The 90`s

What about our inherent and inalienable rights

Note:Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of January 26th - February 1st, 1994

Samuel Bronston died on January 12th.  He was not exactly a household name. Bronston was a big-time Hollywood movie producer.  Some of his epics include Jack London, Fall of the Roman Empire and El Cid.

You may remember El Cid, it was one of those grandiose Hollywood blockbusters, set in the past and featuring both a cast of thousands and Charlton Heston in the title role.  Sophia Loren was in the movie, too.

Heston, as always, played a giant larger-than-life hero who leads his people from bondage to freedom and whose fame is so widespread, he becomes legendary even among his enemies.

El Cid takes place in the Middle Ages during the Spanish Reconquista (or, reconquest) of the Iberian Peninsula from the marauding Moors.  You may recall your European history - the Moors, Arabs, really, invaded Spain around the same time they were plundering, or trying to plunder to rest of the known world in the seventh and eighth centuries.  The Moors did a pretty good job of pushing the Romanized Spaniards back practically into France. In what a became a Catholic Holy War, the Spanish undertook the Reconquista to drive-out the Moors and reclaim Iberia for the Spanish and the Catholic Church.  This effort took over 600 years, culminating in the fall of Grenada and the unification of Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella.

The Spanish Reconquista is depicted in nearly every history book as having a high patina of piety  - being enshrined as one of Western Europe's most noble achievements - an accomplishment whose legitimacy it would be heresay to question.

Last month, The New York Times Magazine, that bastion of pro-Palestinian sensibilities ran an essay by a Professor Anton Shammas where the history of the land of Israel was allowed to be perverted to afford the Palestinian Arabs an opportunity to bolster their case for their national rights.  Shammas invoked an example from the Reconquista, quoting the tale of a Palestinian Arab woman who still held the keys to their home, vacated some 500 years ago in Grenada along with current stories of people holding the keys to houses in Jaffa. He bemoans the plight of his people while never accepting an iota of responsibility for the naked aggression and Jew-hatred that caused their woes.

It is time to cast the re-establishment of the State of Israel in terms of a Reconquista.  Our modern history basically tells a tale of return and the purchase of land with the kopeks dropped into JNF puskkas - but let's be frank about some hard truths:

It must be recognized, and we must educate everyone far and wide that there was never a time during the past 3,400 years when Jews have not lived in the Land of Israel.  There has never been any time in Jewish history when the Jewish people ever ceded or disavowed its claim to sovereignty to the Land of Israel. 

The Jewish People have been engaged in nothing less than a reconquest.  We've had to reconquer the land inch-by-inch from desert and swamp, from ruin to ruin.  We've had to reconquer the Jewish spirit from despair, weakness and hopelessness to pride, bravery and a future.  We've also had to fight against terrorism and war.

If you were to ask many of the so-called refugees from 1948 they will be hard-pressed to document residence in the land beyond a hundred years.  This is also why Palestinians come in many different shades of skin complexion.

Recognizing autonomy for the Palestinian Arabs is akin to the U.S. declaring amnesty for illegal aliens as it did a few years ago - it merely recognizes realities on-the-ground, but it doesn't make it legitimate or sovereign.  Visigoths sacking Rome didn't make Rome Visigoths.

The key difference between the Likud and Labor view toward autonomy for the Arabs is this: Likud at no time was or is willing to cede basic sovereignty over the land and its resources, while labor is busy serving as the midwife for a Palestinian State.  Likud would allow the Arabs to run their local community affairs, not a nation.

Yasser Arafat writes to Rabin on a letterhead printed "President of Palestine" on top.  The autonomy will be called the "Palestine National Authority." Their police force, 30,000-man-strong will be the "National Guard."  They will patrol borders, have an FBI and CIA, issue currency (whether Israel likes it or not) and stamps, they'll fly their flags everywhere and preach Israel's ultimate destruction nightly on their own TV news.

Labor's intense secularism negates the inherent holiness of the Jewish Reconquista of the Land of Israel and we have been remiss in imparting the sacred nature of the re-establishment of our independence.  Ours is no less sacred than the Spanish Reconquista - it just took us a longer time to accomplish than it did for the Spanish. And our current government is ceding Grenada to the Moors. Even the way Israel presents itself in the negotiations paints the Jews as a quasi-colonizing power.

Unless we start talking about our inherent and inalienable rights in Israel - and start believing it - we will be setting the stage for the next round when the PLO State will demand the repatriation of Jaffa, Ramle, Haifa and Nazareth.

The 90`s

Disagree? Yes! Bomb? No!

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of January 19th - January 25th, 1994

Some Jews wanted the New Year to get off with a bang.  In the dead-of-night two weeks ago a pair of crude homemade bombs were left at the front doors to two Midtown Manhattan office buildings by groups cryptically identifying themselves as "The Maccabee Squad" and the "Shield of David."  These makeshift weapons were apparently placed to protest the Rabin-Arafat accord and their attendant provisions. 

Among the Jewish groups with offices in the targeted buildings are the New Israel Fund, a far-left leaning charity in that dispenses money to "progressive" causes in Israel; Americans for Progressive Israel and the Progressive Zionist Caucus to name a few.

Let me say right-off-the-bat that I probably disagree with just about every position adhered to and advocated by these groups concerning the peace process, and that I am as anguished as many Jews are over the dangers facing Israel now, but this is not the point.

What is the point? The point is simply this: You can't go around physically attacking people who disagree with you.

These would-be "defenders of Israel" from the "Maccabee Squad" ought to wake-up and smell the coffee - New York 1994 isn't British Mandatory Palestine 1944.  We are not engaged in a struggle against the Police Department for our freedom and independence. We American Jews are merely spectators of the Israeli scene.  We can offer encouragement and support (on both the right and left) but as Benjamin Netanyahu has said, it is not for American Jews to insinuate themselves into Israeli policy making unless American Jews decide to make aliyah and become Israeli citizens.

Israel is a democracy and the nature of democracy is that sometimes in the marketplace of public opinion, you lose.  Such was the case in the last election and although I didn't like the outcome, it is not for U.S. Jews to get all holier-than-thou while sitting in Manhattan or Boca Raton.  Netanyahu has said that the Likud will use all "legitimate means, and I stress legitimate, to block this accord." This is their duty as the opposition in a parliament - and you won't see any internecine fighting other than debate coming from the Likud benches.   This is best epitomized by the words of Menachem Begin, who, in 1948, at a time of great betrayal by the Labor forces which resulted in the deaths of many Likudniks said, "in no circumstances will we use arms against our fellow Jews."

I challenge these "brave" bombers to demonstrate real courage - make aliyah and join the Israeli army if you feel that strongly about defending Israel, otherwise joining the rest of American Jewry and confine your activities to discourse, education, public relations and philanthropy.

In some non-Jewish wedding ceremonies the preacher intones, "What God has joined together, let no man tear asunder."  The Jewish people cannot afford fratricide. We are still beset on all sides by antipathy. Only by remaining one people can we hope to survive the vicissitudes, many dangerous, that confront us both in Israel and around the world.

As to groups such as the New Israel fund, I don't have to like their program, but they equally don't have to like mine.  If you see things our way, donate money to them. If you see things our way, contribute to groups such as the Jerusalem Reclamation Project, American friends of Ariel or the YESHA fund which benefits the communities in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan.  All these groups have an equal right to their point-of-view, to their ability to operate unhindered by violence or the threats thereof and all are entitled to the mutual respect that says we all have the right to believe as we choose.

Families may disagree, they may even fight, but all this is done out of love.  There is no place within the scope of Ahavat Yisrael - the Love of Israel and the Jewish people for brother to harm brother.  Those adhering to the beliefs of Jabotinsky and Begin would not have it any other way.

The 90`s

Investment in U.S. Jewry a necessity

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of November 3rd -9th, 1993

I remember a conversation I had some years back with then Defense Minister Moshe Arens.  "American Jewish fundraising is more important for American Jews than it is for Israelis," Arens asserted during a conversation on the state of U.S. Jewry.  What did he mean by that? He went on to say that all of the nearly $1 billion raised by U.S. Jewry and sent to Israel, this only amounted to a minute fraction of Israel's Fross Domestic Product and was really just a ripple in its economic stream.  Arens posited that fundraising for Israel did more for American Jews and their sense of self-identification and purpose than it did for Israel. He added that without Israel and a myriad of crises, what would American Jews do?

Arens made these statements several years ago before the recent blast-off of srael's economy into the First World stratosphere.  Last year, for example, Israel's economic growth rate exceeded six percent -- the highest in the industrialized world, surpassing Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the European Community.  The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) has doubled in value each of the past two years and foreign investment is pouring in. Israelis bought a record number of new automobiles, (over 200,000) color TVs, VCRs and more.  More than one million Israelis traveled abroad last year, another record.

Israelis now shop at American-style shopping malls like Diesengroff Center in Tel Aviv, the Canion Ayalon Mall in Ramat Gan and the Canion Jerusalem Mall, the largest mall in the Middle East.   Israelis attend multiplex movie theaters, rent videos from video rental stores, eat at McDonald's, Wendy's, Pizza Hut, quaff quantities of Pepsi and Coke and dress better and more stylishly than ever before.  Michael Jackson, Madonna, Elton John, Bob Dylan and more have had no trouble garnering up to $50 per seat at their recent concerts. In short, Israel is no Third World developing country. The per-capita income of Israelis is very, very close behind the nations of Mediterranean Europe (Greece, Portugal, Southern Italy) and the range od social services provided by the government makes it an extremely progressive place to live.

I have always said that it is somewhat of a good thing that only 20 percent of American Jews have been to Israel, because if more went for a visit, they would find no nation of beggars, sand dines, tanks and daily combat.  The biggest daily combat these days are the legions of car-bound commuters slugging it out on Highway Four from Greater Tel Aviv (many, many office building) and the new suburbs in it periphery. In fact, the recently released study of the Greater New York Jewish Community by UJA/Federation indicates there are 145,000 Jews living below  the poverty line right here in our own backyard and the majority of American Jews are just living a middle class lifestyle.

Israel feels so flush that it isn't asking for any U.S. aid to relocate its troops as a consequence of the Rabin-Peres-Arafat pact, even though this will cost an estimated $175 million.  It gets even better, Israel is donating $25 million this year to international $650 million fund to aid the new Palestinian autonomy!

So, then, without a crisis looming over Israel every day, without Israelis scrounging around to make ends meet, what are we American Jews to do? What are we to do with our nearly $1 billion in annual largesse that's currently going to the Holy Land?

Israelis remind me of the prototypical Jewish businessman as often spooked by Jackie Mason -- when asking an American Jewish businessman or professional, "So, how's business?" the businessman will reply, "oh, terrible, terrible, you shouldn't know from my tzurris."  All this while he business lives in Great Neck, Park Avenue or wherever and is driving a new Jaguar. Israelis moan, but the fact of the matter is they have a healthy economy with low inflation, high output and a reasonably good standard of living for all its citizens.

American Jewry does need a purpose, but looking to save Israel may not be our Holy Grail anymore.  we are extremely skilled at raising charity, but in the process we bear witness to the impeding disintegration of American Jewry due to aging, intermarriage (50 percent outside of New York) lack of synagogue membership and lack of Jewish education.  We are not a community that is growing by any objective or empirical standard.

Here’s what we ought to do:

We should declare an American Jewish Marshall Plan -- let's call it "Operation Survival" or something grandiose like that.  Let's publicize this war and wide as American Jewry's confronting its own battle for existence, its own battle for its very life.

We need o shift at least half the funds currently making its way to Israel and spend them here in the U.S.  We need to alleviate domestic Jewish poverty. We need to buttress our institutions of Jewish education. We must allocate the funding to ensure that every Jewish child who wants it can attend a full-time Jewish day school -- one of the only effective weapons we have against assimilation.  The Catholic Church maintains a far more extensive school network than we do. There's absolutely no excuse for the majority of Jewish kids to attend public schools if we can offer a viable alternative.

We must allocate funds to ensure that every American Jewish teenager gets an opportunity to visit Israel before they get to college.  This will strengthen bonds between Israel and a new generation of U.S. Jewry like nothing else. It will help deter intermarriage and build a population of givers in the future.  This is such a good idea, we ought to ask the Israelis (via the vestigial Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization) to chip-in and pay a portion of this project.

We need to establish a real national Jewish television service over cable TV.  This service should offer daily news programs so that we can keep our people better informed.  This service should offer Israeli programs with English subtitles so we can finally share more culture with Israelis than just falafel.  This service must offer educational programs for kids so they don't just watch stuff like "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" on TV in December.  We need this service to bring us together across the U.S. as a solid community -- because communication is the key to community.

We need to earmark scholarship funds for young people who want to serve the Jewish people by working for our Jewish communal institutions -- and we need to make sure that those who want to teach in Jewish schools are paid competitively.

Finally, we need to democratize Jewish life -- most of us Jewish leaders are self-appointed plutocrats.  In "Fiddler on the Roof," Tevya muses of the possibilities of proffering advice and attaining stature based on wealth.  While most Jewish leaders are devoted and well-intentioned, most American Jews are out-of-the-loop and haven't a clue as to how decisions are made and who gets to make them.  We need to have election for one, central American Jewish governing body -- elections all U.S. Jews can vote in. A fantasy? This kind of institution exists in Canada, in Great Britain, in South Africa, in France and other countries.  Having elections and opening-up the process to the will of the people will energize the masses and get the decisions out from the smoke-filled rooms.

Patrick Henry said that "taxation without representation is tyranny!" Many of us pay American Jewish taxes by giving generously -- many more would give if they had a voice in how and where the money gets spent and who spends it.  It would encourage more young people to get involved in leadership roles and it would enable us to set an agenda that would appeal to the majority.

Many people are speaking about Israel's new "Peace Dividend."  American Jews fought the fight for Soviet and Ethiopian Jews. We fought the fight for Israel's survival in the corridors of Congress and by empting our own pockets to the tune of billions of dollars.  It is now time for an American Jewish "Peace Dividend:" we are entitled to pay interest to ourselves so that our future returns are highly profitable -- and while we're at it, let's ask the Israelis to lend a few hands because helping American Jewry survive and thrive is one of Israel's best possible long-term investments.

The 90`s

Upper West Side was the place to be

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel Publisher Week of October 20th - 25th,1993

It is has to be the biggest Hebe Hop this side of Jerusalem or Crown Heights -- Simchat Torah on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Just mention Simchat Torah to a young, single, Orthodox Jew and what immediately springs to mind is a virtual cornucopia of mating and dating possibilities.  If there is a culmination, a pinnacle to the modern Orthodox social season, Simchat Torah is it. 

On Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah we technically celebrate the end of the holiday of Succot, the end of the plethora of holidays that makes the month of Tishrei so unique and the end of our annual cycle of reading the Five Books of Moses, the Torah.

In Second Temple times the three major Jewish festivals saw an explosion of shiddach, or match-making.  It was where Jews from far and wide, hither and yon gathered to give thanks, praise the Lord and meet members of the opposite sex.

Today, in North America young pilgrims make their way to the Upper West Side.  They come from Toronto, Baltimore, South Florida, L.A., Memphis and even from Brooklyn and Queens.  It is a convocation of the knitted kipah crowd. Everyone eligible and affable from 18 and up converges on their friends couches, on floors and in hotels just to see and be seen.

Synagogues such as Ohab Zedek on West 95th Street and Jewish Center on West 86th Street are besieged by battalions of eager young Jews, their eyes fervently serching the balconies and opposite sides of the mechtizah.

Hallmarks of the festival are virtual open houses, holiday meals where 100 or more are de reguerm where one hops from one house to another, from one oneg to the next in an effor to meet as many people as possible.

This year the West Side shuls tried something -- for Simchat Torah eve they combined their last hatkafuh (or circuit) of the Torah so that everyone from every synagogue would wind-up on West End Avenue between 84th and 86th Streets.  No more shul-hopping necessary. In this era of mega discount warehouses and giant supermarkets, one-stop shopping was the rule of the day this time around.

In a scene reminiscent of Israel, over 10,000 young Jews descended on the avenue for what was probably the largest singles gathering ever.  Residents in the buildings up above were hanging out of their windows, anxious to see what was causing all the fuss below. The police finally had to clear the street after midnight (after four hours) but that still didn't deter the determined and crowds milled about on the sidewalks until past 2:00 a.m.  Needless to say, a great many people arrived late for synagogue the next morning.  

The feeling one gets while enveloped in a crowd of thousands of young committed Jews is nothing short of energizing.  You know that here are vibrant, intelligent people in their 20s and 30s who have made a lifestyle choice to adhere to the faith of our fathers and mothers, to practice Judaism in the face of massive ignorance, disinterest and apathy by the masses of American Jewish young people; who have taken six days off since Rosh Hashanah in a society that hardly ever heard of Succot.

These Ortho-yuppies are the vanguard of American Jewish survival for the 21st century, by meeting and marrying other Jews, by raising their children in traditional homes, by sending them to full-time Jewish schools, by living the Jewish calendar they re-affirm the vitality of Judaism even in this sophisticated day and age.

Frivolity, mixing and mingling aside, you know what this is really all about for us when you've jammed-in, standing room only at a place like Ohab Zedek, when the Torahs a returned to the ark, resplendent in their holiday white covers, crowns and breast plates and the packed house joins in unison singing the words Etz Chaim Hee, "And when it [the ark] rested he [Moses] would say, 'Return Lord to the myriad thousands of Israel.  Arise, Lord to your resting place, You and the Ark of Your strength.' Let your priests (Kohanim) be clothed in righteousness, and Your devout ones will sing joyously. For the sake of David Your servant, turn not away the face of your anointed. For I have given you a good teaching, do not forsake my Torah. It is a tree of life for those who grasp it, and its supporters are praiseworthy. Its ways are ways of pleasantness ad all its paths are peace.  Bring us back to you, Lord, and we shall return, renew our days as of old."

The miracle of Judaism is its constant renewals.  We always start over. There is always a new beginning, the New Moon, the New Year, the New cycle of reading the Torah, it is this constant newness amidst the old that rejuvenates our people through the millennia.  The throngs of young people in Manhattan for Simchat Torah is an apt metaphor for what the whole holiday season is about: a new generation holding fast to the teachings of their parents, looking ahead to tomorrow in an old, yet always new Jewish life year after year.

The 90`s

World sympathy won't be enough for Israel

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of December 29th - January 4th, 1994

Shame as a word has fallen into relative disuse.  Shame as a concept, as an emotion has all but disappeared from the world's psyche.  Everything and anything goes so long as it jibes with one's self-interests.

This is very must the case in geopolitics where hardly any kind of actions or behavior pass as shameful these days.  Like dropping a needle in a silent forest, just as no one may be there to hear it, doesn't mean the needle didn't make a sound.  So too just because most don't want to acknowledge shameful actions doesn't mean they do not take place or that they aren't shameful.

Uppermost among the prevalent cases is that of poor, tragic Bosnia.  Here is a country that was formally recognized by the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and so forth and concurrently blockaded to defend itself against aggression.  The West decided to enforce an arms embargo while simultaneously appeasing every act of Serbian aggression against millions of defenseless Moslems in Bosnia. The West sent in U.N. "peace keepers" who became pitiful pawns for the Serbs.  The West had demonstrated the backbone of jellyfish when it comes to defending the Bosnians and have been willing lately to acquiesce to any absurd Serbian territorial demand that would render Bosnia's borders as porous and indefensible as Swiss cheese is to mice.

American breast-beating, saber-rattling and guarantees for Bosnia have all turned to naught because the administration hasn't the stomach for sending in the Marines for what would surely be a bloody and protracted war.  The American people and newly elected Congress also have little desire to send U.S. forces abroad for lengthy campaigns. The Europeans, most notably the British and French have demonstrated their century-old penchant for appeasing violent dictators and aggressors while striking pseudo-fashionable poses of deep moral conviction.

The New Republic in its Dec. 19 issue says of Bosnia that "the realists will say that Bosnia is only Bosnia, that a quarter of a million people is only a quarter of a million people.  What matters about a stain, though, is not its magnitude. What matters is its debility; and if the conquest of Bosnia really is irreversible, then the stain of Bosnia is indelible."

The U.N. has a resolution up for a vote soon that calls on all states and all parts of the U.N. system to "extend their support to the Palestinian people in their quest for self-determination."  This is expected to pass by a wide margin. Self-determination in U.N. parlance is coextensive with sovereignty and independence. The German sponsors of the revolution are oblivious to the implications of trying to supersede the Rabin-Arafat Accords which set-up a five-year test Period of Palestinian Arab self-rule.

"Independence Now" is the slogan coming from the offices of the Palestinian authority.  "Jerusalem is our Capital" is the cry beginning with Yasser Arafat on down to the Hamas cleric to the man-on-the-Arab-street.  No matter that the PLO has shown a complete inability to live up to its commitments. No mater that terrorism against Jews is running at the speed of light.  No matter that with a peace agreement there is no peace. These things don't matter to an Israeli government who believes the territories must be surrendered to Arafat with all deliberate speed.

In 1984, George Orwell painted a grim picture of future society.  The PLO has a simliar literary work. It is called "1974," and it refers to the "Phased Plan" whereby the PLO will accept Palestine in bits and pieces from the withdrawing Israelis and will work in an evolutionary way to wear down and eventually wear-out the Jewish State.  Arafat and his people talk about it all the time. The Israeli government doesn't want to hear it. Jews die daily and the government doesn't want to see it. Jerusalem is formally on the agenda to have its final status negotiated between Israel and the PLO within the next two years and the Rabin government isn't ashamed of that fact.

Bosnia? Hell's bells, Israeli Arabs now call themselves "Palestinian Israelis" and are actively agitating for autonomy in their areas of the Galilee and Negev.  Arafat calls for the original 1947 partition lines, not the 1948 cease-fire lines. Bihac, Sarajevo and Tuzla have been reduced to indefensible Bosnian ghettoes.  In a future conflict might be we find the city-state of Tel Aviv encircled by hostile Arabs, pleading for U.N. or U.S. protection? How well will our enclaves of Safed and Beersheva fare after being physically cut off from the coastal plain?  We will surely enjoy the world's pity, as do the Bosnians, but what will that get us?

Most Laborites and Peace Now activists are inherently secular, irreligious.  In place of Jewish rituals and beliefs they've deified the peace process and in place of the Torah, peace treaties have accrued their own spirituality.  It is a form of left-wing fundamentalism that is oblivious to facts, realities and one's own self interests. Dogma. Children and the elderly are sacrificed, Molech-like on the altar of peace.  The peace deity knows no satiation, no end to concessions, for without the process, what would fill the lives of its devotees?

This peace extremism is every bit as dangerous an "ism" as was Communism - inflexible, disinterested in public opinion and callous about the lives of its citizens.  Retention of power and the process are paramount and it just doesn't matter how shameful are the consequences of their actions because shame can be removed from one's lexicon if one constructs a new cult where the moral compass operates from wholly different coordinates.