RUTHFULLY YOURS

US Secretary of State John FN Kerry went to see the parents of US citizen and fallen lone soldier Max Steinberg HY”D (May God Avenge his blood). Kerry put his foot so deeply into his mouth as to make it crystal clear why our rabbis decreed that one who goes to console a mourner should not speak until spoken to.

According to the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, “Kerry entered and exited the room swiftly, surrounded by men in black and refusing to take any questions from press.”

“How’s your day?” Kerry asked as he sat down. “How’s your day?” Evie [Steinberg’s mother] asked back. “My day’s going better than yours,” he said.

In the meantime, the Steinberg’s are overwhelmed with the support that they have received here in Israel.

Speaking to Arutz Sheva at Jerusalem’s Crowne Plaza Hotel, where the family are observing the seven-day shiva mourning period, Max’s mother expressed gratitude for “all the love” the family had received from complete strangers.

“I cannot believe that all of these people are here for our son, and all the people that are here are giving us strength to get through this horrible time for our family,” she said.

She recalled how her son had been inspired to join the IDF after visiting the grave of another fallen lone soldier from America: Michael Levin, who died fighting with the IDF’s Paratrooper Brigade during the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

Max’s father told how the Israeli people had “done everything they can to help us live through this very trying time.”

Addressing the family’s decision to bury Max in Israel – and not in LA as originally planned – he said they felt their decision had been validated after visiting Israel.

“…Once we got here and once we’ve been embraced by so many wonderful people.. and the beauty of the country and what it all stands for, there is no other decision.”

Some 30,000 people showed up at Steinberg’s funeral on Wednesday night.

The 3-mile-long tunnel from Gaza was designed for launching murder and kidnapping raids.

Americans are understandably concerned when they hear that the majority of Palestinian casualties in the fighting between Israel and Hamas have been civilians and when they see images of houses in Gaza reduced to rubble and women wailing. Given the lack of corresponding Israeli civilian casualties to date, this creates the impression of an unequal—and hence immoral—fight between Israel and Hamas.

Although American empathy for noncombatants is a critical component of who we are as a people, it should not blind us to reality: Israel’s military exists to protect its civilian population and seeks to avoid harming noncombatants, while its adversary cynically uses Palestinian civilians as human shields while deliberately targeting Israeli civilians.

I recently had the opportunity to see for myself the moral chasm between how the Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas treat civilians during military operations. In May I joined a dozen other retired U.S. generals and admirals on a trip to Israel with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

Just outside Hamas-ruled Gaza, we toured a tunnel discovered less than one kilometer from an Israeli kindergarten. Unlike tunnels that I had seen during the Iraq war that were designed for smuggling, this Hamas tunnel was designed for launching murder and kidnapping raids. The 3-mile-long tunnel was reinforced with concrete, lined with telephone wires, and included cabins unnecessary for infiltration operations but useful for holding hostages.

Israel, fearing just such tunnel-building, has long tried to limit imports of concrete to Gaza for anything but humanitarian projects, yet somehow thousands of tons of the material have been diverted for terror use rather than building hospitals or housing for Palestinians. Since the beginning of ground operations into Gaza, the IDF has uncovered approximately 30 similar tunnels leading into Israel, in addition to the more than two dozen discovered prior to Operation Protective Edge. Hamas operatives have been intercepted emerging from such tunnels in Israel carrying tranquilizers and handcuffs, apparently hoping to replicate the successful 2006 kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, for whom Israel exchanged 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in 2011.

The two big international headlines of the moment are the downing of the Malaysian jet over Ukraine and Israel’s incursion into Gaza. On the face of it, these two stories don’t have much in common, but they are in fact part of the same story. To know Israel it helps to know Ukraine, and to know Ukraine it helps to know Israel.

This weekend will mark the 70th anniversary of the day the Soviets re-took the city of Lviv (or Lvov, or Lemberg, according to taste) in western Ukraine, and ended a three-year German occupation. Before the Germans arrived, there were well over 100,000 Jews in the city and just shy of 50 synagogues. On July 26th 1944, when the Soviets returned, there were a couple of hundred Jews left.

Lviv had been, variously, Polish, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Habsburg, Soviet — but always, across the centuries, Jewish. All gone.

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Same with any number of Ukrainian cities. Chernivtsi, or Czernowitz, was once known as “Jerusalem on the Prut.” There were 50,000 Jews out of a population of approximately 100,000, and they dominated the city’s commercial life. “There is not a shop that has not a Jewish name painted above its windows,” wrote Sir Sacheverell Sitwell in 1937, when it was part of the Kingdom of Roumania. “The entire commerce of the place is in the hands of the Jews. Yiddish is spoken here more than German.” Not anymore. Today, the city’s population is over a quarter of a million, but only 2,000 are Jews.

There are cities like Lviv or Chernivtsi all over the world, where within living memory the streets were full of Jews — people went to school with Jews, lived next door to Jews, accompanied their mothers as they shopped from Jews. And now there are no Jews. In his what-if? novel Fatherland, Robert Harris captures very well the silence that settles in such communities: no one ever asks, “Do you remember the such-and-such family across the street?” — or what happened to them. Just as, a few years hence, everyone in Sarcelles, France will agree not to ask whatever happened to a Jewish-owned pharmacy, set ablaze during a “pro-Palestinian” protest last weekend.

Israel is dedicated to the proposition that there should be one place on Earth where what happened to the Jews in Lviv and Chernivtsi and Baghdad and all over the map will not happen here

1. $1.6bn was raised by Israeli high tech companies during the first half of 2014, 81% higher than the first half of 2013. Israeli high tech companies raised $930mn during 2014’s 2nd quarter – the highest total since 2000, 30% higher than the 1st quarter and 109% higher than 2013’s 2nd quarter (Globes Business Daily, July 16, 2014).

2. Israel’s new investment Angels’ Law – introduced by the Minister of Economy, Naftali Bennett – is the world’s most daring, including a 100% deduction for tax purposes during the first year (Globes, July 17). The $86bn Los Angeles-headquartered Oaktree Capital Management acquired the Israel operations of France’s Veolia Environment for $341mn (Bloomberg, July 10). The $36bn San Diego-based Qualcomm acquired Israel’s Wilocity for $300mn, made its 5th Israeli acquisition following DesignArt ($130mn), iSkoot ($75mn), CSR’s camera division ($45mn) and EPOS for $30mn Globes, July 4). Germany’s Altana invested $135mn in Israel’s Landa Digital Printing (Globes, June 26, 2014). Santa Clara-based ServiceNow acquired Israel’s Neebula Systems for $100mn (Globes, July 10). NASDAQ’s best Initial Public Offering (IPO) during 2014’s 2nd quarter was Israel’s $630mn Kite Pharma which raised $78mn (Globes, June 30). The British York Investment Fund is investing up to $50mn in Israel’s InSightec (Globes, June 30). The Foxborough, MA-based Kraft Group and the Boston-based Canepa Advanced healthcare Fund led a $21mn round of private placement in Israel’s Dune Medical (Globes, June 27). Boston Scientific extended a $15mn loan – with a stock option – to Israel’s MValve (Globes, July 7).