What are they smoking in Jerusalem?

What are they smoking in Jerusalem?

An Israel that occupies, settles and discriminates is not an Israel that the United States or young Diaspora Jews can continue to back indefinitely.

By Ari Shavit  | Oct. 31, 2014 | Haaretz

Over the last five days I’ve visited five cities in the United States: Los Angeles, Columbus, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Miami. I didn’t meet any senior officials in the Obama administration nor was I a guest of any critic of Israel. On the contrary, I spoke to thousands of people who love Israel with all their souls. I listened to hundreds of people whose devotion to Israel is greater than that of many Israelis. But when I looked at my country through the eyes of my countrymen, without whom the country has no future, I wondered what its government was thinking. Where does it think it is leading the Jewish state and the Jewish people?

What are they smoking there in Jerusalem? What world do they live in? Don’t they have eyes to see the looming iceberg? Don’t they have ears to hear the roar of the disaster they are about to wreak on all of us?

The alliance between the United States and Israel is based on common values: democracy, liberty, human rights, the rule of law and entrepreneurship. These values are what sustains the alliance, not common interests. Americans like to believe that Israel is a Middle Eastern forward position for their worldview.

However, our common values don’t accord with the removal of Arabs from buses in Judea and Samaria, with the undermining and neutralization of the Supreme Court, or with the constant and perplexing settlement drive.

An Israel that occupies, settles and discriminates is not an Israel that the United States can continue to back indefinitely. An Israel that insists on behaving like an bull in a china shop will sooner or later lose the support of America’s younger generation. This won’t happen next week or next month, not even next year. But it will happen. If the head-trippers in Israel continue on their path, the collapse will inevitably come.

At the base of the alliance between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora stands a mutual responsibility. We guarantee their existence and they guarantee ours. We are the insurance policy for their future and they are the safety net for ours.

However, the Jewish Diaspora is currently in dire straits.  Increasing numbers of their sons and daughters find it difficult to identify with Jewish nationalism, Jewish religion or the Jewish establishment. Following meaningful, moving experiences during their Birthright trips, many feel some attraction towards Israel. They learned that Tel Aviv is exciting, Israelis are cool and Israeli high-tech is amazing. However, when they observe that the government in Jerusalem continues to settle the hilltops and the Knesset in Jerusalem advocates an outdated worldview, they are at a loss.

The head-on collision between their universal values and the tribal values espoused by the political establishment in Israel causes them to run for their lives. Instead of embracing younger Jewish people, we repel them. Instead of winning hearts, we are losing souls. In our deeds and misdeeds we are alienating the younger generation of Jews. With their own hands, the pseudo-Zionists of the right are undermining Zionism. With their own hands, the pseudo-patriots of the settlements are depleting the ranks of the Jewish people. Those stoners in Jerusalem who are jeopardizing our alliance with the United States are at the same time endangering our brothers and sisters and our communities in the Diaspora.

It’s time to stop this out-of-control party. The light drugs have long since been traded in for hard ones. The mild hallucination has become a bad trip. A Jerusalem ruled by the religious settler movement is a Jerusalem operating in a parallel universe that does not exist. The Jerusalem of the zealots is shrouded in aromatic smoke that cuts it off from reality, distances it from the Jewish people and is liable to lead it into a terrible conflagration. The time has come to shake it out of its fantasy, rehabilitate it and return this country to its senses.

The Messianic Brothers are Doing Israel In

The Messianic Brothers are Doing Israel In

The power freaks running the government are perpetuating poverty and the occupation while alienating Israel's greatest friends.

By Shaul Arieli | Oct. 7, 2014 | Haaretz

“Time is on our side” is the hollow mantra of Naftali Bennett and Uri Ariel of Habayit Hayehudi, along with their brothers in Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu and Yesh Atid. The leftists are tired Zionists, they claim, while appropriating the Zionist project for their messianic ideology. We’ll get the world used to our caprices, they tell anyone who wonders where they’re heading.

But the Jewish year 5775 is beginning and refusing to get used to anything. Some 1.5 million Israelis ushered in the new year at meals funded by donations from good people. The number of Israelis in the cycle of poverty grows each year; most of the poor work.

The gaps are increasing, but the messianic brothers have a solution: Join us in the welfare state in the West Bank. “We doubled the budgets for Judea and Samaria,” boasts the previous finance minister, the embodiment of the vision of socialist Zionism.

The frequent rounds of violence take their toll in blood and damage to the economy. They’re responsible for budget cuts in both primary and higher education, and undermine the welfare and health services. This mainly affects poorer people, of course. While the Jewish brothers are once again proposing that we occupy Gaza, the education minister is explaining that “there was a war” and it wouldn’t be right “to curtail the vision of Greater Israel.”

Nor is the international community getting used to anything. Israel’s standing continues to suffer, especially among those closest to us, the United States and Western Europe. The disgust at our continued domination of another nation is eroding cultural, economic and scientific ties with the rest of the world.

The United States is undergoing demographic changes, as well as a change in priorities. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the Americanologist doesn’t realize how U.S. support is slipping through his fingers. Others, drunk on imaginary power, promise us that the world won’t move without that Israeli app Waze. Particles won’t accelerate without Jewish genius.

The Jewish brothers who continue to put “Jewish” before “democratic” refuse to notice North American Jews’ reservations about Israel. They eschew the two-state idea, repudiate liberalism, sanctify power and practice discrimination.

Even “united” Jerusalem is not cooperating with the security hawks. In our eternal capital the nationalist and religious tensions are deepening, and violence is increasing. The city’s poverty on both sides of the Green Line puts most of its children, both Jewish and Arab, below the poverty line. Most of its residents are anti-Zionists.

Meanwhile, many young Israelis have stopped believing that time is on the side of messianic Zionism. The cost of living, reserve duty and mainly the absence of faith in government policy are pushing them to a future on the other side of the ocean. No, they aren’t tired. The residents of the western Negev near Gaza, a stronghold of genuine Zionism, aren’t spoiled, as some people accuse them of being.

They simply understand that an honest attempt at achieving peace doesn’t mean rejecting the two-state idea, ostracizing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, torpedoing any attempt to include Hamas in the diplomatic process and continuing unbridled construction in the West Bank. They understand the real price, both economic and moral, in the refusal to separate ourselves from the Palestinians.

Time remains indifferent and does not sanctify the artificial status quo. Waiting around the corner isn’t a binational state, but one state – whose characteristics are far from any divine or other promise. It’s a state that even a messiah wouldn’t be able to cleanse.

Why are Reform Jews issuing Yom Kippur messages in Arabic this year?

Why are Reform Jews issuing Yom Kippur messages in Arabic this year?

A closer look at their High Holy Day messages reveals how the various streams of Judaism in Israel are trying to brand themselves, and whom they see as target audiences.

By Judy Maltz | Oct. 1, 2014 | 

Although still relatively small, the non-Orthodox – as well as more progressive Orthodox – Jewish movements have been gaining a foothold in Israel in recent years. In large part, the trend reflects a backlash against the stranglehold of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox establishments on many aspects of civil life in Israel.

A survey of online campaigns with a High Holy Day theme – the first of their kind – provides some insight into how the various Jewish movements are trying to brand themselves these days and whom they see as their target audiences.

Take, for example, the Reform movement, also known as the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism. This most non-Orthodox of all the non-Orthodox movements has decided to take its usual message of egalitarianism and tolerance in a new direction this year, beyond the Jewish sphere: “Israelis helping Israelis celebrate the holidays with dignity” is the title of its holiday campaign, which urges Israeli Jews to embrace Israeli Muslims, and to take advantage of the rare coincidence of the fast of Yom Kippur falling this year on the very same day as the Islamic festival of Id al-Adha (the Feast of the Sacrifice).

Led by the Reform movement’s Keren BeKavod (fund for dignity), the campaign calls on Israeli Jews to donate food to other Jews and to Muslims who don’t have anything to put on their tables during this holiday season.

On its website, where it promotes the campaign on a video in both Hebrew and Arabic, the Reform movement explains that the purpose is to “underscore our commitment to promoting coexistence and religious tolerance in Israeli society.” It urges Israelis with means to donate either a package of food or coupons for clothing to “disadvantaged Israeli families in all communities and sectors in Israeli society to help nurture a Jewish-Israeli voice that is responsible, moderate and seeks peace and interfaith understanding."

Yuli Goren, the spokeswoman of the Reform movement, explains that the decision to expand on the usual messages this year stemmed from a feeling that “we just couldn’t ignore the rising tide of racism in the country in recent months.” The High Holy Days, she says, “provided an opportunity to use the Jewish calendar to fight against racism, and we are the only Jewish movement in Israel doing something like this.”

Friendly Orthodoxy

Tzohar, an organization of progressive-minded Orthodox rabbis, doesn’t exactly qualify as a religious movement per se. Still, it’s gained prominence in recent years as a group that is bent on making Orthodoxy friendlier to secular Israelis, particularly by means of a large cadre of volunteer rabbis who officiate at wedding ceremonies around the country.

Tzohar may identify as an Orthodox organization, but a visitor to its (Hebrew) website could easily be led to understand otherwise. “We pray together on Yom Kippur” is the title of its High Holy Days campaign, which invites “men and women, parents and children, youngsters and adults, secular and religious, to a hospitable, experiential, Israeli, joint Yom Kippur prayer that includes explanation, song, discussion and shofar-blowing at the conclusion of the holiday.”

Aside from a photo of a man blowing a shofar, the page also includes a picture of what appears to be a happy family – a mother and father (incidentally, neither have their heads covered, as is typical among the Orthodox) and a daughter and son.