Wrong Cause

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=304390

Many injustices plague Palestinian society, few of which can be blamed on the Jewish state, even by the farthest stretches of the imaginations of Israel’s enemies. These are self-inflicted injustices.

In the Gaza Strip, an Islamic quasi-state ruled by the totalitarian regime of Hamas has in the past few weeks arrested or summoned for interrogation at least 16 journalists as part of a campaign aimed at intimidating the local media, as reported by The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh.

These journalists’ only crime is daring to criticize Hamas’s leadership.

And the situation for journalists in the West Bank, which is ruled by the “moderate” Palestinian Authority, is not much better. Just last week, a PA court sentenced 26- year-old Anas Said Awwad to one year in prison for “insulting” President Mahmoud Abbas on Facebook.

Awwad was found guilty of depicting Abbas as a member of the Real Madrid soccer team.

In both Gaza and the West Bank the Palestinian political leadership has suffered from a fundamental lack of legitimacy for the past four years. Besides municipal votes, the last democratic election in Gaza and the West Bank took place in 2006. Palestinians were supposed to hold elections again in 2009. But after Hamas’s victory in the last election, Palestinian leadership was split.

With Western support, the Fatah-led PLO managed to maintain control over the West Bank. In Gaza, Hamas launched a violent and successful putsch in which Fatah members were shot down in the streets or thrown off buildings. Warnings by Israel that if Hamas were allowed to participate, Palestinians’ first truly democratic election (Hamas boycotted the 1996 vote) would be their last were not heeded by then-US president George Bush.

Yet, neither the jailing and intimidation of journalists (and other human rights abuses), nor the lack of democratic representation in their political leadership, has mobilized Palestinians in a significant way. At best, rallies are occasionally organized under the vague banner of “Palestinian unity.”

Instead, Palestinians – and Arab citizens of Israel – are rallying under a different banner: the rights of Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails. Palestinians and Israel’s Arabs, threatening a third intifada, have been demonstrating against the “injustice” of Israel’s rearrest of terrorists who are among the 1,027 Palestinian prisoners released in October 2011 under the Egypt-brokered deal between Hamas and Israel for the return of IDF soldier Gilad Schalit.

Samer Tariq Ahmad Essawi, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is one of the rearrested terrorists. Essawi was captured in April 2002 and later sentenced to 30 years for possessing weapons and for helping to form terrorist cells in the Jerusalem area. He was one of many terrorists arrested during Defensive Shield, the military operation carried out under thenprime minister Ariel Sharon that essentially ended the second intifada and restored security to Israelis who had been regular victims of suicide bombings and shootings.

Another rearrested prisoner is Ayman Sharawna, who was arrested for helping carry out a terrorist attack in Beersheba. On the morning of May 11, 2002, two Palestinian terrorists placed an improvised bomb near a group of civilians in the Old City of Beersheba and fled. A technical fault prevented the bomb from exploding fully.

Eighteen civilians were wounded. Sharawna was sentenced to 38 years imprisonment.

Both men were released in the Schalit deal and both men subsequently violated the conditions of their release.

Sharawna returned to terrorist activities with Hamas, according to the IDF, and was arrested in January 2012.

Essawi, who was freed on condition he remain inside Jerusalem, left the city to visit the nearby PA town of a- Ram and was arrested in July 2012. Both men must now finish out their original sentences.

Inexplicably, Palestinians – and Israel’s Arab citizens – have chosen to champion the causes of these hunger-striking terrorists and others while ignoring the fates of journalists arrested, beaten, censored and arrested by their own political leadership, which for four years now has been ruling without democratic legitimacy. Under the circumstances, what prospects for peace can US President Barack Obama hope for when he visits the region next month?

Prisoner X

For many, the “Prisoner X” incident illustrates the desperate need to update our outmoded military censorship rules. But it also underlines the difficulties of conducting a clandestine war against terrorism in an age when Internet-borne social media and news media make it nearly impossible to keep anything secret for very long.

Australian media broke the story about the alleged former Mossad agent Ben Zygier, who reportedly committed suicide in Ramle’s Ayalon Prison two years ago.

And within a short time the story was being reported extensively locally as well.

Revamping the laws governing military censorship might help improve Israel’s image in the world. After all, attempts to maintain a gag order on a story that is being widely reported on the Internet by news outlets based outside Israel, and widely talked about inside Israel, makes little sense.

We should keep in mind, however, that it is not always an altruistic pursuit of truth that is behind the tremendous media coverage given to sensitive intelligence information potentially damaging to Israeli security.

Sometimes the motivation is a desire to hurt Israel.

Similarly, MKs Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al), Zehava Gal-On (Meretz) and Dov Henin (Hadash), who used their parliamentary immunity to bypass the gag order and broke the news about Prisoner X in the Knesset might have been genuinely interested in investigating the ethical questions surrounding the incident.

None of us should accept with equanimity that in Israel of 2013 a man can be arrested, imprisoned, die in prison and simply disappear without the wider public knowing anything about it. But as members of the opposition, it seemed that the three were no less interested in exploiting the imbroglio to attack the government and further their own political agendas.

To be effective in the battle against terrorism, Israel and other Western governments must work outside wider public scrutiny. Secrecy is the cornerstone of the West’s war against terrorism, whether it be the US’s clandestine drone attacks against al-Qaida operatives – including American citizens – in Afghanistan or Yemen; covert operations inside Iran such as the “mysterious” explosions or assassinations of nuclear scientists, aimed at setting back Iran’s atomic bomb program; or the elimination of the masterminds of terrorism such as Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyah in downtown Damascus in 2008 and Hamas’s Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel in 2010.

The same is true of the Prisoner X incident. As former Australian Secret Intelligence Service agent Warren Reed noted, judging from Israel’s desire to maintain secrecy surrounding the incident, Zygier probably committed treachery that endangers Israel’s security.

And his betrayal could have ramifications for future operations. Reed said that Zygier might have been involved with the maintenance of long-term, ongoing security programs that will be essential to Israel’s security for the next 20 to 30 years.

Channel 10 News said the exposure of the alleged agent and his movements on behalf of Israeli intelligence in Iran, Syria and Lebanon could have “very significant” consequences for ongoing work. In countries such as Iran and Syria, the authorities would now be checking through their records, working out if Zygier entered and if he did, who accompanied him, and whom he met with.

Apparently the potential for real damage to Israel’s security was so high that the Supreme Court, hardly suspected of taking lightly suppression of free speech, was convinced that a gag order was in order, according to Chief Censor Col. Sima Vaknin-Gil.

Perhaps, in hindsight, however, more thought should have been given to differentiating between aspects of the story that truly present a danger to Israel’s security and those that do not.

That in Israel of 2013 a man can be arrested, imprisoned, die in prison and disappear without the wider public knowing anything about it should make all of us take pause. But we should remember that decisions by democracies to use non-democratic methods such as imprisonment without trial are not made arbitrarily.

Rather, it is the price the societies of Israel and other Western countries pay as part of the never-ending war against terrorism.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=303357

Benedict’s papacy

Benedict XVI, who surprised many this week by being the first pope in seven centuries to relinquish the papacy before death, will be remembered as a true friend of the Jewish people. But his eight-year stint was not without its Jewish-related controversies.

In many ways, Benedict continued the legacy of his predecessor John Paul II, who rejected anti-Semitism and supersessionism (the notion that Christianity supersedes Judaism as the true religion) and who established diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel.

There was very little difference in substance between Benedict’s and John Paul’s approaches to Judaism and the Jewish people, however when it came to public relations and delivery, the two were worlds apart.

Benedict’s lack of charisma and communicative skills sometimes embroiled him in controversies that John Paul, once referred to as a “papal pop star,” would have either avoided altogether or succeeded in glossing over with a charm offensive.

The two popes’ trips to Israel – John Paul’s in 2000 and Benedict’s in 2009 – illustrate this. While John Paul’s visit was widely regarded as a landmark event in relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people, Benedict left the impression among many Israelis that more could have been said and done to assuage suspicions regarding his German background – including a period during World War II when he was obligated to join the Hitler Youth – his position on the Holocaust and his theological approach to the Jewish people.

It was not just that John Paul, who had grown up with Jews in his native Poland, could convey a genuine warmth toward and familiarity with Judaism.

Benedict’s profound, abstract and deeply philosophical messages and his monotonous, ponderous style of address came across as cold, distant and lackluster for many Israelis, particularly in an age of sound bites, narrowing attention spans and fast-paced media coverage.

Several incidents marred the Church’s relations with the Jews during Benedict’s stint and were probably exacerbated by the pope’s weaknesses as a public figure.

There was, for instance, the Vatican’s decision in 2007 to restore the Latin Mass with the inclusion of a prayer that seemed to encourage the conversion of the Jews. While Benedict omitted the original reference to Jewish “blindness” to Jesus, he left in a passage praying for Jewish recognition of Jesus that was not clearly set in the context of the end of days.

In another incident, Benedict lifted the excommunication of four bishops, all members of the Society of Saint Pius X, who had rebelled against reforms instituted in the Second Vatican Council, a series of meetings and resolutions between 1962 and 1965 among highest-level clergy culminating in the Nostra Aetate document that addressed Catholicism’s approach to modernity and to other religions.

While his intention was to heal a two-decade old schism, Benedict was inadvertently drawn into a debate over Holocaust denial. It turned out that one of the four bishops had said publicly that historical evidence “is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed,” and that only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews had died in the Holocaust and that gas chambers were a fiction. Benedict, who has personally emphasized his intolerance of Holocaust denial, had been unaware of this.

Due to a lack of communication, Benedict gave many the impression he sought to advance the cause of sainthood for Pope Pius XII, the WWII-era pope who has been accused on inaction and silence in the face of the destruction of European Jewry. In reality, Benedict did not beatify him, which would have been a step toward sainthood, though he did sign a document declaring Pius’s spiritual virtues.

In 2010, Benedict also failed to distance himself from a statement made by a Lebanese clergyman that Catholic theology had “abolished” the notion of a Promised Land for Jews because the Kingdom of God is for all. The statement was made by Greek Melkite Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros, a member of a special Vatican Synod in Rome composed of about 200 bishops, mostly from Muslim countries, and tasked by Benedict with addressing injustices perpetrated against Christians in the Middle East.

Benedict truly and sincerely wanted closer relations between the Church and Jews and worked to this end. But his style, that of a German professor more comfortable in the world of books and ideas than in the world of people and mass communications, ultimately hurt his efforts. Good intentions are not always enough.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=303056
 

The Hartman era

Rabbi David Hartman, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 81, represented an approach to Judaism that in 1971 – the year he arrived in Israel – was on the cutting edge not just in Israeli society, but in Western culture in general. Emphasizing individuality and searching out personal paths to God, while rejecting the need for spiritual intermediaries, religious authorities or institutions, Hartman’s thought was very much a product of, and an influence on, the post-modern era.

In an interview with Yediot Aharonot to mark his 80th birthday, Hartman lamented the dichotomy between the religious and the secular that was a fixture of the State of Israel in its first decades under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion and which to a large extent continued to be the legacy of Israeli society for years after Ben-Gurion left politics.

Hartman dedicated most of his life to doing away with that dichotomy.

Under Mapai’s rule, the Jewish religion and its institutions were relegated to the strictly Orthodox while the real revolution unfolded in the political and social spheres, rather than the spiritual one. For the vast majority of secular Israelis, traditional Judaism was irrelevant to their lives. They came into contact with it as it was represented by reactionary and bureaucratic Orthodox institutions only when they married, divorced or were buried. Not much was expected of religion or of those who represented it. And due to its irrelevance, religious authority – carefully restricted to singular, albeit profound, events – was not questioned much.

This artificial compartmentalization of Judaism helped lead to a religious extremism completely detached from reality and made Judaism irrelevant for the vast majority of secular Israelis. But in recent decades, in part thanks to Hartman but also as a result of a larger sea change that has taken place in Western culture’s approach to spirituality, Israeli society was ready to hear Hartman’s message.

For it was only in recent decades that Israelis were receptive to the idea that they could express their religiosity outside formal institutional frameworks and were not obligated to accept a centralized authority or set rituals and rules. Today Jews – and members of other faiths as well – increasingly create sacredness and construct meaning in spontaneous, innovative and intensely personal ways. This message, which Hartman also advocated, would have been missed in Mapai-era Israel, which, like other Western societies, was still preoccupied with all-embracing ideologies and concepts such as communism, fascism and the melting pot. In the postmodern era, however, Hartman’s message was increasingly resonant with meaning for Israelis.

The Shalom Hartman Institute – where Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis of both genders can collaborate and cross-fertilize – embodies the post-modernist, post-denominational era in which we live. It is reflected in phenomena such as Shira Hadasha, a synagogue that Hartman supported that defines itself as Orthodox while striving for gender equality, including women leading prayers and reading from the Torah.

Outside Hartman’s direct influence, we are witness to profound changes in religious practice, despite the haredi monopoly over state-funded religious services. Increasing numbers of secular and religious Israelis, refusing to defer to ultra-Orthodox authority, are insisting on “customizing” their own marriage ceremonies, from the use of TV personalities as officiators and the reciting of modern Israeli poetry under the huppa to the incorporating of symbolism from the destruction of Jewish settlements in Gaza and northern Samaria.

Not all of these reflections of our post-modern era were to Hartman’s liking. The increasing public support for the Women of the Wall, ten of whom were arrested yesterday for the “crime” of praying at the Kotel, most likely was.

However, judging from the same Yediot Aharonot interview mentioned above, the phenomenon of “hilltop youths,” who, not unlike the Shira Hadasha congregation, have broken away from institutionalized rabbinic authority and have adopted a more individualistic approach to religion without intermediaries, was definitely not.

Gauging Hartman’s influence on Israeli society is difficult.

Undoubtedly, he and the scholars who have found in the Shalom Hartman Institute an intellectual breeding ground have had a major impact in many ways.

It is safe to say, however, that as much as Hartman was a catalyst for spiritual change in Israeli society, he and his thought process are a reflection of a post-modern era characterized by new, innovative and more egalitarian forms of religious expression. Hartman was lucky to see his efforts bear fruit and witness this spiritual change unfold before his eyes. May his memory be a blessing.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=302922

Syria intervention

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee at the beginning of the month, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, affirmed that they both supported the call by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and David Petraeus, former director of the CIA, to provide lethal support to the Syrian opposition.

US President Barack Obama opted not to listen to their advice. But even if Obama had not decided to overrule these advisers and had intervened, it is difficult to imagine positive outcomes from such an endeavor – particularly from Israel’s point of view.

With or without foreign intervention, fighting in Syria between forces led by Bashar Assad’s minority Alawite regime and the predominantly Sunni opposition forces is unlikely to end with a stable partition of the country along ethnic, sectarian lines. A fight to the death seems to be playing itself out and after nearly two years of conflict, no clear victor has emerged.

From both an Israeli and a humanitarian perspective, neither an Alawite nor a Sunni victory would be desirable.

The fighting in Syria is essentially another chapter in the age-old Sunni-Shi’ite conflict, with Sunni Saudi Arabia and Qatar backing the opposition forces and Shi’ite Iran backing Assad’s minority Alawite regime.

Without foreign intervention, the chance that Assad will manage to overcome the rebels improves. In the case of such a victory, the Alawite-Shi’ite axis would emerge strengthened and Iran – which has been providing arms, troops and tactical support to Assad – would be emboldened to continue to pursue its interests in Iraq and Bahrain, two countries with Shi’ite majorities, and in Yemen, Kuwait and Afghanistan, where there are large Shi’ite minorities. The Islamic Republic would also continue to foment hostility toward the Jewish state via Hezbollah, its Shi’ite proxy in southern Lebanon.

Still, an Alawite-Shi’ite victory is not necessary the worst scenario for Israel. Assad and his father do have a 40-year track record of keeping the border with Israel quiet.

In contrast, the violent ousting of Assad’s regime, while dealing a serious blow to the Islamic Republic’s ambitions in the region– including its nuclear threat – would lead to the rise of yet another Muslim Brotherhood aligned regime. Scarred by the memories of the Assad family’s repression of Sunnis – including the 1982 Hama massacre of at least 10,000 Brotherhood supporters, men, women and their children – the rise of a Sunni leadership would inevitably lead to widespread revenge killings of Syria’s minority groups – Alawites, Druse, Christians and Kurds – who make up the core of Assad’s supporters. Nor would a Muslim Brotherhood leadership be more disposed to improving relations with Israel – just look at the Brotherhood-affiliated Hamas regime in Gaza and Mohamed Morsi’s Egypt.

Without any major foreign intervention, a continuation of the conflict is likely. Though it perpetuates the humanitarian disaster, non-intervention might reduce the chances of an attack on Israel since Assad’s forces, the Hezbollah and Iranian troops, would be focused on defeating the opposition and would not be interested in opening a new front with Israel. But even that is not certain.

As Syria disintegrates into anarchy, the country could very well be transformed into a breeding ground for jihadists, uncontrolled chemical weapons and advanced Russian-made surface-to-air missiles that, if transferred to Hezbollah in south Lebanon, could seriously compromise Israel’s air superiority.

At the same time, Israel cannot rule out the possibility that Syria and Hezbollah will initiate a limited confrontation with Israel, in an attempt to redirect attention away from the sectarian bloodshed in Syrian to the “Zionist entity.” Doing so would help Damascus find a common cause with jihadists.

That is why Israel has no interest in provoking Assad or intervening in the civil war raging there. At the same time, Israel but must do everything possible to protect its borders and prevent the flow of arms – both conventional and unconventional – from Syria to south Lebanon.

Under the circumstances, Panetta, Dempsey and other advocates of intervention might want to reserve the right to say “I told you so” if the Assad regime survives – but the benefits of intervention should not be overrated.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=302816
 

Betar's foes

As many as a few hundred xenophobic Betar Jerusalem soccer fans do not seem to get it. Even after this group of sectarian rabble-rousers was publicly lambasted by a wide range of public figures from President Shimon Peres to Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, former prime minister Ehud Olmert and Israel Football Association officials; even after they were fined, arrested and distanced from future Betar games till the end of the season by the police and the courts; these hooligans – who by no means represent the majority of Betar fans – continue not only to cling stubbornly to ingrained prejudices, they have no shame acting on these distorted worldviews.

On Friday, dozens threw rocks, accosted a guard and attacked Betar chairman Itzik Kornfein, attempting to force their way into his car. Army Radio reported that some fans spat on the two newly recruited Chechen soccer players, Dzhabrail Kadiyev and Zaur Sadayev.

It is Kadiyev and Sadayev – or more precisely their Muslim faith – that has so incensed some of Betar’s volatile fans.

“Betar pure forever” was the way one Betar fan’s banner put it last week during a game with Bnei Yehuda.

More needs to be done to bring those responsible for the violence to justice. Kornfein called on the state prosecutor, Police commissioner Insp.-Gen. Yohanan Danino and Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat to do more to maintain law and order.

We second the call.

But while those Betar fans who lashed out violently in the name of sectarian prejudices should be punished, we should also be careful not to lose a sense of proportion.

That’s precisely what Avraham Burg, chairman of Molad-The Center for Renewal of Democracy and German history Prof. Moshe Zimmerman did last week when they compared Betar’s xenophobia to Nazism.

The two made the comparisons during a screening of Theresienstadt League, a documentary using Nazi film footage of a soccer game played in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in September 1944 between the Jewish prisoners and Nazi soldiers.

The game, held within walking distance of a crematorium working at the peak of productivity, was filmed by the Nazis as part of a propaganda film entitled Theresienstadt: A Jewish Community.

The propaganda film’s aim was to allay international suspicion of mass exterminations by portraying the concentration camp as a merry Jewish colony. Within weeks of the film being shot, most of the Jews who played in the soccer game were dead.

Besides soccer, it is difficult to fathom what connection Burg and Zimmerman imagined existed between the behavior of Betar fans and Theresienstadt. The two managed to belittle the memory of the Holocaust and confound understanding of Betar bigotry in one fell swoop.

A more fitting parallel can be drawn with the sometimes violent sectarian rivalry that continues to exist between some European soccer teams such as, for instance, Glasgow’s Protestant Rangers and Catholic Celtics. In the summer of 2011 tensions flared after the Rangers dared to hire Aaron McGregor, a Catholic player.

The best remedy for Betar’s bullying is to hire additional Muslim – and Arab – players while continuing to punish violent protesters. Eventually, Betar fans will either learn to express their bigoted opinions civilly or cease to be loyal to Betar, which would be no big loss.

Betar’s owner, Arkadi Gaydamak, should be praised for his brave decision to hire the two Muslim Chechens and for standing behind his decision. It is imperative that the two players receive full support from the Betar club, fellow players and the majority of Betar fans who are unprejudiced.

Kadiyev and Sadayev must not meet the same fate as Ibrahim Nadala who in 2004 left Betar after enduring verbal harassment by fans for being Muslim.

In the final analysis bigotry is not only ugly, it is selfdefeating.

Imagine the Brooklyn Dodgers without Jackie Robinson? Who knows how many talented Muslim and Arab players could have been recruited but weren’t due to mindless prejudice? They may claim to be fans, but the bigots of Betar are acting more like foes.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=301986