The Muqata: The Rambam's Visit to Har HaBayit

Courtesy: The Muqata

Yesterday, the 6th of the Jewish month of Heshvan, marked 843 years since the Rambam -- Maimonides, went up to the Temple Mount -- Har HaBayit, in the old walled city of Jerusalem, and prayed. In 1166 C.C, the Rambam made a pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, as well as visiting other areas around Jerusalem and Hevron.
The event was so special to the Rambam, that he vowed to make a special holiday and commemorate it annually.

The Rambam (Moshe, son of Maimon, otherwise known as Maimonides) was the physician to the Sultan of Egypt in the 12th century. His most well known work is the 14 volume Mishna Torah, (literally, The Repetition of the Torah), which was the first attempt to systematically codify the entire body of Jewish law, (halachah). This work became the basis for later codifications, most notably, the Shulkhan Arukh, written by Rav Yoseph Karo in the 16th century.

In 1166 C.E. the Rambam made a pilgrimage to Israel:

"We left Acco for Jerusalem under perilous conditions. I entered into 'the great and holy house' [the term used to refer to the Holy Temple] and prayed there on the sixth day of the month of Cheshvan. And on the first day of the week, the ninth day of the month of Cheshvan, I left Jerusalem for Hebron to kiss the graves of my forefathers in the Cave of Machpela. And on that very day, I stood in the Cave and I prayed, praised be G-d for everything. And these two days, the sixth [when he prayed on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem] and the ninth of Mar-Heshvan I vowed to make as a special holiday and in which I will rejoice with prayer, food and drink. May the Lord help me to keep my vows...." (translation, courtesy of the Temple Institute)

More at The Muqata: The Rambam's Visit to Har HaBayit

Emmanuel Navon: Jew Boy Street

Courtesy: Emmanuel Navon http://www.navon.com

In one of the many phone calls that Golda Meir made to Henry Kissinger during the Yom Kippur War, she thought it would be a good idea to pull the Jewish emotional trick in order to speed up the urgently needed arms delivery. Kissinger got quite annoyed. "Let me explain something to you, Golda" he said. "I am, first and foremost, an American. Then I am a Secretary of State. And only after that am I a Jew." Unimpressed, Golda replied with the aplomb and wit of a Jewish mother: "It's OK, Henry. In Hebrew, we read from right to left."

Eventually, Henry did deliver the goods, but he also held Israel back toward the end of the war. He didn't want the Soviets to step in and, mostly, he didn't want Israel to humiliate Sadat. The Egyptian leader, Kissinger correctly figured, would give up on the Russians if he was convinced that only America could deliver Sinai to a Soviet-weaned Egypt.

When Kissinger landed in Israel during his "shuttle diplomacy," some Israeli demonstrators shouted at him "Jew Boy!" Then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was embarrassed about this name-calling, but he eventually gave in to Kissinger's arm-twisting by pulling out of the Suez Canal's eastern shore. Sadat got his down payment and didn't need more explanations. Then came Jimmy Carter. He started talking about the need to associate the Soviets to the "Middle East peace process." Sadat couldn't believe it. "I kicked the Russians out of the door and Carter wants to snick them in from the window!" he exclaimed. Hence Sadat's decision to preempt Carter's mischief by dramatically announcing that he was willing to negotiate directly with Israel and to come to Jerusalem.

Carter coerced Begin into withdrawing from all of Sinai and into dismantling all Israeli settlements there. To some, this proves that only America can force Israel into making peace and, in effect, save Israel from itself. This theory, however, misunderstands the difference between what Kissinger and Carter had in mind.

For Kissinger, the Soviet Union was an enemy to be defeated. In the Middle East, that meant pulling the largest Arab country out the Soviet rim, and preserving "our son of a bitch" in Iran. For Carter, by contrast, the Soviets and their Middle-East clients needed to be appeased by addressing their demands –first and foremost when it came to Israel. But forcing Israel to meet its enemies' demands and dropping the Shah did not temper Soviet expansionism and Muslim radicalism. Indeed, the last year of Carter's presidency witnessed, almost simultaneously, the signing of a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, the Islamic coup in Iran, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (not to mention the Sandinista coup in Nicaragua).

According to the "linkage" theory, America will be able to pull itself out of Iraq and sweet-talk the Iranians into dropping their nuclear ambitions only after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved. Georges Soros, for example, wrote in his 2007 manifesto On Israel, America and AIPAC that "Iraq is largely beyond our control; but if we succeeded in settling the Palestinian problem we would be in a much better position to engage in negotiations with Iran and extricate ourselves from Iraq." Recent history proves otherwise. Khomeini seized power in Teheran and Saddam Hussein built a nuclear plant (thanks to France, in both cases) after Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David accords under American pressure. The Camp David accords did not only set the framework for a bilateral Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement but also for a solution to the Palestinian problem.

The fact that America is not winning in Afghanistan and is being outsmarted by Iran has nothing to do with Israel. When America is resolute and gives itself the means to win, it does. At the end of 2006, the war in Iraq seemed lost. President Bush gambled one last time by ordering a surge of troops. It worked. It is thanks to the surge's success that President Obama was able to order a gradual troop withdrawal from Iraq. Today, it is in Afghanistan, not in Iraq, that the United States is loosing control. According to General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, a surge is badly needed in Afghanistan to avoid a humiliating defeat for NATO. President Obama is wavering.

Sending more troops to Afghanistan is harder than delivering articulate speeches on why peace is better than war. Easier still is to adopt George Soros' mistaken "linkage theory" that being tough on Israel shall alleviate America's Middle East headaches.

J Street's website claims that "Georges Soros did not found J Street" and that Soros "publicly stated his decision not to be engaged in J Street when it was launched." It does not say that Soros was not engaged in J Street before it was launched. Wikipedia's entry on J Street states that "the initial support of J Street came from multi-billionaire George Soros, who for a brief time was associated with the organization. Soros pulled out before the initial launch, so as not to negatively affect the group."

Today's opening of J Street's conference in Washington was preceded by many accusations and very little debate on substance. There are clearly different ways of approaching the Middle East's challenges. J Street's approach has the merit of being clear, even though it has failed in the past. Instead of trying to find out the exact number of J Street's Arab donors, or of pointing out to the correct fact that the Israeli speakers at J Street's conference are mostly political has-beens whose ideas have been defeated by facts and rejected by voters, Israeli policy makers and commentators should engage in an easily winnable debate. Exposing the fallacy of most of J Street's assumptions is no rocket science. Let's do that instead of debasing ourselves with the "Jew Boy" name-calling.

After all, those who called Kissinger a "Jew Boy" three decades ago probably miss him today.

PAN AM 103 VICTIMS' FAMILIES AND SUPPORTERS PROTEST RELEASE OF BOMBER MASTERMIND AT UNITED KINGDOM UN MISSION

Wednesday, August 26, 2009
AMCHA-CJC
3700 Henry Hudson Parkway
Bronx, NY 10463
P. 718.796.4730
F. 718.884.3206
E. info@amchacjc.org
www.amchacjc.org

The parents' faces are etched with nearly 21 more years of grief. But their
children remain young, frozen in time, their bodies blasted apart in the
terror bomb which downed Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December
1988.

Kathleen and Jack Flynn stood outside the United Kingdom UN Mission in
mid-Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, for their murdered son John Patrick,
then 21. Hope Asrelsky stood for her daughter Rachel, also 21. Babette
Hollister stood for her daughter Katharine, then 20. Gathered about them
were demonstrators organized by Amcha-Coalition for Jewish Concerns. They
protested the release by Scotland of Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Basset
Ali al-Megrahi, sentenced to life for orchestrating the murder of the 270
victims of Pan Am 103, 189 of them Americans. It is widely believed that
al-Megrahi's release to a hero's welcome in Tripoli was in exchange for
British commercial oil and gas contracts with Libya.

"When there is such a miscarriage of justice we cry out", declared Amcha-CJC
national president Rabbi Avi Weiss. "In God's words, 'your brother's blood
cries out to me from the ground', here, the blood of 270 Pan Am 103 victims.
To the parents of the victims, there are no words which can give you proper
solace. But across the denominations and faiths, each soul of good
conscience is trying to emphasize with you. You have not forgotten;
millions of people have not forgotten. Every passenger on any airline in
the world has been affected.

"Al-Megrahi was released on 'compassionate' grounds. Misplaced compassion
doesn't help, but hurts. Letting al-Megrahi go sends a message to
terrorists, you can do it and get away with it. And certainly no one
believes that only one person took down the plane. To Libya and, I believe,
Syria, we say, we have not forgotten. When Muammar Qaddafi comes to the
United Nations, as expected in a few weeks, he should be absolutely shunned.
Col. Qadaffi: The voice of moral conscience will follow you from the UN to
the Libyan compound in Englewood, NJ, where you may stay. You will not be
safe from the souls of Pan Am 103."

"To lose your oldest son in such a horrific act of terrorism is such an
incredible happening," Kathleen Flynn explained. It has certainly impacted
our entire life. God has blessed us with three other children and seven
grandchildren, but the pain is there every day. Terrorism is here to stay,
and we have to be ever vigilant and make sure that the nations which
participate in terrorist acts are punished. We should not be doing business
with terrorist nations."

"It's an appropriate day for me to be here," Babette Hollister told the
crowd and assembled media. "I spent the morning up in the cemetery because
tomorrow would have been my daughter's 41st birthday. I didn't even attempt
to explain to her what I would be doing this afternoon. It seems such a wild
thing that a person would be released after murdering 270 people."

"I don't speak the language in Scotland", Hope Asrelsky declared. "But I
think they've changed the word 'compassion' to mean the release in exchange
for oil exports and contracts."

Rabbi Jason Herman of the West Side Jewish Center, posed the question, "What
would happen if 21 years from now America, in an act of 'compassion', would
release 9/11 organizer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? In these upcoming days of
Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, we speak of forgiveness and compassion. But not
holding someone accountable is not an act of compassion. The most ultimate
act of compassion is to hold someone accountable because it means that what
they did matters. Scotland hasn't learned that lesson; I hope the rest of
the world does."

Although the voices of the speakers were amplified to the many passersby on
the busy street a block from the United Nations, the protest also became
moments of healing. Rabbi Weiss gathered the protesters in a large circle.
"Let's close our eyes and try to feel the hurt", he told them. "Let's do
all we can to empathize with the families, to unite our souls, to stand as
one."

Other speakers included Maharat Sara Hurwitz of the Hebrew Institute of
Riverdale and Rabbi Israel Stein, rabbi emeritus of Rodeph Sholom,
Bridgeport, Ct.

Rabbi Weiss urged participation in the noontime September 24th rally at Dag
Hammerskjold Plaza against the expected presence of Iranian president
Ahmadinejad at the UN General Assembly.

Grobman: Israelis Denouncing Israel: Legitimate or Arrogant?

When Israelis Denounce Israel: Legitimate Criticism of Israel or Arrogant Self-Delusion

Dr. Alex Grobman

Critics of Israel abound. Some are antisemites who seek the demise of the Jewish state. Others have legitimate concerns about particular Israeli policies. Among the most vocal are a number of Israeli intellectuals who challenge the country’s raison d’être.

In an August 20, 2009 editorial in the Los Angeles Times, Neve Gordon, a professor of political science at Ben-Gurion University, accused Israel of being an apartheid state. He said a two-state solution was the “more realistic” way to end this inequity. Since only “massive international pressure,” will bring about this state and thus save Israel, Gordon recently joined the Arab sponsored Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement founded in July 2005.1

Vilification of Israel by Jews is not a new phenomenon. As early as May 1, 1936 Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson asked: “Is there another people on earth whose sons are so emotionally twisted that they consider everything their nation does despicable and hateful, while every murder, rape and robbery committed by their enemies fills their hearts with admiration and awe? As long as a Jewish child…can come to the land of Israel, and here catch the virus of self-hate…let not our conscience be still.”2 For Katznelson this was aberrant behavior, not the norm. Today, criticism of Israel has become ubiquitous among a significant portion of Israeli intellectuals.3

In the 1950s, psychologist Gordon Allport explained that Jewish self-hate is the process in which the victim identifies with his aggressor and “sees his own group through their eyes.” The Jew “may hate his historic religion…or he may blame some one class of Jews…or he may hate the Yiddish language. Since he cannot escape his own group, he does in a real sense hate himself—or at least the part of himself that is Jewish.”4 Self-hating Jews play a significant role in anti-Israel campaigns of the Western media. Historian Robert Wistrich noted that Jews highly critical of Israel are featured in the British media.5

Manfred Gerstenfeld, chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, found that the French elite and media adore Jews and Israelis who are highly critical of Israel.

A number of marginal Jews, who are not known in Israel, are presented as part of the Israeli mainstream. 6 Israeli’s condemnation of their country is a result of living under “a state of chronic siege,” posits Kenneth Levin, a historian and psychiatrist. Israelis have been abused for so long, that they escape their pain by espousing anti-Israel sentiments. Appeasing the terrorists, they believe, will end hostilities. Israel only has to acquiesce to Arab demands, cease obsessing about defensible borders and other strategic issues, and peace would ensue and such concerns would become irrelevant.7

Sol Stern, a former editor of the New Left Ramparts magazine, adds that this assumes both sides act rationally. According to this scenario, when Israel’s concessions are considered equitable, amity will compensate for any remaining differences. Didn’t the enmity between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union end in détente? Hadn’t President Richard Nixon gone to China? Aren’t “the Arabs rational” people? 8 Any “peace process” is intrinsically superior to war. Regardless of all previously failed attempts, isn’t another peace overture worth trying? To suggest there might be “something inherently violent and unreasonable in Arab Muslim political culture” could be interpreted as racist.9 Instead, Israeli intellectuals began disparaging their own culture and re-writing their country’s history. When they concluded that the Arabs had legitimate grievances, they decided “it was time to try again to split the difference.”10 In the 1980s and 1990s two different Israeli administrations offered “land for peace’ to Syria, but were rebuffed. Under terms of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Israeli government permitted terrorist organizations to return to the West Bank and Gaza and gave tens of thousands of weapons to Yasser Arafat’s security services, before he signed a peace treaty or an irrefutable security agreement. Arab failure to rescind the Palestine National Covenant’s demand for Israel’s demise and replacement by a Palestinian state was either ignored or minimized.11 “No nation in the world has taken so many mortal risks for a putative peace with its most implacable enemies,” Stern observes. Even after the Oslo Accords were shattered when the Arabs began blowing up civilians in pizza shops and on buses, Ehud Barak offered another proposal at Camp David. Instead of accepting this offer, Arafat unleashed “yet another savage wave of extermination against Israel’s civilian population” with weapons Israel had provided him.

Stern credits neoconservatives with understanding that Israel’s right to exist as a democratic Jewish state has always been the main problem for the Arabs, not the “disputed territories.” Arab attempts to bring their case to the attention of the world are not arbitrary.

Suicide bombings are a cleverly planned strategy that has produced considerable advantages. After the first series of attacks against Israeli supermarkets, cafés, malls and buses, the Arab cause was championed by European governments and on American campuses.12 Israeli victims receive little sympathy, historian Tony Judt and a severe critic of Israel claims, because they are not seen as victims of terror, but as “collateral damage of their own government’s mistaken policies.”13 Israeli offers to exchange land for peace have not succeeded. Appeasement has only increased hatred of Israel. Yet Israel is continually pressured to make concessions.

The reason, Stern believes, is that progressive critics cannot acknowledge a fundamental truth: “that there can be political movements, like Islamic terrorism—in which the jihad and the intifada merge—that are so pathological in their hatreds that we can solve the problems they purport to care about only after they are defeated.” 14

Levin sees an element of arrogance in “this self-delusion” by Israelis who believe they can affect change. Jews assume a responsibility for something over which they have no control, to ward off despair. This is similar to an abused child who feels responsible for his plight and views himself as “bad.” The child maintains, “the fantasy that if he becomes good enough,” his father will stop hitting him, his mother will give him attention and whatever other form of abuse he suffered will end.

In the same way, some Israelis are delusional when they assume they can control Arab behavior.

Dr. Alex Grobman is a Hebrew University trained historian. He is the author of a number of books, including Nations United: How The U.N. Undermines Israel and The West, Denying History: Who Says The Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? and a forthcoming book on Israel's moral and legal right to exist as a Jewish State.

1. Never Gordon, “Boycott Israel: An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it’s the only way to save his country,” latimes.com (August 20, 2009).2. Edward Alexander, “Israelis Against Themselves.” In The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders. Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor, Eds. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 35.
3. Ibid., 35-36.
4. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Jews Against Israel,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs No.30 (March 1, 2005).
5. Ibid.
6. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “European-Israeli Relations: Between Confusion and Change? An American Watching Anti-Israeli Bias in France, Interview with Nidra Poller.” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (September 2006).
7. Kenneth Levin, The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege (Hanover, New Hampshire: Smith and Kraus Global, 2005), vii-viii, xv, xix-xx.
8. Sol Stern, “Israel Without Apology.” City Journal. (Summer 2003), Online.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Tony Judt, “The country that wouldn’t grow up.” Haaretz. (May 5, 2006), Online.
14. Stern, op.cit.
15. Levin, op.cit. xvi-xx.