My appearance on Israel National News Radio

I was interviewed on Tuesday by Eve Harrow, a long-time community activist and tour guide from the Judean hills, who hosts Judean Eve on Israel National News Radio.

On her show Harrow discusses Israeli archaeology and nature, and conducts interviews with Israelis on current events in the Middle East and the Jewish world. The Judean Eve podcast airs live every Wednesday from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Israel time.

Harrow and I discussed CiF Watch’s role in combating antisemitism, and the assault on Israel's legitimacy, at the Guardian. Open link to listen:

Jewish Heritage Night edition: Adam Levick, in Jerusalem, shares love of Phils

This was published by my friend Adam Taxin at The Examiner.

Tonight, at 7:05 PM, the Phillies will play the first-place Arizona Diamondbacks at what will be not only "Jewish Heritage Night," but, presumably, will be the 200th consecutive sellout at Citizens Bank Park.

Guest commentary by Adam Levick follows:

When I was growing up in Northeast Philly, baseball was not, for my family, simply a pastime.

My late father, upon returning home after four years serving in the Air Corps during World War II, pursued his dream of becoming a Major League Baseball player; eventually, he played in semi-pro leagues in the U.S. and Canada, before settling down, marrying my mother, and starting a family.

Through the ups and downs of everyday family life, baseball was a passion we all shared. My brother and I played ball in Little League and in high school and – especially through those tumultuous teenage years when fathers and sons are often at loggerheads – no matter what was going on, we could always watch the Phillies together and share in the team’s triumphs as well as their (all too often) defeats.

Even now in Israel, I still play a pickup game of softball every Sunday night at a park in Jerusalem with a bunch of fellow American olim [emigres].

However, although my aliyah [move to Israel] has been everything I hoped it would be – as I met the woman of my dreams and am now married, and I have an incredible job advocating for Israel – without question, the worst part of being in Israel (other than, of course, missing my friends and family) is not being able to anywhere near the 2011 Phillies, perhaps the greatest team, and certainly the greatest pitching rotation, in franchise history.

The time delay here makes it difficult to watch many games, and viewing it on MLB.com just isn't the same. I miss the ballpark, the smell of the grass, the excitement of the fans, the sound of the crack of the bat, and Crab Fries from Chickie’s and Pete's.

I love Israel with all of my heart, yet my affection for America has not waned; nor has my passion for the Philly team to which I’ll forever be loyal.


Adam Levick, Managing Editor, CiF Watch

Kochav Hashachar Diarist

We’re spending Shabbat with friends in Kochav Hashachar, a national-religious community of 300 families, comprising Kochav Hashachar itself, Maaleh Shlomo and Mitspe Kramim within the jurisdiction of the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council. The population is roughly 1,500.

Kochav Hashachar is located on the “Allon Road” some 18 miles North of Downtown Jerusalem. The yishuv is situated toward the Eastern edge of the Judea-Samaria Mountain Range, overlooking the Jordan Valley.

We’re staying with the Rabbi and Rebbetzin (and their four children) who mentored my wife on her journey to a more religiously observant life. Though Rabbi Hillel is from the US, and his wife Aliza, is from South Africa, they met in Israel after making Aliyah and only later returned to the town of Port Elizabeth to serve as the community Rabbi for the town’s dwindling Jewish population.

I’m sitting on a quiet hill overlooking vineyards – grapes grown in Kochav Hashachar are purchased every year by Carmel Mizrachi for their red Fantasia Sparkling Wine – and, beyond that I can see the Jordan valley.

Israelis who live in communities beyond the green line differ in their motivation.  Some are secular and others religious.  Some are ideological and others motivated by the religious significance of Judea and Samaria in the context of Jewish history, and yet others induced by more practical reasons such as the lower cost of living relative to the major urban areas.  Still others find comfort in small town life, where they know all of their neighbors, and where parents feel safe allowing their children play and roam within the community.

What strikes me also about life here is the quiet, the stillness.

Occasionally when I read accounts of life in such Moshavim in the Guardian, the words I read conjure pictures of a place which seem to represent not life as it is, but life as a parable – stories and fictive illustrations in the service of satisfying popular and conventional mores.

I often wonder whether what many in the affluent, post-nationalist West find so alien about Israelis, particularly those who have settled across the green line, is their passion for place, the reverence we possess for this particular place over all others – an apt illustration of the failure of many to understand Jewish particularism more broadly.

To discriminate, in the positive sense of the word, means to distinguish accurately;  to elevate some places over others.  To discriminate means to choose.

When you choose to identify with a particular religious community, you choose that faith and that community and not others.  When you marry, you choose your mate over everyone else. 

Residents here have chosen Kochav Hashachar over all others.

Shabbat Shalom.

Death and Life in Itamar

The entrance to the house where the Fogel family lived – until the brutal attack which consumed the lives of Udi and Ruth, and three of their small children – is still decorated with the note joyously announcing the recent birth of Hadas who, at three months, was the youngest Israeli victim on that fateful Shabbat evening.

I don’t entertain notions that my brief time in the Israeli Yishuv called Itamar, and conversations with the community Rabbi, Moshe, and his wife, Leah, could possibly provide a full picture of what life is like in this community of 1,000 – the vitality, nuance, and day-to-day rhythm which only those who call the place home can ever really accurately describe – but one thing is for certain: While reasonable people can certainly disagree on the broader social and political implications of such communities across the green line, as with so much of what passes for reporting from Israel, the frequent and, at times, horribly callous pejorative depictions of those who choose to live here have almost no resemblance to reality.

In listening to Moshe and Leah – who, in their late 40s, are young grandparents – speak of Itamar, the Yishuv that’s been their home for 27 years, what they quite emphatically spoke of was not enmity towards the perpetrators of the grisly attacks on Friday, no calls for revenge, but simply their love for their country, the spiritual significance of the area (Itamar lies very close to Schechem, where Joseph was buried), and their belief in their right to live there, consistent with their desire to live in a Torah-observant community.

“Hard-line”, “fanatical”, and “extreme” – language carelessly, and lazily, employed in the service placing the rich, nuanced, complicated and passionate lives of the residents of Itamar in a way conveniently consistent with one’s political edifice – represents nothing but dehumanizing hyperbole, and serves often to assuage the empathy and natural inclinations towards moral outrage over the suffering of “the other”. Such words are often little more than name-calling, malicious invectives masquerading as journalism and polemical meditation.

One of the common questions – or, more accurately, political litmus tests – most frequently posed by acquaintances back in the U.S., since I moved to Israel, is how I feel about the “settlers”.

Though I really never had a short and pithy reply for my interlocutors, I’m certainly now prepared to give a sincere and honest, though far less than exhaustive, answer: They are more than political abstractions and, whatever my thoughts about the decision to build and expand such communities, I will not be party to their demonization.

They are, simply, fellow citizens in the nation I love, and the place I now call home.

Young resident of Itamar

My open letter to UK film maker Peter Kosminsky

Mr. Kosminsky,


My initial skepticism over the objectivity of your multi-part drama to be aired on British TV which, as you say, strives to "come to an understanding of the most dangerous and intractable war of our age...the conflict between Arab and Jew in the Middle East", called The Promise, seems warranted now that I've read your introduction to the film printed in the Guardian on January 28th.
You claim that, among the lessons you've learned from researching modern Israel, is that 60 years after the Holocaust:

"Israel is isolated, loathed and feared in equal measure by its neighbours, finding little sympathy outside America for its uncompromising view of how to defend its borders and secure its future."

You then ask:

"How did Israel squander the compassion [derived from the horrors of the Holocaust] of the world within a lifetime?"

To this question, I'll briefly ask an admittedly rhetorical one:


How dare you.


"Isolated", you say?


Actually far from being isolated, my country is actually more economically entwined with Europe than we've ever been - the story of a tiny nation with little in the way of natural resources outperforming not only its neighbors, but some larger European nations as well.   That Arab countries on our borders don't wish to share in our relative prosperity, that 62 years after our birth those same Arab states continue in their self-defeating (either de facto or de jure) economic boycott of our country is not a reflection of our values, but rather of theirs.  In nearly every measurable social, educational, and economic category, my country often wildly exceeds the performance of our oil rich neighbors.  That my Israeli passport makes me persona non-grata in most of the Arab world is an indictment of their intolerance, their intransigence, their bigotry, not mine.


"Loathed", you say?


If by "loathed", perhaps you're referring to the fact that 90% of the Arab world have an unfavorable opinion toward Jews?  That is, empirical evidence demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Arabs are openly not just anti-Israel, but wildly anti-Semitic - polling data which is thoroughly consistent with the evidence of state sanctioned Jew-hatred documented continually, yet frequently ignored by those who see such facts as inconsistent with their predetermined conclusions.  While the overlap between anti-Israel sentiment and outright anti-Semitism in the rest of the world is a bit more complicated, in our region the data proves that the two are quite simply one and the same.  That copies of the Elders of the Protocols of Zion sell briskly on the Arab street, that conspiracy theories about Jews being responsible for 9/11 are popular, and that state-owned newspapers in Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia continue to publish cartoonsportraying Jews as hideous, treacherous, bloodthirsty villains is not a reflection on me.  It is an indictment against them, their culture, and their values.


"Feared", you say?


The notion that my democratic Jewish state is feared would almost be comical if it wasn't so dangerous.  Tell me, Mr. Kosminsky, were we feared when six Arab armies sought our destruction on the day of our birth in 1948?  Were we feared in the weeks prior to June 1967 when Arab leaders were telling roaring crowds in Cairo, Damascus, and Tripoli that the the annihilation of the Jewish state was near, or when those same leaders conspired with the Soviet Union to launch a surprise attack on us six years later on the holiest day of the year?  Have all the civilian casualties and human carnage we've suffered as the result of suicide bombings and rocket fire in the years since those full-scale attacks indicated to you that we are feared?  What you characterize as fear may simply be something more akin to a grudging acceptance by our enemies regarding our resolve, our steadfastness, and our will to survive despite their enmity - not a commentary on our villainy.


That Jews - who have but one state to call their own, and who represent 2/10 of 1% of the world's population - inspire fear in others is again not proof of our sins, our phobias, our behavior - but is a window into the soul of those who allow themselves to believe the most ludicrous, and historically lethal, Judeophobic calumnies.


As a citizen of the country which you now claim expertise, I can assure you that I don't seek the compassion you audaciously claim we squandered. I have no need for your sympathy, and I don't require your affirmation.  Our national right to exist, my rights as a citizen in the national homeland of the Jewish people, is not suspended in mid-air awaiting your approval.  I refuse to give you that power.
To the degree to which my stubborn refusal to allow you, and others, the right to pass judgment on my merit may inspire fear, loathing, and isolation, I'm okay with that.


I'd rather be alive and hated than posthumously loved.


Sincerely,


Adam Levick

15 Seconds

15 seconds.  As I noted in my post yesterday, that’s the time Israelis who live within reach of Gaza rockets have to take shelter from the moment the civil defense sirens wail.

However, while touring Kibbutz Nahal Oz, the site of Saturday’s mortar attack, we learned that such projectiles (as opposed to rocket fire) aren’t detected by Israeli monitoring devices, leaving residents absolutely no warning before impact.


Dov Hartuv, a long time resident of the community, came to Israel forty years ago but, by his own admission, his native South African accent hasn’t diminished a bit.

Nahal Oz was first founded by a group of soldiers who served in the “Nahal” Israeli army unit opposite Gaza, in 1953.

The Kibbutz has had its ups and downs, and the current danger posed by rocket fire from Hamas is seen in the context of previous threats they’ve lived through over the years. 

During the first fourteen years – when Gaza was controlled by Egypt – Nahal Oz suffered from artillery shelling and mines planted in their fields. (Parts of the kibbutz fields straddle Gaza.) There were also many border infiltrations during that period. 

Four members of the kibbutz were killed during the first few years of the new settlement, Dov told us.

The population of Nahal Oz  consists of 360 people, including members, children and residents. Since its founding, many soldiers have settled on the kibbutz and raised a family after their army service. The kibbutz has also absorbed many families from the city, new immigrants from Russia, Argentina and the U.S.

The young men and women from Thailand who work at Nahal Oz do so because, despite the fact that their salary and accommodations are modest, they still earn enough to send money to their families back home.

On Saturday, four 181 mm mortar shells, fired from Gaza, exploded in the kibbutz, including one which slammed into a worker’s home.  One man is still hospitalized, sustaining serious shrapnel wounds to his chest. (The Thai worker pictured to the left is indicating he’s been working at Nahol Oz for four years.)

Dov spoke of the risks of living at Nahal Oz with a sobriety consistent with most of those who I spoke with that day – Israelis not governed by fear, but also not blind to the very real dangers they, and their families, face.

He, like the overwhelming majority of those who call Nahal Oz home, is fiercely secular – the community is currently debating the suggestion by one resident to build a synagogue – but also fiercely protective of the kibbutz (and Zionist) values which brought him to Israel in the first place.

Like the overwhelming majority of Israelis on both sides of the political spectrum, residents of Nahal Oz are proudly nationalistic.

Though burdened with risks which most in the West will never have to face, they have no interest in evacuating to safer ground, and have no doubts about their right to live where they wish in the Jewish homeland.

In September, a rocket fired from Gaza landed just across from the kibbutz kindergarten (picture right). 

As is the custom at Nahal Oz, a tree was planted at the precise location where the rocket landed – as a symbol that their pragmatism is always balanced with an inextinguishable hope for a peaceful future.

An Israeli child's view of life near the Gaza border

While on a tour of Israeli communities along the Gaza border, I had the opportunity to visit an elementary school on the front line of Hamas’ war of terror.  The close distance between the school, located in the Sha’ar Hanegev region of Israel, and the Gaza border left it extremely vulnerable to Hamas rocket attacks after the Iranian backed group came to power in 2006.  As such, students at the school have had to cope with red alert sirens and bomb shelters as an everyday part of their childhood.

Once the siren wails the children have about 15 seconds to run to the nearest bomb shelter -  the approximate time between the siren and the time an incoming missile would strike.  Before Operation Cast Lead, this consisted of a staggering 30 to 50 such “events” per day.

After the war, such incidents are more rare, but still represent a consistent part of their elementary school life. And, as Israelinurse has reported (but all but ignored by the Guardian and most of the MSM), the situation along the Gaza border has been slowly deteriorating.  For instance, in April there were 5 rockets (or other live fire) launched from Gaza into southern Israel, while in December that number rose to 51.

Anat Regev, the school principal, told us that the school’s buildings were recently reinforced to make the roofs less vulnerable to rocket strikes.


While touring the school grounds, we had the opportunity to speak to a few of the children.
Dan, pictured below, is 12 but had an air about him which made him seem quite older, perhaps touched by the world-weariness that most don’t acquire until well into adulthood.  His mother was killed 2 years ago in an auto accident and his father, a medic, was a first responder to Saturday’s shelling of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, not far from the school, which injured three Thai workers, one who is still hospitalized.


Dan is periodically plagued with nightmares, especially in the immediate aftermath of such attacks, but – perhaps driven by a child’s fascination with the macabre – rode his bike to the site of the attack at Nahal Oz, to see “the blood and destruction,” before being told by his father to return home.

Dan told us that the time when he’s most afraid is when he’s neither at school or home – thus, not in close proximity to a bomb shelter – and must respond to the wail of the the civil defense siren by simply laying on the ground face down, with his hands covering his head.

Those few seconds, before the all-clear siren sounds, are, Dan suggested, not so much by his words but more by his expression and demeanor while relating the story, are the most terrifying.

How many enemy rockets were fired into your country this week?

If your answer is "None", then you're not a citizen of Israel.

Far, far from the attentions of the analysts and the reporters and the photographers and the editors and sub-editors, some 30 rockets and mortars were fired into Israel from Gaza in this past week.

The following map illustrates our country's vulnerability in the event a future Palestinian state becomes overrun (as in Gaza) by Hamas, or other extremist elements, and acquires an arsenal od Katyusha rockets.

This is something I humbly ask that you consider when meditating on Israel's reluctance to withdraw from the West Bank.

On love, loyalty, patriotism, and human nature

(The following is my guest post at Jay Adler’s blog, Sad Red Earth, which he asked me to write following a comment I left under one of his recent posts.  If you want to get more background on my post, you can read his two posts which I’m responding to (hyper links in first sentence), but you don’t need to, as I think the piece mostly stands on its own. Though I’m sometimes in disagreement with his politics, his blog is always interesting, and his observations are thoughtful and quite erudite.  His contribution to the blogosphere can’t be overstated.)

—————

There’s much to dissect in Jay’s “Churchill Doctrine“, as well as his follow-up, “Incoherence on Race and Culture.”

I’ll stay clear of Newt Gingrich’s completely indefensible reduction of President Obama as quoted in “The Churchill Doctrine”:

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

Instead I’ll focus on Jay’s broader points he makes about race, culture, and determinism.  I won’t address every item, simply the broad themes in his reply I deem as worth exploring.

Jay says:

“If it does not mean anything at all that we are a nation of immigrants and not of an identifying ethnic stock, does not mean anything that we are the inheritors of a European colonizing culture and not of – among the most bitterly – colonized African cultures, does not mean anything if our President, as I dreamed in that post, might someday be the descendent of a conquered American Indian nation, and not of their conquerors, then what does anything mean?”

Let me ask:

First, it may not mean “nothing”, but it doesn’t appear as if you explain precisely what it does mean? What does “a nation of a European colonizing culture” mean?  What is its significance?  Are Americans to be divided into those descending from colonizers vs. those descending from the colonized?  Is there not, a huge distinction, in your mind, between, a protestant immigrant from England and a Jewish immigrant who escaped Poland in the 1930s?

Does one inherit the sins of his fathers? And, if so, does one also inherit the achievements of his fathers?  If so, don’t we also, as European Americans(whatever that denotes to you), also inherit the noble sacrifices of our ancestors which defeated the twin totalitarian movements in the 20th century – fascism and communism?

Why do many on the left who mock the notion of “American Exceptionalism” – the inherited mantle of the grit, determination, and unimaginable sacrifices made my so many Americans in the service of the successful battles against the totalitarian movements, her contribution to the spread of democracy around the world, and civil liberties and economic prosperity that would have seemed simply unimaginable to generations of men and women throughout history – seem so eager to accept the inherited guilt of a people who, admittedly, also colonized and enslaved?

Further, while I don’t deny that, if my father were of Kenyan background, I’d likely see Churchill much differently, let me ask: do the descendants of “colonized” African people also inherit their own ethnic/national legacy of brutality, misogyny, and oppression against one another? (You wouldn’t deny, would you, that even historically colonized people have their own history – prior to, and after, colonization?  You, further, wouldn’t deny, would you, that they possess moral agency, and can’t possibly be reduced merely to the sum of their experiences with European colonizers?  You seem, in certain passages to admirably reject the rigid categories of post-colonialism but, in others, seem to accept them – at least in your understanding of the West’s (and the America’s in particular) relationship with those previously colonized.

Post-colonial ideology, in its essence, assigns quite arbitrary, and static, moral labels – and represent s an intellectual paradigm which, in my mind, has, more than any other political dynamic, eroded support for, and confidence in, the Western world (not to mention, Israel) among progressives.

Such an ideology (what Pascal Bruckner terms “the tyranny of guilt”), which sees the world through this facile, and seemingly immutable, oppressor vs. oppressed paradigm, I fear, also has the deleterious effect of sapping the moral confidence of the U.S. – a confidence which will be desperately needed to fight the scourge of radical Islam and any subsequent totalitarian movements which may emerge.

I once read that Churchill’s greatness lie in his ability to inspire the British people to see themselves as courageous as he saw them. That is, though the British people were compromised – as all people are – with historical moral failings and human frailty, Churchill understood that he couldn’t rally a nation to defeat the existential threat posed by Nazism which was plagued by self-doubt and guilt.

I have argued elsewhere that – while, naturally, it’s okay for other nations to possess that same cockiness, that same self-assurance of its own proud legacy and achievements – it does concern me if Americans (and an American President) not only accepts that others may feel the same way, but views such views as a negation of the truth of their own exceptionalism.  (Look at it on a personal level.  I might intellectually understand that other men may be as “in love” with their wives as I am with my wife.  But, on a deep and personal level, I quite honestly can’t fathom how anyone can love anyone else as deeply as I love my wife.  My wife, Chana, is the most incredible woman I’ve ever met, and I really can’t fathom – nor do I care to understand – how I could ever possibly love another woman as much as I love Chana. This lack of curiosity isn’t ignorance, nor is it chauvinism. It’s called loyalty, and is, it seems, fundamentally consistent with human nature.)

Beyond this emotional reality – the human tendency to “discriminate” in the positive sense of the word (that is, to choose one from another) however – it is also a fundamental rational truth in the political realm that merely because every nation thinks that it is great, doesn’t mean that it is, in reality, so.  This seems to be the fundamental argument of multiculturalism – this stubborn refusal to acknowledge that not all civilizations are indeed equal.  Some have produced exceptional cultures, governments, and economies, and others have not.  Is this even debatable?

I love my wife as I love my country – not uncritically, but unconditionally – out of passion, loyalty and reason.

Finally, while Obama may have a view of Churchill (based, perhaps, on his ancestry) that isn’t in sync with mine (I have a paperweight on my desk which quotes Churchill: “never, never, never give up” as an inspiration for me personally, and for me as an Israeli, a citizen of a nation who stubbornly refuses to surrender to its enemies.), I hope you would agree that the truth or falsehood of ideas (or the merit of one’s achievements) have nothing to do with their racial, ethnic, or religious origins.  The mantra (epithet) of the “Dead White Male”  back in college – used to describe what the multi-cultural set thought was the inherent irrelevance of the Western classics (in literature, philosophy, etc.) due merely to the color or gender of the author -  has always struck me as, at the very least, ad hominem, and inherently anti-intellectual.

The notion that we are, at the core, more than sum of our racial, ethnic or religious identities; that human nature is universal; that the insights of Sophocles, Shakespeare, or Thomas Hobbes into the challenges of the human condition are as relevant to a boy with Jewish Eastern European parents growing up in Philadelphia as they are to a kid who grew up in Hawaii, Indonesia, and Illinois to a Kenyan father and a white European mother are profound and important truths.  They are, also, it seems, quintessentially classical liberal notions – and, yet, fundamental truths which many on the left seem to have tragically abandoned.

"Medal Ceremony" An American doctor, and personal friend, serving in Iraq guest blogs at Adam's Zionst Journey

(This is the 11th dispatch from my friend Andy, an American doctor serving in Iraq with the Air Force Reserves)

Hello.

My time in Iraq has come within the 7 day mark and today I was surprised by a medal ceremony.

We went to a place called "Heroes Highway" which is the tunnel through which the medivac (helicopter) patients are brought through when they land outside the hospital enroute to the ER. Because the troops come in on their backs they lined the top of the tunnel with a huge American flag so it is the first thing they see before are wheeled into the emergency room. When I did medivac from Kirkuk I and passed through the tunnel I was always too intent on getting the patient to the ER to notice the symbolism of "hero's highway" which is where a huge portion of those killed and wounded here have traversed.

In any event I was called "urgently" to heroes highway for a "medical emergency' and found the command staff waiting for my arrival. I was somewhat confused when Col Lawrence (blonde woman in the pictures) said "Major Lobl, you have done a great job here and we want to acknowledge the tremendous work you have done for our troops." She presented me with the Iraqi Campaign Medal and the Air Force Expeditionary Service Medal. She then said that because of my "volunteer" forward deployment to Kirkuk and because my medivac (army helicopter) combat flights were unique and "above the call of duty" the 332 Medical Group (the med side of Joint Base Balad.) had submitted my name for the Air Force Achievement Medal which was approved by the "president" and was now at my home unit awaiting my return at a ceremony to be given at my home base.

Although I am under no illusion that I have done anything close to the troops who are here longer and spend more time outside the wire (defending me as I am generally helpless if attacked) it was quite an emotional experience standing under heroes highway surrounded by my friends and the brass and receiving the medal. I felt tremendous happiness that the ceremony occurring meant my time here was coming to a close so I can go back to my beloved Pittsburgh to see friends and family. I felt some sadness that I would never in my life unite with all these awesome people at the same time. I felt some trepidation about (as a reservist) going from an environment with unique bonding over a shared experience to a decidedly non-military community where my experience here would be extremely unique.

But most specifically I felt privileged to have been able to be given the opportunity to care for our soldiers and work with some of the most selfless team players I have met in my lifetime. It really is a thrill to serve our country.

But that being the case. I'm thrilled to come home

 

My essay published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: Anti-Semitic Cartoon on Progressive Blogs

by  Adam Levick

Published September 2010

The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs 

 

No. 101, 1 September 2010 / 23 Elul 5770

  

Anti-Semitic Cartoons on Progressive Blogs

Adam Levick

• Political cartoons often have more of an immediate impact in reinforcing negative stereotypes about Jews than a lengthy essay. By far the largest output of anti-Semitic cartoons nowadays comes from the Arab and Muslim world. A yet uncharted field of hate cartoons against Jews is that in progressive blogs.
• Anti-Semitic cartoons found - and seemingly tolerated - on progressive blogs such as Daily Kos, MyDD, Mondoweiss, and Indymedia are mainly expressions of anti-Israelism, a more recent category of anti-Semitism than the religious and ethnic-nationalist versions.
• Traditionally the core motif of anti-Semitism is that Jews represent absolute evil. The cultural notion of what that means has changed over the centuries. Nowadays absolute evil is often expressed as Jews or Israelis being Nazis. Indeed, the cartoon motif most frequently appearing on the progressive blogs is imagery equating Israel with Nazi Germany. Others reflect Jewish conspiracies, Zionists controlling the world, the blood libel, or show Jews as animals.
• Most of the progressive blogs discussed, containing such anti-Semitic imagery cited in this essay, generally fail to remove such hateful cartoons, despite blog policies expressly prohibiting posts that contain "hateful" or "inflammatory" content.

Cartoons have to express ideas in an easy-to-understand way. Therefore they are often accessible even to people who cannot read. Cartoons are also an efficient way to transmit hate and prejudices, including anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism in cartoons has been investigated, among others, by the Belgian political scientist Jöel Kotek in his book Cartoons and Extremism.[1] Political cartoons often have a more immediate impact in reinforcing negative stereotypes about Jews than a lengthy essay.

The largest output of anti-Semitic cartoons nowadays comes from the Arab and Muslim world. Outside it one also finds a significant number of anti-Semitic cartoons in many countries. In Europe, for instance, over the past decade such imagery has been particularly strong in countries such as Norway and Greece.[2]

A yet uncharted field of hate cartoons against Jews is that in progressive blogs. They are mainly expressions of anti-Israelism, a more recent category of anti-Semitism than the religious and ethnic-nationalist versions. Traditionally the core motif of anti-Semitism is that Jews represent absolute evil. The cultural notion of what that means has changed over the centuries. In current times absolute evil is often expressed as Jews or Israelis being Nazis. This charge is usually identified with the virulent anti-Semitic cartoons on right-wing extremist sites and in Arab media. This motif, however, is also the main one found in anti-Semitic cartoons on progressive blogs.

Also the three major submotifs of anti-Semitism are expressed in cartoons on progressive blogs. The first one is that Jews lust for power. In progressive blogs this is manifested mainly as caricatures on Jewish conspiracies and Zionists controlling the world. The second major anti-Semitic submotif is that Jews lust for blood, and progressive blogs include cartoons accusing Jews of infanticide. The third anti-Semitic submotif, namely, that Jews are inferior beings, is expressed on these blogs in cartoons showing Jews as animals.

The cartoonist most frequently appearing on the progressive blogs analyzed here is Carlos Latuff. He is an extreme left-wing political activist who won second place in the notorious Iranian Holocaust Cartoon Competition. Latuff is one of the more prolific anti-Semitic cartoonists on the web, with a staggering amount of work dedicated to advancing explicitly anti-Semitic political imagery.  

See the rest of the essay, here.

"Third Country Nationals" An American doctor, and personal friend, serving in Iraq guest blogs at Adam's Zionst Journey (Pt. 10)

(This is the 10th dispatch from my friend Andy, an American doctor serving in Iraq with the Air Force Reserves)

Hello!

A part of this war (actually a phenomenon throughout the A.O.R) is the tremendous work done by third country nationals. 

This is a term used for people who work on the base ( for the us military) but are not from either Iraq or the allied countries. They are usually from developing countries and are hired by the contractors (Haliburton, KBR, multiple Turkish companies) to come here and do jobs that keep the base running. The do Laundry, cook the food, work at all the shops and restaurants, cut hair, pump gas, clean everything from the hospitals to bathrooms, maintain the rooms, provide internal base security ,work at the gyms, swimming pools and movie theaters, base exchange, drive the buses around base, etc.

They are mainly from countries that speak some English like India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Philippines or have specific skills like the soldiers from Sierra Leone, Honduras, Columbia and Uganda.

In many ways these folks lives are much tougher then ours. They live in (for us) cramped conditions, work (SOMETIMES) longer hours and have significantly less amenities. There salaries are a fraction of ours although the countries from which they come have a significantly lower cost of living. The also typically stay here for years in order to make money for their families.

While here they are subject to the same risks as the rest of as as missiles lobbed at our base do not discriminate between a Nepali and an American.

They deal with being here because they are making much more money then they could at home and spend almost no money here.

There is a slight tension between the military and the contractors as they hypothetically could be a security risk. The thought is somebody could either offer them a lot of money or threaten their family back home (or a combination) in order to induce them to participate in an attack on the base. There are very strict rules about individual friendships between our troops and third county nationals.

Still, the combination of intercultural gatherings and ethnic food is too much for me to pass up so I organized a dinner with a group of air force medical folks (Americans), TCN employees (mainly south Asians) and TCN management (Turkish) at a large Turkish contracting firm.

Essentially a Pakistani guy named Jay who cleans our section of the hospital was telling me about the food in his camp. I asked him to meet the boss  (Turkish) who came over to meet me at which point I told them I would bring the desert if they would provide the food. They said it would be an "honor" so I gathered 10 of my friends and we went to dinner.

The food was absolutely awesome!

Turkish salad and fish, Indian chicken,lamb rice and bread, and soft drinks. I brought an American desert--cinnabons!

We had an absolutely wonderful time!!!

The funny thing (if you can say "funny") is that as the US army has largely returned to the bases the folks who lob up the rockets have more room to maneuver. So we sat outside eating and talking while my radio periodically crackled about attacks on different parts of the base..but nobody seemed the slightest bit concerned. So our group of Hindus, Muslims, Jews (at least one) and Christians would not be deterred from our dinner together by remnants of Al Qaeda (or whomever was behind firing the rockets.)..so score one victory for intercultural (including Muslim)brotherhood over Islamic extremism!

It was nice to eat food outside our dining hall and learn about these folks who serve alongside us here in Iraq!

I gave my obligatory Pitt shirts to our hosts as we departed! 

"Mental Health in the Army" An American doctor, and personal friend, serving in Iraq guest blogs at Adam's Zionist Journey (Pt. 9)

Hello.

I am now safely back at Balad Air base and am back to my usual schedule which means I work 4 days shifts followed by 7 night shifts after which I will leave for another part of Iraq on a short term basis. Either to the green zone to do some work with a navy officer who is training Iraqi Special forces,a base called talil near Baghdad to train army medics, or just do some c-130 missions to pick up patients throughout Iraq.

As mentioned before I wanted to briefly write about mental health issues in the army as I have written about a suicide and a suicide attempt and have evacuated a very large amount of soldiers to Germany for mental health issues.

The facts are the following: The army has gone from having a suicide rate lower then the general population to having a suicide rate that is HIGHER than the general population. As casualties fall here mental health issues are on the rise. The army knows this is a problem and recently finished a very large intensive study about suicide and mental health in the army. They know it is a problem and are desperately trying to make a dent. Their findings (if you Google army suicide study you can read about it yourself) essentially placed the blame on support services and the higher level enlisted and officer corps for not being sufficiently attentive. But the study did not really talk about WHy this is happening. In my conversations with psychologists, enlisted, the medical community and the patients themselves I have gathered my own opinions.

Let me begin by saying the army has done a wonderful job here. They have born the brunt of the fight and have been responsible for really defeating the insurgents as a force that could fight and hold territory. The insurgents still cause frequent death and destruction but it is always via suicide bombings and roadside bombs and is extremely scattered. They do not threaten the political or social system like they did back in 2007-08..Additionally the vast majority of army troops seem to be in excellent mental health. Still, a growing number have very dire mental health issues. It seems important to understand the reason.

(1) Prolonged deployments-Where the AF deploys for 90 to 180 days the Army deployments are always for 12 to 15 months and occur very frequently. In a cumulative fashion these deployments cause family stress and difficulties with relationships. The Army understands this fact and has shortened tours from 15 months to 12 months and are trying to decrease further to 9 months.

(2)Lower operational tempo in Iraq-Paradoxically the changing war in Iraq has led to challenges from a mental health perspective. In the past Iraq was a very "hot" war. Soldiers were outside the wire (base) every day being shot at, knocking down door and going directly after the insurgents. These kind of operations were intense, made time go quickly, did not leave time for brooding about personal issue and helped the soldiers develop a strong feeling of camaraderie. The situation now is different in that they are mainly supporting the Iraqi army, going on patrols for months and months without enemy contact and doing 'busy work" at the base. Many soldiers report a lack of fulfillment in this job as well as large ammount of time to focus on problems at home. Also with the decreased sense of camaraderie (which came from being in combat together) relationships among the troops tend to fray. This increases the risk of mental health issues

(3) PTSD-some soldiers have underlying PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) that is made worse by being back in Iraq. When they were in combat the PTSD sensations of being on the edge and being hyper alert was actually in some way beneficial. but with decreased combat but being back in Iraq their sensations are triggered in a more peaceful environment. This is obviously very stressful for those affected

(4)"YOUNG" Army-It is seems to me that a large portion of the young soldiers with mental health issues would not have been deployed 3 or 4 years ago. The army faced a need for more troops at a time when the war here was going poorly and the us economy was good. As a result some soldiers enlisted who may have not been allowed to enlist in prior years. The included some troops with prior histories of mental illness who (in retrospect) may have been more prone to have problems.

Again, the army is heavily engaged in reversing this problem. We have briefings constantly about mental health and suicide as well as pamphlets throughout the base and commercials around the clock on armed forces network. They have policies in place for all soldiers to meet with counselors and also to be confined to the home base upon return to be observed and meet with mental health teams.

On a lighter side..I have included some pictures of me being given a tour of an F-16 ("VIPER") by one of the pilots and a picture of us filming a commercial for the university of Pittsburgh to be played before the game on 11sept.

Thanks,

PS-almost 70% done!!

The Guardian's Jewish Defamers of Israel, and A Letter To My Teenage Nephew

This essay was published at CiF Watch, and cross-posted at Augean Stables, and Solomonia.

CiF’s Jewish Israel defamers

When joining the team here at CiF Watch, and attempting to understand why Jewish writers for the Guardian are often among the most vociferous in expressing their contempt for Israel, and so willing to demonize the state’s Jewish supporters, I had to get up to speed on the term “Theobald Jew.”

I soon learned that:

According to the Benedictine monk Thomas of Monmouth in his The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich (1173), it was an apostate Jew, a certain Theobald, who, swore that Jews had killed twelve-year old William, a tanner’s apprentice, to fulfill their “Passover blood ritual” in the fateful year of 1144—the first recorded such episode in a long line of murderous defamations.

The CiF contributors I refer to include Naomi Klein, Neve Gordon, Richard Silverstein, Antony Lerman, Seth Freedman, Tony Greenstein, among others. These Jewish writers don’t merely critique Israeli policy, but routinely engage in hyperbole, vitriol, and gross distortions. Their rhetoric is often spewed with hate towards the Jewish state, all but ignoring the behavior of her enemies - the terrorist and reactionary movements who openly seek her annihilation. Such commentators often infer that the democratic Jewish state (the most progressive nation, by far, in the region) is almost always in the wrong, is usually motivated by a hideous malevolence, and represents a national movement which they, as Jews, are ashamed to be associated with.

Freedman, for instance, has suggested that Israel is a theocracy – one which is on moral par with Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda. Gordon has on several occasions accused Israel of ethnic cleansing - once advancing such an ugly calumny in the radical anti-Zionist magazine, Counterpunch. Tony Greensteinhas ardently defended the ugly comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, typically advanced by extremists. Richard Silverstein has called the behavior of Israelis serving in the IDF “subhuman“, and has defended Hamas from “charges” that they are an extremist movement. Naomi Klein actually accused Israel of being so cruel and sadistic as to “bury children alive in their homes.”

While, for the Guardian, employing the services of Theobald Jews serves to inoculate them from charges of anti-Semitism, such Jewish writers, in return, receive the progressive and universalist credentials they so eagerly seek.

The Misnomer of the “Self-Hating Jew”

To be fair, I always found the term “self-hating Jew” to be at best misleading, at worst a complete misnomer. First, because we typically have no way of knowing these writers‘ inner-thoughts. But, more importantly, I never thought that it was an apt description of the anti-Zionist Jews I’ve met over the years. If anything, most seem to possess a belief that they are indeed “better Jews” for being hyper-critical of Israel, opposing their own community, and rejecting the very idea of a Jewish nation-state.

Many seem singularly focused on being seen as a “progressive”. And, as the progressive movement has moved further and further away from identification with Israel – and, to some degree, further away from identification with Jews as such – the need to be seen as progressive (“righteous”) in the eyes of others, has taken precedence over the seemingly parochial desire to identify with, and defend, their own community.

I have thought long and hard about the phenomenon of Jews who oppose their own community, have read and written about it, and there appears to be four dynamics worth exploring:

1. Moral Vanity

I was particularly inspired by Anthony Julius’s long two-part essay published at the American Jewish Committee site, Z Word. The piece was called Jewish anti-Zionism Unravelled: The Morality of Vanity. (Pt. 1 & Pt. 2). Julius also rejects the notion of such Jews as being “self-hating”. Instead he refers to them as moralisers who continually desire affirmation from the non-Jewish world as to their righteousness.

The moraliser makes judgments on others, and profits by so doing; he puts himself on the right side of the fence. Moralising provides the moraliser with recognition of his own existence and confirmation of his own value. A moraliser has a good conscience and is satisfied by his own self-righteousness . He is not a self-hater; he is enfolded in self-admiration. He is in step with the best opinion.

2. The Temptation of Innocence

Ruth Wisse, in her book “Jews and Power“, identified the tendency of some Jews to vociferously oppose their own community as a dynamic which she, in part, attributes to a Jewish uneasiness with the projection political power and a tendency to almost fetishize the Jews’ history of powerlessness. Wisse concludes that Jews who endured, or know the history of, the powerlessness of exile are in danger of mistaking it for a requirement of Jewish life or, worse, for a Jewish ideal. This puerile desire not to be corrupted by the complexities, and occasional compromises, necessitated by possessing moral agency is described by Pascal Bruckner as “The Temptation of Innocence.”

3. Jewish Fear: Assimilation and Altruism as an Inoculation from Harm

More recently, Barry Rubin, director of the GLORIA Center (Global Research on International Affairs), in an illuminating and penetrating piece, entitled“Explaining Jewish Political Behavior“, said:

"[historically] Jews were attacked for allegedly having too much power, even when they had little or none, the emphasis was on being eager to make concessions, not to gain victories through threat or pressure.

…How would this strategy try to succeed? By proving Jews were good citizens, by showing they were unselfish and sought nothing for themselves, by demonstrating their willingness to dissolve the bonds and customs of their own community…and by showing that being nice to them would benefit everyone or almost everyone. In other words, altruism was a central element in the strategy

“…A key element of the assimilationist doctrine has been to deny there was a [Jewish] collective communal interest, and to avoid making collective demands.

Rubin, who, it should be noted, fleshes out his argument more fully in his book, Assimilation and Its Discontents, continues:

large parts of the Jewish elite are proud to stand aloof from their own people and deem it virtuous to abandon it and reject any notion of communal interests (including Israel and religion). Indeed, they think they can best prove their credentials by championing the causes of other groups even–sometimes especially–those in conflict with Jewish interests.

…The elite Jew’s emphasis is often to escape identification with the community, proving he is a cosmopolitan with a universalist identity, being the first to demand the dissolution of any community loyalty and viewing the embodiment of Jewish peoplehood—Israel—as an impediment to those goals. While antisemites charge that all or almost all Jews in positions of power pursue a distinctively Jewish interest, the exact opposite is the truth. This explains how left-wing Jews extol multiculturalism and self-determination for other peoples even as they hold the exact opposite attitude toward their own people, whom they are determined to show are not their own people.

…many Jews, particularly in elite positions, are eager to prove their credentials by criticizing their own people or Israel.

4. The Adversarial Jew: Skepticism and relativism disguised as reasoned political thought

I think there’s one last dynamic at play – an insight I came upon as a result of an email exchange I had with my 16-year-old nephew recently.

He reached out to me to seek my advice on this phase he was going through.It seems that he’s going through an early “existential crisis” of sorts – a frame of mind (I warmly noted to him) that most don’t arrive at until college. He mentioned that, lately, he’s been questioning everything – every social convention, everything he’s ever been told, and wondering whether the wisdom, mores, and customs he‘s been brought up by his parents to believe in and abide by are indeed worthy. He said that, since this struggle, he wasn’t misbehaving, but had resigned himself to merely “going through the motions” – but wasn’t really buying into what he always believed to be true. He wanted to know what I thought.

In my reply, I assured him that what he’s going through is perfectly normal, and was a sign that he possessess a vibrant, active, and healthy mind – and, that, indeed, such existential crises were the inspiration for great works of poetry, literature, and philosophy through the ages. I said that I also went through a similar mental orientation - that I, during the first couple years ofcollege, questioned everything ever taught to me by my parents and my community. I even looked down on the adults in my life, and their seemingly conventional thinking. In my arrogance, I said, I believed that I saw things they didn’t see…had arrived at answers to questions that had perplexed not only my a parents and relatives, but the most brilliant minds in my time and in generations past.

However, I also told him that I eventually learned to have a bit of humility about it all, and eventually realized that I didn’t know much about life, at that early stage in my life, at all. And, that my parents, the older I got (and as my adolescence receded) seemed to become wiser and wiser with each passing year – in what I increasingly identified as their decency, sobriety, and plain common sense.

So, I asked my nephew if he would at least try to avoid the audacity of imagining that he alone possessed the wisdom and insight that has eluded his community – the Rabbis, sages, political, and community leaders – in his generation and though the ages. I asked that he not assume that because his father claims that something is true, that the opposite must indeed be what’s actually correct. I asked that he be patient and assured him that, with time and experience, he’ll eventually not be so quick to question the intentions of those who guide him. I expressed confidence that he will come to see that a healthy skepticism about “conventional thinking” is indeed normal, but that he’ll eventually understand that such thoughts need not devolve into a knee-jerk rejection of all the traditions and values of those who have come before him and have guided generations of Jews through often dark and harrowing times.

Julius, in his Z Word essay, dissected the potential moral pathos of many such renegade Jews:

He holds that the truth is to be arrived at by inverting the “us = good” and “other = bad” binarism. He finds virtue in opposing his own community; he takes the other point of view. He writes counter-histories of his own people. It is not enough for him to disagree, or even refute; he must expose the worst bad faith, the most ignoble motives, the grossest crimes. He must discredit.

My nephew is a smart, decent, and level-headed young man. And, I have no doubt that he’ll maintain his bearings during this intellectual “crisis” and not allow himself to surrender to hubris, nor develop a malevolence towards the family and community that has supported, nurtured, and guided him through the complexities of everyday life – those who love him dearly and have tried with all their heart to provide a path to protect him from the maddeningly complicated world he lives in.

It’s a simple lesson perhaps, but a vital one. And, its wisdom that many of the Jews who write for the Guardian, quite shamefully, don’t even meagerly possess.