ADL Chutzpah and the Preaching of Ethics to Israel - by Judith Bergman

Speaking of the “ethical thing to do”, there is a particular chutzpah in preaching to Israel about ‘ethics’. Israel spends a disproportionate amount of resources –compared to its tiny size — on humanitarian aid all over the world, especially in Africa, and has done so for decades. Israel cultivated a strong relationship with Africa from the earliest beginnings, when the newly ‎decolonized African nations emerged. Israel sent thousands of Israeli experts in agriculture, hydrology, ‎regional planning, public health, engineering, community services, medicine and scores of other fields ‎throughout Africa between 1958 and 1973. Thousands of Africans trained in Israel during the same time. Unlike Europeans, who lived in their own, segregated compounds, the Israelis lived among the Africans they came to ‎assist on the African continent.

Judith Bergman..
MiDA..
12 March '18..

Large parts of the West, including American Diaspora Jewish leaders, appear to have decided that unless Israel desists from its plan of deporting thousands of single, male Africans who infiltrated Israel illegally during the past decade or so, then the Jewish state is either deeply “racist” or inhumane. In any rate it is certainly, they claim, compromising its “Jewish values”.

Now, there is nothing new in the fact that most people seem to love nothing better than a bit of virtue signaling, especially if it can be done at the expense of the Jewish state. However, the latest virtue signaling over the illegal African migrants in Israel seems of even poorer taste than usual, given the disproportionately large humanitarian contribution of Israel to the world, especially Africa.

For decades, Israel has been helping other nations flourish, while usually getting absolutely nothing in return, apart from being condemned by every conceivable international organization from the EU to the UN.

No matter how much Israel does though, it seems it is never enough. Not for the world in general and not for the leaders of US Diaspora Jewry in particular, who constantly obsess over the fate of “Jewish values” in the much harassed Jewish state.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) wrote this to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in January: “As American Jews, one of our greatest concerns is the well-being and security of Israel…We also care about our shared Jewish values and refugee heritage—a very human concern that reaches across borders and distances—and unifies us as a people. We therefore strongly urge the Israeli government to refrain from implementing this plan…Addressing this issue in a humane and responsible manner remains no easy task, but it is the Jewish and ethical thing to do…”

Giving illegal migrants, the majority of whom only entered Israel to seek a better economic future, $3,500 each and passage to a safe third country, as Israel has offered, is actually an ethical thing to do, especially if one considers the alternatives.

Whereas Greenblatt runs an American-Jewish organization, Netanyahu runs a country. As such, other considerations than those of Jewish ‘purists’ – geopolitical realities for example — come into play.

Jewish community leaders can afford to focus on ethics only while keeping their hands clean of actual decisions — which cannot be guided by ethics alone — because what they say and do generally has little consequence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, has to deal with the harsh unpleasantness of actual reality and the potentially damaging consequences of his decisions for the entire state of Israel.

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Making Deserts Bloom Not Only in Israel, But Around the World - by Judith Bergman

Just as the land of Israel flourished with the return of the Jewish people, the State of Israel is now helping other nations thrive. What exactly have social justice warriors done to help the world?

Judith Bergman..
MiDA..
01 February '18..
Link: http://en.mida.org.il/2018/02/01/israel-making-deserts-bloom-around-world/

The Jewish holiday of Tu BiShvat, celebrated today, marks the revival of nature. In Israel, Tu BiShvat is celebrated as an ecological awareness day, and trees are planted in celebration. Over a million Israelis take part in Tu BiShvat tree-planting activities annually. This, a custom developed during the early days of the Zionist movement to popularize the land reclamation and afforestation efforts in the land of Israel.

Over the past 100 years, Israel has gained vast knowledge and expertise in agriculture, reforestation and hydrology, developed as a consequence of necessity. Modern Israel continues quietly to extend its knowledge, including drip irrigation, water treatment – such as desalination and the recycling of wastewater – to Africa, Asia, and even California. Just as the land of Israel flourished with the return of the Jewish people, so too is the State of Israel now helping other nations to thrive.

While so-called social justice warriors rant and demonstrate against Israel, the question that no one asks is, what have these perpetual protesters ever done for the environment, and the truly poor of this world? The answer is – very little. Social justice war is an exercise in futile moral narcissism, the focus of which is to make social justice warriors feel good about themselves.

Israel, on the other hand, has been helping other nations flourish for decades, even when the reborn modern Jewish state itself was still very poor. Israel’s official international development cooperation program, Mashav, was launched in late 1957. Its aim was sharing with the rest of the developing world the know-how and technologies which provided the basis for Israel’s own rapid development. Israel has been, and effectively still is, a laboratory for development solutions.

Israel cultivated a strong relationship with Africa from the earliest beginnings, when the newly ‎decolonized African nations emerged. Taking the relevant expertise it accumulated during its own development experience as a young country facing similar challenges, Israel sent thousands of Israeli experts in agriculture, hydrology, ‎regional planning, public health, engineering, community services, medicine and scores of other fields ‎throughout Africa between 1958 and 1973. Thousands of Africans trained in Israel during the same time ‎‎(So much for Israeli “apartheid.”). Unlike Europeans, who lived in their own, segregated compounds, the Israelis lived among the Africans they came to ‎assist on the African continent (again, so much for Israeli ‎‎”apartheid.”). ‎

Former Prime Minister Golda Meir wrote in her 1975 memoirs, “My Life,” that like Africa, “… we had shaken off foreign rule; like them, we had had to learn how to ‎reclaim the land, how to increase the yields of our crops. … We couldn’t offer Africa money or arms, but on ‎the other hand we were free of the taint of the colonial exploiters because all that we wanted from Africa ‎was friendship. Let me at once anticipate the cynics. Did we go into Africa because we wanted votes at ‎the United Nations? Yes, of course that was one of our motives — and a perfectly honorable one — which I ‎never … concealed either from myself or from the Africans. But it was far from being the most important ‎motive. … The main reason for our African ‘adventure’ was that we had something we wanted to pass on ‎to nations that were even younger and less experienced than ourselves.”

Shocking! We Israelis Can’t Even Get A Darned Blockade Right! - by Sheri Oz

...Anyway, here is what is boring about the siege Israel is mismanaging

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
27 August '16..

I’m going to show you in a moment why watching the Israeli blockage of Gaza is an irritating example of Jewish ineptitude. Jews pride themselves on their inventiveness and on being a start-up nation. I guess we are too busy thinking up new apps and medical miracles and the mundane business of running a blockade just gets overlooked. Either that, or our hearts just aren’t in it. The result is a boring litany of blockade incompetence.

But first I want to show you how the idea of a blockade and siege is used for propaganda.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Who cares about rebuilding Gazan lives?

...A strange form of warfare, no? But it tells a reasonable person something about the relative values of the human societies on the two sides.

Kerem Shalom crossing seen from the Israeli
side, August 2014 More than an ordinary
stream of trucks; a lifeline [Image Source]

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
23 November '14..

If you have not already seen our post from earlier today (including video) of Hamas trumpeting the tunnels they are busy digging and/or repairing in order to murder more Jews ["23-Nov-14: Gaza's wealth and where it is - and is not - going"], please do that before reading on. It's at the top of the list of messages Hamas is delivering to its captive population and the larger Arabic-speaking world.

Back? OK, so if it's not the thugs of Hamas (and it is surely not), who is taking seriously the need of the Palestinian Arab Gazans for repaired houses and a better life? From the Jerusalem Post:

Under an arrangement reached last month to ensure that building materials needed to rebuild the thousands of homes destroyed in the seven-week Operation Protective Edge are not diverted to build terror tunnels or manufacture rockets, the UN is to present Israeli engineers with construction plans, and the engineers will determine how much cement is needed. That cement then will be allowed into Gaza in stages, to enable inspection to ensure that it is being used for the designated purpose. If it is determined that the cement is being stolen and used for other purposes, the supply will stop. A recent assessment conducted by the UN found that more than 100,000 homes in Gaza remained damaged or destroyed. The first batch of construction materials since the Gaza military operation in the summer entered the Strip from Israel in September... ["25,000 Gazans to get access to construction materials to rebuild homes", jpost.com, November 22, 2014]

Keep in mind the mentality of the parties concerned.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 
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Could Gaza get lots more goods through Israel? Yes, but they choose not to

People and businesses in Gaza don't need that many imports from Egypt - but Hamas does.

Elder of Ziyon..
16 August '13..

This week I had an email conversation with the COGAT Gaza spokeswoman about the precise process of how goods get transferred into Gaza.

Here is how it works. (These are mostly COGAT's words, I edited them from multiple emails):

When a Gaza businessman wants to order goods from Israel privately, his first stop would be at the PA offices. There, there's a committee that is in charge of integrating all the requests and putting them in order, the Civil Committee of the PA, according to the format that is familiar to both sides. After that, it is that committee's job to pass a list of trucks that are to cross the next day. The head of the civil committee is in direct contact with the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA) and they work with him closely every day, through phone calls and meetings, in order to make the work process efficient. The PA committee is the CLA's POC, but it is not the one ordering the goods.

When the lists are received at the Gaza CLA, they get to the approval process, and once they are approved they are passed to the CLA's representatives at Kerem Shalom, who are the first to receive the truck drivers the next morning.

As of today, the capacity of Kerem Shalom is 400 trucks per day. Due to the number of requests from the PA Civil Committee the number of trucks crossing per day never reaches 400. It can go up to 300 trucks on a good day.

Of course, if the Palestinian side would like to add more trucks to cross at Kerem Shalom, they're free to do so. The Israeli side will make its arrangements to meet the demands.

Unfortunately, many trucks are a no show at the crossing, for Palestinian personal matters. The trucks are coordinated, and are on the list, but every day the CLA sees a large number of blank forms for trucks that never crossed. That depends almost entirely on the Palestinians. Should they decide to cancel a truck for whatever reason, the CLA only knows about it at the end of the day, when they sum up the merchandise that went through. (It appears possible that the Israeli seller might renege sometimes as well, but that doesn't appear to be the normal case.)

The Palestinian businessmen do their coordination with Israeli private companies on their own. They only interact with COGAT (through the PA) when it comes to making sure the goods actually cross.

My comments:

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out!

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S. Israel: Two more incoming rockets from Gaza, responding to Israeli provocation

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
31 July '12..

An update on the continuing indiscriminate fire by the Gazan terrorists on Israel and Israelis. In the past fifteen minutes (it's now 1:20pm on a hot Tuesday afternoon) we have gotten reports of two rockets crashing into southern Israel and exploding not far from the border with the Gaza Strip. The rockets were of course fired from the Gaza Strip by any of an almost limitless list of real and imaginary groups, subgroups and sub-sub groups of the Gazan Palestinian Arab terror conglomerate. The Tzeva Adom incoming missile warning system began sounding at 1:00pm.

We suspect these rockets are intended as retaliation by yesterday's outrage: the facilitation by Israel's military of 251 delivery trucks carrying more than 6,100 tons of goods into Hamas-controlled Gaza, including a ton of veterinary drugs. During the week just ended, more than 735,000 liters of heavy-duty diesel fuel for Gaza's power plant were admitted via COGAT [details here]. COGAT is almost never mentioned in news reports - it's the arm of the Israeli military that serves to co-ordinate civilian issues among Israel and the Israel Defense Forces on one hand; the multitude of interested international organizations and diplomats on the second hand; and the Palestinian Authority and its Gaza equivalent on the third hand.

Thousands of tons of goods arriving by road from Israel: no flotilla, no tunnels, no sniper cover. The insult to the Palestinian Arab pride of Gaza's population is understandably more than a normal person can bear.

Link: http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.co.il/2012/07/31-jul-12-southern-israel-two-more.html

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.
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So how urgent was the need for humanitarian aid for the Gazans?

Arnold/Frimet Roth
This Ongoing War: A Blog
03 June '10


How urgent was the humanitarian aid that the cynically misnamed Freedom Flotilla tried to force through Israel's naval blockade of Gaza? We can get some idea of the answer by considering a little-noticed report put out yesterday by the spokesperson's office at the IDF. That report is online here. under the plain-spoken headline "Hamas Refuses to Allow Flotilla Aid into Gaza Strip".

The essence of it is this: 25 Israeli trucks, laden with the so-called aid found onboard the flotilla vessels, are standing by idlely this morning (Thursday) while the Hamas regime that rules the Gazan Arabs plays its eternal game, honed by years of experience, of political-point-scoring while shafting its own population.

The "aid", if that's an accurate term, that arrived on those boats includes large quantities of expired medications, along with clothing, blankets, some medical equipment and toys. Hamas, according to the IDF, "is unwilling to accept the cargo and the trucks filled with humanitarian aid have not been allowed to enter the Gaza Strip. It appears that Hamas is in fact stopping the transfer of the humanitarian aid. Hamas did not explain his opposition to the transfer of the aid." Meanwhile there are reports of additional boatloads of allegedly urgent aid on the way, along with additional boatloads of the same kind of thugs and provocateurs we witnessed in the past few days. A great pity.

Israeli interests have always been to give the Palestinian Arabs, including the Gazans, something to value, something to protect, in their lives. This may be driven by self-interest but it's a legitimate standpoint nevertheless. These interests are served by ensuring a steady stream of goods and equipment into Gaza. Though a good proportion of the world's news media avoid reporting this, the reality is that deliveries from Israel are routine and frequent. So are the two-way transfers of people for for medical, religious, welfare, business or diplomatic reasons.

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