Welcome to the third
issue of The Unabashed Zionist!
Because an unabashed Zionist is better than a bashed one.
Obviously.
Some business first:
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And now for the main event….
(1) UAZ in print
Because I am unabashed, I don’t mind keeping you abreast
when I appear in print. (At least I’m not asking you for money. Yet.) This week
my earlier longer article against Open Hillel got divided into two parts, and
posted in a more accessible form on the Huffington Post: part I here,
and part II here.
I also posted a piece analyzing
just where fair-mindedness can go wrong, for example when people like UN
Secretary General Ban-Ki moon end up supporting terrorism against Israeli Jews.
My trusting “give the benefit of the doubt” nature keeps telling me that he
can’t really mean it the way it came out, and yet the fact that this sort of
thing keeps happening does make me wonder whether it’s time for me to get a new
nature.
You can find the piece here.
If you had the energy to visit these links, leave some
fantastic comments (or at least sincere ones), and then share the links—I’d be
much obliged.
(2) YCMTSU: You can’t
make this s*** up!
(a) At some point I will document the general rule that whenever
the other side accuses Israel of some terrible misdeed X, they are themselves
far more guilty of X than Israel. This week’s first YCMTSU segment includes an interesting
variation on that theme, perhaps belonging in its own category:
WOSDIIO: When Our Side Does It It’s Okay!
We all know that when one people occupies another people’s
territory, it is bad, very bad. Fortunately, as the other side would have you
believe, there is only one example of this in the whole wide world, and that is
of course Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands (either 1967 or 1948), and of
course Israel is bad, very bad. But in fact there are many occupations going on right
now, including Turkey’s occupation of Northern Cyprus, China’s of Tibet,
Russia’s of Crimea, Morocco’s of the Western Sahara, England’s of Gibraltar and
the Falklands, Italy’s of a piece of North Africa, etc. The only difference
between these occupations and Israel’s “occupation” is that the latter, very
possibly, doesn’t actually count as an “occupation” according to international
law—but that is for another newsletter.
In any case, the Palestinian Authority, which typically
condemns Israel’s “occupation” at least three times before breakfast, is fully
aware of Morocco’s occupation of the Western Sahara, but, since these are
fellow Arabs and Muslims, apparently, guess what:
WOSDIIO!
The Palestinians affirm Morocco’s sovereignty over that territory
because, after all—YCMTSU—you say “occupation,” but we say “territorial
integrity,” and do so with an entirely straight face.
Elder of Ziyon has the details here.
(b) The following real headline reflects everything that is wrong
in the Middle East today:
“UN mediates return
of Israeli ‘spy’ bird from Lebanon”
This vulture, you see, joins a long line of other critters
that Israel’s Arab neighbors have accused of being Zionist spies (I kid you
not). Turns out it was just a bird that was tagged for scientific research,
which (you know) the Israelis occasionally putter around doing. Even so, this
is the part that gets me. They needed the UN
to mediate its return. On the plus side, at least, finally, the UN has achieved
something other than giving Ban-Ki moon a platform to endorse terrorism against
Israeli Jews.
YCMTSU. The story is here.
(3) Speaking truth to
narrative
We all know about the narratives. The Zionists have theirs,
the Palestinians have theirs. That is true and unavoidable, but the problems
really begin when you either (a) conclude there is no truth at all, only competing
narratives, or (b) adopt your preferred narrative without caring much at all
about the truth. I want to avoid going all philosophical on you here, so I’ll
try to stay focused.
We all know the Palestinian narrative: they are the
indigenous people forcibly displaced by Zionist colonialism, and Israeli Jews
are the perpetual aggressors while they are the perpetual victims. Even clear unabashed
terrorism is called “resistance,” as if the mere existence of a Jew in their presence
is itself an aggression to be resisted. Part of the narrative is that the
Palestinians are crushingly oppressed and impoverished by Israel. Gaza is
regularly called “the world’s largest open-air prison,” for just one example.
But these narratives don’t always stand up well against the truth.
This long but important article from the Jerusalem Center
for Public Affairs will shift your image of things a bit. Turns out there is a
decent amount of luxury in the Palestinian territories alongside the poverty, after
all, and that on many quality of life measures, Palestinians do pretty well,
and better than many/most other citizens in other Arab countries.
Is it possible that their lives under Israeli oppression
aren’t all entirely awfully terrible?
See the article here.
As for the “open-air prison,” at some point I’ll share images
of the luxury that is available in Gaza as well (resort hotels, amusement
parks, swimming pools, expensive vehicles). It might not surprise you to learn
that Hamas leaders are extremely wealthy individuals (at least according to
what I’ve been reading lately). But it might surprise you to learn that there’s
no actual “humanitarian crisis” going on in Gaza, thanks pretty much
exclusively to Israel’s generous border policies toward its enemy neighbor to
the south. You want a humanitarian crisis, replete with starvation and illness,
you’ll have to look elsewhere (and not that far away, in fact.)
On this issue, have a look at Commentary columnist Evelyn Gordon’s “How to Spot a Fake Siege,”
available here.
(Incidentally, in the “good news” department Israel does
very well on such measures as overall happiness
and quality of life. But it also has a serious income inequality issue, with a
very high impoverishment rate (as reported here).
Next time you see images of Palestinian poverty, keep in mind that over 20% of
Israelis also live below the poverty line. You can always find areas of serious
impoverishment in any nation. For a true image of the bigger picture, what you
need to examine are not individual images or stories, but statistics.)
One last point to keep in mind when confronted with that opposing
narrative. Words are important. What Israel applies to Gaza is not a siege, but
a blockade. There is a big
difference. Sieges don’t let anything through. They starve out the besieged. Blockades,
at least in this instance, restrict only military materials. If you want to see
a siege, look at Egypt’s control of the Rafah crossing on its border of Gaza.
It has been nearly permanently closed to people and goods for some years now.
In contrast, the crossings between Gaza and Israel oversee hundreds of trucks
every day in both directions, carrying food and medicine and any consumer
products residents of Gaza want to buy. Many individuals also cross daily, for
professional, personal, medical reasons, etc.
Oh, and one very last bit of truth against narrative—the U.N. has
determined that Israel’s blockade on Gaza is—wait for it—legal: see here.
Imagine that! What a world.
(4) Maybe it is the
settlements after all?
But
not the settlements you think. For some reason, when Jews build an additional
bathroom in Judea or Samaria what they’re building is not a home or a neighborhood
but a “settlement,” and everyone clamors about how illegal it is. (There is
this mysterious thing called “international law” that everybody insists condemns
almost everything Israel ever does. In future issues we’ll go in search of this
elusive entity.) But it turns out the Arabs do lots of building in these areas
that really is illegal, demonstrably
so according to agreements the Palestinians themselves have signed with Israel.
The fact that much of this illegal building is funded by the European Union—you
know, that conglomeration of countries from which Jews are fleeing in record
numbers because of how much Europeans love Jews—would surprise no one who has
read Tuvia Tenenbom’s splendid book Catch the Jew!, a book that would be funny
if it weren’t so painfully true.
This
perhaps could have gone in the WOSDIIO category, but you can read the
article here.
The
Tenenbom book now makes me realize I need a new category, the
(5) “Would be funny if it
weren’t so painfully true” category
The Onion pretty much nails the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict here. Really, if you’re looking for a way to explain
how people get so simple-minded (read: mushy-minded) about the Middle East,
this is it.
(6) And now we pause for an
opportunity
for
college students to attend a terrific program run by the Tikvah people, and get
paid for it. If you know of an undergrad who wants to learn more about Judaism
and Israel, send him or her here. (Other programs are
available for faculty members. I’ve participated in a couple and they were
superb. Check out the organization here. They also occasionally
sponsor public lectures and panels.)
Finally,
we’ll close with a little
(7) Good News!
Israel
really isn’t such a dreadful place. In fact it has a thing or two to recommend
it. Maybe even as many as 21!
OK,
that’s it for now.
Til
next time, remember—stay unabashed.
UAZ
