Belgians advised not to wear Kippot

As reported in yesterdays Jerusalem Post.

Granted, I am not suprised by this, as this is already the case for Jews of France, and I imagine this will spread to Jews residing in other countries in Europe. However, the leader of the jewish community in Belgium gave a very interesting answer as to why it is in fact better for the Jews not to wear kippot which I thought you might appreciate.

Phillip Marcovits, head of the Belgian Jewish organizations steering committee stated that by Jews not wearing kippot, "Jews would demonstrate their civic consciousness and contribute to Belgium's democratic and liberal charachter. It would also set the Jews apart from Muslims, he said, who display their religious affiliation at every opportunity".

In my mind, it is one thing to come out and say that Jews shouldn't wear kippot or other Jewish symbols b/c of anti-Semitism, but to say that in order to be good liberal, democratic citizens of Belgium they shouldn't wear them is ridculous in my mind. Isn't democracy and liberalism about pluralism and tolerance? He attempts to cast the Muslims in a negative light b/c they are proud of their heritage and weren't afraid to show it, yet I beleive that if only more Jews were proud to be indentified and walk around as Jews we would be better off (both in Israel and the Diaspora).

- posted by Ze'ev @ 5:07 PM Permalink Home

The French Connection

I was on the A train this morning on the way to work, reading Howard Sachar's A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time. A guy from France, who looked about my age, noticed the book, and asked me, "What do you think of the Palestinian?" French people often leave off final consonants, so he might have said "Palestinians," but I decided to be annoying and ask, "Which Palestinian?"

The conversation proceded until we both got off at Broadway-Nassau. He shared with me a jumble of concerns about Israel. His first was, why are Jews a nation with a country, when Christians and Muslims are not? It's actually an interesting question. I told him how Jews have always defined themselves as a religion and a nation, connected to the land of Israel, and that throughout our dispersion, we always prayed for our return. As for Christians and Muslims, I don't know why they don't have a land. (Yes, I know there are many Christian and Muslim countries, but the particular countries are not specific to the religion.) I've seen the suggestion that the very idea of a national state, a state with a national purpose, is a Jewish idea. But, we moved on to other things.

He was concerned that Jews moved from Europe to Israel and stole houses from Arabs. I told him that even though there were a few hundred thousand Arabs there, there was still plenty of room for Jews to build new houses - no one was kicked out. Then, he was concerned that you can't criticize Israel without being labeled an anti-Semite. I said I wasn't labeling him anything, and had no idea what he was talking about. He was concerned that Arabs in Israel don't have the right to vote. I told him he was misinformed.

When we were nearing my stop, I said, "What is your central concern?" He said that he understands that Jews were persecuted in the past, but why must they now persecute the Arabs? I told him that there was a war going on, and we are fighting for survival against terrorists. Then, as he got off the train with me and was headed in the same direction, towards the 4/5 trains, I changed the topic. Here's where it gets interesting.

I told him that France also has a problem with Muslim terrorists. I told him that France has more Muslims than Israel does, and that France may someday have more of a problem with terrorists than Israel does. Like a good European, he blamed himself (France) for not making the Muslims in France welcome, thus causing them to have no choice but to blow things up. At least there wasn't a double standard. He went on to say that most of the Muslims came when France was bringing many foreign workers to France, and now France is having trouble integrating them into French society. He agreed that the Muslims may themselves not want to integrate.

I asked him if he thought that someday, France would become a Muslim country. He said it might. I asked him if that would bother him. He was getting off the train then, but said something to the effect of que sera sera. I would have loved to hear more of his thoughts on this one, but I didn't.

To me, the parallels were very clear. Israel can't really integrate a large Muslim population, and neither can France, nor should either country necessarily want to. The goals of those countries are incompatible with the goals of the Muslim populations. Israel wants to be a Jewish country, and France wants to be a secular, Western, liberal democracy. Muslims goals are different. They don't have to be wrong, just different. And that is why God created Muslim countries - for Muslims to pursue their goals through statehood. Likewise, other countries need to pursue their goals, and integrate immigrants who share those goals. Maybe my French subway companion (whose name I never got) will realize this connection. Probably not. But I tried.

- posted by Ben @ 10:38 PM Permalink Home

Where Have You Gone King David - Our Nation Turns Their Lonely Eyes to You

Ironic. There is no better word to describe the events unfolding today in the Land of Israel. "This is very sad, very grave, but this is the reality of Israel in 2004. There's Sopranos on television, and there's Sopranos in Israel." So spoke Senior Labor party legislator and Member of Israel's Knesset, Ofer Pines-Paz, who, in a single sentence, aptly summed up the success and ultimate failure of secular Zionism.

Pines-Paz was referring to what he termed as a "political earthquake", resulting from the alleged bribery scandal involving Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Sharon's son, Gilad, Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and potentially many more high ranking government officials. Sadly, this is not the first time that the names of Sharon and Olmert have arisen in political corruption scandals. In fact, political corruption among Israel's leadership dates back to the period of the Yishuv, and is perhaps the one area where Israel's political leaders, of both the left and the right, are able to walk side by side. At the very same moment, a political earthquake of another sort is raging in the Land of Israel. The Likud, headed by the likes of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, has undergone a face-lift, where they now very much resemble their long time source of political opposition, the Labor party, headed by Shimon Peres, who is personally responsible for the Oslo accords, and one of the few left in Israel to believe that they are still viable.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism, of which the Likud party is a direct descendant, must be
turning in his grave. Revisionist Zionism, as well as the Likud's party platform, rejects the very notion of the creation of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. To hear Sharon and Olmert speak not only of favoring the creation of a Palestinian state, but that if it can not be achieved through negotiations, they will bring it about through unilateral concessions is mind blowing.

Amram Mitzna, if he weren't too busy trying to foist non-government sanctioned peace deals such as the Geneva Accords down our throats, would be charging Ariel Sharon with highway robbery. After all, it was Mitzna, then head of the Labor party who was routed by Sharon in Israel's last election, who ran on the platform of making unilateral concessions to the Palestinians and of the need to create some type of physical separation between us and them. Lo and behold, the very platform that forced Mitzna to resign his leadership of the Labor party, as he and the party had become the laughingstocks of the country, is now the platform of Ariel Sharon and the Likud.

Sharon has stated time and again that he is willing to make painful concessions. Included in those concessions will no doubt be the uprooting and transfer of Jews from their homes. Should this come to pass, it will not represent the first time in the long history of the Jewish people, where Jews have been expelled from their homes simply because they were Jews, but it will represent the first time this will be done to Jews living in the Land of Israel, our ancestral Homeland, carried out by the hands of fellow Jews. (The lone exception coming in 1982, when Ariel Sharon personally oversaw the destruction of Yamit, a Jewish town in the Sinai, where Israel agreed in the Camp David accords signed with Egypt, to withdraw completely, leaving it Judenrein). Sharon has even more recently demonstrated the seriousness of his intentions with his ordering the destruction of a recently built and dedicated synagogue in the town of Tapuach, within Israel's Shomron region, carried out by the hands of the IDF.

Let us now return to the comments of Knesset member Pines-Paz, "There's Sopranos on television, and there's Sopranos in Israel". The defining goal of secular Zionism was for Israel to become a nation like all other nations, as well as to create a new Jew, one who would bear little resemblance to the traditional Diaspora Jew who because of his numerous Jewish practices and beliefs was shunned by the non-Jews. In this regard, secular Zionism has been an almost complete success.

In Israel, one can find on TV The Sopranos, along with Sex in the City and Friends. Culture in Israel, whether it be TV, movies, literature, education, clothing or music, is based almost entirely on western societal norms and values, predominantly found in Europe and the United States, as opposed to representing Jewish values and beliefs. This ideology, of striving to be a nation like all other nations can also be found in our leaders of today. Can one really look at our leadership today, or even over the past decade, and say that the prime motivation behind their actions was in accordance with Jewish values or rather with trying to win favor and acceptance in the eyes of the nations of the world? Sadly, the same values that allow our leaders to become involved in all manners of political corruption are the very same ones that allow them to call for the destruction of synagogues and for the transfer of Jews from their homes in the Land of Israel.

In the Tanach (the Jewish Bible), one can find what is expected of the leadership of the Jewish people. He is to be one of the highest moral character, as well as being of great spiritual stature. One who can lead the Jewish people in both war and prayer. He is not expected to be perfect, rather one who when confronted with wrongdoing can lead the nation in sincere repentance. He is to be the embodiment of a Jewish nationalist, with a love for the Land of Israel and the people of Israel coursing through his veins.

These are the values - Jewish values - that are so sorely lacking in our leaders of today. The Jewish people and the Jewish state are deserving of and crying out for a leader with the Jewish values necessary to lead the Jewish nation. Only Jews, proud Jews, in heart, mind, body, spirit and soul need apply.

- posted by Ze'ev @ 3:28 PM Permalink Home

We Are All Settlers

by Evelyn Hayes

I'd love to be a settler and come home to the promised land
No more sojournings from where they want us gone.

I'd love to be a settler with Avraham Aveinu in Beit El.
No more burnings, pogroms, murders on foreign soil.

I'd love to be a settler in Hevron, Zichron Yaakov, Ashkelon.
No more sojournings and runnings on and on.

I'd love to be a settler with Yosef, Menashe and Ephraim.
No more sojournings, no more chasings from here and there.

I'd love to be a settler in Yerushalayim, Schem, Petah Tikvah, Beersheva.
No more sojournings, no more sweeping us away.

I'd love to be a settler in my homeland
together with our sisters and our brothers.
together with The Fathers and The Mothers.
I'd love to settle the land where I belong.

I'd love to be a settler high on the hills of Shiloh, Gamla, Kiryat Arba,
deep in Jewish history at Itamar and Elazar,
together with those who cleared the swamps in Degania and the Galillee.
No more sojournings from where they want us gone.

I'd love to be a settler on the plains of Susiya, Psipora, Herzeliya,
deep in Torah at Tzefat, where our medieval scholars learned
and study their holy books.
No more sojournings, torture, from where they swiped us out.

I'd love to be a settler and follow our true fate,
resettle where invaders ruined, rebuild our ancient streets,
revive what was, create what should have been.

It's time to be a settler, throw away the yellow stars.
It's time to resettle our homeland, continue our ancient path.
It's time to be a settler and wave the Magen David:
affirm our past, reclaim our future.
It's time to be a settler, to be at home in the promised land we adore.
It's time to be a settler and proclaim a promised love.
It's time to resettle Eretz Yisrael
and fulfill the Torah's tale
It's time to be a settler in Eretz Yisrael,
stop sojouning her and there,
erase the centuries of despair.
It's time to be a settler in Eretz Yisrael
and fulfill the Torah's tale.
It's time to be together with our sisters and our brothers
in the land of the Fathers and The Mothers.
It's time. It's time. It's time to be together in our ancient settlement,
our country, sacred state, our own land,
the promised homeland.
It's time. It's time. It's time we are all settlers and come home....

- posted by Yishai @ 6:49 PM Permalink Home