Print this page
Bookmark and Share

Stand for Israel Blog

Now we know: Suicide bombers are really just… green

February 1, 2010

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has jumped on the global warming band wagon, AP reports. The deep-in-hiding terrorist leader, who has taken to bashing Israel more lately in order to shore up Israel-hating support for the terrorists who follow him, released a new audiotape (apparently, video cameras don’t work in whatever cave he’s hiding in) called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar — because the Great Satan’s latest sin (along with other industrialized countries) is global warming.

National Review’s gem-like Jonah Goldberg hits the mark:

Of course, any minute now we’re going to hear from someone — any predictions who? — that the real reason “they” hate “us” is climate change. It ain’t freedom, it ain’t American empire, or licentiousness, or Israel. All of these jihadi nutters are blowing themselves up to save the polar bear.

Of course, we lovers of Israel know that, sooner or later, someone’s going to blame the plight of the polar bear on–The Jews.

Totten: Go ahead and profile me

January 7, 2010

Michael Totten has spent extensive amounts of time in the Middle East, including sojourns in Lebanon and elsewhere, He says that Israelis get what airport security means:

  • I don’t want to be profiled at the airport, but our airport security system is so half-baked and dysfunctional it may as well not even exist. So rather than doubling down on grandma and micromanaging everyone on the plane, we might want to pay as much attention to people as to their luggage, especially military-aged males who make unusual and suspicious-looking travel arrangements. That’s what the Israelis do. At Ben-Gurion Airport you don’t have to take off your shoes in the security line and you don’t have to stand in front of invasive and expensive body-scanning machines.
  • Israeli security agents interview everyone, and they subject travelers who fit certain profiles to additional scrutiny. They take me aside every time, partly because of my gender and age but mostly because a huge percentage of my passport stamps are from countries with serious terrorist problems. They’ve asked if I’ve ever met with anyone in Hizbullah. I am not going to lie, especially not when the answer can be easily found using Google. They know I’ve met with Hizbullah. That’s why my luggage gets hand-searched one sock at a time while elderly tourists from Florida skate through. I don’t take it personally, and it makes a lot more sense than letting me skate through while grandma’s luggage is hand-searched instead.
  • When I get on a plane in the U.S., I often breeze past women decades older than me while they’re being frisked. Almost every single person in line knows it’s ridiculous. We don’t say anything because it feels vaguely “fair.” Maybe it is, but it’s no way to catch terrorists.

SFI explainer: Why does Israel make such a fuss over one soldier?

December 25, 2009

Not long ago, a friend of SFI’s–a committed Christian who is a great friend of Israel–asked a not-so-simple question. Why, he wanted to understand, would Israel consider swapping thousands of prisoners–many of whom have murdered Israelis and, if released, would certainly try again–for a single soldier?

The friend is a deeply compassionate and moral man, but logic, he said, dictated that such an exchange would simply not be in Israel’s interest. He said that he couldn’t even imagine the American army and American people allowing themselves to be held hostage as a nation the way Israelis do because of one soldier, let alone that the U.S. would free hundreds of terrorists who soldiers gave their lives to capture — all for one soldier. (And, especially, he said, since it’s a soldier being held and not a non-combatant.)

On many levels, of course, he’s right. It doesn’t make logical sense, but there are deep reasons–religious and cultural–why Israelis’ perspectives on this differ from Americans’. And while SFI is not about to tell the Israeli government and people what to do–or even come down on either side of the issue–it’s worth explaining a little why Israel has made such swaps in the past and why it looks pretty likely that they’ll close a deal with Hamas in the near future.

He’s not just a soldier

One of the first things to understand is that no soldier in the IDF can be seen a “just” a soldier: Israel’s army is not a voluntary force, and nearly all Israelis are drafted into compulsory service. Therefore, the idea that a soldier chose to put himself in harm’s way (albeit for the most of honorable of reasons) doesn’t really apply. Gilad Shalit could be each Israeli’s son or brother, husband or cousin.

Military service is seen as a responsibility that Israelis must bear for having a Jewish state, and Shalit (or Ehud Goldwasser, Ron Arad, or any other captured Israeli soldier) is carrying that responsibility for every Israeli (and every Jew, according to some). But, in the Jewish mind, it doesn’t end there — his fellow Israelis remain responsible for him.

The Jewish sages teach that kol yisrael arevim zeh l’zeh, every member of the nation of Israel acts as a guarantor for the rest. This ethic of mutual responsibility is deeply rooted in the Jewish psyche and worldview, and remains strong even in today’s primarily secular Israeli culture.

An extension of this is the perhaps bizarre risk IDF soldiers regularly undertake in order to recover the dead bodies of fallen comrades. All of this has a tremendous effect on morale and self-understanding among soldiers, who know the risks the army and their fellow soldiers will take for them — and who know the commitment they have to their colleagues in kind.

Jewish tradition and religious law: Redeeming the captives

Discussions of the plight of captured soldiers inevitably involve discussions of the specific mitzvah (commandment) of pidyon shevuyim, which compels Jewish communities to redeem captives — sadly, a need that goes far back in the Jewish historical experience. Centuries ago, pirates and brigands frequently kidnapped Jews, knowing that their communities would raise ransom to redeem them; before that, hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced into slavery across the Roman empire.  Today, the mitzvah remains a part of tradition, and is taught even in communities that do not strictly adhere to Jewish religious law. (See this course on Shalit and Jewish law being offered by an online Orthodox yeshiva, as well as this curricula for courses taught by the Jewish Agency, which is not a religious organization.)

The great medieval scholar Maimonides wrote in his Mishneh Torah, one of the most important codes of Jewish law (note that these are traditional Jewish translations):

Pidyon Shevuyim takes precedence over supporting the poor or clothing them. There is no greater mitzvah than Pidyon Shevuyim, for the problems of the captive include the problems of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, and [s/he] who is in mortal danger. [One] who ignores the need to redeem captives transgresses the following [commandments]:

“Do not harden your heart or shut your hand against your needy kinsman” (Deuteronomy 15:7)
“Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor” (Leviticus 19:16)
“You shall not rule ruthlessly over him in your sight” (Leviticus 25:53)
“You shall surely open your hand to him” (Deuteronomy 15:8)
“Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18)
“Rescue those who are drawn to death” (Proverbs 24:11)
and many other injunctions like these.

But there is no mitzvah greater than Pidyon Shevuyim.

Redeeming the captives vs. saving lives

As with all Jewish law, however, the commandment to redeem captives has to be balanced against other commandments, including one of the most paramount of all the commandments, pikuach nefesh – saving lives.

For this reason, Prime Minister Netanyahu met at length with groups like Almagor, an organization for victims of terror. Almagor and other groups and individuals have argued that a swap like the one on the table for Shalit not only makes null the sacrifices of soldiers who died capturing terrorists (by releasing the terrorists they gave their lives to put behind bars) and cheapens the memory of those the terrorists killed, but—most crucially—risks the lives of more Israelis.

Paying a high price for one captured soldier, they argue, only increases the incentive for terrorist groups to kidnap more. Shalit may be released, but someone else’s son will be nabbed by Hamas sometime soon after – and all of Israel will be in the same boat again. Others argue that in a culture as preoccupied with honor as is that of the Middle East, allowing Hamas to claim victory only emboldens them to continue their campaigns of terror against Israel’s civilians. And, fundamentally, there is the obvious concern that released terrorists will simply go on to kill more Israelis.

These are obviously complex issues, both strategically and ethically. SFI joins with the people of Israel, and all who love her, in praying for the safety of Gilad Shalit and all of his fellow soldiers, and that God will give the leaders of the Jewish state wisdom and strength to make the right choice, for Shalit and for all of Israel.

If you have question you’d like answered or would like to see an issue explored on www.standforisrael.org, please be in touch with us in the comments.

Helping erase Biblical history

November 18, 2009

We could hardly say it better than Commentary’s incomparable Evelyn Gordon on the dust-up over building in the “settlement” of Jerusalem”:

… labeling half of Israel’s capital a “settlement,” as Jonathan has pointed out, may be hard to beat. But a New York Times report of a new book about the Temple Mount is definitely in the running. Seeking to give readers some background, the report offered the following gem: “The lack of archaeological evidence of the ancient temples has led many Palestinians to deny any real Jewish attachment or claim to the plateau.”

We’ll ignore the fact that the Second Temple is actually well-documented in extant writings from the period, and that several sections of the Temple compound’s outer walls, as described in these writings, have been uncovered (the Western Wall being one of them).

Instead, let’s discuss why there is a dearth of findings from the Temples themselves. (1) There happens to be a mosque on the exact site where, according to tradition, the Temples once stood. (2) Israel, contrary to Palestinian propaganda, is not out to “destroy al-Aqsa”; indeed, it scrupulously avoids any action that might endanger the mosque. (3) Israel is so deferential to Muslim sensibilities that, after capturing the Mount in 1967, it handed control of the site back to the Muslim waqf. Which brings us to (4): for all these reasons, Israel has never excavated the only place in the world where remnants of the Temple could possibly be found. Nor were any digs conducted there before 1967: al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock have stood undisturbed for hundreds of years. And yes, it is hard to produce archaeological evidence if you never even conduct a dig.

What is outrageous about this report is not just the way it abets Palestinian falsifications of history, though it certainly does that: since the reader isn’t told that this “lack of evidence” stems from the fact that nobody ever looked, he naturally assumes that archaeologists did, in fact, look and found nothing.

Even more outrageous, however, is the way Israel’s generosity is being used against it: its very restraint in eschewing excavations on the Mount — its concern, again, for Muslim sensibilities, its desire to avoid even the appearance of harm to the mosques — has been twisted into “evidence” that no Jewish connection to the Mount ever existed.

This is a standard Palestinian tactic: Israel’s refusal to let Jews pray on the Mount, also in deference to Muslim sensibilities, is similarly used as “proof” that Jews have no connection to the site. After all, Muslims pray there; Jews don’t; QED. And this tactic has been wildly successful: most of the world is completely convinced that Israel lacks any rights on the Mount.

But if Israel’s generosity is being exploited in this fashion, perhaps Jerusalem needs to rethink its tactics — and start demonstrating the Jewish connection to the Mount in actions rather than words. Excavating under al-Aqsa would be too drastic a first step. But letting Jews pray on a designated section of the Mount devoid of mosques would be an excellent place to begin.

Grief, horror: Reactions to Teitel show differences between Israel, her enemies

November 8, 2009

Rabbi’s Commentary: Here in Israel, the press is abuzz with news of the capture of “the Jewish terrorist”: Yaakov Teitel, an American immigrant , confessed to a string of attacks in Israel over the last twelve years. Among the crimes he admitted to are the murders of an Israeli Arab and a Palestinian in the southern West Bank; placing separate bombs that maimed the teen-aged son of a Messianic family, lightly wounded a anti-nationalist Israeli professor, and injured an Israeli Arab and damaged a monastery; as well as setting other bombs in Jerusalem neighborhoods and in a West Bank settlement that damaged property but caused no injuries.

These crimes are reprehensible and Israelis from all ends of the spectrum have rightfully condemned him and the acts he admitted to, without qualification. Israelis also are asking questions, though: They want to know how he was able to go undetected for so long, why no one ever reported him, how he was able to receive citizenship, and, of course, how a supposedly devout Jew could engage in such profoundly un-Jewish acts.

It is very telling that, among the condemnation and soul-searching, are comparisons between Teitel and the terrorist masterminds of organizations like Hamas: Israel’s leading daily, Ha’aretz, called Teitel “the Jewish counterpart of ‘The Engineer,’ Yehiya Ayyash.”

What a comparison.

Ayyash was a master bomb-maker who, in the mid 1990s, transformed the effectiveness of Hamas suicide bombing campaigns. He was personally responsible for the deaths of more than 125 Israelis and left more than 500 maimed before being killed in 1996 by a booby-trapped cellphone planted by the IDF. Arab newspapers mourned that “one of the nation’s most beloved and respected sons has left this world” and more than 100,000 Palestinians attended his funeral. He continues to be lionized by many Palestinian and Muslim leaders and Syrian TV even ran a mini-series memorializing his “life and work” during the Islam’s holy month of Ramadan.

The comparison shows the near-impossibility of there being a Jewish counterpart to Ayyash.

Though they’ve defended his right to be presumed innocent, not a single one of Teitel’s friends, family, neighbors, or anyone in the “settler” movement have defended—or failed to condemn—the acts of which he stands accused. The idea of celebrating them—as Ayyash’s thousands and thousands of supporters did and do—is simply unthinkable.

“Any person of conscience in Israel must rise up in indignation against such acts,” settler movement spokesman Danny Dayan said, calling them “grave, unacceptable and wrong, both legally and morally.” Teitel’s sister-in-law told the media that his family and neighbors didn’t understand how someone from their community could do what he’s accused of doing: “We… don’t bring up our children in such a way.”

Clearly, the “Jewish terrorist” is an aberration whose acts of violence and hate have placed him not just on the wrong side of the law, but far outside the bounds of Israeli society.

Palestinian terrorists, on the other hand, operate with their government’s support and their society’s adulation. Palestinian authorities and Muslim clerics laud suicide bombers as “martyrs” whose actions ensure them a special place in heaven. After “successful” attacks—such as a deadly 2002 bombing in Tel Aviv, the 2004 double suicide bombing in Beersheva, or the horrific yeshiva shootings in 2008—the streets of Gaza and towns in the West Bank typically fill with thousands of people celebrating and handing out sweets, as mosques open to accommodate worshipers for special prayers of thanksgiving.

And then there is the matter of sheer numbers. It may be true, as some say, that “every religion has its extremists.” (In a statement following news of the arrest, Prime Minister Netanyahu acknowledged the tiny minority of Israelis who refuse to live by the laws of a civil society and charged Israelis to continue to condemn violence and “use all legal power” to stop it.) But it is an inescapable fact that the number of Muslim extremists—including those willing to sacrifice their own lives to kill innocents—dwarfs the number of Jews (or Christians) who use violence to further their agendas. Tragically, attacks carried out by Muslim terrorists are now so common that they’re barely even reported, whereas Teitel’s case is receiving the attention that it is precisely because it is such an aberration.

The Bible teaches us the preciousness of human life; there is nearly no value higher in Jewish tradition. Israelis do not go to war easily and they mourn when they are forced to take human life in self-defense. Teitel’s fate will be determined by the Israeli courts and, if found guilty, he will undoubtedly receive a harsh sentence. Would that Muslim terrorists received similar treatment in their own societies.

We must pray for the victims of these crimes, and that the Israeli police and jurists will be able to unravel this sad tale, and that, if guilty, Teitel will face justice. And we must be ever mindful of the Bible’s directive: “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” (Deuteronomy 30:18-20)