The two week IDF rescue and medical mission to Haiti drew some absolutely amazing press. Even media outlets normally critical of Israel couldn’t heap enough praise on what Israelis did in Haiti. For example, watch this brief (under two minute) report on CNN.

Here is another CNN story about Israeli rescue efforts. Even some in the Arab media covered the story. Here is what Palestinian-American journalist Ray Hanania had to say:

“200,000 Haitians died in an earthquake. They sent doctors and supplies to help. That is a good thing. Just because we are fighting with Israel doesn’t mean we should sneer at that assistance to people in need. YES, I wish Israel could show the same compassion for Palestinians. But Israel and Haiti are not at war and Israelis and Palestinians (mainly Hamas and the settlers) are.”

Despite this some have used the IDF efforts in Haiti as an excuse to bash Israel according to an article in Ha’aretz published on January 21. Those who hate Israel accuse the Jewish state of giving aid not out of concern for the suffering in that country, but rather for ulterior motives:

“…for a shocking number of others, the bottom line is simple: Israel, and Israelis, can do no right. In its most extreme there are those who have accused Israel of using the Haiti catastrophe as a new reservoir for harvesting organs.

But even many of those who shun blood libels, have seized on the Haiti mission to bash Israel, revealing in many cases a hatred - and a bigotry - that borders on the visceral.

‘I guess giving Israel credit for good deeds in Haiti,’ wrote reader John Smithson on the widely read Mondoweiss site, ‘is like watching a serial killer or other sociopathic type mow an old woman’s lawn (or some other charitable thing).’

This sort of reaction is not surprising giving the almost daily anti-Israel diatribes found on that website. The Ha’aretz article continues:

“The contention is that Israel sent aid to Haiti on purely cynical motives […] it is nothing short of racism to maintain, in Haiti and in general, that Israelis can do no right.

In his book The Case For Peace, Alan Dershowitz claims that many of the supporters of the Palestinians in the West are “more Palestinian than the Palestinians” and that their hatred of and vitriol towards Israel is far greater than what is found among Palestinian Arabs. This latest round of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hatred, complete with blood libel which would make the authors of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion proud, is a prime example. No Israeli deed, no matter how noble, will go unpunished by those who truly hate the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

The Goldstone Report is, unfortunately, once again in the news day in and day out. The usual media outlets and organizations who work to demonize and delegitimize Israel are once again treating it as a statement of fact rather than a biased and one sided political propaganda piece. This despite the fact that the Obama administration condemned the report as, in the words of U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell, “one-sided and deeply flawed”. The critics of Israel never mention, as a Miami Herald editorial did, that Operation Cast Lead followed “eight years of relentless rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups.” Daily rocket attacks against civilians in Israel continue to this day without one word of protest from the international community.

I know many in the world see the United States as hopelessly biased in Israel’s favor. The British, on the other hand, have not exactly had warm relations with Israel lately and, indeed, the U.K. has been the country with the highest level of anti-Semitism in Europe. Perhaps the testimony of a high ranking British military officer will be a bit more convincing.

Colonel Richard Kemp served as commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. He previously has served as a commander in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia. UN Watch has provided not only video of his October 16, 2009 testimony but also translations into nine languages. Here are some of his most salient points:

“During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.

[…]

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy’s hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.

More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.”

I urge everyone to read or watch Col. Kemp’s full testimony and pass it on to anyone who quotes the Goldstone report as some sort of evidence of Israeli war crimes.

Last Sunday Fareed Zakaria, the host of GPS on CNN, opened his program with an analysis of the Iranian nuclear crisis. He started by saying:

A moment of truth is arriving on the Iran Issue. Western countries will have to face up to the fact that there are only really two choices with Iran: one, a military strike, effectively preventing the country from continuing to expand its nuclear capacity; or, secondly, learning to live with such a capacity.”

Up to this point Zakaria was 100% correct in his assessment. The current talks with the Iranian regime have produced no concrete results and based on comments by the Iranian government they never will. I can understand why President Obama wants to give diplomacy every reasonable chance at success. If nothing else it provides the U.S., and perhaps by extension Israel, some diplomatic cover with the rest of the West when the inevitable war with Iran comes.

Zakaria went on to describe some of the consequences of a strike by either the U.S. or Israel on Iran. Once again he was spot on:

Now, I think striking Iran would have the first effect of uniting the country behind the regime. It happens in every country that is attacked from abroad. George W. Bush’s approval ratings on September 10, 2001, were around 40 percent. In one month, after 9/11, they had risen to 93 percent. Iranian dissidents warn that the day after an American attack or an Israeli attack, they would all have to come out in support of the regime.

The political spillover from such an attack in Arab countries would also be large, and the military spillover in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Iran still funds militias, would probably take the lives of American and European soldiers. The price of oil would skyrocket, and, at best, such a military strike would delay the Iranian program, not end it, and probably delay it by just a few years.

It’s all true. Indeed, the consequences to both Israel and some Sunni Arab nations, which Iran would likely attack to disrupt oil supplies, would be very high indeed. Let’s also not forget the loss of innocent lives among Iranian civillians. Iran has placed it’s nuclear and missile launching facilities in populated areas. Yes, the cost of a war with Iran will be terrible for all involved and many nations will get dragged in.

The rest of Zakaria’s analysis is seriously flawed. Worse, it seems to reflect and reinforce the thinking of some in the Obama adminstration, which makes it downright dangerous. Zakaria continued:

Is it possible to live with a nuclear Iran? I would argue yes. Living with it is not a passive option. Iran’s behavior will make it possible to maintain, perhaps even expand, sanctions on it. It will strengthen western resolve and, more importantly, make most Arab states ally themselves far more closely with the United States and Europe than ever before. The great strategic threat in the region would no longer be Israel but Iran.

These countries, the Arab countries, would make vigorous efforts to contain Iran’s influence militarily and politically, as would western nations. We could press for more sanctions, inspections of all kinds. And, finally, Israel’s vast nuclear arsenal, 250 nuclear weapons by most accounts, plus that of the United States would act as a deterrent on Iran. It would not use its nuclear weapons because it would clearly trigger an overwhelming response.

This is not a perfect option. But, in the real world, it seems to me a far more sensible one than a gamble that attacking Iran would solve this problem.

I don’t believe for one moment that the Islamic religious fanatics who run the Iranian regime would be deterred by Israel’s weaponry or any likely retaliation.

Former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, often referred to as a “moderate” in the press, called for a nuclear attack on Israel on December 14, 2001. His comments included the following:

If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world

We are all aware of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s repeated calls to destory Israel. For the Iranian leadership this is an ideological and religious imperatives. Against such imperatives conventional deterrence simply does not work.

Zakaria went on to interview three “distinguished experts”, none of whom expressed the idea that Israel may have no choice but to preemptively strike Iran to avoid their own destruction. When PBS’ Newshour With Jim Lehrer has a panel on issues like this they make sure to have all views represented. Even unabashedly left-wing MSNBC has had balanced panels where the idea that Israel may have absolutely no choice but to act if it is to survive has been clearly voiced. Not so on CNN. I couldn’t help but remember a discussion some years ago on CNN hosted by Christiane Amanpour where her idea of differing viewpoints, left and right, meant that she had Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former Carter administration National Security Advisor, a Democrat, and Brent Scowcroft, the former National Security Advisor to President George H. W. Bush, a Republican, as her guests. Both men are notoriously anti-Israel and spent significant parts of the segment complementing each other’s analysis of why everything wrong in the Middle East is Israel’s fault. Zakaria’s guests weren’t so blatant but none disagreed with Zakaria’s analysis.

In his next segment Zakaria went on to interview Judge Richard Goldstone of the infamous Goldstone report, a report widely seen as denying Israel any reasonable right of self-defense.

CNN no longer seems to be engaging in the in-your-face anti-Israel and anti-Jewish attacks like the August, 2007 two hour “Special Investigations” piece called “G-d’s Jewish Warriors“, also hosted by Christiane Amanpour. They have learned to be slightly more subtle. Still, there is no mistaking the purpose of a program that first presents the awful consequences of an Israeli strike on Iran and then trots out the Goldstone Report, no matter how reasonable and erudite the smiling Mr. Zakaria may seem.

CNN may be willing to gamble the lives of 7.28 million Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, on the belief that the Iranian regime is sane and can be deterred. They may be willing to gamble the lives of my family in Israel. Americans should not be. First, friends don’t ask friends to die in a nuclear holocaust. Second, once Israel is gone, can some attempt to destroy “The Great Satan” be far behind? Didn’t President Ahmedinejad chair a conference on the world without the United States? If deterrence doesn’t work as Mr. Zakaria suggests it would what would the consequences for all of the West be?

We need to remember CNN’s long history of anti-Israel bias and take all their reporting on the Iranian nuclear threat with an appropriately large grain of salt. We need to remember that the CNN agenda will undoubtedly include blaming Israel for any and all consequences of a conflict with Iran.

Anyone who knows me knows I like tea. I drink a lot of it. I always buy loose leaf tea of all sorts. One of the least expensive brands of loose leaf tea, and one that sells excellent English and Irish Breakfast Tea blends, is Twinings, a British company. Today I went shopping and walked right past the Twinings tea. I am buying tea from American companies, imported Chinese tea, anything but British. Today I started my personal boycott of all things British and I urge everyone who supports Israel to join me.

In case you haven’t following the news the British are increasingly boycotting Israeli goods and services. Major British trade unions have been boycotting Israel since 2007. AISH has published an alarming report about the rise of anti-Semitism, not just anti-Zionism, in the UK and how it is no longer taboo to express hatred and loathing for the Jewish people in Britain. Even the BBC, which has repeatedly stoked the flames of anti-Semitism with its strong anti-Israel bias, reported a record rise in UK anti-Semitism in the first half of this year. In the spring of last year Hebrew University historian Robert S. Wistrich, who was himself educated at Cambridge Univesity stated, ”Britain has become the center for the meeting of anti-Semitic trends in Europe.” The sharp rise in anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic attacks in Britain has been reported every year since 2005.

So.. if the British hate me and my family just because we are Jewish why should I support them, their businesses and their economy? If the British hate Israel, where much of my family lives, with a passion, why on earth would I want to send my hard earned money to that dispicable country? I’d rather buy American or Israeli products. When it comes to products that aren’t made or grown in the U.S. or Israel, like tea, then I’ll support almost anybody else before I’ll support the UK. I’m enjoying a wonderful cup of Blooming apricot flavored black tea from China right now.

Please follow the links I’ve provided and read up on this for yourself. If you’re Jewish, a supporter of Israel, or just plain think that anti-Semitism is as disgusting as any other form of ethnic or religious intolerance or racism, please join me in this boycott.

Shana Tovah!

Here is wishing all Blogs of Zion readers a happy, healthy and sweet new year.

Just over a year ago I reported on the work of Dr. Andre Oboler for O’Reilly News, who had written a report on how Google Earth was delivering overtly politically biased information. A combination of negative publicity and a libel suit filed against Google resulted in changes to Google Earth which resolved the issue. Dr. Oboler published a new report on Tuesday and this time he has targeted Facebook and with good reason. Despite a prohibition in the popular social networking website’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, it’s terms of service, Facebook has remained a happy home for Holocaust denial and racist “white pride” groups.

Oboler’s report notes that Facebook’s terms regarding hate speech have been repeatedly watered down, most recently in a May, 2009 overhaul. Yet in the latest revision, dated August 28, 2009, there is still a very clear prohibition:

You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.

There is an additional prohibition which may well apply:

You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.

Dr. Oboler’s report notes previous complaint by a grassroots Jewish organization, the JIDF (Jewish Internet Defense Force), who, in turn, noted laws against Holocaust denial:

The JIDF letter went into further detail noting that Holocaust denial is illegal in thirteen countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland. They also pointed out the strictness of laws in Germany, Austria, and Romania and that “any group that denies the occurrence of the Holocaust is violating the laws of these nations.” The JIDF also argued that “German law also outlaws anything associated with Nazism. So any group that has Nazi symbols and such should be taken down.” In additional to national law the JIDF referred to European Union law and specifically Joint action/96/443/JHA,24 which requires countries to make Holocaust denial “punishable as a criminal offence.”

Oboler adds:

Other countries, such as Australia and Canada, which do not specifically prohibit Holocaust denial still prohibit public hate speech. […] Holocaust denial is a special case under international law. It is recognized as hate speech internationally. There are calls from the United Nations down for all efforts to be taken to eliminate Holocaust denial, which is both a serious defamation against the Jewish people and a tool to promote new hate against the Jewish people through conspiracy theories.

The Facebook pages in question do appear to violate the laws of at least 15 nations and the European Union as a whole. Despite clear prohibitions against hate and illegal, misleading or discriminatory activity Facebook continues to allow and indeed defend pages that violate it’s own terms.

The problem goes beyond Holocaust denial motivated by and encouraging anti-Semitism. A May 12 article in Business Week noted:

Facebook has come under attack in the past for hosting anti-Gypsy groups. The site currently contains several groups defending “white pride.”

I don’t think many people would doubt that “white pride” pages on Facebook or elsewhere on the internet are overtly racist. As such they clearly violate the prohibition against “discriminatory” content and yet, much like the Holocaust denial pages, they continue to be hosted on Facebook.

Dr. Oboler also points out that in the United States the First Amendment guarantee of free speech is not absolute:

The first is that U.S. laws governing protected speech do not apply to private spaces such as Facebook. Any concerns Facebook employees or managers have about the first amendment are misplaced, or are being deliberately misused to confuse the public.

In other words, it is up to Facebook to decide what to include and exclude from their privately owned website. The First Amendment doesn’t force Facebook or anyone else to host content they consider objectionable. Another limitation which may apply more to some of the “white pride” content than to Holocaust denial are laws in the U.S. prohibiting incitement to violence. These laws have repeatedly been upheld as Constitutional by the courts. Libel and defamation are also not protected speech in the United States. Despite these facts Facebook has repeatedly defended these pages on the basis of free speech and the First Amendment. Dr. Oboler also believes that the First Amendment can’t be used as a shield against the laws of other nations or international law since the free speech protections do not apply to private space.

Dr. Oboler claims that the issue is a moral and ethical question for Facebook. He also notes that negative publicity, unflattering press, anger in the blogosphere, and all forms of public pressure have failed to motivate Facebook to take action against what is clearly and undeniably hate speech.

While Dr. Oboler’s new report highlights the problem without proposing remedies, he did advocate a specific solution in an op-ed piece published in The Guardian (UK) on July 13:

The internet requires regulation, just as film, television and computer games do. If companies such as Facebook abdicate that responsibility, it suggests government intervention is needed to prevent an internet-powered surge in racial hatred. The spread of racism and hate is not something that can be left to chance or the whims of the private sector. Working against hate, bullying and racism must be part of the price companies pay when they offer an online social environment as their product.

Advocating government mandated censorship of the internet generally brings out the most unusual of political alliances in the United States. It is opposed by everyone from the ACLU on the left to conservative evangelical Christian groups on the right. Censorship is a dangerous and slippery slope. Even is such a law could pass Constitutional muster, which is questionable at best, the same law the Dr. Oboler would use to ban Holocaust denial could be used by to try and ban material that Dr. Oboler would undoubtedly support. Would pro-Palestinian groups try to claim Zionism and support for Israel are hate?  It would open the door to litigation to attempt to apply such a law to limit all sorts of speech that one group or another may find objectionable. That requires the government to spend time and resources defining what is and is not hate, something most Americans simply do not trust government to do.

For now the only alternative is to continue to publicize the issue, something Dr. Oboler has been very effective in doing. As his work to highlight the problems with Google Earth plainly demonstrated, such efforts may take years to be effective. In the end sufficient public outcry, negative publicity, the threat of boycott and legal action using existing laws may be sufficient, in time, to bring about change without creating new and possibly onerous law.

NOTE:  This article was originally published in slightly different form on the O’Reilly Broadcast website.

This is from an e-mail circulating around the Internet which someone in my family received:

HB 1388 PASSED !!

You just spent $20,000,000 to move members/supporters of Hamas, a terrorist organization, to the United States ; They get housing, food, the whole enchilada.

HB 1388 PASSED

Whether you are an Obama fan, or not, EVERYONE IN THE U. S. needs to know…..

Something happened…. H.R. 1388 was passed, behind our backs. You may want to read about it.. It wasn ‘ t mentioned on the news… just went by on the ticker tape at the bottom of the CNN screen. Obama funds $20M in tax payer dollars to immigrate Hamas Refugees to the USA . This is the news that didn ‘ t make the headlines…

By executive order, President Barack Obama has ordered the expenditure of $20.3 million in “migration assistance” to the Palestinian refugees and “conflict victims” in Gaza . (…including by contributions to international, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations…”) The “presidential determination”, which allows hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with ties to Hamas to resettle in the United States , was signed and appears in the Federal Register.

It sounds really sinister, doesn’t it? Thankfully it’s all a pack of lies designed to mislead the ignorant.

If it’s a House Resolution (H.R.) it passed in the House of Representatives and is not an Executive Order. It would also have to pass the Senate and be signed by the President to become law. This person is mixing apples and oranges. Whatever they are concerned about can be either an Executive Order or a bill that passed Congress, not both. For someone who knows anything about how the American legislative process works that should be the first obvious clue that something is very wrong with this e-mail.

So, let’s take a look at H.R. 1388 and see what it’s all about. The title of the bill is: “The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, an Act to reauthorize and reform the national service laws.” It’s an extension and expansion of the National and Community Service Act of 1990, first signed by President George H.W. Bush. In 1993 this was expanded with the founding of AmeriCorps, created by by the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993, signed by President Clinton and expanded by 50% by President George W. Bush. H.R. 1388, which was signed into law back in May, is about Americans doing national service: public service work for the country. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with the Middle East or Palestinians or Hamas. After repeatedly mentioning H.R. 1388 the e-mail has no specifics and completely misrepresents the bill.

OK, maybe the author got his or her numbers wrong and really wants us to look at an Executive Order. He or she was even kind enough to provide a link to the Federal Register, so naturally I followed the link to see what it’s all about. I assume the author was hoping that either nobody would actually follow the link or that they simply wouldn’t bother to read the details. The Presidential determination in question, which I do remember well, spent funds already allocated for refugee assistance. It is dated January, a full eight months ago, and has nothing to do with any bill currently before Congress or which passed Congress recently. Second, the idea, as I read it, was to help people flee Hamas, not help Hamas. These are refugees from Hamas, not Hamas supporters. If you followed the news at the time you know that Hamas used the conflict with Israel as cover for arrests, torture, and murder of Fatah members in Gaza and any remaining non-Muslim Palestinians (mainly Christians) in the territory. The idea of helping these people did have support from members of Congress of both parties: the same members of Congress who voted unanimously to support Israeli defensive actions in Gaza just three weeks earlier.

The author goes on to list a bunch of other horrible things that President Obama has done, from closing Guantanamo (which hasn’t actually happened) to federally funding abortions (which also actually hasn’t happened). It ends with the ominous line: “We are losing this country at a rapid pace.” Actually, the far right and the know-nothings among the conservative movement haven’t figured out that they lost the 2006 and 2008 elections. They already lost the country as the American people have rejected their agenda.

What is so galling about this is that it’s all lies. Nothing new has passed Congress, President Obama hasn’t signed any new laws or issued any new executive orders regarding Hamas or the Palestinians. If he had I’d be the first to write about it. If this President supported Hamas in any way, shape, or form I’d be up in arms about it. Here’s reality: it never happened. It’s just part of the right wing smear campaign, the hatred directed at President Obama, which goes on each and every day in this country. It absolutely disgusts me.

When the Bush administration laid out the Roadmap peace plan it, together with the United Nations, Russia, and the European Union, clearly laid out three conditions that Hamas would have to meet to be included:

1. Recognition of Israel
2. Renunciation of terrorism and violence
3. Acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Roadmap

Hamas has never accepted any of the Quartet’s conditions and, as a result, remains classified strictly as a terrorist group by the United States and most of the West.

Further attempts at a peace process were based on the idea that the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority did meet this conditions and had, in fact, agreed to them as part of the Oslo Accords. This has also been the basis of all U.S. aid to the Palestinians, including the training and arming of security forces.

Since March of this year we have seen one senior Palestinian Authority official after another make clear, in no uncertain terms, that they don’t accept any of the three conditions either. It started with Muhammed Dahlan, a former Palestinian security chief and senior Fatah official, during a March 17 interview on Palestinian television:

“I want to say for the thousandth time, in my own name and in the name of all of my fellow members of the Fatah movement: We do not demand that the Hamas movement recognize Israel. On the contrary, we demand of the Hamas movement not to recognize Israel, because the Fatah movement does not recognize Israel even today.”

Rafik Natsheh, a member of the Fatah Central Committee who also serves as chairman of the faction’s disciplinary “court,” expanded on Dahlan’s comments during an interview with Al-Quds Al-Arabi last month. He stated that Fatah has never recognized Israel’s right to exist and it has no intention of ever doing so, effectively closing the door to any future peace agreement. He also made clear that Fatah intends to launch a new intifada or “armed struggle.”

“All these reports about recognizing Israel are false. It’s all media nonsense. We don’t ask other factions to recognize Israel because we in Fatah have never recognized Israel.

[…]

I am certain that we will hinder all the traitors who wish to remove the resistance option from the movement’s charter. Let all the collaborators [with Israel] and those who are deluding themselves hear that this will never happen.”

Finally, at the sixth Fatah General Assembly earlier this month these positions were formalized and reiterated by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. In effect the Palestinians have abrogated the Oslo peace agreement signed by Yasser Arafat. The Fatah-run Palestinian authority no longer meets any of the three conditions placed on Hamas. Why, then, is Fatah still somehow defined as “moderate” and treated differently than Hamas?

Back in December, 2007 I wrote that absent a recognition of Israel’s right to exist as defined by both the League of Nations Mandate and by the United Nations in Resolution 181, which means as a state for the Jewish people, there was no basis for any negotiations with the Palestinians. Now, nearly two years later the Netanyahu government has made clear that it is ready for negotiations without any preconditions. The Palestinians, emboldened by President Obama’s shortsighted and ill advised pressure on Israel over settlements, are demanding unilateral concessions from Israel before even agreeing to sit down and talk. Rather than bring Israel and the Palestinians closer to peace the Obama administration has foreclosed any chance of meaningful negotiations.

Right now the American taxpayer is footing the bill for arming and training security forces aligned with or which are part of Fatah, even as Fatah makes clear that those arms will be turned on Israel. We are, in effect, arming one terrorist faction while snubbing another. We are doing so in a time of huge budget deficits. Does this make any sort of sense?

In the United States the President determines foreign policy. However, that power is not absolute. The U.S. Constitution put in place a system of checks and balances. Congress controls the purse strings. Israel enjoys overwhelming support in Congress from both political parties. It is time that Congress acts to cut off all aid to the Palestinians until they meet the three clear conditions set out by the international Quartet. Doing so will stop the arming of unrepentant and unreformed Palestinian terrorists who seek to destroy Israel and send a strong and unequivocal message to President Obama that his Middle East policies, which are increasingly seen as pro-Arab and anti-Israel, have little or no support.

NOTE: First published as part of The Jerusalem Post Submission Contest earlier today.

Anyone who has read my blogs and other writing over the years has almost certainly figured out that I am not religious and certainly not Orthodox. I went to a mixture of Conservative and Orthodox congregations growing up and I was part of a modern Orthodox congregation for a time when I was in my twenties. I am not ignorant when it comes to Orthodox Judaism but there are elements of it that I am just not comfortable with or which just do not match up with my own beliefs. I do feel comfortable with the Conservative (Masorti) movement.

A couple of years ago I wrote posts for this blog whenever I had time. If that was on Shabbat then that was when I posted. Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t posted on Shabbat for quite some time now. No, I haven’t begun observing the sabbath in a religious sense. My work pretty much requires me to be available 24×7. So long as I want to succeed in IT (computer work) in the U.S. that won’t change.

Religious views in my family range from pretty much atheist, albeit with a Jewish ethnic identity, to ultra-Orthodox. When I was in Israel I stayed with a modern Orthodox cousin and his wife over Shabbat. I must say that I think a day each week without computers or cell phones, without driving or work, without shopping or television, without all the stress of modern life, is actually very refreshing. I think being Shomer Shabbat is probably very healthy. I have written before that I believe that when I make aliya I may very well observe the sabbath. I think it would be a very positive change in my life.

In the meanwhile, though, I still do what I need to do. I do post to other blogs whenever I have time. However, I will continue to refrain from my Zionist writing or publishing on Shabbat out of respect to my Orthodox readers. I look at the divisions between religious and non-religious in Israel and in the wider Jewish community and I think that all we really need is a bit more respect for each other to get past our differences. We are all Jews. The anti-Semites out there don’t make such distinctions.

Shabbat Shalom!

Mark Gold wrote a piece published on the right-wing Israpundit website on August 6th titled “Were Jewish Obama Voters Fooled?”. He also submitted the post to The Jerusalem Post blogging contest. I originally wrote a brief comment objecting to his assertions but the more I through about what he wrote the more I realized just how insulted and offended I was by his article. I decided a longer and more forceful response was in order.

The principle assertion made by Mr. Gold is that “Obama’s Jewish voters were not fooled by his campaign, but rather that, unfortunately, Israel is just not a major concern or issue to them.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Mr. Gold also claims that none of his Jewish acquaintances have any regrets about voting for President Obama. Perhaps that is because the Republican alternative still looks, in retrospect, even more likely to have done serious harm than the Obama administration, even with its current misguided policies towards Israel.

Mr. Gold’s claims that Israel is relatively unimportant to American Jewry or that American Jews continue to blindly support the President and his policies is belied by an article in today’s Jerusalem Post with the headline “Most US Jewish Obama backers oppose his Israel policies”. The article quotes frequent Fox News contributor Dick Morris:

”Democratic Jews in the United States strongly support Obama, but also strongly support Israel. Asked explicitly to choose between Obama’s position and that of the Israeli government on issues such as construction in the settlements, or the two-state solution, they back the Israeli view by more than two to one. To me this indicates that the jury is still out and that a backlash may yet develop against Obama’s policies.”

Sorry, Mr. Gold, but two to one in support of Israel and opposed to the President’s policies vis a vis Israel among Jewish Democrats indicates, to me, that Israel remains a major concern for most of us.

The alternative Mr. Gold presents, that we were “fooled” by the Obama campaign, is also completely wrong. As a religious minority we watched John McCain sell his soul to the religious right of the Republican party. We watched him select Sarah Palin, an incompetent and absolutely unprepared less than one term governor from Alaska as his Vice Presidential choice. Mrs. Palin is also an overtly right wing evangelical Christian. Jewish Americans who aren’t wedded to the Republican Party or the conservative movement still distrust evangelicals with good reason. First, they seek tirelessly to convert us to Christianity and strip us of our Jewish religion, traditions, and culture. Second, for many evangelicals their support for Israel includes a prophetic view of the future in which the Jewish people either accept Jesus or are slaughtered in a coming apocalypse. Consequently they support the most right wing and intransigent forces in Israel who work against any hope of peace at any time in the future. Sorry, but to most American Jews these people are not our friends. The prospect of Mrs. Palin, who shares those views, a heartbeat away from the Presidency was truly frightening.

We saw a right-wing Republican campaign as contrary to the liberal values most American Jews, and indeed the majority of Jews in Israel, share. We saw Senator McCain and Governor Palin, and the prospect of their likely Supreme Court nominations, as a direct threat to our religious freedom in America.

American Jews were faced with a difficult choice. We looked at Barack Obama’s record in the U.S. Senate, which was staunchly pro-Israel. We wondered if it was sincere or merely a necessity to be elected Senator from Illinois. We looked at his statements while in the Illinois Senate which also were positive. We heard his campaign statements and we heard reassurances from Joe Biden, whose record of support for Israel is long and impeccable. We watched other strongly pro-Israel Democrats line up behind Obama.

After all that many of us still had our doubts but looking at the candidates and hearing the reassurances about Mr. Obama we made what seemed to be the less onerous choice. I am still not at all sure it was the wrong choice. Yesterday I wrote about the power of Democrats who support Israel to influence the President and help to change his policy towards Israel. I will remind my readers once again that both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were seen as anti-Israel early in their respective administrations. Early in the Bush administration when Prime Minister Sharon visited the President pro-Israel voices in the press colorfully stated that the Prime Minister had been “bushwhacked.” The Prime Minister then famously warned President Bush that Israel is not Czechoslovakia in 1938, to be sacrificed to appease the Arabs. The President’s policies changed and Mr. Gold is one of those that still sees Mr. Bush as the best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.

Much as an assessment based on the first six months of the Clinton or Bush administrations would have reached the wrong conclusion about how these Presidents would shape American policy towards Israel, so too might Mr. Gold’s assessment of President Obama prove false. The truth is we just don’t know yet. I also find it interesting that Mr. Gold is attacking American Jewry for a lack of loyalty to Israel. Didn’t Mrs. Palin, a candidate he supported, characterize anyone in areas which weren’t supporting her candidacy as essientially un-American? I wonder how Mr. Gold reconciles that with condemning American Jews for putting American interests ahead of his notion of Israeli interests. That is the assertion Mr. Gold is making.

Simply put, Mr. Gold’s article does not pass the smell test. I wrote yesterday that Republicans and conservatives who see political gain in discrediting President Obama will always throw proverbial stones regardless of the policy. They will always find fault. It is in their political interest to do so. If we ignored Republican warnings about Mr. Obama during the campaign it was simply because the source of those warnings was not trustworthy. Democrats, liberals, and moderates are not interested in condemning the President. We are more interested in meaningful policy change towards Israel. Mr. Gold, as a conservative Republican, is in no position to castigate and condemn Jewish Democrats when his true agenda has less to do with what is right for Israel than it does with pushing a conservative Republican agenda, one most American Jews simply do not agree with.

I am an American Jew of Israeli heritage. Much of my family lives in Israel. I am actively planning aliya. My love for the State of Israel and my support of Israel could not be stronger. I also love the United States of America and all the opportunities this country has given me. I don’t see a conflict or a tension between the love of these two countries. I am also a Democrat who voted for President Obama. I don’t think I made the wrong choice. As such I find Mr. Gold’s article questioning my values and loyalties and those of other Jewish Democrats offensive and insulting.