Why Won’t Obama Talk to Israel?

The article appeared in the New York Times, written by Aluf Benn, editor of Israeli news paper Haaretz; Benn brings up several important points while trying to understand what has been President's Obama's aproach towards Israel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/opinion/28benn.html?_r=2

Israel in Song...Remembering our Soldiers.

Songs, are written with one idea in mind, yet the original one could change to serve another purpose. Israeli soldiers are never forgotten, and as is common in Israel, where music plays a vital role, they are remembered in song.
Shlomo Artzi turned one of his songs called “Anajnu Lo Tzrijim”, ‘More than this we do not need’, in an outcry for the safely return of soldier Gilat Shalit. The song pleads for “his return”, for “the tears have dried from our eyes”, “let him return so we could meet him, more than this we do not ask”.
At his concerts, Artzi plays this song while a picture of Shalit is displayed in the screens at the show.

Sarit Haddad’s hit theme Shema Israel, was played to remember Shalit and soldiers Regev and Goldwasser who were then returned to Israel in July of last year, in a coffin, as part of a prisoner exchange.


Shlomo Artzi
When opening this link, click on the green tag to listen to the song(with English subtitles)
http://www.shiron.net/artist?type=lyrics&wrkid=376&prfid=975&lang=1


Sarit Haddad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roc2QORAhKw

Israel in Song… Ha Ish HaHu, 'That Man'

This song written by poet Natan Yonatan and composed and sang by the very famous Israeli Singer Shlomo Artzi, became one of the many tribute songs to Prime Minister Rabin after his assassination. The song tells the story of “That Man”, and asks “where are other men like him, where could they be found?”, “a man who was like the weeping willows”. It appealed to Rabin’s “uniqueness” as a leader and as a humble person, a warrior who understood the call of the people for peace, and who proved, with his life, that violence and extremism leads nowhere.
The following link(which English subtitles) presents Shlomo Artzi at one of the annual rallies held in Tel Aviv’s ‘Kikar Rabin’ to mark the date of Rabin assassination.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGKaxzy_-Y

The President Takes a Hard Line on Israel Yet he doesn’t want to be seen as ‘meddling’ in Iran.

This article brings to mind important historic facts, easily forgotten and the issue of the double standard taken by most of the countries of the world, including the US, against Israel.
The ‘disengagement’ from Gaza, even though it was a unilateral move in which no agreement was achieved with the Palestinians, could have been a trial on the ‘land for peace’ initiative; yet, the removal of about 9.000 residents (some of whom haven’t found a permanent residence yet), proved what many in the Israeli community felt: Gaza became a terror State ruled by Hamas who continued to attack Israel; the only difference, it was just from a closer range.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204886304574308172135404080.html

Can secular host TV show about Jewish tradition?

Channel 1, which is the Public Channel in Israel, airs a show called “Mekablim Shabbat” (Receiving the Sabbath),hosted by Dov Elboim, in which several personalities from the Israeli spectrum, writers, comedians, singers, professors, etc, are invited to discuss the weekly Parasha portion.
I view the show almost every week, and I have always liked the fact that each one of the guests, provides his own interpretation to the text, some based on Rabbinic interpretation, some on personal studies or experiences, bringing a “modern” view into the Bible reading, allowing for viewers, especially those who feel these are “ancient” texts with no relevance into their lives, to make this connection, to understand and view the text in a different light, one from which the Bible is meaningful to every Jew, ancient or Modern, religious or secular.
Meir Porush, deputy Education Minister form the Ultra Orthodox party United Torah Judaism, does not share this view, and believes, that a secular host, who does not wear a kippah, has no place meddling in religious issues; from his complain I would say that he doesn’t even watch the show since he recalls what “ a viewer” told him about it: “Moreover, a viewer who wrote to me said that the host's interpretations do not fall in line with the accepted interpretations in Judaism, and constitute a desecration of what Judaism holds sacred."
In his response, Israel broadcasting Authority head Motti Shklar claims rightfully that: “ the host has the utmost love and respect for the tradition and its content, but surely people who do not wear a kippah also have the right and the obligation to be part of the Jewish tradition, in their own way."
There are several reasons that have kept the secular public to distance themselves from studying traditional texts; the importance of resuming this practice is central to the survival of Jewish tradition and life in Israel and the Diaspora. Openness and tolerance from both parts is central to accomplish this matter.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3750406,00.html

Zionist ship in danger

Yaron London,a recognized Israeli journalist and TV host of the channel 10program "London et Kirshembaum"(as well as a recognized songwriter), argues in this article that both the Arab and Ultra-Ortodox minorities, whom together comprise one third of the population of the State,are being joined by a large group of the Israeli society, who are not part of the vision of having a "democratic, secular, modern, liberal, and open republic with a Jewish majority". The Zionist enterprise was, in its begginigs, the dream of a few, well educated Jews from Easter Europe, who succeded in bringing about this daring enterprise. Nowadays, they remain a tiny group as well amongst a divided society wishing to sail each in its own direction.


http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3750488,00.html

Israel in Song... Beit Haarava

Beit Haarava is a kibbutz in the Judean desert, in the proximity of the Dead Sea. It was originally built in 1939 by Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany. Yet, the history of this kibbutz remind us of the vision of men who believed, as Ben Gurion would say, that the dessert could become , ought to become populated land. But could it be possible to bring life from such arid, salty land? Not many believed it would be possible. Moshe Aizikovitch a member of Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, was sent to this place to check on the possibility of developing this land for farming and agriculture, thus making it possible to build a Yishuv where new immigrants could settle. Its proximity to the Dead Sea made this enterprise extremely difficult, the evaporating salty waters of the sea, turned this arid land into salty ground were life was unconceivable; but turning dreams into reality was not foreign to the Jewish people. By irrigating the land from the flowing waters of the Jordan River, an extremely difficult and hard work that was literally performed with the own two hands of every member of this kibbutz, the pioneers began by washing the soil loaded with salt until it became fertile ground for farming; and so they did; Beit Haarava became a growing Yishuv, with pioneers, idealist, building and living, marrying and giving birth in this previously wild piece of Land.
But Beit Haarava is also in the border with Jordan and it became one of the first targets during the War of Independence; its residents were evacuated to the nearby Israeli post at Sodom, the ones that stayed behind and perished at the hands of the Jordanian legion defending their Land…


Following is the song that tells the story of Beit Haarava,sung by one of the greatest israeli singers, Arik Einstein.
Lyrics: Haim Chefer and Amos Keinan
Music: Shmulik Krauss

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzshksOU9oI

This other link is from the Israeli program “Kach Haiah”, even though it is in Hebrew, the images from the origins of the kibbutz are worth watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwcn5azvvGg(first part)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC-X3FSM7rs&feature=related(second part)

Israel and the Diaspora

A.B Yehoshua, one of the great and most respected Israeli writers, has been wildly outspoken against what he feels are the core differences between Israel and the Diaspora. He believes Jewish life in Israel is complete, not so life in the Diaspora.
In 2006, he was as invited to a symposium in the Washington about the future of the Jewish people, in which he stressed his opinions on this matter generating great controversy; the Americans felt “insulted” by what they felt was a criticism on the part of Yehoshua to their true Jewishness or their closeness to Israel.
They failed, in my view, to understand that as much as Yehoshua was criticizing them, he was doing the same for his Israeli counterparts who chose to move and live somewhere else, simply because Jewish identity has been “mobile”, a “garment” as he calls it, then it can be changed or exchanged for another garment in times of trouble while maintaining the “mobile” Jewish spirituality.
I completely agree with Yehoshua’s assessment; there is no way in that a Jewish life outside of Israel could be compared to life in the Diaspora, not even in the US which is most respectful of Jewish identity and values. As Yehoshua argues, for better or for worse, Jews in Israel are linked by territorial boundaries, are governed by Jews, pay taxes to Jews, serve in a Jewish army, defend Jewish settlements or expel their fellow Jews from them; the political, social and cultural life in Israel is shaped by the Jews living there, by the outcomes of their daily lives. This is a fact, we Jews in the Diaspora do not share and fail to understand; it is certainly difficult if not impossible to grasp what daily life in Israel means if not living there; one can imagine their joys and grievances, but there is no way one can truly share in their experiences, not from afar. What better example than the one Yehoshua gives; this symposium was held on the eve of Yom Hazicaron, Memorial day in Israel for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorist attacks, a grim day in Israel, where not one citizen is devoid from the terrible reality of having lost a father, a son, a relative, a friend, or an acquaintance. There was not even one mention of this fact on the symposium by other than Yehoshua. So, do we truly share the same experiences? Do we really hope for Israelis to understand or respect Jews in the Diaspora when their “contribution” to the State, even though significant, has been mostly economic, or political?
Only if we, in the Diaspora acknowledged this reality we’ll be able to build a deeper more meaningful and stronger relationship that would benefit both the Jewry in Israel and the countries of the Diaspora.


Following is the speech given by A.B Yehoshua

The meaning of homeland
A.B. Yehoshua
Just before I entered the hall for the symposium in Washington that inaugurated
two days of discussions on the future of the Jewish people in light
of the century that has passed since the founding of the host organization
(American Jewish Committee), my youngest son phoned from Israel and
told me about how moved he was by the memorial ceremony, in which he
and his wife and toddler daughter had just taken part, for the fallen of
Israel’s wars. I made a brief comment to the panel’s moderator about the
fact that the symposium was taking place on the eve of Yom Hazikaron,
Israel’s Memorial Day, and I hoped that, amid the many congratulatory
speeches at the start of the evening, this would be noted and that we might
also all be asked to honor the Israeli Memorial Day, as customary, with a
minute of silence. But this didn’t happen. And Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s
Independence Day, due to be marked the following day, received only faint
and brief mention from the speakers.
I do not cite this as a grievance, but rather as a symptomatic example
that may also explain my gloomy state of mind at that symposium, given
that the deep and natural identification that a large portion of American
Jewry once felt with Israeli life has been steadily and seriously weakening in
recent years. All of the participants in the subsequent discussions agreed
that, for some years now, a slow process of disengagement of American
Jewry from Israel has been intensifying. The reasons are numerous and
complex, and related both to the fact that the “Israeli drama” has lost many
of its attractive features for American Jews, and to the accelerated processes
of assimilation occurring to varying degrees within America itself.
Missed opportunity
Even though the title of the symposium was “The Future of the Past: What
Will Become of the Jewish People?” I may have been the only one to begin
by talking about the failure of most of the Jewish people to foresee in the
twentieth century the depth and vehemence of the hostility toward it,
which eventually led to an annihilation unprecedented in human history.
“The Jewish texts,” which many Jews today consider to be the core of their
identity, did not help us to understand better the processes of the reality
around us. The Jews were too busy with mythology and theology instead of
history, and therefore the straightforward warnings voiced by [Ze’ev]
Jabotinsky and his colleagues in the early twentieth century—“Eliminate
the Diaspora, or the Diaspora will surely eliminate you”—fell on deaf ears.
After Palestine was taken over by the British, the Balfour Declaration
of 1917 promised a national home for the Jews, and if during the 1920s,
when the country’s gates were open wide, just a half million Jews had come
(less than 5 percent of the Jewish people at that time) instead of the tiny
number that actually did come, it certainly would have been possible to
establish a Jewish state before the Holocaust on part of the Land of Israel.
This state not only would have ended the Israeli-Arab conflict at an earlier
stage and with less bloodshed—it also could have provided refuge in
the 1930s to hundreds of thousands of Eastern European Jews who
sensed the gathering storm, and thus would have significantly reduced
the number of victims in the Holocaust.
The Zionist solution, which was proven as the best solution to the
Jewish problem before the Holocaust—when the Communist revolution
cut off Soviet Jewry, the gates of America were closed because of the
Depression, and European democracies were destroyed by fascism and
Nazism—was tragically missed by the Jewish people. And if it weren’t for
those few (less than half of 1 percent of world Jewry) people who, a hundred
years ago, believed and actually sought the fulfillment of the need
for the sovereign normalization of the Jewish people in its ancient homeland,
the Jewish people could have found itself after the horrors of World
War II just wandering among Holocaust museums, without even that
piece of sovereign homeland that still offers some solace for the disaster
that occurred.
But such a tough and piercing reckoning, coming from such an
old-fashioned Zionist premise about our painful and tragic missed
opportunity in the past century, is not welcome at the festive opening of
a convention of a Jewish organization that, like many other Jewish organizations
at the start of the twentieth century, shunned, if not actively
opposed, the Zionist solution. Better to talk about all the Nobel Prizes
and prestige garnered by Jews in the past century, about the intellectual
achievements of Freud and Einstein, and about the tremendous contribution
that Jews have made to Western culture. Therefore, right from
the start, I felt like I was spoiling the nice, pleasant atmosphere with my
anger. And instead of joining in the celebration of the wonderful spirituality
of the Jewish identity, and of the cultural renaissance in America,
and instead of extolling the texts that we must learn and the Jewish values
that we must inculcate, I tried nevertheless to outline at least a fundamental
boundary between Jewish identity in Israel and Jewish identity
in the Diaspora.
This is no easy task nowadays. Many Israelis would disagree with
me as well. The basic concepts of Zionism have either been pulverized
beyond recognition within the normality of sovereign life, or usurped in
a distorted and grotesque way by fascist rightist ideologies or radical postmodernism.
And this is where the conflict between myself and my listeners
arose. (Not with all of my listeners, actually. Some, mainly Jews who had
some Israeli experience, came up to me after the discussion was over to
express deep solidarity with what I’d said.)
I did not talk about “the negation of the Diaspora.” The Jewish
Diaspora has existed ever since the Babylonian exile, about 2,500 years
ago, and it will continue to exist for thousands more years. I have no
doubt that in the future when outposts will be established in outer space,
there will be Jews among them who will pray “Next year in Jerusalem”
while electronically orienting their space synagogue toward Jerusalem on
the globe of the earth. The Jew has a wonderful virtual ability to express
his identity with consciousness alone. The lone Iraqi Jew in Baghdad
after the American conquest or the two Jews sitting in Afghanistan are no
more or less Jewish in their foundational identity than the chief rabbi of
Israel or the president of the Jewish community in America. The Diaspora
is the most solid fact in Jewish history; we know its cost, and we are
aware of its accomplishments and failures in terms of Jewish continuity.
In fact, the most harshly worded statements concerning its theological
negation are to be found scattered in the “core” religious texts; there is no
need for an Israeli writer to come to Washington to talk about the negation
of the Diaspora.
All of the reports suggesting that I said that there can be no Jewishness
except in Israel are utterly preposterous. No one would ever think of
saying such an absurd thing. It is Israel and not the Diaspora that could
be a passing episode in Jewish history, and this is the source of my compulsion
to reiterate the old and plain truths that apparently need to be
repeated again and again. Not just to Diaspora Jews, but to Israelis, too.
Jewish identity in Israel, which we call Israeli identity (as distinct
from Israeli citizenship, which is shared by Arab citizens who also live in
the shared homeland, though their national identity is Palestinian)—this
Jewish-Israeli identity has to contend with all the elements of life via the
binding and sovereign framework of a territorially defined state. And
therefore the extent of its reach into life is immeasurably fuller and
broader and more meaningful than the Jewishness of an American Jew,
whose important and meaningful life decisions are made within the
framework of his American nationality or citizenship. His Jewishness is
voluntary and deliberate, and he may calibrate its pitch in accordance
with his needs.
We in Israel live in a binding and inescapable relationship with one
another, just as all members of a sovereign nation live together, for better
or worse, in a binding relationship. We are governed by Jews. We pay
taxes to Jews, are judged in Jewish courts, are called up to serve in the
Jewish army, and compelled by Jews to defend settlements we didn’t want
or, alternatively, are forcibly expelled from settlements by Jews. Our
economy is determined by Jews. Our social conditions are determined by
Jews. And all the political, economic, cultural, and social decisions craft
and shape our identity, which, although it contains some primary elements,
is always in a dynamic process of changes and corrections. While
this entails pain and frustration, there is also the pleasure of the freedom
of being in your own home.
Homeland and national language and a binding framework are fundamental
components of any person’s national identity. Thus, I cannot
point to a single Israeli who is assimilated, just as there is no Frenchman
in France who is an assimilated Frenchman—even if he has never heard
of Molière and has never been to the Louvre, and prefers soccer matches
and horse races. I am sure, for example, that some of the British pilots
who risked their lives in defense of London during World War II knew
the names of the Manchester United players better than Shakespeare’s
plays, and yet no one would dare call them assimilated Britons.
Identity as a garment
What I sought to explain to my American hosts, in overly blunt and
harsh language perhaps, is that, for me, Jewish values are not located in a
fancy spice box that is only opened to release its pleasing fragrance on
Shabbat and holidays, but in the daily reality of dozens of problems
through which Jewish values are shaped and defined, for better or worse.
A religious Israeli Jew also deals with a depth and breadth of life issues
that is incomparably larger and more substantial than those with which
his religious counterpart in New York or Antwerp must contend.
Am I denouncing their incomplete identity? I am neither denouncing
nor praising. It’s just a fact that requires no legitimating from me,
just as my identity requires no legitimating from them. But since we see
ourselves as belonging to one people, and since the two identities are
interconnected, and flow into one another, the relation between them
must be well clarified.
As long as it is clear to all of us that Israeli Jewish identity deals, for
better or worse, with the full spectrum of the reality and that Diaspora
Jewry deals only with parts of it, then at least the difference between
whole and part is acknowledged. But the moment that Jews insist that
involvement in the study and interpretation of texts, or in the organized
activity of Jewish institutions, are equal to the totality of the social and
political and economic reality that we in Israel are contending with—not
only does the moral significance of the historic Jewish grappling with a
total reality lose its validity, there is also the easy and convenient option
of a constant flow from the whole to the partial.
Not by chance do more than half a million Israelis now live outside
of Israel. If Jewish identity can feed itself on the study of texts and the
mining of memories, and some occasional communal involvement—and
as long as all those capable Chabad emissaries are supplying instant Jewish
and religious services everywhere on the planet—what’s the problem,
in the global age, with taking the Israeli kids and exiling the whole family
to some foreign high-tech mecca? After all, the core of the identity is
eternal and accessible anywhere.
This is how Israeliness in the homeland will also become a garment
that is removed and replaced with another garment in times of trouble,
just as Romanian-ness and Polishness were replaced by Englishness and
American-ness, and Tunisian-ness and Moroccan-ness were replaced by
Frenchness and Canadian-ness. And in the future, in another century or
two, when China is the leading superpower, why shouldn’t some Jews
exchange their American-ness or Canadian-ness for Chinese-ness or Singaporean-
ness? Just think about it: Who would have believed in the sixteenth
century that within 200 or 300 years, the Jews would be
concentrated in an unknown land called America?
The Jews have proven their ability to live anywhere for thousands of
years without losing their identity. And as long as the goyim don’t cause
too many problems, Jewish perseverance will not falter. If Israeliness is
just a garment, and not a daily test of moral responsibility, for better or
worse, of Jewish values, then it’s no wonder that poverty is spreading,
that the social gaps are widening, and that cruelty toward an occupied
people is perpetrated easily and without pangs of conscience. Since it will
always be possible to escape from the reality to the old texts, and to interpret
them in such a way that will imbue us with greatness, hope, and
consolation.
The national minority among us of the Palestinian Israelis, who
share Israeli citizenship with us, could also make a contribution to this
identity, just as American Jews contribute to the general American identity,
and the Basques to the Spanish identity and the Romanian minority
in Hungary to the Hungarian identity, and the Corsicans to the
French, and so on. The more Israeli we are, the better the partnership we
have with them. The more we concentrate solely on Jewish spirituality
and texts, believing this to be of chief importance, the more the alienation
between us grows.
The simple truth
I keep bringing up the matter of texts, because in liberal Jewish circles
this has recently become the most important anchor of identity, as evidenced
by the return of manifestly secular people to the synagogue—not
in order to find God, but to clutch onto identity. The struggle for Soviet
Jewry is over; the Security Council will deal with Iran; there is nothing
left but to return to the familiar and the known. As someone who has
spent his whole life dealing with texts—writing, reading, and analyzing—
I am incensed by the increasingly dangerous and irresponsible disconnection
between the glorification of the texts and the mundane
matters of daily life. Instead, I propose that we continue to nurture the
concrete and living value of “the homeland,” rather than the dull and
worn-out value of Jewish spirituality.
In all the Bible, the word moledet (homeland) is mentioned just
twenty-two times, and many of these times in reference to other nations.
The first sentence spoken to the first Jew is, “Go for yourself from your
land, from your moledet, and from your father’s house to the land that I
will show you.” And throughout their long history, the Jews obeyed the
first part of this imperative with great devotion, moving from one
moledet to another with surprising ease. And the terrible end to these
wanderings needs no further mention.
If we don’t want this kind of Jewish mindset (with the help of our
Palestinian rivals for the homeland) to pull the rug out from under our
feet, we ought to reiterate the basic, old concepts to Israelis just as much
as to American Jews who, though they were offended by me, treated me
with exemplary courtesy, perhaps because deep down, they felt that I was
speaking the simple truth.

An apology to those who attended the symposium
Reverberations from the first evening of the conference have made me
realize to my distress that a not insignificant portion of the audience was
offended by the tone of my remarks, as well as by part of their content. I
wish, therefore, to express to them my deepest apologies. Everything I
said about the partial nature of Jewish life in the Diaspora as opposed to
the all-inclusive nature of Jewish life in Israel has been said by me over
the course of many years in the past, both in print and in addressing
numerous Diaspora Jews. Never before did this lead to such an angry
reaction as it did this time. Presumably, there was something in my tone
and imprecise formulation that insulted part of the audience. I say “part,”
because there were also those who came up afterward to thank me—
which does not, of course, compensate for the feelings of the others.
The debate between us is a basic one that goes to the root of things.
But we are one people, and I have never ceased to stress this cardinal
principle. Nor was there anything in what I said at the conference that
called it into question. I am appending an article [see above] that I have
written for the weekly magazine of the Hebrew newspaper Ha’aretz, in
which I deal with my opinions on the matter in greater detail. And once
again, permit me to apologize to anyone whose feelings I have hurt.

A brief epilogue
The storm that arose in the wake of my comments—scores of articles
that were published, for and against, in the Diaspora and in Israel—testifies
truthfully that my words roused (albeit without particular intention)
a raw and dormant nerve. Everyone—those who objected and those
who agreed with my comments—repeatedly asserted that: a) What I
expressed was not new. I have repeated and publicized these views for
many years in many places and have expressed them scores of times to
the Jews of the Diaspora and Israel. (As Alfred Moses, the past president
of the American Jewish Committee and Centennial chair, said, “I heard
A.B. Yehoshua say the same things thirty years ago, and so I invited him
… because I wanted a debate.”) b) There was complete agreement
among supporters and detractors of my views that it was very good that
the debate on this age-old subject was rekindled.
Why the debate reignited with such force now calls out for a sociological
and an ideological study both of the changes that have occurred
in the concept of national identity in the world and how the importance
and meaning of Zionism have lessened among the Jewish people. And
here I wish to make one observation:
Two events of world importance took place during the twentieth
century, only three years apart: A) the Holocaust, an event that has no
parallel in human history, and B) the return of the Jewish people to its
homeland after 2,000 years, also an unparalleled event in human history.
In my estimation, the Jewish people have not yet fully digested the
deep meaning of the failure of the Diaspora outlook as it was experienced
during the Holocaust. And the Jewish people, including many Israelis,
have not grasped the qualitative change that has occurred in Jewish identity
with the return to complete sovereignty. Since the Diaspora mode of
Jewish identity existed for more than 2,000 years, the qualitative change
that has occurred within this identity with the establishment of the State
of Israel has not yet been fully internalized.
Nevertheless, the fact that during the last seventy years the Jewish
community in Israel has been transformed from less than 2.5 percent of
world Jewry to almost 50 percent of that whole proves that, despite all,
the trend from partial Jewishness to complete Jewishness is natural and
true.
A.B. Yehoshua
August 2006

The Jewish Nakba

Nakba means "catastrophe", in arabic. It is the term used by the Palestinians to describe the disaster that fell upon them the day Israel declared its Independence;on that day, while Israelis celebrate Yom Haatzmaut, the Arab population commemorates "Al-Nakba", asking for the return to "their homes and land", of all the refugees expelled between 1946-1948, and their descendants. This is one of the main obstables to a Peace Agreement since it would imply a demographic suicide for Israel.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3743829,00.html

Education, Hamas way

Simply astonishing!

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3744402,00.html

Israel in song....

The Bible is a recurring theme in Israeli song, numerous composers, ancient and modern, find in the Bible inspiration for their songs, either retelling well known stories or giving them a meaning of their own.
The story of Jacob in the Bible is well known; he fell in love with Rachel and agreed to work seven years for her father Laban in order to marry her. Jaacob was misled by Laban who gave him his eldest daughter Leah instead of his beloved Rachel. In scripture is not common to speak about love; yet Jaacob and Rachel’s relationship is described in such a way. On the other hand, Leah is not a pretty woman, she had “weak eyes”, and was always, the “unloved” wife(Gen. 29).
Ehud Manor, one of the greatest Israeli songwriters felt the treatment given to Leah was unfair and wrote a song in which Leah is “vindicated”: She is loved by Jaacob, who wants her to be proud, not sad and bitter about her sister; she bore 10 sons he remind her, who stand by her side; the seven years had already passed and he is just hoping to fulfill her wishes. If I forget you, he says, then ,my name is not Israel…
Tziva Pick, a famous Israeli singer and composer, and nowadays, judge of the Israeli version of American Idol (Cojav Nolad), set the song to music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2s0W13jiaE&feature=related

Israel in song...

The Six Day War in 1967 brought about deep changes in Israel; from a territorial point of view, Israel became a much bigger country, yet 1.500.00 Arabs were now under Israeli control.
A great sense of pride because of the great achievements of the war spread from Israel to Jews around the world and this Zionist pride lead to a wave of aliya from America, Europe and South America, especially Argentina, of people with deep Zionist ideals. Industry developed and there was a great economic growth in the country that was until that moment, experiencing a great and difficult economic recession.
Religious Zionists that belonged to the National Religious party, and Labor supporters for the Movement of Greater Israel assigned messianic terms to the victory of 67´and the conquest of the Biblical Lands of Judea and Samaria, a process that in their view would lead to the redemption of all Israel.
This group of believers later formed Gush Emunim (the Block of the Faithful) in 1974 after the Yom Kippur war. The Gush was a political movement which encouraged settlement activity in the Land promised to the Jewish people in the Bible.

Naomi Shemer wrote Al Kol Ele,in 1979. Her brother in law, which she cared much about, passed away, and the song was written to console her sister Ruthi. But the phrase “Al nataa kor natua”, “Do not uproot that which has been planted”, caught the attention of Gush Emunim who “appropriated” the song and attached to it a political meaning. The song became the hymn of the Gush, who at the time opposed disengagement from the city of Yamit,in the Sinai Peninsula (as a result of the Peace Agreement with Egypt)

FOR ALL THOSE THINGS

Naomi Shemer (free translation by Rebeca Herman)

For the honey and the sting
For the bitter and the sweet
For our little girl, guard us
my good Lord.
For the fire that burns
For the gleaming waters
For the man returning home
From a distant place

Chorus
For all those things
For all those things
Guard me, please my good Lord.
For the honey and the sting
For the bitter and the sweet
Do not uproot what has been planted
Do not forget to have hope
Let me return,
To the good Land


Rustles a tree in the wind
Far away a star is shining
The calmness of my heart at night
Is being inscribed now

Please take care of all those things
And for the love of my soul
For the silence and the cries
And for this song

In the following link the song is performed by Yossi Banai, for whom was originally written
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJQg29FLVDY&feature=related

History: How distorted views become ´facts´.

Narrative Dissonance - Martin Peretz (New Republic)

More and more, history has become a competition between and among narratives, self-consciously disdainful of what we used to think of as fact. But real history is the telling and interpretation of actual happenings, and it requires what used to be called knowledge - correct facts and warranted interpretations of them. There are two basic narratives to the nearly century-old Jewish and Arabs-of-Palestine dispute. What is most brazen or, at best, bizarre in Obama's historical recitation in his Cairo speech is the stark omission of the whole Zionist enterprise. Instead, he chose to understand the Jewish presence in Palestine as a sort of restitution for the Holocaust. The result was to diminish the determination of the Jewish people through the ages, and especially since the age of nationalism in the mid-nineteenth century, to reclaim their homeland and restore its dispersed sons and daughters to Zion - not as a reparation, but as a right. By the time World War II - before the Holocaust - began, there were already more than 500,000 Jews in Palestine. Most of them had arrived as their palpable reply to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, to the approval by the League of Nations of a British mandate for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Jewish sovereignty in postwar Palestine was only one of several rearrangements contemplated for the vast territories that had been governed by the Ottoman Empire, now expired. From this land mass emerged the states of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, North Yemen, and various other adjustments of frontiers on behalf of the Wilsonian principle of the self-determination of nations. These countries, composing almost the entire Fertile Crescent, were vouchsafed to the Arabs, their first experiments at self-government in history. Tiny Palestine was intended for the Jews. They were already at work in the desert, in the swamps, in their kibbutzim, in their new cities, including Tel Aviv, in their bourgeois enterprises, in their universities and research institutions. And, moreover, they had revived their ancient language, making it a living tongue. Hitler had nothing to do with this revolution. Is all this not a revolution worthy of presidential recognition?

Read the full article
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=cd70b25d-12b5-4f6f-8fd3-4a965be569f3

Israel in song...

Israeli music reflects the history of the State, the history of the Jewish people from antiquity to modern times; almost every chapter of history is set to music, phrases of the Tanach and other Jewish Sources are intertwined in song, given new meanings, adapted into modern life.
Maybe the best known Israeli song of all times is ‘Jerusalem of Gold’, written and composed by Naomi Shemer. This song has an interesting story behind it; it is just one of the many Shemer’s songs that became Israeli hits, and have remained so until this day.


“Jerusalem of Gold”, in our Sources is the name of a jewel that Rabbi Akiva wanted as a present for his wife Rajel; The phrase “For all your songs I am a violin”(Lejol shiraij ani kinor) belongs to a poem by Yehuda Halevi. These images are part of the inspiration behind the most popular song of Naomi Shemer, the one that brought her to stardom. It was 1967, a tense period in Israel prior to the Sixth day war and the Song Festival was being held at Jerusalem’s Binyamei Hauma; for the first time the festival was to stage songs written by composers and poets to entertain the audience while the votes for the top singer were being cast. Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek suggested the songs be written about Jerusalem. At the time there were no songs about yearning for Jerusalem, it was a subject that apparently did not interest the public. Naomi wrote her song bringing familiar elements from the city, the stones, the violin, psalms. When she showed the song to her friend Rivka Michaeli, who lived in Jerusalem, she proposed Naomi to write about longings for the Old City. Following this advice Shemer added another verse: “And the wells are dry/the city square is empty/ and there are no visitors at the Temple Mount in the Old City” and “there is no going down to the Dead Sea by the road of Jericho”. This verse became the center of a controversy in which Shemer was accused of ignoring reality, because there were in fact people living in the Old City: “Arabs of course, but no Jews” was Naomi’s response; for her as long as there were no Jews living in the city it felt as if it was empty; by this event Naomi was associated with the Israeli right; it was a kind of “accusation” regarding her opinions towards the Land. To this she answered: “This criticism angers me very much. It’s as if a man misses his loved one, and goes to a psychiatrist, Amos Oz (a famous writer associated with the Israeli left), and he tells him “Don’t worry she’s not alone in bed”… A world that is empty of Jews is for me a dead planet, and an Eretz Israel who is empty of Jews is for me empty and deserted”.
Naomi Shemer chose Shuli Natan, an unknown 18 year old singer/soldier to perform her song. The Israeli Broadcasting Authority was skeptic about this choice; they argued that no one knew this singer and the public might no respond well, but Shemer stick to her choice. She heard Natan`s voice for the first time while listening to the radio with her daughter Lali. She heard a beautiful female voice and asked her daughter to write down the name of the singer. When she finished writing Yerushalaim shel Zahav, she asked Kol Israel(radio broadcast) to find this singer for her, she knew Natan was the right singer (a soprano) for her song.
The song was played at the festival by Natan accompanied only by her guitar; it had to be played again by the end (by public petition) of the festival and the audience immediately joined in singing the chorus. The war broke shortly after and the song was perceived as a kind of prophesy; Shemer, a prophetess.
It was this song that was in the lips of every soldier when they captured the Old City and raised the Israeli flag.
Natan Sharansky, former Soviet political prisoner and former Minister for Diaspora affairs, recalls how this song raised the spirit and hope of Soviet Jewry and inspired them in their fight. The song was the closest thing they had to Israel and through which they could express their Zionist feelings.
After the war, Shemer added another verse to the song in where she described the return to the Old City: “We returned to the water wells/ to the market and the city square/ and the sound of the Shofar can be heard at the Temple Mount in the Old City”; in another verse she said “and know we are able to go down to the Dead Sea by the way of Jericho”. She performed this new version before the fighters and they immediately began to applaud to which she responded: “it is me who has to applaud you, because it is a lot easier to change a song than to change a city.”
From that moment on the song became a symbol and a kind of prayer and Naomi Shemer was catapulted as the “Israeli Nationalist songwriter.”
In 1968 then member Knesset Uri Avnery presented a bill to the Knesset Speaker, proposing that Yerushalaim Shel Zahav be anointed the country’s anthem. Shemer did not reject this proposition; she said it was actually an honor for her. Avnery felt Hatikva was not the appropriate anthem neither for the Jewish nor the Arab population of the State. He proposed a few changes for the lyrics to make it more suitable for the two people (Israeli and Arab) for whom the city is holy. Avnery proposed the slogan “United Jerusalem, capital of two peoples”, an opinion he maintained when interviewed after Naomi’s` death in 2004, when he confessed that his idea was changing part of the lyrics to make them suitable for the Palestinians, a proposition I believe, Naomi would have never accepted.
Towards the end of her life Naomi “confessed” to a reporter from Haaretz newspaper, that the melody of the song might be the same as a Basque lullaby she once heard. She felt she plagiarized the song and that pained her deeply. She didn’t have the chance, before passing away, of listening to the author of this lullaby speak on her behalf and deny these allegations.
Jerusalem of Gold was chosen the song of the Jubilee at Israel’s 50th anniversary, the most beloved song of all times.

Link to the song as performed by Shuli Natan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnenEKv6sGI&feature=related

Link to the song as performed by Ofra Haza at the main event for Israel's Jubilee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlIJOAZ1pak&feature=related

1st 'Museum of Jewish people' to open in Tel Aviv

New museum will be first in world to tell story of Jewish people and largest experiential museum in Israel. Estimated cost of building new institution is $25 million


http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3737514,00.html

Israel maps

This site provides maps from ancient Israel, the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel, to Modern Israel, changing borders etc.
An interesting and informative way to follow on Israeli history and border changes through times.

http://www.zionism-israel.com/maps/Israel_Maps.htm

A Jewish Democratic State

by Gadi Taub

"The Jewish state has a Jewish character: its symbols, its holidays, and much else, are all drawn, as they are in France, from the cultural heritage of the majority. But it is precisely by separating Israeli citizenship from the national Jewish identity that the minority can preserve its own identity without infringing on its citizenship. Israel allows for a state-sponsored Arab-language school system, a state-sponsored system of Muslim courts for marriage and personal status, and Arabic is a second official language of the state. The discrimination and hardships that befall Israel’s Arab minority are not to be excused. But they do not stem from Israel’s legal structure as a Jewish state. They stem from a bleeding conflict between Israel and the rest of the Palestinian nation, much of which is still under occupation."

http://www.gaditaub.com/eblog/the-idea-of-a-jewish-democratic-state/