Jabotinsky in the New York Times, 1915

I learned from reading a JTA archived news item, while looking from something else entirely (I love researching), that sent me to another source that:

On 2 February 1915, the New York Times headlined an article “Zionist in Peril of Turkish Attack.” The source was “a well-known Moscow journalist” named Vladimir Jabotinski,, whose name would become associated with Revisionist Zionism. Jabotinski reported that there was the “gravest fear” for fifteen thousand Jewish colonists in “Galilee, Judea, Samaria” because the Turks were ‘inciting’ the Arabs to violence.  

I contacted a friend, EOZ, who managed to obtain for me this:

There it is: Jabotinsky in the New York Times, 1915.

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My January 22, 2021 Letter in JPost Magazine

As published in the Jerusalem Post Weekend Magazine, January 22, 2021:

I was astounded, nay, discombobulated, reading Glenn C. Altschuler's review of Aharon Nathan's memoir ("A better Israel and world", Jan. 15). Altschuler, a university professor, finds that a 90-year old, in reminiscing about his female teachers during his teenage school years, wrote in a way that is "inappropriate in 2021". This was, for me, a stupefying moment.

In 2021, it seems he is suggesting that memories need be erased, that reality be reordered, that what was, well, wasn't quite the way it was. Honesty in history is to be avoided.

Was Nathan's language one of suggesting after-school liaisons or encouraging  adult-minor intimacy? He was, to be clear, recalling his feelings and those of his classmates. No vulgarities seem to have been employed. I can only wonder what Altschuler would have allowed in that chapter.

If in academia the cancel culture so reigns in that we cannot read what actually  happened, if only in a young man's mind, that we may never be permitted to know exactly what occurred so that we cannot discuss, argue and deliberate events and thinking, we might as well start burning books and torching films.

Yisrael Medad

Shiloh

The Pali Necklace Intended to Strangle Israel

I have tried over the past few years to highlight this accessories company which commercializes clothing and jewelry inteneded to erase Israel.

They have now begun to push the "Pali Necklace".

Comes in different shades:

But that configuration of borders:

erases Israel. All of Palestine is...Arab is the claim. And the slogan "from the River to the Sea: promotes that geographical conceptualization.

If Zionists promoted a map that reflected the original borders of so-called "historic Palestine", up until Article 25 of the League of Nations Mandate separated TransJordan

we'd be accused of expansionism.

The same with the Zionist proposal of the Jewish National Home to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

Imagine the contretemps if I would upload the Revisionist "Both Banks of the Jordan" map. Okay, I will:

A historical representation of the Tribal Portions:

And there's the Sullam map of From the River to the River (Genesis 15:18):

That "Pali Necklace" is intended to educate and mobilize a consciousness that Israel doesn't belong in that region, that only an Arab Palestine should exist and that Israel should not exist.

That's a strangling necklace.

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Quick Comment on BDS

To remind ourselves:

a. The boycotting by Arabs as a weapon against Jews and Zionism began early during the Mandate period.

b. The boycott was directed not only against the idea and practice of Zionism but against Jews as Jews.

c. The boycott was not aimed specifically at an "occupation".

Examples:

1929

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Jewish Students, Progressivism and Zionism

I have blogged on several occsions that the collapse of Jewish national identification among the younger generation of Diaspora Jews. I noted the Bund which morphed into Communism, various pacifist groups in the 1920s and 1930s, Reform Judaism before 1937, the rise of the American Council for Judaism and other marginal but loud voices were all in this mold and preceded contemporary reality. Then the push after 1967 from left-wing anti-war groups led to Breirah and others which followed the previous generation in viewing Israel more as a threat to their Dispora identities.

What we see today with IfNotNow, JVP, Bend the Arc and others is reflected, if not totally in purpose, but at least in the process of development that occured with Avukah.

Thanks to Tal Elmaliach's new article, I was able to extract some relevant history that may make clear my position on history repeating itself, if not exactly:

I now located Nathann Glazer's memoirs which shed more light:

I entered City College in February 1940...I was persuaded by a fellow student to attend a meeting of Avukah, the student Zionist organization. I was not a Zionist but was willing to hear what there was to be said for Zionism. It was an accident that had a strong impact on the rest of my life. The speaker was Seymour Melman, a recent graduate of City College who had just spent a year in Palestine and was reporting on his experiences. Had Avukah been simply a Jewish organization, I doubt that it would have made much impact on me. But these were socialist>Zionists. What is more, they were intellectual socialist Zionists and looked down on nonintellectual socialist Zionists...soon I was on the staff of Avukah Student Action (the organization's national newspaper) and had become a Zionist; indeed, before that was settled, I was named editor. No loyalty oaths were required to become a member of Avukah. We had a three-point program, presented in documents portentously titled "theses," and in theoretical pamphlets. The organization may have been Zionist but the culture was in most ways left sectarian. We were generally allied on campus issues with the anti-Stalinist Left – the socialists and the Trotskyites.

The three points of our program were to build a "non-minority Jewish center in Palestine, to fight fascism, and to foster a democratic American Jewish community. This program represented a somewhat off-center Zionism. The term non-minority was meant to leave room to for a binational state of Jews and Arabs. In those days we believed it possible for the two nations to share power, with neither being in the minority in a political or cultural sense. Our notion was that if both nations were guaranteed equal political rights, the Arab majority of Palestine would allow unrestricted Jewish immigration...Avukah was a switching point on the road from socialism to sociology. At first it emphasized the socialism, of which I knew little until 1 became involved. But Avukah, following the pattern of other left sectarian organizations, had "study groups," in which we read not only Zionist classics but also socialist classics: Bukharin's Historical Materialism was particularly favored by some of our elders. But we were not Leninists. Though left, and critical of social democrats, the radical leaders of Avukah who tried to influence us were (Rosa) Luxemburgian – revolutionary but against a directing central party and for education of the working masses.

It was a very congenial bent. The only issues that called for action were Zionist ones; for the rest education was sufficient. The doctrine hardly mattered, I am convinced. It is almost embarrassing to say we believed in revolution. The only way to relieve the embarrassment is to confess that we really did not...

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Salo Baron, 1940, The World War and European Jewry

What follows are some selected extracts of an article published in the Contemporary Jewish Record, vol. 3, July-August 1940 and based on Address delivered at the joint session of the National Conference of Jewish Social Welfare meeting in Pittsburgh May 25, 1940.

World War II had begun eight months earlier, Kristalnacht happened  18 months previously, the Nuremburg Laws were promulgated four and a half years before this meeting.

Salo Baron was the outstanding Jewish historian of Jewish history at the time and, as has been noted:

Baron opposed the "lachrymose conception of Jewish history"...[that] the main elements of Jewish experience through the ages to be suffering and spiritual scholarship. In a 1975 interview, Baron said "Suffering is part of the destiny [of the Jews], but so is repeated joy as well as ultimate redemption."

What was his view of the present and the future? Was a Holocaust forseen? Did his thinking overly influence the lack of activism in American Jewry's practical response? What did he expect would happen during the war?

I purposely employ PDF copy of the article to indicate no change or editing was made.

Such was the mindset of organized American Jewry leadership in 1940.

The end result was vastly different and, quite probably, this mindset facilitated the poor response to what later happened to European Jewry.

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Back-to-the-Future Interventionism

By accident, I stumbled on this illustration in

an 1873 book of William H. Seward's travels, Travels Around the World, including to Palestine, at this site.

But note this there:

(p. 626). Historians belive that Jaffa is the only port in the world which can boast uninterrupted inhabitation throughout its entire existence. The Canaanites founded the city in the 18th Century BCE and called it Jaffa (Yafa in Arabic) (the beautiful). It’s in Palestine, but has been occupied by the Israeli military since 1948.  

I think that is called back-to-the-future interventionism.

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Push-Button Terminology

I will not argue with, counter, disprove or negate the content of this piece.

I will but simply highlight for you all the push-button terms in it that are intended to set off the alarm bells for liberals, sending them into harrowing concern, nervous tension and igniting under them hate and derision. Each one of them could have been written differently, less contentiously, but the author(s) had a specific goal in mind.

We are Israel's largest human rights group – and we are calling this apartheid

Hagai El-Ad

The systematic promotion of the supremacy of one group of people over another is deeply immoral and must end

Hagai El-Ad is executive director of B’Tselem

Israel’s controversial separation barrier at the Qalandia crossing between the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem, December 2020. 

Tue 12 Jan 2021 

One cannot live a single day in Israel-Palestine without the sense that this place is constantly being engineered to privilege one people, and one people only: the Jewish people. Yet half of those living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea are Palestinian. The chasm between these lived realities fills the air, bleeds, is everywhere on this land.

I am not simply referring to official statements spelling this out – and there are plenty, such as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion in 2019 that “Israel is not a state of all its citizens”, or the “nation state” basic law enshrining “the development of Jewish settlement as a national value”. What I am trying to get at is a deeper sense of people as desirable or undesirable, and an understanding about my country that I have been gradually exposed to since the day I was born in Haifa. Now, it is a realisation that can no longer be avoided.

Although there is demographic parity between the two peoples living here, life is managed so that only one half enjoy the vast majority of political power, land resources, rights, freedoms and protections. It is quite a feat to maintain such disfranchisement. Even more so, to successfully market it as a democracy (inside the “green line” – the 1949 armistice line), one to which a temporary occupation is attached. In fact, one government rules everyone and everything between the river and the sea, following the same organising principle everywhere under its control, working to advance and perpetuate the supremacy of one group of people – Jews – over another – Palestinians. This is apartheid.

There is not a single square inch in the territory Israel controls where a Palestinian and a Jew are equal. The only first-class people here are Jewish citizens such as myself, and we enjoy this status both inside the 1967 lines and beyond them, in the West Bank. Separated by the different personal statuses allotted to them, and by the many variations of inferiority Israel subjects them to, Palestinians living under Israel’s rule are united by all being unequal.

Unlike South African apartheid, the application of our version of it – apartheid 2.0, if you will – avoids certain kinds of ugliness. You won’t find “whites only” signs on benches. Here, “protecting the Jewish character” of a community – or of the state itself – is one of the thinly veiled euphemisms deployed to try to obscure the truth. Yet the essence is the same. That Israel’s definitions do not depend on skin colour make no material difference: it is the supremacist reality which is the heart of the matter – and which must be defeated.

Until the passage of the nation state law, the key lesson Israel seemed to have learned from how South Africa’s apartheid ended was to avoid too-explicit statements and laws. These can risk bringing about moral judgments – and eventually, heaven forbid, real consequences. Instead, the patient, quiet, and gradual accumulation of discriminatory practices tends to prevent repercussions from the international community, especially if one is willing to provide lip service to its norms and expectations.

This is how Jewish supremacy on both sides of the green line is accomplished and applied.

We demographically engineer the composition of the population by working to increase the number of Jews and limit the number of Palestinians. We allow for Jewish migration – with automatic citizenship – to anywhere Israel controls. For Palestinians, the opposite is true: they cannot acquire personal status anywhere Israel controls – even if their family is from here.

We engineer power through the allocation – or denial – of political rights. All Jewish citizens get to vote (and all Jews can become citizens), but less than a quarter of the Palestinians under Israel’s rule have citizenship and can thus vote. On 23 March, when Israelis go and vote for the fourth time in two years, it will not be a “celebration of democracy” – as elections are often referred to. Rather, it will be yet another day in which disfranchised Palestinians watch as their future is determined by others.

We engineer land control by expropriating huge swaths of Palestinian land, keeping it off-limits for their development – or using it to build Jewish towns, neighbourhoods, and settlements. Inside the green line, we have been doing this since the state was established in 1948. In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, we have been doing this since the occupation began in 1967. The result is that Palestinian communities – anywhere between the river and the sea – face a reality of demolitions, displacement, impoverishment and overcrowding, while the same land resources are allocated for new Jewish development.

And we engineer – or rather, restrict – Palestinians’ movement. The majority, who are neither citizens nor residents, depend on Israeli permits and checkpoints to travel in and between one area and another, as well as to travel internationally. For the two million in the Gaza Strip travel restrictions are the most severe – this is not just a Bantustan, as Israel has made it one of the largest open-air prisons on Earth.

Haifa, my birth city, was a binational reality of demographic parity until 1948. Of some 70,000 Palestinians living in Haifa before the Nakba, less than a 10th were left afterwards. Almost 73 years have passed since then, and now Israel-Palestine is a binational reality of demographic parity. I was born here. I want – I intend – to stay. But I want – I demand – to live in a very different future.

The past is one of traumas and injustices. In the present, yet more injustices are constantly reproduced. The future must be radically different – a rejection of supremacy, built on a commitment to justice and our shared humanity. Calling things by their proper name – apartheid – is not a moment of despair: rather, it is a moment of moral clarity, a step on a long walk inspired by hope. See the reality for what it is, name it without flinching – and help bring about the realisation of a just future.

Again, the article errs, misrepresents, misleads, neglects history, twists facts and more. But that is so very obvious.

I decided to focuse this time on the messaging, the mind-prop.

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Update on Arab Construction in Shiloh Valley

I informed my readers of an Arab initiative of construction at the south-east edge of Shiloh Valley some 18 months ago.

An update.

Construction is continuing after a long legal battle.

The pinkish symbol and lower right marks the location:

Aerial photographs:

They are moving apace.

Their parcelization plan:

Their view

Our view

Their other projects:

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"Ruin Upon the Temple Mount" Is A...?

"Ruin Upon the Temple Mount" Is A...?

a) reality, representing the lack of a Jewish Temple at Mount Moriah.

b) reference to the verse in Lamentations 5:18: that Mount Zion, that is, the Temple Mount, "which is desolate" will have "foxes walk upon it.”*

c) situation whereby the ruins of the site remain unexcavated by archaeologists to discover its important historical, cultural and religious significance.

or -

d) a song played by the Irish group, Dread Sovereign, who believe in "filthy cult old doom, black and heavy metal", who also don't mind displaying Hebrew in their graphics in the latest clip:

Yes, it is "d".

If anyone has the song, let me know. I know nothing about it but will try contacting the band.

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* The understanding is, however, as is recorded in the Talmud's Tractate Makkot (24b), that if the prophecies of destruction have been fulfilled, so will be the ones by the prophet Zechariah about the Temple being rebuilt - as so:

The Gemara relates another incident involving those Sages. On another occasion they were ascending to Jerusalem after the destruction of the Temple. When they arrived at Mount Scopus and saw the site of the Temple, they rent their garments in mourning, in keeping with halakhic practice. When they arrived at the Temple Mount, they saw a fox that emerged from the site of the Holy of Holies. They began weeping, and Rabbi Akiva was laughing. They said to him: For what reason are you laughing? Rabbi Akiva said to them: For what reason are you weeping? They said to him: This is the place concerning which it is written: “And the non-priest who approaches shall die” (Numbers 1:51), and now foxes walk in it; and shall we not weep?

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Three Fingers to the Left of the Tree and Down

Here is a picture that the late Miri Tzachi snapped while in a helicopter over Jerusalem's Old City:

You will notice at the bottom right-hand corner that I have added an arrow pointing to a tree just inside the Temple Mount wall and inbetween the wall and the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Why?

As I have posted before, during the 11 month period of September 1966 and August 1967, I studied at the Machon L'Madrichei Chutz La'Aretz program as a member of Betar. Guided by my own educational instructors, especially the late Nissan Teman (Chaim Fischgrund is to my right),

I quickly made contact with Emmanuel Hanegbi, Tzachi's father, and Dr. Israel Eldad. I began attending the once-weekly lecture series conducted by the Chugim Leumim at the basement of Ezra Yachin's Art Gallery at the corner of King David and Hess Streets. Topics were Uri Tzvi Greenberg Poetry, History of the Undergrounds, Zionist Thought and such. Shabbat services were at the Students' Minyan on Balfour Street. And then on to the Saturday night Melaveh Malka gatherings on Mount Zion.

Source

Do not forget that at this time, all the stretch leading from the east edge of the Sultan Pool (where the traffic light is) up to the Jaffa Gate was No-Man's Land, blocked off with barbed-wire and tank barriers. 

Source

While then Mt. Zion complex was in Israeli control, it was virtually an outpost. But it was a replacement for the lost holy sites inside the walled Old City and it was where David's Tomb was presumed to be.

Source

After some food and drinks, a discussion and singing, we would ascend the minneret over the courtyard

Source

and look out into the Old City.

The Temple Mount was clear and it was large, all lit up and couldn't be missed - but we were seeking out the Western Wall.

I was told my first time up at the top, "see that tree? raise up three fingers to the left and the Kotel is just down, out of sight".

And then the few who were up at the top starting shouting out at the top of their lungs:

"We are returning. We will be back!"

It was a bit electrifying. Nearly midnight and Jerusalem then in 1966 was an empty city at that time of night and our voices carried over and reverberated and echoed.

And we returned.

Here I am at the Kotel, day after Shavuot, 1967.

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