RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/316151

“Colin Powell was at times accused of being less than sympathetic to Israel, [but] that was not at all the case,” former Defense Department official Dov Zakheim recently claimed in the Washington Jewish Week newspaper. But a careful examination of Powell’s record shows that friends of Israel in the U.S. had legitimate concerns.

The well-known anecdotes about Powell speaking some Yiddish and serving as a “Shabbos goy” as a teenager are heartwarming. It’s too bad that this seems unrelated to interactions with Israel.

It was Powell who pressured Israel not to respond to Saddam Hussein’s Scud missile attacks during the Gulf War. As missile after missile struck the heart of Israel, as more than 4,000 buildings were damaged and 74 Israelis were killed, Israel’s hands were tied by Powell’s pressure.

In April 2001, Palestinian Arab terrorists in Gaza fired hundreds of rockets at Israeli kindergartens and kibbutzim. Israel hit back at the terrorists. Powell’s response? He publicly denounced Israel’s response as “excessive and disproportionate.”

Abraham Foxman, the longtime national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said Powell’s harsh criticism of Israel was an “overreaction” and “an erroneous judgment about the Israeli action.” Malcolm Hoenlein, executive Vice President of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said Powell’s language “was inappropriate and subject to distortion by the media.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/11/commemorating_the_balfour_declaration_.html

Before World War I, the area of Palestine was a region of the Ottoman Empire with a small Jewish population. After the start of World War I, the British government began considering changes in the Ottoman Empire, the sick man of Europe, which had entered the war on the side of Germany and the Central Powers in October 1914. Among other proposals, Prime Minister David Lloyd George favored partition of the empire. In the Middle East, the last generally recognized sovereign power was the empire, and the area of Palestine was a district, not a political entity.

The Balfour Declaration was not a declaration but a letter of November 2, 1917, written by Scottish-born Arthur Balfour, former prime minister and foreign secretary, to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community.  Balfour, who was raised as a Protestant in the evangelical tradition, had been a friend of Chaim Weizmann, the most important Jewish personality of his day,  since 1906 when they opposed the Russian pogroms.   The Balfour letter was the result of prolonged discussion in the British cabinet and with Zionist leaders, and the subject of several drafts of the letter. Various individuals have been suggested as the primary author, including Lord Milner and Leopold Amery, but there is no definitely acknowledged single writer.

The declaration stated that “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.”   In the statement, two factors are clearly understood: nothing should be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

The declaration gave rise to conflicting emotions: Jewish hopes and Arab disappointments. Lord Rothschild remarked that “for the first time since the dispersion, the Jewish people have received their proper status by the declaration of one of the great powers.”

The declaration was the first public support for Zionism by a major political power since Cyrus, the Persian king who liberated the Jews from their Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/jewish-academics-promote-binationalism-in-place-of-israel/

The annual convention of the Association for Jewish Studies on Dec. 19 will feature “Binationalism Revisited‒Palestinian, Zionist and Jewish-American Perspectives.” A snapshot of panelists speaks volumes.

The premier association of Jewish-studies scholars is planning to provide a platform in December for radical professors to promote “binationalism” to replace Israel.

Binationalism has a long and ugly history in the Jewish world. When Palestinian Arabs slaughtered 69 Jews in Hebron in 1929, Hebrew University chancellor Judah Leon Magnes responded that Jews should give up the dream of a Jewish state and instead agree to a “binational” Arab-Jewish state of Palestine.

According to the Magnes plan, Jews would never be a majority in their own homeland. Immigration would depend on the consent of Palestinian Arab pogromists like the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Of course, like all Jewish “peace” proposals over the years, Arab leaders unanimously rejected the Magnes scheme. The idea of even a small number of Jews being admitted to the Land of Israel was unthinkable to them.

But the fact that there was no Arab partner didn’t stop Magnes and his tiny band of followers from continuing to advocate binationalism. Even after the rise of Hitler, when the lives of millions of European Jews depended on finding a haven, Magnes continued pushing a plan which, in practice, would have left most Jews trapped in Europe.

The term “tone deaf” does not even begin to describe a man who was so utterly out of touch with the needs of his people that he was ready to deny most of them shelter in their most desperate hour.

That’s why binationalism vanished in disgrace from the Jewish public conversation decades ago. At the time, it would have been a disaster for the Jewish people. Today, it would mean the dissolution of Israel.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/is-americas-visa-waiver-carrot-a-stick-in-disguise-opinion-683395

The statement on Tuesday by US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorka that Israel is among four countries being considered for inclusion in the US State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs visa-waiver program has led more than a few would-be travelers to say they will believe it when they see it.

Whether the other three – Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania – are equally weary of having that particular privilege dangled in front of them every few years is unclear. One thing is certain, though: Israelis of all socioeconomic backgrounds are afflicted with wanderlust and take every opportunity to flit around the globe, whether or not they can afford to do so.

This tendency has always been a source of curiosity on the part of foreigners, many of whom rarely or never venture beyond their own shores. Americans are often shocked to encounter Israelis who have crossed the US, coast to coast, returning with photoshoots from every national landmark, from the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas to Disneyworld.

The desperation to fly somewhere – anywhere – has been especially noteworthy during the pandemic, when air travel is such a nuisance. Deciphering the coronavirus regulations for exiting and reentering alone would seem to be a sufficient deterrent. Yet it has not been one.

On the contrary, Israelis of all stripes are pouncing on plane tickets for low-cost stints in an Airbnb or luxurious vacationing at five-star hotels in every location imaginable.
Claustrophobia could have something to do with it. Living in a state that can be traversed by car from North to South in six hours, and east to west in less than two, might have that effect. Coupled with the closures and quarantines that came with the onset of COVID-19, the sense of being cooped up became magnified.

October 28, 2021  —  Conference of Jewish Affairs spokesman, Rabbi Aryeh Spero, issued the following statement today:

“All friends of Israel and historic truth should be horrified by the recent betrayal of Israel by the Biden administration insisting on creating an American consulate for Palestinian Arabs in the city of Jerusalem.  Inasmuch as the United States already has its embassy in Jerusalem, the formation of a special American consulate indicates that the Biden administration plans to make Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian Arab state.  

“It is unheard of for a foreign country to designate the capital of a particular nation as a future capital of another country. It is also the height of audacity to disrespectfully communicate to an existing country that an outside force plans to usurp its capital and hand it over to an aggressor. The Biden administration has gone beyond any norm of respect and civility by insisting that the Palestinian Arabs have an official consulate in both East and West Jerusalem.

Rabbi Spero stated, “The Biden administration’s insistence on this scheme displays a handwriting on the wall that it has already determined the outcome of negotiations before they have been negotiated, to wit, that there will be a Palestinian Arab state with Jerusalem as its capital and, God forbid, the expulsion of the Jewish State from the Old City of Jerusalem.