RPS (Righteous Person in Sodom) Award

This week's RPS Award goes to the editorial writer of Haaretz who wrote an excellent editorial blasting the Knesset for approving the racist JNF law on the preliminary reading.

Read about it here.

The English translation does not do justice to the Hebrew headline: "Medinah Yehudit ve-Giz'anit" ("A State that is Jewish and Racist"), which is an allusion to the famous phrase in the 1948 Declaration of Independence, "A State that is Jewish and Democratic".

Please read Tikkun Olam's piece, which cites the Haaretz editorial, and the brilliant cartoon by Daniella London-Dekel. And the clarification by Realistic Dove.

Remember: this is only approval of the preliminary reading; it now goes into committee. That is why it is most important to scream from the rooftops about this. The more Israel can be embarrassed in world opinion the better for her and for all us.

There is much more to read in today's Haaretz, and once again I have publisher Amos Schocken and editor David Landau to thank for their being a beacon of light.

I cannot say the same for my Jewish Studies colleague, Kadima MK Prof. Menahem ben Sasson, the chairman of the judiciary committee, no less, and the MK responsible for the proposed Israeli constitution, no less, who voted for this infamous bill. Menahem's area of specialization is the history of the Jews in Arab lands. Perhaps he is trying to create some sort of dhimmi status for Israeli Palestinians here....no, that was not an unfair jab, Menahem

In coming posts I will try to grapple with the arguments -- the not entirely unreasonable ones -- that will be brought in the coming days to justify the bill. I imagine that Israel's neoconservative thinkers such as Amnon Rubinstein, Ruth Gavison, and Yoram Yakobson will come up with prima facie reasonable arguments to support their case. In America, these writers would write for liberal hawk or conservative journals. They are not evil incarnate; on the contrary, they are people to engage, and to be engaged by them.

But folks, the reason I am writing this blog is also to respond from the gut. And my gut says:

Cut the sophisticated legal and philosophical crapola. This Bill is Evil!

Postscript to the Knesset Bill Banning JNF Land Lease to Goyim

Aren't orthodox progressives naifs? I thought that Haaretz's print edition would make a big deal of the preliminary passage of the Knesset bill discriminating against non-Jews that I reported on this blog yesterday. Yet the item got two paragraphs on p. 14 of this morning's edition.

Realistic Dove wrote a heartfelt elegy on the JNF, appropriate for the beginning of the month of Av. Check it out.

According to a piece written by Uri Avnery some time ago, much of the lands currently belonging to the JNF were not bought by Jewish donations, but were expropriated by the Israel government from Arab villages after 1948, and then given to the JNF precisely to preserve the fiction that Israeli institutions do not discriminate against its Arab citizens. As long as Uncle Ahmad and Aunt Jemimah knew their place and stayed in their own shanty-towns, things were harmonious. It was only when that uppity one, Adil Ka'adan, tried to get smart, and integrate a Jews-only settlement, that problems started. The High Court stepped in, the policy was changed, and now the true Zionists have reasserted their privileges.

Will the bill pass? Will it be upheld by the courts? Are separate communities justifable, as Ruth Gavison seems to think? Time will tell...but if you really want to be depressed -- and I can't think of a better time of year -- read the Talk-backs to the Haaretz article.

Israel Racism Watch -- Knesset gives initial approval to bill restricting JNF land lease to Jews only

Jerusalem Post is here

The link to the Haaretz Hebrew is here.

The Haaretz English Translation is here

Basically, the Israeli Knesset gave preliminary approval today to a bill outlawing the lease of land owned by the Jewish National Fund to goyim. It now goes into committee where, God willing, it will be buried. But I doubt it.

Of course, it is against the halakha to sell the land of Israel to idolaters. The fact that Rav Kook ruled that Muslims are not idolaters is a source of unending embarrassment to the religious right.

But the point of this bill -- cosponsored by a member of Ehud Olmert's Kadimah party -- is to bypass the High Court's 2004 ruling that required the JNF to lease state land to Israeli arab Adil Ka'adan as a result of that ruling, Meni Mazuz, the State Comptroller, instructed the JNF not to discriminate in sales. That angered the Israeli legislators, who wish to pass this discriminatory law. The irony is that there was an attempt to prevent the bill from being tabled because it is racist. Apparently, not enough.

By the way, the Ka'dan ruling was praised by Alan Dershowitz in his book, "The Case for Israel."

I am hoping that Alan will speak loud and clear against this racist -- oops -- "Jewish" law, (that is how the proponents are describing it.)

Should I be glad that the racism that is so deeply rooted in political Zionism, and the State of Israel, is being flushed out of the closet for everybody to see? Not really.

But hang on...it is a Jewish state, right? And that land was bought by Jews for Jews. I mean shouldn't everybody have to a right to buy land for her family?

Sure, and I have a legal and moral right to sell only to whites -- right?

Will the Knesset redeem itself? Only if we shout loud enough.

Alan, please make a comment on the Huffington Post today. You say that you have criticized Israel before. Let's hear you loud and clear.

By the way, for a truly bizarre reading of the Ka'dan case by Ruth Gavison, the liberal-hawk law professor turned neocon (on her way to being a female Scalia), see

http://www.international.ucla.edu/burkle/news/article.asp?parentid=7876

David Shulman's Dark Hope

Some important books have come out in the last few weeks in Israel, and I thought I would mention a few of them in short posts.

First, David Shulman’s Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine (2007, U of Chicago Press)

David Shulman is the Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic Studies at Hebrew University, and a world-renown expert in Sanskrit and the history of Indian religion. The book is his diary of activities with Ta’ayush, the Jewish-Arab organization founded during the dark days of the Second Intifada that provides food and relief supplies for Palestinians and Bedouin.

I read the Hebrew version of the book (Ha-Tikvah ha-Marah) this past Shabbat, and at first I found more marah than tikvah. But then I thought of the activists like Prof. Shulman, and I felt a bit of hope.

I thought I would translate a few pages for this blog, but Prof. Shulman told me that the English version had already come out. So please check it out on Amazon

This is not a book about the peace process, terrorism, geopolitics, the rise of Islam, Jewish fundamentalism, yada yada yada. This is a book about how innocent people’s lives are made miserable on a daily basis, and how Jews and Palestinians have come together to help them. I really urge you get it and give it to your friends and family. Testify, testify, testify.

Oh, heck…I can’t help it…just a couple of lines of my own translation from the Afterword, and may the U. of Chicago Press have mercy on my soul:

"'You shall remember that you were a slave'… 'Shake yourself from the dust, arise'…'To loose the chains of injustice, and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke'…'Whoever sustains one life, it is as if he sustained an entire world'…Did I invent these voices? It seems that they burst forth from the depths of a dream, a distant and troubling dream. To be right – that’s nothing. To be “righteous” – that is the true disaster. But to do what you can – that is everything.

"We know our adversaries, the ones close to us: those who sit with indifference in government ministries, or who are recruited in the army’s high command, or who simply stay at home, apathetic and inactive. We shall meet them at every corner. At every house that they destroy, every olive tree they uproot, every rocky field that they go to steal. We will struggle with them again and again,without violence. We will track, document, and testify, and occasionally, we will stop them. They have weapons. We have each other – and a smidgeon of hope in the darkness."

What more can I add?

Jerusalem Street Scene c. 10 pm tonight

My wife and I were taking a walk on Derekh Beit Lechem, and we passed the 1868 dairy restaurant. "Dairy restaurant" is a misnomer because it conjures up visions of blintzes and borscht, where as anybody in Jerusalem knows, this is a high-class and very expensive fish and pasta restaurant. 1868 is very popular with the haredi set, who look out of place in Baka, but who may come to the restaurant because the supervision is the Chug Hatam Sofer.

As my wife and I were passing the restaurant, we saw a young, well-dressed hasidic married couple. The young man looked at me and said in Borough Park Hebrew, "Would you take a picture of us?" I took his digital camera in my hand, and they posed in front of the restaurant. Just before I took the shot, the young man put his arm around his wife. They made such a lovely couple.

And yet I know many people in Israel, secular and religious, who would take one look at them and dismiss them because they don't belong to the tribe. Ditto for the Palestinians. How many times do we try to look at the individuals who are not member of whatever tribe we belong to, and relate to them as human people?

Appropriate thoughts for the Second of Av.

Justice for Holocaust Survivors' Children! And What About Palestinian Refugees?

Phil Weiss's short take on this extraordinary story is well-worth reading.

The Realistic Dove, Mondoweiss, and the Amhaaretz Zionist

Here I am, thinking that I am hot stuff for starting a blog that is neither anti-Zionist nor political Zionist, but represents a line of thought of somebody (Magnes) who was universally dismissed (except by folks like Hannah Arendt), and then it turns out that I have a place in the blogosphere. Place me between Phil Weiss's mondoweiss and Dan Fleshler's realisticdove. That may not be fair to them. They have professional blogs, and I don't know how to type. Also, they're going to hell because they shave during the Three Weeks (wait a minute, I shave during the Three Weeks...ok, so they shave during the Nine Days.)

Anyway, thank you Mobius for making the shiddukh between me and the Realistic Dove....I really hope that my readers from Efrat (you know who you are) check out the Realistic Dove. Pick on him for a while...

It's Rosh Hodesh Av, and I would like to put in my own two cents about bringing together the Jewish anti-zionists and the so-called Zionist left that Dan F. has been talking about I think I have some credentials here because I am a) a religious fanatic who blesses the moon once a month; b) a wimpy liberal democrat who thinks Chomsky is a moderate and c) an opponent of the one-state solution because it shafts the Palestinian people.

What I am about to say seems to me trivially obvious. There is an overriding moral imperative to end the Occupation. That is the platform on which all decent people should agree. There may be moral considerations in favor of slavery, child-sacrifice, wife-beating, and apartheid. I don't recognize any. Ditto for the Occupation.

It will be said that ending the Occupation may endanger the Jewish State. But I say that if the price to pay for the State of Israel is the ongoing occupation of three and a half-million Palestinians, then that price is too high -- and that no decent human being -- and I include all the political Zionist ideologues from Herzl and Weizmann to Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion -- would agree to that price. Liberal zionists, it is about time that you say the same thing, loudly and clearly.

Who belongs in that coalition? I, for one, would find it difficult to sit on the same platform with folks who think that 9/11 was a Zionist plot. But I would sit on that platform. Because even though the thought offends me, as a Jew and as a rational animal, I understand where it is coming from. And as long as the person who thinks so doesn't want to gas Jews, then she should be part of the coalition. Phil Weiss is right -- this is not just a Jewish issue, this is an American issue, and, of course, a human rights issue.

But we all wear different headcoverings, even those of us who go bareheaded. That is the first coalition. There are two more.

The second coalition is the coalition that I believe in deeply -- and that is the Palestinian-Jewish coalition. The history of Zionism has been the history of Jews talking to Jews about how much land we can morally take from the Palestinians. That debate is over for me. Jews should be joining together with Palestinians -- and the place for that is not only in Israel, but davka in the diaspora communities, where American Jews and Palestinian Americans already have so much in common. I am not talking dialogue here...I am talking coalition. See where you agree and see where you don't agree, and work together on what you agree. And remember -- the balance of power is unequal -- so on matters to be negotiated, one should tilt toward the Palestinian side. (A subject for another post -- what we Jews owe to the Palestinian people.)

The third coalition is the coalition of Jews against the Occupation. OK, I am a tribalist here -- Jews mean a lot to me. Norman Finkelstein, Daniel Boyarin, Noam Chomsky -- all moderates in my book, by the way -- mean a lot to me also BECAUSE they are Jewish. Here, I have gripes on both sides. When Tony Judt and Norman Finkelstein snipe at each other, it bothers me, but both are smart enough to know that they stand together against the kohot ha-tumah (better left untranslated) in the world. And they do...Judt was supportive of Finkelstein's tenure bid after Dershowitz stepped in, even though Finkelstein and he have their "issues". But both are adults.

My request from the Zionist liberals is that they NEVER join the chorus of rightwingers who bash the anti-Zionist or non-Zionist left. Disagree with Finkelstein but don't bash him. In another post I will take Gershom Gorenberg, a guy to whom we owe a great deal for his book on the settlements, to task for this. Have your disagreements, but resist the temptation to look over your right shoulder and say to Alvin Rosenfeld, "Hey, I am your side...these guys are heretics."

I have to go to work. Have a good month, even though everything is the pits here in Jerusalem.

On the Zionist Settlement Enterprise

In memory of my teacher (for one course), Prof. Yosef ben Shlomo, z”l

Bloggers, I am told, shouldn’t write long posts. So I will be long on claims and short on arguments.

Let’s start with some of my assumptions.

From its inception the Zionist movement in its statist form threatened the aspirations of the emerging Arab nationalist movement, and the vast majority of the Palestinian residents. The increasing settlement of Jews in Palestine with the express purpose of that settlement being a Jewish state was obviously opposed to the national self-determination of the native population. Of course, given the context of nationalism, colonialism, and orientalism, etc., Zionism was understandable, and I am not for a minute casting aspersion on the morality of the political Zionists. (On the contrary, the view of Zionism as a national liberation movement is one I basically accept – as long as that liberation is not at the expense of another people with claims at least as equal.)

Hence , the resistance of Arab nationalists to Jewish nationalism was entirely reasonable. I am not claiming that the Arab position was right; I am claiming that it was reasonable. Israel is now nervous about being swamped with Sudanese refugees. Just imagine how we would feel if those refugees claimed that they were coming home to rebuild their ancient homeland.

Even if one accepts the justice of some Zionist claims, those claims would have to be balanced with the claims of the native population, who had every reason to believe, especially following the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire, that in the normal course of things, a Palestinian state would arise that would reflect the makeup of the majority of its inhabitants.

Irreconcilable claims are often settled through a reasonable compromise mediated by outsiders. In retrospect, the Arabs miscalculated badly in rejecting partition, but that rejection was understandable. The Zionists miscalculated badly by rejecting partition after they got the upper hand, but that rejection was also understandable. In any event, the UN ratification of the partition plan did not justify the unilateral declaration of independence in 1948, much less the failure to relinquish territory achieved in war, much less the horrible decision not to let the Palestinian refugees return to their homes.

And now for the question of Zionist settlements. I am not here talking about private ownership but of national sovereignty. (Important distinction. I will talk about private ownership in a separate post.)

Land held by Jewish individuals or companies prior to 1948 should in no way have been seen as automatically belonging to a future Jewish state. If I buy a house “for the Jewish people” in Kansas with the intention of that land being part of a future Jewish state, then this purchase doesn’t advance that claim. Of course, if Jews live in the house, then a democratic government should represent them. But what makes territory part of the state is recognition of that fact, based on international law, treaties, etc.

Territory acquired as a result of the 1948 war belongs to the State of Israel by force of that land being recognized by the countries of the world, and by the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people, as under Israeli sovereignty. This includes the land that was acquired in the 1948 war beyond the UN Partition borders. Without such recognition, this territory remains disputed territory. In the eyes of Hamas, for example, it remains disputed, just as in the eyes of some Israelis, the West Bank remains disputed. Still, I believe that the Israel’s sovereignty over such land is as provisional as are its borders. Until a treaty is signed and Israel has recognized borders, everything, in principle, is up for grabs -- including Sheikh Yunis (today Ramat Aviv -- that line was for Prof. Ben Shlomo!)

Territory acquired after 1967 is universally viewed by international bodies as Occupied Territory. That includes, in my book, anyway, areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

Some conclusions I draw from the above:

1. What counts when it comes to sovereignty is not just what we think but what everybody thinks, i.e., the Palestinians and the world. At the moment, the vast majority of the world, including the Palestinian people, including Hamas, are willing to conclude some sort of peace settlement with Israel on the basis of the 1948 armistice lines. While there is nothing holy about these lines, they are a convenient starting point because of international recognition and the passage of time.

2. That there are Jews and Christians who believe that Israel has a historical claim to Judea and Shomron means as much to me as that there are Iraqis who believe that Iraq has a historical claim to Kuwait. (I am not referring here to the religious question of Eretz Yisrael, which I find utterly irrelevant to Zionism. )

3. Every step that Israel takes with respect to settlement inside the green line should be done taking into account its implications for bilateral relations with the Palestinian national entity.

4. No Israelis should be settled on post-67 occupied territory against the wishes of the Palestinian people, and in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. I think that Israelis have the right and the responsibility to negotiate for settlement for Jews – for example, the Jewish settlement in the Jewish Quarter – but as part of a peace settlement, and not unilaterally by the occupying power.

I wish I had time to argue these points, but I don’t. I haven’t said enough about the morality of the Zionist settlement program. That is a difficult topic, but I think that parts of the settlement program was justifiable in light of the norms and expectations of the time, many of which are no longer relevant.

Again, I am not talking about private ownership, but about national sovereignty.

So, it is more legitimate for Israelis to settle territories that are within their recognized national sovereignty, than for those that are without. Settlements outside must conform to the guidelines of the Fourth Geneva Convention, as generally interpreted.

,

Shabbat Shalom...please enjoy the Shabbat respite from the Three Weeks, and no public display of mourning, please!

Two Bad Arguments for Political Zionism

1) The Holocaust proved Herzl right. Because of antisemitism, Jews will never be safe until they have a state of their own.

2) Had the State of Israel existed in 1939, a large number of the six million would have been saved.

Of course, neither argument has anything to do with having a Jewish state in Palestine. Even if both were valid, they would not provide sufficient justification for displacing the Palestinians, unless the latter were themselves responsible for the Holocaust. I don’t even think they would justify giving a large chunk of Germany to the Jewish people after World War II, but that is at least debatable.

The first proposition is untested. Since 1948, very few Jews have had their physical safety threatened that was unrelated to the State of Israel. So had there been no Zionism movement, it is not clear that, after 1945, the physical security of the Jews would have been worse off. Arguably, it would be better off. As Y. Leibowitz used to say, Israel has been indirectly and directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews -- but Israel has not saved the life of a single Jew that would have been at threat had there been no Zionist movement. (Well, maybe one or two…)

The second proposition is a historical counterfactual, and hence it has no real force. Let us assume that it is true; it does sound reasonable. But so what? Had Hitler not come to power in 1933, even more of the six million would have been saved. And it was more likely for Hitler not to come to power in 1933 then for there to be a Jewish state in 1939. In fact, it was because of the Holocaust that Israel came into existence when it did.

There are much better arguments for political zionism than these. I will consider them at a later date.

Short takes before cleaning my room for Shabbat

1. Those people who want to guess at my identify are invited to do so via email to me, Jeremiah.Haber@gmail.com. I suppose we should have a contest or something.

2. Thanks to Mobius for mentioning me on his Jewschool.com site The site traffic doubled today (to 15 hits, I think).

3. Why am I a Zionist? Or: what makes me a Zionist? That is the subject of a post in the near future.

4. Rebyudel, sorry about the misspelling of Rabbi Kahane's name. (And sorry to Feigie and R. Nahman Kahane, too.)

5. Good question, amehad -- aliyah has always been the big issue, though not as big now. I will devote a post to that, too. Magnes was willing to limit aliyah, although this was a big deal for him. And, yes, there is no justification (to my mind) for settlements over the green line; all are in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Don't bother to argue with me on that one; you won't change my mind. If it makes you guys out there in Efrat feel better, I don't see any essential difference between Shevei Shomron, Efrat, French Hill, Ramat Eshkol, or the Rovah. In my opinion, Jews can be in all those places -- under a Palestinian flag. (Don't worry, it ain't gonna happen, so no point getting riled up.)

Shabbat Shalom, y'all

Jerry

The Last Heresy

Hebrew University’s Institute of Advanced Studies is sponsoring a workshop on Judaism and Heresy. At first glance, heresy does not seem such a hot-topic for the twenty-first century unless you live among fundamentalists. But, of course, even secular ideologies have room for orthodoxies and heresies, and Zionism, of course, is the only orthodoxy left for the Jewish people. You can be a pork-eating atheist who spits on religion, but if you are a Zionist, then you are a welcome part of the Jewish people, If you are a Satmar hasid who believes that the State of Israel is an abomination, then you may look and talk Jewish, but “you have removed yourself from the Jewish people.” Ditto for the anti-Zionist left.

I just ran into a colleague who is attending the conference. He is an expert on Karaites, and his paper made the point that as long as the Karaites refused to recognize rabbinic authority, but saw themselves as part of the Jewish people, then they should not be considered heretics. But when in the nineteenth and twentieth century in Russia they saw themselves as a different religion/ethnicity from the rabbanites, then they removed themselves from the Jewish people, and really were heretics. When I asked him, “Are anti-Zionists heretics?” he said, until the Holocaust they were not, but after the Holocaust, they in effect removed themselves from the Jewish people, and should be considered heretics. He said that this was analogous to the Karaites. Well, I didn’t get a chance to talk to him because I was trying to get into my car, and I couldn’t find the keys. But I don’t get the analogy at all. The separationist Karaites saw themselves as the true Jews and the rabbanites as imposters. But the anti-Zionists have no problem with Judaism, or with being considered Jews. They just don’t agree about Zionism.

One of the tragedies of the establishment of the State of Israel was that it effectively destroyed the debate over Zionism. Oh, sure, the debate between Zionists and the Diasporists continued. To some extent the debate over political Zionism continued, although Zionists now assume that if you question the legitimacy of Zionism, you question the right to Jews to exist, or to express their collective identity. But if you ask the question today, “What form, if any, should Zionism take for the Jewish people?” you are looked at as if you are nut. There were people who used to identify what the Soviet state did with Marxism or Communism. But when I was growing up, I used to hear all the time, “Don’t assume that the Soviets state embodies the most cogent or appealing form of communism.”

How many times have you heard that said about Israel?

The Israeli Occupation of Gaza Continues

Yes, I know, that's kind of obvious. But there are some people who think that because the wardens moved their families out of the prison, the prison is no longer a prison.

Israel controls Gaza. It controls its airspace, access to the ocean, border crossings, you name it. It has placed a land, sea, and air embargo on it. After exploiting its labor for 40 years, hardly developing its industries, and now economically crippling its agriculture, it is still very much responsible for the welfare of the Gazans?

Until when?

Well, it will be legally responsible for their welfare until a strong and independent Palestinian state arises on the West Bank and Gaza, which has as much control over its destiny as Israel has over its own.

And then, Israel will have a long-term moral responsibility for the welfare of the Gazans.

Of course, tell that to the Knesset's committee on legislation, which declared the occupation of Gaza over...so Israel will not have to pay conpensation to civilians for destruction of life and property.

http://www.ynet.co.il/home/0,7340,L-8,00.html (Hebrew) Remember the motto of (political) Zionism -- maximum control over the land with minimum responsibility for the natives.

Sorry to have to moderate comments, but...

OK, it's not because of Ged and my critics that I have to turn on the "moderate comments" option, but because of Italian spammers like Rodrigo. So I will print all your comments, even the ones that call me a traitor, self-hating Jew, etc., but not the ones that make pitches for snake-oil, etc.

Please read the "Are You a Moral Zionist?" post if you haven't done it already. Comments welcome.

Are You a Moral Zionist? Take the Test!

Zionism, like other things, comes in various shapes and sizes. I, for one, am a Zionist who doesn't believe that the State of Israel as founded in 1948 is a good idea; it has to be changed fundamentally to make it into a liberal democracy with a more vital and challenging Jewish component. Political Zionism may have been a reasonable idea at the time, especially if you came from Eastern Europe, but it hasn't worked out well. When Magnes addressed the Jewish Agency and said that declaring a state would provoke unending war with the Arabs, he was laughed at. Who's got the last laugh now?

But today, I want to talk about a different division of Zionism, not one of political vs. cultural, but moral vs., well, not-so-moral. And I have devised a test that you can take to judge your morality meter. I know, I know, this is "beyond Chutzpah," to use Norm Finkelstein's phrase (so don't accuse me of plagiarism!), but there is a point to the exercise.

Are you a moral Zionist. Answer these questions!

1) As part of your education about Israel (youth group, synagogue, Hebrew school, Hillel, etc.), you were told that the Jordanians desecrated Jewish holy sites and cemetaries between 1948 and 1967, but that Israel respected Arab holy sites. Now you learn that the Israeli government had a deliberate policy of destroying Arab towns and villages (around 500 of them), including sixty mosques, many of great archaeological value, over the objections of Israeli archaeologists.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/878851.html

Your reaction is:

A. To feel outrage that you were lied to, and to acknowledge that Israel lost the moral high ground on this issue.

B. To accept responsibility for the actions of Israel, to discuss ways of commemorating the towns and mosques, to issue an apology to the Palestinians and Muslims.

C. To say, "Look, all emerging nations try to obliterate the past of their enemies; we are no different from anybody else. So maybe wiping out the towns was not nice, but that's the way the world works."

D. To say, "Those ghost towns and empty mosques posed a serious security threat to the State of Israel, and we were perfectly justified to wipe them out. Anyway, if the Arabs hadn't attacked us, they wouldn't be ghost towns"

2. You were always taught that the land for settlements in Judea and Samaria were obtained according to law, and that the Arab demand for making parts of Eretz Yisrael "Judenrein" was antisemitic. You now learn that many settlements were built on Palestinian private land, that much private land was declared public land by dubious legal methods unrecognized outside of Israel, and that the distinction between private and public land is actually irrelevant, because all of the land is considered by the world "Occupied" except by some Israelis, Zionist Jews, and Christian fundamentalists. Your reaction to this:

A. To feel outrage that you were lied to, and to acknowledge that Israel lost the moral high ground on this issue.

B. To agitate for the removal of the settlements, and at the very least to call for a complete freeze and a government accounting.

C. To shrug your shoulders and say, "There was a war, and these are spoils of war."

D. To say, "This is Eretz Yisrael, man; if they don't like it, they can move to Detroit."

3. You were always taught that the Palestinians fled during the 1948 and 1967 fighting because their leaders urged them to do so, so they could come back after the Arab victory and loot the Jewish stuff. You now learn that Palestinians were forcibly expelled as part of IDF policy, and at any rate, even those who left voluntarily, or happened to be away at the time, were not allowed to return to their birthplace as part of a strategy to provide a Jewish majority, and that this strategy of transfer had already been discussed by the executive of the Jewish Agency prior to the State. Your reaction is to:

A. To feel outrage that you were lied to, and to acknowledge that Israel lost the moral high ground on this issue.

B. To urge Israel to take responsibility for creating the plight of the refugees, by its sovereign decision not to let any of them back in, in violation of UN resolution 194.

C. To say that the rights of the Jews to a state of their own involved, inevitably, getting rid of a large number of Arabs, and that the justice of Zionism outweighs the resulting injustice to the Palestinian Arabs.

D. To argue that life is tough, that your parents or grandparents were refugees, and that the Arabs themselves kicked out the Jews from their countries, that their own brethren should take responsibility for them the way Jews take reponsiblity for their refugees, that the Palestinians could have stayed put, that the whole damn thing is their fault, and that, anyway, refugees are a fact of life, expecially after World War II.

Well, I'll stop here.

If you answered A or B to all three, then you are an adult and moral Zionist. Pat yourself on the back, and feel bad about being a bleeding-heart.

If you answered C, then you are an amoral Zionist; or to use the jargon, you believe in realpolitik. We won; they lost; let's eat. You may use the language of morality (cf. 3C), but that's just for outward consumption and inward self-justification. The bottom line for you is that even if Jewsact immorally, the only thing that really matters is that are alive to act at all. If "being moral" entails national suicide, then forget about morality.

If you generally answered D, then you are an immoral Zionist. Or you are a moral Zionist, whose conception of morality is that of Tony Soprano or Meir Kahane. In the professional jargon, it's called "Mafia Morality." This usually means that you do an enormous amount of hesed work, that you always have guests for shabbat, that you give a lot charity to Jewish causes, and that you would do anything, anything for anybody who is a member of the tribe. But that if somebody is not a member of the tribe, then he or she has worth only in so far as she is good for the tribe.

(I will have a post later on Torah morality according to Tony Soprano (or Dov Lior, or Yisrael Rosen, etc.))

If you answered B to all the questions, then send me an email -- we should have coffee together some day.

Best

Jerry

What Hebron Needs is Jews

When will the government evict the people who are masquerading as Jews in Hebron?

According to the reasoning of the Rambam (Maimonides), many of the Hebron settlers are not halakhically Jewish; well, to be precise, one has to suspect their lineage. I say that with respect to the ones who act immorally and cruelly towards their Palestinian neighbors. For whoever acts cruelly, his Jewish lineage is suspect. (Mishneh Torah, Matanot Evyonim 10:2)

When people ask me, "Why shouldn't Jews be allowed to live in Hebron?" my answer is bevakasha, let Jews live in Hebron. But not the pseudo-Jews living there now. And only when it is a Palestinian city in a Palestinian state.

Shabbat Shalom, y'all

Jerry

A Righteous Man in Sodom -- Dror Etkes.

Haaretz published a good piece today about how the West Bank settlers grab land and keep Palestinian villages from expanding.

Here is the Hebrew link:

http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/879100.html

and here is the English link

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/878955.html

The article was written by Amos Harel, who has coauthored the definitive study of how Israel stole and continues to steal Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza.

Let me say off the bat that I can't stand Israelies who demonize the settlers. The immorality of the settlements attaches to the entire Israeli society, me included. I have nothing to say about the morality of the settlers, either, most of whom I put in the "captive children" category (captive of their post-Holocaust trauma and Zionist ideology). Of course, excusing doesn't mean exculpating.

Here is the lead:

"West Bank settlements have been allocated huge amounts of land, but use very little of it, according to a Peace Now report.

"Only nine percent of the area under settlement jurisdiction has been built on, and only 12 percent is being used at all, the report said, citing Civil Administration figures.

"But despite their huge unused land reserves, 90 percent of the settlements exceed their boundaries, and about one-third of the territory they do use lies outside their jurisdiction, the report added.

"The findings attest to the government's ongoing cooperation with the settlements' expansion, Peace Now charged: On one hand, the state earmarks huge tracts for the settlements, out of all all proportion to their size, in order to prevent Palestinian construction in those areas. Yet once an area is closed to Palestinians, the settlers begin seizing adjacent Palestinian lands, often privately owned, that lie outside their jurisdiction."

You know, there is a famous midrash brought by Rashi in the beginning of his commentary on Torah, in which the nations of Canaan accuse the Israelites of stealing the land. "You are listim (thieves)." Now, had the Jews written that midrash today, they would have said thinks like, "No, this is not stealing at all...actually, these territories are disputed; we are administering them; we are able to do things for the benefit of the settlers because of the Fourth Geneva Convention which allows us to do things for the benefit of the inhabitants (even though, technically speaking, it doesn't apply); anyway, we build settlements on public land; the Palestinians themselves have lots of illegal building." Yada, yada, yada.

All the above is crapola. The only real justification I understand is what the Midrash answers: "The earth belongs to the Lord. He decides to whom he can give it. He gave it to you; he can give it to us." (By the way, I wonder what the nations responded to that.)

In other words, if the "Pals" don't like it, they can go to hell, or to Detroit, whichever they prefer. (No anti-Detroit jokes.)

But Israel can't say that, right? And so they have to lie, they have to steal through deception, and they have to do it quietly, so the world -- and even the Israelis -- don't know.

That is why Dror Etkes is one of my heroes. He doesn't sit in Tel-Aviv and kvetch on Shenkin St. He and Hagit Ofran, who is taking over from him, know every piece of land being stolen from the Palestinians in Eretz Yisrael. The evil done in the West Bank can only be done in the dark, like ganavim be-layla.

Will publicizing this stuff succeed? To me, that's not the point. The point is that, like my hero Magnes, he stands up and denounces the immorality and the arrogance of power.

The Fourth of July, Judah Magnes, and the Israel Baseball League

OK, so I just had my July 4 barbecue (mangal) here in Jerusalem with my family. God bless America. One day I will argue that you can't really be unreservedly pro-Israel (in the ZOA sense of the term) and love America. You certainly can't consistently love Israel and be a Republican. But I wander...

I want to say a few good words about the new Israel Baseball League. I know that my friend Dan Kurtzer has moved up in the world from US ambassador to Israel and Egypt to Commissioner (Netziv!) of the IBL. Gosh, for less than 15 bucks, you can get a baseball with his autograph on it.

Kurtzer was quoted by Joel Greenberg as saying:

"'Judah Magnes, an early Zionist leader and the first president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, played second base for the university in 1927 in what might have been the first organized baseball game in the Holy Land,' wrote Kurtzer, who is currently teaching at Princeton."

Of course, it would have been inappropriate for Dan to mention that Magnes was dead set against the establishment of the State of Israel, or that he predicted most of what came to pass -- unending warfare, violation of the rights of the Palestinian natives, etc., etc. Better stick with baseball.

So I would like to give two cheers to the new Israel Baseball League, and especially to the Netanya Tigers and Benji Engelhart. Way to go, Benji!

Why only two cheers? Well, I can't help but noticing that the Israel Baseball League is really the Israeli Jewish Baseball League. What happened to 20% of the population?

It's not that any of the teams have a lot of native Israelis on them. But couldn't they have found room for one team from, say, Um al-Fahm? Or even Yaffo? Even if there were American Jews on the team, at least the team could try to represent the town.

I know, I know, baseball is not a Palestinian sport...yet. I am just grumbling. I do wish the guys and the fans well.

Still, can't something be done to show some sensitivity to the Palestinian minority...maybe at least invite Palestinian kids from the Galilee to watch a game?

I figure that with Kevish Shesh (Highway 6), the highway that stole the land from the Arab villages up north, getting to Kibbutz Gezer, where some of the games are to be played, should be a snap.

Mah man Dan should be able to swing it, so long as he is not accused of being a self-hating Jew. That's how the rightwingers termed him during the years he was one of Secretary of State Baker's "Jewboys."

There are no kosher settlements

You know, back in my (political) Zionist youth, I put down two thousand bucks to join a non-profit organization called, "Reishit Geulah". By doing that I was helping support the creation of a new town on the West Bank, right outside of Jerusalem, called "Efrat".

The year must have been 1978 or something. I remember going to hear Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, then rabbi of the Lincoln Square Synagogue in New York City, make the sales pitch for a model Torah community. At one point, after showing plans for the villas, apartments, shul, etc., a skeptical woman raised her hand and said,

"But Rabbi -- isn't Efrat over the Green Line?"

To which Rabbi Riskin replied

"Efrat is in the consensus -- nobody wants to give it back. It's part of the Etzion bloc. And anyway, we will have good relations with our Arab neighbors."

About a month later, I withdrew from Reishit Geulah and got my two thousand dollars back. They were very prompt about the refund.

The town of Efrat -- arguably the most immoral settlement that Israel has ever constructed on the West Bank (but it's a close race) -- will be the subject of a separate post.

Here I just want to see how Efrat maintains its neighborly relations. Please watch the following video (you have to navigate to the site)

http://mishtara.org/blog/?p=214#more-214

You see in the video a group of Palestinians and Jews protesting the fact that route of the Separation Fence now entails a new path for Efrat's sewage. And the cheapest path is through a grove of apricot trees -- well, what were once apricot trees, until they were cut down. This will destroy the livelihood of the Palestinians who have worked there for generations. No amount of compensation will make up for destroying their livelihood and their way of life. Note the reasonableness of the Palestinian, and the patent unfairness of the setup.

Important! Keep watching the video. You will then see the destruction of the apricot trees to make way for the sewage of Efrat, to the soundtrack of Ana be-khoah.

Now take a few minutes to look at yourself at the mirror and ask yourself, in what way was I responsible for the destruction of the livelihood of an entire village?

Now you will say that this happens all the time in any society. Doesn't the government have the right of eminent domain, which allows it to expropriate land for the common good? The answer is yes, it does, provided certain conditions are fulfilled: a) the government has the consent of the governed and is not an occupying force; b) the public good is not the only the good of the occupier or its own population; c) proper compensation is given.

All three of these conditions were fulfilled in the evacuation of the Gush Katif. Not one of them is fulfilled in the current case.

This is just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of injustices that you will never read about in the press. Since you won't read about it, you will think that it does not exist.

Remember, when an Israeli's rights are violated, he can appeal to the Israeli police, the Israeli courts, and to one of the most powerful armies in the world, the Israel Defence Force.

But when a Palestinian's rights are violated, to whom can he appeal? To the same Israeli police, the same Israeli courts, and the same Israel Defence Force -- none of which bodies represents him or his interests.

More on the poll reported in YNET yesterday

The poll found that Israelis hold contradictory views. For example, while 64% of the Israelis supported a law prohibiting non-Jews from being prime minister (the percentage includes Palestinian Israelis, so actually, the percentage of support is greater among Israeli Jews), 61% of the Israeli public calls for an equal (per capita) distribution of resources between Israeli Jews and Arabs.

The representative of the Fund that commisioned the poll attempted to resolve the contradiction by saying that while Israelis fundamentally hold liberal values, many are afraid to put them into practice because of the security situation. This is a very unsatisfactory explanation. The question was not, "Should an Arab be the Prime Minister?" but "Are you in favor of requiring by law that the Prime Minister be Jewish." No doubt that had the poll been taken at the beginning of the Oslo Process, the numbers would have been slightly different, but not by a whole lot. When the fundamental understanding is that only a Jew should be Prime Minister -- because it is a Jewish state -- then there are no need for laws.

No, the views of Israelis are contradictory because that contradiction is at the heart of the State of Israel, and is found in its most foundational document, the 1948 Declaration of Independence. Many Israeli Jews (though not all -- I know many of orthodox Jews and Russian Jews who disagree) simply want a state that is Jewish and democratic. So when they are asked, "Should there be equal allocation of resources for all?" most, but not all, will answer, "Yes." But if you ask, "Should Arab political parties be members of the government coalition," I daresay that most will say, "No, this is a Jewish state." But until Israeli Palestinian political parties are accepted into the coalition, there will never be equal allocation of resources -- because it is the government coalition that divides up the money pot.

Israel is really a quasi-democracy. It has some of the trappings of the democracy -- it allows Palestinian citizens of Israel the right to vote, for example -- but it rigs the game so that the Palestinians might as well place their ballot in a toilet rather than in a ballot box -- because of the understanding that Palestinian parties will never access to power. I call this "democracy-lite" or "racism-lite". By indoctrinating the populace to accept Israel as a Jewish state, there is no need to legislate against non-Jews being prime minister. It is understood that in a Jewish state, non-Jews will not rise to high office. That's racist.

I want to make clear (in response to one of the comments). It is not that I conclude that Israel is racist because of this poll. All I need for that is the Declaration of Independence, current Israeli legislation, and its interpretation in the Israeli courts. What this poll shows most dramatically is that you can simultaneously be in favor of democratic values, but those values will often be compromised in light of the ethnocentric values embodied in the state.

America is different. Although America was founded as a Christian state, the fact of its being Christian nowhere appears in the foundational documents. If it did, then it would be religio-racist in the sense I defined yesterday.

My wife just heckled, "What about Tony Blair's decision to be Catholic after he formally resigned? Doesn't that show that the Prime Minister of Great Britain must be Anglican?" Apparently, not. Although there have never been non-Anglican prime ministers, there haven't been legal restrictions against Catholics (and only Catholics) serving as prime ministers since the early nineteenth century.

Why was the state founded in such a way? I think that the Zionists wanted to reproduce for the native Palestinians their own alienation from their countries of origin. They were citizens of Russia, Germany, England, Austria, etc. -- but as Zionists their nationality consciousness and identity were Jewish. They criticized Jews who felt themselves to be full citizens and part of the native states as "assimilationists". So when they created a Jewish state, they made certain to include non-Jews as citizens but to exclude them from the nation represented by the state -- i.e., to exclude the nation-state from them, just as they had felt excluded in Germany, Russia, etc.

That is racist. And it is at the heart -- the very heart -- of political Zionism and the state of Israel.

Until Israel recognizes Israeli nationality -- until the nation represented by the state of Israel is constituted by its citizens, Israel will remain a racist remnant of late nineteenth-century Eastern European nationalism.

Or it can remain the state of the Jewish people -- provided that anybody who becomes an Israeli citizenship is ipso facto a member of the Jewish people. So you can Muslim Jews, Christian Jews, and Jewish Jews.

Don't laugh. In the late eighteenth century, the German Jew David Friedlaender argued (ironically) that if the price for German citizenship was conversion to Christianity, then the Germans should allow for a conversion to an enlightened form of Christianity, to which the Jews could submit en masse.

Judah Magnes, my kind of Zionist, had another solution. But that is for another day.

Jewish and "Democratic" -- Israel Racism Watch

Today I kick off a new feature on The Magnes Zionist -- I call it the Israel Racism Watch. Israel is a deeply racist state. By that, I don't mean that Israelis are any more racist than other folks. Who isn't bigoted when it comes to race? It is not the racism of Israelis that should be of particular interest, but the racism inherent in political Zionism, which set at its goal the creation of an ethnic nation state that distinguishes between citizenship and nationality. That is racist.

Is Zionism racist? Not all kinds of Zionism. But the sort of Zionism that is embodied within the state of Israel is indeed racist.

And please, don't tell me that Zionism can't be racist because any gentile can convert to Judaism, blah, blah, blah. By "racism" I mean unwarranted discrimination on the basic of religion, ethnicity, national origin, etc.

For instance, suppose this scenario: 64% of Americans support legislation requiring the president of the United States to be Christian (or White, or Anglo-Saxon). That would get US Jews up in arms, right? After all, even though the majority culture of the US is Christian, and even though the chances of a Jew being elected president are slim, though not as slim as in the past, still -- wouldn't you American Jews be outraged if legislation like that were supported by almost 2/3 of the American public? Wouldn't you cry antisemitism, and rightfully so?

So read this (in Hebrew)

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3420441,00.html

Yup, you guessed it -- 64% of the Israeli public supports legislation requiring that the Prime Minister be Jewish. So the son of the Rumanian foreign worker, who is born in Israel, and serves in the army as a distinguished war hero, and gets elected as the leader of the Likud party, would be barred -- by law -- because of his religion. And the Palestinian Israeli whose has lived in it for generations would be barred -- by law -- because of his religion.

And pulleez, don't quote Arnold Schwarzenegger to me. He can't be president of the US because he is not a native American. But twenty percent (at least) of Israelis who are NATIVE Israelis would be barred.

You may say, "Oh, but that will never get to the stage of legislation"...but that's not the point. The point is that most people say, "Well, of course only a Jew can be a prime minister -- this is a Jewish state." And so citizenship goes out the tubes.

Just another reason why "the only democracy in the Middle East" is hardly a democracy, but rather an ethnocracy which gives lip service to democracy....

Michael Oren's "New Paradigm"

Michael Oren, rightwing Israeli historian, had an op-ed in today's Haaretz, in which he proposed that Israel and the world forget about the Fatah party and the Palestinian Authority, and instead, give limited autonomy to the Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, with internal security (i.e., policing) controlled by a Jordanian-Palestinian force. There would be some sort of provisions for (elected?) councils that would meet with each other to consider issues of mutual concern. Somehow, I doubt that those issues would include land-expropriations, settlements, control of water resources, etc., not to mention, Palestianian security from the IDF and the settlers. After years of this arrangement (i.e., after the Palestinians behave themselves, and prove to Israel that they are no threat to its security, and they they known their place), only then can one speak of a lasting peace.

Now, Michael Oren is certainly entitled to his opinion, blah, blah, blah, but he is not entitled, as an historian, to write a bald-faced lie, and that is his assertion that the above constitutes a "new" paradigm. This is fundamentally the Israeli position at least since the first Camp David, and arguably from 1967. It is very close to the Begin autonomy plan (if there was such a plan), with a soupcon of Peres' Jordanian option. Gee, it even goes back to Golda Meir and King Abdullah. Central to all those plans was the denial that the Palestinians have an inalienable right to statist self-determination. There is no mention of the Palestinian right to live as a free people in their own land, the land of Palestine, to paraphrase Hatikvah.

Still, Oren's "new paradigm" might work under the following circumstances: Israel would announce its intention to help, together with the Quartet and the UN, the Palestinians to create a viable and secure state that would be as economically and militarily strong as Israel, and that would include an evaculation of all the settlements over the 67 border, the nullification of the annexation of Jerusalem, an admission of responsibility for the refugee problem, a release of all Palestinian prisoners. That help would be contingent upon an orderly transformation of the occupied Palestine to a liberal secular democracy, in which religious political parties (like Hamas) had a place, the abolition of the militias, etc. That would be a big carrot for people that are starving for freedom.

Sounds like a fantasy? No more than Oren's "new paradigm." The only difference between his and mine (neither of which has much likelihood of being adopted by the world) is that were Oren's to be adopted, and the Palestinian people would start blowing up Israeli civilians again, a lot of the world would find their actions justifiable as part of the resistance of an occupied people who have been told that they will not get a state.

Postscript on Finkelstein

Some readers have pointed out in response to my post criticizing the De Paul president's letter that the school can do what it wants with respect to its tenure decisions. Actually, that is only partially true. Candidates denied tenure quite often sue universities if they feel that the decision is grossly unfair, violates procedures, etc. There have been cases when university presidents have been forced out in the aftermath of failed tenure proceedings.

But let's not get carried away. It is more likely for a university administration to undergo censure from the American Association of University Presses. For a list of administration censured by the AAUP, see

http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/protectrights/academicfreedom/censuredadmins.htm

Finally, I can't see how any defender of Dershowitz can be happy with the tenure denial, since Finkelstein's research wasn't seriously criticized, at least according to the president's letter. A university decides that it doesn't want to have a troublemaker like Finkelstein and it gets rid of him. Maybe it has a right to do so; maybe it doesn't. But wouldn't Dershowitz's supporters have been happier had Finkelstein been denied tenure on the weakness of his scholarship than on his personality?

De Paul's President Libels Norman Finkelstein

That Norman Finkelstein has been denied tenure at De Paul is not in itself a cause for concern. Many professors, good and bad, are denied tenure. But what is a cause for concern are the reasons offered by the university-wide tenure committee, and, worse, De Paul’s president, Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, for the tenure decision. A reading of Rev. Holtschneider’s letter to Finkelstein should set off bells for anybody concerned about fairness in tenure considerations.

For those who have not been following the case: Finkelstein was recommended for tenure by a nine-to-three vote by his peers in the Political Science department, and by its chair. The two outside reviewers also recommended his scholarship. His dean wrote against his tenure, and the university-wide tenure and promotion committee voted four to three to deny him tenure. The president upheld that decision.

The president’s letter to Finkelstein explaining his own decision implies quite openly that Finkelstein was not denied tenure because of the quality of his scholarship. Neither the external reviewers nor the members of the political science department that supported his tenure accused it of being inaccurate, derivative, unoriginal, sloppy, or any of the vices associated with bad work. The three members who opposed his tenure were said to be “critical of the accuracy of some of the evidence” and the “cogency of some of his arguments” (emphasis added). This is hardly a damning critique.

So if Finkelstein’s tenure case was not decided on the strength of his scholarship, then what were the reasons? Essentially, they boiled down to this: Norman Finkelstein is not considered by some to be a polite scholar. According to the tenure committee report, “…some might interpret parts of his scholarship as ‘deliberately hurtful’ as well as provocative more for inflammatory effect…Criticism has been expressed for his inflammatory style and personal attacks.” Note that the tenure committee apparently itself did not come to these conclusions, but either leaves them as hypothetical (“some might interpret”) or attributes them to unnamed individuals (“criticism has been expressed” – by whom?) And finally, “It was questioned by some whether Dr. Finkelstein effectively contributes to the public discourse on sensitive societal issues.” If being an effective contributor to the public discourse were a criterion for tenure, how many thousands of academics would be looking for a job? But, agree with Finkelstein or not, he certainly has been effective in contributing to the public discourse.

So much for the university-wide tenure committee. Much more disturbing, however, is the President’s attempt to justify the committee’s decision with reference to four obligations of professors borrowed from the American Association of University Professors. According to the AAUP, professors are a) “not to discriminate against or harass colleagues”; b) “to respect and defend the free inquiry of associates;” c) “to show due respect for the opinions of others”; d) “to acknowledge academic debt and strive to be objective in their professional judgment of colleagues.” Now, Norman Finkelstein is rightly categorized, in my opinion, as an abrasive, polemical, and intemperate public intellectual. But what does that have to do with the four obligations listed above? Has he harassed colleagues? Has he tried to intimate associates? Has he failed to acknowledge academic debt? Has he denigrated objectivity? Has he even been accused of any of these things? Does he stand accused of them in the various tenure reports? It seems that Rev. Holtschneider, in his desire to justify the reasonableness of De Paul’s decision by appealing to criteria of outside organizations, has gone beyond any (publicly) known facts about Finkelstein.

Has Finkelstein shown due respect for the opinions of others? It seems to me that the record shows that he agrees with some opinions, disagrees with others, and dismisses others after he has argued (sometimes ad nauseum) against them. If respect for an opinion means treating that opinion seriously rather than peremptorily, then there are few people whose opinions Finkelstein respect more than Alan Dershowitz – he has devoted considerable space in attempting to refute them. Surely “respect for the opinions of others” should not preclude harshly criticizing those opinions as erroneous, poorly reasoned, unsound, preposterous, or worse.

Still, let us grant that Norman Finkelstein is, at times, and certainly on his website, an academic pit-bull. Is he any more so than Alan Dershowitz, or for that matter, Richard Dawkins, who cannot be said to show much “respect” for the opinions of creationists? Dershowitz has made many outrageous and nasty ad hominem claims against Finkelstein. Anybody who is in academia knows, or has heard of vituperative criticism, harsh book reviews, etc. One can bemoan the loss of civility in academic discourse. But why should Dershowitz, or Dawkins, or a host of acerbic academics, be protected by tenure, whereas Finkelstein is not? That is a basic unfairness that the president’s letter does not address but that concerned academics should.

The letter gets worse. Finkelstein stands accused of “not respecting the rights of others to hold different opinions,” and “of not exercising impartiality in passing professional judgments on others.” His writing is said to “violate professional ethical norms.” Now, I have not read the tenure file, obviously. But nothing in the public record, or in the president’s letter, is remotely relevant to these serious accusations. Has Finkelstein taken steps to silence his critics? Did he, for example, attempt to dissuade a publisher from publishing one of Alan Dershowitz’s books? Has he attempted to advance, or block the advancement, of someone because of partiality? What “professional ethical norms” has he violated “in his published writings”? It may be that “ad hominem attacks threaten, rather than enhance academic freedom.” But can anybody seriously think that the victims of Finkelstein’s attacks, most notably, Alan Dershowitz, have thereby had their academic freedom threatened or jeopardized?

It is difficult to avoid the impression that either Rev. Holtschneider misunderstood these academic vices that he was accusing Finkelstein of, or that, not wishing to seem to deny Finkelstein tenure on the grounds that he was not nice, stretched them to make them apply to his case. He may have grounds for these accusations, but he certainly has not given them. If there are grounds, I would recommend that he make them available for the public record, or at least to the American Association for University Professors. Otherwise, I don’t see how De Paul can avoid an academic censure from that organization. The president's letter is found at: (http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/pdf/tenuredenial/Finkelstein,Norman06.08.2007.pdf )

Avrum Burg Comes Through

A must-read http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/867986.html

Let's hope that Haaretz translates the entire interview.

Well, I knew it would happen sooner or later...Avrum Burg, a past Secretary General of the Jewish Agency and Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, has given up on Israel and Political Zionism. Why? Well, partly because he is Jewish, and as the sign in Meah Shearim says, "Judaism and (Political) Zionism are diametrically opposed." Mostly because he realizes that the problem with Israel is not the Arabs but Israel itself. The Jewish people have are suffering from a collective Holocaust trauma.

Oh, sure, he is not a deep thinker, and he has a tendency to say the sort of outrageous things that I said in the previous paragraph. But all his critics should ask a certain question -- here is a guy who grew up Israeli, served in the IDF, achieved high position -- and he has had enough.

Why?

Or to put it another way -- show me a single person in another (non-communist) Western country who achieved high political office and then slammed the door on his country, without betraying it.

If Burg were just another blankety-blank ("self-hating Jew," "traitor," etc.) you could easily dismiss him, right?

But if you can't give me another example, maybe the problem is not with him.

It's with Israel.

A Response to the Bombastic "Open Letter to Breaking the Silence"

A few months ago, the Stand-With-Israel organization, upset over the fact that the Israel Campus Coalition had voted unanimously to allow ideological diversity among its constitutent groups, circulated an "Open Letter to 'Breaking the Silence'." Now, the Magnes Zionist is not a member of "Breaking the Silence," so I can't speak for them. But since the letter has resurfaced on the Israel Hasbarah (Hebrew for: "Party Line") website, and since shabbes was out late tonight, I thought I would write my response. An Open Letter to Members of "Breaking the Silence"

We, the soldiers and people of the State of Israel, are deeply pained and outraged by the activities of your group, “Breaking the Silence.”

Now, how's that for a bombastic opening! "We, the soldiers," as if the letter is signed by the entire Israeli people and the IDF! Couldn't you guys drop the definite article? Or were you attempting to imitate Jefferson?

You, a handful of former IDF soldiers, travel abroad to tell foreign audiences we allegedly committed abuses during our IDF service. You claim such abuses are typical.

Most of the members of "Breaking the Silence" are present IDF soldiers who do reserve duty -- more than I can say for a lot of the yordim who signed the "Open Letter." But let that pass... Note in the paragraph above that the "alleged abuses" in the first sentence become just "abuses" in the following sentence. Come on, guys -- are they abuses? Then they aren't "alleged." If they are only "alleged" -- then how can anybody claim that they are typical! But in fact, BTS doesn't claim that they are typical; they claim that based on their experience, and on the experiences of other soldiers whom they know, these abuses are widespread. How widespread? That is not the issue. The issue is that they are widespread enough, and are not dealt with by the IDF. And if you don't believe them, then read the BTS website.

You claim to speak for us. You do not.

"Breaking the Silence" claims to speak for the group, and not for anybody else. They realize that they are a minority of voices crying in the wilderness, and that many people disagree with them. They also recognize that many soldiers haven't had the experiences that they have had. They are the lucky ones.

You claim we are silenced. But we regularly speak up. No army is perfect and we, too, face difficult issues, but we work through them just as every army in a democratic society does. We will not let you misrepresent us. We have the right and the duty as the majority to testify that your accounts do not reflect what we have seen with our own eyes and what we have experienced.

I don't want to picky, but nobody is denying anybody the right to speak up. Soldiers who have not experienced what the other soldiers have -- as reflected in the testimonies on the website -- have a moral obligation to say so. If you think that the testimonies are lies, or exaggerations, or made up, then please explain why you think so.

You say there is need for new self-critical dialogue, but in Israel all voices, including yours, are heard. Yet you deceive foreign audiences by telling them otherwise.

I don't get this at all. None of the group said that they were silenced in Israel, except when the IDF broke up their picture exhibition. After the initial media splash in Israel, interest died down. That is not surprising in a country where Kohav Nolad (the Israeli "American Idol") had better ratings than the coverage of the evacuation from Gaza.

You give alleged examples of terrible IDF abuses, but your goal is not to uphold the IDF’s ethic of “purity of arms.” You are aware that there is a chain of command for reporting abuses, and when proven, they are severely punished. Once again you deceive foreign audiences by telling them otherwise.

Yada, yada, yada...It is hard for me that anybody who served in the IDF could write such a line. Nu, hevreh, be'emet. The IDF, like any army, like any organization, engages in covering their ass ("kisuy tahat", be-'ivrit zehah). It's no different from the US army in that regard. Sure, when it has to, in order to enforce army discipline, or because some photographer managed to capture a beating without his film being confiscated, it investigates. There are procedures. There is even an ethical code. And it is taught to the soldiers. There are orders for when one is allowed to open fire. And I genuinely believe that the IDF, like any other normal army, wants to enforce discipline.

But READ THE TESTIMONIES ON THE WEBSITE -- all this is dealt with there. There are enough screwups, foulups, stam rishut, that thousands of Palestinians civilians have been shot, and very few people have been punished. After all, the army investigates the army.

Would you like to live under a Palestinian occupation, and have a Palestinian army justice system investigate their abuses? Don't you see that this is a recipe for injustice? Or are you so brainwashed that you think the army bureaucracy is a paragon of virtue.

Your goal apparently is to introduce a debate about Israel’s policy in the Territories. That is a legitimate topic for discussion.

Hello...that's not their goal. Their goal is to expose abuses and to let the Israeli public and the world know what is happening. See the website

But you want it to be their goal. You see, you would love them to be another leftwing IDF-bashing group. The fact that a lot of these people are combat officers drives you nuts, doesn't it. We are not talking about Norman Finkelstein or Noam Chomsky here. We are talking about the people who are guarding you (the ones of you who live in Israel and not in LA.)

Look, I can understand somebody who answers , "All this is regrettable, but Israel's existence is at stake. Maybe the price for Israel's existence is subduing 3 1/2 million Palestinians. If they don't like it, let them move to Detroit." That's ok; I can understand that. But just know the price you have to pay. Don't kid yourself into denying the abuses.

But instead of debating the issues, you have chosen to defame the IDF and misrepresent Israel to foreign audiences hoping that you will win support for your political agenda. This is dishonest, sensationalist manipulation. You are simply exploiting foreigners’ ignorance about us and spreading misinformation and hate.

And what is the political agenda? Can you find a quote on the website which will tell me what that is? Note how the authors invent a political agenda for the group, then criticize them for not debating the issues. The group is not interested in debating the "issues." They are not well-heeled propagandists (oops, masbirim) who are taught how to score points on college campuses. These guys are disgusted with what they have done or witnessed.

And the testimonies themselves come from left, right, and center -- hilonim, datiyim, and even mitnahalim.

Can you bring a single example from the website which is" misinformation."

We, the soldiers who served at border patrols, in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza raise our voices in protest. You dishonor yourselves and us, and you demean our sacrifices. We have done everything in our power to uphold the purity of arms and to be true to Jewish ethics during even the most difficult times.

May God bless you for that (and punish you for your immature, rhetorical excesses....)

We raise our voices to remind you of the tens of thousands of us who have endured physical pain, faced death, been taken hostage and been severely wounded just because we upheld our principles and our core value that all human life is precious. We remind you of the difficult moral dilemmas we face daily because terrorists embed themselves among Palestinian civilians and use them as human shields since terrorists do not abide by the Geneva Convention.

Neither does Israel, but we'll let that pass. Or maybe you haven't heard about nohal shakhen, where Palestinian civilians have been used as human shields by the IDF. After years of complaints by human rights group, the Israel supreme court struck it down. But, of course, the army still does it, despite the court.

Let me put it this way -- if Palestinian terrorists blew up ten thousand Jews and ate them for breakfast, that would not excuse, condone, or justify trashing a Palestinian doctor's office and leaving two piles of shit in the middle of the room.

"Breaking the Silence" is not saying that Israelis soldiers are bad people, or are particularly immoral. (If it was, then there would be no group. You don't see "Breaking the Silence" in Serbia or Rwanda.)

BTS is not Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. This is not the UN talking. These are combat soldiers who are perpretrators or witnesses of the abuses. They are confessing to their own crimes, not to the crimes of others. They know that the army does not punish the perpretrators unless the press has gotten to them. That is not because the IDF is bad...it is because it is an army.

The only argument you can have with the group is that what they have witnessed is not representative. Fair enough. I wonder what it would take to convince you that these abuses are more widespread than you think...or are you immune to change, since the IDF is always right....

But let me tell you something -- if what you are saying is right, and what they are saying is wrong..

How come it took three years for the opponents of "Breaking the Silence" to start a petition?

How come the "Open Letter" originated in the US and not in Israel?

How come most Israelis I know, even those who don't like the group, don't contest their war experiences?

They may try to contextualize them ("Look, most of these things happened during the dark days of the second intifada, when the soldiers were under pressure") or they may criticize the testifiers ("Why didn't they report the behavior to their commanding officer?"), or they may justify the practice ("Hey, we have to show the Arabs who are the bosses, or otherwise there will be chaos.")

Or is your petition initiative that of rightwing American Jews, some of whom have made aliyah, the sort of folks who are willing to talk about IDF abuses only when settlers are evicted.

To sum up: the point of the group is not to say that IDF is not a moral army.

The point of the group is to say that the "most moral army in the world" will inevitably commit such abuses -- even if it doesn't want to -- because that is what an open-ended occupation does to you.

After all, if the IDF needs koah harta'ah (deterrence) it has to teach the civilians a lesson, If it has to demonstrate the IDF presence (le-hafgin nokhahut), it has to scare the civilians. So you trash a few offices, you take a few souvenirs, you smash a few cards, you make a few Arabs clean up the mess -- she lo yarimu rosh.

Every once a while, when a magavnik (Border Police) stam beats up a Palestinian to show him who is boss, somebody catches it on camera. Then the politicians get upset, the army says it will investigate, and takhlis, nothing happens. And that is for the one out of thousands of cases which make it to the press.

Don't believe me? Read about it, ye defenders of Israel, here. Then watch the video.

So this is our reply to you—our signatures to show that you, a handful of misguided individuals, are not telling the real story, that you magnify the few exceptions to our standard behavior and miss the total picture which is far greater than your collective experiences and imaginations. We are replying to your misguided words with far more than the 140 politically-motivated academics who signed your letter.

As if the "Open Letter" is not politically-motivated....

We, the people of this land, come to you out of the great tapestry that is Israel—young soldiers, reservists in their thirties and forties, who are people of color, Christians, Arabs and Druze—who believe that Israel has a right to live in peace and security. We come from across the political spectrum but all of us care deeply and have lost and wept and yearned for a peace that we have tried to usher in with dignity, respect and honesty.

(Wait till I wring out my handkerchief....)

How can anybody write of "honesty" when they write such emotional drivel as this? I guess that, according to the authors, the newspapers who published the Abu Ghaib pictures believed that the US does not have the right to live in peace and security. Or they were guilty of lashon haroh

For us and for our children, we ask you to cease your destructive and misleading activities.

What about your parents?

The Captive Children File I

Every once a while I will waste my time and respond to tinokot she-nishbu, "captive children," or in this case, folks who have been so brainwashed by the Israel party line (in contemporary parlance, hasbara) that they are unable to think straight.

Judith Weiss complains that "Breaking the Silence" is guilty of slander, i.e., leshon ho-ro' (or lashon horah, to use the common yeshivish mispronunciation that Ms. Weiss uses) because the group has publicized testimonies of soldiers who have confessed to, or witnessed, inappropriate behavior towards civilians.

I find the halakhic argument that Ms. Weiss raises interesting. If it is lashon horah to decry embarrasing behavior that violates the halakha -- like pedophilia and wife-beating, for example -- then she has a point. In fact, some orthodox have used that argument to stifle orthodox pedophilia and wife-beating. When Gary Rosenblatt, the New York Jewish Week's editor, exposed an orthodox rabbi who was accused of sexual molestation, he was accused by some people of lashon horah. Ms. Weiss apparently is of the "Don't-wash-our-dirty-laundry-in public." Or maybe she is more tolerant of Jewish sex offenders than of IDF soldiers humiliating Arabs.

Note that when "Breaking the Silence" toured the US last fall, they were accused of distorting the IDF record, which is a shande for the goyim (you can figure that out, if you read this far.) Fair enough. But now, according to Ms. Weiss, they can't even talk about it in Israel to an Israeli crowd!

The group has collected close to a thousand testimonies, four hundred of which are on their website. Conservatively speaking, I figure that for every soldier who testifies to a representative of this group, at least ten do not. How do I come to that conclusion? First, occupying armies, especially in long-term occupations, and when they are in stressful situations, dehumanize the population. That is just the way things are everywhere. For another, what motivation do soldiers have to offer testimonies to other soldiers? Another reason -- who wants to make a big deal about ordering an old Arab man to clean up a checkpoint? Most of the humiliations published on the Breaking the Silence website are not considered as such by Israelis. She-lo yarimu rosh!

What Ms. Weiss doesn't get -- and here the analogy with the pedophile breaks down -- is that it is perfectly normal for good, moral, eighteen-year soldiers, to do immoral things.That can't be prevented. You can call it unintentional, and much of it is. But it's a fact. The testimonies speak for themselves.

What I expect from Ms. Weiss and her cohorts is to deal with the testimonies themselves, and not invent straw men. Let her read them and comment on them. Let her feel the pain of the soldiers who are giving the testimonies.

Because if you can't understand how soldiers are traumatized by seeing old Arab men humiliated by their buddies -- if your defense-mechanism reflexibly spits out, "out-of-context," "small minority," "most moral army in the world" then it is about time that you let your heart melt -- before you and your friends do serious damage to that army.

The New York Times Piece on "Breaking the Silence"

Memo From Jerusalem Israeli Soldiers Stand Firm, but Duty Wears on the Soul By STEVEN ERLANGER JERUSALEM, March 22 — Some of Jerusalem’s nicest people gathered the other night to listen to a talk by an Israeli soldier troubled by how he and some of his colleagues had behaved in the occupied West Bank. The small crowd on a rainy evening was a bit disheveled, with lots of untamed hair and sensible shoes. Largely English-speaking, they were generally somewhere on the left of Israel’s wide political spectrum, and they listened earnestly as Mikhael Manekin, 27, spoke quietly about his four years of service with the Golani infantry brigade in the West Bank. Mr. Manekin and his colleagues spent a lot of their time at security checkpoints around Hebron and Nablus, controlling the movement of Palestinians to try to ensure that suicide bombers could not infiltrate Israeli cities. The checkpoints are part of a security network, including the separation barrier, that protects Israel, but also deeply inconveniences Palestinians who would never consider strapping on a bomb. Mr. Manekin is the director of Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli combat soldiers and some current reservists, shocked at their own misconduct and that of others, who have gathered to collect their stories and bear witness. Since 2004, the group has collected testimonies from nearly 400 soldiers (available in English at www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp). He spoke of how some soldiers humiliate or beat Palestinians to keep crowds in line and how soldiers are taught to be aggressive, but how most behave within decent moral limits — and of how the fear that hundreds of people could erupt in anger wears on the soul and turns young men callous. “I don’t think this is a problem of the military,” he said. “It’s a problem of the society. We’re sending these kids in our name. And there has to be a space to talk of bad things. It’s not enough to say, ‘But there’s Palestinian terrorism,’ which there is, but that’s too easy.” He felt conflicted whenever he went back into the army on reserve duty, he said. “I love my soldiers, and I’m a good officer,” he said. “But going back into that system is hard. Still, I see my future here and my children’s future. And I want a safe country, like everyone, and also a moral country.” In the aftermath of Israel’s inconclusive summer war against the militant organization Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, Mr. Manekin’s stories struck an ambivalent note even in this audience at the Yakar Center for Social Concern, founded in 1992 to promote debate and dialogue among Israelis and their neighbors. Run by Benjamin Pogrund, a distinguished journalist from South Africa, the center embraces difficult topics like the status of Israeli Arabs, settlements, religious orthodoxy and challenges to democracy. There is a general gloominess in Israel after the war with Hezbollah, a sense that neither the government nor the army performed very well, and the result is widespread anxiety and a new mood of introspection. The government is one thing, but the army is the core institution of this little state, and a fine new film about the army’s last days in Lebanon in 2000, “Beaufort,” is being praised for its depiction of the sensitive Israeli soldier bravely doing his duty despite his fear and the usual political and military confusion. While criticism of the army is quite acceptable in Israel’s democracy, and not just on the left, Breaking the Silence left some raw feelings here. At the recent talk and discussion session, one man stood and said Mr. Manekin and his friends were hurting Israel, especially its image abroad, in order to salve their own consciences. Many in the audience nodded in agreement. Tall and dignified, about 45, the man said that he, too, had served in the West Bank, “and I’m proud of what I did there to defend Israelis.” It is crucial to intimidate people at checkpoints to keep them cowed, he said, his voice shaking a little, “because we are so few there, and they are so many.” Then he said: “These people are not like us! They come up to our faces and they lie to us!” That was enough for Uriel Simon, 77 years old, a professor emeritus of biblical studies at Bar-Ilan University and a noted religious dove. “As for liars,” Mr. Simon said, then paused. “My father was a liar. My grandfather was a liar. How else did we cross lines to get to this country? We stayed alive by lying. We lied to the Russians, we lied to the Germans, we lied to the British! We lie for survival! Jacob the Liar was my father!” he said. As for the Palestinians, he said: “Of course they lie! Everyone lies at a checkpoint! We lied at checkpoints, too.” Everyone is afraid of mirrors, Mr. Simon said, readjusting the knitted skullcap on his nimbus of white hair. “We hate the mirror. We don’t want to look at ourselves. We don’t like photographs of us — we say, ‘Oh, that’s not a very good likeness.’ We want to be much nicer than we are. But here there are also prophets who are mirrors, who are not afraid of kings and generals. The prophet says, ‘You are ugly,’ and we don’t want to hear it, but we have to look at the mirror honestly, without fear.” Later, Mr. Simon tried to describe the ambivalence and even confusion, as he saw it, in the room. The army is central to Israel, and the problems so complicated, he said. At the beginning of the summer war, as in the beginning of any war, including the war in Iraq, “there’s a euphoria that derives from an almost irrational belief in power and force, that the sword can cut through all the slow processes.” It is more enthralling if, like Israel, “you have so much power that you can’t use, and suddenly you can.” But the euphoria is always short-lived, he said, because no army is as efficient as advertised, and power rarely delivers the clean outcome it seems to promise. “We bomb southern Lebanon like mad, and still they continue to send missiles at us,” he said. The frustration is even more intense “for a people like Israel forced to live on its sword, for who will save this little state?” he asked. “The United Nations? The good will of America? We’d be overrun 10 times before America awakes, even if it wants to awake. So every 10-year-old knows the sheer importance of the Israeli Army, and the more you need it the more you expect from it.” At the end of the evening, Mr. Simon said, he went to talk to the tall man who had been so upset. “He said to me, ‘You won’t believe me, but I agree with 90 percent of what you said.’ ” Mr. Simon laughed softly. “It just showed how confused he was.”

Breaking My Silence

Yes, I know, I have been away for a month, enough to kill off this blog. But the recent media coverage of "Breaking the Silence," the IDF veteran group that collects testimonies about IDF war crimes and humiliation of the civilian populace, has roused me from my dogmatic slumbers. Let's start with the Reuter's piece in the Washington Post article about the group's Hebron tour. The tour has been a big success not only with foreign media and diplomats, but with Israeli groups, and even American yeshiva students. If you are visiting Israel, go and see how life has been made hell for the Palestinians by the so-called "Jewish" settlers (I use quotation marks because the Hebron' settlers Jewishness is in doubt, at least according to the Rambam, who rules that cruel people are of dubious Jewish lineage.) Israeli army veterans show dark side of occupation By Bernd Debusmann, Special CorrespondentReutersTuesday, March 20, 2007; 3:18 AM HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) -- Disenchanted Israeli army veterans have turned into guides to one of the bleakest places on the West Bank, the Israeli-held part of Hebron, to highlight what they say is the ugly face of occupation most Israelis never see. Over the past 20 months, former soldiers have led some 2,500 people, in small groups of around a dozen, mostly Israelis, on grim show-and-tell excursions meant to explain the brutalizing effect of daily routine in an occupied city. Stops on the tours include the positions from where former squad commander Yehuda Shaul says he fired his grenade machinegun, night after night, into a densely populated neighborhood from where Palestinians, night after night, fired on Jewish settlements. "A grenade machine gun is an awesome weapon, but it is inaccurate," he says. "The grenades kill everything within a radius of eight meters, injure anyone within a radius of 16. So, at first you worry about hitting innocent civilians. After a while, you shrug off the worries and get used to it. In the end, you look forward to blasting away." Burly, bearded and from an ultra-orthodox background, the 24-year-old Shaul was one of the founders of Breaking the Silence, a group of former soldiers who shocked Israel in 2004 with an exhibition of photographs and video testimony on harassment and abuse of Palestinians. The exhibition, which ran for weeks in Tel Aviv and was briefly on display at the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) spawned the tours of Hebron, where many of the soldiers in the group served during the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising. More than 4,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis have died in the intifada, which saw a sharp increase in Palestinian suicide bombings and hardened the mental wall between Israelis and Palestinians. ERODING MORAL VALUES "The tours have two goals," said Shaul. "Show the effect the occupation has on the occupied AND on the occupiers, the way it disrupts Palestinian life and the way it erodes the moral values of Israeli soldiers. "The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) blames excesses, when they come to light, on 'rotten apples'. But few soldiers end their West Bank tours with entirely clean hands. Israeli society prefers to keep silent about this." Shaul spoke as he walked through the eerily quiet, deserted old city of Hebron, past shuttered shops and graffiti painted by some of the 650 Jews who live in four settlements in H2, the official name of the sector under Israeli control under a 1997 accord that effectively divided the city. H2 takes up about a fifth of the area of Hebron and embraces what used to the bustling market of the Old City, the wholesale market, and Shuhada street, the main commercial artery in the days when 30,000 Palestinians and 500 Jews shared the area. Shuhada is now a "sterile street," where Palestinians are not allowed to walk. H1, the rest of Hebron, is home to 150,000 Palestinians, few of whom ever cross the checkpoints that control movement between the two parts of the city. "Kill the Arabs," says one slogan on a wall in the old market. "Arabs In," says another, over an arrow pointing to a garbage dump. Shaul served 14 months of his three-year service in Hebron and says he began having doubts over the justness of what he was doing shortly before returning to civilian life. He began talking to other soldiers and found they had similar misgivings. "This is how Breaking the Silence was formed. Since then, more than 400 soldiers have come forward and given video testimony of their experiences, evidence that the occupation is not the black-and-white story most Israelis think it is." "REVENGE FOR 1929" But in the black-and-white world of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides cite dates in Hebron's long history to bolster their views. For the settlers, a day of Palestinian infamy is August 23, 1929, when mobs killed 67 Jewish men, women and children and drove the rest of the community out of the city. Shaul recalls an incident which added to his growing doubts -- young settler girls throwing stones at an elderly Palestinian woman, bent low by the weight of baskets she was carrying. He asked the girls what they were doing. "Revenge," said one. "For 1929." For Hebron Palestinians, the date that best illustrates the mindset of the settlers is February 25, 1994, the day Brooklyn-born Baruch Goldstein used his army-issue Galil assault rifle to kill 29 Palestinian worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs, a site holy to Jews, Moslems and Christians. The attack drew harsh condemnation from the Israeli government but, Hebron Palestinians point out, it backfired on the victims: to keep the two communities apart, the army closed Shuhada Street and the wholesale market next to the Avaraham Avinu settlement. It is a compound of low, gray buildings and few Palestinians remained in their vicinity. The house of one who did, Hashem al-Azzeh, often serves as the last stop of Breaking the Silence's city tours. Al-Azzeh is not a loquacious man and prefers to convey his points through home-made videos. One shows a throng of settlers invading his home (while he was absent), the other is of settlers stoning Palestinian school girls as Israeli soldiers watch. "Israelis usually are really shocked when they see this," he says. "We are not."