The key to not panicking in line at the Supersol - by Akiva Gersh

Israelis have done this so many times before. They’ve been called upon to interrupt their self- and family-centered lives time and time again for the sake of the nation.

Akiva Gersh..
JNS.org..
20 March '20..




I moved to Israel in 2004, and since then, there have been events and moments that have reaffirmed the reasons why I did.

One of those moments is right now.

Yes, now, during these challenging and confusing and unsettling days that the world is being held captive by the coronavirus.

Like so many others around the world, we in Israel are confined to our homes, but the few moments a day that I do manage to get out into the world remind me of why I love Israel so much.

It’s the calm I see on people’s faces as I push my shopping cart through the supermarket. It’s their ability to still smile and even laugh with one another as they stand in line waiting for their turn to pay for the items they want to bring back to their families in quarantine. And it’s their ability to still believe that y’hiyeh b’seder … “It’ll be OK.”

And I wonder why is it that Israelis are not entering into hysteria the way people in other countries are, even though their day-to-day lives have been deeply and unexpectedly altered in very much the same exact way? Why are we not stripping the shelves bare of toilet paper and pasta and cold medicines, leaving nothing to find for the people that come after us?

And then it hit me.

I realize that the people I pass on the street, on the road and in the stores have seen hard times before. While recognizing and honoring the unique aspects of this time we’re now in, this is not the first time the people of Israel have been forced to struggle. They’ve done so many times before. They’ve been called upon to interrupt their self- and family-centered lives time and time again for the sake of the nation.

(Continue to Full Column)

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Shine - Happy New Year

Dr. Chaim Shine
Israel Hayom
05 October '11

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=603

Amazement, surprise, tsunami, disappointment: these words describe what a number of media sources reported after the publication, on the eve of Rosh Hashana, of the satisfaction survey of most Israeli citizens. Turns out that most Israeli citizens say things are good in the country and the great majority would never even consider the possibility of leaving. Satisfaction at this level is the kind of thing you find in countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland.

Who would have believed it? This tiny country, surrounded by enemies, fighting for its very existence for over 60 years against unending hostility, and still the citizens are proud of their country, believe in its path and are ready to sacrifice their lives for its continued existence.

Only 6 percent of the participants in the survey asserted that they had negative feelings toward the country. I would guess that some of them live in Kfar Shmaryahu, a wealthy suburb of Tel Aviv, or nearby it. It is well known that there is no connection between actual satisfaction and one's socioeconomic situation. Israel is the only country in the world, however, that has a directly opposite connection between one's personal happiness and economic satisfaction.

For more than two years, through impressive and sophisticated measures, the Israeli media has tried to breed fear and loathing into the lives of citizens by sowing despair and dread. From reading and watching media sources, many might get the impression that the state of Israel is on the verge of collapse. What haven't they told us: that Israel is an occupier, is corrupt, violent, leprous and isolated? How about the veteran television anchor who proudly decided to shatter the myth of the great Israel Defense Forces? As if we are talking about statues of Stalin or Saddam Hussein who oppressed their subjects with catapults and used shoes!

Now, following this survey, it turns out that all the efforts to depress Israeli citizens were fruitless. The public did not buy the wares from these wicked salespeople who tried to sell us oversized portions, two for the price of one, and all accessories included. There is a lack of trust between citizens and much of the media; a definitive lack of trust without a chance for mediation. The smart Jews learned how to read the newspapers and watch television with their personal white-out, erasing the necessary words of "objective" commentators that repeatedly are revealed as having little base in reality.

Jeffrey Goldberg's latest anti-Glick meltdown

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
15 October '10

Yesterday one of my readers forwarded me a blog post written by the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg and asked me to comment on it. In truth, I rarely find much point in reading Goldberg's self-absorbed writings.

Goldberg has carved out a little niche for himself. Many years ago he wrote two stupendous pieces for the New Yorker about Hizbullah and ever since he has been paying the ideological price. The Left, which Goldberg clings to for dear life isn't particularly interested in hearing about the dangers of jihad. So to prove that he is okay in spite of the fact that he reported on jihadists, he's been attacking Israel - and particularly non-post-Zionist Israelis -- ever since.

Goldberg is a disillusioned Zionist. He moved here, served in the IDF, couldn't make a go of things and went back to America to write about how horrible Israel is. He regularly divides Israelis into two categories: the "good" Israelis and the "bad" Israelis. The good Israelis are his friends in post-Zionist political circles. The bad Israelis are the other 90 percent of the country that remains Zionist and devoted to the country and doesn't care what they say about us on the BBC or write about us in the Atlantic.

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The President's Tin Ear

JINSA
Report # 1,005
10 July '10

President Obama dragged out some really dated stereotypes while demeaning both Jews and Israelis in an interview with Israel's Channel 2 Television. Confronted with the "anxiety" (as the reporter put it) that some Israelis feel about his relationship toward Israel, Mr. Obama bluntly blamed the Jews:

This is the thing that actually surfaced even before I was elected President, in some of the talk that was circulating within the Jewish American community.

He continued:

Ironically, I've got a Chief of Staff named Rahm Israel Emmanuel. My top political advisor is somebody who is a descendant of Holocaust survivors.

Would someone please tell the President that in the 21st Century the "some of my best friends are Jewish" line is offensive? And, in this case, inconsistent. Before the election, the President's people demanded that no one associate the candidate with the vicious anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism of his longtime pastor and spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright, in whose church then-Senator Obama sat. If nothing of Wright rubbed off on him in 25 years, how did those sneaky Jews do it?

Speaking of irony, here's one. After claiming closeness to the American Jewish community vicariously - through the Jewish commitment to the American Civil Rights Movement of which he was not a part and because he has Jewish friends and, after claiming that, "My closeness to the Jewish American community was probably what propelled me to the U.S. Senate," Mr. Obama opines:

(Read full report)

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The unbearable ordinariness of terrorist threats to ordinary people

Arnold/Frimet Roth
This Ongoing War: A Blog
09 July '10
Posted before Shabbat

(In spite of it all, we'll do more than manage, and when it's all over, we'll be happy to have reached home. Y.)

As the summer travel season gets into full swing, there's yet another reminder of the growing role of terror in the lives of ordinary people.

An official “concrete, high risk” warning of terrorist attacks directed against ordinary Israeli civilians was made some hours ago by Israel's National Security Council Counter-Terrorism Bureau. Its general advisory warns all Israelis traveling abroad to increase their customary alertness, particularly businesspersons and Israelis who previously served in public service roles. They're all targets, "at a high risk for kidnapping or murder” according to the dry government office statement.

The background is that Hizbullah is reliably reported to be seeking vengeance against Israelis for the demise of the notorious terrorist mastermind Imad Mugniyeh in 2008.

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No, the Problem Is Not Obama’s Middle Name

Claudia Rosett
pajamsmedia.com
09 July '10

Posted before Shabbat

As part of his public reconciliation with Israel, Obama for the first time in the almost 18 months since he became president just gave an interview to an Israeli TV station (this from the same American president who gave his first interview in office to Al-Arabiya — remember that ?). Speaking Wednesday to Israel’s Channel 2 News, Obama struck a friendly tone.

And yet, as if he can’t quite help himself, out comes this astonishingly crude remark. As reported in the New York Times, he was asked about “the anxiety of many Israelis who feel that he does not have a special bond with Israel.” Obama replied — get ready for it: “Some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.”

Come again? There are Americans who have wondered about that middle name, less because it is “Hussein” than because it has lived a strange life of its own, fading in and out depending on the audience – disappearing during Obama’s 2008 election campaign, reappearing during his outreach to the “Muslim world,” coming and going as if it mattered in some malleable way to Obama himself. Has he ever considered that public worry about his middle name might have more to do with the slippery nature of its use, and the too often disturbing policies of its owner, than with the name itself?

And for Obama to impute Israeli anxiety to his Cheshire Cat of a middle name is grossly dismissive and insulting to the Israelis. Does he really believe they are such bigots as to judge him — other things equal — by his middle name? Does he have any evidence for that? Or was he drawing on his own stereotype of Israelis? How exactly was he judging them, when he tossed out that remark?

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Conspiracy and conflict

NOW Lebanon
09 March '10

According to a recent survey conducted by the Dubai-based public relations firm ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller, young Arabs want democracy, jobs and affordable homes. The findings imply that the vast majority – 85 to 99 percent of the 2,000 18-to-24 year-olds polled in nine countries including the GCC, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon – share the same aspirations as their counterparts in the globalized community, clearly rejecting a hidebound Arab world that has failed to get with the program.

Still, old habits die hard. This weekend, while young Arabs were no doubt downloading music from iTunes and wondering how the job interview with the multinational went, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once again bored us by announcing that the 9/11 attacks were a “big lie”, while in Lebanon, on the eve of the national dialogue, his proxy army, Hezbollah, gave the middle finger to Lebanon’s shaky democratic principles by announcing that its weapons, which have apparently tripled in number since the 2006 war with Israel, were non-negotiable.

Ahmadinejad is no stranger to sharing with the world his take on history. He infamously declared that the extermination of six million Jews during the Second World War was a myth. His latest theory, that the US engineered the flying of three commercial aircraft into national landmarks just to have an excuse invade Afghanistan and control the world’s oil reserves, is part of this world view.

It would be funny if so many people didn’t believe him. Tragically, the Arab world is built on suspicion and conspiracy, a paranoia fuelled by one very powerful drug: Israel. Ahmadinejad is a potent peddler of the line that Israeli and US ambitions are inextricably tied, and that a secret Jewish cabal controls Washington and concocts the most outrageous evil to achieve common goals.

(Read full article)
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Will $40 Million US Tax Dollars Subsidize UN Agency That Tolerates Teaching Martyrdom to Palestinian Kids?

Heather Robinson
Huffington Report
07 February '10

Last week the United States announced an initial contribution of $40 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN agency dedicated to providing food, jobs and education in the Palestinian territories. According to a U.S. State Department press release, the money will "provide critical health, education, and humanitarian services to 4.7 million Palestinians across the region."

This United Nations agency, which receives the largest share of its funding from the U.S. taxpayer, has in recent years come under fire due to at least one of its employees' admission that it employs members of Hamas.

Last month, due to concerns Hamas had infiltrated UNRWA, the Canadian government quietly decided to redirect funding away from the agency; instead, the $300 million in aid Canada has pledged to the Palestinians for the next five years will go to food aid and the support of the Palestinian justice system in an effort to help the Palestinians build a civil society.

Perhaps the U.S. should follow Canada's lead.

In recent years, watchdog organizations have shined a light on the content of books in schools in the Palestinian territories - and what they illuminated was a consistent pattern of propaganda denying Israel's right to exist, dehumanizing Israelis and Jews, and lacking any concrete perspective that would point towards a nonviolent resolution of the conflict, such as a two-state solution. UNRWA schools use the same text books as those that are used in Palestinian schools run by the Palestinian Authority - and by Hamas.


While not part of the original article I have added this as a current example of children's media from Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), Feb. 5, 2010

(Read full article)

When The People Will Hike

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
09 December 09

One of the interesting things about Israelis and Israel is that we love to hike. We climb mountains, descend into riverbeds. We seek water, the highs and lows of the land. We explore the caves, the hills, the valleys. Everything, everywhere...whenever we can. It's a national obsession - perhaps born out of too many years in which we could not freely hike our land.

On extended days off from the army, rather than avoid his army friends, Elie will arrange to get together and hike with them. Our family has gone on many hikes - few really challenging ones, as I am a bit nervous having children walk near the edges of cliffs and things. It is probably another one of the seldom recognized miracles that happen daily here that so few people actually get injured.

Some of Israel's recognized tourist sites are carefully marked. Follow the green or blue arrows. Stick on the path and climb and descend...that's what I do. I am a path-follower. Boring it is, but what can you do. As soon as I leave the path, I am sure scorpions and snakes and lions and tigers will attack. No, it's the path for me (at least as far as my kids know, so let's leave it at that. Kids, stay ON the path).

What do most Israelis do...especially the young ones? (Read here my three sons and most army-age people.) Well, if there are arrows, it is too much evidence that man has been here before. Why walk the path, my sons often feel, if they can scale the sides. Elie is often the first to break off to the side...his brothers follow as I slowly wind my way safely and slowly along the path. They sprawl on the ground, relaxed and amused, as I catch up to them.

As I said, it is a national obsession that we can't do often enough because despite living in this beautiful country, we live in the real world. We work...hard...and if you keep the Sabbath, you really have no day in which you can simply escape to the far reaches of our land.

So, when can we hike? The answer is the holidays - as many of them as possible. We go in the summer, on Passover, on Sukkot...and on Hanukah, which starts at the end of this week.

(Read full article)
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Birthday Wishes

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
29 November 09

Shulamit Aloni, a former head of Israel’s Meretz Party, gave an interview to Yedioth on her 81st birthday. “It’s hard for me to say a kind word about the state today,” she said.

“No one should be speaking this nonsense about ‘blood on the hands.’ Since 2000, with the launching of the second intifada, we have murdered thousands. We too have blood on our hands,” she remarked.

“We need to release those demanded (by Hamas) immediately,” she went on. …

“We are a nefarious people. What we are doing in the West Bank is worse than all the pogroms done to the Jews.” But she qualified her statement by saying she was “not referring to the Nazis, but the Cossacks.”

Conventional leftist self-hatred, as these things go. But this comment on Israeli politics was interesting:

“The Right has two left hands, but the Left doesn’t even exist today,” she said.

Here’s some free political advice: That’s because most Israelis don’t loathe their country, and they know the Aloni-Meretz faction does.

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Terra Incognita: Where is the banality of the Jews?

Seth Frantzman
Terra Incognita/JPost
23 November 09

The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall reminds us once again of the theory of the "banality of evil." It is important to explore the way in which contemporary thought views the actions of the East Germans and their Nazi forebears as "banal" and yet many of those who see their actions as dull, tend to judge the IDF harshly.

A discussion of the subject should begin with celebrated filmmaker and Israeli intellectual Eyal Sivan.

Sivan is primarily famous for The Specialist, a 1999 film about Adolph Eichmann. Sivan's main themes in his work have been that Israel has created a national Holocaust cult; that Israelis are capable of becoming more and more like Nazis in their dealing with the Palestinians and that Eichmann, one of the greatest Nazi organizers of mass murder, was "banal" or dull, therefore merely part of a system, and not particularly evil.

Sivan's work follows in the footsteps of philosopher Hannah Arendt, a German-born Jew who had an affair with the Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger before fleeing to New York in 1941. She resumed the affair after the war, defended her philosopher-partner at his trial and then defended Eichmann's "banality" in her famous book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963).

Both Arendt and Sivan are well-known, respected intellectuals whose ideas influence contemporary views on the Holocaust.

Many have challenged Sivan and Arendt by trying to prove that Eichmann was far from banal; that he was a crusading individual, a unique person who excelled at his work and was thus evil, not merely part of a larger bureaucratic "machine" that was Nazism.

But perhaps the question shouldn't be whether Eichmann was banal, but whether the Jews are banal.
(Read full article)
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Peace is not a must

Informal understandings only viable approach in our zero-sum conflict

Elyakim Haetzni
Ynet/Israel Opinion
17 November 09

In his recent New York Times op-ed, Thomas Friedman came up with the insight that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are interested in a peace process, and that American pressure on both sides merely hinders them from getting along on their own for lack of any other choice.

Well, welcome to the club. After all, this is what the rightist camp has been warning of all along: Impossible peace plans that exact thousands of “peace victims. However, let us hope that Friedman will not stop there and will proceed to go deeper, into the root of the problem – the reasons why the leftist peace perception was hopeless to begin with.

The deal offered to the Arabs by the “peace camp” is simple: 1948 in exchange for 1967. We will hand over to you everything we conquered in the Six Day War, and in exchange you will recognize the Jewish State’s existence and the Green Line as its lawful border. That is, you will give up much of the land of Palestine, your previous homes, and your dream of returning to them. You will give up everything you fought over through wars and terrorism.

The Arabs have rejected this deal from the outset, and the argument over it persists merely among the Jews. The Arabs, based on their religious, cultural, and national perceptions, cannot sign a deal that in their view would turn a Muslim state into a Jewish one; an Arab state into an Israeli one. Whoever does so, will pay with their life.

An authentic Arab leader will also not be giving up the right of return of Muslim Arabs to the heart of the “house of Islam.” Arafat in 2000 and Abbas in 2009 reached this obstacle and drew back. The blind Americans and Israelis failed to understand why.

A realistic position vis-à-vis the Arabs requires a different approach:

1. Don’t recognize our existence and certainly not our existence as a Jewish entity; as we already exist, we have no need for such recognition. It won’t give us anything. “Recognition” is not a type of merchandize and we offer nothing for it.

2. Don’t give up Haifa and Jaffa. Signing such deal would pain you while granting us no benefit. We know that should we become weaker one day, you will take back the 1948 Palestine even if you declare a thousand times that you renounced it. Hence, “renunciation” is not a type of merchandize either.

3. Don’t engage in negotiations with us and don’t sign an agreement whereby you cannot get more than 1967 in exchange for 1948. This will merely create frustration and disappointment and bring catastrophe to both sides. We will maintain ties, understandings, and even friendship “under the table” – de facto and not de jure. We will have a modus vivendi rather than a formal “peace.”

Our official ties with Jordan have been characterized by King Abdullah as a “cold peace.” It appears that the secret ties that prevailed previously were better. When it comes to give and take, Jews and Arabs get along very well – ranging from commerce to health and from matters of garbage collection to knowledge-sharing and joint projects.

Whatever it is that is deemed worthy for both sides because of neighborly needs goes well, as long as it is managed far away from the watchful eye of the media and public opinion; that is, far away from politics and the agreed-upon lies.

Salam Fayyad’s plan to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state stems from the inability to sign agreements. It is preferable for him to have a de-facto state in so-called Area A, rather than being perceived as a person who renounced sacred demands and rights.

It is difficult for us to internalize the fact that the conflict with the Palestinians is a zero-sum game: Each side feels deep in its soul that this is its land, and this is the only conflict in history where both nations demand the same city as their capital. Only a fool or a swindler would be seeking a “solution,” a term taken from the math realm, just like “peace process” is reminiscent of chemistry, as if we are dealing with exact science here. In life, not everything is resolvable.
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Remember Reciprocity?

If Jews have to stop building homes, Arabs should be asked to do the same

Ophir Falk
Ynet/Israel Opinion
27 August 09

Benjamin Netanyahu takes pride in “institutionalizing the concept of reciprocity.” Indeed, one of his fundamental first term achievements as prime minister was stopping the process of “giving something for nothing” - to educate Israelis and Palestinians alike to the concept of reciprocity and to clarify to a disinclined Clinton administration that the term also applies to the Middle East peace process. However, if recent reports concerning backchannel diplomacy are accurate, it seems that Netanyahu may have forgotten an important page from the book he himself wrote.

Headlines drum-rolling the scheduled meetings between Netanyahu and Senator George Mitchell imply that a tacit agreement has already been reached concerning a unilateral freeze on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria. The planned freeze is supposed to be limited in duration, until a final agreement is reached between Israel and the Palestinians. This seems strange. Obama wants Jews to refrain from building in areas that may jeopardize the final border to be drawn between Israel and its neighbors. Yet Obama has not made such demands from the other side. If Jews are expected to stop building, Arabs should be expected to do the same.

The first step in resetting negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is not a freeze on Jewish settlements, but rather, a basic and candid declaration of both sides to recognize one another. Netanyahu has already declared his willingness to accept a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside Israel. In response, Mahmoud Abbas reiterated his demands for the “right of return” of Arabs to Israel proper and for Jerusalem to be the Palestinian capital, while refusing to recognize the existence of the Jewish state. That is not reciprocity – that is ridiculous.

Israel considers Judea and Samaria part of the historic Jewish homeland just as the Palestinians view the West Bank as part of the future Palestinian state. That premise is problematic since the West Bank and Judea and Samaria are the same place. Jews have a right to live in Judea and Samaria. We know that from the bible, history lessons and indisputable archeological finds. Hence, no one should have been surprised when Israel’s deputy prime minister reminded us of that.

Nor should anyone be surprised that over a million Arabs living in the West Bank regard it as their home. The question is whether Arab rights to build in a village called Ras Atia near the Israeli town of Rosh Ha’ayin outweigh Jewish rights to build in ancient Shilo not far from Nablus. Do Arab building rights in Na’alin, near Modi’in, outweigh Jewish building rights in Bet El, near Ramallah? Not if reciprocity is to be taken into consideration.

For the sake of reciprocity, if Jews are asked to stop building homes, Arabs should be required to do the same; limiting Jews while giving Arabs a free hand is not reciprocity – its racism.
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Israelis Denouncing Israel

When Israelis Denounce Israel: Legitimate Criticism of Israel or Arrogant Self-Delusion?

Dr. Alex Grobman
The Galilean Word
24 August 09

Critics of Israel abound. Some are antisemites who seek the demise of the Jewish state. Others have legitimate concerns about particular Israeli policies. Among the most vocal are a number of Israeli intellectuals who challenge the country’s raison d’être.

In an August 20, 2009 editorial in the Los Angeles Times, Neve Gordon, a professor of political science at Ben-Gurion University, accused Israel of being an apartheid state. He said a two-state solution was the “more realistic” way to end this inequity. Since only “massive international pressure,” will bring about this state and thus save Israel, Gordon recently joined the Arab sponsored Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement founded in July 2005.1

Vilification of Israel by Jews is not a new phenomenon. As early as May 1, 1936 Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson asked: “Is there another people on earth whose sons are so emotionally twisted that they consider everything their nation does despicable and hateful, while every murder, rape and robbery committed by their enemies fills their hearts with admiration and awe? As long as a Jewish child…can come to the land of Israel, and here catch the virus of self-hate…let not our conscience be still.”2 For Katznelson this was aberrant behavior, not the norm. Today, criticism of Israel has become ubiquitous among a significant portion of Israeli intellectuals.3

In the 1950s, psychologist Gordon Allport explained that Jewish self-hate is the process in which the victim identifies with his aggressor and “sees his own group through their eyes.” The Jew “may hate his historic religion…or he may blame some one class of Jews…or he may hate the Yiddish language. Since he cannot escape his own group, he does in a real sense hate himself—or at least the part of himself that is Jewish.”4 Self-hating Jews play a significant role in anti-Israel campaigns of the Western media. Historian Robert Wistrich noted that Jews highly critical of Israel are featured in the British media.5

Manfred Gerstenfeld, chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, found that the French elite and media adore Jews and Israelis who are highly critical of Israel.

A number of marginal Jews, who are not known in Israel, are presented as part of the Israeli mainstream. 6 Israeli’s condemnation of their country is a result of living under “a state of chronic siege,” posits Kenneth Levin, a historian and psychiatrist. Israelis have been abused for so long, that they escape their pain by espousing anti-Israel sentiments. Appeasing the terrorists, they believe, will end hostilities. Israel only has to acquiesce to Arab demands, cease obsessing about defensible borders and other strategic issues, and peace would ensue and such concerns would become irrelevant.7

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