Threats Quash Irish Dance Festival in Israel

Michael L.

Ha'aretz reports:

An Irish dance competition that was set to take place in Israel has been canceled, following threats by pro-Palestinian activists.

The Carey Academy said it canceled the "1st Israeli Feis," which was set to take place in Tel Aviv in August, after threatening messages were posted on the event's Facebook page by members of the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a protest was held outside the academy's dance studio.

Most Israelis consider the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction their country (BDS) to be grounded in anti-Jewish prejudice.  Israelis look around and see that they are surrounded by countries with far worse human rights records that are not subject to western calls for sanction or boycott.  They, therefore, see the movement against them as hostile, bigoted, and hypocritical.  Hundreds of thousands of people are dead in Syria within the last few years, but no one speaks of a BDS for Syria.  Millions of people are dead in Congo over the last decade and the West does not care.  As Israelis often see it, the sanctimonious West has simply swapped out the allegedly nefarious Jew of the early twentieth century for the allegedly nefarious Jewish state of the early twenty-first century.

The Irish, naturally enough, tend to view the Arab-Israel conflict through the lens of Irish-English history.  For many Irish this translates into visceral support for the Palestinian-Arabs, and a generalized hostility toward the Israelis, who they view, like the English, as violators of the sovereignty of an indigenous people.  It is, thus, not the least bit surprising that among the European countries Ireland tends to be more pro-Palestinian than most.

European views on Israel, and on the movement to boycott Israel, are not uniform.  If the Irish have tended to be less supportive of Israel, the Czechs have tended to be more pro-Israel and for similar reasons.  If the Irish generally view the Arab-Israel conflict through the lens of Irish-English history, the Czechs tend to view it through the lens of their experience during World War II wherein the country of Czechoslovakia was sacrificed by the major European powers in the fruitless hope of avoiding a larger conflict.  It is for this reason that that the Czechs, unlike the Irish or virtually anyone else, provided arms for Jewish defense during the 1948 war for Israeli liberation.

But was it "Israeli liberation"?

Palestinian-Arabs do not look upon the 1948 war as the liberation of the Jewish people from foreign control and the re-establishment, after 2,000 years, of Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land.  What they see is al-Nakba, the catastrophe.

During the war to establish the State of Israel approximately 700,000 Arabs were displaced, sometimes through Jewish military force and sometimes through a voluntary desire to remove themselves from the path of warfare, an option that the Jews did not have.  Middle Eastern Jews, Mizrahis, living outside of Israel at the time, went through a similar process of displacement and with similar numbers of people.  The difference, of course, is that on the heels of the Holocaust, Israel was intent on absorbing Jewish refugees, while the Arab states thought to use their displaced brothers and sisters as clubs against the "Zionist regime."

Those who follow the BDS campaign in the international Jewish media and "blogosphere" usually read stories of BDS failure.  This is particularly true in the United States where the movement has yet to gain much traction.  In Europe, of course, the situation is different.  Anti-Zionism and BDS have more of a following in part because of the greater percentage of Arab-Muslims who live in Europe compared to the United States.

However, it also should be kept in mind that from the perspective of a Palestinian-Arab father who must put food on the table for his family, the BDS movement sometimes represents a threat to livelihood.  When Sodastream closed its factory in Mishor Adumim, in what is commonly referred to as the "West Bank," some five hundred Palestinian-Arab families lost their breadwinner.

These five hundred families who - due to the efforts of those who allegedly wish them well - may face considerable hunger in forthcoming weeks and months.

And just how depriving Israelis of Irish dancers helps Arabs is beyond comprehension.  It simply makes no sense.  If the Irish wish to help Muslims and Jews live together peacefully in the Middle East, they should encourage cooperation rather than a boycott of the Jews, who are among the most persecuted people in the history of humanity.

If, on the other hand, those in the Irish community who support the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) want constant bloodshed between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East then they are going about things the best way possible.  If they want Jews to strike back against Arabs in that part of the world a very good way of doing it is to stoke Jewish fears concerning persecution.

The success of the BDS movement in quashing the Irish Dance Festival in Israel is a relatively small matter.

It is ugly and counterproductive, nonetheless.

Mort Klein is not a Happy Man

Michael L.

Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), is not a very happy man, today.

Concerning Obama's recent capitulation to the Islamist regime in Iran ZOA staff writes:

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is deeply horrified, but not surprised, by the truly terrible nuclear agreement that has been signed by the P5 +1 nations (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, including the United States, plus Germany) and the radical Islamic Iranian regime. This agreement will provide nuclear weapons and hundreds of billions of dollars to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Hitler of the Mideast, and to Iran, the Nazi Germany of the Middle East. Only last Friday, Khamenei and Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, appeared at the latest of a series of regular rallies calling for destruction of the U.S. and Israel.

The ZOA National President Morton A. Klein has issued the following statement:

“The nuclear agreement concluded in Vienna is quite simply a catastrophe and a nightmare. It leaves the world standing at an abyss."

I like Mort Klein and the ZOA is the most stalwart of the major pro-Israel organizations.

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, writing in my newly found home at The Jewish Press, has cataloged the basic reactions of the major pro-Israel (or allegedly pro-Israel) organizations in the United States.

The ZOA, of course, loathes the deal and Klein seems to be in no mood to take Sar Shalom's considered advice.  Instead, they are "horrified" and the deal is "terrible" and the Iranians are Nazis.

J-Street, on the other hand, is happy as the proverbial clam.

Marcus writes:

J Street founder and president Jeremy Ben-Ami once described his nascent organization as “President Obama’s blocking back.” It apparently still sees itself that way. While hedging its bets a tiny bit by calling the deal “complex and multi-faceted,” J Street takes President Obama at his word and concludes that the deal “appears to meet the critical criteria around which a consensus of non-proliferation experts has formed for a deal that verifiably blocks each of Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon.” Tellingly, the statement does not mention what those criteria are.

At the end of the day, US president Barack Obama got precisely what he wanted, a piece of paper with a Persian signature.  What it means beyond that is difficult to see.  At the beginning of the negotiating process Obama told the American people that it was US policy to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weaponry.

The purpose of "the deal" was not to get a piece of paper with some signatures on it.  The purpose of the deal was to fulfill the US foreign policy goal of preventing an Iranian bomb.  The deal does not do that, thus it is yet another Obama foreign policy failure.

On the very outside, we will likely see an Iranian bomb within ten years, maybe fifteen, but my guess is considerably closer to five.  What this means is that the Obama administration has sold us all down the river.

Jews.  Arabs.  Australians.  Americans.  Europeans.  All of Asia.

We are about to embark upon a brave new world wherein a highly bigoted Persian Shia government, that despises Jews and westerners, and maintains resentment from 1953, will now control the world's most dangerous weaponry.  This is going to change the face of the Middle East and, perhaps, the world, more generally.

Once Iran gains the bomb the western powers will have no ability to curb its behavior.  Iran will place a nuclear shield around its partnerships and interests, as any country would do.  Unfortunately, for the rest of us, Iran's partnerships and interests include Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen.  Iran opposes the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but that is primarily because ISIS is a significant inconvenience on Iran's intentions toward Iraq.

Although virtually no one seems to be discussing it, what we are seeing in Iraq is an Iranian take-over with American complicity justified by the need to defeat ISIS.  It can truly be said at this point that Iran has absolutely defeated Iraq, with the help of the United States, and will now go forth to control, if not conquer, a significant portion of that former country as it consolidates its power throughout the region.

This is an exceedingly interesting moment in history and an exceedingly dangerous one.

The Obama administration is desperately hoping that the Islamic Republic of Iran will represent a stabilizing force in the region.  Obama seems to want Iran to take over the US role in that part of the world and impose an Iranian Peace on the neighborhood.  This is not entirely unfeasible except for the fact that Iran has yet to make nice with Israel.  Until that happens empowering Iran with nuclear weaponry, an enormous influx of cash, and additional prestige - which it will use to beat upon Israel via its proxies in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip - will not lead to peace.

After Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich pact with Hitler, in September of 1938, Churchill famously remarked, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

I do not know that this deal is anything close to the same level of importance as the Munich pact, but it might be.  None of us know what the future holds and none of us, I suspect, really have much understanding of the Ayatollahs of Iran and their military capacity... which is about to take an enormous leap.

What I see, as I put it earlier, is a roll of the dice.

It could be that Obama's gamble is going to work out.  Maybe Iran will be brought in from the cold and perhaps Obama is right to pat it on the head.

What I still do not understand, however, is the quid pro quo?

Who gains in this deal other than the Ayatollahs?

How to talk about the Iran deal

Sar Shalom

I'll leave the task of describing why the Iran deal should be rejected to others. Instead, I'd like to bring up the reality that unless 12 Democrats in the Senate and 43 in the House join the effort to stop the deal, even assuming that all Republicans do so, the deal will take effect. This means that Congress' time to review the deal is not rally-the-base time, it is persuade time. That is, it is time to work on persuading the necessary Democrats in the House and Senate that it would be better to continue as is with the sanctions than to allow the deal to take effect.

Unfortunately, the bluster from the Republicans will not have any persuasive power. Anything that can be dismissed as knee-jerk opposition to a deal with our enemies will not have any persuasive power. Rallying a pro-Israel Democratic constituency could have the needed persuasive power, if there is a large enough group of them willing to make the required noise. However, it is unlikely to be enough. We need to understand the 12 most conservative Senate Democrats' terms for evaluating the Iran deal and then explain it within that framework in a way that would induce them to override a veto of Congress' rejection of it. It also would not hurt if the Republicans in Congress would offer some inducements, such as removing some element from the assault on Obama's domestic agenda, in order to get the needed handful of Democrats to support the override.

Update: The Jerusalem Post has an editorial making the same point with a few details added. Some particularly sage advice:

Second, the Israeli campaign against the deal must avoid personal attacks on the US president. Lobbying efforts must focus on the issues. Democrats will rally around their president if they perceive him to be the subject of baseless ad hominem accusations.

Obama Rolls the Dice

Michael L.

According to Israel National News (Arutz Sheva) these are the key provisions of The Deal:

Iran will reduce its uranium enrichment capacity by two-thirds. This will involve stopping the use of its underground facility at Fordow for enriching uranium.

Iran’s stockpile of low enriched uranium will be reduced by 95%, to 300 kg. This will be done either by diluting the enriched uranium or shipping it out of the country.

The core of the heavy water reactor in Arak will be removed, and it will be redesigned so that it will not produce significant amounts of plutonium.

Iran will allow UN inspectors to enter sites, including military sites, when the inspectors have grounds to believe undeclared nuclear activity is being carried out there. It can object but a multinational commission can override any objections by majority vote. After that, Iran will have three days to comply. Inspectors will only come from countries with diplomatic relations with Iran – therefore, they will not include Americans.

Once the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has verified that Iran has taken steps to scale back its program, UN, US and EU sanctions on Iran will be lifted.

Restrictions on trade in conventional weapons will last another five years.

Restrictions on trade in ballistic missile technology will last another eight years.

If there are allegations that Iran has not met its obligations, a joint commission will seek to resolve the dispute. If that effort is not successful within 30 days, the matter would be referred to the UN Security Council, which would vote on continuing sanctions relief. A veto by a permanent member would mean that sanctions are reimposed. The whole process would take 65 days.

Israelis, and most particularly the Netanyahu government, do not seem happy with the deal.

Marissa Newsman, writing in the Times of Israel, tell us:

“The prime minister emphasized that the deal raises two main dangers: It will allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons — if it keeps to the deal, at the end of the 10-15 years, if it breaks it, before then,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.

“It addition, it will pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the Iranian terror and war machine which threatens Israel and the entire world,” the statement quoted Netanyahu as telling Obama.

What we are looking at here, in my humble opinion, is a roll of the dice.  In the mean time Iran will reap considerable financial benefits which, as Netanyahu reminded Barack Obama, will be used for the noble purpose of committing violence against the Jewish minority in the Middle East.

The US administration seems rather smug about finally getting the deal and Iran is enjoying rubbing it in Israel's face, however it is not as if the Sunni Arab states are happy with this, either.  What we will now see in the Middle East, due to Barack Obama's apparent need to partner with Islamist forces such as Iran - not to mention the Muslim Brotherhood - is a nuclear arms race with Saudi Arabia and Egypt taking the lead in order to counter Obama's Iranian nuclear weapons.

What we will also see is the ongoing deterioration of American influence throughout the region because no one, aside from the Iranians, now see the United States as a trustworthy tactical partner.

Earlier, Netanyahu slammed the world powers’ nuclear deal with Iran as a “stunning historic mistake,” while maintaining that Israel was under no obligation to adhere to it.

“Israel is not bound by this deal with Iran because Iran continues to seek our destruction. We will always defend ourselves,” Netanyahu told foreign media reporters in Jerusalem.

I do not see how any Israeli government has any choice but to oppose this deal because it means that Iran is going, in relatively short order, to gain nuclear weapons.

The real question, to my mind, is what, if anything, Israel intends to do about it?  Israel took out the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, but this is not 1981 and Iran is not Iraq.  I doubt if Israel, by itself, has the capacity to take out Iranian nuclear facilities.  US military "bunker busters" may be necessary, but there is no way that the hostile president of the United States is going to provide Israel with the means to do the job.

The Obama administration will yammer to Americans and to the international community that this is a great day for the world and a great day for the United States.

Critics of the administration will claim that it is highly naive and, thereby, a danger to people throughout the world.

Richard Nephew, a former top sanctions advisor in the negotiations, said:

“This was the first time that a country that was breaking all the rules was made to change."

And:

“It will show you can bring a country in from the cold.”

Barack Obama must be the most blasé American president that I have ever seen.

His primary legacy will be an Islamist bomb and the destruction of the Oslo "peace process."

{Perhaps we can be thankful for the latter.}

Essentially the Obama administration is gambling on the good-will of the Ayatollahs, the very people that continually screech for "Death to America!"

Perhaps Obama's roll of the dice will get lucky, but I would not bet on that, either.

Peace-Loving Jewish Left-Dwelling Americans

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at the Elder of Ziyon, Jews Down Under, and The Jewish Press.}

Jewish Left-Dwelling Americans are probably among the most well-meaning people on the entire planet.  I have never seen such unrequited niceness in my entire life, actually.

I suppose that I am just a tad biased, but I am willing to bet good shekels that American Jews are over-represented in the various charities, civic groups, non-profit organizations, and soup kitchens of America.

We come out of a religious-ethical tradition grounded in social justice and reinforced by the long shadow of the Holocaust.  We want peace for all Israelis, including Jews, Muslims, Christians, Rosicrucians, Lutherans, Calvinists, Russian Orthodox Catholics, Mennonites, Atheists, and God-Knows-What-All.

We want peace for everybody, everywhere, and never tire of insisting to anyone who will listen - whether they like it or not or even care - that we do so.

We even, many of us, want to Repair the World which, I have to tell you, I find a tad ambitious.  Tikkun Olam seems a little above my pay grade, but if peace-loving Jewish left-dwelling Americans honestly think that they have the wisdom to pull-off the job, then good for them.

{As a poker player, however, I would not place that bet.}

In terms of the Arab-Israel conflict, we want two states for two peoples.  That is, we really want twenty-three Arab states for one people and a single small democratic, Jewish state for our people wherein maybe - if the Arabs will let us - Jews can live in peace.

And, yet, somehow, against all reason, we cannot seem to understand why this would not be acceptable to the Arab majority throughout the Middle East, who want nothing whatsoever to do with Jews, period.

We want Arabs and Muslims, and everyone else in Israel, to live free and democratic lives next to a "Palestinian" state without being under the gun.  This is because we western liberal Jews see ourselves as rational and peaceful and, for the most part, we are rational and peaceful.  Most of us who come out of the American Jewish Left were raised in middle-class homes that emphasized education and an ethos of justice.

We grew up within a late twentieth-century American political milieu, heavily influenced by the Civil Rights Movement, that stressed that people "of color" in the United States have been historically persecuted and held-back economically due to centuries of racism, genocide, slavery, and Jim Crow laws.

Thus the American Jewish Left was raised to empathize - cognizant of Jewish history - with the poor and the persecuted and to generally assume that the problems of poor Black people, Latinos, and the Native Indigenous in the United States are due, at least in some significant measure, to institutionalized economic and cultural discrimination.

It is for this reason that so many peace-loving Jewish left-dwelling Americans empathize with the poor embattled "Palestinian" people.

Getting Smacked Around In Our Own Political Homes

However, American Jews would also very much like to stop having to constantly defend Israel from BDS and malicious, anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist attacks within their own political homes.

Wherever left-leaning American Jews congregate on the political landscape they are called upon to justify the allegedly cruel and inhumane behavior of their brothers and sisters in the Middle East.

That is to say, within left-leaning American political discourse, in almost any venue, Jews have a moral spotlight placed upon them.

We have seen this recently with undergraduates Rachel Beyda, at UCLA, and Molly Horwitz, at Stanford University.  Both young ladies applied for positions within their respective student governments only to be questioned about their capacity, as Jews, for fair-mindedness in decision-making.  They both, I understand, made it onto their respective student governments, but not before having to go through a humiliating process wherein their integrity was challenged for no other reason than that they happen to be Jewish.

This type of objectively anti-Jewish racism, it should be noted, is a direct result of anti-Zionism and the BDS movement on American college campuses throughout the country.  Were it not for anti-Zionism and BDS those two young women would not have been singled out for humiliation.

Americans in the Democratic Party, and the American Left, more generally, are subject to the constant drip, drip, drip of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist defamation of the Jewish people in the Middle East who they are coming to believe, more and more, are racist, imperialist, colonialist monsters who have used the Holocaust as a cudgel to beat down the "indigenous" Arab population.

This represents the general mood of the so-called "Palestinian narrative."

Its influence, whatever its intent, undermines the general well-being of all Jewish people, not just those of us who happen to live in the Jewish home.  The point is to make all Jews feel immoral, and to make others believe that we are immoral, for restoring or supporting our national sovereignty after two thousand years of displacement and abuse.

What they are telling the world is that despite the Holocaust - and despite thirteen centuries of second and third-class non-citizenship as dhimmis under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperialism - that Jewish sovereignty on the very land that Jewish people come from is an abomination that must be weakened, undermined, and destroyed.

The reason for this is because the "Palestinian narrative," while spreading the blood-libel that Jews enjoy killing non-Jewish children, also insists that we are a nation of land thieves who have no organic connection to Jerusalem or Judea... nor, apparently, anywhere else.

The Palestinian Narrative and the Jewish-Left Confirmation

The "Palestinian narrative," however, is either true or it is false.

That is to say, it is either true that the Jewish people are from that land or it is true that the Jews are not from that land.

If it is true - as history tells us - that the Jewish people have been living and working and building and writing on the land of Israel for millennia then Israel can hardly be unlawfully or illegitimately occupying its own land.

If the "Palestinian narrative" is, indeed, false and therefore if Jews actually come from Judea and Samaria, then perhaps the diaspora Jewish Left might cease confirming, and thereby promoting, the idea that the small bit of Jewish land on the edge of the Mediterranean actually belongs to the conquering Arabs.

Whenever peace-loving Jewish left-dwelling Americans claim that they oppose the "Occupation" (with the Big O) they are essentially claiming that the Jewish people have no indigenous rights to the Land of Israel.

They, therefore, oppose "settlers" and "settlements" in the "West Bank."

"Settlers" and "settlements," of course, are vaguely negative and loaded terms to mean Jews who live in Jewish townships where neither Barack Obama, nor Mahmoud Abbas, seem to think that Jews have any right to live.  Our friend Yosef, of Love of the Land, and his wife, Melody, are thought by some to represent a problem because they live on the very land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

Not wishing to offend any but Jewish sensibilities, we also refer to the Land of Israel beyond the so-called "Green Line," Judea and Samaria, the traditional heart-land of the Jewish people, as "West Bank."

Judea and Samaria have been referred to as "Judea" and "Samaria" (or "Yehuda" and "Shomron" for you hard-core boys) for thousands of years.  The words "Judea" and "Yehuda" refer to the ancient Jewish presence on that very land.  It was only after the British took a mighty bite out of Israel and forked it over to the Hashemites - whoever they are, exactly - that the newly founded state of Jordan (Trans-Jordan) labeled the area "West Bank" in order to erase any Jewish connection to Jewish land.

When we refer to Judea and Samaria as "West Bank" we tell the world that the Jews have no historical connection to the very land that Jews have lived on for thousands of years.

And this is how peace-loving Jewish left-dwelling Americans inadvertently set the Jewish people up to be smacked down and how we confirm the false narrative of our enemies.

I recommend against it... and I bet that Vic Rosenthal would, too.