Herzog, declared that he was "ashamed" that such a thing could happen. In November 1987, a commission headed by former Supreme Court justice Moshe Landau offered classified guidelines, adopted by the Cabinet, for the use of a "moderate measure of physical pressure" during interrogations.
During the first intifada, after Islamic Jihad had carried out its first suicide bombing, exploding the Number 405 bus from Tel Aviv-Jerusalem and murdering 16 passengers, the Shin Bet came under ever increasing pressure to keep Israelis safe. Dichter recalled a December 1989 incident in which Palestinian gunmen had ambushed and killed two IDF reservists in the Gaza Strip. A number of suspects were arrested including Khalid Sheikh Ali in whose home investigators found axes and masks. In a failed effort to discover the whereabouts of the cell's arsenal and its plans for further attacks, interrogators reportedly tortured him to death. It was hardly the only instance of its kind, but it left the institution traumatized and its leader's soul-searching.
In 1999, Landau's guidelines were muddled by Israel's Supreme Court under Aharon Barak which basically ruled that force could not be used during interrogations though agents dealing with a "ticking bomb" situation could use a "necessary defense" argument if criminally charged.
By the time Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon (1996–2000) stepped down and Dichter took over the political climate was right to press for a law that would, in effect, inoculate agency operatives against charges of working "in the service of the state while operating outside its laws." If the price for a shield of legitimacy was oversight, the Shin Bet was ready to pay it. The agency's former general counsel, Aryeh Roter, who drafted the bill ultimately passed by the Knesset, told the College of Management audience that the 2002 law successfully demonstrated that terror could be combated within a legal and comparatively transparent framework.
As Barak recognized, the most difficult cases involve "ticking bombs" where investigators have little time to elicit from suspects details of an impending attack. During the deliberations over the Shin Bet Law, then Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit said he would not allow torture to be enshrined in legislation. The best that can be done, said Dichter is to rationalize the process of obtaining internal approvals so that agents can operate legally in real-world situations. Current procedures requiring multiple authorizations "at three o'clock in the morning" from a long checklist of officials, up and down the political and legal chain of command, are unworkable when confronted with a suspect "who refuses to reveal at which bus depot in the country a bomb has been set to explode later that morning during rush hour," said Dichter.
Ten years after the law's passage, the Shin Bet, whose motto is "the unseen shield" nowadays operates with comparative transparency providing its personnel with a deserved sense of legal propriety as they fulfill their grave 24/7 responsibilities of keeping Israelis out of harm's way. Israelis do not expect the Shabak to play by Marquis de Sade's rules, but many do take comfort that those at the frontlines of Israel's struggle for survival do not capriciously breach the very values that distinguish Jewish and Western civilizations from the darkness the Islamists would impose on us all.

Martyr in Waiting

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Khader Adnan, currently under administrative detention in Israel, has announced the end of his 66-day hunger strike in exchange for a commitment by Israeli authorities to set him free on April 17. His pending release raises this moral dilemma: If Adnan is a significant figure in PIJ's West Bank infrastructure and was detained because he posed an imminent danger to Israeli citizens, was it ethical for Israeli authorities to capitulate to his demands?

Roughly 300 Palestinian Arab security prisoners are currently held in Israel without trial. Other democracies, the United States and the United Kingdom among them, also employ this stopgap measure. Apparently no democracy has been able to combat terrorism without such an expedient.

Unless one is privy to the intelligence reports, one cannot know whether Adnan is, as his defenders claim, merely a PIJ spokesman or, as the authorities believe, far more lethal. Even if he is not one of PIJ's ticking bombs, Adnan certainly runs with those who are. Yet he will go free because authorities feared that his self-inflicted martyrdom would trigger paroxysms of rioting and bring international opprobrium from the Palestinian amen corner and others insulated from, or indifferent to, the potentially fatal consequences of his release.

Perhaps living in a Palestinian polity that incubates fanaticism stokes a propensity toward self-punishment. In January, Palestinian Women's Affairs Ministry staffers undertook a hunger strike to protest corruption within the Palestinian Authority. Political prisoners in Mahmoud Abbas's West Bank statelet have also waged hunger strikes. Or perhaps the phenomenon is more universal: Those who equate compromise with betrayal and see only their own Truth may lean to self-destruction. Think of the deadly hunger strike undertaken in the late 1970s by fanatics in the Baader-Meinhof Gang or the ten IRA militants, led by Bobby Sands, who starved themselves to death in 1981.

Whatever the cause, other jihadist prisoners have used Adnan's tactic. The most recent was Hana Shalabi, who was released in the Gilad Shalit exchange after an earlier stint in administrative detention but—like the Palestinian who stabbed a soldier in Hebron on Purim—returned to terrorism. Because Adnan's hunger strike was not unique, the ethical dilemma it poses is especially pressing.


Administrative detention leaves civil libertarians, liberal and conservative, deeply uneasy. I posed the following hypothetical to Tel Aviv University philosophy professor Joseph Agassi, who describes himself as a liberal nationalist: Imagine that during the Weimar period a young monster was arrested and sentenced to five years in Landsberg Prison. The historical fact is that he received friendly treatment there and spent his time co-authoring a screed that outlined his nefarious worldview. But what if the inmate had been treated harshly, become depressed, and commenced a hunger strike? Would it have been immoral to let him die?

Agassi rejected my scenario. "Wouldn't it be better," he asked, if Israelis considered "whether it is not easier and wiser to change the situation rather than torment ourselves with the impossibility it imposes on us?" Of course, it was wrong to let Germany slide into the hands of a criminal sadist (though another misfit might "quite possibly" have taken his place). But the "real question," said Agassi, "is, how come a civilized country like Israel has overflowing jails?"

A leftist Israeli academic went farther, saying my pre-World War II analogy was flawed because Adnan, compared with Europe's Jews, "is also a victim, as a Palestinian, of morally dubious policies, and of a violent occupation and dispossession."

In other words, there are those on Israel's ideological left who oppose Adnan's incarceration altogether. Convinced that Israel has "lost its soul" (or never had one), loathing the "occupation," and holding Benjamin Netanyahu wholly culpable for the deadlock in the "peace process," some post-Zionists would release all Palestinian "political" prisoners. And, indeed, if you maintain that Israel has no right to any presence beyond the 1949 armistice lines, disregard the refusal of Palestinian "moderates" to negotiate with Netanyahu unless he accepts those indefensible boundaries, and ignore what Hamas and the PIJ intend for Israelis, it follows that you would want prisoners like Adnan lionized, not caged.

But what if you believe that imperfect Israel remains a moral enterprise? What if you shy away from promiscuous moral relativism and hold that PIJ's goals are downright evil? Then, like Abraham Feder, a Conservative rabbi and theologian in Jerusalem, you come to a different conclusion.

Feder believes Israeli society is under no moral obligation to save Adnan if he chooses to "martyr himself for his announced cause of destroying Israeli society." Nor would Feder compel Israeli doctors to save him. Feder explains his opponents' case this way:

In Genesis 21:17, Hagar and Ishmael are in the wilderness on the brink of death. An angel shows Hagar water. She and the boy are saved. The Midrash presents a dialogue in which the angels in heaven plead with God to let Ishmael die, since in the future he will cause the children of Israel suffering and death. God sees this future but refuses to let the boy die. The biblical phrase underlying God's judgment is "ba'asher hu sham." This means, the Midrash says, that the boy must be judged as he is now—and now he is innocent.

This is interesting, says Feder, but it does not apply to Khader Adnan. First, Adnan is not an innocent boy but a member of a murderous organization. Second, it is not Israeli authorities who are killing him.

There is no way to know whether Israel's capitulation to Adnan will save more lives than letting him die. If he had died, perhaps Palestinians would have gone on a binge of rioting. When he is set free, he will kill or enable those who do. Only this is certain: The cause for which Adnan was prepared to die is Israel's destruction. In this circumstance, perhaps one way to judge a person's moral compass is to ask whether he or she is gratified by the prospect of Adnan's release or, at the very least, anguished.

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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