Rechavia Berman – GangstaYid

Horny Gods, Horny Prophets

Posted by: on: April 28, 2013

  • In: Judaism
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The Minister of Education and the God of Mt. Nevo

Not a political post

FML. By the time you get inspired enough to write an actual, old school, longer than 140 character post (rather than lob the quick gist out there and engage in back and forth all day as you develop the idea with someone or someones among a first circle of over a thousand), you’z inspired enough to write about a million different things. These can only all fit not-annoyingly in a painfully constructed custom made grab-bag, if at all. So we’re not gonna do that.

As you may or may have not noticed, I have kinda resigned as a functioning political blogger. Why have I quit? This is due to a sense that Alea Jacta Est and what the fuck’s the point and there aren’t even close-to-maybe-not-really-enough-people-on-either-side who see things clearly1 for there to be any chance of changing the current crash trajectory. That said, I may have enough muse left in coming days to to touch on current events too in a totally separate post, just cause sometimes you can’t keep your mouth shut regardless of whether there’s anyone listening. But that’s not why we’re here right now. This here’s a linguist-historical-academic post.

So, my sister-of-choice, wisest and most venerable of priestesses to Goddess Bast, i.e Dena Bugel @Shunracat (you should follow her. Fascinating eclectic feed) – she’s studying ancient Mesopotamian history right now (with an emphasis on ancient textile materials, yarns and twine and such – that’s not the important part. Ancient Mesopotamia is. Deep ancient. Not the Babylonians who conquered Jerusalem. 1500+ years before that.

Now, Dena is my sister as in I’m her brother from another mother (and-father). I would die for her (and by extension her immediate loved ones) and anyone that says any impolite shit to or about her (debate her fiercely, just be notified) will be banned from my blog and any social media I have. Because I said so.

However, sis and I – for all that many would consider us “fellow travelers” in politics, and we think alike in some ways cause we’re both members of a professional/neurological-tic group called “translators” –we really do not always see eye to eye, be it on the bic picture or the many side alley stories. In addition to that, she is more given than I am to conspiracy theories in general and those that undermine Zionist or current official Jewish narratives in particular – and I ain’t shy about either myself. With me so far?

So sis says to me she made a discovery. I know from whatever in the when and how she said it she means linguisto-sleuthing. So she says, the word prophet (this whole conversation takes place 95% in Hebrew, in which prophet is “navi”  (nun-bet-yod-alef) – where do you reckon it comes from?

I say: “The (pretty much identical modern and ancient Hebrew) root “come” (and by extension “bring”) – bo (bet-vav-[silent]alef). He’s the one who brings the word of god.

Says she: “One would think that, right? But no.” Before I have a chance to begin suspecting this is an idea unfounded by anything outside her own surmise, she quickly adds that she has two quotes, both by Primary and quite definitive Hebrew lexicographer Avraham Even-Shoshan, as in the dude who if you EVER read a Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary, odds are it’s his; a guy who even if you point out he lived and wrote dictionaries before a bunch of recent archeological finds, had no bias whatsoever against Zionism and definitely not against Judaism, unlike many of us :-).

So, the word Navi, according to the Merriam and Webster of modern Hebrew dictionaries, comes from the words navu/nevo/nabu in Chaldean (Casdite) and Sumerian. These are words for “read/reader/reading” and –this is the important bit – these words in turn come from the name of Nabu, the god of reading and wisdom. King of Gods Marduk’s personal scribe-god in the pantheon. Not Zeus, but like Apollo. A major god.

So far fascinating if you’re into history AND language, but doesn’t prove any new meta-insight to me. True, Nabu is mentioned and found in sculpture prominently as late as the very end of the 2nd Babylonian empire (just think of those kings and their chief ministers: Nebu-chadnezzer, Nebu-zadran, etc);

But Nabu lived long and started waaaay before that, being fully formed in mention as early as around 2,000 BCE. That’s some 100 years at least before common chronology puts Abraham, and some 500-800 years before anyone puts Moses and his fully-formed-or-not Torah.

(explanation of the above graph. Feel free to skip to the next one if you choose).

Whether or not you buy jack shit of what the bible has to say about any aspect of events, by the 10th century BCE, which is to say around 1,000 BCE, there begins to emerge an undeniable, slightly yet significantly distinct culture in what is modern-day Israel/Palestine. This culture is referred to in research as Israelite. By that time Nabu had been around as the god of wisdom of the wisest cultures around for at least 1,000 years. So it is entirely possible that by the time the Israelites are proven to have existed, which is to say after 1000 BCE for certain and by some indication at least in some part(s) of the land as early as around 1200 BCE, The notion of Nabu and his name’s connection to the very concepts of writing, knowledge (and by extension, foreknowledge and concentrated knowledge) was so cemented in the language of the entire region that it was unavoidable regardless of the pagan origin for the word not be used for a prophet. Even by the Jeohava-centric and pagan-detesting bible.

To sum up to here: It sounds a lot like another episode in the “Dena thinks she has something, I see what she thinks she sees but don’t see any real evidence for it.” It’s not.

The twist takes us on a lil detour to early 16th century Florence, and a highly successful artisan, prone to throwing tantrums at his very rich and powerful patrons, who turned out to be the most influential figure in Western art history.

The double-barreled dynamo known to his intimates as Micky (well michele [mi-ke-le] if you wanna be show-your-work about it) still has a few top 10 hits, including a ceiling he painted at this chapel and a couple of very famous statues, one of which is of Moses. You know, the one with the horns?

Now, folks who know about this stuff tend to attribute the horns, with a snort of derision, to late-medieval European ignorance, in this case a mistranslation of the Hebrew “karnu panav”, which means “his face radiated” rather than “his face grew horns”, even though the two meanings share an identical root and are obviously related on the visual imagery level.

So while you’re beginning to catch the drift, it’s important to make clear: It’s entirely possible that the reason for the horns WAS a funny Christian misreading of Hebrew and not the following you’re about to read. But be that as it may, we’re about to see that there may be a very real, vital-at-the-time reason to sculpt Moses with horns.

Remember the god Nabu? God of reading and wisdom, from whom the “Nabi” or “Navi” – i.e. prophet – receives wisdom and special knowledge? So guess what Mr. Nabu Deus looks like in the statues and engravings we have of him. Yup. He has horns. Not rendered rays of light or even power shining from his face. Horns. Physical growths from the cranium.Like so or so and also so.

So what did “Karnu Panav” mean to the first folks rendered this story into writing – his face radiated (non mass energy) or his face literally grew horns as he became like onto Nabu. And even if we accept it really meant radiated from the very first (with a solid case as it happens. Some of the most ancient examples Jewish art show renditions of a [relatively abstract] Moses figure with rays coming out of his head, more like pictures of saints and Jesus in Christianity than like Nabu and his budding antlers. Also, various biblical verbal imagery likens the presence/attention/will of Jehovah to the sun, sunlight, sun rays, etc.) , That still leaves us with a wording designed inescapably to make us – and much more so, a person of the ancient fertile crescent – think of horns and an inescapably famous (pagan!!) god whose effect produces horns. In addition to, or instead of, making us think about Jehovah, who is not rendered or painted or engraved of sculpted in anything rightly called Jewish art. That’s a big, fundamental, difference-from-all-the-rest kinda thing Judaism is known for. #2 with a bullet on the .OG Top10 list.

Now, the Hebrew version has a bit here about the worship of Pagan gods alongside and/or in place of Jehovah in post-Moses biblical narrative. If you want I’ll get into that in the comments section (do stop by there on your way out, if only to say “It was interesting enough to make it all the way here”). For now we’ll end this first of two insights with the fact that the mountain where Moses died is called Mount NEVO. It is spelled with the exact same letters (though different vowel signs, but same letters) as Nabu in short-spell writing.

And to truly wrap up the Nevo-Nabu-Navi-Moses segment, a word from her most revered feline-ness who made the original find that got the ball rolling:

“What I’m saying is that the tension [in the biblical narrative]between prophets [who tend towards a sort of universal humanism] and the priests [kohanim, cohens], who are more into the jealous, exclusive, intolerant of any whiff of otherness aspect of Jehovah, can be explained by a latent universal sociological tension between prophets [charismatic, deriving power from random and time-specific personal experience of the divine, have to prove themselves true by personal success {miracle, true foretelling of events}] and priests [hierarchical, deriving power from set ritual and organizational continuation and procedure, do not have to prove themselves personally, and maintain power by serving and fortifying the organization that say that each of them as an individual has special powers and privileges and must be listened to, in whatever degree according to spelled-out rank].

This, Dear Dena points as she signs off, makes the whole thing both more and less consp-feeling at the same time. Which in geek-speak means it’s as much fun as a coupla cats with a flashy light ball o’yarn.

Going on to a somewhat unrelated but totally in the same ballpark kinda thing: Another great rabbi of the female side, the most amazing woman on earth who happens to be the mother of my children, heard about alla the above over Friday dinner (Christian readers: read Sunday family dinner), mulled it over with me some and then threw a similar curveball of her own, not dictionary-backed as of yet but blindingly obvious as true when you know the back-story

Y’all ever heard of the Metatron, be ye from synagogue, church or jum3a oriented cultures? Kevin Smith fans? If so, skip this link. If not, read the link.

Long story short:

The Metatron, who is a type of Prometheus (giver of divine basic knowledge to mortals) and also akin to Moses in his very early career, is Enoch, son of Yered (Anglophone-change alert: That’s where you all get “Jared” from, I believe.) Genesis 5:18-24.

In the original Hebrew the name is Chanoch (and who knows what it was in a pre-Hebrew, way-pre-Israelite Mesopotamian predecessor). What makes him unique among the many antediluvian people mentioned in Genesis is simple: Like Elijah the prophet thousands of years later, he was born like any hiuman and unlike elijah had progeny, but he never died. He was taken up to heaven without dying and given a gig in the immortal scheme of things, making him an immortal member of the heavenly host, the guys generally referred to as “angels”, although unlike almost all other angels, mortal-born.

Metatron is significant in Jewish mysticism no less than he is in The “Dogma”-inspiring Christian variety, but it’s more low key in Judaism, though equally accepted as true by believing scholars of both religions (He’s in Islam too. A primordial deity/deified culture hero powerful enough to remain, with name intact AND mortal biography and same general post-mortal job description and career history, through all the languages and empires and religious upheavals, with the requisite variation according to which kind of cleric is telling you the story behind the scripture.

So, the big insight, yeah? In Hebrew, the ,main word for education, from at least the time of the writing of Proverbs and on, is chinuch. Chanoch → Chinuch.

If you speak Hebrew and know the whole extra-biblical sory of Chanoch, this is a big “Oh man that makes perfect obviously true sense” moment. That’s the woman who loves me thought about that. And she be a babe too. Eat y’alls heart out.

Oh, and just to really tie the two segments together, like The Dude’s rug, Check it:

Metatron’s primary function (at least in Judaism, which is linguistically relevant, and  contrary to portrayal in “Dogma” ), is not really as God’s full time, primary “voice”, or herald, that is, repeater of divine knowledge by sound, but his scribe, recorder and repeater of divine knowledge by written words. And naturally he’s the one who taught humans writing, among other similar “secrets from heaven.”

And the god Nabu? He’s the scribe of Marduk, King of the Mesopotamian pantheon (Think Zeus/Jupiter). Like Hermes has a specific job in the Olympus as the messenger of the gods, in addition to “patron god of [commerce, tricks, deceit, misdirection, clever ploys etc. kinda like the Norse Loki only that’s not his all-consuming aspect])’. Nabu is also patron god of this and that like any other god, but in addition has a day job. He is depicted sitting like a scribe in a mortal king’s palace – closest to (much lower than, obviously), the heavenly king, same thing as Chanoch the Metatron (meta-tron in Greek – meta you know and tron is instrument, tool). be it Jehovah or Marduk.

Ya dig? If so, give your grapho-maniac host and humble narrator some love down below. Most obliged.

Like I said, I can’t promise that there’ll be a current events post too, seeing my past year or so’s rate, but I’mma give it a try, I think. No friggin neder.

Oh, someone donated after the last post and that behooves acknowledgment. Bolshoi spasiba, droog.

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1. And for the record though both sides are being stupid, Israel has the power  and is being the more stubborn and is inflicting MUCH more day-in-day-out friction (and more casualties, needless to say, merely by being the much bigger gun in the fight, regardles of right/wrong, wise/stupid.

 

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Vote2013IL – The Rise of the Empty Suit

Posted by: on: January 25, 2013

  • In: Israeli politics
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The first, and most important thing to understand about the Israeli elections just concluded this week is that, big picture-wise, they simply do not matter. Israel has consciously or subconsciously decided to miss the window of opportunity for the so-called two-state solution. Anyone who believes that Yair Lapid will truly insist on meaningful negotiations with the emasculated Mahmoud Abbas, beleaguered head of the Palestinian Authority, is suffering from a severe case of the wishful thinkies and lack of familiarity with the subject matter.

Lapid is a man who, by his own admission, puts blind trust in the judgment of the security establishment. Unlike the “Attack Iran” issue, where the security establishment presented a principled and determined opposition to the delusions of grandeur entertained by the PM and Minister of Defense, in the case of the occupation there is little to compare. The decided majority of the vectors that make up the position of the IDF and other security forces do not want to end the occupation (neither the obvious one in the West Bank or the aggressive-”passive” one in the Gaza Strip), since by now almost all of Israel’s security apparatus lives for and is geared around the maintenance of this situation. While stopping the Gaza blockade wouldn’t be a serious momentum change, withdrawing ALL troops west of the Green Line (or at least west of the security fence) would force the IDF and Border Patrol to change everything about the way they operate, from the location of bases and installations to most operating procedures. No organization is eager for such change, least of all one built on the application of force as a sole solution to any challenge.

So whether the government will be built on the triple axis of Netanyahu-Lapid-Bennet (with some table crumbs given to another party or two just to make it look more stable and inclusive) or whether Lapid insists on something Bibi refuses to give him, forcing the PM to stick with a narrow government made up solely of his “natural allies” – the orthodox of both stripes and the national religious, or in short the forces of occupation and reactionary thought – little in actual policy is expected to change. Bibi himself would have little problem taking this option and leaving the rising newcomer in the cold, but he has made himself so disagreeable to the vast majority of major international players (with all due respect to Micronesia and even the ever-cool Czech Republic) that he will not be able to survive his usual squirm routine on the international stage while beholden to such a coalition. Lapid, the man in the empty suit, becomes the invaluable camouflage for Mr. Netanyahu’s plan for the new term: More of the same.

Unlike the case of the “peace process” facade, Economically, of course, there won’t even be much need to throw sand in Lapid’s eyes. All three members of the axis are what we in Israel call “porcine capitalists”. On the one hand, Lapid’s victory does represent a showing of force by the politically amorphous tens and hundreds of thousands that made J14 the earthquake it briefly was. However, being politically amorphous, most of these didn’t empower political forces that will truly work for the stated goals of that civic uprising. Inasmuch as Lapid himself is concerned, as well as part of his top Knesset Members (such as former Shin-Bet chief and well-compensated CEO Ya’acov Perry), nothing could be further from their own economic inclinations than the radical re-distribution of publicly-held assets demanded by the protesters. When push came to shove, right at the start of the campaign, to support or resist the blatant giveaway of ILS 27b (yeah, billion), back to corporations in the form of accrued tax breaks for re-investment in Israel despite the fact that they didn’t in fact re-invest – Lapid took the (wrong) position that this (simply enforcing a very straightforward quid-pro-quo) would constitute retro-active punitive legislation. Somehow Lapid’s principles and the short-term interests of the “haves” always seem to coincide.

A word on Lapid: even the infinite space of the Internet might not suffice to compile all the evidence that Lapid is an empty suit. He regularly uses phrases and quotes in ways that illustrate that he does not understand them. Just one example for kicks – he once tried to school his readers on the Gettysburg Address, and had Lincoln talking about the “four fathers” of the United States (four-score and seven years ago, our…yup. Four fathers). And this is a man who passes in Israeli media as an expert on Americana…

His logical absurdities are a matter of legend, and his sticky, saccharine-laden life-long quest to define the essence of “What is Israeli” is a fascinating study in unselfconscious white privilege. His insistence on denying the benefit of being his father’s son to getting where he got is comical, and for all his pretense of being a straight-shooter, his campaign spent an inordinate amount of time deleting and blocking the questions of anyone who threatened to stump the new messiah. The fact that such a man controls such a large portion of the legislature (with a very empowering party rulebook he wrote himself, which basically guarantees him the top spot till 2020), is disconcerting to say the least, but is expected to provide ample hilarity nonetheless.

It is hard sometimes to explain to outsiders the degree in which the doublespeak necessary for maintaining a dual existence (pseudo-democracy west of an imaginary line, outright apartheid occupation east of it) has corrupted political discourse in Israel. This corrupting effect manifests even far away from the topic of occupation. For instance: These elections were called, several months before the end of the Knesset’s term, because Bibi couldn’t get his own cabinet and coalition to sign off on his proposed bi-annual budget. The reason for this failure by the coalition partners may seem technical at first: They couldn’t in good faith sign off on the budget because they weren’t allowed to actually see it.

So, the PM, previously thought to be coasting safely to re-election on his own terms, with a very stable coalition, suddenly has to call early elections because he wants to pass a budget so bad, he wants his partners to accept it sight-unseen, before they get to say “Um, dude, we DO have to get re-elected too.”

Happens, right? Budgets are a main source of political contention and it is only natural that they play a prominent part in the demise of ruling coalitions. Budgets are what politics is all about – the means by which the various dog packs arrange the tearing of the carcass of public resources.

What is unnatural is that this played very little part in the campaign. There was talk about the cost of living, and big election loser Shelly Yechimovich’s vage “It Can Be Better Here” campaign, but the fact that the PM tried to force through a set of god-only-knows-what cuts on essential services, is going to elections for it and still won’t tell anybody what’s in it – that was not mentioned. (Added: Nor did the revelation of the huge national deficit – a full percent more of the GDP, and close to 50 billion shekels – rock the campaign as it should have. Then again, maybe that accounts for Lapid’s last-week surge. He did, after all, run on a “where’s the money” slogan.)

Then again, it was a very odd campaign. There was very little buzz in the streets, very few support signs hanging from porches and windows. Only in the last week was there a sense of action on the street. Israelis, although always cynical about politics, have always been equally fervent about it. Even though the voting rate has been declining for a couple of decades now, in every previous elections there was a sense of to-do throughout the campaign. Not so this time. Many will say the action was simply contained within the virtual sphere where candidates and parties spent most of their efforts. I will make so bold as to paraphrase the great Neil Gaiman and say that for all the wonders of our zeroes and ones, we are still of this world, and victories that don’t take place in the real world aren’t as real. Then again, the polling box is very real, and it has spoken for now.

So expect cosmetic change in Israel’s conduct in its occupied territories and vis-a-vis the world, and tyranny-of-the-majority application of porcine capitalism, shrouded by vast-seeming but empty project launches. Lapid and his Knesset Members and his voters all realize the dangers of becoming a true international pariah. However, Lapid is too beholden to a tough-guy style of Israeli posture to insist on, or even demand true changes in the way we approach the rest of the world. Lapid believes that all Israel needs to do is insist, and the Palestinians will relinquish their demands for East Jerusalem – just as they have accepted that there will be no significant realization of the “right of return”. The arrogance of this notion is of course telling in many ways, but it also leads us to the question “what IS Jerusalem, or East Jerusalem for that matter?”

That’s a whole ‘nother ball o’wax, but we’ll do Lapid the justice of providing his own answer to the matter: The Tower of David. Shrewd way of saying “The Old City within the walls” without being overly religious about it. It’s about the history, ya see. Twenty years ago, even 15, Israel could have kept sovereignty of the old city (with special arrangements) and every single neighborhood east of the Green Line already built at that time, had it put a willingness to relinquish all other Palestinian neighborhoods and villages in the huge area designated by Israel as “Jerusalem” on the table (and solved the other issues and finalized a deal).

Now? Not so fast. However, if Lapid is willing to say that, and say that in return for insisting on what’s within the walls he’s willing to give up places like Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, Issawiya and others (which are also of immense historical and “heritage” value, and where settlers are forcing out residents of many years in an attempt to create a Jewish-majority circle around the walls) – that would be progress. Stopping the ethnic cleansing of the Jordan Valley would be nice, too. I still think it would be like performing CPR on a corpse, but if one is really committed to the two-state solution that would be the way to go about it. And of course, those injustices need to stop no matter which jackoff holds which very impressive title.

But they won’t. The truly decisive factor in this next Knesset is how Chief Big Torch’s 18 new Indians will behave. Some of them are excellent people, like sports and military analyst Ofer Shelach, activist Karin Elharar, Prof. Ruth Calderon and others. A few are known douchebags like the aforementioned Perry and former Student Council head Boaz Toporovsky. Most are rather unknown and the big question is how many of them will sit back and bask in the importance and benefits of a one-and-done turn on the national stage whole Bibi and Yair smoke cigars and drink whiskey as they continue to enrich the rich and drag on the farce of a peace process. Other questions to watch: How loud will the unhinged fringes of both Likud and Jewish Home be, and how vindictive will the 14 Labor MK’s be towards their failed general Shelly. Your guess is as good as mine, but when I find out I’ll let ya know.

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But Where Is Bibi’s Bomb?

Posted by: on: October 2, 2012

 

Once the ripples of laughter had died down from the smash success of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Road Runner special reboot production, It was only a matter of time till the question begged itself: Why would Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office run the obvious risk of ridicule in order to make its point in this way? By “in this way” I mean that even as we accept the wisdom that says “Hey, he got it talked about”, we must also accept upon further reflection that a less ludicrous choice of prop would still have had  a theatrical effect and gotten  mentioned – without any of the weakening of one’s message. You know – the weakening that comes from being openly declared ridiculous, and from subconsciously rendering your deathly-serious topic synonymous with cartoon connotations.

Bibi’s staff is stuffed with American backgrounds (in addition to his own). It is utterly impossible that no one there heard “beep-beep! Vrooooom!” in their minds as soon as they saw what the boss was schlepping to the big speech. I know his office is all kindsa dysfunctional, but I doubt it’s to  the point where no-one can say anything about something like this. So they knew the risk and decided to go ahead with it.

Then why? What was so important that the Prime Minister’s office was willing to not only endure a shit storm of scorn but purposely create it? Not the Iran thing. We’ve already disproved that. Give up? Look in the Negev, the south of Israel. No, not our own non-NPT-participatin’ nuclear facilities. A bit west of there. A place currently named Umm al-Hiran.

My homie and top notch journalist Noam Sheizaf already cooked the story down to the lean bare nitty, so read that and come back for a sec.

Back? Those of you that are just about facts and analysis have my blessing to bail here and spread the word. For those that want my take as well, I’mma be brief:

Any adult who moves into any sort of settlement built on the ruins of the village of Umm Hiran is a legit target for reprisal by force. Yes I’m talking about the dread, naughty, oh my we must never “take the law into our own hands”. I’m not talking about the law. I’m talking about JUSTICE. It’s the law that’s doing this evil thing. And no, just because the king takes the poor man’s ewe – a second time, for fuck’s sake – doesn’t make it right. All you bible-thumpin’ ardent Zionists should take a note there. (2nd Samuel, 12:3, in case you need it. )

Once again: ANYBODY participating in this theft, whether as propagator, executioner or beneficiary and recipient of stolen goods is a legitimate target for reprisal. Those that want to be angels have my utmost respect, but I’m talking of mere humans here. It’s not a threat, either, but merely a prediction and a statement of simple morals. I wish I could say promise I’d fight alongside the Abu al-Qian clan when the dozers come. Chances are I won’t be there, but I’d argue to exonorate anyone charged with anything less than causing permanent disability or death in reprisal of this.

Yeah, I said it. Charge me with incitement, motherfuckers. I double dare you.

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Willard The Dullard and The Glorified Numbers-Runner That Could

Posted by: on: August 6, 2012

Oh Mitten, kitten, what ARE we gonna do with ya? More on that in just a sec, but never mind that right now! Kind words were bestowed upon a certain book faithful readers of this irregular fine and friendly feature may have heard of. It may have taken a few weeks for the first review to clear the bowels of a large media organ, but we couldn’t have hoped for a better one.

“Skewering [Israeli] policy with moral clarity and discomfiting honesty”

“[Israeli Dissidents] offers plenty for more keyed-in readers. […] many of the articles are well-researched, magazine-length pieces of hard-hitting journalism — usually providing far more detail than the mainstream media.”

“Idan Landau’s article on the troubling relationship between the US military industrial complex and aid to Israel is a must-read for anyone interested in the international dynamics that fund the violence here.”

“Landau’s articles on Israeli policies in East Jerusalem’s Silwan and the Jordan Valley are illuminating and incisive condemnations of the occupation’s bureaucracy that will surely leave its apologists speechless.”

There’s more, but my readers be quick on the uptake so y’all get the drift by now. Mightily pleased, although I am willing to lay good money that the one about typical snarky blog posts was directed at someone I know from around the way in the mirror… but I don’t care. As long as Idan’s work gets credit, and the rest of the authors are favorably mentioned, I’z a happy trooper.

So read the whole thing, then read the book if ya haven’t already, and see if you agree with the kind Mr. Davis, whom you should follow for informed ME stuff and general intereting-ness (Yeah it’s a word. I just said it.)

Sales spiked, btw, after the review, but we need more coverage. If you work for a media organ with serious reach or have a following of sufficient size and think the book deserves exposure, please do what you can, and the blessings of the Goddess be with you.

But enough about Israeli Dissidents and its glorious march for now, and let us turn our eyes to the pilgrim’s progress. By now you’ve all heard about the Romney camp’s trifecta of gaffes in England, Poland and the Holy Land. But for those of you who rely solely on me for incisive commentary (bad choice btw. Always vary your intel), I will repeat some of the salient points about the erroneous and offensive remarks Dullard made, mention a the leading explanations for them and offer one I haven’t seen elsewhere as of yet.

Willard, as you may recall (that’s his actual name. Mitt is a middle name), unburdened himself of a certain, um, deterministic worldview, if not a an outright bigoted one, when he said that

“I was thinking this morning as I prepared to come into this room of a discussion I had across the country in the United States about my perceptions about differences between countries. And as you come here and you see the GDP per capita for instance in Israel which is about 21,000 dollars and you compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority which is more like 10,000 dollars per capita you notice a dramatic, stark difference in economic vitality. And that is also between other countries that are near or next to each other. Chile and Ecuador, Mexico and the United States. […]

[Romney then alluded to a point made in “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” a book by former Harvard professor David S. Landes:]

“Culture makes all the difference. And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things. One, I recognize the hand of providence in selecting this place.”

Let’s parse this, shall we?

The standard bearer of the Republican party, when asked (by himself) to name the two key causes for the economic disparity between Israel and its occupied Paltustanian Authority, names “culture”, and “Providence”

So:

  1. The reason Israelis enjoy a higher standard of living is that they have the more success-oriented culture, and
  2. God likes them better.
    .
    Now, just to set the record straight, and withholding my usual invective, this pitifully simplistic analysis omits a few key elements:1) Israel controls all of the Palestinian territories. The sham of the Oslo-era A, B and C territories notwithstanding. Israel controls everything that goes in or out of “Palestine” and levies a hefty price for allowing things through. Where imports from Arab countries  (which don’t have trade with Israel but will gladly sell to Palestinians) might adversely impact sales by Israeli manufacturers, they are seldom allowed. Security, you see. Just an example.
    2) Israel controls ALL of the resources of “Palestine” – be they mineral or ethereal. Israel controls the airspace, the frequencies, the bandwith, etc. All that invisible stuff necessary for progress these days.
    3) This deserves its own entry: The WATER (which, even when pumped from under Palestinian land, costs a Palestinian 20 times as much as an Israeli.) Israeli and Palestinian have neighboring enterprises, equally dependent on water. Which of them will more easily turn a profit? The one with the superior (kleptocratic) culture, of course! Not even going into the intentional dehydration of entire areas of “Palestine”. Just on the economic competitive level.
    4) In fact, Israel controls the very soil. Israel operates almost all the quarries, and 94% of the soil and rock quarried in “Palestine” is used in Israel or in the settlements. (Israel’s vaunted beacon-of-the-rule-of-law High Court ruled this perfectly OK, since the Palestinian economy benefits by Palestinians working in the quarries). 

    I mean, just look at all the construction on this side, and over there (as Jon Stewart’s correspondent put it so well) they just choose to live in rubble! Clear case of culture inferiority. Nothing to be done about it

    We’ll stop here, though there is of course much more.     It’s amazing how when you control everything and anything a people do, make them pay 20 times more for their own water, systematically displace significant little chunks of them all the time, and don’t even let them use their own rocks and dirt for construction – those people suddenly don’t seem to have the right “culture” to compete.

     

     

     

     

     

So no, Governor. It’s not all about culture, unless by “culture” you mean rank, vicious, fanatically-inspired colonialism. In fact, if that 10K GNP number wasn’t inflated by donations, it would represent a WILD success under the circumstances. Just as Israel’s Olympic athletes are mostly HUGELY successful when you factor in how little is invested in them. Israel ranks in the absolute cellar of investment in sports per GDP. In the entire world. Countries as developed as New Zealand and as troubled as Zimbabwe invest more. For an Israeli to make an Olympic swimming final means that had his parents relocated to ANY first world country, he would have undoubtedly (barring seriously bad luck absent from the Israeli iteration) had  a medal. For an Israeli to win Bronze is a sure gold for the exact same talent in any OECD country and quite a few more. A GNP/GDP of $10K under the utterly kleptocratic occupation would be astonishing.

Even as it is, there is nothing to worry about the Palestinian “culture” when it comes to making money. Palestinians, and my friends of that nation will forgive me if I mention this, are admiringly / disparagingly known as “The Jews of the Arab World”. Their business acumen built the Gulf countries. Palestinian Hi-Tech, while not as dominant as Israel’s (much of Israel’s Hi-Tech juggernaut is militarily-fueled, btw),is quite nimble, inventive and altogether admirable – especially when it has to operate under uncertain power supplies, at times. Governor Romney would know that had he bothered to make an even perfunctory visit 10 miles away.

So why did Romney – why was he even allowed by his handlers – to say such outrageous, offensive, blatantly ignorant and compromising things? I mean, forget the Israeli issue; Are you REALLY courting the crucial Hispanic vote (Hello, Sunshine State!) by saying that the US’s advantage over Mexico was a sheer result of culture? Aren’t you like half from Mexico or some shit, dipshit? (oops, sorry. I’ll try harder).

The obvious answer, much discussed, is Sheldon (the glorified little numbers-runner that could) Adelson, the man who is determined to out-Soros everyone for all time and sink a rumored $100M (either total or on top of eight figures he sunk into Newt) in the upcomin’ in order to unseat the sitting President.

We’ll get to Sheldon and his troubling and innovative role in the upcomin’, but first my own angle, offensive as it may sound to some truly decent and interesting acquaintances, as to why Romney found it so easy to say such an unnecessarily damaging thing.

Mormons are Philo-semites. It’s a thing with them to feel affinity and admiration towards the Jewish People. Joe Smith intentionally or impromptu-like modeled the forced immigration of his church on the Exodus, and no Christian sect save the Jesuits stresses learning for learning’s sake like Jews do. This is not accidental (Ken Jennings was not a fluke), nor overlooked by Mormons.

Sometimes this admiration can feel icky to Jews. Not just myself, most thinking Jews I know from a broad spectrum of opinions find it anywhere from tedious and perplexing to downright creepy at times, depending on the variety they ran into. Some of the non-thinkers are happy about it, while some of the non and thinkers alike have enough residual yid/yahudi instincts to politely accept whatever benefit but be internally wary.

Oh, and how could I forget. The mormons claim some kind of genetic or cultural link to ancient proto-Judaism because according to their mythology, around 600 BCE a Judean priest (or Levite??) named Lehi escaped the impending doom (fall of the first temple in 586 BCE) and tumbled all the way to the new world, where… (read the Book of Mormon for the rest).

Just wanted to mention this, because I believe it IS a factor. And now to THE factor:

So Adelson wants to invest as much money as he feels like to unseat the President. This, in itself, is legal and one may argue even legitimate. Odious as some (cough, cough) may find it, “Citizens United” is the law of the land in the US. The desire to unseat a sitting President in itself is most legitimate and needs no excuse. Most of the time I’d like to unseat the current bastid myself, if I could see anyone better to the right of of the sadly long-shottish Bernie Sanders (love ya, you curmudgeonly Yankee geezer).

What makes Adelson – and Willard’s subservience to him – unprecedented (on top of his unprecedented meddling in Israeli politics) is that Adelson’s chief motivation for this largesse is the benefit of a foreign power. Think about it. It’s one thing to say “I’m a businessman, my primary political concern is the benefit of my business, so I’m gonna do my tootin’ darndest to make sure there’s a President whose budgets and policies benefit me and mine”. This is what is called “the pursuit of happiness”. It is quite another to say “My chief concern is the benefit of a single FOREIGN nation and I’m going to pour in amounts that have never been poured on behalf of a single issue, to the benefit of that nation and not even pretend to be motivated by US interests unrelated to the welfare of that nation.

Of course, Adelson apologists would insist that he is the perfect patriot who just happens to see US and Hawkish-Israeli interests perfectly aligned. However, those not emotionally invested in Israel – and, shocking as it may sound, not everyone is or can be expected to be – should see that for what it is. There is no such thing as absolute accord between the interests of any two countries.

There are laws against this, and for good reason. Adelson eludes those laws because he is an American citizen and is serving as a willing, voluntary and (as far as anyone can prove) uncoordinated agent on behalf of the current Israeli administration.

However, Adelson-Romney’s conduct bodes very very ill for the American electoral system and American sovereignty. Even if you like what Adelson is pushing for, you can’t seriously believe that there won’t be an Arab Adelson. A Chinese one. A Russian one. (Yo, Mikhail Prokharov, kagdela?)

It also bodes extremely ill for American Jewry to have Israel used so blatantly as a wedge issue, by a man like Adelson. An entire generation of democrats is learning to despise both. Israel’s greatest success over the years was using its influential American minority to attain true consensus-level in American politics. It was never a wedge-issue before because differences were truly negligible. They still are, so the Republicans are going back to their religious roots and thinking up auto-de-fas.

IN FOUR YEARS, OBAMA HASN’T VISITED ISRAEL ONCE!!! screams the Adelson campaign. In 12 years, neither Reagan (Gipper on the Deck! Atten-shun!) nor Bush Sr. (still, a Republican) visited Israel once. So? Nixon did, but only in his second term, and Ike didn’t, and we weren’t around for Hoover. Mmkay?

WTF? Is Adelson insane? Never mind Romney, who’s nauseatingly willing to parrot whatever his moneybags dictates, pretending that once ensconced he won’t pursue what all first-term presidents do (a second term) by the same means that got him there in the first place – only this time with actual policy and soldiers rather than just words.

Does Adelson, for all his prattling about his Jewish pride (he famously said that he regrets serving in the US military and not the IDF. However, he apparently does not regret living the US lifestyle rather than that of the object of his burning loyalty) – does this man really have so little connection to his Jewish roots to not understand how dangerous this is? That there will be terrible consequences for the most successfully integrated yet proudly distinct Jewish diasporum ever should the slightest thing go wrong, and a fall from that crucial consensual status regardless? Does Adelson see himself or his sock-puppet Bibinocchio as the Messiah, so there will be no consequence?

This, Chief Justice Roberts, is what you have wrought. Find a way to mend it, as you will be Chief for a long time to come. As an American, I cannot believe you approve.

I had lots in store to say about internal-Israeli stuff, which is also fascinating in its unraveling into hell (Remember a few months ago when it was “King Bibi”? Well, now folks be wondering what’s ailing the man and how he screwed up so badly, and in last weekend’s social justice protests there was a wonderful sign: We Don’t Want A King, We Want A Leader. The “king” was transliterated from English, as a contempt intensifier).

However, shit be getting long and I owe that stuff to my long-neglected readers in Hebrew first. So comment, share, make some goddamn noise if you learned anything from the above or think others will, and make me want to do the next one afore it get stale.

Oh yeah, y’all recollect this?  Well, seems like we gots ourselves a reader in Shin Bet Chief Yoram Cohen, who decided to stay on my good side and fessed up the ver’ next mornin’. Apparently Mr. Jawahari has been a very naughty and busy boy, allegedly not only being contacted by a Syrian Mukhabarat agent (plausible), but indeed enlisting with great alacrity and performing dazzling feats of espionage on behalf of his dastardly, horrid handlers, collecting data on tank counts, troops counts, locations of secret installations and whatnot.

Now, the Stasi KNOWS he didn’t do all this shit, save possibly being solicited by a Syrian intel agent. Maybe. So either They want to flip him and are pretending to go hard on him, or (more likely), they are punishing him, either for REFUSING to flip, or for simply not reporting that he was approached by the Syrian (which, had he done and had been found out to have done, would condemn his relatives on the Syrian side to a cruel and unusually grisly demise). I think he’s been allowed counsel by now, but not sure. Will endeavor to find out.

As always, Keyboard Radical and the Holyland Update are not responsible for any conceptions, illusions or sympathies misplaced along one of our tours. We thank you for flying the crazy skies. Please share and comment on your way out.

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Yo, Shin Bet Boss! What’s up with Iyad Jawahari?

Posted by: on: July 2, 2012

Yoram dude wazzup? How was your Sabbath babe? ‘dya see the Euro final or were you busy at work? Reasoמ I ask is I know you got this terribly important and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious new detainee that’s probly keeping you in the office long hours right about now.

You know who I’m talking about. Iyad Jamil al-Jawahari? The Druze doctor from Majdal Shams in the occupied (according to the entire world except Israel) Golan Heights? The one you arrested when he came back with a bunch of Druze students you allowed to study in Syria? The one you told everyone they can’t say a goddamn word about?

Yeah, that one. Yeah I’m talking about him, so listen up: I really don’t know at this point if he’s a full Israeli citizen with a blue ID card, or if he’s perhaps one of the many in the Golan who say “No thanks. We are Syrian nationals under your disputed but accepted de-facto rule. Thanks anyway for the offer.” I also don’t care. The man is not only a human and therefore deserving of certain rights (I know that don’t impress you much). He is also a legal native resident of an area the Empire itself claims as fully annexed and therefore under the full rule of civilian law.

Under this rule of law we have these things called prisoner rights, and they apply from the instant of custody. I don’t care what you say he’s done. He could have undergone super-secret training in contumaciously covert Hizballah camps deep in the inaccessible places of the Syrian desert. (And considering the batting average of the Shin Bet in cases like this, odds are not cood. Statistically, it’s far more likely that he’ll be charged with far lesser violations than whatever it is they’re telling the judge and scaring him with right now).

Where were we? Oh yeah, Yoram my main man: You will report the arrest – not just to his family who were surprised when he didn’t come through the border passing with the other students and were told he was arrested and nothing further –  To all of us. Official like. And let us know he’s seen an attorney and has been told at least in general what he’s suspected of and what (in general) kind of proof there is.

Now you’ll notice I’m not saying release the guy immediately. I respect the fact that your job gives you a certain discretion to investigate, apprehend, interrogate and charge people. And I understand that your ferociously friendly court has already given you an extension of custody, and that’s all… if not fine, at least proper. As the poet put it, the ceremony of innocence has not been drowned.

But if you think for a second that we’re gonna let you keep a man – an equal subject of the Israeli Empire, as it were, by its own insistence – in total darkness and not talk about it or mention his name, you are sorely in error, buddy. We are going to be talking about Iyad Jamil al-Jawahari for at least until his full, fair and speedy judicial process is over. Maybe even longer. Depends mostly on you, actually.

Now I hope you notice, bruh, that I’m being respectful to you. Ask my readers and they will assure you that this is not a given. I am sad to say that your predecessor (distant kin of mine, but keep it between us) managed to lose whatever respect his and your disagreeable but necessary position conferred upon him.

But you’re not him, so I’m starting all fresh with you. Announce you’re holding the man and on what general charge and that he’s seen counsel. Today. You’ve already had him for quite a bit longer than the law allows, so don’t be whining that you can’t get no work done like this. If that be the case, we’ll get someone who can.

But it ain’t gonna be like that, is it dawg? We gonna be cool you and me, right? Mos’ def. You go take care of that thing and maybe we’ll hook up after, watch some Olympics and shit. Later homesץ

(This was referred to me by the indefatiguable Richard Silverstein, who unlike Iyad al-Jawahari is not a subject of the Holy Jehovah Empire, and therefore not really motivated by what my man Yoram does or does not allow folks to talk about.)

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Israeli Dissidents: The Blacks have it

Posted by: on: June 1, 2012

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More info coming shortly, as Friday obligations allow.

Israeli Dissidents: Help Us Choose A Cover!

Posted by: on: June 1, 2012

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See here, then come back to this side to vote. Thanks!

 

 

A New Way To Break Your Cherry

Posted by: on: May 7, 2012

Y’all know the cute rite-of-passage story about the ancient Greek city of Sparta? How they were supposed to steal something without getting caught, so as to show they could be good fighters, and if they were caught they were punished, but for the operational failure of being detected and not for the moral failure of stealing?

Well, like many other things regarding ancient myths, the underlying truth is…gnarlier, shall we say. Oh sure, the young Spartan hoplite-trainee had to steal, but the real “punished for being caught” test was not to steal – it was to kill a man, or more precisely a Helot.

The Helots were the state-owned slaves of the Spartan regime. In order for all the full Spartan citizens to form that ideal “warrior society” and spend their lives from age 7-60 training for and fighting wars, someone else had to raise crops and clean the streets and the dishes and the homes and so on. Enter the Helots – or to be more accurate, enter the Doric Spartans, who around the 7th century BCE conquer the native Messenians and turn them into “Helots”.

Now, this sort of setup required some serious oppression to keep running. The Spartans’ main answer to this problem was a yearly ritual in which they would go through a ceremony of declaring “war” on the long-vanquished and enslaved population. Call it Operation Cast Helot or something. This prevented the Helot numeric advantage from becoming overwhelming, kept any rebelliousness in check and gave the Spartan fighters their famous battle-tested toughness.

The rest of the year the murder of a Helot was a serious offense, albeit on grounds of damaging valuable state property, and not due to the sanctity of life or any effete claptrap of the sort. So the aspiring young tough-guy was challenged to kill himself a Helot – without anyone seeing, so they wouldn’t be forced to punish him. This random, piecemeal slaughter also had a helpfully chilling effect on the Helots.

The Spartan model, although much appreciated by thinkers of a certain kind throughout the years, has never been precisely duplicated. That said, the notion of running wet training drills on your conquered natives is still with us, as evidenced by the latest little story about the most moral army. You know, the one from The Only Democracy[TM]

A few weeks ago, sharp-eyed consumers of the news noticed a cute little hed on YNET: Duvdevan Soldier Discharged For Kicking Bound Palestinian. Duvdevan is the IDF’s elite undercover unit. Members pass as Arabs and infiltrate organizations and demonstrations (and often incite them to violence and even instigate it). In short, at first blush it seemed like a story about the IDF reacting properly and swiftly to unacceptable behavior. And then you read the actual item.

Turns out the boys were out training in the village of Ramon. What do I mean training? Just that. Sneaking around in local garb in the village, in the middle of the night, trying to blend. Well, not a great day at the office for the boys. They were detected. See, Ramon has a pretty rampant crime problem. Folks there have a short fuse when it comes to their property, the nighttime and strangers.

So the stealthy commando kids are observed near the sheep-pen of the Shawakha family. Four Shawakhas run downstairs; One grabs a tire-iron, another a knife, a third a nice thumpin’ stick. They get to the street and the strangers are coming towards them. Rather than identify, or use their guns to deter, the Cherry Boys* keep walking right up to the local guys. When face to face, one of the commandos finally draws a gun. No warning, no “police/army/intelligence/Israelis”. One of the Shawakhas tries to grab the gun (held by a non-identifying plain-clothed thug and suspected thief) and gets shot in the thigh. Then the soldiers shoot another brother in the stomach. Then more shots are fired. Long after any kind of normal person would be declaring who they are and why they shouldn’t be resisted. One Palestinian dead, one severely wounded. One Duvdevan genius with a cut arm.

After all resistance to the boys in camouflage was subdued, and the Helo—Palestinians had their hands cuffed and their asses sat on the ground, one of the soldiers was still furious at them for not realizing he’s an untouchable, so he kicked one of them in the face. And that, to the Israeli embodiment of MSM, was the story. Soldier Kicks Coolie, Bounced From Unit. Not, say, Army Kills Local In Training Fiasco.

For THAT, the IDF (rightly) discharged him. But the practice of training on unwitting natives in this lovely and not-at-all dangerous manner – that, the IDF informed me, was done by proper procedure and after much consideration of all aspects of advisability.

Luckily, while the IDF has yet to reach the level of wisdom associated with giving a shit about what I happen to think, Israel’s veteran human rights NGO B’tselem speaks more softly but carries a bigger stick. After they sent a letter saying “y’all sure this is the way you wanna be?” the IDF about-faced and announced that its own Investigative MP unit would look into it. Uh-huh.

This ain’t the first time, either. I reported on this 2 years ago.

Then last week it turned out it isn’t just Helots they practice on. The good people of Tel Aviv noticed one fine morning that the air has a peculiar, sharp stank to it – above and beyond your normal megalopolis pollution. The authorities stalled for a good long time, playing dumb, and finally broke down admitting it was them doing some hush-hush crap. Who? What? Here the police, Enviro-Protection Ministry and Homeland Security started playing a lively round of Pass the Buck. I feel so much more protected now, I can’t even tell ya.

Finally, in other “Killin Ay-rabs and Getting’ Away With It” news:

A guy killed a Palestinian suspect he had already apprehended and bound. Claimed “his gun went off”. Court told him to his face it was unconvinced of this version. Sentence: Eight months. This is progress of sorts. William Zanzinger only got 6, and he wasn’t a uniformed fighter in the Hosts of the Lord.

Another guy, Colonel Ilan Malka, was found innocent of all wrongdoing in the piecemeal slaughter of the Samouni Family during Operation Poll Jum— I mean, Operation Cast Lead. The real rundown is over at Idan Landau’s blog, but that’s Hebrew. Long story short: IDF enters this neighborhood in Gaza, called Zeytun, takes over the compound owned and inhabited by the Samouni family, and herds all the surrendered civilians (about 100) into a 200 sq. meter space. The army in this case is a unit under the direct command of Col. Malka. He herded them. He knew they were there. Despite this, when he got reports on suspicious movement in that corner, he didn’t go “oh, that’s where i cordoned my tame civilians, lets make sure it ain’t one of them gathering wood for warmth cause they got no power”. He ordered to open fire. On several distinct occasions. Despite this, the IDF self-investigation finds nothing wrong.

There’s more to come, a quick wrap-up of the no good, very bad, not at all useful month Hasbara has had and a lot more… stay tuned.

Oh, while you’re waiting for part B – y’all seen The Hummus Enforcement Agency yet? Get your pita bread ready and go do so. Seriously.  Bon Appetit!

Oh, almost forgot: MCA, aka Adam Yauch, AKA the ballsiest Jewboy in music, passed away as most of y’all probably know. RIP, great heart.

*Duvdevan means Cherry in Hebrew.

 

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Like We Just Got Out of the Ghetto

Posted by: on: April 19, 2012

When you’re a godless lefty knife-in-the-back-of-the-nation kinda guy, holocaust jokes are kinda part of the territory. In case you’re appalled by the notion and don’t understand how Jews who themselves have lost kin in the holocaust can do that: If you live outside of Israel and have ever had the slightest feeling that the holocaust is misused and overused, stuffed down one’s throat in wrong ways with wrong lessons implied and spelled outright, I can say only this: STFU and be thankful, because you have no idea. What Israel does with the holocaust for external propaganda it does a hundredfold for internal consumption. Besides, spend time in a serious injury ward and you’ll hear the same kind of blackest humor.

 

That said, and acknowledging that I’ve been known to tell a black shoah joke here and there, I must insist that it is not out of delight in contrariness and shock value that I say:

 

We Israelis must sharply stop with the holocaust ritual.

 

Definitely the way it is done now. We didn’t really need the study just recently published, showing that “Voyages of Life” trips (heritage high school trips to the death camps in Poland) have adverse mental effects on the minors who take them. A cursory glance at the talkbacks on any major news site would show much the same.

 

The anecdotes are too numerous to list, and extend far beyond the “It’s 1938, Iran is Hitler” fixation of our Prime Minister. From the one on former Knesset Speaer Avraham Burg’s book, about a Jew who told him “I can’t take a train when I go to Europe. Being in a train there brings it all back to me” and when asked where his parents came from said “Iraq” (where Jews were not deported by train in the holocaust). And more recently, a radio host on Israel’s military station stated that to her any fair-skinned blond-haired youth has a “Hitler Jugend” look, and that “They” (speaking of Danes, the People of the lefty scum who dared assault an officer’s rifle with his face) “are born anti-semites and die anti-semites.”

 

The Noble Danish People, for those of who don’t know and others who need an update on the weather in this reality, are the only nation on earth to be collectively awarded a “Righteous Among the Nations” medal from Yad VaShem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum. Quick recap: In a short national effort, spanning all walks of Danish society from the royal palace to the street sweepers, they smuggled 90% of their Jews to neighboring neutral and free Sweden in fishing boats. The country’s universities announced a week’s vacation on some pretext so that students could enlist in the effort. Of 426 Danish Jews who were captured by Nazis and transported east, 70% survived. They survived because the government of His Majesty Christian X sent food packages to Treisenstadt every week. But never mind. To some insane person on Israel’s national military station the Danes are inherently antisemites.

 

I too had a funny (in a scary way) experience in the same vein. I’m arguing occupation with a supposed Israeli who goes by AsoldiersMom on twitter. The chronological scope of the exchange or any other I’ve ever had with her never ever got earlier than the founding of Israel. To my memory, it was all 90s and 21st century. Suddenly I see her calling all her followers: “Join me in blocking holocaust-denier @AbuKedem !!!” She was dead serious, too.

 

The Holocaust, to the average Israeli nationalist, is a cart blanche. The ultimate, evergreen, self-replenishing get-out-of-jail card. “I don’t wanna hear it, I’ve had a holocaust and whatever I do is to protect me from it ever happening again, and therefore justified. If you disagree, you support the holocaust.”

 

From proof of a morally viable justification for creating a state at the expense of the natural rights of a native people, the holocaust has long since become a catch-all excuse for Israel’s right to be the neighborhood punching bag who suddenly shot up in height and packed on much muscle, but is still the traumatized little boy thinking only of raging vengeance for all those unhappy childhood years.

 

And so, from a cure to the disease that begat the holocaust (a cure conceived well in advance of that monstrous climax) the Zionist endeavor has become enthralled to a vendetta for the years of suffering. The purpose of this state is not to allow its citizens the normal whole life that they felt barred from fully experiencing in exile, but to defy, to prove we’re still around, to lash about on all sides and prove how our rage and our refusal to listen to anyone else have no limits, because our pain has no bounds and nothing can compare to it.

 

This is the behavior of a wounded animal. But how is it that this sort of reaction is still here? Wounds that do not kill tend, after all, to heal, right? Exactly. In order for the wound to remain open, so it can produce the same reaction of self-justifying rage, to remind that we’re still mad with pain, we need to keep invoking it. We need to brainwash people with the pain and compel high school students and their families to undertake the expensive burden of the holocaust tours, which become drunken romps (as 17 year old excursions tend to) and practice in hating gentiles and nurturing the sense that everyone wants to kill us everywhere all the time.

 

The actual still living victims of the wound, of course, can be left to spend their remaining days in abject poverty and squalor. So much so that when after years of outrage then-PM Olmert managed to pass a $23/month increase in the pensions of holocaust survivors, he had the nerve to describe it as a historical rectification of injustice, when in reality the sum added – and the new sum combined – wouldn’t suffice for his rectal hygiene budget. Because the sole drive we derive from the wound is not correction, healing or some universal lesson about the human condition that could ever to apply to ourselves from any other angle but the absolutely wronged party, whose one desire is revenge and whose right to execute it trumps all.

 

Another example from Twitter: I’m arguing with this funny right-winger journalist named Avishai Ivri who sometimes has me on his very right-wing radio show as a token lefty. And then he delivers this gem:

 

“Anyone who believes they’d survive a single night here without IDF soldiers armed to their teeth around their bed is indulging in sweet delusions.”

 

The problem with this statement is not that it is factually wrong. It’s that save for scattered exceptions, the state and its navigators have nurtured the situation necessitating this from the very start. One of the first critiques the Palestinians used to hurl at the newly-established Israel was that it was a grotesque garrison state surrounded by barbed wire. Our response has always been “Stop making us and we’ll stop. We ain’t doing this for fun.” But in light of the passing years, one has to wonder.

 

Zeev Jabotinski (the founder of the Israeli right-wing, in other words no lefty) gave the corpus of Zionist thought the concept of the Iron Wall. According to this, there would be a period following establishment of independence during which we would need to create and maintain an impenetrable barrier (the iron wall) which will prevent our defeated neighbors from regaining that which we took, as many times as needed to convince them that our presence is irreversible; However, even Jabotinski’s militant “you need men on that wall” vision stipulated that when that wall had achieved its purpose, we would be able to make peace with them and live as states live all over the world with their neighbors – with ties of trade, culture, tourism and mutual loathing ventilated at sporting events.

 

The thing is that somewhere along the line, the wall went from means to end. Even when the wall is made of space-age stainless steel with uranium titties (according to foreign sources of course…), many refuse to stop laying more and more bricks, more supports and foundations and laser beams to zap anyone even looking at the wall. Maybe that’s how the Tower of Babel was built? Maybe people built a levee against the river tide (a laudable precaution) and then just kept on building way after exceeding the height of even the most mythical killer flood waves?

 

Must we really, just to live here safely, hold two million people under a regime in which we see it as perfectly legitimate to use them as unwitting props in live-ammo military drills? To keep them firmly under our heels with a Stasi-like web of coerced informants numbering in the many thousands? To enjoy such obvious and overwhelming superiority over them that we can do all that, plus keep another million and a half under a quiet siege, half cut off from the world, hardly feel any consequence in our daily lives – and still treat every vain attempt by the vanquished to bite through the IDF boot at the foot stepping on their windpipe as an existential threat. Must we really live like this until further notice? Other states, with equally annoying neighbors and no such military superiority, manage to do without this and only we can’t? That way madness lays.

 

There’s a famous Zen story about the great teacher Tanzan, who was traveling with another monk when they come upon a pretty young girl afraid to cross an overflowing brook. Tanzan picks her up, carries her across the river and continues with his friend. The other guy after a while says “Why did you do that? You know we monks are not supposed to have any contact with women, particularly not young and beautiful ones.” Tanzan replies: I left the girl on the bank. Are you still carrying her?

 

Even the biggest trauma, if it is survived, needs to be left behind. This does not mean to forget. As long as there is a State of Israel (even in its impending one-state incarnation) it must include a Yad VaShem. The memory of the holocaust and its lessons must be taught, but there is a limit, and that is way back on our 6. So stand up straight, dammit, and stop acting like we just stepped out of the ghetto. We’ve grown a bit since then, and we can be proud of that.

 

So lets stop building the wall and start punching some windows and doorways in it, let some light and air in, maybe a neighbor now and then. It’s not healthy to live alone in the dark all the time. We do intend to actually LIVE here, right?

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Senior IDF Chaplain: Jewish Morals Condone Wartime Rape

Posted by: on: March 28, 2012

The #2 chaplain in the IDF, who is in charge of all religious education to soldiers, answers a religious law question and comes out flatly for the right of a Jewish soldier to rape a foreign captive

 

You know how old things crop up on the Internet? Well, today something floated to the surface on the Hebrew portion of the net that may hound Israel and the IDF for years to come – if both institutions even have many years left to them.

But doomsaying aside, the public and straightforward halachic opinion issued by Colonel and  Rabbi Eyal Krim, the number two man at the IDF’s Military Rabbinate, back in the bloody days of the Second Intifada and “Operation Defensive Shield” (2002), is sure to create a storm. How big a storm will provide indications both of the current state of Israeli society at large, and of the degree to which the foreign press pays attention and gets the point.

The halachic issue in question is one known in Judaism as that of the “Pretty Woman”. The dilemma here is not whether it’s OK to fall in love with a prostitute as cute as Julia Roberts whom you hired as eye candy for a party, but something far darker.

A translation of the question (politely stated, with the tell-tale religious acronym for “with heaven’s help” at the top) and the answer by Colonel Krim, follows in full (Hebrew original here):

 

Question:

I have read on this site about [the halachic issue of] a pretty captive woman, and the relevant portions from the Torah, yet I am left with a question:

In various wars among the nations, such as World War 1, various nations fought amongst themselves, without any of them being particularly “good” or “bad” for the Jews…

But if an army were to conquer a village and rape Jewish girls there, it would have been justly considered as a disaster and a tragedy to the girl and her family.

Therefore, rape during time of war is considered heinous. So how is it that I have been told by a rabbi that “a pretty woman” is permitted, according to some rabbis, even before the process laid out in the Torah? Meaning he may first give in to his urges and lay with her, and only then take her to his home? And so on.

This seems like a contradiction. After all, if the rape of civilians during war is considered to be awful and forbidden, why should Jews supposedly be allowed?

Are IDF soldiers in our time, for example, allowed to rape girls during warfare, or is this forbidden?

Thank you.

.

Answer:

The wars of Israel – both the Mitzvah wars and the wars of choice – are Mitzvah wars. This is how they differ from the wars that take place amongst the nations of the world, between themselves.

Since war in essence is not a matter for the individual but nations war as wholes, there are situations in which the personality of the individual is “erased” for the greater good. And vice versa – at times we may endanger an entire unit to save an individual when this is required for morale.

One of the vital and crucial elements in war is to maintain the army’s fighting capacity. Thus, he who is afraid and faint of heart returns behind the war, so as not to soften the hearts of his brethren, and the emotions and needs of the individual are pushed to the side in favor of national success at war.

Just as during war the boundaries of risking oneself for others are pushed, so are the boundaries of chastity and kosher diet. Foreign wine prohibited during times of peace has been allowed at time of war to maintain the high spirits of the fighters. Prohibited foods have been allowed during wartime (according to some authorities even when there is kosher food available) in order to maintain the fighters’ fitness, although at peacetime they are disallowed.

Thus war also takes precedence over some coital laws. Although having relations with a gentile woman is a very grave act, it was permitted during wartime (under the conditions it was permitted) due to consideration of the difficulties of the fighting men, and since the success of the collective is our main object, the Torah has allowed to indulge the evil urge under the conditions specified, for the success of the collective.

 

Shalom

Eyal Krim

.

As we Yids say: Oy. I mean, where to start? With the Bronze-Age morality that sees war as a state that suspends all regular notions of justice and decency? To be fair, for that era that was advanced morality. Nobody else prohibited any treatment of war captives at all. Woe to the vanquished was the universal standard, and conquering kings gloried in the trampling of their enemies and rape of their women. The Torah said that even in war actions have consequences, and equaled the penalty of rape at war with that of rape of your neighbors daughter: You had to marry her, and you even had to give her a fortnight month to grieve for her lost family. But what was morally progressive back then is now what we godless buzzkills like to refer to as a war crime. Practiced on a wide enough scale, it can even make crime against humanity.

However, lots of blood has flown out of bodies and been buried in the mud over the millenia since, and at a slower pace, even broadly accepted standards of minimal mandatory morality have risen. Even at war. The entire aftermath and results of WW2, which incidentally featured the greatest slaughter of Jews in history, were a rejection of that notion, which was heartily embraced by the vanquished side in that conflict. If there was supposed to be one group of people that was unanimously, unequivocally against the German variety of the ultra-nationalist plague and all it stood for, it should surely have been the Jews. Or at least so one would think.

Need we go on? Krim is clearly more troubled by the act of having sex of any kind with a goya than by the notion of raping one. Then again, he is only following the inflexible logic of his creed. That IS what the Torah says. The rape is sometimes condoned but consensual relations with a heathen vagina never is.

That such views exist is not surprising. That such views are held by a high ranking military officer, one whose job is to oversee the religious indoctrination forced upon soldiers who come into combat situations in urban areas more than any other in the world, is alarming to say the least, and should lead to deep reflection on the part of Israelis who care in any way about their people’s religion.

Oh, the official response? Glad you asked. When acclaimed blogger (and personal friend, full disclosure) Yossi Gurvitz wrote to IDF Spokesperson’s “New Media” unit to ask whether these statements were consistent with IDF position, and if not what will be done regarding Krim, and how the IDF plans to deal with the possible blowback from this new revelation, he was told that his questions reflected a disrespect both towards the IDF and the Jewish religion, and that therefore the Spokesperson Unit will no longer be replying to his queries on any matter. So there.

In the 19th century, Judaism was faced for the first time in many centuries with a fundamental schism, as educated Jews who had taken advantage of emancipation laws sought to reconcile the good in Judaism with the universal values of the Enlightenment. From this drive were born the two main branches of world Judaism today: Conservative and Reform. The main difference between the two is that Conservative Judaism accepts the overall authority of the Halacha – that 1800 year-old corpus of religious law expounding on the words of the five books of Moses – while giving itself more freedom to tinker with it than is accepted in the Orthodox world. Reform Judaism, on the other hand, allows itself to simply disregard certain portions of halacha that it finds either irrelevant in the face of modern technology or outdated in the face or modern moral views.

One would think that Reform Judaism would be the natural fit for Israeli progressives. But neither Conservative nor Reform Judaism ever made even the smallest recognizable advance within any segment of Israeli society. They have always existed on the margins, discriminated against in the disbursement of religious-affairs budgets, and devoid of any political clout whatsoever (save that which the anti-clerical left was willing to throw them in order to score hits on the religious parties). Even leftists, who often say they yearn for a “humane” Judaism, don’t throng to the two main alternatives. A young Israeli humanist seeking spiritual food is far more likely to either embrace oriental philosophies or to “see the light” and realize why a creed that grants him special and irrevocable privileges is in fact the one true truth.

This is easily understandable. Both reformation movements are uniquely exile-oriented and were designed explicitly to enable Jews to integrate in societies in which they were not the majority and did not call the shots.

However, the rightward messianic and/or fundamentalist drifts of virtually all parts of Orthodox Judaism in Israel means that anyone who cares about the perpetuation of Israeli Judaism, as a faith that can be professed without being automatically suspect by any right-minded person in the world, must create the grounds for the rise of a Judaism that can maintain a by-and-large consistency with basic modern notions of human rights – even if that means devising a whole new form of Judaism, which while speaking of and to the Jew living on his ancestral land and constituting a majority, is still at least as enlightened as the best of “the nations”. Leaving the definition of free, homegrown Judaism to these retrograde troglodytes will lead to Judaism everywhere being viewed on a level akin to that of the Westboro Baptist Church or the Lord’s Resistance Army.

P.S. Yes, I totally ignored the wonderful people of Shomrei Mishpat – Rabbis For Human Rights, who with precious few numbers do great deeds to restore honor and humanity to the name of Judaism. However, those rabbis are mostly Conservative and Reform, and in any event the humanist version of Judaism has been tested at the ballot box more than once over the past two decades. It never managed to get elected to Knesset on its own.

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