responses to several who wrote in about my last posting

My last posting in response to Boris Gorbis generated a lot of mail, most of it not very complementary. As experienced as I am in this kind of give and take, and as determined as I am to bring a different perspective to Russian Jews, its painful to receive many of these messages, both on a personal level and because of what it says about how hardened so many people are, how convinced they are that we have nothing to look forward to but endless bloodletting. This attitude makes me very sad, but the attitude is clearly informed by the reality we all confront today and must struggle to transform.
Elena says I am incredibly naïve, and she doesn’t want to say ’stupid’, but clearly thinks so. Elena, I like to think I am neither and I also suspect I have spent more of my life in Israel than you have (correct me if I am wrong, Elena). So let me pose again this question to the collective of Soviet Jews in the U.S.; “Why do you suppose you are greater authorities on Israeli reality than someone like myself?’ I am more than willing to grant that you are greater authorities on Soviet reality than I am, but not Israeli or American reality. Is it just possible that you are distorting reality by seeing the political situations in both Israel and the U.S. through an ideological template formed in reaction to a no longer existent totalitarian construct called the Soviet Union?
An anonymous responder who loves America nevertheless considers this country "zemlya nepugannyx idiotov" because we supposedly lean over backwards to understand the adversary’s point of view and because of that failing Khrushchev had us “beat by decades.” Well, the last time I looked, Khruschev’s system was on the ash heap of history and the writer of these lines was living in America, not the Soviet Union, so it would appear the American system, including our effort to understand the adversary’s point of view, worked a hell of a lot better than the supposedly more realistic and less naïve Soviet system. It ought to be obvious to any moderately sophisticated person that if you are likely to be far more effective in overcoming an adversary by understanding him/her than by reducing him/her to a stick figure of evil. Indeed, the West subverted the Soviet system by understanding that Russians were real people, not devils, who were attracted by consumer culture.
The respondent argues the fact that I only mentioned a few Israeli-initiated homocides shows Israelis are better or more moral than Arabs. Well, Boris was basically telling me there were NO Israeli initiated homocides, that this is stick figure good guys against bad guys. In fact, I could easily have given a longer list if that had been my intent, and certainly could have included Sabra and Shatilla, a horrendous massacre of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese Phalangists which would not have taken place if Ariel Sharon hadn’t sealed off those refugee camps, preventing anyone from escaping and then inserting the Phalangists into the camps with the mission of “cleansing” them. And then, surprise, surprise, three days later it turns out the Phalange had killed 800 people. Yes, the Phalangists did the killing, but Sharon enabled them to do so, and as the Kahan Commission ruled, should clearly have known that was likely to happen.
But I am NOT trying to prove that Jews are worse killers than Arabs. I am trying to show that violence begets violence, killing begets killing, and in such a situation, nobody’s hands are clean. The premise that the other side is the darkest evil and we are goody goodies who are not capable of killing innocent civilians just because we are Jews, is a lot of buba meises and skazkee and I am frankly surprised that observers of the situation as intelligent as Boris Gorbis can take such nonsense seriously. In reality, that way of thinking is nothing more than willful self-delusion.
Having argued what angels we Jews are, the writer then offers the analysis that the Palestinians will see the light only after they, like the Germans in WWII, have been pounded into rubble, adding, “The bag of flower seeds works best if sown on scorched earth. Denazification of Germany is an excellent model for the dehamazification of Gaza.”
What the writer doesn’t get is that unlike the situation in which the Allies far outnumbered the Axis, Israel is not in a position to occupy and transform the Arab/Muslim world, since there are 6 million Israelis and 1.2 billion Muslims. Besides, to dehamasify Gaza and the West Bank, Israel would need to offer the Palestinians something besides endless occupation and the placing of Jewish settlements on their land. The U.S. occupied Germany after WW2, but it did not build permanent American settlements there, with the idea of grabbing a piece of Germany and making it part of America. As long as Israel continues building settlements, it contributes directly to the Hamasification of Palestine, not the other way around.

As for David Tsal, he tells us that he ran up against hatred of Jews and hostility to Israel when he tried to dialogue with Arabs. I’m sure that is true and I’m sure that was painful, but what kind of response would an Arab who encounter if he/she came to dialogue with some of the people on this forum? Hatred and suspicion is a two way street. As for the red heifer, I remember that episode well, and the point was that there are real live Jews, people who live in the Old City known as the Temple Mount Faithful and real live Evangelical Christians supporting them who actually believe that when the red heifer appears, the Dome of the Rock will disappear and the Third Temple will go up. Check out this web site for an example of this. So its not just about Muslim paranoia in this cause (though there is plenty of that) but real Jews with guns, some of whom have plotted in the past to blow up the Dome of the Rock and/or Al-Aqsa (a bunch of them were arrested in 1984, if my memory serves me right, preparing such a plot).
Tsal then goes on to caricature those who fight for peace as being those with blood on our hands, rather than those on both sides, Arab and Jewish, who perpetuate the killing.
From his comfortable exile in LA, he writes the following; “So who made me hate Arabs? Arabs themselves. Only Arabs themselves. Do I like it? I hate it. But then, I must do what I must do. There is no "want" or "like" here. There is no other choice. We are destined to fight and to kill. The only other choice is to be killed. This is not our doing; this situation came from above and ago. I would wish there were another choice, except that I am not interested in pipedreams and empty wishes.”

So David hates and has no choice but to kill or be killed, except that other Jews besides himself will likely have to do the killing. And I am the one with blood on my hands? Get real, David.

Anyway, nidaber, lets talk further.

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My response to Boris Gorbis

Here is my response to Boris Gorbis’ "The Bag of Flower Seeds Or the Sad Disorder of Moral Blindness". I appreciate Boris’ warm words about me and reciprocate his affection. Yes, we have have very different positions of how to save Israel, but both of us love Israel passionately, and it is not only healthy, but absolutely essential, to have this ongoing debate. So here is my response to Boris’ heartfelt words…

Boris starts by asserting that Walter Ruby is deluded, that I don’t know the Israel that exists, but rather am a spaced out American hippie with some tra-la-la emotional pie-in-the-sky yafe nefesh version of the lion lying down with the lamb. Well, not to pull rank here, but I spent over five years of my life living in Israel and speak good Hebrew. That doesn’t make me the world’s greatest expert on Israeli reality, but I know a thing or two about the place. I have covered Israel as a journalist for many years. I feel Israel in my kishkes. So I am not some starry eyed nincompoop, offering illogical ideas from afar.

Yes, when Boris and I sat together in a hotel lobby in Ramat Gan for an hour a couple of months ago, I did share with him my vision of Israelis and Palestinians finding a way to live in peace based in part of peoples’ diplomacy and allowing children on both sides as he puts it archly, to have “a bomb-free lunch time.” Absolutely! If we can’t aspire to such a future, then what is there to believe in? Is Boris ready to accept the prospect of perpetual war, with all that implies for the children of Israel? I believe with every fiber of my being, based on journalistic work spanning decades among both Israelis and Palestinians that considerable majorities on both sides want the killing and suffering to end. It’s their kids and grandkids whose lives are on the line, and I don’t think most would appreciate Boris telling them essentially that there is no hope for an end to the killing.

Unlike Boris, I think the lady with the bag of seed was on the right track. I believe passionately that if and when Israelis and Jews, Palestinians and Arabs, begin meeting, dialoguing and forming personal connections, they will not be able any more to see each other as abstractions—as shadowy symbols of evil as Boris sees the entire Palestinian/Arab collective. The Oslo process failed in large part because not enough effort was made by both sides to form that web of personal connections. There ought to have been a big organized effort to have Israeli doctors meet Palestinian doctors, teachers meeting teachers, and Israeli and Palestinian scout groups hiking together on both sides of the green line. That it didn’t happen was partly the fault of the Israeli peace camp—much of which preferred to separate from the Palestinians, rather than engage with them as human beings. But if the two sides don’t engage with each other as fellow human beings, they will never trust each other enough to take the very real risks involved in making peace. The failure of Oslo showed that a small elite of diplomats and government officials meeting in Norway and coming up with some complicated agreement is not enough to end a century of hostility. There needs to be sustained grass roots involvement.

How do I know? Because I have taken part in such efforts for years. I was part of a group that brought Israeli and Palestinian youngsters to a summer camp in Spain and watched them connect with each other. It wasn’t easy and there were setbacks, but by the end of the three week session meaningful relationships based on real affection had been formed. I doubt many of those kids were able to keep those connections alive because of the violence that ensued and the sealing of the two populations off from each other. But I believe those kids were changed profoundly by what they experienced and the Israeli ones will never be able to dismiss “them” as “the Other” some form of absolute evil, because they got to know kids named Ahmed and Maha and the Palestinian kids met Moshe and Orly.

And thousands of other brave Israelis and Palestinians who did take part in such efforts were changed and when conditions begin to improve will begin again to push forward on such efforts. Please click the following link for one such effort which has yielded important positive results in stimulating meaningful dialogue between Israeli Jews and Arabs, including rabbis and imams.

Boris, I agree with you that Soviet Jews learned a lot that I did not through their bitter experience over 70 years. You learned how to survive in an inhuman system where your identity as a Jew was denigrated and crushed every day on the pages of Pravda and Izvestia, by hearing the word zhid on the tramvai, being blackballed from MGU and a thousand other insults and hurts. I have enormous respect and love for Soviet Jews for surviving as intact Jews and human beings through all of that and having helped to destroy that system and having become free Jews and human beings. But I would argue strongly that what you endured in the USSR doesn’t make Soviet Jews the ultimate authority on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which goes back decades before Soviet Jews arrived on the scene and has a whole different set of characteristics. The dynamic there is different than the Soviet Union under Stalin or Brezhnev. So it’s not, as you suggest, about being a “good Jew” who kisses the ass of the KPCC. It is about finding a way for the six million Jews of Israel to survive in a part of the world inhabited by hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims. How is that going to happen? Not by force of arms. Despite Boris’ martial instincts we can’t kill or subjugate them all. In fact, it turns out that even the mighty U.S. can’t impose its will on Iraq. Israel cant do it either.

Boris and I may not agree on much, but we share a belief in Israel’s moral right to exist over the Arabs’ moral right to destroy it. From the time I spent a year in Israel at the age of 12 back in 1962 (do the math), I have known in my gut that if Israel were to be destroyed I would not want to go on living. The question is how do we ensure Israel’s survival—by Boris’ way or mine? It is clear to me that the only way to guarantee Israel’s survival in the long term is through reconciliation with its neighbors and that egregious and unnecessary acts like grabbing their land, building settlements and holding people in cities like Hebron and Nablus under perpetual military occupation is not the way to achieve such a reconciliation.

Boris starts telling us about admittedly terrible acts committed by Palestinians, like tearing apart the bodies of Jews and demands if there has been even one such case among Jews. Yes, I remember a mob in Bet Shean back in the 80’s tearing apart several Arabs who carried out a bombing attack in a local market. Their fury was understandable, but yes, it did happen. Jews did tear Arabs into pieces. Nor can it be said that Jews have never murdered Arabs in cold blood just because they are Arabs, have never beaten or humiliated them just because they are Arabs. What about Baruch Goldstein or Ami Popper who methodically mowed down innocent Arabs? What about members of the Jewish underground in the West Bank who plotted to blow up a Palestinian school in Jerusalem? What about West Bank settlers who behave sadistically toward Arabs, use every opportunity to humiliate and enrage them, and delight in hacking down their olive groves? What about Israeli soldiers and Border Police who have been shown on many occasions to have unnecessarily killed Palestinians? What about soldiers at checkpoints who have prevented Palestinian women In labor from reaching hospitals on time; have allowed Palestinians who have heart attacks from getting to hospitals—allowing quite a few to die right there at the checkpoints.

So, Boris, don’t give me your self-righteous yerunda that the other side are stick figures of absolute evil and we are so clean and pure. The truth is that ongoing conflict causes cruelty by both sides, causes both sides to dehumanize the other to the point where it is easy to kill them, either with suicide bombs or katushyas on the Palestinian side or by dropping bombs from the sky or shooting live artillery fire into civilian areas of Gaza on the Israeli side. We do not destroy Muslim shrines? Well, Israeli extremists have been plotting for decades now to blow up the Dome of the Rock to make way for the third temple. The Shin Bet arrested a whole bunch of them back in the early 80’s when the plot had gotten to a serious point, but most served short jail terms or none at all.

We don’t engage in all the terrorist acts Boris lists that the Palestinians have committed? True, we don’t need to emply terrorism because we have a strong army to enforce a 40 year occupation on the Palestinians. They don’t have an army so they conduct their struggle by other means—very ugly ones. But how many Israelis and how many Palestinians were killed during the intifada? Four or five times as many Palestinians were killed and a big percentage of them were not terrorists but innocent civilians who got killed when the IDF turned downtown Gaza or Nablus into free-fire zones. Can you have the least bit of compassion for any of those victims, Boris? They too are human beings.

So there is great cruelty and acts of murderous violence on both sides and there will continue to be until the two sides find a way to end this horror. Many brave Israelis and Palestinians understand this and have tried to reach out to each other across the barricades. They understand that there can be no winners in the mutual bloodletting; only the blighting of the lives of this generation, the next and the one after that. It is indeed very unfortunate that so many ex-Soviet Jews are coming into this situation with the attitude that war is the only way because given the demographic weight of ex-Soviet aliyah, if those attitudes continue, it will make even further off the day that the two peoples reach reconciliation.

And finally, yes, with all my affection for Russian Jews, let me say directly that people who were dehumanized as zhidi and oppressed as a people, should not dehumanize and oppress another people. It is understandable why that happens, but it is shortsighted and morally wrong. Jews are not evil and Palestinians are not evil. They are two peoples claiming the same piece of land for the past 100 years and fighting each other for it. The experience of the last 100 years shows that neither side can vanquish the other. So despite the present day horror and bloodletting, despite militance and fundamentalism on both sides, sooner or later, there will be another serious attempt to find a way to peace. Our job, for the sake of the children of both Israel and Palestine, is to do whatever we can to make that day sooner rather than later.

Walter

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N.J. public high school teacher: If you dont accept Jesus, you'll go to hell

for those in the Russian Jewish community who continue to believe that right-wing Christian fundamentalists are our best friends and allies, check out this piece from the NY Times about an 11th grade public school teacher in Kearny, just across the river from Manhattan, who taught his students that dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark and that people who dont believe in Jesus go straight to hell. And kol hakavod to the feisty student who taped the teacher's ramblings and put them on the Internet. Questions to lovers of the Christian fundies; what if your child had been in that class and forced to listen to his/her teacher affirm that Jews are doomed to eternal hellfire?

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Avigdor Lieberman's press conference

Avigdor Lieberman’s ‘press conference’ before the Russian language media at the Israeli Consulate in New York last week was one of the stranger media events this reporter has covered in over 30 years in the business—an ‘off the record’ press conference.

First, a cross section of New York’s Russian leadership attended the event, so that it had more of the feeling of a political rally than a press conference. The attitude toward Lieberman by nearly all of those in attendance was utterly reverential, and anything he would have said or done would have been greeted with cries of approval.

What Lieberman did was to confound expectation. The guy with a reputation as a loud mouth loose cannon given to making outrageous statements spoke in a soft monotone and said little that was controversial, Secondly, after giving opening remarks of about five minutes that were a repeat of things he had said many times before, Lieberman then said that everything he would say from that point on in response to questions from reporters would have to be ‘off the record’. Turn off your tape recorders and put away your cameras, members of the media.

Say what? An off the record press conference? Well, not exactly, because in response to cries of protest from several reporters, Lieberman grudgingly agreed that we lowly scribes could report what he said in general terms, as long as he wasn’t quoted directly. Or at least that was what he appeared to say in Russian, even though Israeli Consul General Aryeh Mekel, who was sitting alongside Lieberman but doesn’t speak Russian, said that Lieberman told him in Hebrew that his press conference was totally off the record, which meant that Lieberman’s name shouldn’t be anywhere in anything we should write—let him be referred to as a high government official or some such nonsense. But then, Lieberman didn’t say a lot that would make for good headlines anyway. So, what the hell, I’ll take my chances and briefly describe Lieberman’s remarks for the readers of Ruby Jewsday.

In a nutshell, Lieberman was selling himself in his new guise as the minister responsible for confronting the Iranian threat, and therefore as now being above the grubby details of politics; the staunchest defender not only of Israel’s survival, but of all of western civilization. Quite a portfolio for a boy from Kishinev who just a few years ago was directing thugs to rough up anti-Bibi delegates at the Likud convention! The situation today, Lieberman said, is like Munich 1938, and the West needs to stand united in full solidarity with Israel, rather than appeasing the anti-Semitic fanatics, which, he seemed to imply, is the course of sellouts like James Baker and the Iran Study Group. Lieberman said (and this clearly would have been the best sound bite of the press conference if we reporters could have used it), that the United States has the military strength to deal with Iran, but probably not enough political will. Elite opinion understands the great danger from Iran, but public opinion in the US doesn’t get it and is in a dangerously pacifist mood. It was not an issue of Republicans necessarily being more resolute than Democrats, he emphasized. He met with Tom Lantos and his namesake, Joe Lieberman on this trip, and they both are very tough on Iran.

So how can you serve in the government of a weakling like Olmert, Lieberman was asked by a hard-line reporter from one of the local Russian newspapers? I’m doing it for the sake of the national interest, not for my own political interest, Lieberman replied, his eyes turned reverentially upward. As though he is the only politician in Israel who puts the national interest over his own and as though going into the government did not give him a powerful leg up on Bibi in the contest to be the leader of the right in Israel. No, this Lieberman is a real tzaddik.

The main thing is to build a wall to wall coalition against the fanatics, extremists and Holocaust-deniers in Teheran, everything else is secondary. It’s a question of To Be or Not To Be. He has a point in that, what with the detestable Ahmedinijad riding high and hosting Holocaust denying scum like David Duke, but it is mildly troubling that someone like Lieberman who has taken some extremist positions himself, such as reading Israeli Arabs out of the national community even though they have been part of Israel far longer than himself and other ex-Soviet Jews, should be positioned at the head of that effort. Extremism against extremism.

Asked how Russian Jews in America can help in that effort, Lieberman said they should mobilize all of their efforts to influence the American Jewish community, Congress and the White House, to confront Iran and not allow it to develop a bomb. The hour is late and we all have to join in the effort.

Overall, it was an impressive showing, even with the annoying ‘off the record’ gambit. The guy is obviously a hell of a smart politician and seemed to confirm my prophecy of a few months ago that he will moderate his positions as he gets closer to power. He has certainly gone mainstream now, meeting with Condy Rice, Joe Lieberman and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Anyway, he sure knows how to knock reporters off stride, scratching our heads and trying to figure out whether he was really off the record or not. Frankly, I’m still not sure I might not get a visit from the Mossad for putting this material on my blog. If it happens, dear readers, you will be the first to know.

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Alive and well

I'm alive and well, but pulled in seven directions by deadlines. I hope to respond to Boris Gorbis and give delayed account of Lieberman over next 24 hours.

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Boris Gorbis: The Bag of Flower Seeds or The Sad Disorder of Moral Blindness

Here is the latest offering by Boris Gorbis, a leader of the Russian community of Los Angeles, who published here last month his dialogue with an unnamed American Jewish leader. In his new piece, Boris takes me on directly; responding to my recent postings on the Jewish Russian Telegraph and explaining why he thinks I am a nice guy but a victim of the sad disorder of moral blindness. I think Boris is a nice guy too--we spent a fun hour together, but didnt get a chance yet to do some serious vodka drinking, no nadeus skora budit chance ili ve New York, L.A., Tel Avivi, ili mojen byit v'Krimu. For all that, I think Boris has a "sad disorder" also, as do other Russian Jewish siloviki; an overdose of self-righteousness, a tendency to see the world in the starkest black and white terms and a willingness to declare Middle East wars from Los Angeles and Boston that Israeli boys and girls will have to fight. But let me share Boris' piece here and I'll respond at greater length in next 24 hours or so. By the way, I saw Avigdor Lieberman today--a not very informative meeting he had with the Russian media and leadership--and will post a short piece on that later tonight.


THE BAG OF FLOWER SEEDS OR THE SAD DISORDER OF MORAL BLINDNESS


When I came home this evening I had plans other than responding to Walter Ruby’s yet another installment on the issue of Russian Jews and their position on the Arab/Palestinian-Jewish/Israeli conflict. But his piece left me so puzzled that I could not resist and put all things aside.


First, I think Walter, a decent fellow; a skilled and emotional journalist suffers greatly. He knows the Middle East; he is Jewish and he loves Israel. Not the Israel that exists but the one built on romantic biblical notions of the lamb peacefully co-existing with the lion. Since this is a mental construct, an emotional mirage, Walter’s despair is apparent. In our brief encounter this year in Tel Aviv he shared with me his dream - that of a people’s diplomacy where peace is established one on one, peace between men and women of similar or different backgrounds with only one common bond – desire to end hostilities and live in peace, side by side. A peace that gives all children a bomb free lunch time and one that lasts forever.


I barely resisted from telling him what association his narrative brought up. Now is the time.


When I settled in San Francisco in 1975, a leading Russian newspaper there published a front page article under this heading: “The Bold Plan to End the Cold War”. A woman with a White Russian background offered this comprehensive idea: (quoting and condensing from memory) “Cold War is a terrible thing leading to much unnecessary suffering. Russian children are dying in droves from hunger and American farmers overproduce wheat. Russian women are forced to work hard and know no leisure but American women’s spare time is filled with fear of a nuclear attack. It is all a result of the absence of contacts between people. Now, I have a plan. Let every American family buy a bag of flower seeds and send it to a Russian family. When spring comes and flowers begin to bloom the Russian family sitting on a porch would look at the dazzling flower cover and tell its government: “Americans are nice people. We do not need to fight them. Let us make peace”


Unlike the utopian lady with her bag of seeds, Walter Ruby is contagious. His views are shared by many who genuinely profess love of Israel which often hides their disgust and hatred of the way things are there. For some (not for Walter, I hope) this follows the Gorbis’ Law of Hatred which states that: “The intensity of hatred is in direct relationship to the degree of closeness: the closer the identification, the stronger the rejection.” For many, (and I hope not for Walter) it plays out like this: “See those ugly Israelis? I am better! To prove it to myself, I shall spare no one, not even my closest relatives and friends to point out how bad they are, how wrong are their deeds and I shall spare no effort in criticizing and exposing them, for as a Jew I have the right, indeed an obligation, to do so.”

Unlike Walter and his generation of American Jews (and non-Jews) we have seen a large number of these “good Jews” pander to the Party, to the KGB, even to the school officials. Yes, Walter, we, ex-Soviet Jews, “geniuses of JRT” have seen and learned more in our schools than you did. We learned that the desire to be a “good Jew” is not at the expense of being a Jew; it is at the expense of being a moral human.


I know that as a reviewer of Israel, Walter Ruby has a very different view of morality than I do. My morality encompasses three simple principles. First, I believe that it is amoral to think of others before you attend to the needs of those closest to you. Second, I believe that we judge people by what they do, not by what they say. And finally, I believe that not all cultures and their moralities are created equal. The culture of cannibals in Tasmania may be a fascinating study (some tribes only eat strangers and some only eat their own) but it is a repugnant culture and I could easily call it evil. As a Westerner, Walter Ruby, is a relativist, an intended carrier of the ideas of “multiculturalism” an ideology that pronounces all cultures, all morals, and all national aspirations equally valid and thus equally moral.


I abhor this nonsense. I believe in the existence of “good” and “bad”. In fact, I believe in the existence of educated and loquacious people who cannot accept the “evil” among strangers but could easily identify it among their own. In my world view, it is amoral not to demand the victory of a superior morality over the evil one. I have thus the right, indeed an obligation, to claim that Israel’s moral right to exist is superior to that of the Arab world’s moral duty to extinguish Jewish presence in the Middle East (for starters). Therefore, I conclude that it is moral to use every means at our disposal to assure that the Jewish good triumphs and the evil is defeated.


Let me make it clear. I do not compare the death tolls or the sufferings on both sides. To me, they are different for they come from different causes. I do not wish the death and destruction of buildings but to me a destruction of an ancestral Arab home that nurtured a suicide murderer is acceptable and moral whereas the Katyusha rocket hit of an apartment building in Israel is not. This is the initial asymmetry that caused Walter Ruby to give me an unearned (but now treasured) sobriquet of a self-appointed “chacham”. Walter thought that he was asking me a caustically rhetorical question when he wrote: “Again, I ask Boris what makes him such a great chacham, such an authority on the desires, hopes and morals of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims?” I and most of those who read this must regrettably declare that we are.


We are indeed unwilling experts on Palestinian, Arab and Muslim actions and thus of their hopes, desires and aspirations. We witnessed the mad crowd prying out the body of a Russian Jewish soldier from the Joseph’s tomb and tearing it apart, piece by piece. We saw the ten (and some) odd pieces of bodies of two young Jewish men who missed their turn and wound up disembodies by a crowd in an Arab town some 10 miles from Jerusalem. Have anyone ever seen a Jewish mob tearing up a human? Anyplace? Anywhere? We did not see Jewish kindergartens and schools teaching children how to be martyrs (shahids) to drive the Jews from Palestine. The Arabs have them. We do not have a charter calling for the destruction of a single Arab state, as the Arab world has for the “Zionist entity.” Our invisible world does not order us to either convert or destroy the infidels after they reject conversion thrice. The Muslim world hears and follows these instructions. We do not declare our shrines and sacred cities off-limits to the infidels, but I challenge any non-Muslim to try to enter Mecca or Medina. Our Hasidim do not use explosive laden automobiles to blow up crowds at a market only because it is frequented by the Reform. The Sunnis do it to the Shiites and the Shiites obligingly reciprocate. We do not destroy Arab shrines or for that matter cultural monument of other religions. It is the Koran-thumping Talibs (future Muslim scholars) that blew up the 2,000 year-old colossal Buddhas in Afghanistan.


Jews do not kill European cinematographers for the documentary about Jewish women. The Euro-Arabs do. We do not firebomb buildings or kill nuns in retribution for publishing cartoons of Moses. This belongs to the Muslim realm of aspirations. Our culture does not bestow sainthood on those who blow themselves up in pizzerias or restaurants to kill Arab teens. We do not blow up Arab buses aiming at the early working crowd for maximum effect. Jews do not dig tunnels to smuggle weapons to our Jewish comrades shooting from behind the security of children’s housing in Gaza. We did not see Israeli vehicles painted in UN colors to abduct Arab soldiers. We did not see Israeli college graduates overthrow a wheel-chair bound invalid overboard, nor did we ever commandeer an ocean liner to demand the release of Jewish guerrillas. We are the experts on airline highjackings because we were the victims of Arab morality and remain the targets today.


How easy it is to forget the past and pretend that only the future holds correct answers. How easy it is to argue with Walter Ruby whose criteria of correctness is having an epiphany of “seriously dialoguing” or “considerable amount of interaction with ‘the enemy’. “ Contrary to Walter’s assertion I do not believe that the other side is a “demonic species”. I just cannot help but notice that very often they have behaved like one. Thus our ‘considerable amount of interaction’ is a public record and contrary to another Walter’s admonition, that “no side has a monopoly on truth” we shall hold tight on to the knowledge of what is. When the rest of the world, and my friend Walter Ruby, remembers what it conveniently ignores, it will be the day of peace. Until then we must fight. That is the only hope for our survival. Everything else is flower seeds for the morally blind.


Boris Gorbis

Los Angeles

December 11, 2006

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Ha'aretz editorial

Thanks to everyone who has written in past several days. I will be responding to some of those letters to me in next several days after I get past immediate journalistic deadline. It is gratifying to see this discussion forum catching on. In the meantime, please check out this editorial from today's Ha'aretz. Why am I posting it here? Because it is an important statement from the most eloquent representative of the Israeli peace camp of outrage at the grotesque travesty of Holocaust denial and calls for Israel's destruction coming out of Teheran and a call for all Israelis, Jews and lovers of justice, left and right, to unite against the threat from Iran. Secondly, it is worth considering for all those here who are convinced that the peace camp is weak and will not stand up for Israel's security and basic interests. To believe we have to reach a solution that accords basic justice to the Palestinians does not mean one will not stand up for Israel's honor and security.

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my latest posting on the Jewish Russian Telegraph on the situation in Israel

Please see my latest posting on the Jewish Russian Telegraph, the Boston-based right-wing Russian Jewish blog. I was responding to about seven postings responding to an earlier posting of my own. Check out the whole interchange at www.jrtelegraph.com


I would like to thank everyone who responded to my last posting on JRT and look forward to continuing discussing these issues, both on JRT and rubyjewsday.com. Again, everyone is welcome to come and post on my blog as well.

Let me respond to a few of the points made by my interlocutors. JRT editor Greg Margolin, who I enjoyed interviewing together with Alex Koifman when I did a story on the controversy between the Boston Jewish establishment and Russian Jewish leaders a couple of years ago, asks why I bring in the concept of silnaya ruka or iron hand, given that he did not mention it in the JRT piece I was critiquing. True, but it seems to me that the whole approach of JRT is silnaya ruka, the premise that Israel can solve all of its problems with the Palestinians, Arabs and whole Muslim world, with brute force and military might. Just hit them hard enough and win more military victories and they will give up and accept permanent Israeli control of the occupied territories and all the settlements Israel wants to build.

The problem is that approach has been tried for 40 years and hasn't worked. That was Arik Sharon's whole approach for decades until he became prime minister and had the ultimate responsibility for Israel's destiny and then got a sudden jolt of cowardice or insanity or whatever Greg wants to call it and became a lefty/softy. Same with Olmert who was also a lifelong Likudnik. Same thing with Bibi when he was actually in power and not on the outside shouting right-wing slogans. And I guarantee that the same thing will happen with Lieberman if he ever comes to power.

So why do you suppose all the heroes of the Israeli right suddenly come down with cowardice or insanity when they reach power? Because they have to deal with the reality that there are less than six million Jews, versus hundreds of millions of Arabs and 1.3 billion Muslims. Because of this reality, plus the fact that the West, including the U.S. will not write off all of its own interests in order to allow Israel to impose its will on the entire Arab-Muslim world, Israel will NEVER be able to follow the JRT approach to the conflict. That was true in 1967 and 1973 and 1982 and 1993 and 2000 and its just as true today.

Sure, Greg, you and I as Diaspora Jews both have a right to criticize Israel's leaders and I've done my share of that too. Nevertheless, as I wrote, its very easy to sit in Boston and suggest smugly that Olmert, like every other Israeli leader who ever existed, must be either a coward or insane because they don't 'get' what is so self-evident to the geniuses of the JRT; that brute force is the answer. But, with due respect, that hardly can be called a serious analysis.


Writing in a simlar vein, Gene calls Olmert and company "criminals", whereas Vladimir from Minneapolis implies that Olmert's approach is "appeasement" and asks me to give one example of a time when appeasement worked. Well, I hardly see Olmert's policies as appeasement; on the contrary, I see him as trying to give the absolute minumum of land for the maximum of peace. I dont think his plan will work, but for the opposite reason you do. I think that ultimately Israel will have to go back very close to the 67 boundaries and share Jerusalem with an independent Palestinian state if it wants to achieve peace.

Vladimir notes mournfully that ultimately all peoples deserve the leaders they elect, even leaders like Olmert and Peretz. That seems to me again a way of saying that he and other JRT participants understand better than Israelis what is good for them. Kol hakavod, Vladimir and Yekhil that you have sons serving in the IDF, but that doesnt make you a better strategist than either of the crazy cowards presently at the top of the Israeli government.

My friend Boris Gorbis again treats us again to his conviction that "the needs, desires and hopes of most of the Jews and Arabs, of Israelis and Palestinians, are not symmetrical. These belong to entirely different planes of reference. Our fundamental moral rights and theirs moral do not intersect." Again, I ask Boris, what makes him such a great chacham, such an authority, on the desires, hopes and morals of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims? I doubt whether Boris has ever seriously dialogued with any of the above. My own sense, based on a considerable amount of interaction with 'the enemy' is that Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians are all human beings and as human beings have many of the same desires and hopes, for peace, security, success and prosperity. But Boris is convinced the other side are another species entirely--a demonic one.

Finally, my friend Alex Koifman, offers me the following advise: "If you want to understand our community - just sit & listen. Like a student in elementary school." Well, Alex, I have sat and listened and I am still listening and learning, buit also respectfully exchanging ideas with members of the Russian Jewish community as well. As I said, I love and respect Russian Jews, and have since I first began interacting with them back in 1980, but I dont think they have a monopoly on all the wisdom in the world. I would suggest that just as both American Jews and sabras have plenty to learn from Russian Jews--and both have often behaved in an unforgivably patronizing, condescending way toward Russian Jews-that Russian Jews also have plenty to learn from American Jews and sabras as well. No side has a monopoly on the truth, but each side has some pieces of it.

Russian Jews have enriched my life in many wonderful ways, and I understand how the historical experience of Russian Jews shaped the sglad, the mindset, many express here on the JRT (I have known Russian Jewish peaceniks as well, but acknowledge there is a pronounced tendency toward hakishness). But it is exactly because I like and respect this community so much that I reach out and say, 'I think that sglad as it relates to Israel and the Palestinians is a dead end that, if followed, will only dig Israelis, including one million Russian Jews in Israel, deeper into endless conflict.

Anyway, thanks for the chance to dialogue with you and and let us pray together for the peace of Jerusalem.

Walter

Continued...

On Bloomy and the Islamic Center of Long Island

More thoughts on Mayor Bloomberg and on a wonderful evening I spent last weekend at the annual dinner of the Islamic Center of Long IslandAn anonymous person responded to my posting on Mike Bloomberg asking how I could say, "I'm not a Bloomy fan." Well, I agree he has done a better than expected job, he's proven very compentent, though I dont see a lot of compassion on his part for those who aren't sharing in prosperity, for those who cant afford their rent and could end up in the streets. I specifically begrudge him the heavy handed police tactics he employed during a major anti-war march in February 2003 just before the beginning of the Iraq war (the police forced a crowd of 100,000 or more onto sidewalks, waded through the crowd with horses in a way that could have caused panic and stampeding and prevented most of the marchers, including myself, from reaching the destination and hear the speeches despite having given authorization), his mass arrests of protesters during the GOP Convention and then holding protestors illegally for up to 72 hours. Those were police state tactics that Bloomy employed to kiss up to and prove his Republican bona-fides to George Bush and I dont forgove and forget so easily when a politician blithely violates citizens' First Amendment rights to petition the government in the public square and puts the lives of thousands at risk with thuggish police tactics.

I went this weekend as a guest to the annual dinner of the Islamic Center of Long Island (ICLI) about which I wrote in the Jewish Week when that institution was attacked as "extremist" by Cong Peter King, despite having been involved in outreach efforts to the Long Island Jewish community for 15 years (they held a joint Ramadan-Succot event this year) and despite having denoounced the 9-11 attacks and terrorism in general. Farouque Khan, a founder and the chairman of the board of ICLI, took part in a highly praised trip to Israel this year together with two rabbis, several Catholic priests and Jewish, Muslim and Catholic high school students. The mosque is overwhelmingly composed of professionals (especially doctors and lawyers), mostly from India and Pakistan. Nassau District attorney Kathleen Rice showed up to praise the mosque and its leaders and members, and to condemn Peter King's attacks, as did King's defeated rival in the recent congressional race, Dave Mejias, as well as did Rabbi Jerome Davidson of Temple Beth-El in Great Neck, and other clergypeople. The leading imam at ICLI told attendees that it is not enought for Muslims to be loyal American citizens; they need to stop thinking in terms of 'them' and 'us' because "We Americans are all in one boat."


Sitting in the audience at the event, and enjoying a wonderful meal and warm hospitality with my gracious and welcoming hosts, I thought about how far they were from the demonic description of Muslims habitually tossed around in the Russian media; in places like the Jewish Russian Telegraph and by a recent guest columnist on this blog, Boris Gorbis of LA, who wrote in part;

"Our individual system of values has at its core two beliefs: One - every life is sacred and two – subject to the rule of law, each person has autonomy over his or her actions. The Muslim world’s system of values is different – it rests on two symmetrically opposite propositions. First, infidels spread spiritual and physical uncleanliness and, second, Koran obligates every faithful Muslim to stop the infidel’s sacral uncleanliness by conversion or annihilation.”

So what am I to make of the dissonance between my own life experience, which has included many wonderful, personally enriching encounters with Muslims, in the U.S. Israel and countries like Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Senegal,and Boris' flat assertion that believing Muslims are all out to destroy us? I wonder again how many personal encounters Boris has had with Muslims and how he came to his conclusion that every faithful Muslim must either try to convert or annihilate non-Muslims (None of the hundreds of Muslims with whom I have had personal encounters in my life have sought to do either). Yes, there is a big problem with Islamic extremism in the world, yes, we all know what happened on 9/11, yes, I worry deeply about Islamic rejectionism vis a vis Israel, but the worst mistake we can make is to tar all Muslims with one brush; to essentially say, there is nothing to say to Muslims, they are our blood enemy y fsyo (thats it). It is so incredibly important to build bridges between the Russian community and moderate Muslims; to stop mutual demonology and help people on both sides to be aware that we are all human beings and have to find a way to live side by side in peace and hopefully, with ever growing personal contact, whether in Midwood, Brooklyn or in Israel.

Continued...