Disagreements should be settled with words, not deadly weapons.
That’s a basic rule of civilized society, and it defines the parameters of the Free Marketplace of Ideas that highlights American civil discourse. It is a rule that applies equally to plumbers, to auto mechanics, to locksmiths – and, as should go without saying, to members of the academic community, including college professors. At least, that is what they taught me during my undergraduate days at Columbia University.
And ...
1. Pollard did a terrible, terrible thing.
2. A terrible thing. Just terrible.
3. Horrible. And he messed up the position and status of Jews in American government. He fed into anti-Semites’ worst diatribes about Jews being of diverted loyalty to foreign powers. He had no right to imperil the Jewish position in this country and, thereby, to lend credence to haters elsewhere in the world who wonder about Jews and our loyalties in those countries.
4. He has been sitting in ...
The Laura Schlessinger stuff has been circulating enough that a brief comment is warranted. And because she is a public figure whose actions and comments touch on our values, it is halakhically proper for me to make these comments that, in a different context, would be forbidden as lashon hara and motzi shem ra’.
First, I have no comment on Shmuly Boteach’s commentary, attached with the Laura article. In the huge assemblage of those who deeply admire and respect Rabbi ...
Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky invites a forthright open dialogue, a conversation about Jerusalem. Contemplating Israeli talks with those governing the autonomous Arab enclaves of Judea and Samaria — Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestine Authority — Rabbi Kanefsky writes that it is time for us to be honest about the story of Jerusalem. Employing the pages of The Jewish Journal, he particularly challenges those in the Orthodox Zionist community to converse, to be honest about Jerusalem.
I accept his invitation in these ...
Continue Reading → ShareThere are times to feel deep sadness. One quietly breaks down in tears at a funeral. But this week is not a time to be consumed as much by sadness as to be filled with anger, even quiet controlled rage. And the rage well may be targeted not so much at the Other but at our own, those who should have known better.
The Koran compares Jews to monkeys and apes. http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/dov-fischer/who-chose-hamas-to-lead-them/ The Arab population of ...
Continue Reading → Share“The whole world is demanding that Israel withdraw. I don’t think the whole world, including the friends of the Israeli people and government, can be wrong.”
— Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary General, speaking in Madrid, Spain
At this moment in time, many Jews who love and support Israel hear the soft voice within, asking the question to which Kofi Annan recently alluded in Madrid: Can we alone be right, while the whole world around is wrong?
The evidence that we are ...
Continue Reading → ShareSeveral covens of Jew-haters, ranging from the Middle East to the more troubled and confused of American campuses like those at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), recently marked their “Nakba Day” to protest that a Jewish country ever was created in the Middle East. Today, Jerusalem Day, is my chance to respond by affirming the Jewish claim to an eternally undivided capital city of United Jerusalem.
Ever since I learned to pray, I learned about Jerusalem. In time, as ...
Continue Reading → ShareThe great tragedy within contemporary Zionism is that Zionist leadership and articulators operate on a continuum of defensiveness, always reacting to the latest attack on Israel’s legitimacy. This “reactive defensive Zionism” is the same whether we look at Jewish organizations, Jewish political figures, or even at college Jewish activists. Zionists always “play defense.”
Defense certainly is an important part of a winning strategy. The best hockey and soccer teams still need to field a goalie. Football teams need a defensive squad, ...
Continue Reading → ShareTo understand the people of Gaza, who now lay claim to the passions of humanitarians-without-a-cause, one might begin by considering Gazans’ freely elected leadership: the Hamas terror network. And to understand Hamas, one might begin by looking closely at the Hamas logo. The logo’s center features swords and a golden-domed structure, but the squiggle at the top-center of the logo is most descriptive. One squiggle is worth a thousand words. That squiggle is not an Arabic symbol but ...
Continue Reading → ShareThe recent landslide vote of the Israeli Likud Party, utterly rejecting an Arab country west of the Jordan River, reflects the evolving mindset of the largest political party in Israel. There is good reason for that position — the land of Judea and Samaria, birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, does not belong to the Arab Islamic world. Why? After Oslo’s debacle, it should suffice to respond: Because.
But there is more. The Arab world does not even have a name ...