Haveil Havalim #84 Is Up!

This week, me-ander is hosting this week's of Haveil Haveil #84

me-ander has a wide assortment of diverse posts from across the J-Blogosphere.

Don't miss it.

You can submit one or two of your best Israel or Judaism related posts to dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.

If you'd like to host an upcoming edition you can e-mail Soccer Dad at the same address.

You can also submit entries to Haveil Havalim using either Conservative Cat's submission form or the submission form at BlogCarnival.

Listed at the Truth Laid Bear Ubercarnival.

Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, haveil havalim, Israel, Judaism.

Death to Israel!--Hey, It's Only an Opinion

LGF links to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune:

Members of Utah's Jewish community are alarmed by a proposed demonstration that will call for "Death to Israel."
A man - whose name wasn't available Thursday - has applied for a free-speech permit from Salt Lake City to demonstrate on sidewalks near City Hall on Wednesday. The city is reviewing the application.
City officials cannot constitutionally deny it based on the content of the message.

But according to the police, there is no reason to be unduly concerned. The group sponsoring the event has an innocuous name, only 9 people on average show up for such events and of course:

"It's not like they're threatening to kill people," [police spokesman Joe] Cyr said. "They're just [expressing] their opinion."

Whew! What a relief.

Mayor Rocky Anderson, who will speak at an anti-Bush rally on Wednesday, said he doesn't know if the city will grant the Death to Israel permit.

''Do I agree with that sort of hateful expression? I don't. It's so reminiscent of the 'Death to America' slogans that we hear around so much of the militant Muslim world,'' Anderson said.

Earlier this month, The Associated Press reported thousands of Iraqi Shiites chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" in Baghdad to show support for Hezbollah militants fighting Israeli troops in Lebanon.

Or reminiscent those Moslem protests we've seen in London:

Hey, it's only an opinion.
Sleep tight.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Anti-semitism.

Putting the 'UN' in UNIFIL

During the war between Israel and Hezbollah, UNIFIL--which has already aided Hezbollah and thwarted Israel in the past--does what it does best:

During the recent month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel, U.N. "peacekeeping" forces made a startling contribution: They openly published daily real-time intelligence, of obvious usefulness to Hezbollah, on the location, equipment, and force structure of Israeli troops in Lebanon.

UNIFIL--the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978--is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.

Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.

As an example of UNIFIL's helping hand, on July 25th there was the following included as part of its report:

Yesterday and during last night, the IDF moved significant reinforcements, including a number of tanks, armored personnel carriers, bulldozers and infantry, to the area of Marun Al Ras inside Lebanese territory. The IDF advanced from that area north toward Bint Jubayl, and south towards Yarun.

This may be the mildest form of UNIFIL overt aid to the terrorist group Hezbollah. There are other, more overt, kinds of aid that UNIFIL has been happy to provide Hezbollah, such as when UNIFIL abetted the Hezbollah kidnapping of Israeli soldiers on October 7, 2000:

An Indian soldier who served in the UNIFIL brigade on the Israel-Lebanese border reportedly told interviewers in Israel that the soldiers in his brigade "could have prevented the kidnapping" of three Israeli soldiers last October, Eitan Rabin of Maariv reported in an exclusive report Friday.

Dozens in the UNIFIL brigade reportedly watched the kidnapping but did nothing. Moreover, at least four Indian soldiers reportedly had been bribed [reportedly hundereds of thousands of dollars] by the Hizbullah to offer active assistance in carrying out the abduction.

...The Indian soldier said that at least four UN soldiers collaborated with the Hizbullah to help them reach the ambush location, and to assist them in locating the IDF soldiers.

UNIFIL, under Frence leadership, refused at the time to provide Israel with uncensured tape of what happened following the kidnapping when Hezbollah removed evidence. UNIFIL claimed to be doing this in the name of neutrality.

UNIFIL is not neutral, it is neutered, and has no business being anywhere in the vicinity where peace and people's lives are at stake.

But then again, neither does the UN.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Hezbollah and Hizbollah and Lebanon and UN and UNIFIL.

Birthright Israel--Love of More Than Just Zionism

Nathaniel Popper of the Forward writes that there is more to Birthright Israel than love of just Zionism:

Birthright Israel, which has taken more than 100,000 young Jews to the Holy Land, is generally thought to be a tool for inculcating Zionism. But when it was organized, Yossi Beilin, then Israel's justice minister and the official at the center of the project, reflected the sentiments of the philanthropists behind it when he said, "I see myself as a Jewish shadchan," using the Hebrew word for matchmaker.

Ths success of Birthright Israel has encouraged all kinds of grants for other projects as well--a federation-sponosred dating game for Russian Jews in San Francisco, a singles initiative in Los Angeles funded by the Newton D. and Rochelle F. Becker Foundation and in New York: Makor, which sponsored a sold-out speed-dating session last week. Then there is Michael Steinhardt--who turned from hedge-funds to impresario turned matchmaker--who has given millions to Birthright Israel, and founded Makor. At the Manhattan Jewish Experience he promises a honeymoon on his Anguila estate to any couple in the room who meets that night and eventually marries. He claims to have paid for 20 honeymoons so far. The Manhattan Jewish Experience itself counts some 60 couples as a result of its work.

Meanwhile, Popper gives a clue why Birthright Israel has succeeded--not only in matchmaking and increasing numbers:

It was the allure not of a Jewish woman but of a free trip that inspired me to go on the Birthright tour.

Maybe, though, that's the key to its success. Critics would be quick to say that matches like mine will only push the problem of assimilation one further generation down the line--without a deep attachment to Judaism, they'd say, there's no substance to my Jewish identity. But my new partner has shown me the wonders of candle lighting, the Yiddish language and the holidays, and the beauty of these Jewish rituals is much more evident through the rose-colored glasses of love.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Birthright Israel.

A Lebanese View of Hezbollah's 'Victory'

The issue of victory in the recent war in Lebanon has been argued back and forth. Israelis for the most part recognize their failures and are working on learning from the mistakes--including pushing for Olmert's ouster from power.

On the Lebanese side, Michael Young--opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon--is not impressed by Hezbollah's claim to victory:

But what kind of victory is this that, even by Hezbollah's unexacting standards, must qualify as a major setback? In its public appraisals of the conflict, Hezbollah has ignored what Israel did to those parts of Lebanon the party cannot claim as its own. Its cries of triumph have been focused on the stubborn resistance put up by Hezbollah combatants in south Lebanon. Nothing has been heard from party leaders about the billions of dollars of losses in infrastructure; about the immediate losses to businesses that will be translated into higher unemployment; about the long-term opportunity costs of the fighting; about the impact that political instability will have (indeed has already had) on public confidence and on youth emigration; and about the general collapse in morale that Lebanon faces.

Young finds that Hezbollah has even failed according to their own definition of victory.

The reason for Hezbollah's 10,000 to 15,000 rockets was to act as a deterrence, but Hezbollah's use of those rockets will result more suffering and traumatizing of the Shiite community, creating only more political fallout. Even the money that Hezbollah is now distributing can only go so far in compensating for the suffering, lost lives, lost businesses, and lost livliehoods.

Furthermore, Hezbollah's base of support among the Shiites may decrease in the face of being sacrificed for Iran, thousands of miles away.

After refusing to allow the Lebanese army into southern Lebanon, he has now allowed it in. Hezbollah's deterence value to Iran is decreased if it goes against the Lebanese concensus and the international community. [Personally, I would imagine that Nasrallah cares about the Lebanese concensus more than about international opinion, assuming he cares about the welfare of the Lebanese at all]

Meanwhile, for its efforts Iran now is giving out large amounts of money to Lebanese Shiites to hold onto its base of support while at the same time Iran's own poor complain that Iran has abandoned them. In return, a situation has been created where Lebanese sentiment might hinder Hezbollah's ability to deter Israel from attacking Iran's nuclear facilities. Furthermore, new attacks from Israel in reaction to Hezbollah attacks might cause the Shiites to turn against Nasrallah.

Young suggests that both the government and the parliamentary majority in Lebanon--which includes those hostile to both Syria and Hezbollah, are working against Nasrallah's efforts to transform his 'victory' into political gains. As the costs of the war become apparent, the Lebanese unenthusiastically see the war as nothing more than a calamity--and Hezbollah has not been able to reverse this mood.

Young concludes:

So perhaps a victory it is, but in that case Hezbollah's victory is no different than most other Arab victories in recent decades: the "victory" of October 1973, where Egypt and Syria managed to cross into Israeli-held land, their land, only to be later saved from a thrashing by timely United Nations intervention; the "victory" of 1982, where Palestinian groups were ultimately expelled from West Beirut, but were proud to have stayed in the fight for three months; the Iraqi "victory" of 1991, where Saddam Hussein brought disaster on his country but still held on to power. Now we have the Hezbollah "victory" of 2006: the Israelis bumbled and blundered, but still managed to create a million refugees, to kill over 1,000 people, and to kick Lebanon's economy back several years. One dreads to imagine what Hezbollah would recognize as a military loss.

While Israel does not see the war as a victory, it may be that a significant number of Lebanese do not either. That Nasrallah and Hezbollah claim victory may put them in the minority--among the very people upon whom they have brought so much suffering.

If Young's analysis is accurate, Nasrallah may need to ask Iran to hold his room at their Lebanese embassy.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Hizbollah and Hezbollah and Lebanon and Iran and Nasrallah.

List of the Victims of the Hezbollah Rocket Attacks

In a comment to my post about the 123 Israeli children killed by Palestinian terrorists, someone asked me if there was information about the children murdered by the rockets fired by Hezbollah into Israel--the rockets with shrapenel to increase the number of casualties.

Yisrael Medad emailed me that a list of the casualties of the rockets fired by Hezbollah can be found at the website of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs

One difference between the pictures Israel provides and the Hezbollah-aided media provides is that Israel tends to provide pictures of the people in life; not in death staged for maximum propaganda effect.

Apparently, for Hezbollah the Moslem concept of modesty has its limitations. And does Islam permit these other 'businesses' of Hezbollah as well:

· Drug trafficking
· Illegal arms trading
· Cigarette smuggling
· Currency, video and CD counterfeiting
· Fraud
· Robbery
· Operating illegal telephone exchanges
· Extortion

If the Hezbollah 'victory' has restored Arab honor, just what is it that Arabs are honoring?

Technorati Tag: Israel and Hizbollah and Hezbollah and Lebanon and Arabs.

Israel's 'Right of Return' is Made in Japan (and Armenia and Bulgaria and Finland...)

In a piece on the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal--"Does Japan have a right to exist as a Japanese state?"--David Bernstein asks why the concept of 'the right of return', basing citizenship in part on ethnic descent, is only called into question in regards to Israel. He notes that:

judging by immigration laws, there are quite a few, and with a few exceptions (Armenia and Germany), their discriminatory immigration policies exist, unlike Israel's, without any justification resulting from persecution of that group.

For example, according to Wikipedia: "Japanese citizenship is conferred jus sanguinis, and monolingual Japanese-speaking minorities often reside in Japan for generations under permanent residency status without acquiring citizenship in their country of birth." Why does Japan have the right to exist as a Japanese state? Has this question ever been asked?

An Irish government Web site states: "If you are of the third or subsequent generation born abroad to an Irish citizen (in other words, one of your grandparents is an Irish citizen but none of your parents was born in Ireland), you may be entitled to become an Irish citizen"--if, as I understand it, you register properly. Does Ireland have the right to exist as an Irish state?

Several other countries recognize a "right of return" similar, but often broader, than Israel's (via Wikipedia):

• Armenia. "Individuals of Armenian origin shall acquire citizenship of the Republic of Armenia through a simplified procedure."

• Bulgaria. "Any person . . . whose descent from a Bulgarian citizen has been established by way of a court ruling shall be a Bulgarian citizen by origin."

• Finland. "The Finnish Aliens Act provides for persons who are of Finnish origin to receive permanent residence. This generally means Karelians and Ingrian Finns from the former Soviet Union, but United States, Canadian or Swedish nationals with Finnish ancestry can also apply."

• Germany. "German law allows persons of German descent living in Eastern Europe to return to Germany and acquire German citizenship." My understanding is that this German descent may go back many generations. (Note that until recently, Germany's citizenship law was less liberal than Israel's, in that it did not allow people who were not ethnic Germans, including Turks who had lived in Germany for generations, to be become citizens.)

• Greece. " 'Foreign persons of Greek origin' who neither live in Greece nor hold Greek citizenship nor were necessarily born there, may become Greek citizens by enlisting in Greece's military forces."

Wikipedia provides a several other examples, none of which seem to ever raise the same questions about the legitimacy of the states involved as the Law of Return does for Israel.

Bernstein also notes the difference between Israel and these other countries in having a Right of Return: Hitler's attempted--and partially successful--genocide, Stalin's attempt that was pre-empted only by his death, and the history of violence both attempted and successful over the centuries requires the need of a homeland where Jews can find a refuge.

Even as that refuge itself is under attack.

Crossposted at Israpundit

Technorati Tag: Israel and Right of Return.

If Al Qaeda is Behind the Kidnapping of the Fox News Journalists--Why?

According to The Blotter, the kidnapping of the two Fox News Journalists--Steve Centanni and Olag Wiig--by a group identifying themselves as the Holy Jihad Brigades, may in fact have been carried out by Al Qaeda.

Besides the similarity in the language used by the terrorists to that used by Al Qaeda in the past, the nature of the kidnapping itself is not the kind done by Palestinian terrorists:

Also unusual for Palestinian militants was the extraordinary demand issued in the statement that "Muslim prisoners in U.S. jails be released within three days" in exchange for the two Fox journalists. Targeting journalists from an American news organization and making demands on the United States rather than Israel is not typical for Palestinian groups.

So why has Al Qaeda now taken an interest in this particular area of the Middle East?

Analysts believe that al Qaeda has expressed an increasing interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict for a number of reasons, one of which is their major setbacks in Iraq. Their tactics of beheading and mass murder of innocent civilians have not been popular with the majority of Iraqis, and their leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. air attack two months ago.

Al Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan have been dismantled after their allies, the Taliban, were overthrown by the U.S.-led war in October 2001, and their leadership has been forced to seek refuge in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Many of their top operatives have been arrested in the past four years.

By contrast, the increasing chaos of Gaza represents an opportunity for al Qaeda to tap into the growing rage of young Palestinians, frustrated with the corruption of their leaders and the lack of any real progress towards a viable state. The impoverished camps of Gaza represent a "fertile ground" for al Qaeda, according to Palestinian observers.

Finally, the huge political boost achieved by Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite organization, during the last engagement with Israel represents a major challenge for al Qaeda. "Al Qaeda has been overshadowed by Hezbollah. The only way to regain the limelight is to focus its attention on the Palestinian issue," said Gerges.

So far, the terrorists have in fact made this more of an anti-American than an anti-Israel attack.

But they have only just started.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Al Qaeda and Centanni and US.

Hezbollywood Makes Pallywood Look Like B-Movie Producers

Pallywood is nothing like Hezbollywood.
The Palestinians orchestrate shootings...funerals.
Hezbollah orchestrated a war.

Public diplomacy for any country, not just Israel, has gone global. While the conflict may be determined in local terms, such as Israel's fight against Hizballah, the ramifications of the action itself are global in nature. Therefore, public diplomacy must be geared toward the global scene.

Ever since 9/11, we have been in a different type of war. We were exposed for the first time to a global network of terrorist organizations, sort of a multi-national corporation of non-state actors.

On the Lebanese scene, through the careful manipulation of evidence, the theater of war has turned into a crime scene. Every action that Israel takes in Lebanon - with its densely populated villages that Israel must operate in because that's the only way that we can uproot the terrorists in them - creates an opportunity for the other side to use public diplomacy with global ramifications. Thus, instead of the war being about Israel's right of self-defense, Hizballah was able to turn it around so that the issue on the international agenda became Israel's destruction of Lebanon and Israel as the cause of world instability. The victim becomes the criminal.

For example, Nasrallah ordered his men to remove their uniforms and blend in and continue to fight from within the civilian population. In this way, when Israel attacks Hizballah, the scene is one of Israel moving against what appears to be civilians, even though rockets fired from these villages are striking Israel. Attacks on what looks like civilian targets can then be called "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes." In addition, by blending in with civilians, it's easier to fight the Israelis who exercise self-restraint when fighting near civilians.

Another way to change a theater of war into a crime scene is by building Hizballah positions in close proximity to those of UNIFIL. Then there is always an opportunity for a potential mishap where Israel will hit the UNIFIL position by mistake. Or Hizballah may provoke an Israeli attack by firing from a specific location and ensuring that a human shield of innocent civilians will be present at the site.

These are just some examples of how Hizballah uses public diplomacy and the media as a tool of war. They create changes on the ground so that later they can manipulate the situation, and once the crime scene is created, the media look for the villain and his smoking gun.

The Hezbollah production was quite an achievement.

And it might be part of the reason that Palestinian terrorists have raised the bar by kidnapping Steve Centanni and Olag Wiig, the two Fox News journalists.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Pallywood and Hezbollywood.

Voices in the Democratic Party About Israel--and Jews

In Is the Democratic Party Going European?, Jonathan Rosenblum writes about a growing trend within the Democratic Party vis-a-vis Israel.

A deep ambivalence towards Israel has infected the Democratic Party, which many political analysts are currently projecting to take over one or both houses of Congress in the next elections. A recent Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll comparing voter attitudes on the war in Lebanon and towards Israel shows Republicans to be far more supportive of Israel than Democrats. Though the Democratic Party is the political home of the vast majority of American Jews, 54% of Democrats advocate that the United States adopt a more neutral – i.e., less pro-Israel – stance to the Middle East, as opposed to only 29% of Republicans. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans felt the Israeli bombing in Lebanon was fully justified, as opposed to only 29% of Democrats.

This by itself is not really something new. In June of last year, while conducting a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war, a number of Democrats took a swipe at Israel:

The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration "neocons" so "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation," McGovern said. "The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."

Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering whether the true war motive was Iraq's threat to Israel, thanked McGovern for his "candid answer."

At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations -- that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an "insider trading scam" on 9/11 -- that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks.

Howard Dean spoke out against those statement. But Rosenblum goes further, looking at the views expressed within the Democratic Party not only about Israel in particular, but about Jews in general:

On the angry Left blog sites, which play an ever larger role in Democratic Party politics, attacks on Jews are commonplace.

After spending several months campaigning for Senator Joseph Lieberman in Connecticut, Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton, revised his lifelong view that intolerance and hate-speech are more likely to be found on the Right. In a piece in the Wall Street Journal, Davis provided a sampler of the anti-Semitic attacks on Senator Lieberman posted on some of the most widely read and influential Democratic blog sites.

Lieberman was accused of supporting the war in Iraq so that American soldiers, not Israeli ones, would die. One post on Daily Kos, the most influential Democratic blog, read, "Jews only care about the welfare of other Jews . . . Ignore all the Jewish propaganda about participating in the civil rights movement of the ‘60s." Another Daily Kos reader described Lieberman as a "racist and religious bigot." And a reader at Huffington Post opined that Lieberman "cannot escape the religious bond he represents. His wife’s name is Haggadah or Diaspora or something you eat at Pesach." Yet another blogger made fun of the beard Lieberman grew during the Three Weeks, and suggested that he dye it "blood red."

Venomous caricatures of Israel as the new Third Reich have long been standard fare in respectable papers in Europe, but the migration of such views across the Atlantic is deeply worrying, if only because America is Israel’s one absolutely indispensable ally.

If anti-Semitic statements like this are more common among the more liberal left-wing members of the Democratic Party, then a lot will depend on the degree to which their influence within the Democratic Party as a whole increases. Their influence is not certain and still remains to be seen. But it is a warning sign that Israel--and Jews--can never be certain of who their friends and allies are.

Technorati Tag: Israel and anti-Semitism and Democratic Party and Daily Kos.