RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/israel-back-to-the-future/91113/

The centenary that has just been marked of the San Remo Conference reminds us that, among other things, the statecraft that produced the State of Israel way predates the United Nations. It is a moment to grasp that in partitioning Palestine after World War II, the United Nations took a step back. And set the stage for the war against the Jews that has sizzled in the Middle East ever since.

This is beautifully sketched this week by famed law professor E.V. Kontorovich, writing in the Jerusalem Post. He suggests that the parley that took place at the end of April, 1920, at San Remo, Italy, is finally getting the attention it deserves. San Remo had been attended by the main victorious allies of World War I — Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. America, which had just rejected the League of Nations Treaty, was there as an observer.

“In San Remo,” Mr. Kontorovich writes, “the League of Nations decided to turn much of the former Ottoman Empire into new nation-states: Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan all emerged from this process, along with Israel.” He notes that none of those previously existed as states and that today “their legitimacy is unquestioned” because “they arose from the mandate process” of the League itself.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/israel-is-a-country-not-a-concept-opinion-626472

The State of Israel turned 72 on Wednesday, and what a peculiar birthday it was. If not for television and the Internet, it might have passed by unnoticed. Indeed, thanks to the coronavirus-spurred 27-hour curfew, the customary annual celebrations were void of participants, other than dignitaries delivering speeches and celebrities performing to venues filled with empty seats.

The sparse fireworks that were permitted in the end went off with more of a whisper than a bang. And anyone not fortunate enough to possess a balcony – or whose garden is secluded – missed out on the sense of solidarity that singing the national anthem on terraces around the nation provided.

As for the traditional barbecues, well, many took place with immediate family members, either indoors or on private patios. So, while the smell of charred meat wafting through the air was strong, the gatherings were subdued.

THIS IS NOT to say that the atmosphere was lacking in cheer, however. On the contrary, the weeks of virtual isolation leading up to the holiday, alongside the gradual reopening of shops that began a few days earlier, contributed to a sense of shared hardship on the one hand and budding optimism on the other. Nothing symbolized the latter better than the news that the beauty parlors were back in business.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/p-david-hornik/2020/04/29/israels-72nd-locked-down-independence-day-still-thriving-and-growing-n386797

As of Tuesday evening and Wednesday, Israel turns 72. But something—to paraphrase the Haggadah, the text that’s read for the Passover ceremony earlier in the spring—makes this Independence Day different from all others: we’re under a strict lockdown, the strictest yet since the COVID-19 era began.

Although, as in many other countries, restrictions are gradually being eased, today they’re back in full force because the government fears the effects of intermingling and, particularly, of large gatherings.

It means that, for this day, we’re not supposed to stray more than 100 meters from our homes. Even grocery stores are closed. The police have set up 44 roadblocks to prevent intercity travel. The usual public events are canceled.   

But one of the most popular of them—the annual flyby of air force planes—will happen on a smaller but still significant scale. As the military announced: “Four Efroni planes will fly over the country’s hospitals and salute the efforts of medical teams and the entire healthcare system, who are fighting the war against the coronavirus.”

Despite this mostly quiet, subdued Independence Day, there is—as in other years—much to celebrate. The annual demographic data are in from the Central Bureau of Statistics, and they’re distinctly upbeat.

https://www.jpost.com/judaism/jewish-holidays/what-does-a-jewish-state-mean-626097

A fundamental misunderstanding has dominated the discussion about this question. Does a Jewish state mean one that is run according to Halacha? Entangled in questions of interpretation and authority, the State of Israel struggles with this issue daily and in myriad ways. What is the place of secular, non-religious Jews? How can individual freedom be protected? Should there be a separation between shul and state?

The idea of a Jewish state is not about the role of Jewish law, a realm of rabbinic discourse, but about how a political structure can incorporate all of its constituent elements into a dynamic, organic whole. The function of a Jewish state is to provide by virtue of its sovereignty the basis of Jewish civilization, a context for Judaism to grow and develop, Jewish existence, a consciousness of what it means to be a Jew.

Jewish civilization and Jewish sovereignty

For Jews in Israel, the struggle to survive is often taken for granted. A fact of life that punches us with every terrorist attack, pounds with every anti-Jewish Arab riot and pains with condemnations by UN agencies and European Union diplomats. It’s nothing new; Jews have lived with persecution and the threat of extinction for millennia. It’s in our blood. We breathe our vulnerability, our eyes search for escape. Many assimilate and drop out, some join the perpetrators and turn on their own. And yet the fragile DNA of Jewish living persists.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/only-here/

As we heard our Jerusalem neighbors’ Sabbath prayers, I thought: we are locked down in the one place Jews would want to be locked dow

It sounded as if the voice was coming from the stones.

Every evening, as nightfall comes to Jerusalem, the buildings here, chameleon-like, change their colors. The streets in our neighborhood are quiet on Shabbat in any event, but lately, they’ve been almost ghostly, eerily silent. Nothing about the neighborhood has changed, but everything is different. So when Shabbat began the week before last, with that slightly golden tint coloring the buildings as the angle of the light shifted before the sun was gone, my wife and I stepped outside onto the terrace to breathe it all in.

We’d expected the usual quiet, the sound of little more than the birds and those proverbial Jerusalem cats. They were there, to be sure, but then, as we stared out over the railing towards the building next door and the street below, there was a voice. You could have mistaken it for the muezzin we often hear around here, bellowing from amplifiers and speakers in mosques closer to the Old City, but this was no muezzin. This was Hebrew.

We craned our necks, to no avail. We couldn’t see where it was coming from, but as the voice grew clearer, we quickly realized – it was Kabbalat Shabbat. From a porch somewhere, or from a window, maybe even a rooftop – who knows? – someone had taken it on himself, with all the synagogues shuttered, to gather together all the neighbors who couldn’t see (and maybe don’t even know) each other, to sing and to pray together. It was Shabbat in Jerusalem, after all. We were in isolation, whoever-he-was was saying, but we weren’t going to be isolated.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/israeli-memorial-day-mourning-in-masks-and-ikea-gate/

For the first time in the history of the Jewish state, mourners did not descend en masse upon the country’s 53 military cemeteries on Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. Instead, small ceremonies—with the president, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, and other soldiers and dignitaries wearing surgical masks—took place on Monday evening at the Western Wall and on Tuesday morning at the Mount Herzl national cemetery.

This was not by choice.

As was the case ahead of Passover and Holocaust Remembrance Day this month, the Israeli government—at the urging of the Health Ministry—imposed a ban on gatherings due to the fear of a spike in COVID-19 infections. To explain each such restriction, health officials pointed to the drastic increase in the number coronavirus patients who caught the disease during the Purim holiday on March 9-10.

In spite of widespread disappointment, most of the public was obedient. Many connected with family and friends virtually via the video conferencing app Zoom. Those among the more stringently Orthodox or less computer-literate remained removed and forced to celebrate, or grieve, on their own.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/applying-israeli-sovereignty-changing-the-when-not-the-what/

The presumption was that exchanges of “land for peace” would happen after an agreement with the Palestinians. But that left the timing up to them; if they didn’t agree, then it wouldn’t happen. And so far, it has not.

European Union foreign-policy chief Josip Borrell put forward a surprise resolution on Israel’s new government that included the following: “The E.U. does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank. The E.U. reiterates that any annexation would constitute a serious violation of international law.” But E.U. statements have to be unanimous, and Borrell was thwarted by members of his own club. The details aren’t clear yet, but Hungary and Austria were definitely opposed, and an Israeli diplomat noted that the largest number of E.U. delegates to date opposed a resolution aimed at Israel.

It was the second time Borrell made such a move, and the second time countries of the European Union opposed him. In February, Borrell had met with Iranian leaders and shortly thereafter tried to ram through a condemnation of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mideast peace plan. Of the 27 E.U. members, six refused, including Italy, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.

In an apparent “sop” to Israel, Borrell’s latest statement also said that the European Union is willing to continue cooperation with Israel on fighting the coronavirus. He appears to have been channeling Omar Barghouti, founder of the BDS movement, who blatantly compromised his anti-Semitic principles because Israel appears set to create something he wants to use. Barghouti said, “If Israel finds a cure for cancer, for example, or any other virus, then there is no problem in cooperating with Israel.” Borrell’s point is the same—the European Union will happily benefit from Israel’s medical and high-tech innovation, as well as use Israeli security mechanisms (including intelligence that has saved countless European lives by thwarting planned terrorist attacks). Nevertheless, criticism of Israel will be attached to everything it says.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15918/palestinians-virus-normalization

If Hamas is opposed to any form of cooperation with Israel, why does it continue to allow medical supplies to be transferred from Israel into the Gaza Strip on an almost weekly basis?… It was also revealed that the sister of senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzouk had been admitted to an Israeli hospital for two weeks for cancer treatments.

Yet, Hamas is now saying that the Palestinian “peace activists” who talked to Israelis through an online videoconference will face legal measures for their “crime.”

If Hamas does not want any contact with Israel, it should close the Gaza Strip border with Israel and refuse to medical supplies or truckloads of goods and fuel. If Hamas does not want any contact with Israel, it should stop sending family members of its leaders to receive medical treatment in Israel. If Hamas does not want any form of contact with Israel, it should stop sending Palestinian doctors to receive training from Israelis.

If and when the “peace activists” go on trial in the Gaza Strip, the international community and all those who describe themselves as pro-Palestinian advocates will have a golden opportunity to call out Hamas for its hypocrisy and lies. Failing to do so will directly facilitate the intimidation that Hamas and Palestinian extremists apply to anyone who seeks a better future for the Palestinians or peace with Israel.

Rami Aman, a Palestinian journalist and “peace activist,” has been under detention by Hamas since April 9 on charges of holding a videoconference chat with Israelis to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip and the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

Eyad al-Bozom, a spokesperson for the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Interior, said that Aman and other Palestinians who participated in the videoconference with the Israelis are suspected of “holding a normalization activity with the Israeli occupation via the internet.” According to al-Bozom, “holding any contact with the Israeli occupation is a crime punishable by law and a betrayal of our people and their sacrifices.”

The arrest of Aman and his friends surprised none of those familiar with Hamas’s repressive measures against the two million Palestinians living under its rule in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, the arrest of the “peace activists” is right in line with the Palestinian and Arab anti-normalization campaign that prohibits any form of contact between Palestinians and Israelis.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/this-yom-hazikaron-remembering-what-we-have-lost/

It is our task in the Diaspora to bridge the miles and other differences, and mourn along with our fellow Jews in Israel.

Israelis and Zionists around the world will mark Yom Hazikaron this year starting on the evening of April 27. Yom Hazikaron LeHalalei Ma’arakhot Israel ul’Nifge’ei Pe’ulot HaEivah, literally: Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel and Victims of Terrorism is Israel’s Memorial Day, and it is not celebrated with barbecues but with tears of ultimate grief. And as so many Israelis mourn for their precious fallen fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, and friends and comrades, it is not the same for Jews outside of Israel.

We may all mourn together on Tisha B’Av and during Yizkor on Yom Kippur, but tragically, it is not the same observing Yom Hazikaron inside the Jewish state as it is anywhere else.

It is our task in the Diaspora to bridge the miles and other differences, and mourn along with our fellow Jews in Israel.

One book to read that may assist you to feel the depth of the loss that so many Israelis feel on Yom Hazikaron is Letters to Talia.