#itamar ben-gvir

[hero-israel]

Hi, if you don't mind answering, I have a question regarding Israel. I figured any Jewish person in Israel or not probably knows better than I could guess after occasionally reading Tumblr for a couple of months. What do you think is right/wrong about the Israel government, what should it be like and what should it do now? I would be thankful if you could answer.

Some context, if it makes any difference why I'm asking: I'm Ukrainian, and I was surprised first time I saw people comparing Israel with russia. It felt wrong to me from the start, cause it made more sense to compare terrorists with terrorists instead. Western leftists seem ignorant and delusional to argue with them, but I also saw this opinion from some Ukrainians on twitter, so I got interested to learn a bit more to get proper arguments against this comparison. Then I learned that quite a lot of Jewish people here are against current actions of the Israel government in Gaza, which at first looked strange to me cause it's a very different situation from what we have in Ukraine. I figured that Jewish people are the best source to learn "what's wrong with Israel government" without being flooded by conspiracy theories. I support Israel, but I don't want to support things that most of you guys actually disagree with. And another thing, personally I don't see how it's possible to get rid of hamas without harming civilians in Gaza, but I saw here Jewish people arguing that both Palestinian and Israeli civilians shouldn't be harmed. That's why I asked a few people on Tumblr what they think Israel should do to get some opinions, though perhaps my question among attacks was seen as an attack too. So this time I add this long clarification, sorry about that 😅

Thank you for the insight - I particularly appreciate hearing what this sounds like from Ukrainians as they face their own crisis.

I support actions that protect Jewish lives and Jewish rights, everywhere in the world, including in Israel. I want governments moral enough and strong enough to do that, everywhere, including in Israel. Sadly, Israel is really fucking it up for the last year.

No one should be happy with what is happening in Gaza. It is an appalling humanitarian disaster, exactly as Hamas planned it would be. Once they were able to stage their attack, Israel had no choice but to invade; to have done anything other than invade would have sent a message to all their enemies that they would just lie back and take it, and that is a message they cannot afford to send.

The current Israeli government is one of the most ultra-right-wing, revolting, criminal, and incompetent out of any democratic nation in the world. Their stupidity made the Hamas attack possible. Benjamin Netanyahu has been PM forever and kept winning elections because despite his ugly, crooked personality, he was good at the job, good from economic and diplomatic perspectives, and avoided major change with the Palestinians. As he stayed in office longer and got more crooked with age, his scandals and campaign crimes piled up until it really looked like he could face prison for it. For a cruelly, tantalizingly brief period, the more forward-thinking elements of Israeli society were able to oust the far-right parties, but eventually that fell apart for the dumbest and most aggravating reason ever and Netanyahu was able to come back. This time he boosted up fringe ultra-right-wing candidates who were too extreme to function in a "real" government but who promised to help him change laws so he wouldn't go to jail. The actual process of changing those laws - transparently to end the investigations of the MULTIPLE indicted or convicted criminals in this government - tore Israeli society apart. People were warning for MONTHS that military readiness was plummeting. The Hamas attack plan had been known since around 2015 and an even more detailed version surfaced last year. They were all just too busy working to legalize crime and settle old scores than on watching the border where the genocidal fascist militia lives.

I don't know what the proper plan at this point is. After 3 months, I'm still very much emotionally stuck on "what you are supposed to do is PREVENT THIS, YOU IDIOTS, THAT IS YOUR JOB, AND NOT A HARD ONE." I don't think I will ever get past that, it was so obvious and I had been losing sleep all year fully expecting something like this to happen. Within the first few weeks after the attack, I saw a message from former PM Naftali Bennett about how it would be relatively quick and easy to flood all the Gaza tunnels with seawater and that would solve the problem; kill off Hamas troops, destroy their weapons, collapse their bases. Clearly they haven't done that yet. Does that mean it can't be done? If it can be done, then I lean towards thinking the current campaign should go on until it is done. If it can't be done, then I'd like to hear exactly what the goal of this incursion is and how long they expect it to last. Are they going to kill 30,000 people in the course of disarming and expelling Hamas? Or are they going to kill 30,000 people and Hamas will still be a recognizable threat anyway? If it's the latter, why kill all those people, why not stop now? When do they stop? Those are fair questions.

Basically all Jews "support Israel," insofar as they want it to keep existing as a Jewish state. Basically all Jews who support Israel also truly have no ill will toward Palestinians. They see Palestinians' problems as being less severe than the problems Jews have faced, historically and recently, and not worth the risks to Jews if an Israel did not exist. They believe in peace and want there to be a two-state solution, either because they really want a better life for Palestinians or because they want to stop feeling vaguely guilty about the occupation, or a mix of both.

I hope this was in any way helpful and regret that I couldn't be more precise about what the future plan should be.

[vyorei]

God they're just so VILE

[tomorrowusa]

Until this month, Bibi Netanyahu was a HŪGE fanboy of Hamas. Their relationship goes back decades. This is not some wacko conspiracy theory. Much of the information about this comes from mainstream Israeli media and high ranking Israeli former officials.

Here are excerpts from an in-depth article at the CBC – Canada's public broadcaster.

Israelis don't agree on much, especially lately, but polling shows they mostly agree that Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is to blame for leaving Israel unprepared for Hamas's onslaught on October 7. The accusations aimed at Netanyahu go beyond merely failing to foresee or prevent the Hamas attack of October 7, however. Many accuse him of deliberately empowering the group for decades as part of a strategy to sabotage a two-state solution based on the principle of land for peace. "There's been a lot of criticism of Netanyahu in Israel for instating a policy for many years of strengthening Hamas and keeping Gaza on the brink while weakening the Palestinian Authority," said Mairav Zonszein of the International Crisis Group. "And we've seen that happening very clearly on the ground." "(Hamas and Netanyahu) are mutually reinforcing, in the sense that they provide each other with a way to continue to use force and rejectionism as opposed to making sacrifices and compromises in order to reach some kind of resolution," Zonszein told CBC News from Tel Aviv.

Bibi and Hamas could be called "frenemies".

Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, told the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2013 that "if we look at it over the years, one of the main people contributing to Hamas's strengthening has been Bibi Netanyahu, since his first term as prime minister." In August 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu's "strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah." The logic underlying this strategy, Barak said, is that "it's easier with Hamas to explain to Israelis that there is no one to sit with and no one to talk to."

The Bibi-Hamas relationship goes back almost 30 years. In some ways, Hamas helped put Bibi in power in the first place.

Netanyahu first came to power in the 1996 election that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli extremist opposed to the Oslo Accords. Early polls showed Rabin's successor Shimon Peres comfortably ahead. Determined to sabotage Oslo, Hamas embarked on a ruthless suicide bombing campaign that helped Netanyahu pull ahead of Peres and win the election on May 29, 1996. Today, some of the same extremists who called for Rabin's death hold power in Netanyahu's government.

A reminder that the current Israeli government led by Netanyahu is the most far right in Israel's history. Netanyahu filled it with extremists, religious fanatics, and virulent ethno-nationalists in order to stay in power.

Just two weeks before Rabin's assassination, a young settler extremist posed for the cameras with a Cadillac hood ornament he said he had stolen from Rabin's car. "Just like we got to this emblem," he said, "we could get to Rabin." Today, that young man, Itamar Ben Gvir, is 45 years old and has eight Israeli criminal convictions — including convictions for supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism. Once he was rejected by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for his extremist views. Now, Israel's police must answer to him as Benjamin Netanyahu's minister of national security.

Imagine how a second Trump administration would be and you get a hint of what Bibi's pre-October 7th cabinet was like.

The Bibi-Hamas connection only gets worse.

Netanyahu's hawkish defence minister Avigdor Liberman was the first to report in 2020 that Bibi had dispatched Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and the IDF's officer in charge of Gaza, Herzi Halevi, to Doha to "beg" the Qataris to continue to send money to Hamas. "Both Egypt and Qatar are angry with Hamas and planned to cut ties with them. Suddenly Netanyahu appears as the defender of Hamas," the right-wing leader complained. A year later, Netanyahu was further embarrassed when photos of suitcases full of cash going to Hamas became public. Liberman finally resigned in protest over Netanyahu's Hamas policy which, he said, marked "the first time Israel is funding terrorism against itself."

Yep, Bibi actually had a bag man deliver cash to Hamas.

The Palestinian Authority's Ahmed Majdalani accused the Qatari envoy of carrying money to Hamas "like a gangster." "The PLO did not agree to the deal facilitating the money to Hamas that way," he said.

Netanyahu fancies himself as a clever Machiavellian playing one side against the other. He has even bragged of this to members of his party.

On March 12, 2019, Netanyahu defended the Hamas payments to his Likud Party caucus on the grounds that they weakened the pro-Oslo Palestinian Authority, according to the Jerusalem Post: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel's regular allowing of Qatari funds to be transferred into Gaza, saying it is part of a broader strategy to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority separate, a source in Monday's Likud faction meeting said," the Post reported. "The prime minister also said that 'whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for' transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state."

Of course Bibi was ultimately being too clever by half.

Netanyahu insisted that neither the money nor the construction material given to Hamas would be diverted to military purposes. But today, the IDF finds itself showing how Hamas has done exactly that — by diverting and converting civilian funds and materials to warlike purposes. The military tried to warn him at the time, former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot told the Ma'ariv newspaper. He said Netanyahu acted "in total opposition to the national assessment of the National Security Council, which determined that there was a need to disconnect from the Palestinians and establish two states."

A lot of radical chic Hamas fans in Western countries will undoubtedly try to obscure the fact that they are cheering the same group which a far right Israeli politician (until recently) has been lavishing with tons of cash.

And the Bibi-Hamas connection is a reminder that while far right politicians in many countries like to portray themselves as tough on security, they will usually put their craven lust for power above all.

[eretzyisrael]

The Quds News Network is a Hamas-affiliated news site. In this case it translated the words of Ben Gvir incorrectly - he threatened terrorists, not Palestinians. Haaretz quoted him as saying,  “Our government killed the most terrorists, over 120 in the past six months, but a lot of work remains – and we have to lend a helping hand to soldiers and the police to support and strengthen them.”

But an Arab or Hamas media outlet lying about what an Israeli said is hardly news. Far more interesting is that this is where a UN representative gets her news from.

Quds News is an unabashedly pro-terrror site, like most Palestinian media. But it is also explicitly antisemitic. 

One article denies that Jews are a people, quoting the Khazar myth and others. 

This Quds News article about the Holocaust says that Jews believe "the suffering of the Jews cannot be compared to the suffering of the rest of the peoples, since the Jews are the people chosen by the Lord El, while the rest of humanity becomes in an inferior stage of this choice, - being gentiles - and therefore the suffering of the Jews - the supreme race of all - is not similar to the suffering of inferior Gentiles." In this quote, Quds News is echoing the justifications of the Nazis for genocide. 

It then says that Palestinians are the primary victims of the Holocaust, not Jews.

This is all classic antisemitism. It is hate that the news site is quite proud of and not at all ashamed of. So it is no surprise that Francesca Albanese considers an antisemitic, Hamas news site to be a reliable source for her to quote.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Let's take a look at it in its simplest form: 

A Jew living in the Jewish State took a silent and contemplative stroll in a Jewish holy place.

This is it. That's the scandal. Nothing more, nothing less.

To highlight the absurdity, let's formulate it differently:

A Muslim living in Saudi Arabia took a silent and contemplative stroll in a Muslim holy place.

A Catholic living in the Vatican took a silent and contemplative stroll in a Catholic holy place.

A Hindu living in India took a silent and contemplative stroll in a Hindu holy place.

Can you ever imagine anyone but a Jew creating a worldwide brouhaha over a literal nothing?

Ben-Gvir did not desecrate the Mosque. He did not enter the Mosque. He did not taunt Muslim worshippers about how much better the place would look if it were razed. He didn't record himself playing football, holding a barbecue, or generally just having a good time with his pals.

He took a silent, contemplative stroll in Judaism's holiest site as Jew in the Jewish State. And the world exploded.

Let’s examine the foremost reactions to his visit:

Support for and/or encouraging the murder of Jews (calls for another intifada).

Arabs & Jews should return to war-like relations (Revoking the Abraham Accords)

This is something that concerns the entire world (UN Security Council meeting)

[plitnick]

Cutting Through: Breaking Down Israel's Defense At The ICJ

In the latest edition of the Cutting Through newsletter, I take a deep dive into Israel’s defense against charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice. I examine their claims and whether any of their arguments might serve to sway the court. Check it out, and share the newsletter and help it grow!

[schraubd]

Is the Jewish World Ready for Itamar Ben-Gvir?

In 2009, Marty Peretz called Avigdor Lieberman a fascist.

My how the world turns.

Today, of course, Lieberman is effectively a centrist figure in Israeli politics, who seems more inclined to form coalitions with the left-of-center bloc than the right-wing. 

Some of that reflects changes in Lieberman -- he has moderated somewhat from where he started and moved towards the center since bursting onto the Israeli political scene. But a lot of it is attributable to changes in Israel's political center of gravity, which has been lurching to the right for decades. Opinions and beliefs which were outlandish and outrageous in 2009 don't even qualify as right-wing in 2022. In 2018, Batya Ungar-Sargon could hold Naftali Bennett's feet to the fire over his open opposition to democratic rights for Palestinians. Fast forward just a few years, and Bennett is the savior figure who managed to oust the even more odiously anti-Palestinian Bibi Netanyahu out of office. What was once the extreme right in Israel now is the "moderate" bulwark against an ascendant and even further-extreme right. The world keeps turning.

And so we get to the present day, and the rise of a new extremist powerbroker in Israel: Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir is more than a terrorist-sympathizer, he actually was convicted of providing support to a terrorist organization. He wants to expel Arabs, he had a shrine to Baruch Goldstein, he's a disciple of Kahanism. His political character has been described as a "pyromaniac", given his lust to take combustible situations and pour gasoline on them. He's been described as a "David Duke"-like figure in Israeli politics, except unlike Duke he's actually winning office. He makes even the original flavor of Bennett or Lieberman look positively moderate. And in the very plausible event that the right-wing bloc wins the next Israeli election, Itamar Ben-Gvir is likely to receive a very prominent ministry position in the Israeli government.

The establishment of the Jewish diaspora isn't ready for this. In 2019, when Netanyahu first entered into a deal with Ben-Gvir, it received widespread condemnation from American Jewish groups (even AIPAC!). They characterized his party "racist and reprehensible". Three years later, Ben-Gvir's influence has only grown. If he does enter into government at a high level, does anyone believe groups like AIPAC are going to hold the line? That they'll follow their own logic and concede that Israel's governing coalition is seeded with the racist and the reprehensible? Or will the world turn once more, and Ben-Gvir become accommodated?

By and large, the American Jewish community has been covering its eyes regarding the surging ascendency of far-right extremism amongst the Israeli Jewish community. The tendency has been to dismiss this sort of extremism as marginal, as outliers, as the province of fringe cranks that one might find in any pluralistic political community. There is a terrified refusal to acknowledge the larger pattern, which is that folks like Ben-Gvir are not outliers, and things are getting worse, not better. "A little patience," they say "and we shall see the reign of witches pass." But it isn't passing. The cavalry isn't coming. It can happen (t)here.

The American Jewish community does not want to see Israel descend into far-right fascism. It wants, desperately, that folks like Ben-Gvir are outliers and are repudiated and can be rendered into fringe irrelevancies. But that's not happening. So what next? Unfortunately, the problem with not wanting to see something is that there's always the option to cover your eyes. Squeeze them shut and pretend the problem isn't there. Start whatabouting on Hamas or Iran or this or that. Figure out a way to accommodate and appease the new normal, in the hopes that after this, we won't go any further. Soon the reign of the witches has to pass. That is, more or less, what the global Jewish community has done for the past few decades -- it has just pretended not to see the rise of Israel's extreme right in the hopes that if it is ignored long enough, it will go away.

It's not going away. It is getting worse. And sooner or later, we have to starting thinking about what steps we need to take to arrest and reverse its momentum, rather than vainly hoping it will correct itself. I am not convinced that the American Jewish community is ready to have that conversation. But if we don't have it, folks will start having it without us.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/D1aIcBk

[indizombie]

Israel's incoming national security minister is set to be the far-right firebrand Itamar Ben-Gvir - a staunch supporter of settlements who calls for stone-throwing Palestinians to be shot. He also wants Israeli soldiers to have immunity from prosecution in cases where Palestinians are killed.  Dror Sadot from B'Tselem, the human rights group, described 2022 as an "extreme year" in terms of Palestinian fatalities.  "There are many cases of protests where the Palestinians are using rocks, stones and sometimes other means, and Israel's army almost always uses disproportionate force," she said.

Tom Bateman, ‘West Bank footage throws spotlight on Israel's use of lethal force’, BBC

[izraelinfo]

Manszur Abbasz: Ben-Gvir és társai szinte reménykedtek egy újabb arab felkelésben október 7-e után

"Izrael Állam palesztin polgárai látják a nehézségeket mindkét oldalon, és hídként szolgálhatnak a békéhez, hogy helyreállítsák az elmúlt két hónapban tapasztalt szinte teljes pusztítást."

A Raam párt elnöke, Manszur Abbasz kneszet-képviselő tegnap azt mondta, hogy “október 7-e után Ben-Gvir és társai az arab társadalomban a “Falak Őrzője 2” (שומר החומות) mintájára vártak felkelést, sőt szinte reménykedtek, hogy ez megtörténik. Ezt a Berl Katznelson Foundation és a Mitvim Izraeli Regionális Külpolitikai Intézet konferenciáján jelentette ki. „Szerencsére az izraeli arab társadalom…

[paulthepoke]

The Watchmen: Israeli Drama, Russia Nukes, Middle East Diplomacy, China's Yuan, Australian Dead Fish

The Watchmen: Israeli Drama, Russia Nukes, Middle East Diplomacy, China's Yuan, Australian Dead Fish

On this edition of The Watchmen… We are just a couple of dudes sitting on the wall watching the world go by. Drama continues in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pausing on Judicial Reform for now. https://www.jns.org/opinion/a-resistance-coup-just-defeated-israeli-democracy/ Netanyahu to postpone his judicial coup; in exchange he’ll establish new police force under Kahanist Ben…

[vyorei]

Live coverage of the 28th of December 2023 has now begun.

Here is an amalgamation of news from the last near 2 hours, oldest at the top and latest at the bottom.

[tomorrowusa]

« Hamas's surprise attack on Israel, on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war, will be remembered as an intelligence failure for the ages.

[ … ]

Israel’s surveillance technology industry, as evidenced by the Pegasus spyware scandal, is among the most advanced in the world. Despite all of this, Hamas’s preparations were missed.

[ … ]

[T]his attack takes place in the midst of a period of profound social dislocation for Israel. Netanyahu’s far-right government, peopled with individuals in cabinet roles who should not hold public office, such as Itamar Ben Gvir, the minister for national security, have spent their time pouring petrol on what was an already highly combustible situation in the occupied territories. »

— Peter Beaumont at The Guardian. Mr. Beaumont was previously The Guardian's correspondent in Jerusalem.

This is one of the most spectacular intelligence failures since the start of the 20th century. Israel had previously been renown for having world-class intelligence gathering. Politics may have undermined its effectiveness.

Prime Minister Netanyahu heads the most rightwing government in Israel's history. His Minister of National Security is Itamar Ben-Gvir who is best known for his openly racist views.

Ben-Gvir is an attorney who enjoys representing Israelis accused of hate crimes. The reason he's a senior minister is that Netanyahu needs the votes of Ben-Gvir's extremist party to hold on to power.

Ben-Gvir's portfolio includes overseeing border security. Before being chosen as Minister of National Security by Netanyahu he had no experience in national security – and it certainly showed this weekend.

Pandering to far right factions to attain or retain power is ultimately not a winning move in any country – and that includes the US.

In the end, Netanyahu gets the blame for this disaster; when you intentionally sow division in your country and promote unqualified allies to power for political gain then it's your fail. If you can't rule without the help of racist extremists then you don't deserve to be leading a country.

[eretzyisrael]

In both cases, ignorant Westerners who should be supporting freedom and equality are in the forefront of quashing that exact freedom in order to avoid hurting the feelings of irrational, potentially violent Muslims:

- State Department spokesman Ned Price repeatedly said in response to Ben-Gvir's visit that the US supports the "status quo," implying that the visit violated it and was "provocative:" "We oppose any unilateral actions that undercut the historic status quo. They are unacceptable.... it’s absolutely critical that all sides exercise restraint, refrain from provocative actions and rhetoric, and preserve that historic status quo at Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, both in word and in practice....We’re deeply concerned by any unilateral actions because – precisely because they have the potential to exacerbate tensions, or worse. "

- Hamline University issued a statement claiming, falsely, that what the instructor did violated Islamic law: "Students do not relinquish their faith in the classroom. To look upon an image of the prophet Muhammad, for many Muslims, is against their faith."  But it is not at all clear that Islamic law addresses viewing such depictions, only creating them. And as mentioned, the Muslim students could have chosen not to view them.

These are perfect examples of "proleptic dhimmitude," where Westerners act (often beyond what Muslims demand)  in fear of anticipated Islamic responses that had not even occurred.

This illustrates the real unwritten law that has increasingly dominated the West: "Don't piss off the Muslims." All of the moral posturing about "tolerance" and "status quo" are fig leaves to obscure the fact that Westerners live in fear of Islamic terror, and are willing and even anxious to give up on our own freedoms to pander to the most extreme Muslim positions, human rights be damned. By using the yardstick of banning anything that is "provocative," the West is allowing the most intolerant and violent Muslims to dictate Western behavior in all aspects of life. Because anything and everything can provoke Islamists. Because in both cases the dhimmified Westerners are giving a green light for extremist, potentially violent Muslims to expand their demands ad infinitum:

[ruminativerabbi]

Ben-Gvir’s Visit to the Temple Mount

Itamar Ben-Gvir is Israel’s Minister of National Security. He is also a criminal, having been convicted in 2007 of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization. (The organization in question was the far-right Kahanist political movement called Kach.) He is known to have had at one point hanging in his home a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, the physician-terrorist who murdered twenty-nine worshipers and wounded another 125 in the mosque located on the site of the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron on Purim in 1994, and who was subsequently beaten to death by the other worshipers. His views were deemed so extreme that he was actually not accepted for service in the IDF after completing high school owing to the violent extremism he espoused. For that, he is very well known in Israel. But he is also famous—or perhaps I should say infamous—for having stolen an ornament from Yitzchak Rabin’s car a few weeks before the latter was assassinated and then, while brandishing it aloft, saying to his followers that the next step after stealing the ornament should be murdering Rabin himself. Ben-Gvir finished law school, but was actually blocked from taking the bar exam by the Israel Bar Association because of his extremist views. (Who even knew the Bar Association could do such a thing? In the end, though, Ben-Gvir appealed and, after settling three different sets of criminal charges against him, was finally allowed to take the both the written and oral parts of the exam, both of which he passed and so became licensed to practice law.)

Today, Ben-Gvir’s party is the third largest in the Knesset, more than doubling its seats from one election to the next. And it was as leader of that party, called Otzmah Yehudit (“Jewish Power”), that he was offered the newly-created National Security Ministry that includes, among many other things, overseeing the Israel Border Police on the West Bank.

And it was this Ben-Gvir who led a small party of supporters to ascend to the top of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on January 3. There was no specific point to the visit other than to show that there are not and must not be any laws—much less laws imposed by foreign entities or governments—restricting the rights of Israelis to visit any part of their own country, which certainly includes Jerusalem, Israel’s capital city.

There are a thousand issues on which Ben-Gvir and I are on different sides. I have sympathy for the Palestinians, who have been betrayed so many times by their own leadership that even as keen a student of Middle Eastern politics as myself cannot remember how many chances to create an independent Palestinian entity have been missed by the Palestinians’ sclerotic and corrupt leadership. I believe that making Israel’s Arab citizens feel welcome in their own country is a positive, healthy goal towards which Jewish Israelis should strive. And I believe that the concept of using terrorism to fight terrorists is not only illogical but also misguided and, in my opinion, deeply counterproductive. Nobody becomes less violent by being treated violently.

But Ben-Gvir’s trip to the Temple Mount is in its own category and it is about that specific incident that I’d like to write this week. My feelings about the man’s brief excursion to a part of Jerusalem I myself have only seen from afar, mostly from looking across the valley that separates the Mount of Olives from the Temple Mount, are complex. I am sure that the point of the visit was to be provocative and confrontational, even incendiary. And that part repels me, as it should any person eager to promote peaceful relations between the various groups who call Jerusalem home. But the concept itself that a Jew should be forbidden to visit the holiest of all Jewish sites is also anathema to me. And the vitriolic response to Ben-Gvir’s visit—and particularly those that featured knee-jerk references to the importance of maintaining the status quo on the Temple Mount—those reactions repulsed me as well.

I should start by noting that it's not all that obvious that Jews should ascend the Temple Mount in the first place. I myself wrote the chapter about Israel in the Rabbinical Assembly’s landmark work, The Observant Life, in which I reviewed at length the various opinions regarding the halakhic permissibility of climbing up to the top of the mount given the relevant facts that all today are presumed to be in a state of impurity and that the precise location of the buildings and courtyards stop the Mount in ancient times can be only be presumed through scholarly conjecture today. (It seems clear also that the Temple Mount itself was distinctly smaller in ancient times. So there are a lot of details in play here. The relevant section in The Observant Life in on pp. 346–348.) And although Maimonides himself ruled that a Jew should avoid the entire Temple Mount area so as to be absolutely certain of not transgressing the law, there are many authorities today—both Conservative/Masorti and Orthodox—who find it permissible to climb to the top of the Temple Mount and merely to avoid entry into the Dome of the Rock and/or the central plaza to its south. The general halakhic sense of how things are has changed over the years. When I first visited the Old City in 1974, it was widely understood that religious Jews should not ascend to the top of the mountain. A large sign at the entrance to the path leading up to the Temple Mount says much clearly.

But things have changed dramatically over the years. And the further to the right one looks, the more widespread the belief that, not only is there nothing wrong with climbing to the top of the Temple Mount, but there is an important statement to be made—to the Jordanians (the self-appointed guardians of the mosques atop the Mount), to the Palestinians, to the United Nations, and to the rest of the world in doing so: that Jewish people do not need anyone’s permission to visit their own holy sites. And that that applies even, or perhaps especially, to sites in Israel over which foreign nations claim the authority of governance.

Ben-Gvir’s was brief, just about fifteen minutes in length  and it took place early in the morning. He didn’t attempt to recite his morning prayers. Nor was this his first visit to the Temple Mount, just his first visit as a cabinet minister. The responses were entirely predictable. The Jordanians were enraged. The Palestinians, ditto. But it fell to our American ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, to pin the tail on the real issue involved. “To be very clear,” the ambassador said very clearly, “we want to preserve the status quo and actions that prevent that are unacceptable.”  And this was echoed even more officially by U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price, who said that our nation “oppose[s] any unilateral actions that undercut the historical status quo.”

For me personally, it’s that notion of the “status quo” that sticks in my craw. The Latin words denote “the existing state of affairs,” but the ambassador’s and the State Department spokesman’s use of the term leaves unaddressed the highly pertinent fact that Ben-Gvir’s visit specifically did not violate the status quo. Or at least not the status quo that has pertained since Israel wrested the Old City from Jordanian control in the Six Day War, at which time Moshe Dayan decided to permit Jews to visit the Temple Mount but not to pray there. (The idea was that having regular prayer services, or even for individuals to recite their prayers there, would be too provocative, but that their mere presence atop the Mount would be something the local Muslims would have to learn to live with.) And that is precisely where things have stood since 1967. So to say that Ben-Gvir violated the status quo is simply not true: the man ascended to the top of the Mount, walked around for a quarter hour, then left. This was pointed out to the State Department spokesman, who responded to a question about what the status quo actually is by saying it would have to be a matter of negotiation between “the parties themselves, including the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.” George Orwell couldn’t have said it better: the status quo is not the situation that currently pertains, but rather whatever arrangement the interested parties are able to negotiate into being—which is precisely the opposite of what “status quo” means.

On the ground, the question of Israel’s right to exist translates into the right of Israelis to behave as citizens of their own state with all that entails—and certainly the right to behave as masters in their own home. And that certainly should involve the right of unrestricted access to their own holy sites, something Muslims and Christians in Israel take for granted. The notion that a liberal, non-fanatic, non-fundamentalist person such as myself cannot see what exactly Ben-Gvir did to provoke the outrage of the world says more about the world than about Ben-Gvir. Muslims in Jerusalem do and should have the right to worship where and when they please. But so should Jews. What the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan—the same people who forbade any Jewish presence at all in the Old City of Jerusalem during the years they occupied it—should have to do with the governance of the Temple Mount should be…nothing at all.

[plitnick]

Brad Sherman models the perfect pro-Israel Democrat

This piece, written late last week, takes on a new importance in light of the Israeli massacre in Jenin and the Palestinian lone shooter attack in Neve Yakov. More to the point, the importance it’s magnified by Antony Blinken’s contemptible tour of Middle East criminals, from Cairo and al-Sisi to Jerusalem and Netanyahu. The article examines the words of Brad Sherman, one of the most zealous…

[mounadiloun]

Le sionisme et l'apartheid

Le sionisme et l’apartheid

Comme moi, vous avez lu ou entendu les réactions suite au retour de Benjamin Netanyahou aux manettes du gang sioniste flanqué de complices au racisme décomplexé. Et vous avez eu l’impression que ce qui se tramait dans l’entité sioniste, c’était un changement radical. L’ambassadrice sioniste Yael German en compagnie de Ted Deutchn président de l’American Jewish Committee Les responsables…