An interesting tidbit, delivered by the Algemeiner:
A British document from early 1948, declassified only weeks ago, tells the story:
“the Arabs have suffered a series of overwhelming defeats…. Jewish victories … have reduced Arab morale to zero and, following the cowardly example of their inept leaders, they are fleeing from the mixed areas in their thousands.”
Do read the whole thing.
The Elder of Ziyon comments (here):
Gaza Siege! Collective punishment! – And no condemnations!
After reproducing the BBC confirmation of the Egyptians closing off the Gaza crossing, the Elder makes the following observations and comments:
“I cannot find a single call for an emergency session at the UN.
Nor any criticism from the Arab world.
Nor any criticism from any Gaza groups.
Nor any condemnations from “human rights” organizations.
Funny, isn’t it?”
The Elder sees what others ignore. Shame on them all.
This essay, from Bruce Schneier, is an important refresher of one he did after 9/11. It’s a solid, sensible view of terror as he sees it from a western perspective. However, from my perspective, it’s one of those areas – one of the few, you might argue – where Israel and Israelis have a different perspective. Where such events are unusual, in Israel they are not. Indeed, much ‘low level’ terrorism – which is assuredly not low level to those who are its victims – is just not reported out of Israel. It is not newsworthy.
Therefore, be aware that this is a valid view, but it is not the only one. I would very much like to see how Mr Schneier would cover the same topic from our viewpoint.
As the details about the bombings in Boston unfold, it’d be easy to be scared. It’d be easy to feel powerless and demand that our elected leaders do something — anything — to keep us safe.
It’d be easy, but it’d be wrong. We need to be angry and empathize with the victims without being scared. Our fears would play right into the perpetrators’ hands — and magnify the power of their victory for whichever goals whatever group behind this, still to be uncovered, has. We don’t have to be scared, and we’re not powerless. We actually have all the power here, and there’s one thing we can do to render terrorism ineffective: Refuse to be terrorized.
It’s hard to do, because terrorism is designed precisely to scare people — far out of proportion to its actual danger. A huge amount of research on fear and the brain teaches us that we exaggerate threats that are rare, spectacular, immediate, random — in this case involving an innocent child — senseless, horrific and graphic. Terrorism pushes all of our fear buttons, really hard, and we overreact.
But our brains are fooling us. Even though this will be in the news for weeks, we should recognize this for what it is: a rare event. That’s the very definition of news: something that is unusual — in this case, something that almost never happens.
Remember after 9/11 when people predicted we’d see these sorts of attacks every few months? That never happened, and it wasn’t because the TSA confiscated knives and snow globes at airports. Give the FBI credit for rolling up terrorist networks and interdicting terrorist funding, but we also exaggerated the threat. We get our ideas about how easy it is to blow things up from television and the movies. It turns out that terrorism is much harder than most people think. It’s hard to find willing terrorists, it’s hard to put a plot together, it’s hard to get materials, and it’s hard to execute a workable plan. As a collective group, terrorists are dumb, and they make dumb mistakes; criminal masterminds are another myth from movies and comic books.
Even the 9/11 terrorists got lucky.
If it’s hard for us to keep this in perspective, it will be even harder for our leaders. They’ll be afraid that by speaking honestly about the impossibility of attaining absolute security or the inevitability of terrorism — or that some American ideals are worth maintaining even in the face of adversity — they will be branded as “soft on terror.” And they’ll be afraid that Americans might vote them out of office. Perhaps they’re right, but where are the leaders who aren’t afraid? What has happened to “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”?
Terrorism, even the terrorism of radical Islamists and right-wing extremists and lone actors all put together, is not an “existential threat” against our nation. Even the events of 9/11, as horrific as they were, didn’t do existential damage to our nation. Our society is more robust than it might seem from watching the news. We need to start acting that way.
There are things we can do to make us safer, mostly around investigation, intelligence, and emergency response, but we will never be 100-percent safe from terrorism; we need to accept that.
How well this attack succeeds depends much less on what happened in Boston than by our reactions in the coming weeks and months. Terrorism isn’t primarily a crime against people or property. It’s a crime against our minds, using the deaths of innocents and destruction of property as accomplices. When we react from fear, when we change our laws and policies to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed, even if their attacks fail. But when we refuse to be terrorized, when we’re indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail, even if their attacks succeed.
Don’t glorify the terrorists and their actions by calling this part of a “war on terror.” Wars involve two legitimate sides. There’s only one legitimate side here; those on the other are criminals. They should be found, arrested, and punished. But we need to be vigilant not to weaken the very freedoms and liberties that make this country great, meanwhile, just because we’re scared.
Empathize, but refuse to be terrorized. Instead, be indomitable — and support leaders who are as well. That’s how to defeat terrorists.
[This essay originally appeared on TheAtlantic.com. Available, here.]
This is too important to passover. From the Elder of Ziyon (with my added emphasis):
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Don’t believe anything you read in the PalArab media
The “International Middle East Media Center” says:
Monday evening, May 13 2013; a group of extremist Israeli settlers set ablaze Palestinian olive orchards and farmlands that belong the villages of Qaryout, south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
Local sources reported that the armed settlers burnt the agricultural lands, and prevented the villagers from reaching their lands to put the fire off.
Bashar Qaryouty, coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements in Qaryout village, reported that the burnt lands were planted with wheat and olive trees.
And from Palestine Info:
Jewish settlers set ablaze more than 20 dunums of cultivated land lots in Qaryut village, south of Nablus, on Monday and prevented their owners from approaching to put it off.
Bashar Al-Qaryuti, in charge with monitoring settlement activity in the village, said that dozens of settlers from the settlement of Shilo started the fire that burnt the land cultivated with barley, wheat, and olives.
He charged that the Israeli occupation forces provided protection for the settlers and blocked the land owners, 25 individuals, from extinguishing the fire.
There are stories like this daily in the PalArab media. Unfortunately, it is all too rare to find out the other side of the story.
Luckily, this time we can.
The land is owned by a Jew and this was upheld by a court judgment. He is the only person who ever cultivated that field. He started a controlled fire to get rid of overgrown brush.
No barley, no wheat, no olives, no Arab owners. Every single word that was reported by the Arab media, and by the spokesman, was a lie.
How can anyone believe anything these people say when we have proven time and time again that they lie with impunity?
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Ra’anana Gamer: I suggest the last question is directed to every mainstream western media outlet. Just what fact checking do they bother to do?
From Israel HaYom:
On Shavuot, the holiday which Jews around the globe begin celebrating this Tuesday night, Iraqi Jews mark 72 years since the Farhud — the 1941 riots in which 137 people were slaughtered and hundreds more injured. The Babylonian (Iraqi) Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda has inscribed the victims’ names, and Iraqi Jews worldwide recall the horrible disgrace of those events, which were so reminiscent of Kristallnacht in Germany. The Farhud riots were carried out by a mob that had been incited to violence, and resulted in the Iraqi Jewish community losing faith in the country they had called home for millennium; the community of some 140,000 Jewish people dwindled to just a sparse few today.
You can read the whole thing, here. It rather debunks the nonsense about how well Jews were treated in Arab countries before the establishment of modern Israel.
(And as to why the establishment of Israel should be any kind of excuse or reason for anti-semitism in the Arab world, that only ‘works’ if you assume their culture resembles that of a collection of immature alpha males, unable to cope with a challenge to their world view. In other words, it’s crap.)
And while the recollection of the events must be a terribly sad occasion, there hopefully is some comfort in the gathering of these exiles and others in Israel today. I love the melting pot nature of the population. (Though it has to be said, the pot’s pretty white in Ra’anana!)
[I first saw this at Point of no return. It will add something to my Shavuot.]
One of the distinctive aspects (for me) about living in Israel, is the wind down on Friday afternoons as Shabbat approaches. The hustle and the bustle slowly ebbs away. The traffic thins out, household activity round and about seems to fade, and a special kind of invisible calm begins to settle.
As I write this, it’s mid afternoon in the run up to Shavuot, and it’s the same kind of experience happening now.
You don’t have to be religious or observant to appreciate it or benefit from it; a rest day is a chance to recharge the batteries in whatever way takes your fancy.
For Shavuot, the traditional orthodox Jewish approach is to learn Torah through the night, and do the morning prayers as early as possible. There are opportunities all over Ra’anana, and I am spoiled for choice. (But I do miss Shavuot in Glasgow, and have some very happy memories.)
To those who celebrate the chag, Chag Sameach. To everyone, just be well.
From Globes:
“Business Insider” names 20 hottest Israeli start ups
“As a startup hub, Israel is second only to Silicon Valley.” Waze tops the list.
“Business Insider” yesterday listed Israel’s 20 hottest start-up, and praised the country’s developed start-up industry. “By some counts, Israel is home to 4,800 startups today. It’s also home to least two dozen accelerator/incubator programs in the Tel Aviv area, alone, including some run by Microsoft and Google,” it says, adding, “As a startup hub, Israel is second only to Silicon Valley. So it’s not easy to name the nation’s hottest, most exciting startups because everywhere you turn there are young companies doing really cool things.”
Waze Ltd. tops the list, with its crowdsourced traffic reports. “Business Insider” says, “Waze is far and away the hottest, most talked about startup in Israel these days.” It adds, “At one point, Apple was rumored to be buying Waze. That didn’t happen but the company is doing so well that co-founder Uri Levine has become an angel investor in other Israeli startups, like Pixtr.”
Wix is in second place. “It provides free and low-cost websites and lets people with no tech background create beautiful sites. Wix hosts over 30 million sites,” “Business Insider” writes.
The rest of the start-ups are:
The inimitable Elder of Ziyon has an important essay about the Hawking BDS situation.
“In a nation that has embraced the false themes of unlimited Israeli evil and absolute Palestinian Arab victimhood, can we expect people to suspect that they are being fed a diet of lies? Finding out the truth takes time; it takes effort, and it takes commitment, all resources that most people cannot be bothered with. If their newspaper says that Israel is the intransigent party, who will spend the time to research the other side? Who would even consider that there is another side?
Read it all. If you are British, read it twice. Then never say again that you haven’t been warned.
As previously posted, last week I did a 40 km ride around Jerusalem. The event started at the newly refurbished railway station, partly to advertise its opening as a social, cultural, events and meeting venue. And very nice it is too.
Registration was to start at 6.15 am, but of course I arrived before then. The place was already alive.
Watch this space disappear
But it got busier.
A sea of cyclists
After I had picked up my event number, and joined up with Shosh and her crew, there was a wait until the start time of 7.00 am. Which became 7.15 am. I think the Jerusalem mayor was involved, but it was hard to hear much above the crowd. Besides, he was speaking this funny language…
It took a full ten minutes for us to get from our position in the venue, to the starting line. After that, on to the bike, and off we went on our ride.
The initial stages were on the roads, and the traffic was stopped to let us have a free and less dangerous passage. But after maybe 15 minutes, we were off road and climbing.
Jerusalem is hilly. Around Jerusalem it is hilly. So we went down and up, but mostly up. And after that, we went up some more. Thank goodness for the water stations.
“What do you mean, you have no bananas?”
It was hot, and I used up my backpack water all too quickly. I would have liked some fruit, but you had to be at the front of the event to stand a chance of getting a banana. The rest did not look too appetizing, so I stuck to water.
No escape…
Everything went well until we got back into Jerusalem.
(Here, “well” is a relative term. I was hot, thirsty, tired, sore, and hot. But that was not the worst of it.)
Shosh, who had kindly kept me company for most of the time, was being held back by my pace, so I encouraged her to go ahead. But somewhere after passing the Teddy Kollek stadium in Jerusalem, I looked around and realized there was nobody ahead of me. The pack of riders had gone. Worse, there was nobody behind me. Worse, there were no signs, and no stewards. Yes, I was lost.
I cycled on a bit. No riders. (I was looking for any sign of the green color of the free t-shirt they gave each rider. Most wore theirs for the ride.)
A passing motorist told me to get lost keep going. But I was still lost. What did I do? I put on Waze (the Israeli GPS social network app about to be snapped up by Facebook, allegedly) and let it direct me. I reckon I did at least an extra couple of km with that off route detour. Anyway, eventually, I made it back. At the venue, there was a massage tent with masseurs offering treatment to relieve the pain, but all I wanted to do was get home. My bike bore the signs of the ride and I know it wanted a clean up.
Play dusty for me
All in all, a good ride. Pity about the poor stewarding and route marking at the end. I am comforted in knowing I was not the only lost rider.
Thanks to Shosh for the tip and the company. And thanks to Jerusalem for being such a cracking backdrop. I was too busy biking to take too many pictures, so you will have to take my word for it this time. It was lovely. (It was also hot, and uphill.)
I hope there will be another one next year and I will be able to ride it again. Next time, I am aiming to get a banana.
This is an extract from an acceptance speech by Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein, on being presented with the Dr Bernard Heller Prize at Hebrew Union College, NYC:
“Three hundred million Arabs do not enjoy freedom of speech. Half of them, 150 million, as women, not only lack freedom of speech, but have barely any rights at all. And the private rights of how to pray and how to love are wrongly dictated by governments, all across the Arab World. Three years ago, we witnessed what was called the Arab Spring. Dictators who had oppressed their own people — and deceived them by telling them that Jews and Israel’s very existence were one of the primary causes of their misery — were toppled. It was a time for human rights organizations and governmental organizations to try to push for these rights long denied, with the hopes that they would take some root. One might have hoped, too, that it was also a time for human rights organizations to tell the people living in Arab countries that their governments not only misled them about their own rights, but also falsely portrayed Israel as a threat and an enemy to detract attention from their plight. Sadly, they did not do this. And the reason, in my opinion, is because of where many in the human rights community have placed their emphasis in recent years.
In my opinion, over the last few years, many in the human rights field have steadily retreated from upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Instead of focusing on insuring basic human rights for all citizens across the Arab world and in other closed societies, they have waded into the muddle of trying to become experts in the laws of warfare, deciding what constitutes a legitimate act of war and what does not, what should be considered a war crime and what should not. The result is that human rights organizations are trying to act like a referee at a sports event, calling war crimes of both sides. They come across like a group of litigator lawyers playing a game of “Gotcha!” mostly with the Israeli Defense Forces and occasionally with Hamas, Hezbollah, and from time to time, Iran.
Instead of this role, for which they are not well qualified, if they want to have an impact for good in the Middle East, human rights organizations should be focusing on state-incited hate speech. And, unfortunately, there is plenty of it in closed societies across the Arab world. If human rights organizations wanted to be open and honest with the suffering Arab masses, who are certainly suffering, they would point out that blaming Jews is a distraction and not what is holding them and their children back from enjoying the miracles of today’s world. For decades, government-sponsored hate speech in closed societies has been fostering a revenge rather than reform mentality.
A point that cannot be made too often: incitement and hatred are a barrier to peace in the Middle East, and to progress of these closed societies. It would have been good to highlight how Western funding props up this sorry state of affairs.
Here’s where you come in. State-incited hate speech in closed societies by Arab governments and Iran, among others, for over 65 years has had an enormous effect. It has prevented peace. It has had a chilling effect on minorities, and not only Jews, but Christians, Bahai’i and others. And it has prevented the kind of popular empowerment that is the region’s only hope for a better future. Iran and its non-state allies, Shiite Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas, have actually been calling for genocide, not only of Israel, but of all Jews everywhere. They have not only called for it, but are carrying on a war of attrition, mostly against Israel, but also striking many cities throughout in the world.
Ayatollah Khamenei has declared that he can destroy Israel in 9 minutes. Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has wheeled Iran’s largest rocket through Tehran, declaring: “This is for Israel.” Incitement to genocide is a crime under Article 3(c) on the Convention and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide-General Assembly Resolution 260 that came into force in 1951.
It is hard to believe that major human rights organizations have taken no action on the matter. They call the statements of the Iranian leadership “advocacy” – a form of protected free speech – rather than “incitement.”
Incitement seems to be among the few issues where Sunni and Shiite dictatorships and terrorist groups are in agreement. Sunni Saudi Arabia runs a huge textbook business that reaches Arab children of all ages, that calls Jews “Descendants of monkeys and pigs,” among other things, and they do a pretty good job attacking Christians too.
I, as a publisher, and you, as graduates of one of the great Jewish institutions in this country, know the value of words. The power of words in the past has certainly been recognized. Julius Streicher, publisher of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, was tried at Nuremberg, convicted and hung. The power of speech was certainly recognized in the trials following the Rwanda genocide as well. Yet, the major human rights organizations have found no way to confront the problem and recognize that the 300-plus million people living in closed Arab countries have been taught for decades that a small Jewish state has no right to exist.”
You can read the whole thing, here.
[A great spot at my right word.]