To the Radical Right Wing Republicans

President Obama is as much a friend of Israel as any American president has been. He has done a much better job of fighting terrorism than the previous Republican administration and therefore has done a better job of protecting Israel as well as the United States (the 2 countries which together contain most of the Jews in the world). Now you Radical Right Wing Republican Zealots (including some of your Jewish pawns) want to use us Jews to help you defeat President Obama in the next election by claiming that he is against Israel. I am a Jew and a Zionist. I am always concerned about the safety of my fellow Jews everywhere, including Israel. But I will think for myself and not be led by your lies. You can not use me.

One Israeli for 1000 Palestinian Terrorists

Israel did the right thing in negotiating the release of Gilad Shalit in return for the release of 1000 Palestinian terrorists. One Israeli person is worth more than 1000 Palestinian terrorists.

The United Nations and Palestinian Statehood

If the U.N. were to take some action toward upgrading their opinion of Palestinian statehood, some Israelis have advocated "punishing" the Palestinian Authority. Why? Who cares what the U.N. calls Palestine (West Bank and Gaza Strip)? The realities on the ground will remain the same if neither side changes course. Perhaps it will put Abbas in a stronger position with his own people, allowing him to make some of the concessions needed to come to an agreement with Israel or avoiding premature real statehood responsibility. Perhaps it will remove the urgency of creating a real Palestinian state, allowing it to continue to grow economically to reach a position where it will more likely behave as a good partner with Israel (which seems to be Netanyahu's plan?). The only loser would be the U.N. which would be pushed to the side by reality.

Not Just Tolerated

To create peace between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East, both sides must do more than just begrudgingly tolerate each other. To many Arabs, Israel is an anomaly that should have no right to exist. After years, it has become obvious to them that Israel does exist and will not go away. But any concession in negotiation is overly generous. In the proper order of things, Jews are not supposed to be equals in their own country,but rather a subserviant minority.
On the other hand, there are some Jews who believe that the Land of Israel (the same land which the Arabs call Palestine) was given to the Jews by God. To them, allowing any Arabs to live in that land is an act of extreme generosity. This attitude is equally unfair and delusional.
Just as Hamas can use that kind of logic to justify its rocket attacks on Israel and complain when Israel retaliates, extreme right wing Jews can use a similar logic to justify the West Bank settlements and ignoring the rights of Arabs in the Palestinian territories and in some cases even Arab citizens of Israel.
One can hope that one day the rational people on both sides can come together to create a land that recognizes the rights of all the inhabitants of the land whether it ends up split into 2 or 3 countries or is unified into one.

J Street: Who Are You?

When I read the web sites of J Street and the New Israel Fund, I see many concerns for Israel with which I agree, religious pluralism, separation of church and state, concern for minorities (Jewish and non-Jewish), opposition to the deportation of children of migrant workers, concern for calling Israelis unpatriotic if they criticize some actions of their government, and crticizing the expansion of settlements on the West Bank. I even once made a contribution to the New Israel fund because I wanted to give money that would go into the Israeli economy and also support an organization with which I agree. But I have not repeated that contribution because I really don't know to whom I contributed. It was refreshing recently to see that J Street was "horrified" by the recent attacks from Gaza that killed 8 Israelis in the Negev. But I am bothered by the lack of criticism of the Palestinian leadership for starting the Intafada many years ago that killed many Hebrew people, for insisting on conditions like the "right of return" which are impossible for Israel to meet, and for teaching hatred of Jews to their children. I also haven't seen criticsm of the surrounding Arab nations for starting the mess by invading Israel/Palestine in 1948, using hatred of Israel to take the focus off the suppression of their own people, and for keeping Palestinian Arabs in their countries in refugee camps for generations to maintain their hatred of Jews.
The tragedy of J Street is that they could be a force for reason, but by always focusing on criticism of Israel and glossing over the transgressions of the Arab side, they remove themselves as representatives of ordinary Jews/Hebrews like me.

Attack from Gaza

Terrorists from Gaza recently crossed the border into Israel and killed people. Israel retaliated by bombing targets in Gaza. Now some people have accused Israel of aggression. It is not aggression for a nation to defend its people. The present government of Israel can be criticized for sometimes wasting its resources to cater to a growing minority of citizens who think that aquisition of land has some religious purpose. But when Israel is attacked it needs to fight back with whatever means will do the job and not just balanced. We Jews in the Diaspora as well as in Israel disagree about many issues, but when we are attacked anywhere, we are united in supporting each other as we should be.
Certainly Israel has to maintain a strong military considering the challenges facing it. however being strong is not just military. It has to be inclusive in defining who is a Hebrew. Immigration of people who are willing to take on the Hebrew language and culture make Israel stronger and help to turn the demography in Israel's favor. The senstivities of the Israeli Arabs who make up 20% of the population should be considered as much as possible and not just tolerated.
On the Arab side, Israel should be regarded as an asset, not a liability. The present difficulties in Israel/Palestine were created by the surrounding Arab states and to some extent by Europe more than by the Israelis and the Palestinians. If the moderate Israelis and Palestinians could unite and supercede the extremists on both sides as 2 nations or one, they could truly be the premier nation in the region despite their small size. Maybe that is too much to hope for.

Why has Israel Turned to the Right?

At the time of the founding of Israel in 1948, the Labor Party was the predominant party in the government, and Israel was to a great extent a socialist nation. At that time the government and people were open to the concept of 2 states along the the lines that were formed at the end of the 1948 war. The Israeli people were not happy with giving up East Jerusalem but otherwise were resigned to reality. During the 1990s with a liberal Israeli government, a period of what appeared to be peace making occurred. The Palestinian Authority came into being as a first step toward Palestinian statehood. Both sides were talking to each other. Most importantly, a feeling of trust developed between many of the Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews. Ehud Barak offered the Clinton/Barak plan to Yasser Arafat which would have satisfied most of the Palestinian demands (but not the return of the Palestinian Arabs to the State of Israel and did not give all of East Jerusalem to Palestine). Arafat rejected it and instead started the Intifada which included terrorist attacks on Israel. The trust between the 2 populations disappeared and along with it the cooperation and mutual prosperity that had been developing for a decade. Over the subsequent years Israel built a fence to keep the terrorists out and hired foreign itinerant workers to fill the jobs in Israel that were no longer open to the Palestinians. Later, Israel tried to unilaterally separate from the Palestinians. The first step in this separation was Gaza. It was safer to start by withdrawal from Gaza because Gaza was away from the Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv population center of Israel. But then the Gazans elected Hamas to rule them. Hamas outwardly declared that it wanted nothing less than a Palestinian state including all of the land of Israel/Palestine (in other words the destruction of Israel). It backed up those statements with rocket attacks on the Israeli towns bordering Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel away from Gaza has enjoyed the end of the Intifada from the West Bank (in other words peace) under a right wing coalition. There also has been a period of financial growth both in Israel and the West Bank. No wonder most Israelis prefer to leave things as they are. Perhaps many Palestinians are actually wary of complete independance although officially they would not say so.
However, the status quo has its problems and can not last forever. The settlement people are trying to use the staus quo to further their own interests by expansion in the West Bank settlements. This is contrary to the interests of both Israel and the Palestinians. In recent weeks, it has become apparent that Israel's financial success has not benefitted all Israelis equally, in that Israelis are beginning to protest about housing prices that have become unaffordable.
So, it is necessary for Israel and the Palestinians to come to a permanent negotiated equitable plan. It will take compromise by both Israel and Palestine. It will take changes in attitude by the majority of both people towards each other. Prosperity for both sides (already happening) and some equity in the distribution of that prosperity are extremely important.

Who is the Victim and Who the Victimizer?

Many people regard the Palestinian Arabs as victims of the State of Israel. However, is that really true? After all, who invaded whom in 1948 at the end of the British mandate? The United Nations partitioned the Land of Israel/Palestine into enclaves for Jews and Arabs. The Jews declared the State of Israel in their enclaves. At the time, Israel (the Palestinian Jewish community) was willing to accept the U.N. partition because it was vulnerable. The Palestinian Arab community did nothing to create a state of their own. The surrounding Arab states invaded Israel/Palestine resulting in the emigration of most of the Palestinian Arabs in the wake of the Arab invasion. At the end of the war, from 1948 to 1967, Jordan annexed the West Bank and Egypt annexed the Gaza Strip. Neither country declared or encouraged the creation of a Palestinian state in those territories during those 19 years. The Palestinian Arabs themselves said and did nothing to separate themselves from Jordan and Egypt. It was not until after the 1967 war when they found themselves under Israeli rule that they suddenly became Palestinians who wanted their own country (which even then included all of Israel). Had the Arab and Jewish communities of Israel/Palestine cooperated in the time preceding the  British withdrawal to create 2 independant states according to the U.N. partition plan which could have allowed access by religious people on both sides to their respective shrines as tourists, they might have been able to prevent the invasion by the surrounding Arab states. Israel would have gone along with that, but the Palestinian Arabs did not and instead abandoned their sovereignty.

An American Financial Problem

Now let me focus on an American problem. We are facing a difficult financial problem.
We have a great pragmatic president, but unfortunately the idealogues in Congress are not willing to compromise. A reasonable compromise would be a balance between raising taxes and cutting spending. The Democratic Senate has even proposed a bill without tax raises to mollify the Republicans, but that is not good enough for the Tea Party Kids.

Who is a Hebrew?

There is some controversy as to who is a Jew. The word Jew of course refers to someone who observes the Jewish religion, but it also refers to a person who is born Jewish and does not observe another religion but also does not necessarily observe the Jewish religion. Most likely his or her ancestors at some time did observe the Jewish religion. It is not a matter of race. If you look at Jews, you will see a racial variation from blonde blue eyed northern European appearing Jews to brown eyed Mediterranean appearing Jews to African Jews from Ethiopia and Indian Jews who look like all the other people in India. What we have in common is a history and some connection to the Jewish religion, whether in the present or in a previous time or generation. Strictly speaking, the Jewish religion says that having a Jewish mother makes one a Jew. Certainly Orthodox Judaism follows that rule and probably Conservative Judaism. I don't know that we all follow that rule so strictly.
At one time it was not as much of an issue as it is today. It was mainly a matter of religion and was rightly in the realm of the rabbis. However, a change occurred with the rise of nationalism in Europe when Jews were now regarded as different not just because of religion. In this atmosphere, came modern Zionism in the late 19th Century. Most of the founders of the Zionist movement like Theodore Herzl were not necessarily religious, but were reacting to a nationalistic European anti-semitism. In fact many Orthodox Jews opposed Zionism in its early days, saying that the rebirth of a Jewish Israel would only come in the time of the Messiah.
Now with the existence of the State of Israel, who is a Jew has become a political issue, because the original purpose of Zionism was to create a haven for Jews who needed to excape persecution elsewhere. Therefore a Jew who arrives in Israel can become an instant citizen. Now in the negotiations over a future division between Israel and a future Palestinian state, the Palestinians insist on immigration  of descendants of Arabs who left Israel in 1948 into the State of Israel, but that would shift the demography of Israel so that it might eventually become an Arab state rather than a Jewish state. So now Israel's Prime minister insists that Israel be recognized by the Arabs as a Jewish state. This is one of the sticking points in reaching a settlement. There is also a problem with this in that 20% of the population in Israel is Arab, mostly Moslem. Forcing them to call their country a Jewish state puts them in a dilemma between loyalty to their country, their language, and their religion.
Let me propose a way out of this dilemma for everyone concerned. The heart of the problem is in the fuzziness between the definition of Jewish as a religion and as a people. Let us leave the word Jewish as the Jewish religion and use the word Hebrew to refer to us as a people both in Israel and here in the Diaspora. Let Hebrew refer to people who are Jewish by religion or have a Hebrew history or Hebrew descent or speak Hebrew as their language or are citizens of the State of Israel whatever their religion or lack of religion. Jewish is the religion and Hebrew is secular. It might be semantics here in the Diaspora, but in Israel it would take the matter of Hebrew nationalism away from the rabbis and give it to the secular Israeli government where it belongs.
Defining the secular side of Jewishness as Hebrew would strengthen Israel in many ways. There would be no reason to deport the children of migrant workers who grow up as Gentile Hebrews as well as migrant workers themselves who want to take on the Hebrew language and culture as their own. This would help to turn the demographic clock in favor of Hebrews, making the Arab demography less threatening. Immigration is the life blood of a nation, and massive Jewish immigration just isn't happening anymore. It would strengthen Israel in its negotiations with the Palestinian Arabs by throwing the ball into their court and by putting Israel in a position where Israel will survive as a Hebrew nation whether Palestine becomes a separate state, a part of the Hebrew state, or something in between. Anything will work as long as each person has an opportunity to be a first class participating citizen of his or her country.
As for those who say that this idea would diminish or endanger the Jewish religion, my answer is to have faith in our religion. I am sure it would stand up to any competitor in a free exchange of ideas. It has withstood 2 millenia of persecution, not to mention the Holocaust, and we are still here.

Why Judaism?

I am a follower of the Jewish religion, particularly the Conservative movement in Judaism as it is practiced in the U.S.A. I don't pretend to have arrived at this belief with complete objectivity. I grew up in this tradition and am comfortable with it. One of the differences between Judaism and most of the other Western monotheistic religions is that it is not a universal religion in the way that Christianity and Islam are. Judaism, beginning its evolution in a time when all the other religions were polytheistic, viewed its mission as bringing monotheism to the world, not necessarily Judaism. Judaism considers itself the way that the Jewish people worship God rather than a universal way for everyone. That is why Judaism does not go out of its way to convert Gentiles and why we are so few (13 million) compared to the major religions of the world. In a sense Christianity and Islam are the success of our mission, but we Jews want to remain Jews because that is who we are.

Why is God? Why is Religion?

There is an ongoing debate about the existence of God. Is there a God? And if so, What or Who is God? Actually, there is no universal definition of God, so if one wants to believe in God, one can take whatever one actually believes and say that is God. Conversely, if one desires to be an atheist, one can define God in such a way that excludes God from whatever the atheist believes. However, I think the more important question is not whether or not God exists, but rather why is there God. Belief in one or more deities has existed in various civilizations, both sophisticated and primitive, no matter what extent of isolation, since prehistoric times. Why? Let us imagine a prehistoric person living in a time when language has begun, and people can now talk to each other about what has gone on in the past (history) and plan for the future. There are now stories of ancestors who no longer exist. Life is temporary, unpredictable, chaotic. Now people can begin to realize that their time of life is limited. The same can be said nowadays for small children who suddenly discover the same fact. It is frightening. One needs a way of making sense out of the temporary nature of existence, some permanence, some order out of chaos. So, the answer for early people was often a belief in the sun or the moon or some mythologic greater than human gods or eventually one almost abstract God. They all served the purpose of giving meaning to a seemingly otherwise meaningless existence.
Unfortunately, like any institutions, people eventually began to find secondary gains in religions. People believed their own religion to be "the true religion." People felt the need for others to believe in "the true religion" even if it meant killing or harming other people to force them to believe correctly. Religion often became entangled with government and politics. This misuse of religion is actually contrary to the original purpose of religion to give meaning to life, to make life more tolerable. I believe strongly in the separation of church and state. Although religion can have a negative effect on government by imposing the ideas of a particular religion on people who do not necessarily follow that religion, more importantly government can have a negative effect on religion, diluting its real purpose of giving meaning to life by involving it in pursuits unrelated to that purpose.

A Brief History of Israelites, Hebrews, and Jews

According to the Bible, the first monotheist was Abraham. He passed on his belief to his son Isaac, who passed it on to his son Jacob who received the name Israel. Whether you believe they were actual historical people or mythologic characters, those men are considered the patriarchs of our people.
According to the Bible, the Israelites (incidentally, the English language has 2 words, Israelites for the ancient people and Israelis for the citizens of modern Israel, but in Hebrew it is one word) migrated into Egypt to escape a famine. The government of Egypt was friendly to them at that time. A later government was unfriendly to the Israelites. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt to a period of wandering in the desert to the land east of the Jordan River (the location of modern day Jordan), and ultimately, after the death of Moses, the Israelites migrated westward across the Jordan into Canaan (the land situated between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean). The historians tell us that a people from Asia called the Hyksos entered Egypt and ruled the country or part of it for a period of time, and were then driven out of Egypt by the native Egyptians. So the Biblical and historical accounts of those events are somewhat compatible. What is important as far as our names are concerned is that word Hebrew means crossing over. To the Canaanites, the Hebrews were the people who came from across the Jordan River.
The Hebrews eventually formed the Kingdom of Israel which consisted of various territories inhabited by the various tribes of Israel. Later the kingdom split into two, the northern kingdom which retained the name Israel and the southern kingdom which took the name of its most prominent tribe, Judah (Judaea). The northern Kingdom of Israel was later conquered by Assyria and its people disappeared. The Kingdom of Judah was later conquered by the Babylonians, but some Jews returned after Babylonia was defeated by the Persians and formed the new Kingdom of Judaea until it was conquered by Rome with the ultimate dispersal of Jews into the diaspora for the past 2000 years. The present state of Israel was declared in 1948 following a period of migration of Jews into the territory mainly beginning in the late 19th Century.
So, the name Israelite (Israeli) dates back to around the time of our ancestors entering, living in, or leaving Egypt, Hebrew dates back to the entrance of our people into the land of Israel after the death of Moses, and Jew dates back to the time of the kingdom of Judah (Judaea). The Jewish religion evolved over the various periods described above, but Judaism as we now know it might be said to date from the time of the Kingdom of Judaea.
　

Who am I?

Before I give you my opinions, you might want to know who I am. I am an American, a Jew, a Hebrew, and a Zionist. What does this all mean? I am an American because I am a citizen of the United States of America. I was born in Chicago 73 years ago and have lived in Los Angeles for the past 27 years. I have no desire to live permanently in any country other than the United States (including Israel). However, I am a Zionist in that I do have special feelings for the State of Israel because I am a Hebrew and a Jew, and I am concerned for the safety and welfare of all my fellow Hebrews. I share a history with all the Hebrews in the world, including the more than 1/3 who live in Israel. Included among my fellow Hebrews who do live in Israel are a number of my relatives. So my interest in Israel is based on real concerns, and that is why I have decided to create a blog to discuss that interest.