There are Always Two Sides to a Story

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank leaves out some important details in his column entitled, "AIPAC Beats the Drums of War." (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/aipac-beats-the-drums-of-war/2012/03/05/gIQASVMZtR_story.html)

He cites the fact that AIPAC delegates like me "admired an armored personnel carrier, a surface-to-air missile and a model of an Israeli drone." These items showcased in the AIPAC Village - a central meeting area at the Policy Conference - all reflected the warlike atmosphere Milbank claims AIPAC was seeking to create.  According to him, these props were all understandable within the context of the speeches delivered by Senators Joe Lieberman, Mitch MCconnel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.


Here's what Milbank doesn't tell his readers.  The very measured speech delivered immediately after Mitch McConnel and before Prime Minister Netanyahu by Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also brought led all of to leap to our feet.  Here's what Milbank conviently ommits from his column:  that the armoured personnel carrier we all "admired" (http://www.military-today.com/apc/maxxpro_mrap.htm) was developed by the U.S. Manufacturer, Navistar International, and an Israeli company called Plasan.  It's purpose is to protect troops, like the U. S. troops currently serving our country in Afganistan from being killed and maimed by IEDs.  That model drone we oood and ahhd is just like the hundreds of drones that President Obama has ordered be used against terrorists operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  For some reason, Milbank forgets to mention the new bandage technology that was on display highlighting the kind of cutting edge Israeli technology that saves lives.  That same technology was what saved former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords when she was shot in Arizona.  Had that bandage technology not been available she would have bled out and died on the spot.  


Milbank's broadside against AIPAC and pro-Israel advocates (Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Jews and non-Jews) like me who believe in a strong relationship between the U.S. and Israel and in protecting the security of both nations reminds me of the wise adage: "There are always two sides to a story."  In the interest of fairness, I thought I'd give you the other side of a very one sided account.

Kobi Oz, Beit Shemesh and Rabbi Pappenheim (The Sequel)

In my last post I ("Kobi Oz, Beit Shemesh and Rav Amsalem") I wrote about Rav Amsalem - a bright light in the Haredi world - who represents a potential, constructive force for positive change in Israel vis-a-vis the divide between the Haredim and the rest of Israeli society.  I also mentioned Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, (a scion of the Edah Haredit (Israel’s largest Haredi community which is also anti-Zionist) who began a dialogue with the Da’at Leumi (Modern Orthodox, Zionist) community of Beit Shemesh in the wake of the conflict that has racked the city).  Like Rav Amsalem, Rabbi Pappenheim is a significant player in the Haredi world who is at the forefront of an almost singular effort within that community to build a bridge of understanding between Israel's Modern Orthodox and Haredim communities.

The Entrance to Beit Shemesh (Photo Credit: Rabbi Jacob Herber)

Just this morning I, along with other members of my Hartman RLI cohort received troubling and tragic news about Rabbi Pappenheim from my colleague and friend, Rabbi David Seth Kirshner.  Rabbi Kirshner, a member of our RLI class was with us when we all visited Beit Shemesh earlier this month, including our meeting with Rabbi Pappenheim.  Here is Rabbi Kirshner's email:

Hevreh,

I pen this note from inside the girls school in bet shemesh we visited a few weeks ago. I'm on a (fantastic and inspiring) jfna rabbinic mission to Budapest and Israel.

I learned on this trip that rabbi Pappenheim, the member of Toldot Aharon that courageously met with our group an offered some moderate conversation, was recently attacked and severely beaten by other members of Toldot Aharon. He was spat on and kicked and called a shaygetz. Hence, he is not meeting with this group. This is bothersome and a "big deal" on a few levels, namely that the Pappenheim name is one of royalty in the Toldot Aharon world and this sanctioned attack is frightening to the notion of the possibility of moderate conversation in the future.

Clearly the "mafia" style behavior continues here.

Regards to all from Israel.

Rabbi David-Seth Kirshner

Sent from my iPhone us

Rabbi Pappenheim Speaks To Hartman RLI Cohort in Beit Shemesh (Photo Credit: Rabbi Jacob Herber)

Rabbi Kirshner's conclusion is sadly too true.  I am desperately waiting for the fulfillment of Kobi Oz's vision:

“Tolerance is bubbling beneath the surface.  Look how people are bit by bit leaving behind the tension and in the end just want to be united in this great synagogue called the Land of Israel.”

It will only come to fruition when the vast majority of Haredim join with true leaders and visionaries like Rav Amsalem and Rabbi Pappenheim and when they stand up these thugs and the rabbis who indoctrinate them and send them on their missions of hate and destruction

Kobi Oz, Beit Shemesh, and Rav Amsalem

Last Shabbat (Shabbat Yitro) I taught and led a discussion about Kobi Oz's beatiful song entitled, "Elohay."  (You can hear the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUFWuEcykSg).  After my visit earlier this month to Beit Shemesh where I and other members of my Hartman RLI cohort met with some of the parents of the girls who attend the Modern Orthodox Bnot Orot elementary school (including Hadassah Margolis, the mother of Na'ama, the eight year-old girl who was spat upon by a Haredi man as she walked to school) and later with Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, (a scion of the Edah Haredit (Israel’s largest Haredi community which is also anti-Zionist) who began a dialogue with the Da’at Leumi (Modern Orthodox, Zionist) community of Beit Shemesh in the wake of the conflict that has racked the city), I questioned whether Kobi is correct to claim that:

“Tolerance is bubbling beneath the surface.  Look how people are bit by bit leaving behind the tension and in the end just want to be united in this great synagogue called the Land of Israel.”

Kobi’s perspective is that there is a movement afoot in Israeli society for national unity between Jews of all denominations: secular, Reform, Masorti (Conservative), Da'at Leumi (Modern Orthodox), traditional and Haredi. 

The following video demonstrates the grave and great challenge that Israeli society faces vis-à-vis the Haredim.  My hope and prayer is that Rav Amsalem, a Haredi rabbi for whom I have the greatest admiration and respect, will lead a revolution that will restore some sense of moderation among the Haredim.  Alas, given the response from his former political party, Shas, I won’t be holding my breath.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TmbnDls3C8&feature=youtu.be

Hanukkah Never Happened

Hanukkah Never Happened.

That’s what Maen Rashid Areikat, the PLO’s chief representative to the United States, would no doubt say.  In a recent op-ed piece in the Washington Post Areikat makes the claim that the Palestinian people have a rich and deep history, one that dates back as far as 10,000 B.C.E. He claims that Palestinians “have lived under the rule of a plethora of empires: the Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Israelites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Mongols, Ottomans and, finally, the British.”  (You can read Areikat’s piece in full here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/palestine-a-history-rich-and-deep/2011/12/21/gIQALJ6GLP_story.html)

Did you notice the obscurity of one well - documented indigenous group?   That’s right, the Jewish people are left out of his narrative.  After mentioning the Israelites in a chain of occupiers the Jewish people seemingly disappear from the scene.  Palestinians don't encounter Jews in the land until we arrive from Europe.  We're nothing more than carpet-baggers.  This is all part of the Palestinian attempt to eradicate the Jewish people's historical claims and connection to the Land of Israel.  Palestinian nationalism is a modern movement born of the 20^th century.  It evolved when Arabs living in Palestine (named by the Romans after the Philistines) during the British Mandate realized that their Arab brethren (e.g. Egyptians, Syrians, and the Hashemites) had abandoned them in the quest for their own respective territorial interests. 

But that is neither here nor there.  The Palestinian people (once called Palestinian Arabs) exist as a political reality.  They have their own national aspirations that deserve to be fulfilled by way of a two-state solution.  As a people who yearned for 2,000 years for a restoration to our national homeland, we understand those yearnings better than anyone else.  But Areikat’s revisionist history is the sort of fiction that is both ironic and tragic.  Ironic in that it’s yet another example of the Palestinians proclivity to cry foul when others, like Newt Gingrich, call into question their historicity as a people; a strategy they’ve been employing against the Jewish people for decades.  Tragic in that it's the way the Palestinians teach their children history in school.  It's also the way they continue to make their people ill prepared for a final resolution of their status with Israel. 

An Open and Sent Email to Tom Friedman

Dear Tom,

I'm emailing to express my sadness, distress, anger, incredulity and outright exasperation related to your column of December 13th entitled, “Newt, Mitt, Bibi and Vladimir."  Mine is probably one of many emails you've no doubt received from other angry readers and subscribers of The New York Times. I've been a subscriber of the paper for many years.  But now that I've paid my most recent bill I'll be cancelling my subscription.

My decision - not an easy one for me to make - is a result of the unrelenting assault on the Time's Op-Ed page against the State of Israel and it's supporters; one which reached a crecendo this week in your column.  I won't restate the critique of your intial words, or of your apology.  I'm sure you're well aware of what folks like the AJC's David Harris and the editors of The Jewish Week have written related to both.  As a Rabbi who loves and supports Israel but who is also critical of Israel when a tokhekha is necessary, I completely agree with your critics.

I would only add that my decision to leave the Times as a subscriber is also a  result of the paper's decision to edit the heart of David Harris' letter to the editor; the only letter published by the Times in response to your column.  I find it tragically ironic that the Times rightfully applauds expressions of free speech and political dissent and admonshes political leaders like Vladimir Putin when those expressions are attacked, curtailed or manipluated, but employs some of the same tactics when it comes to its own columnists.  Perhaps I'd feel a bit better knowing that you walked into your editor's office and said something like, "I'm a big boy, I can take criticism.  Go ahead and print David Harris' letter in full.  He's a well-respected leader of the American Jewish community, I'm not afraid of his critique, and print some of the other letters we got too.  We should be role models when it comes to expemplifying free and fair political discourse."

I'm hoping in the future I'll want to renew my subscription.  In all honesty, it will depend on you and your editors.

Hag urim sameah,

Rabbi Jacob Herber
Congregation Beth Israel
6880 N. Green Bay Avenue
Glendale, WI 53209

Israel Just Made Engaging with Israel That Much More Difficult

My friend, colleague, and Hartman RLI hevrutah partner, Rabbi David Cohen, and I have spent the last four weeks presenting the Hartman Institute's Engaging Israel program to our respective congregants and other members of Milwaukee's Jewish community.  The  goal of  the Engaging Israel Project is to respond to growing feelings of disenchantment and disinterest toward Israel among an ever-increasing number of Jews worldwide by creating a new narrative regarding the significance of Israel for Jewish life.  So far it's been an extraordinary experience, but a challenging one nonetheless, as we've attempted to help how our participants reconcile their strongly held and beloved American values with traditional Jewish values as they all relate to Israel.  I think we've made some substantive, real progress.  

But now I wonder if all of our work is threatened with being undone.  Today, videos produced by Israel's Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and distributed in key American cities have gone viral.  The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg has blogged about them (you can read his post and watch the videos here: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/netanyahu-government-suggests-israelis-avoid-marrying-american-jews/249166/and they are all over social media forums like facebook. The t.v. spots are aimed at Israelis who live here in America.  If you listen to the dialogue and watch the body language of the actors it's quite clear that the ads present a negative critique of the Jewish American experience. The Israeli Jew is imperiled by the non-Jewish religious and cultural milieu that surrounds American Jews who are seemingly either incapable or uninterested in responding to those influences. The message is quite clear:  if you're an Israeli living in America your Jewishness (and that of your children) is endangered.  

Other innuendos abound.  Israeli Jewishness is apparently richer, more profound and more pure that that of American Jewry.  That critique is an unfair, untrue and myopic description of American Jewish life.  The fact is, Israeli culture, both social and religious, is and continues to be deeply enriched by our Jewish culture here in America.   Just as we American Jews can learn much from our Israeli brothers and sisters - the importance of the Hebrew language and literature to Jewish life - is but one example that comes to mind, Israelis can learn much from us American Jews about religious pluralism and the paradigms we've developed for living a meaningful Jewish life in the face of modernity.  

Instead of validating the Judaism of Jerusalem and New York, Tel Aviv and Chicago, Haifa and Los Angeles, these cynical ads pit one against the other.  Most damaging and troubling they demean and devalue the American Jewish community.  They throw up one more impediment to American Jews reconnecting and engaging with Israel.  And speaking tahlis, they make my job and Rabbi Cohen's job that much more difficult.

No Tom, Palestinians Will Determine Salam Fayyad's Success, Not Israelis

Tom Friedman needs to visit Gaza and the west Bank, and soon.  In his most recent New York Times column (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/opinion/israel-and-the-arab-awakening.html?_r=1&ref=opinion) Friedman argues that Israel holds the key - the only key it seems - to peace with the Palestinians.  That key is visionary support for Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority's Prime Minister.  "He's [Fayyad] been the most radical Arab leader of all," Friedman writes,  "He is the first Palestinian leader to say: judge me on my performance in improving my peoples' lives, not on my rhetoric.  His focus has been on building institutions - including what Israelis admit is a security force that has helped to keep Israel peaceful  - so Palestinans will be ready for a two-state solution."  While I would claim that Israel's security from terrorist attacks is due in large part to the unfortunate exitsence of the security barrier, it's hard to argue with Friedman's assertion that the Palestinians' success is tied inextricably with Fayyad's.  He is a serious leader who - unlike other Palestinian leaders before him as well as contemporaries like Mahmoud Abbas - has quietly gone about building the infrastutre necessary for a future Palestinian state.  As Tal Becker, a Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, once told me and my Hartman RLI colleagues, "I never before met a Palestinian leader who gets excited about budgets until I met Salam Fayyad."  Plain and simple, Fayad is a technocrat and a state builder.  Revolutionary leaders like Yassar Arafat have gotten the Palestinans nothing.  They need more leaders like Salaym Fayyad who build schools, hospitals, museums, etc.; all of the necessary institutions that will make a future Palestinian viable, while at the same time eschewing terrorism as a moral and effective form of resistance.

But here's where Friedman is wrong.  Israel will not determine whether Fayyad succeeds.  The Palestinian people will.  Yes, Israel can and certainly should help Fayyad, not out of some altruistic reason, but for its own sake, for the sake of its own security and desire to achieve a lasting peace.  But if the Palestinian people don't support Fayyad, if other Palestinian leaders don't support Fayyad, his future and that of the Palestinian people will be imperiled.  Isn't that what the "Arab Spring" was supposedly all about, the people throwing out tryrants and oppressors and supporting instead leaders who had their interests at heart?  The fact is, Fayyad is reviled and hated by Hamas and by Mahmoud Abbas in large part because of his success in rooting out graft and corruption, and because they view him as serious political threat.  He can't even enter the Gaza Strip for fear of being assassinated by his Hamas rivals. Friedman criticizes the Israelis for withholding $100 million in in Palestinian tax revenues and argues that they should reward Fayyad by giving him the money he needs.  Prime Minister Netanyahu has indeed agreed to release the $100 million to the P.A..  But if Fayyad is under threat from his own Palestinian interlocutors what difference would it make if Israel showers him with hunderds of millions of shekels? Yes, Israel should wisely leverage its power and make its political calculations for the sake of supporting true agents of peace.  But in the end, those who will determine the success of their leaders are the people, and in this case the Palestinian people.  Perhaps if Tom Friedman visited Gaza and Ramallah he would see things a bit more clearly.