This will bring a smile to your face and infuse your heart with hope and love!
The Face of Revolution – Tel Aviv 2011
25 Thursday Aug 2011
Posted in Israel/Zionism
Category Archives: Israel/Zionism
More on Glenn Beck as he prepares to desecrate God’s Holy Name at the Holiest Site of the Jewish people on Wednesday
22 Monday Aug 2011
About a week ago I wrote why I believe Glenn Beck is bad for Israel and for Middle East peace. In two days (Wednesday, August 24) Beck will stand at the foot of Har Hazeitim in Jerusalem and, according to YNET’s Washington, D,C. correspondent Yitzhak Ben Horin, try and resuscitate his own career after being fired by Fox.
Note the end of the article that both Senator Joe Lieberman and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who are in Jerusalem, declined to attend Beck’s event, without saying why or condemning him outright.
When Civil Discourse on Israel Fails
22 Monday Aug 2011
Posted in American Jewish Life, Israel/Zionism
In the early 1980s when I served as the Associate Rabbi at Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco, I had come to the conclusion that a two-states for two-peoples end-of-conflict resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the only way that Israel could remain Jewish and democratic. The year was 1983 and Menachem Begin was Prime Minister of Israel. Only 9 years earlier the pro-Israel Breira organization made up mostly of American liberal Rabbis advocated for the same resolution and was drummed out of existence by the American Jewish establishment.
In 1983 I wanted to explain to my congregation why I supported the creation of a Palestinian State alongside a secure State of Israel, but because I was a young junior rabbi I called my childhood rabbi for advice. Rabbi Leonard Beerman had never been averse to controversy. He had fought in Israel’s War of Independence, marched with MLK, was among the very first American rabbis to protest the Vietnam War, and earlier than almost anyone else supported the Palestinians in their quest for statehood. For all this he was denied the Presidency of the Central Conference of American Rabbis when he was nominated.
Leonard told me; “John, I am already at the end of my congregational rabbinate and you are starting out. You will feel badly no matter what you do. I think you ought to be circumspect. Your day will come. Be patient.”
I heeded his counsel and said in my Rosh Hashanah sermon only that the most significant moral problem in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was that there are two peoples who have legitimate claims to the same land.
After services concluded a number of synagogue leaders gathered to greet one another outside my Senior Rabbi’s study. A group of three Israelis approached and one of them, who happened to be the chairman of the Likud party of Tel Aviv, lost all semblance of civility and lunged at me. Thankfully, the synagogue president jumped between us and averted what would probably have been a powerful right to my jaw.
I recall the incident because ever since I wrote an op-ed column in March for The Los Angeles Jewish Journal expressing why I support J Street, a controversial left-leaning pro-Israel pro-peace political organization in Washington, D.C., there has been a constant flow of very nasty emails to me at Temple Israel by one man in particular, not a synagogue member.
Granted, one person sending vicious emails is not such a terrible thing to endure. I deleted his emails after the first couple, and eventually I had them all blocked. Out of sight, out of mind. However, for some reason in the last 2 weeks our Temple email system underwent some change and his emails began streaming into my in-box again. I was, frankly, dumbfounded that this guy was still at it. Though I am not worried for my safety, I have noticed that his tone has worsened. One accused me of contributing to the genocide of the Jewish people, and a second put me in league with Hamas.
Obviously, the sender is disturbed; but he is not alone in his intolerance and hatred for views with which he disagrees relative to Israel.
When Jeremy Ben-Ami (the founder and President of J Street) and David Suissa (a columnist for The LA Jewish Journal and The Huffington Post) spoke at Temple Israel in April before 600 people from throughout the LA Jewish community what was most striking was the civility of the event and the respectful way Jeremy and David dialogued. Both acknowledged that the other is pro-Israel even as they disagreed on fundamental issues.
As the September 21 vote in the UN General Assembly and possibly the Security Council on the Palestinian Statehood resolution approaches, we are likely to see the vitriol from the extreme right-wing intensify. We need to remember what the rabbis of the Talmud taught; that the reason for the destruction of the Second Temple was sinat chinam, groundless hatred of one Jew for another. The way our people behaves here and in Israel will help to determine the very character of the State of Israel. We all need to keep our heads.
Why Glenn Beck is dangerous to Middle East peace and a bloody idiot!
18 Thursday Aug 2011
Posted in American Politics and Life, Israel/Zionism
Put aside for a moment the truth that Glenn Beck is an ignorant, arrogant, self-righteous extremist. What most recently is alarming is that he has inserted himself into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and by doing so poses a threat to the Jewish democratic state of Israel and to Middle East peace.
Beck is against a 2 states for 2 peoples end-of-conflict resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He is for one state; ostensibly a Jewish state, but if there is only one state, by 2015 Jews will be in the minority in the land that Israel currently occupies between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. If heavily populated Arab land is not given to the Palestinians in a negotiated deal that results in 2 states for 2 peoples, and they remain second class citizens in Israel, the Jewish State of Israel will become an Apartheid-like state in just three and a half years. If, however, Israel remains a democracy with equal voting rights granted to all its citizens (Arabs living in the West Bank do not vote in Israeli national elections), then Israel will cease to be a Jewish State and the Zionist dream will be thrown into the trash-bin of history.
Beck is in Israel this week preparing to hold a mass rally in Jerusalem under the banner “Restoring Courage” next Wednesday, August 24. While there, he has spoken to reporters to characterize the hundreds of thousands of housing protesters in Tel Aviv and all around the country as politically “hard left.” To the contrary, the protesters cut across all political party lines. They are middle-class Israelis having a very hard time making ends meet as inflation continues to rise and salaries remain stagnant. They have protested non-violently and are within their democratic rights.
Beck also said, “I’m wondering if there’s any financing behind any of that. Why even look, why even look to see if there is any global leftist financing involved in Tel Aviv. And you know what, do not even look to see if there is any Islamist movement that is joining them.”
What is he talking about?! Is Beck, the fundamentalist Christian, trying to provoke Armageddon and a Middle East war resulting in the second coming of Christ? This could be the only rationalization to his outrageous charges.
A disclaimer: I am one of 400 rabbis (Reform, Conservative and Orthodox) who signed a letter to Rupert Murdoch this past year to protest that Beck’s trivialization of the victims of the Holocaust on the Fox network should not be tolerated. In response, on the air, Beck charged that we Reform Rabbis (though, again, many of the signatures were rabbis from other Jewish religious streams) are all political leftists and cannot be considered religious leaders.
The only good thing I can say is that being on Beck’s enemy’s list is a badge of honor!
Who Rules Israel?
12 Friday Aug 2011
Posted in Israel/Zionism
Israel, like America, is convulsing. 300,000 Israelis of all political stripes have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest economic conditions and call for greater “social justice” and equality within Israeli society. Working middle-class Israelis cannot pay their rent and salaries are not keeping pace with inflation, despite Israel’s national economic health and global leadership in start-up companies in bio and communications technologies.
How has it come to this? Here are some of the reasons.
More than a dozen years ago economic reforms put in place by then Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reduced government regulation and thereby encouraged start-up companies and the emergence of an entrepreneurial class. The government also eliminated subsidies of basic goods such as cottage cheese and bread. At the same time billions of dollars were spent (and continue to be spent) by successive governments building up West Bank settlements which Amos Oz, in Haaretz recently, characterized as “the greatest mistake in the state’s history as well as its greatest injustice.” For years Israel has also poured mammoth sums of money into the ultra-Orthodox yeshivas where “generations of ignorant bums grow, filled with contempt toward the state, its people and the 21st century reality.” (These words are not mine, but I wish they were. They belong to Leonard Fine.)
What is going to happen? That is anyone’s guess. Politically, my cousin, Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin of the Likud Party, was quoted this week saying that Israel might never reach the November 2013 scheduled elections. This government could fall at any time and new elections would be held.
Yes, by the way, my Israeli family are right-wingers and always have been going back to my Great-Great Uncle Avram Shapira, known as the Shomer (i.e. policeman) of Petach Tikva. Uncle Avram helped settle the town with his family and four other families beginning in 1880. They had come from Russia in 1878, lived in the Old City of Jerusalem for 2 years before moving to this town, now a suburb of Tel Aviv. I met Uncle Avram at the age of 7 when he visited us in LA in the winter of 1956, but that’s another story.]
And then there is looming on the horizon September 20 when the Palestinian Authority has called for massive non-violent demonstrations. The following day, September 21, the PA intends to bring to the United Nations General Assembly (not the Security Council because it knows that the US will veto it) a resolution for Palestinian statehood.
Indeed, Israel has a few challenges on its plate.
Months ago, one of the best articles I have seen on what is happening in Israel, who is running the government and why this government is the most right-wing government in the history of the State, appeared on the op-ed page of the New York Times written by Yossi Alpher, the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. I recommend your reading, saving and distributing it. It is prescient!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23iht-edalpher.html
300,000 Israelis Take to Streets – May You Live in Interesting Times!
07 Sunday Aug 2011
Posted in Israel/Zionism
There is a clear linkage between the huge unprecedented protests (300,000 last night) now building weekly in Israeli cities, the Israeli government’s obsessive efforts to expand settlements in the West Bank, the government’s historic funding in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the ultra-Orthodox religious community, and the right-wing extremist assault on democratic freedoms of speech, political organizing and religion in the State of Israel.
The account below from “Media Line” (a superb independent American based media service – I recommend your subscription – medialine@list.themedialine.org) overviews the economic crisis in Israel which is a consequence of deregulation and de-funding of many essential industries in the 1990s and the unwise funding of West Bank settlements and the ultra-Orthodox.
It should be noted, however, that the deregulation and elimination of government subsidies in the 1990s under then Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also had the effect of creating an entrepreneurial class of Israelis that has enabled Israel to rank second in the world after the United States in start-up companies in bio-technology and communications technology.
The current protests are now stimulating a debate that perhaps Israel needs to return to a more socialist oriented economy not only to enable middle class Israelis to survive, but also to bring greater equality to the citizenry as it was in its initial period of Israel’s history.
The Israeli government today has two major challenges – the economy and the scheduled Palestinian statehood UN vote in September. In thinking about how monumental each issue is for Israel’s future I am reminded of the Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times!”
The following is the post this morning from Media Line:
Israel Takes to the Streets: More than 300,000 Nationwide Protest
By some estimates it was the nation’s largest-ever outpouring of citizens demonstrating for a cause with as many as 300,000 Israelis turning out on Saturday night as economic protests continue to build. The demonstration in Tel Aviv alone reportedly drew 250,000 while 30,000 others crammed into streets near the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem. The cost of living and lack of spending power provided the impetus for rallies that many noted had crossed the political divide – a rarity in protests here. On Sunday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will name a panel combining experts with politicians to make economic recommendations the government hopes will stem the national angst. Netanyahu’s finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, is reported to be his choice to head the committee even though demands for Steinitz’s firing are among the most frequently heard demands. Three weeks in to the mass demonstrations, there appears to be no end in sight. The target is the massive gap between the “haves and have-nots”; the high cost of living and low spending power compared to other nations. Israelis find it impossible to make ends meet after paying high rents, costs of goods and services that are considerably more than comparable countries and taxes that rank among the world’s highest. The economic revolt is the first serious challenge to the Netanyahu government since it took office 27 months ago.
A Shabbat Conversation and an Alternative UN Proposal
01 Monday Aug 2011
Posted in Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism
This past Kabbalat Shabbat at Temple Israel I reflected on three meetings I had in the 36 hours that preceded the lighting of Shabbat candles; a national phone conference with Jeremy Ben-Ami, President of J Street, that included 25 other individuals among whom were Rabbis and leaders of the J Street national board, a lunch meeting attended by 7 other Los Angeles Rabbis with Brigadier General Nathaniel Dagan, the former chief education officer of the IDF, and a breakfast meeting with an old friend, Daniel Sokatch, now the CEO of the New Israel Fund.
The conversations all concerned Israel and addressed the expected September UN Palestinian Statehood Resolution, the anti-democratic turning of the current Israeli government (arguably the most extreme right-wing government in the history of the State led by settler groups, ultra-Orthodox political parties, and the Russian “Putinist” party of the Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman), and the unprecedented middle class economic revolt (150,000 Israelis took to the streets on Shabbat in at least 10 cities across party lines) protesting strained economic conditions because they cannot afford housing based on their salaries despite the very healthy Israeli economy.
I said that the facts are clear; namely, that unless Israel works out with the Palestinians a 2 states for 2 peoples end-of-conflict agreement she cannot remain both Jewish and democratic.
The first fact is that the government’s policy of building West Bank settlements to the tune of billions of shekels over many years and supporting the ultra-Orthodox Yeshivot and institutions with billions more have exacerbated the problems within Israeli society by misdirecting funds away from building more apartments in Israel itself and sustaining its social networks. Despite the success of a burgeoning Israeli economy the middle class is being squeezed.
The second fact is that unless Israel returns to the 1967 lines with appropriate land swaps and settles all other issues with the Palestinians in an end-of-conflict agreement Jews will constitute 48% of the population of Arabs and Jews living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea in 2015, just 3½ years from now. If the status quo continues, and Israel denies West Bank Arabs the right to vote, it will turn into an Apartheid State. If it opens the doors to equal citizenship for West Bank Arabs, Jews will be a minority and the Zionist vision of building a Jewish state will be consigned to the trash bins of history.
On Saturday morning following services, a young man (about age 15) who had been at services the evening before, approached me and said, “My name is Jacob and I am a member of a Conservative synagogue in Florida [he was in LA to attend the bar mitzvah of his cousin], and my Rabbi holds the exact opposite position as you about the Middle East conflict.”
I asked, “So…what do YOU think?”
He said, “I agree with you.”
He then explained that his high school debating club had a debate this past spring on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that he was assigned the position of arguing the Palestinian side. “Because I had to research the Palestinian story, I now understand why they want a state of their own and why they have been so frustrated for so long.”
“True!” I responded. “There are two narratives here, Israeli and Palestinian, and this conflict is not simply a political zero-sum game, but a moral one involving two peoples and two nations. We cannot claim for ourselves what we deny others.”
I told him, “Jacob – You keep at it. We need visionary, smart and strongly identified Jews such as you.” We shook hands and wished each other Shabbat shalom.
I was heartened by this young man and thought that if this is what we can expect from the younger generation, then there is reason for hope.
Back to my meetings of last week – Several weeks ago there appeared an article on the Op-Ed page of The NY Times written by four Israeli experts on the upcoming UN Palestinian Statehood Resolution; Yossi Alpher, Colette Avital, Shlomo Gazit, and Mark Heller. I recommend that you read it – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/opinion/25iht-edalpher25.html
Stay tuned. Now that the debt limit crisis seems to have ended, we turn to the Middle East. These next 6 to 8 weeks are going to be very interesting indeed!
The Opposite of Peace?
31 Sunday Jul 2011
When I ask people what they believe is the opposite of “peace” most pause suspecting that it’s a trick question because the answer seems so obvious. After a moment they answer war!
This isn’t wrong, of course, but I think that the real opposite to peace is “truth.” Consider the nature of each.
Truth is hard, absolute, cut-and-dry, black or white, unbending, rigid. Its yay is yay; its nay is nay. There’s neither middle ground nor gray. It’s an all or nothing thing.
Peace on the other hand requires subtlety and nuance. It’s delicate, pliable, flexible, and soft. It’s neither cut and dry nor black and white. It’s the gray of the in-between and necessitates give-and-take, compromise and accommodation.
Whether the conflict is between peoples and nations, political parties, business interests, spouses, siblings, friends, or enemies, peace cannot be sustained if one or both parties insist always on adhering to its truth without regard to the truth of the “other.” Henry Kissinger once quipped that a successful outcome to negotiations means that both sides end up unhappy.
What’s taking place in Congress with the debt limit crisis is the same malady that is infecting the American Jewish community vis a vis our disagreements about Israel and the Palestinians, and it is the same problem within the Israeli government and the Palestinian community. Neither side can have it all. There are legitimate narratives to be heard and understood by each party. Everyone ignores this truth at its own peril.
President Obama was right when he noted this week that “compromise” has become a dirty word in American politics. I fear the same is true within the current Israeli government, that peace is not its real goal.
Shaalu shalom Yerushalayim. Seek peace O Jerusalem!
Sign this petition on the UN Palestinian Statehood Resolution
27 Wednesday Jul 2011
Posted in Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism
As you may know the Palestinian Authority is attempting to have the United Nations vote on a resolution that would grant them statehood. Our Reform movement has always supported a just and secure peace for our people as well as for the Palestinian people in a two states for two peoples end-of-conflict resolution to all issues between them. The Reform movement also has stood by negotiations between the two sides to reach an agreement and eschews unilateral actions as an obstacle to progress towards peace.
ARZA (the Association of Reform Zionists of America) is circulating a petition on this subject on behalf of all the arms of our American Reform movement. I ask you to read this petition, to sign it and to share it with your friends. You can print and post it in a public space or simply forward this email with a link below along with this explanation.
http://www.arza.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=2322
Kol tuv ul’shalom,
Rabbi John Rosove
Israeli Generals and Diplomats urge a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines
26 Tuesday Jul 2011
Posted in Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism
When Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed that the 1967 borders (i.e. the 1949 armistice lines) are indefensible in response to President Obama’s call for Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate a two-state for two-people’s end of conflict solution to the conflict on the basis of that line with appropriate negotiated land swaps, no credible military and security voices corroborated his view. So claims a group of Israeli generals and security experts who are in the United States this week. I will be meeting with one of these generals later in the week and will report back what I hear, but I wanted folks to read the Haaretz account of their journey to the US (they were brought by J Street) and why they are here. They will be meeting with the National Security Council officials and groups around the country urging a two-state solution before it is too late.
Rabbi John Rosove's Blog 