RUTHFULLY YOURS

Demonstrate sovereignty, not solidarity
Until Thursday evening’s rally at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, the last time I participated in a demonstration was in 2005. And though the two events could not have been more different, the connection between them was direct.

Back then, the Knesset was on the verge of approving Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan for the “unilateral disengagement from Gaza” — a less brutal name for the forcible evacuation of every last Jew from Gush Katif, and the eradication of four Jewish communities in northern Samaria.

Suicide bombers had been blowing themselves up daily on buses and in malls, and Israelis were desperate for the government to take action. Disengagement was Sharon’s answer.

In spite of countrywide protests — and a lost referendum within Sharon’s Likud party, which caused its leader to pull a stunt and form Kadima overnight — the entire media and much of the public was game to get out of Gaza.

The rest of us considered the plan to be disastrous from every standpoint. We argued that Gaza would become one large terror base. We also thought Sharon was betraying the very people he had encouraged to settle there. The purpose of the protest I attended, which took place in front of the Knesset, was to demand that a national referendum be held, so that a genuine poll on this monumental move could be taken among the populace, not just the politicians ostensibly representing our wishes. (The Knesset subsequently voted against the proposed referendum.)

More than 150,000 people turned up at that demonstration, and I felt proud to be there. I was heartbroken, however, that I was one of only a handful of secular Israelis in the huge crowd. What it indicated was that Sharon had been successful in his purposeful division of society, so as to garner support for the removal of fellow Jews from their homes.

Spurred by the comment of someone I encountered on the way to the demonstration, who told me that I “don’t look like one of them,” I published a piece contesting the wedge between Gush Katif and the rest of the country.

“This is a state with two peoples,” I wrote in the Jerusalem Post. “‘Them’ and ‘Us.’ Lest the perplexed outsider imagine that the two peoples in question are Jews and Arabs, let him be re-educated: In post-modern, post-Zionist Hebrew, ‘them’ is a term used to define all the Jews who, after 1967, set up households on land the Israeli government begged them to populate and develop. Such people are known as ‘settlers’ — when they aren’t referred to as their synonym, ‘occupiers.’

Outside the US, throughout the Western world, anti-Semitism is becoming a powerful social and political force. And its power is beginning to have a significant impact on Israel’s relations with other democracies.

Consider South Africa. Following a lopsided vote by the University of Cape Town’s Student Union to boycott Israel, Jewish students fear that their own student union will be barred from operating on campus. Carla Frumer from the South African Jewish Student Union told The Times of Israel, “If they prove we are a Zionist organization and support Israel, they can have us banned and seek to de-register us.”

In Sydney, Australia, Jewish families received a triple blow last week when Jewish children on a chartered school bus were assaulted by eight anti-Semitic drunken teenagers.

The first shock was that their children, some as young as five, were terrorized on their school bus.

The second shock was that the bus driver made an unscheduled stop to allow the anti-Semites to board the bus and harass the children.

The third shock was that after catching six of the eight assailants, the police let them out of jail the same evening.

Taken together, the incident revealed an obscene comfort level among Australian authorities with the terrorization of Jewish children. Jewish families cannot assume that their children will be protected by non-Jews, whether they are school bus drivers or the police.

Unfortunately, these stories do not begin to scratch the surface of the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the developed world. From Paris to San Paulo, from Berlin to Boston the public space Jews can enjoy without fear is becoming more and more limited.

The same is the case in leftist political circles.

More than 5,000 Olim (Jewish immigrants to Israel) are expected to arrive from France during 2014, and more than 1,000 Olim arrived from the US, France and other countries during the 30 day war in Gaza. As impressive as this is, the potential of Aliyah is much more dramatic.

The current wave of European anti-Semitism – fueled by centuries old anti-Jewish European culture and an unprecedented wave of Islamic immigration to Europe – behooves Israel to pro-actively generate (and not just absorb) a game-changing wave of Aliyah.

A pro-active Aliyah policy aims at triggering a massive scale Aliyah – not just a few tens of thousands Olim per year – as was initiated and implemented by Prime Ministers Ben Gurion, Eshkol and Shamir, who valued Aliyah as a top priority, in defiance of Israeli and international opposition and skepticism. This must be set on a fast track mode, and not planned as a medium or long-term policy.

A pro-active Aliyah policy constitutes an appropriate follow up to the war in Gaza, demonstrating and feeding Israel’s gumption/resourcefulness, reflecting defiance of threats and challenges, and reaffirming confidence in the long-term viability of the Jewish State.

The window of opportunity for the arrival of 500,000 Olim, during the next five years, is wide open – temporarily – in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, France, England, Belgium, Holland, Hungary, Argentina and other countries. It is wide open due to the intensification of anti-Semitism; non-democratic trends and instability in Russia and Ukraine; the expansion of aggressive (and soon terrorist) Islam in Europe; Israel’s relative economic edge; and the impressive Jewish/Zionist education infrastructure in the aforementioned countries, which have cultivated pro-Aliyah sentiments. Additional tailwind to Aliyah from Russia and Ukraine would be provided by a formal conversion of the 300,000 Olim from the USSR, whose children serve in Israel’s Defense Forces, who are targeted by Palestinian terrorism, contribute immensely to Israel’s well-being, consider themselves Jews and are recognized as Jews by Israel’s Law of Return, but not by Israel’s Rabbinate. The temporary nature of this window of opportunity requires immediate action, lest it would be forfeited.

In order to raise the substantial required funds– which grow scarce due to the cost of the war in Gaza – Israel’s Prime Minister should convene an emergency session of leading Jewish businessmen from the USA, Canada and Australia (which are also a source of substantial Aliyah), Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Panama, Brazil and Argentina, reclaiming Aliyah as a permanent, top moral and strategic priority of the Jewish people and the Jewish State, irrespective of circumstances. The Prime Minister should present a pro-active Aliyah policy, which responds to the growing predicament of Jewish communities, while inducing a game-changing enhancement of Israel’s infrastructures of economy, transportation, telecommunications, education, medicine, science, technology and national security, catapulting Israel’s posture of deterrence to unprecedented heights. Moreover, Israel Development Corporation is able to significantly expand the sale of the highly competitive Israel Bonds to local and state governments, unions, financial institutions and individuals, raising billions of dollars for an historical, job-creating, research and development-enhancing, export-increasing and national security-upgrading initiative.

EPA’s proposed rule to drop the word “navigable” and redefine the “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) to include every occasionally damp ditch and puddle in the nation is a land grab of epic proportions.

Few outrages perpetrated by President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency can match its proposed rule titled “Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’ Under the Clean Water Act.” It would remove “navigable” from American water law and take federal command of all “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS.

It redefines “waters” as nearly everything that could get wet, including most of the land in America.

Under WOTUS, every seasonal stream bed, puddle and ditch in the nation would be ruled by the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers’ armed enforcers, bypassing Congress and sidestepping the U.S. Supreme Court in the process. Congress is helpless to stop it — EPA-loving Democrats have a death grip on Senate bills and there aren’t the votes to override Obama’s certain veto. The Supreme Court has twice struck down major pieces of the proposed rule, which the EPA blithely ignored and merely changed the words, hired scientific shills to patch over the flaws, and created this new battering ram to shatter the gates that guard America’s property rights.

EPA has been buying support from Big Green groups on water issues since at least 1994, which came to light in an inspector general report of three cooperative agreements to the Natural Resources Defense Council totaling $3,260,467 for “storm water education” and “market transformation of energy efficient products” from 1994 to 2005.

The IG reported, “We questioned $1,419,548 of reported outlays because [NRDC] did not maintain the necessary documentation to fully support the reported costs, as required by Federal regulations.”

Big Green foundations have been lusting after WOTUS power since the late 1990s. Foundation Search shows 74 Clean Water Act grants totaling $5,261,449 since 2002, Barack Obama’s last year on the Joyce Foundation board (1994-2002). Joyce gave $220,000 in CWA-related grants, $100,000 of it to NRDC in 2002. NRDC received $705,000 in 13 CWA-related grants from four foundations.

Most noticeable was that the protests across Western European cities have overwhelmingly been led by Muslims — not Islamists — just normal, “integrated” Muslims, who stay at home when any other war occurs. (Where were their protests against Qatar for funding Hamas?)

What is harder for people to address is the lies that feed this violence.

These otherwise “integrated” people hate Israel and Jews because they have been taught to. A whole generation — perhaps several — has been taught to hate. That is a lot of hate, but it needs to be tackled.

The best place to start might be by tackling the lies and defamations that are allowed to go on underneath everyone’s noses, such as the frivolous — and false — accusations of Israeli “genocide,” “war-crimes” and the like. The problem is worse than anyone had thought.

The Gaza War has had disturbing fallout in Europe. The Gaza War has produced flagrantly anti-Semitic protests, attacks on Jews and the burning down of Jewish buildings. Those protests have come as a surprise to parts of the European public – nowhere more so than in Germany, where a hatred thought to have been disgraced for all time has found its way back onto European streets under a new guise.

As well as being a time for outrage, this also ought to be a time for re-thinking. And some of that rethinking will have to be done by those who assumed they best understood these outbursts. Certainly calls to “kill the Jews” in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy are a part of the problem, but these, as well as the outbreaks of violence against Jews across Europe, are condemned by politicians and journalists alike. To some extent it is too easy for them to do so. There is not yet any real political or other price to pay for saying that you think people should beat up rabbis in the street, send “Jews to the gas” or call openly for genocide. What is harder for people to do is address the lies that feed this violence, and the underlying hatred that the Gaza War revealed. These need attention.

Groups in Europe that monitor anti-Semitic hate crimes have, for many years, been ahead of the public curve in understanding that these attacks are no longer carried out by white, neo-Nazi, skinhead thugs. Although such people do exist, they are small in number and shunned by the wider society. The discovery that anti-Semitism today is spurred by Muslims and (to a lesser extent) misinformed fellow-travellers has been recognized by people who work in the field, but has taken a long time to trickle down to public awareness.

There are people who see Islamic immigration as a positive thing; that it creates “cultural enrichment” and “thriving immigrant neighborhoods.” This is the vision of the liberal elites. There is also the reality.

Krugerplein, or Kruger Square, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is now the theatre of a series of incidents, starting with a woman who hung an Israeli flag outside her window. Muslims answered by displaying “Palestinian” flags.

The woman who hung the Israeli flag, Leah Rabinovitch, is originally from Mexico, and therefore probably may not have been aware of Islamic intolerance towards all things Jewish. Her neighborhood, however, is “non-western immigrants,” meaning mostly Muslims.

She received death threats, had stones thrown through her windows, and had a Molotov-cocktail thrown at her home. The corporate owner of her apartment ordered her to remove the flag. Israel’s flag after all, is considered a “provocation.”

A view of the apartment building in Amsterdam where Leah Rabinovitch lives. After hanging an Israeli flag, she was subjected to stone-throwing, a death threat and a firebombing. (Image source: AT5 News video screenshot)
Checking at Krugerplein, last week, I counted seven “Palestinian” flags – flags which are never considered a provocation, of course.

The good news is that Israel’s flag is back, again enjoying the Dutch sunlight.

What is revealing, however, is not what happened, but where it happened.

Krugerplein is at the very heart of the Transvaal neighborhood [Transvaalbuurt], built a hundred years ago. The streets are all named after the heroic Boer fighters, who waged a bitter guerrilla war against the colonial superpower of those days, the British empire. The names celebrate the traditional friendship between the Afrikaners/Boers and the Dutch. President Kruger, general Botha, Orange Freestate; they are all there.

In the 1920s and 30s, Jews from the overcrowded center of Amsterdam moved to Transvaalbuurt. In pre-World War II days, it counted 17,000 inhabitants, 70% of them Jewish. There was very little interest in religion. Many of them joined “left-wing” causes. Trade unions, and socialist and communist parties flourished — a Dutch version of the Lower East Side.

Albeit belated, and ever grudgingly, the non-Muslim world has been compelled to acknowledge ISIL’s ghastly, murderous jihad rampages against both the Christian and Yazidi religious minorities of northern Iraq.

Even now, however, no U.S. television network has been willing to air the explicit testimonies of both Yazidi and Christian refugees from these jihad depredations about the following salient issue: how local Sunni Muslims, their erstwhile “neighbors,” not only aided and abetted ISIL, but were more responsible for killings, other atrocities, and expulsions than the “foreign” invading jihadists. For example, Sabah Hajji Hassan, a 68-year-old Yazidi, lamented,

The (non-Iraqi) jihadists were Afghans, Bosnians, Arabs and even Americans and British fighters. But the worst killings came from the people living among us, our (Sunni) Muslim neighbors. The Metwet, Khawata and Kejala tribes—they were all our neighbors. But they joined the IS [Islamic State; ISIL], took heavy weapons from them, and informed on who was Yazidi and who was not. Our neighbors made the IS takeover possible.

The Yazidi Hassan’s observations independently validated this prior, concordant assessment (video here) by Christian refugee from Mosul:

[Unnamed Christian refugee]: We left Mosul because ISIL came to the city. The [Sunni] people of Mosul embraced ISIS and drove the Christians out of the city. When ISIS entered Mosul, the people hailed them and drove out the Christians. Why did they expel just the Christians from Mosul? There are many sects in Mosul. Why just the Christians? This is nothing new. Even before, the Christians could not go anywhere. The Christians have faced threats of murder, kidnapping, jizya [deliberately humiliating “poll-tax,” per Koran 9:29, imposed upon non-Muslim Jews/Christians/Zoroastrians, vanquished by jihad, along with a slew of other “sacralized” debasing regulations] This is nothing new. […] I was told to leave Mosul. They said that this was a Muslim country, not a Christian one. I am being very honest. They said that this land belongs to Islam and that Christians should not live there.