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This is just shocking…

Oct 23rd, 2009
by Leah.
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This week Reporters Without Borders published its annual Press Freedom Index. As could be expected in the current political and media climate, Israel was ranked 93rd and 150th (inside and outside the Green Line), behind such bastions of the freedom of expression as Lebanon, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates. Sure enough, Israel was singled out together with Iran in the group’s analysis of the index.

I am not at all upset by this new record of progressive anti-Semitism. Actually, I am quite happy. By falling off the deep end with its blatant anti-Israel rhetoric, international public opinion is administering a long-overdue course of shock therapy for Israel’s chronic insecurity complex. After decades of trying very hard to appease, of paying an arm and a leg (actually  hundreds upon hundreds of very literal arms, legs, limbs and lives of innocent terror victims) for the illusion of a new Middle East, of fantasizing about eating hummus in Damascus and doing business with the Emirates, of bringing the world the latest technical and medical innovations, of beating the world at its own game of military ethics, Israel is finally waking up to the fact that no matter how lovable it tries to appear, it will never become the world’s darling.

Believe me, the treatment is working, because Israelis are internalizing the message. They are refusing to cooperate with Goldstone’s kangaroo court, canceling all-included tour packages to the Turkish Riviera, and staying away from cultural talks with the Israel-bashing Egyptian intelligentsia. Even the ultra-liberal Israeli press is beginning to call things by their names.

Slowly but surely Israel is rediscovering Ben Gurion’s maxim of “it doesn’t matter what the Gentiles will say; what matters is what the Jews will do.”

A Letter to Goldstone

Oct 19th, 2009
by Leah.
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Someone sent me a copy of a letter in which a personal friend of Judge Goldstone berates him for his involvement with the anti-Israel committee named after him.

I have no idea whether the cover story is true and who really penned this letter, but that in no way diminishes the poignancy of the arguments or the validity of the facts.

Judge for yourself.

To: Judge Richard Goldstone
From: Barbara Press
Subject: Hello Richard… It’s been a while…

Dear Richard

Our paths have crossed many times compelling me to correspond directly with you. I pray your indulgence that you hear me out by reading to the end of my missive. In fact I ask you to share my letter with Noleen from beginning to end and to respond with your thoughts.

It has been a while since (inspired by you as head of ORT South Africa) I, together with Rabbi Bernard at Oxford Shule, established a school to teach the Killarney-Houghton Black domestic workers how to write, read, sew, cook and drive. It has been a while since you praised my father, Hubert Press, as one of the finest business brains  you had ever encountered. It has been a while since I dined with you, Noleen, David and Marilyn Rivkin, discussing opera.

Jewish life has been crying out for a man of the stature of Adolph Cremieux, of Justice Louis Brandeis, of Sir Moses Montefiore, people of the highest integrity and purpose. For those who champion their own people are remembered forever in the annals of history. But those who are self-serving are lost in a trail of ignominy.

South African Jewry stands tall and your efforts in championing Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa were applauded and earned you a  reputation as a man of stature.

I am bewildered by the direction you have taken as part of the United Nations Human Rights Council. This rogue Council has been tainted by a membership that does not condemn Iranian tyranny, Chinese oppression, African despotism, but spends their time condemning one country unjustly, Israel.

The Goldstone Commission bears your name. One would expect the mandate of any report to be objective, so that your name could be respected and a legacy ensured. Instead your committee ignored the facts, embraced bias and rendered the report bearing your name,  illegitimate.

You tried to defend yourself in the New York Times but it was transparent and not effective. You could have resigned from the commission and retained your integrity. You knew that Israel faced 12,000 Grads and Kassams from its Iran-backed terror base of Gaza, 8,000 irreversibly traumatizing the families and children of Sderot. You knew that the U.N. never passed one resolution condemning these deadly missiles. You knew that before and during Operation Cast Lead, Israel made thousands of cell phone calls to warn civilians. You knew that Israel sent thousands of texts to warn civilians. You knew that Israel dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets in Arabic (I managed to obtain one of these as evidence) to warn civilians. You knew that Israel aborted operations to avoid civilian deaths. You knew that Israel set up medical facilities on the edge of Gaza to treat civilians. You knew that Israel dropped supplies of food into Gaza to feed civilians.

You also knew that Hamas operatives are not “civilians”. You knew that not only were they not civilians, but that they hid behind their own civilians to fire on Israeli civilians. You knew that they misused ambulances for military purposes. You knew that mosques and schools were used for Hamas depots and launching pads. You knew that Hamas operatives kill or shoot at the legs of any Gazans refusing to target Israel.

The video footage and U-tube sequences are still available for any and all of us to witness.

You clearly knew that one of your team members had condemned Israel in a published letter, even before the conclusion of the incursion or  the beginning of your investigation. But you did not resign or distance yourself from the hypocrisy of this illegitimate report.  Instead, a tedious 500-page report of the 3 week battle was padded with pages from the tainted U.N. mockery of Israel’s security barrier (misnamed the “wall”). What a sad indictment of the charter of the United Nations.

Richard, you were indeed a respected legal giant in Johannesburg. This report did not arise from ignorance or naivete. I am trying so hard to resist the conclusion that your role and report might represent a self-serving desire to ingratiate yourself for a more senior position in the kangaroo court called the United Nations. But  if true – and one hopes that this is not the case – at what price?  Association with the infamous U.N.,  garners no respect in the USA so why would anyone seek to be head inmate at the U.N. Asylum?

I have been very direct as South Africans are want to be. But many of us South Africans have been tainted by the perfidy of the Goldstone report. This is the Jewish time of Judgment when the scales of fate are entered in the book of life and we all need to look into our souls. I am not sure how you could comfortably extricate yourself. Perhaps we could discuss this face to face.

Good Yomtov to you, Noleen and your family.

Regards,  Barbara Press Fix

Obama's peace for our time

Oct 5th, 2009
by Leah.
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chamb obama Obama's peace for our time

Peace for our time?

On September 30, 1938, Neville Chamberlain returned to Britain after selling Czechoslovakia off to Hitler and pronounced the agreement to signify “peace for our time.” Less than a year later, Germany invaded Poland, setting off the greatest tragedy in modern history.

Fast forward to 2009. President Obama betrays Czech and Polish allies by unilaterally scrapping the Eastern European missile defence program in order to gain Russia’s nominal support for yet another round of worthless sanctions against Iran. From there, he goes on to declare a fantasy nuclear disarmament resolution at the UN, while hiding secret intelligence of Iran’s Qom facility that, if left unhampered, will be able to produce enriched uranium in less than a year .

Just to make sure Iran has ample time to continue with its nuclear program, after revealing this secret intelligence in Pittsburgh, the US together with other Security Council members, engages Iran in negotiations in Geneva without even setting an agenda.

Sure enough, Ahmadinejad doesn’t feel any pressure. “We prefer to build up friendship and understanding [with the world powers] and are prepared for long negotiations,” he said on Iranian television. “But the six countries [UN Security Council members] are free to adopt whatever policies they like. We will not be harmed, anyway.”

If Obama gets his way, he’ll have a whole year to daydream about a nuclear-free world. I just hope the rest of us won’t pay the price.

Netanyahu at the 92 Street Y

Sep 29th, 2009
by Leah.
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The appraisals of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the UN range from an exercise in futility to an address worthy of the new leader of the free world (especially against the backdrop of Obama’s tepid remarks).

Whatever one may think of the UN speech, I have found Netanyahu’s address before the Jewish American leaders at the 92nd Street Y to be very poignant. In it Netanyahu cited the Lubavitcher Rebbe as the driving force behind his 25-year-long career as Israel’s leading advocate abroad and the inspiration for the latest appearance before the UN.

Netanyahu revealed that he had met the Rebbe in 1984, while serving as Israel’s ambassador to the UN, and was instructed to light a candle of truth in the pitch darkness reigning inside the house of lies (Rebbe’s assessment of the UN). In his interview to the Israeli TV, Netanyahu said this message has been guiding him ever since.

Giving credit where credit is due is always admirable.

You can view Netanyahu’s entire speech at the 92 street Y here:

From Mahmoody to Goldstone and back

Sep 28th, 2009
by Leah.
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While reading Betty Mahmoody’s For the Love of a Child (the sequel to Not Without My Daughter), I got an insight into the folly known as the Goldstone Report. What’s the connection, you may ask? Read on.

As a mother, I wholeheartedly understand Betty Mahmoody’s motivation for fleeing Iran to bring up her daughter in a democratic Western society. But if we put aside our cultural biases, is there really a difference between Betty’s abduction of her daughter to the US (following which, the girl was forever separated from her father) and the husband’s original insistence on moving the family to Iran, even at the expense of separating the child from the mother? Each one of the parents wanted to bring up the child in his or her native culture, and, unable to reach an agreement, acted unilaterally on this desire. (I am aware of Betty’s claims of abuse, but I am setting this issue aside for the sake of the argument).

Likewise, though I wholeheartedly support the efforts of Yad Leachim to bring Jewish women married to Arab men (as well as the children of these marriages) back to the fold, I understand that my outlook is colored by my Jewish faith. The mechanism by which a Jewish woman takes her children unilaterally from Ramallah to Jerusalem to bring them up as Jews is the same as the one employed by her husband to take them back and raise them as Muslims.

So long as humanity is not united by a single ethical belief, the moral high ground often depends entirely on the subjective position of the observer. The same goes for Israel’s attempts to defend itself from its neighbors’ attacks. As long as the observers (be it the UN or the self-appointed European freedom fighters) have undertaken the Palestinian cause, no amount of ethical safety measures will absolve Israel from accusations of human rights violations.

To the contrary, the higher the hyper-ethical standard Israel attempts to maintain, the louder the accusations. I will never forget the terrifying hours during which we frantically tried to contact my brother-in-law stationed in Jenin, after hearing rumours of heavy casualties in the city during Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002. Though he emerged from combat unscathed, 13 of his comrades paid with their lives for Israel’s insistence on sending in ground troops in an effort to preserve civilian Palestinian lives. The “reward” for these efforts were movies the likes of Jenin Jenin and a worldwide outcry against Israel’s humanitarian violations.

In a similar vein, though IDF is the only army in the world to go through the pains of telephoning enemy civilians to warn them of planned air raids, as was done during the 2008 incursion into Gaza, Judge Goldstone and his ilk have no qualms lambasting Israel as a perpetrator of genocide.

Judaism’s dedication to the values of human life and compassion is unmatched by any religion. From ancient Jewish kings known throughout the world as “the kings of mercy” (1 Kings 20:31) to outstanding levels of voluntarism in modern Israel, Jews in general and Israelis in particular have no need for anyone’s ethical preaching. All efforts to live up to a superlative level of morality, not practiced anywhere else in the world, has so far backfired on Israel’s defensive efforts to defend itself.

The time has come for Israel to redefine its military ethic to conform to the Talmudic teaching of “if someone comes to kill you, arise and kill him first” (Sanhedrin 72a) and dispense with the attempts to save face while doing so. Though there’ll be little change in Israel’s public image, its defensive abilities will improve tremendously.

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