The Jewish Bystander Phenomenon

How often have you seen the following situation:

It's time for Minha/Maariv shel hol. There's more than a minyan present. All that's needed is a chazan. After a few minutes of complete silence, a few "nu"s penetrate the fog, daring someone (else) to get up and be the Shatz. Soon a particularly brave soul gets up and starts asking people if they want to be chazan. Most will decline the honor, until someone eventually gives in.

Or how's about the following:

Three guys have just finished dining together. A mezuman is needed. Now a game of "pass the buck" begins. Each member of the trio will say "bechavod" to his neighbor, running round and round till someone caves and is mezamen. (The cohanim have already happily gievn up their first dibs to play the "bechavod" game).

Maybe I missed something - isn't being a mezamen or a shatz an honor? When did it become a burden to borne only when absolutely necessary? Perhaps someone can explain this to me?

Well, I'm no farmer...

I was going to write a post about how it's impossible for an active grad student to find any sort of work, but this comic demonstrates this better than I ever could (no, I'm not married).

When in Israel, Speak in Hebrew

The latest YU Commentator has a very illuminating set of articles (see Hirhurim link, requires free subscription) on the tensions between Torah study and academia. As I've mentioned before, there is nothing similiar for those of us that learn in Israel. Zilch. Gornisht. We have nowhere to turn for any kind of advice, or even informed debate and opinion, regarding academia and religion.

Note to Richard Joel: You want to make inroads here? Start by translating the Commentator into Hebrew (I also think that the Orthodox Forum needs to do the same with their books), or better yet - by establishing a journal that would include both Israeli and American students' perspectives on the conflict between religion and the university. The mutual translation of views from English to Hebrew and vice versa can make a real difference and lead to genuine cultural interaction. Otherwise, the YU presence here will amount to little more than just another American Jewish bubble in Israel, one of many.

Finally, Some Sanity

ADDeRabbi, whose blog I always enjoy, makes one of the most sensible comments on the shemitah ta-ra-ram I've seen yet. I wish there were more like him.

On Frumkeit and Hypocrisy

As a practicing MO Jew, I have nothing against frumkeit per se. On the contrary, I consider the present flourishing of the Jewish religion to be a highly positive phenomenon. After being told by non-Jews and 'enlightened' Jews for the past two centuries that we are doomed to extinction, it is heart-warming to see the exact opposite happening. Even academia, that bastion of secular liberal humanism, is starting to recognize the power and importance of religion in Jewish and non-Jewish society.

Nevertheless, this revival is not without its uglier aspects. One of these is the phenomenon of self-appointed 'defenders of the faith' who disparage and disgrace talmidei chachamim, gedolim and rabbis who are not 'frum' enough in their mind. The most extreme expression of such fanaticism is of course the small group of Me'ah She'arim kana'im (obviously I refer to a group within Meah She'arim, not all of its residents) who viciously attack all but the most stringent authorities. At times, this even leads to physical violence, as when some kana'im physically assaulted Rabbi Yitzhak Halevi Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Israel, when he attended and spoke at Rabbi Isser Zalaman Melzer's funeral in 1954.

Most of the expressions of this disparagement do not reach this level, although they are no less digusting and disgraceful. One such phenomenon is the use of the term 'JB' for Rav Soloveitchik or referring to Rabbis without their proper title, like a recent comment on My Obiter Dicta's post about authorities on heter mechira referred to Rav Shlomo Goren.

It goes without saying that such people would go apoplectic if one referred to the Brisker Rav or the Hazon Ish in like form. That this is utterly hypocritical and disgusting also goes without saying. It is also contrary to halacha, which did not make kavod talmidei chachamim and the issur of bizui talmidei chachamim contingent on agreement with their halachic opinions, though I'm sure many have tried to be metaher that sheretz. Worse still, by allowing the use of ad hominem and insults against Rabbis one doesn't like, the more stringent sections of the Orthodox community are burning whatever bridges of common dialogue remain between them and the 'insufficiently frum' crowd. Nay, it undercuts the very fabric of halachic dialogue and 'friendly disagreement' on which I believe normative Orthdox Judaism rests. Otherwise we are no different than the various murderous sects of tzadikim the Netziv lamented in his intro to Sefer Bereishit. It pains me immensely that it has come to this.

I don't care what your opinion is on heter mechira, kashrut, or whatever halachic issue gets your goat. You have an unequivocal halachic obligation to respect the authority and person of Rabbis who hold differently. Otherwise, you're not much different from the thugs who attacked Rav Herzog - in other words, you're just a common self-important bully.

Checkmate

The reviewer of Foreign Affairs wipes the floor with Mearsheimer and Walt. Well worth the read. (Hat Tip: Martin Kramer)

The Silent Demon: OCD and Orthodoxy

We walk among you. Most of us are normal people, many are quite intelligent. You may know us as very hard workers. Perhaps you think that we are "perfectionists" when it comes to cleaning or doing work, or that we worry excessively over what appear to be insignificant issues. What binds us all is an overwhelming, often emotionally paralyzing fear of having done something wrong by omission or commission (leaving a place dirty, not knowing whether we locked the house) as well as a ritualistic need to repeat actions over and over again until we're "sure" the problem has gone away. But the fear and the need always come back, often the second we finish our ritual.

What we all share is a biological-psychological disorder known as obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD. I'm sure you've heard of this illness in the past. You may have thought it a funny or strange quirk, one of those quaint neuroses we suffer from in the modern world. Nothing could be further from the truth. OCD is hell repeating itself over and over again on a daily, nay hourly, nay sometimes even minute-to-minute basis. Whatever our "quirk" is, it paralyzes us, takes up an increasing amount of our time, and if not checked, can consume our entire life. What's worse is that many of us are ashamed of it or don't even realize that we have a sickness, since we mistake our problem (cleanliness, order) for the cause of our anxiety rather than just the disease's "excuse" for torturing us. We're very good at hiding it too, making a compulsion seem just like slightly excessive diligence.

All of which brings me to the issue of the relationship between OCD and the 'humra' mentality of many yeshivot and Orthodox communities. What I say here is based primarily on my own experience and knowledge, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true elsewhere.

Imagine the following scenario: A new yeshiva student comes at Zman Elul and is immediately immersed in rabbinic speeches about the need to do teshuva, to change. His natural zeal to change now becomes an overwhelming fear when he realizes just how many things he's doing wrong, certainly by the ridiculously high standards he set himself and which are encouraged in the strict yeshiva world. All of a sudden he doubts himself with every action he takes - always not sure whether he said the right words at davening, always thinking that he did a sin with every move he made, or that he wasn't makpid enough or mahmir enough. Every clearly minority opinion in halakha in the mahmir direction forces him to go even further, shema that opinion is right. Eventually he simply breaks down in davening after imagining himself committing the worst sin he could think of at the time. Or perhaps, instead of just thinking and worrying excessively, he moves to compulsive activities, such as repeated fasts, mikve bathing or tefilot and acts of crying and self-flagellation.

I myself was fortunate to have a RM who was aware of dangers such as these, and helped to calm me down and take things slowly. Whenever I had a ridiculous question on halakha, he knew to answer me patiently and allay my fears. Eventually I learned of my condition and have adapted myself accordingly. I deliberately avoid the study of halakhas that would encourage crazy thoughts (such as hilkhot hanhagat haboker, nedarim etc), at least not without the oversight of someone knowledgeable enough to put things in perspective for me. Thanks to a lot of hard work, I have started to actually enjoy mitzvot and mo'adim, instead of spending every waking second thinking about what I might have done wrong.

I highly doubt there is such awareness of this problem in many of the orthodox communities and yeshivot, especially, but not exclusively, the more "right-wing" ones, where religious stringency is the norm. I have no doubt that Hanokh Daum's book on the subject, regardless of his motivations, contains a great deal more than a grain of truth when it comes to the sufferings of OCD Orthodox Jews in the "total" atmosphere that is yeshivah. For us, religion becomes a hell of emotional torture, instead of the multifaceted experience, which should include happiness and contentment alongside periods of fasting and sorrow, which I believe Judaism to be.

We walk among you. We could be your fellow hevruta or student, a neighbour or a relative. For years we have suffered terribly without you noticing. Now it is time that you look for, and listen to, our desperate cry for help.

Ahh, sweet schadenfreude!

There are few things more entertaining than watching the radical secular looney-left folks at "the newspaper for thinking people", Haaretz, tear each other apart. It seems all the hard-core secularists (scroll down for the vituperative stuff) are up in arms over a critique of a five-volume encyclopedia of post-emancipation Jewry which focuses almost exclusively on secular Judaism and Jews, by a radical post-Zionist, no less. This post-zionist critiques the book for not having Mizrahi Jews or women on the writing staff, and is a bit miffed at the lack of mention of religion in this massive encyclopedia.

Now, I have not seen the encyclopedia myself, but if this very perceptive critique by an author I read and respect has any truth to it, then not only is the encyclopedia essentially a WASP-ish (White Ashkenazi Secular Protectionist) endeavor meant for other WASPs, but much of it sounds like a souped-up version of those who-is-a Jew books that include people who were Jewish by accident of birth and no more. More importantly, the encyclopedia apparently has removed anyone who was not a die-hard secular atheist liberal - this would remove almost all of the great "Jewish" thinkers of the age, regardless of how they defined their religiosity.

After years of us religious folk having to defend ourselves against the attacks of these ideological die-hards, it's nice to see them suffer the same fate, and on the pages of their "in-house" newspaper yet. Ken Yirbu.

Attention, up-and-coming Israeli Graduate Students: WE ARE SCREWED!

One of the most common questions I get asked when I mention my field of study (Contemporary Jewry), aside from "what is that?" is "what are you going to do with that"? To tell the truth I haven't given it much thought. I entered the subject of history because I like it and because I'm good at it. I always figured I could lnd a job at a think tank, teach, do research, or if those don't work, then try translating or editing. Still, I've always wanted to be Prof. Higgins' definition of a happy person - making a living from my "hobby".

Recently I received the equivalent of a sudden dunk in a bucket of ice water. A recent study found that the amount of Israelis with higher education finding work in their chosen fields is quite low. Not only that, but the amount of tenured faculty in Israel has essentially been frozen even though thousands of students graduate with higher degrees every year. This is not even mentioning the tenure process in Israel, an over-beauracratized, top-secret and convoluted matter which can lead to decisions based on, among other things, "academic politics". Needless to say, I am not optimistic about my future, and I am seriously considering a career change if things don't start looking up.

If anyone has any suggestions to improve the situation, I'm all ears.

Internet Dating for Dummy Jews like Myself

1. It's not personal. Really - when I make contact with someone else or vice versa, we are just two cards on a screen at first. Rejection simply means I or my opposite number decided that two random cards out of thousands don't match.
2. Corollary to the above: We all have a sense of humour and a love of life (or some other generic meaningless trait). You need to stand out to get noticed. For instance, you can tell a joke to prove your humour, or perhaps tell something quirky or interesting about yourself that isn't on the "traits" list.
3. Pictures are not a negotiable item. They increase exponentially the chance of you getting noticed. Conversely, items with no pictures will be skipped over quite often. Few of us like "blind dates", so don't expect people to take that chance on the net.
4. Corollary to the above (3): In your picture, you should smile friendly-like. Nothing is more off-putting than a bland serial-killer style stare at the camera. Also, choose your picture wisely - not too artificial looking, but still nice.
5. When you address someone, do so directly - in the second person ("you"). Don't write some general statement about how nice marriage is or send holiday greetings. We simple folk prefer direct communication over oblique hints.
6. If you don't like someone, have the decency to say so. There are few things more agonizing than sending a message to someone and never receiving even a formal response.

If anyone has anything to add to this list, I'm all ears.

Torn, Part II: On Being a Failure

Last year, I started a journal to express my anxieties and dillemas as a religious Jew learning in a university. Now that the new academic year is coming around, I have decided to try and renew this journal with the hope of expanding on the points I made in the introductory post.

I made mention in the introduction of my conversation with my RM (teacher) in yeshiva. There I complained of adjustment difficulties and keeping myself busy all the time. Finding hevrutas was very difficult, and I just did not succeed in filling up every seder with activity. Even more frustrating was what I felt to be a lag in my learning abilities. Try though I might, I rarely succeeded in finishing all the sources in the mar'e mekomot, and I always felt that everyone else understood everything and could keep up, while I was forever behind. My RM wisely suggested that I start studying some courses at University, a path that I would begin to take a year later.

Still, my failure to be able to last more than a year really smarted. My attempts to study in the BIU kollel were similiarly doomed to failure. In the easy class I was bored; in the challenging classes I couldn't make any headway. In the end, I just gave up, a veritable reject. It turns out I'm not the only one. From what I have heard, yeshiva students who decide to go to university rather than stay on were seen for many years, and saw themselves, as failures. Even though this perception is beginning to change, the amount of prepapration of yeshiva students for university is still lacking. Nothing resembling the corpus of the 'Torah U-Madda' ethos in America exists here.

So here I am, a guy who couldn't cut it in yeshiva now plowing his way through the dangerous minefield of Academic Judaism (more on that in the next post). The real question is, am I a failure, a grade-B Jew? Am I doomed to be considered inferior in two worlds - the yehsivish for not being able to learn, and in the academic for being frum?

If anyone has any answers, I'm all ears.

To Rectify an Historic Injustice (on Rav Goren)

As we approach the Day of Judgement, I would like to take this opportunity to adress a major injustice done to one of the major Rabbinic thinkers and activists in the State of Israel - Rabbi Shlomo Goronchik (Goren) (1918-1994), Chief Rabbi of the IDF from 1948-1967; of Tel Aviv from 1968-1972; and of the State of Israel from 1972-1983. Rav Goren was a highly prolific and original thinker, both in terms of halakha and general thought. He almost singlehandedly established the IDF Chief Rabbinate and helped turn it into an institution that positively affected not just religious Jews but all Jews in the army (indeed, the IDF Rabbinate's authority declined when he left).

His contribution to the subject of halakha and war, in all its aspects, is so large that it is simply impossible to mention the subject of war and religious Jewish thought without mentioning him. A highly public figure, he aroused considerable controversy (such as when he suggested blowing up the Muslim buildings on the Temple Mount) and demonstrated halakhic backbone - for instance, when he was matir the agunot of the Israeli sailors who died at sea, such as the members of the submarine Dakar. He left behind an impressive literary corpus (link includes only some his post-humously published writings) on virtually every subject regarding Jewish law and thought.

Yet, a review of the scholarly literature published in Israel on religious-Zionist thought finds almost no reference to Rav Goren. Thinkers and authorities from all ends of the religious spectrum - from the Rav Kook school to the Kibbutz Hadati and beyond, has been given due scholarly treatment. Relatively marginal figures (for their time) such as Rav Hayim Hirschenzon, as well as oppositional thinkers such as Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Eliezer Goldman have entire books and collections of essays analyzing their work and thought.

And Rav Goren? A footnote here, a short mention there, if we're lucky enough. True, he has been the subject of a popular biography and a few, very recent, articles by Dr. Aryeh Edrei of Tel Aviv University. A PhD Thesis is presently being written in Bar Ilan on the IDF Chief Rabbinate that will undoubtably discuss his contribution to the same. Still, even if we were to dig deep for scholarship and study of Rav Goren, we would still come up with a mere fraction of the attention given to others. A man who dedicated his life to the Jewish people, who was publicly involved in so many fields of thought and halakha, now seems doomed to endure the ultimate insult - that of being ignored and ultimately forgotten. I believe that those of us in the field of Jewish Studies have a moral responsibility to ensure that this does not happen. At the very least, we owe him the courtesy of acknowledgement.

On the Matter of Bagatz VS. Katzav

I'm sure you've all heard of Bagatz's decision to suspend the plea bargain with Moshe Katzav. In all likelihood, given the temprament of the court and the media circus, the arrangement will be overturned. While many are exulting at this reversal, I belive that Bagatz's present policy is nothing short of a disaster. This has nothing to do with the specific case of Katzav himself. If he really is guilty of the charges, then I would like nothing more than to see him put in a jail cell alongside a very lonely 300-pound prisoner named Bubba, or the Israeli equivalent, for the rest of his natural life.

So what's the problem, you may ask? There are many, actually, but I will focus in this post on one immediate issue - plea bargains. The overwhelming majority of criminal convictions in this country are based on plea bargains of one kind or another. Only a small percentage of cases actually see the inside of a courtroom. Even so, the judicial system suffers from backlog and there is a lack of judges.

Now imagine that Katzav's plea bargain is overturned. The judges can claim that it was an exceptional ruling from now till Doomsday - once the precedent has been set, there will be no turning back. Every bereaved family member or two-bit politico with a grudge can apply to have cases re-opened or the thousands of pleas arrived at each year examined. As a result, there will be fewer pleas, fewer "deals" to get at least partial justice or catch criminal fish higher up the ladder. Thousands of cases will result not in pleas, since the defendants aren't going to sign agreements that could easily be overturned. Many cases which could have had some good results will be thrown out, many other will reach the courtroom. Trials will take years longer to be resolved, if ever.

In its effort to achieve absolute "justicity" over every facet of administration in this country, Bagatz will end up paralyzing the justice system. Bagatz would have done well to take a cue from Moses, who realized that even he could not handle every single complaint. As for the "lynch-mob" public enthusiastically endorsing a Bagatz reversal, I would advise: "Be careful what you wish for...you just might get it".

Man Bites Dog

Tom Segev, hardly a Zionist, gives Avrum Burg's screed a good thrashing (in Hebrew). Well worth the read.

Saladin's Jordanian Castle

A few years ago I did a paper on Qal'at Ar-Rabad, otherwise known as Castle 'Ajlun. It was built by a deputy of Saladin on the eastern bank of the Jordan River directly opposite the famous crusader castle Belvoir (Cochav Ha-Yarden).

I have seen two reasons for the establishment of this castle. One, in the wikipedia link above, is the traditional one. According to the traditional explanation, the castle was primarily meant to protect against the external threat of Crusader expansion. Another reason, given by a Muslim contemporary historian, is that it was also meant to bring the Ajlun area under central control (before it had been controlled by the local bedouin) - i.e. to matain internal order in a crucial border region.

Does anyone know which explanation is correct? Perhaps both are true?

The War Against Brit Milah

The new Azure is out, with plenty of excellent articles to choose from. In this post, however, I would like to adress a very serious matter brought up in the correspondence section. There, no less than three letters to the editor responding to Dr. Ido Hevroni's article on circumcision as rebellion in the context of Roman domination. These letters, which include a "Rabbi" who endorses "alternative" britot milah that do not involve surgery, are all united in their utter disgust and repulsion at brit milah, describing it in the grossest and bluntest terms. Obviuosly, all are "enlightened" Jews, the type which have tried to "redefine" Judaism to make it indistinguishable from Western fads ever since the coming of modernity. A recent post by Gabriel Schoenfeld on the subject generated no less than 45 responses, much larger than any other post on the Commentary blog by an order of magnitude. There, too, the comments are filled with a disgusting venom.

My main concern here is not the existence of such opinions but their apparent legitimacy within the Jewish world - not just the fringes. I consider it nothing short of horrifying that the editors of Azure saw fit to publish only the anti-Brit Milah letters and not one in support. I can not stress the ramifications of this campaign enough. Brit Milah is not some transitory miderabanan that can be "intellectualized" out of existence, it is one of the core identifying marks - yes, marks - of Jews since the beginning. It is an issur karet, one which the Jews often risked their lives to perform.

The past couple of decades has seen quite a wave of Jewish religious thinkers "intellectualizing" various mitzvot and obligations out of existence for the sake of pleasing individualistic whims and secular humanist Western dogma. I live in dread of the day that the move to abolish this last red line becomes a real intellectual movement, backed up by distorting "Jewish Sources" of course (no doubt with a helthy dose of how kevod ha'adam supersedes every issur in Judaism).

I really don't know how to react to this ?%$@ anymore. When I see and hear of stuff like this, all I want to do is break down and cry. I feel so helpless.

The Massacre That Almost Was

Last year the news services reported a horrifying scholarly discovery. Though everyone knew that if Rommel reached Palestine, the Yishuv would share the same fate, we did not know that an eizentzgruppe had already been formed and plans made for the annihilation of the Jewish community in Palestine, in advance of Rommel's expected victory.

Now this study has been published in a detailed, point-by-point discussion in Yad Vashem's journal. We learn there of the planned Final Solution for the Yishuv, in which Palestinian Arabs were meant to take a large part, similiar to that of the Eastern European collaborators such as those in Latvia and the Ukraine. The Grand Mufti, Haj Amin Al-Husseini apparently worked feverishly to ensure a "clean sweep" of the Jews in the Holy Land, providing statistics and maps for the SS.

Next time you hear about how the Palestinians would never dream of annihilating the Jews, mention this article.

Nice Try (On the Van Leer Institute)

The Van Leer Institute is known throughout Israeli academia as the most influential bastion of the hard-core anti-Zionist left. Boasting a large budget and an impressive array of academics from various fields, this institute is the one-stop shop for all your anti-Zionist needs. For years, left-wing as well as right-wing Zionists have lambasted the institute for its one-sided, radical agenda, embodied in its flagship journal Theory and Criticism. Assaf Sagiv did a wonderful deconstruction of their alternative history of the 50 years of Israel, the conclusion of which I have re-posted from an earlier comment at the bottom of this critique.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw the following extensive puff-piece on Van Leer. Even more surprising was the fact that the article appeared not in Haaretz, but in the Jerusalem Post, which I had thought was at least Zionist in orientation. The article is symptomatic of the intellectual attitudes of the hard-left as a whole - only members of the institute are quoted extensively to praise Van Leer to the sky, critics and detractors are anonymous and lumped under "many [critics]". Needless to say, the fawning reporter does not ask any hard questions about the radical agendas of the academic team such as in the aforementioned journal or in the many books it supports which bash Israel incessantly. We do not learn of the blatant abuse of the Holocaust by Messrs Ophir and friends as documented by Prof. Elhanan Yakira. We learn nothing of the "Palestinians are innocent victims and Jews are evil aggresors" school constantly pumped the people in question.

I don't think it would be an exagerration to say that Van Leer bears a substantial part of the responsibility for the present demonic image that Zionism and the State of Israel "enjoy" abroad in critical academic, cultural and political elites. As mentioned below, their negative attitude pervades many humanities and social sciences departments here in Israel, to the point where finding pro-Zionist comment in academic articles is equivalent to finding buried treasure. All the "we love everyone" rhetoric is, in my opinion, a mask that covers a very poisonous hatred of everything the State of Israel stands for. To say that they represent the Israeli left is no less pretentious and false as the Bolsheviks' claim to represent the whole of the "people". The Jerusalem Post would do well to encourage moderate alternatives to Van Leer rather than serving as their unofficial spokespeople.

Post-modern academics cannot come to terms with the “existing order,” but they do not know how to change it without turning today’s “oppressed” into tomorrow’s “oppressors.” They do not know how to wage an effective fight against the evil, which, in their view, is inevitably rooted in political reality. Lacking the possibility of engaging in practical action, all they have left is negation for its own sake. Despite the impression conveyed by some of its articles, Theory and Criticism is not the ephemeral publication of a fringe group. Unfortunately, it presents us with a reliable picture of a mode of thinking now accepted as the norm in important circles in Israel’s academia, especially in the humanities and social sciences. In light of this fact, it is impossible to avoid certain depressing conclusions about the role played by the academic elite in Israeli society.

Most Israelis expect that their institutes of higher learning will contribute to the advancement of the public discourse in Israel; that the tens of thousands of young people who enter the universities each year will benefit from their education by becoming better citizens, and learning to make intelligent political decisions within a democratic framework. Yet Israel’s campuses are gradually becoming hothouses for political anarchism, as the Israeli intelligentsia busily educates towards resentment of the Jewish state and the values that permit it to exist. Academic “post-Zionism” does not even play the important positive role that intellectual opposition sometimes does in a pluralistic society; it does not bother to advance realistic alternatives or formulate a creative, inspiring vision which offers a kernel of hope. In its cultivation of chronic and sterile resentment, bereft of both responsibility and imagination, the trend represented so powerfully by Theory and Criticism in the end offers nothing more than “theory” and “criticism.”

It's going to get worse, much worse.

Sorry for the blogging hiatus. I had a lot to write, and still do, but I could not bring myself to actually sit down and get it out of my system. I hope that this post will help "break the ice".

A while back, I made mention of Norman Finkelstein's false claim that there is a scholarly "consensus" that Israel had expelled the Palestinians in 1948. Unfortunately, this falsehood is part of a much bigger pehnomenon - the creation and solidification of a new, anti-Israel orthodoxy, according to which Israel and Zionism were always in the wrong during its existence. According to this narrative, Israel was the guilty party in 1948 and launched an unjustified quasi-colonial war in 1956. Everything that happenned to Israel after the victory of the Six Day War was also mostly if not solely Israel's fault due to the occupation and Israel's militaristic nature. It goes without saying that only Israel's faults - which do indeed exist - are stressed while positive qualities are ignored. The Arabs and especially the Palestinians are of course perfectly innocent victims - the 'New Jews' if you will.

The only task remaining for the new orthodoxy is to connect the two halves of this portrait, by 'proving' that Israel was not justified in launching a pre-emptive strike in 1967. This task was somewhat stymied by the fact that Dr. Michael Oren's careful historical account demonstrated that Israel had very good cause to strike first. Rest assured, anti-Israel scholars are hard at work trying to undermine Oren. No less than two articles have been published in the mildly pro-Arab Middle East Journal doing just that. This is merely the opening salvo of the historiographic debate Oren predicted would happen even before he came out with his book. I don't doubt that Tom Segev's tome will help things along.

I check new books and articles on a regular basis, and I am not comforted by what I see. The new orthodoxy, a rather extreme mirror-image of yesteryear's heroic image of Israel and Zionism, is all-encompassing. The "concensus", especially that of 1948 but soon to include 1967, is present in virtually every "objective" or critical work coming out - and there are many. No-one is willing to cut Israel any slack, or at least take the historical zeitgeist of various periods into account. Israel apparently must act perfectly or not at all. Its wars are either completely "no choice" or "choice". It is either stands up to every unrealistic demand of purist liberal democracy or it is not a democracy at all.

There are few real protesters to this orthodoxy. Many of the legal scholars, historians and sociologists that study Israel, including those who are native Israelis, either adopt the "critical" narrative wholesale, or at least in part. Indeed, some of the worst bile has come from native Israelis.

I'm not sure what to recommend at this point. The few attempts to fight the "new orthodoxy" feel like too little too late. Perhaps a new approach is needed, one where the new orthodoxy is shown for what it is - an "establishment" and "hegemonic" position, and no longer the rebellious challenge it once was. Then the tables can be turned, since now it is those who support Zionism and Israel who are the true contrarians in worldwide academe.

If anyone has any better ideas, I'm all ears. AIWAC

On The Self-Delusion of Anti-Zionist Jews

The anti-Zionist Jews are up in arms. For years they have had the intellectual playing field almost entirely to themselves - in the media, in academia and in literary circles throughout Europe and the States. The "post" and anti-Zionist terminology and rhetoric has achieved near hegemonic status in all these fields. Whenever someone called their hatred and negationism for what it was - they balked. "We're just critics of Israel", they say, or "We just criticize Israel's policy in the territories/policy towards its Arab citizens/its Zionist nature".

Recently, Prof. Alvin Rosenfeld has called a spade a spade. In a thoroughly documented study, he demonstrates the virulent, hateful and annihilationist rhetoric spewed by "progressive Jews" on a regular basis. Their response is exactly the same as before. They hide behind the grain of truth in their accusations to justify the fabric of pointless and stupid venom.

At this point, this argument is not just annoying, it is an insult to the intelligence of anyone above the age of three. If you support the "Right of Return", the creation of a bi-national state between the Jordan and the Sea, or deny the Jews any moral agency or national rights in the land of Israel, then you can no more call yourself a "critic" of Israel than a rabid atheist can call himself a "critic" of religion. They are calling for the state's dissolution, and it would be better if they stood up and were counted as opponents and negationists, not "critics" of one type or another.

A similiar thing can be said for those who do nothing but condemn Israel as the worst thing ever created by humankind, who call it "Nazi", "an apartheid state", but say "but I defend Israel's right to exist" in whatever form. This too is an insult to the intelligence of thinking human beings. It is like saying that Voltaire's disgusting, hate-filled and wholly negative essay on Jews is "not anti-Semitic" because he said at the end of it "Still, we ought not to burn them".

"Criticism" that does nothing but villify in the worst possible terms, leaves the other side utterly blameless and refuses to posit any useful advice or attach positive traits to the object of its "criticism", is hatred, pure and simple. Anti-Zionist Jews would do well to keep that in mind.

Website Recommendation

There are a lot of current events sites in Israel, but only a few are worth taking seriously. One such site, which discusses issues in Israel in depth is Omedia. Here's a link to one of their English-language articles, discussing the nature of popular political culture in Israel.