Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

‘Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir’ by Shalom Auslander - BOOK REVIEW - Los Angeles Times - calendarlive.com, october 14, 2007

Auslander…can be a moving writer; many passages describe with great skill the airless, oppressive climate of Monsey. Perhaps the finest chapter recounts the time his father — a carpenter who wanted for respect in the scholarly community — was commissioned by the local rabbi to build a new ark for the congregation’s Torah scrolls, only to be humiliated and ignored upon its unveiling.

And he can be funny: A reminiscence of his first dalliance with non-kosher food ranks with sections of “Portnoy’s Complaint.” Auslander watches a Gentile order ahead of him at a poolside hot-dog stand. “Vinnie stood beside me, piling his pig dog high with sauerkraut and thin-cut pickles. I stared, open-mouthed, as he flipped his hair back, cleared a path to his mouth, and took a bite. It was as if he’d never heard of Leviticus 11:7.”

This review does not do justice to Zertal and Eldar’s book, which is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the settlements. However, to really understand the settlers and their treatment of the Palestinians, one should supplement this book by Haim Yavin’s extraordinary series of DVDs entitled Land of the Settlers, for which Zertal and Eldar were consultants. Yavin conveys a sense of the conflict as understood and lived by both settlers and Palestinians in their everyday lives. Zertal and Eldar’s book is less human. But it puts the unforgettable scenes filmed by Yavin in historical perspective.

Lords of the Land - Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar - Books - Review - New York Times, October 14, 2007

Across the Green Line, the West Bank, captured in 1967, is another country, neither Israel nor Palestine, but a lawless place, where the Jewish settler, rifle in one hand and prayer book in the other, is undisputed king. The settlers have their own roads, guarded by the Israeli Army, water, electricity, supplies and — occasional if well-publicized crackdowns aside — substantial impunity from the law. Much of the land on which their settlements stand, was, as Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar detail in this important book, simply stolen. The settlements are illegal, in contravention of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to occupied territories. But for those who claim a divine mandate, the Geneva Conventions count for nothing. According to the United Nations, more than a third of the West Bank is now off limits to Palestinians. A web of Israeli Army checkpoints and obstacles further atomizes what is left of Palestinian society.

“Lords of the Land” is the first complete history of the settlement project. It provides a detailed narrative of injustice, and is profoundly depressing for anyone still hoping for a fair resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or even hoping that Jews and Arabs will be seen as equal in the eyes of Israeli law.

Source:

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFA+Publications/Photo+exhibits/

Our+Country+-+Photographs+by+Alex+Levac.htm

The settlers’ great moment of joy: December 8, 1975. After nine days of resisting the Rabin government’s attempts to remove them from Sebastia in the West Bank, settlers hear that Rabin has blinked. Gush Emunim leaders Hanan Porat (right) and Moshe Levinger are hoisted aloft by their supporters. Photo by Moshe Milner, Israel Government Press Office.

Daniel Ben Simon, The return of the settlers, Haaretz, October 2, 2007

I have seen them at Homesh and on other hills, and there seems to be a new breed of fanaticism capable of deeds the previous generation of settlers regarded with awe and fear. Among the thousands of new fanatical youngsters there is no sense of national propriety or fear of the state’s authority.

I have seen them cursing security personnel and spitting at them and flinging racist epithets at Druze and immigrants from Russia and Ethiopia. They did this without the slightest hesitation or fear. This is the generation that follows the generation that achieved the revolution of faith in the territories after the Six-Day War. That same messianic faith that has changed the face of the country, never mind the face of the Middle East, for many years. The latest wildcat settlement attempts - even though they look like youthful actions - are a real challenge to the decision makers, a warning lest they dare follow in the despicable footsteps of their predecessors. The attempts are also aimed at making it clear that what happened in Gush Katif will not happen again.

The big mystery remains the settlers’ Yesha Council. Will it line up with the extremist voices? Will it try to moderate and lower the flames as it did at Kfar Maimon, for which it has paid a high price? After all, these young people have rebelled against its authority and have accused it of collaborating with a government that uproots settlements.

The international meeting in November, where Israel will play a crucial role, will apparently determine whether the Yesha Council will be swept up by the romantic vision of redemption in the style of settler activist Daniella Weiss, or try to reach an understanding with the government.

Former chief rabbi dies after illness - Haaretz, September 28, 2007

Former chief rabbi Abraham Shapira, 96, died yesterday after an illness.

Shapira will be remembered as one of Israel’s most political chief rabbis. During the Oslo Accords, Rabbi Shapira ruled that handing over territories, even as part of a peace agreement, was against Jewish law.

He also called on soldiers to refuse orders, an instruction he reiterated many times over the years, including during the disengagement from Gaza in 2005.

He was considered the unofficial spiritual leader of the National Religious Party.

No room for ‘misfits’ - Haaretz - Israel News, September 21, 2007

“Zman yehudi hadash” is a white project that corresponds with Europe and North America while casually erasing entire Jewish histories, those lived by the Jews of the Islamic countries.

As I pointed out last week, the encyclopedia’s editorial board consists of 14 learned members, among them only one woman (Shulamit Volkov) and one Mizrahi (Michel Abitbol). And what about the contributors? The five volumes contain some 380 entries written by about 240 different authors. Of the 380, 67 were written by women (about 18 percent), three by Arabs (on “Arab topics”), and 15 at most were written by Mizrahim (about 4 percent).

This bias, which is even more severe than the outrageously low representation of these groups among Israeli university faculty members - where the numbers are 20 percent women, 7 percent Mizrahi and about 1.5 percent Arabs - is also evident in the contents of the different entries. It is astonishing to see, for example, how for most of the writers, Mizrahi Jews simply do not fall within their field of vision.

Les ultra-orthodoxes israéliens exigent le respect de la shmita, année sabbatique pour les cultures, Le Monde.fr, le 14 septembre 2007

A l’occasion du Nouvel An juif, jeudi 13 septembre, jour où débute la 5 768e année du calendrier hébraïque, la question de l’année sabbatique se pose à nouveau. Jusqu’à présent, les arrangements étaient facilement acceptés. Il suffisait, en fait, de procéder à des ventes fictives de terrains à des non-juifs et le tour était joué. Cela permettait aux juifs de continuer à cultiver leurs champs et surtout d’obtenir le certificat de kashrout nécessaire pour vendre les produits et les consommer en accord avec les préceptes de la religion juive. L’année suivante, les terres étaient restituées aux propriétaires et personne n’y trouvait vraiment rien à redire. Sauf quelques orthodoxes ultras qui estimaient que ces tours de passe-passe ne respectaient pas la lettre des textes.

“LES LOIS DE LA TORAH”

Cette année 5768, les choses sont différentes. Les orthodoxes juifs, les haredim, font une énorme pression sur le grand rabbinat d’Israël pour que ces petits arrangements cessent et que l’on s’en tienne à la Halakha, le droit rabbinique. “Pas question de contourner les lois de la Torah même si l’on a beaucoup de sympathie pour les difficultés des paysans”, explique le rabbin Meir Bergman, chef d’un groupe ultraorthodoxe. Et d’ajouter : “Dieu pourvoira à leurs besoins.”

Lau, Observing shmita sensibly - Haaretz, September 10, 2007

The seventh year, the shmita (sabbatical) year, is approaching. The country’s major merchants are preparing: Here is a golden opportunity for organizing the mass sale of produce untouched by Jewish hands and “free of any fear of the violation of the laws governing the shmita year.” Ultra-Orthodox bodies specializing in supervision of kashrut (Jewish dietary laws) are mobilizing to encourage Israeli consumers to purchase agricultural produce only from non-Jews.

“CNN Comes Under Unprecedented Attack - Forward.com, September 6, 2007

The three-episode special, “God’s Warriors,” by CNN’s chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, is being characterized by Jewish groups as equating Jewish extremists in West Bank settlements with Muslim jihadists.

Being ashamed is not enough - Haaretz, February 2, 2007

If a peace agreement is ever signed with the Palestinians, the Hebron settlers will have to end their illegal holiday at the Park Hotel, which has been going on 38 years too long, because no border will be able to include this outrageous enclave inside a large Arab city. Following the 1994 massacre by Baruch Goldstein of Muslims praying in the Tomb of the Patriarchs, Yitzhak Rabin should have seized the opportunity to remove the Jewish settlement, but he was deterred. And since then, no leader has even dared think about doing so.

Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

Mahmoud Ibrahim, 10, center, and other Palestinian boys survive by selling goods salvaged at a West Bank dump, near Hebron.

West Bank Boys Dig a Living From Settlers’ Trash - New York Times, September 2, 2007

What is Zion if not the Temple Mount? - Haaretz - Israel News
And what is Zion if not the Temple Mount, the Mount of Olives and the Old City?” Conceding Jerusalem and its holy places, many fine people already understood then, is neither legitimate nor moral. Such a decision cannot be binding on the State of Israel or the Jewish people.

Persuade the people - Haaretz

…so long as Israel keeps raising the separation wall and the Palestinians keep getting poorer - all the debates about principles for a peace agreement are pretty worthless

Sale is a legal fiction that allows the land to be farmed and the produce sold to Jews during the sabbatical year
The beginning of the Jewish sabbatical year is just two weeks away, but the kashrut certification bureaucrats are breaking new records for the absurd: Kashrut supervisors from the Chief Rabbinate are forcing Israeli Arabs to sign a document that gives the Israel Lands Administration and the Chief Rabbinate the right to sell the land to a non-Jew as a condition for continued kosher certification for their produce. If they refuse to sign, they were told that the wholesalers to whom they sell their goods will also lose their kashrut certification.