Category: Thought

Posted on

Biafra, Israel, and the Hypocricy of the West

Reports continue to race in about scores of wounded and dead Biafrans. With the violence initiated by gangs backed by the Nigerian government, one tries to grapple with the sheer trantsparent morality of both the White House and the State Department. Obama’s foreign policy has always been an enigma and yet the Biafra is the most baffling of all. The American government continues to back a divisive Islamist over the law abiding people in Biafra.  Yet it should not come as a surprise to those that have watched the US government’s treatment of Israel that, America relishes in playing both sides against one another.  After all conflict is good for business, America’s arms business.

In the case of Biafra, which is home to a growing Jewish population as well as a Hebraic form of Christianity, the pretenses of balancing the conflict have gone completely out the window. The question is not is Biafra different, but why is it being treated different?

 

Echoes of the Slave Trade

Within Biafra, the Igbo are the most populous.  They also happened to have made up the majority of the slave population ripped from West Africa and transferred to the Americas.  The presence and perseverance of the Igbo in a similar fashion to the Jewish Nation is a reminder of just how eternal spirit and hope are.  The West hates to be reminded of its hypocrisy.  Biafra is a constant reminder that in truth the West stands for little.  

The pronouncements of rights and freedoms are just that, clever talking points given to stake the moral high ground while painting others as deficient in the realm of ethics. Yet one must be blind not to see the ridiculousness of it all. The West was the largest perpetrator of the destruction of the African continent, including Israel which rests on its North Eastern tip than any other group of Nations.  Starting with the crushing of the Judean Revolt all the way to destructive policies of post colonial Africa, the West has wiped out whole cultures and memories causing everlasting trauma.

Biafra reminds us who the real enemy is.  The Hausa to the North, much like the Arabs that surround Israel are pawns, enabled by those Arabist bureaucrats at the State Department as well as the neo-colonial policies of Europe. Biafra and more specifically, the Igbo reveals how hollow Obama’s and the Lefts pseudo empathy of African suffering really is. By picking Islam over traditional indigenous cultures,  they have shredded Pan Africanism the same way they have called into question Israel’s very connection to its Land.

Biafra, more than anything exposes the lie that Obama and the West actually care.  They don’t, unless it is about money.

The parallel struggles of Biafra and Israel are a reminder that good people need to stand up. Yet, the situation is also a wake up call to Israel, that now is the time to become the leader it is destined to and take a central role in protecting and freeing Biafra. Doing so will send a message to the World, that morality is something worth fighting for.

Posted on

The Tragic Legacy of David Raziel

The twenty-third of Iyar marks the day David Raziel fell in battle during World War Two. Raziel is best known for being the commander of the Etzel (Irgun Zvai Leumi) during the late 1930s and as a model for what the modern Hebrew soldier was meant to be.

Less commonly known about Raziel was his connection to Palestine’s Chief Rabbi Avraham Yitzḥak HaKohen Kook and the yeshiva where national-religious ideology developed. He studied at Mercaz HaRav for years and was even a regular study partner of Rav Zvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook, son and ideological successor to the chief rabbi. Together the two learned the elder Rav Kook’s writings, specifically as those writings apply to Israel’s national rebirth as a means to usher in a better world for humankind.

The young men growing up in these communities are more often than not filled with a selfless dedication to this vision that generally finds expression through exceptional military service.

More than being the model for the modern Hebrew warrior, Raziel can more specifically be viewed as the prototype for Israel’s national-religious community, especially those inhabiting the mountainous Samaria and Judea regions. Many of the more ideological Jewish towns and villages throughout the West Bank have bred a culture of dedication to Rav Kook’s vision for Israel and the world and – like Raziel – the young men growing up in these communities are more often than not filled with a selfless dedication to this vision that generally finds expression through exceptional military service.

It was at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University that Raziel befriended Avraham Stern and introduced him to the Torah and traditions of Israel. Stern had come from a revolutionary socialist background, growing up in the All Union Leninist Pioneer Organization (youth faction of the Russian Communist Party) at the time of the Russian Revolution and first entering the Jewish community through the socialist Hashomer Hatzair. Stern had been unimpressed with both the Zionist right and left but was immediately inspired by Rav Kook’s messianic philosophy and – in addition to gradually taking on Jewish ritual practices – accepted upon himself the task of reviving the Israelite Kingdom.

Stern understood the Jews to constitute a people and not a mere culture or religion as most Marxists at the time claimed. He recognized Israel’s indigeneity to Palestine and identified British colonialism as the greatest obstacle to Jewish liberation. He joined Raziel in the Etzel command and the two worked together in building the nucleus of a Jewish fighting force that initially focused on defending Palestine’s Jewish community from the country’s increasingly hostile Arab population. At a time when the Haganah – the semi-legal Jewish militia under the command of Labor Zionists – practiced a policy of restraint in the face of attacks, Raziel led the Etzel in reprisals that demonstrated terror to be a sword capable of cutting both ways.

Although committed to the same ultimate vision, Raziel and Stern began to part ways in 1939. Raziel the soldier sought to turn the Etzel into a formidable army. But Stern the revolutionary saw more value in a clandestine underground. His Marxist background enabled him to analyze the factors standing in the way of Israel’s freedom. He identified Britain’s material interests in the Middle East, concluded that these interests demanded permanent control of Palestine and decided on the necessity of an anti-colonial struggle to free the country. In fact, by applying Marx’s method of analysis to the Jewish people as an indigenous people victimized by British imperialism, Stern came to deeply identify with the anti-Roman rebels of the Second Temple era – even taking for himself the penname “Yair” in honor of Masada’s Sicarii commander Elazar Ben-Yair (according to Professor Joseph Klausner, an influential teacher of Stern’s, the Sicarii were proto-communist Jewish nationalist guerrillas).

Raziel had the long-term vision for Malkhut Yisrael as a “light unto nations” but his short-term political vision was too narrow and myopic to reach Stern’s conclusions. When World War Two erupted, Stern distinguished between the German tzorer (persecutor) and British oyev (enemy), arguing that while the Germans hated and sought to harm the Jews, the British were the true enemy for standing in the way of the Jewish mission (by occupying our homeland and preventing Jews from returning home). These conclusions were reached prior to the Wannsee Conference at a time when German policy was merely to deport Europe’s Jews to whatever far-off country would take them. Adept at finding common ground with anti-Semitic Polish officials, Stern suggested a diplomatic agreement with Germany that would send the persecuted Jews to Palestine in exchange for the Etzel’s cooperation against England. But with or without such an agreement, Stern concluded that all efforts should focus on fighting British rule, for the sake of both freeing the homeland and rescuing Europe’s Jews.

Lacking the analytical tools to even recognize the inherent conflict between Jewish and British interests, Raziel accepted upon himself the political authority of Z’ev Jabotinsky and placed the Etzel at the disposal of the British war effort. Rejecting Jabotinsky’s leadership, Stern demanded a Jewish war aim in exchange for helping the British. He felt that without a commitment from London to either open Palestine’s gates to Jewish refugees or commit to a Hebrew state following the war, fighting for the British was betraying the Jewish cause. From Raziel’s perspective, the Germans – who most fiercely hated and were attempting to harm Jews – were the primary foe. But because Stern and his followers viewed the Jewish people not as an object with a problem (anti-Semitism, persecution, etc.) but rather as a subject with desires (independence in Jerusalem), they were able to recognize the necessity of an immediate anti-British struggle. They broke away from the Etzel and created a revolutionary underground dedicated to freeing Palestine from foreign rule. Although his knowledge of Torah was clearly deeper and broader than Stern’s, Raziel lacked the political sophistication to recognize the moves that would bring their people closer to the ultimate goal both men shared.

Hunted by the regime and driven by the symbolism and meaning of their leader’s demise, Stern’s small band of followers – the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – possessed the strategic understanding to make each move count.

Raziel fell in battle wearing a British uniform on foreign soil. And the Etzel suffered from paralysis until 1944. Stern, by contrast, was shot dead while handcuffed by British detectives in Tel Aviv. Hunted by the regime and driven by the symbolism and meaning of their leader’s demise, Stern’s small band of followers – the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – possessed the strategic understanding to make each move count. Every single explosion, shot fired and word of propaganda pasted to the walls of urban centers was geared towards very specific short- and long-term goals – forcing the British into a policy of collective punishment to maintain security, fostering general hostility towards the empire among the populace, dragging the Etzel (and even briefly the Haganah) behind them in their anti-colonial struggle, finding points of common cause with progressive forces in the Arab world, generating global sympathy – especially on the left – for their cause and making the price of ruling Palestine more expensive for the British than the benefits of exploitation. Applying the same Marxist analysis as their martyred leader, the Sternists identified the empire’s material interests in the region and attacked those interests until retreat became England’s best strategic option. And official British documents attest to the fact that it was “Jewish terrorism” that forced their withdrawal from Palestine.

 

Israel’s contemporary national-religious sector, of which I am apart, shares much in common with David Raziel – faith, long-term vision and a readiness to sacrifice. Our boys serve with distinction in Israel’s most elite units and we’ve successfully made a two-state solution impractical through our efforts to populate Samaria and Judea with Jews. But like Raziel, most of us sadly lack the political sophistication to recognize the material factors driving efforts to divide the country or to formulate effective strategies to advance Israel closer to our vision. The failure to save Gush Katif in 2005 is perhaps the clearest example of this flaw. Despite the many arguments focused on whether or not to actively resist, no one presented a sound strategy for HOW to effectively stop the disengagement plan. No one properly identified the material conditions and pressures driving Ariel Sharon to act as he did and no one suggested a comprehensive strategy to prevent the expulsion from being carried out.

There are questions the national-religious sector desperately needs to ask.

How do Israeli political leaders benefit from promoting a two-state solution?

How is such a policy in the regional interests of the United States and why does Washington push so aggressively for it?

How have the Israeli and Palestinian ruling classes benefited from the Oslo process?

In what way does accepting American aid make our leaders subordinate to Washington and vulnerable to pressure to surrender our heartland?

Is it possible to increase our Knesset representation without diluting ideology?

What is the best way to win over the Israeli masses to our vision?

Can the struggles for Eretz Yisrael and Jewish identity be communicated to the world in a language that would at the very least generate broad-based critical support?

With whom should political alliances be sought?

Is a relationship with Evangelicals desirable or dangerous?

Is reality truly as simple as “those giving us money are our friends and those trying to harm us our enemies” or should we carefully discern our own national interests, identify who might have common interests and then create the proper conditions to enable an alliance?

What material factors are driving Jews and Palestinians into conflict?

Must Palestinian grievances be rejected out of hand or could they somehow become part of advancing Jewish liberation?

If the forces of westernization within Israeli society have used the Palestinian cause to advance their agenda for decades, couldn’t those loyal to Eretz Yisrael and Jewish identity potentially do the same (especially now that partitioning the land has become practically impossible)?

We need to analyze the real obstacles standing in the way of Israel’s destiny and formulate the most effective means of overcoming those challenges.

In addition to raising another generation of dedicated soldiers, the national-religious sector must develop sophisticated political leadership. Rather than follow the modern-day Jabotinskys into a fantasy of Israel as an outpost of Western civilization, we need to analyze the real obstacles standing in the way of Israel’s destiny and formulate the most effective means of overcoming those challenges.

David Raziel, the prototype for our most courageous and dedicated young men, teaches us a valuable and tragic lesson. If we don’t learn to think outside the box and start questioning the very assumptions behind most of our political ideas, we can easily lose our way and unwittingly betray the struggle we’ve committed our lives to. Dedication to a higher purpose and the willingness to sacrifice for a greater vision might make us a powerful force in Israeli society. But a scientific analysis of our situation and the ability to formulate effective political strategies are crucial to actually thwarting the plans of those seeking to divide our land and advancing to the next stage of our people’s liberation.

Posted on

Hatred With and Without Algorithms

If you have ever found it profoundly disturbing that so much political debate centers on an online ‎platform, Facebook, which was originally about social interaction, but has by now metamorphosed into a ‎grotesque, many-headed monster that actively encourages (more about that later) and whips into a ‎frenzy existing hatred against Israel and Jews, your intuition was correct. The latest journalistic ‎experiment, in what can only be described as the dark underbelly of Facebook, confirms it. ‎

While the fact that Facebook is rife with anti-Semitic hatred is not news to anyone with even a fleeting ‎familiarity with the platform, the following is bound to disturb even the most hardened cynic.‎

A journalist from the British online newspaper Jewish News went undercover on Facebook, creating ‎fake anti-Israel internet profiles in order to infiltrate the anti-Semitic hate groups that proliferate on the ‎social platform. What he discovered were groups resembling “a lynch mob from the Middle Ages, its ‎members winding each other up until the entire group is burning with an anger that is desperate for an ‎outlet.” He mentions how one highly active group, “Israel is a War Criminal,” has more than 250,000 likes. ‎Browsing its timeline regularly, he says, “is a horrifying and deeply disturbing influence. … It is a ‎cesspit of vile and extreme political activism.”‎

What is of most concern, however, is not even the virtual cesspit of violent language and hatred, or the ‎sewer-like fabricated memes created, Goebbels-style, merely to elicit the most primitive ‎response against Israel and Jews. The most disturbing part in all this is that Facebook actively participates ‎in the hate fest, egging the participants on until hate is everywhere: “As the website builds a profile of ‎what you like and what you do not, it begins to form a unique bubble around your online existence … which means when I search for ‘Israel,’ I receive groups that are inherently pro-Israeli, but when ‘Mr. X’ ‎does, he sees a completely different list. … The truly disturbing element of the search results is that they ‎produce a list that is almost hermetically sealed in one direction. They give the appearance that the other ‎side doesn’t exist.”‎

In other words, Facebook’s algorithms ensure that users only see more of what they have already liked ‎and seen. Therefore, if you are an anti-Semitic or anti-Israel Facebook user, Facebook ‎aims to please by showing you anti-Semitic or anti-Israel Facebook posts, even if you just put in ‎‎”Israel” in the search field. In this way, those Facebook users “learn” that their warped reality is “true,” repeatedly ‎confirming their prejudices until the hatred has become all-pervasive. ‎

The Jewish News journalist’s observation regarding Facebook’s algorithms aptly confirms what Shurat‎ Hadin concluded in October, when the Israeli organization filed a lawsuit against Facebook: “Facebook ‎actively assists the inciters to find people who are interested in acting on their hateful messages by ‎offering friend, group and event suggestions and targeting advertising based on people’s online ‘likes’ and internet browsing history.”‎

In other words, Facebook actively works to create hate-filled, anti-Semitic echo chambers — a sobering ‎and truly horrific thought that everyone ought to consider, whenever they enter the virtual meeting ‎place.‎

The trouble with the online echo chambers is, of course, that they do not remain online. The ‎incitement makes its way into the real world, where it may manifest itself in stabbings and murders in ‎Israel and anti-Semitic hate crimes and terrorism elsewhere.‎

Let’s take a step back from the virtual world for a moment and contemplate whether we see the disturbing Facebook trend in real life as well. Echo chambers are not unique to the ‎virtual world of social media. It is a growing phenomenon in real life, as well — a particular version of “reality” ‎regarding Israel is promulgated, circulated and reinforced endlessly, until it becomes the only “truth.” ‎

The United Nations is one such echo chamber, where the very language applied about Israel is coded in ‎phrases that denote a reality that does not exist outside this disaster of an international organization. ‎Nevertheless, most of the diplomats involved in the U.N., whether they agree with this language or not in ‎private, uniformly employ it as if it were true, leading to the establishment of a false reality that has dire ‎consequences on the decisions and votes made against Israel. One recent and striking example was the yearly vote on Israel in the World Health Organization, where the Jewish state was again ‎denounced as the world’s only health violator. The absurdity of this decision is extreme, yet grown men ‎and women, highly educated diplomats from supposedly civilized nations such as the U.K., France and ‎Germany, supported the resolution. By doing this, they not only betrayed all logic and ‎the justice they purport to support, but they clearly demonstrated that there exists in the U.N. ‎an alternate reality similar to the alternate reality that Jew-haters inhabit online ‎in the seedy underbelly of Facebook.‎

Western academia and university campuses represent another echo chamber where the established ‎‎”truths” abut Israel may not be challenged according to the reigning rules of political correctness, and ‎where professors and social justice warriors reinforce each other’s deep-seated anti-Semitic prejudices ‎in a way that creates an alternate reality similar to those mentioned above. ‎

This is not, however, limited to university education. In Britain, a schoolgirl from Wanstead High ‎School was met with frenzied jubilation and won the regional final in a speaker’s competition, the Jack ‎Petchey Speak Out” Challenge, after giving a virulent anti-Israel speech.The speech was a primitive ‎variation of the most commonly spewed diatribes against Israel, yet she was applauded by the school’s ‎teachers and pupils, as well as the local authorities, and rewarded accordingly. ‎

This is the result of yet another echo chamber, which now exists in British primary education. The British ‎National Union of Teachers, aptly named NUT, actively condones similar propaganda to that which is ‎found on Facebook’s hate sites, in the U.N. and in academia, thus supporting from an early age the ‎imbibing of British children with hatred toward Israel and furthering the dissemination of Palestinian ‎propaganda. As an example of this, NUT recently supported a conference, “Nakba: Then and Now” in ‎London, organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. At this conference, ex-NUT President Philippa ‎Harvey, speaking on behalf of the union, described a new project called “Beyond the Wall,” which intends ‎to engage U.K. schools in learning about schooling in conflict zones. The project intends to show films to the ‎young Britons that illustrate “the daily struggles experienced by Palestinian children as they try to gain ‎an education.” One hardly dares to imagine the kind of untruths and propaganda running rampant in ‎those films.‎

Whereas it is important to fight the virtual cesspool of hatred, which serves as its own brainwasher and ‎echo chamber, as it were, on Facebook, we must not lose sight of the fact that the exact same ‎mechanisms at work on Facebook are very much at play in the way that anti-Semites and Israel haters ‎operate in the real world. There they create their own nonvirtual echo chambers, which are equally or ‎even more dangerous, because they have a much further reach than just the haters and trolls prowling ‎the internet. ‎

By surrounding themselves with like-minded haters and creating alternate realities and ways of ‎speaking about those realities, in schools, on campus, in academic circles and among diplomats in the U.N., ‎they ultimately become blind to any kind of objective facts, and they even lose the language needed for rational discourse about Israel. And they don’t even need computer algorithms to ‎do it.

(Originally published on Israel Hayom)

Posted on

Gaza: A Port Is No Panacea For Poverty

Hamas are not burrowing tunnels because Gaza has no port. They are burrowing them despite the fact it does not have one.

(Originally published on Times of Israel)

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.  — attributed to Albert Einstein

Just when you thought that you could not possibly hear anything more preposterous on how to help resolve the conflict with the Palestinian-Arabs, somehow someone always manages to prove you wrong — and comes out with a policy proposal so glaringly absurd that it transcends what you mistakenly believed was the pinnacle of imbecility.

Harebrained and hazardous

Disturbingly, precisely such a hopelessly harebrained scheme is now being repeatedly bandied about by Israelis in positions of influence.

This is the idea of providing Gaza with what, in effect, will be a detachable civilian port under Israeli supervision , built on an off-shore artificial island, connected to the mainland by a bridge more than 4 kilometers long, which can, according to its proponents, easily be disconnected should the Gazans “misbehave”.

Actually, this nonsensical notion has been around for quite some time. Indeed as early as 2011 the British daily, The Guardian, reported that Yisrael Katz, Israel’s minister for transport, was pursuing the idea, which he estimated would cost $10 billion and take about a decade to complete.

Lately, however, it has been raised with increasing frequency in the media, and publicly endorsed by both government ministers and senior IDF brass.

Thus, earlier this year, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yoav Galant, currently Construction Minister, formerly head of Southern Command expressed his support for the idea in an interview with Bloomberg (March 1).

Just prior to that, Haaretz (February 24) reported that “Senior Israel Defense Forces officers are in favor in principle of a port for the Gaza Strip”, and just last week the Jerusalem Post (May 21) wrote: “High up within the defense establishment, some believe that the time has come for Israel to set up a civilian seaport for the Gaza Strip”.

Detachable port? Detached from reality!

Indeed, at a conference held this weekend in New York, Yisrael Katz, who now, in addition to his former transport portfolio, holds the newly created post of intelligence minister, reiterated his previous support for the construction of a port of Gaza on an artificial off-shore island,: “The off-shore project could provide Gaza with an economic and humanitarian gateway to the world without endangering Israeli security.”

This, of course, is demonstrably detached from reality — but more on that a little later.

I confess that the first time I heard of this appallingly absurd idea was in a private conversation several months ago with someone (whom I shall leave nameless) recently designated as a serious contender for the position of head of the Mossad, to replace previous director, Tamir Pardo.

I remember at the time being taken aback by an idea, so clearly ill-conceived and  ill-fated, being promoted by someone so senior — but took (false) comfort in the belief that it was so wildly outlandish that it would never be given serious consideration by those in authority.

As it turns out, I was sadly mistaken — as this perilous proposal continues to enjoy sustained attention in the discourse.

Soldiers turned sociologists?

Perhaps most disturbing are the reports of the support the idea received from senior IDF officers – both past and present — and the rationale that this support appears based on.  For typically, it has nothing to do with any military considerations or operational advantage Israel might gain from the provision of such port facilities to the terrorist-controlled enclave — but rather on a (highly questionable) assessment of socio-economic trends in Gaza, the ramifications this may have for the Gazan public, and how a port might allegedly address it.

Thus, one well-informed correspondent on military affairs describes reasons that underpin that “rationale” for want of a better word: “Hamas, the argument goes, would be hard pressed to careen down the slope of a new war with Israel, even if it wanted to, if the Gazan economy were to begin to take off, enjoying imports and exports, allowing for jobs and income, and giving the civilian population something to lose. While there is no doubt that Hamas is responsible for Gaza’s dire economic state by insisting on jihad with Israel rather than investing in its people’s welfare, Israeli defense officials still feel that they can and should assist the Gazan people attain a better life.”

While some may find this professed concern for the welfare of enemy civilians both noble and a reflection of “enlightened self-interest,” in truth it portends ominous outcomes for Israel and Israelis.

For it is a position that is so diametrically at odds with past experience, and flies so directly in the face of the facts of recent decades that it is difficult to know what is more disturbing: Whether the supporters of the proposal really believe what they are saying; or whether they are saying it despite the fact that they don’t.

Reinforcing the rationale for terror

Of no less concern is that this position echoes the sentiments expressed by both Ministers Katz and Galant  that “The biggest danger to Israel is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza…If Gaza had the ability to bring ships, and goods, without posing a security problem, that is in everybody’s interest.”

For it is a message that strongly reinforces the rationale justifying terror, implying that it is largely economic privation that is the primary cause of the Judeocidal terror emanating from Gaza, and if the residents of that ill-fated strip were afforded greater prosperity, this would operate to stifle the motivation to perpetrate acts of terror.

This is a thesis that is wrong on virtually every level. Firstly, it is risible to believe that Hamas, that has deliberately put its own civilians in harm’s way, gives a hoot about their economic well-being. After all, if it has scant regard for their lives, why should their livelihood be of greater concern?

Indeed, it is far more likely that if the general economic situation were to improve, Hamas would coercively appropriate much of this new found wealth for its own belligerent needs — with prosperity thus making it more potent — not more pacific.

Perversely, perhaps a more effective, but heretically politically-incorrect, suggestion for removing Hamas would be to allow socioeconomic conditions to deteriorate so drastically that the general populace would rise up against it, depose it and ensconce a hopefully more amenable regime, with greater sensitivity for its needs.

But I digress.

To suggest that by alleviating economic hardship, Israel could alleviate terror is, in effect, not only inverting the causal relationship between the two, but it also implies that the victim of terror is to blame for his attackers’ aggression against him. Little could be more counterproductive — and misleading for Israel.

Port no panacea for poverty

Of course, as I have demonstrated at length elsewhere, the allegedly dire situation in Gaza is not the cause of the terror that emanates from it. It is the consequence of that terror. The onerous measures that Israel is compelled to undertake to ensure the safety of its citizens is not the reason for, but the result of that terror. If the latter were eliminated, there would be no need for the former — and far more rational solutions than a multi-billion dollar artificial island could be found to facilitate the flow of goods and people to and from Gaza.

Indeed, no great analytical acumen should be required to swiftly bring us to the conclusion that a port in Gaza will never be a panacea for the poverty of the population.

Hamas, and its other terrorist cohorts, are not burrowing tunnels because Gaza has no port. They are burrowing them despite the fact it does not have one.

After all, Gaza does have a modern port, under Israeli supervision, at its disposal barely 35 km. north of it, in Ashdod.

Under conditions of peace (or even credible non-belligerency), Ashdod can supply all Gaza’s supervised civilian needs, without squandering billions on a fanciful floating island port.

However, under conditions of on-going belligerency, even under the strictest Israeli supervision, there is no way — short of taking control of Gaza—to ensure that dual purpose material such as cement, fertilizer and steel will not be used for belligerent objectives

“Hamas stealing 95% of civilian cement…”

The intensity of this problem — and the futility of a Gaza port as a means of solving ,or even alleviating it, was vividly highlighted  by a recent report in the International Business Times (May 26).

It cited the director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Dr. Dore Gold, who speaking at the UN World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, revealed that Hamas has been siphoning off 95% of the cement transferred into the Gaza Strip intended to rebuild homes, so that it can use it for military purposes and tunnel construction. Gold told the conference: “From our own investigations we found that out of every 100 sacks of cement that come into the Gaza strip … only five or six are transferred to civilians.”

So, even if the island port were under tight inspection, how could Israel ensure that the building materials that went to construct the recently discovered tunnels would be used for more benign purposes? How could it ensure that steel was not being used to fabricate missiles and the means to launch them? Or fertilizers being diverted for the manufacture of explosives?

Moreover, one might also ask how, as opposed to the case of Ashdod port,  is Israeli supervision to be maintained, and the safety of the Israeli personnel be ensured in the isolated off-shore port, should they–as is far from implausible–be set upon by a bloodthirsty local mob?

Humanitarian solution for humanitarian crisis

The grave economic situation that plagues Gaza will not be alleviated by giving Gaza access to port facilities, which it, in principle, already has available to it.

As noted earlier, Israeli restrictions on the flow of goods are not the cause of Arab enmity, but the consequence thereof. The crippling unemployment, reportedly above 40%, will not be alleviated by transferring Israeli supervision from Ashdod and the Gaza border crossings to an off-shore islet.

There is soaring unemployment because any creative energies that might exist, are not channeled by those who rule Gaza toward productive/constructive goals, but into fomenting violence against the hated “Zionist entity.” A port will not change those realities.

Indeed, it is likely to exacerbate them.

The penury of the enclave is not due to lack of resources, but to the preferences and priorities of the brigands who govern it, and as events have shown, the only way Israel can determine who governs Gaza — and who does not — is by governing it itself.

Katz, Galant and IDF senior brass are , of course, right that Israel should defuse the brewing humanitarian crisis in Gaza — which is demonstrably the consequence of the ill-conceived two-state approach and misguided attempts to foist statehood on the Palestinian-Arabs.

But it is a humanitarian crisis that requires a genuine humanitarian solution: Generously funded humanitarian relocation of the non-belligerent Arab population elsewhere, out of harm’s way, and extension of Israeli sovereignty over the region.

“Perhaps now would be a good time…”

Indeed, there is no other approach –whether with a port or without it — that can:

• Provide a durable solution to the problem of Gaza;

• Eliminate the threat to Israel continually issuing from Gaza; and

• Preclude the need for Israel to “rule over another people.”

Indeed, as one appraisal of the port proposal in the Jewish Press (March 24)  concluded its critique “Perhaps now would be a good time to put into action one of those programs that advocate paying local Arabs to [e]migrate to better places..”

Indeed, perhaps it is.

Posted on

Reunification of the Nation of Israel with the Land of Israel

“The survivors among you – I will bring weakness into their hearts in the land of their foes; the sound of a rustling leaf will pursue them, they will flee as one flees the sword, and they will fall, but without a pursuer. They will stumble over one another in flight from the sword, but there is no pursuer; you will not have the power to withstand your foes.” (VAYIKRA 26:36-37)

It is in this Divine curse that the Torah reveals the disgrace of Israel’s exile. And history can attest to the truth of these verses. Outside of our homeland, the Nation of Israel was reduced to vulnerable migrants wandering through foreign lands. Unable to resist the persecution we suffered in the Diaspora, Jews acquired a reputation for cowardice and victimization. We were treated as vermin, easily exterminated without a fight. Israel’s survival became largely dependent upon the benevolence of our neighbors and we were conditioned to accept our shameful status as an uncontested reality.

Israel’s downtrodden state in the exile distorted our concepts of kedusha and stripped us of our former valor. The Jewish people’s self-image was severely damaged by the cruelty of host nations to the extent that we began to see ourselves as naturally incapable of self-defense. Many “pious” Jews even began to view traits of courage and heroism as foreign to our culture, as if Israel were by design physically inferior to other peoples. This mentality of learned helplessness grew in Jewish hearts to the point that many were fearful at even the slightest sign of tension with neighboring gentiles. Due to the tremendous suffering Israel experienced at foreign hands, the once proud Hebrew Nation developed a low soul – a slave mentality that made us fearful of even “the sound of a rustling leaf.” The great valor that had characterized Israeli fighters in ancient times was forgotten as we wandered the globe as a national ghost through history – a broken people perpetually searching for safe refuge.

But just as the Jewish people were stripped of our former honor in the exile, the Land of Israel was stripped of her illustrious beauty. She became barren without her soul mate to nurture her soil. Her great splendor had departed and she was reduced to an infertile wasteland.

“I will make the land desolate; and your foes who dwell upon it will be desolate. And you, I will scatter among the nations, I will unsheathe the sword after you; your land will remain desolate and your cities will be in ruin.” (VAYIKRA 26:32-33)

According to the Ramban, the verse “your foes who dwell upon it will be desolate” is a partial blessing within the curse that guarantees through all generations that the Land of Israel will not receive any foreign sovereign in place of her rightful people. He points out that in the entire world, there are no other lands which were once good and bountiful but are now (in the lifetime of the Ramban) as desolate and empty as Palestine.

A century before Hebrew sovereignty was returned to Eretz Yisrael, the renowned American author Mark Twain visited the country and described it in The Innocents Abroad Or The New Pilgrim’s Progressas a “desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds – a silent mournful expanse… A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action…We never saw a human being on the whole route…There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”

While most of the Jewish people wandered through a dark and bitter exile, the Land of Israel lay anguished in barren devastation. Although foreign conquerors tried to cultivate her once rich and fertile soil, the land was unwilling to provide for illegitimate rulers and remained unwaveringly faithful to her true indigenous people. Only with Israel’s miraculous return did the country once again resume productive life. In an astonishingly short time, the once harsh infertile country became a major world exporter of flowers, fruits and vegetables.

The reunification of the Nation of Israel with the Land of Israel miraculously infused new life and strength into both. Only a few short years after the decimation of six million, Jewish remnants on their native soil stunned the world with unmatched military prowess. The Hebrew Nation was reborn and the Land of Israel returned to agricultural productivity.

Am Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael are inseparably connected in a bond so tight that we even share the same name. Our deep spiritual connection to our homeland – like the connection of the soul to the body – transcends all rational human understandings. Our country is an intrinsic part of who we are and the foundation for our national mission in this world, as neither it nor we can attain full expression without the other. Separated from the nation, the land is doomed to desolation (as was the case for nearly two thousand years). Similarly, the Jews outside our borders are not the essential Hebrew Nation but rather a deformed shadow of our true inner potential – a wandering people miraculously able to hold on to our individual “Judaism” without possessing any tangible concept of peoplehood. But when properly situated in our ancestral homeland, Israel becomes the healthy living nation that brings the knowledge and blessing of HaShem to mankind.

The Maharal of Prague teaches in Netzaḥ Yisrael that like the orbits of the planets in space and the importance of oxygen for human beings, Hebrew sovereignty over the Land of Israel is a natural necessity built into the system of Creation. When Israel is living as an independent nation in our homeland, the entire world becomes healthy. The heart of humanity is in place and able to channel Divine life and blessing to all existence. It has been in opposition to the laws of nature inherent in Creation for Israel to be separated from our beloved country. Like a ball thrown up in the air that must come down, Am Yisrael must return to sovereignty over our soil. Nature corrects itself as we return home and the Torah now aspires – for the first time in nearly two thousand years – to be lived on a national level that infuses kedusha into every sphere of life. And as nature corrects itself and history progresses forward, our liberation will advance toward the full redemption of humankind.