Anthony Scaramucci’s Profanities — and Ours

The ouster of trash-talking Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci from the Trump White House reinforces one of my strongest beliefs, which is that foul language is still foul.

Scaramucci’s 11-day tenure may have set a welcome record for the fastest in, fastest out of a supremely unqualified White House staffer. His tirade against chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon, during an interview with Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker, contained enough expletives to blow up a Trump Tower, and was published last Thursday on the magazine’s website with no tidying up of the expletives.

I imagine that aside from his NC-17 language, Scaramucci would still have been kicked out after the interview broke. He revealed himself as a man of incredibly poor judgment and an almost maniacal meanness. This guy was going to be a Communications Director? Wow, just wow.

Still, let’s face it: expletives in everyday talk have become epidemic. The definition of vulgarity has been defined increasingly down. I hope that the egregiousness of the Scaramucci episode might be a wake-up call that language still matters.

Admittedly, I’ve always been sensitive to harsh language, even though I grew up in a home where the worst expletive ever uttered – and that only in extremis, such as when the UCLA Bruins had just fumbled the ball at the ten-yard-line in the fourth quarter – now barely rates an ellipsis after the first letter in print. I already miss those fast-disappearing ellipses, which now appear as almost quaint.

When I first wrote about the topic of profanity about a dozen years ago, offering tip sheets to parents and teachers to help prevent or discourage swearing among kids, the studies I found about the impact on profanity almost uniformly agreed: the more people swore, the more they became desensitized to the inherent anger in those words, and the angrier they became as people. People who swore without restraint were usually seen by others as less intelligent, disciplined, and unhappier than their cleaner-talking friends and neighbors. Revisiting this topic just last week, I discovered that newer studies dismiss profanity’s desensitizing impact. Instead, researchers pat profanity-users on the head. Swearing is just cathartic, they say. It feels good, and is therefore good for you.

There’s a time and a place for profanity. I like the old-fashioned times and places: the battlefield, the moment when you accidentally drop a heavy book on your foot, and “Ouch!” just won’t cut it. Those days are gone, but everyone knows that language counts, it’s just that we’ve become oddly selective about what words and phrases cause outrage. On college campuses, you can hardly say the word “white” or “American” or “rape” without mass fainting spells and demands for punishment for the speaker. Racial epithets, which are terrible and dehumanizing, are still somehow okay if used by someone of the same race. But we are also euphemism-happy, calling a used car “pre-owned” and referring to a job firing as a “department realignment.” That politician didn’t lie, she “misspoke.” And on and on.

The free-flying and promiscuous use of foul language – as verbs, nouns, adjectives, as anything and therefore as nothing – is only making our uncivil society less civil than ever. And our kids are listening, copying our actions and our words. Do we really want to live in a society where everyone is swearing all the time? If we do, what words will we have left to express true outrage, anger, fear or frustration? They’ve all been used up, empty and yet coarse at the same time.

How ironic that we are increasingly careful about what we put into our mouths, fearful of GMOs, pesticides, additives, and food dyes, but heedless of the words we are spraying like verbal toxins into the atmosphere? If we are what we eat, aren’t we also what we speak?

Judaism recognizes this truth. The laws of lashon hara, literally “bad speech,” are vast and intricate. They cover everything from implied insults to name-calling and certainly any outright profane language. The laws are so sweeping because it’s our speech that makes us human, and our words can hurt, or our words can heal.

Isn’t it time to rethink our promiscuous use of profanity?

Judy Gruen’s forthcoming memoir, The Skeptic and the Rabbi: Falling in Love with Faith, will be published September 5. Her work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Aish.com and many other media outlets.

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Why I Celebrate on a Day of Mourning

Just over 2600 years ago, Babylonian armies destroyed the holy temple in Jerusalem, ransacked the ancient Kingdom of Judah, murdered scores of people throughout the kingdom (known as “Jews” – ie, the people of Judah), and hauled off scores more as captives, to the land of Babylon.

Fifteen years ago, around this very day, I stood on the edge of the land that once was a small city in that ancient Kingdom of Judah – on the exact spot where the city guard looked from his tower into the distance and saw flames of light extinguishing in surrounding towns. The ensuing darkness signaled that the Babylonians were approaching and the end was near.

A chill went through my spine.

While the rest of the people on the tour continued walking around the ancient city ruins, I stayed glued to that spot, feeling the warm breeze on my face, looking out into the expansive distance, imagining the terror that must have shot through the city people as they awaited their fates.

Their end was my beginning: the beginning of an exiled people in Babylon, who over the millennia transformed into a thriving, vibrant community — writing the authoritative Babylonian Talmud, launching the first ever Jewish learning institutions (yeshiboth, commonly known as yeshivas), and otherwise developing a rich and unique culture full of stories, music, language, spiritual teachings, architecture, prayers, dance, scholarly works, art, and religious rituals.

After nearly three millennia, my ancestors were sent packing once again: In 1950, my family was among the 100,000 Jewish refugees from Baghdad alone – forced to flee after a surge of anti-Jewish violence throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Most of these refugees, including my family, were absorbed by the modern state of Israel. As in hokey-pokey style: One foot in, one foot out.

While my grandparents, six aunts and one surviving uncle remained in Israel, my father continued his migration to Massachusetts, where he chose to go to graduate school.  There he met my mother, who had been on her way to New York from Colorado. When she’d gotten to the Massachusetts/New York fork in the interstate, however, she spontaneously decided to go north instead.

Together, they raised my sister and me as headstrong Iraqi Jews in Canada and California — teaching us the songs, prayers, religious rituals, food, personal and communal stories, Hebrew pronunciation, and a little of the language of Iraqi Jews.  (I can say the most important things in Judeo- Arabic: “watermelon,” “barefoot,” “hammer,” and “my stomach hurts.”)

I went on to disseminate this knowledge across the world, over the course of two decades, as part of my ground-breaking Jewish multicultural work. Still, as tirelessly as I worked, I could not re-create Jewish life in Baghdad. I was unable to undo the violence and destruction that Iraqi Jews had faced. I was unable to bring back everything that was lost in the upheaval and uprooting. I was unable, in short, to resurrect the Iraqi Jewish community — to bring it back to life as it once was, in bold Technicolor.

What’s worse, over the past few decades, those who grew up in Iraq have been growing old and dying. Meanwhile I have been isolated from so many of these people, for a number of complex reasons. I am an exile within a family and community of exiles. So where does that leave me?  Who am I?  And who will I be when the older generation passes?

Throughout the Jewish community around the world, thsa b’ab is a memorial day — a day of fasting, prayer, and commemoration.  It is a dark day, when people read paradoxically depressing yet triumphant stories about Jews who chose death over forced conversion, even when they had to watch their own children be killed before them. Today is also considered a day of terrible luck, replete with trembling fear, because the temple was destroyed not once, but twice on this day (the second time by the Romans, 656 years later).

I always have struggled with what exactly to do on this day. We are guided to actively induce a sense of grief and despair, so as to honor those before us and to remember being cast from freedom in our own land to captivity in someone else’s. But how, I wondered as a 14 year old in San Francisco, was I to do that, and what use was it anyhow? Actively feeling miserable and scared of moving all day long, because lordy knows what might go wrong next?

About a decade ago, I read an article by someone who suggested that this day actually should be one of celebration and honor: Yes, the temple was destroyed. Yes the kingdom was ransacked. Yes the people were hauled off as exiles. But look what’s come of it: vibrant Jewish life around the world, with the Babylonian exile reaching the far corners of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central, East, and South Asia, and the Roman exile stretching across all of Europe and the Americas.

As a Jewish multicultural educator, that spin resonated with me. Plus it was just so positive, so full of life and the pulsing rhythm of eternal change and transformation. It celebrated Jewish resilience and creativity and adaptation as a people, always surviving, always thriving, always pushing forward into new horizons.

And so, I realized, it is with me personally: Iraqi Jewish life is now gone, as Judean Jewish life once was gone as well. What stands in its place, in my shoes, is a vibrant, creative, pulsating mix of East and West, old school and cutting-edge, religious and secular, traditional and feminist. I express this mashup of perspectives by writing original songs for my band, Iraqis in Pajamas, which fuses punk rock with Iraqi Jewish prayers – making me a living, breathing, invigorating 21^st century incarnation of all who came before me. Just like my Jewish ancestors on the rivers of Babylon, I am the beginning of something new.

And that is cause for celebration.

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Sarah Halimi, Sisyphus and the denial of anti-Semitic violence

It took too long for the French people to recognize the Jewish victim of a brutal April 4 murder by name. After weeks of indifference by media outlets and politicians, French President Emmanuel Macron demanded publicly that the judiciary shed light on the nature of the crime.

Significantly, Macron spoke of Sarah Halimi during the ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the Vel d’Hiv, the roundup of more than 13,000 French Jews during the Holocaust in 1942.

“Despite the denials of the murderer, our judiciary must bring total clarity around the death of Sarah Halimi,” Macron said, adding that “we were silent, because we did not want to see.”

Halimi’s face and body were fractured in multiple places. She had been afraid of her attacker and his sister’s anti-Semitic insults for some time. Her assassin called her a “dirty whore” and “Sheitane” (Arabic for Satan), and recited verses from the Quran as he beat her severely, shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greater) before defenestrating her.

All of France should have been shocked by this horror, and should have risen up asking for truth and justice in support of this woman assassinated in her home simply because she was Jewish. Instead, everyone buried their heads in the sand. The prosecutor still has not designated Halimi’s murder as a premeditated anti-Semitic act.

Once more, all those fighting for French society to stand up against anti-Semitic violence find themselves in the same position as the mythological hero Sisyphus, condemned for all eternity to perform the impossible task of pushing an immense boulder up a steep hill each day, only for it to roll back down as the sun sets.

How many years have we implored French authorities and society to react to the rising number of anti-Semitic incidents? How many times have we heard attempts by the authorities to “relativize” the situation, to explain that there is no new anti-Semitism, that the rise in anti-Semitic acts is only hooliganism?

In 2006, very few protested the kidnapping, 24-day torture and assassination of Ilan Halimi. But notably, Nicolas Sarkozy, then France’s interior minister, declared that the murder was an anti-Semitic crime. This affirmation set the stage for yet another battle over acknowledging the source of the new anti-Semitism. This meant accepting the fact that victims of racism could themselves be racists.

It also meant understanding that anti-Semitism does not only concern Jews, but rather all of French society—that it is a virulent cancer. If left untreated, it can metastasize and destroy an entire society. Historically, in our liberal democracies, the safety of Jewish communities is an indicator of the level of health of the society as a whole.

Other courageous voices joined. The Foundation for Political Innovation carried out a study together with the American Jewish Committee, pointing out that vehement anti-Semitism comes from three sectors of the population: a substantial portion of French Muslims, the extreme left and the extreme right. Former Prime Minister Manuel Valls famously stated that “France without Jews would no longer be France,” and emphasized this inconvenient truth: “Yes, anti-Zionism has become in many parts of French society a screen that hides a visceral anti-Semitism.” DILCRAH—a ministerial delegation opposing racism, anti-Semitism and anti-LGBT hate—proposed a plan to fight this scourge, and the plan was adopted by France’s government.

Then how is it possible that after the murder of Ilan Halimi in 2006, the murder of three Jewish schoolchildren and a rabbi in Toulouse in 2012, and the terrorist attack on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in 2015, France has relapsed into denial by refusing to acknowledge the reality of anti-Semitic violence when it comes to the murder of Sarah Halimi?

Maybe it was our fault, as we Jews did not want to be seen as constantly complaining. Maybe the Jewish community was unwilling to believe that in 2017, it is still possible that an elderly lady would be beaten and defenestrated just because she is Jewish.

By recalling her name at the ceremony commemorating the Holocaust-era roundup of French Jews, and by demanding justice for Sarah Halimi, President Macron has broken down the wall of indifference that surrounded this drama, and has stood up for all of us, for all of France.

With these words he has, in his own way, advanced the boulder of Sisyphus.

Let us keep the boulder from rolling back down, by refusing to accept the continued impunity of those who spew the poison of anti-Semitism in our country.

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Simone Rodan-Benzaquen is director of the American Jewish Committee’s Paris-based Europe branch.

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Memo to Jewish community: Imams incite murder; American Muslim leaders silent

At the end of WWI, a soon-to-be released German corporal was tasked by his superior to write a memo about the threat of Jews to Germany’s future.

“Anti-Semitism — born of purely emotional grounds — will find an expression in the form of pogroms. “The final goal must be the removal of the Jews. To accomplish these goals, only a government of national power is capable and never a government of national weakness.” 

It was written and signed by Adolf Hitler. Twenty years later he launched WWII, and Nazi Germany’s systematic genocide would eradicate 6 million Jews. Hitler’s letter is now on permanent display at our Museum of Tolerance, a brutal warning that when someone threatens to kill you—take him seriously.

That’s why the Simon Wiesenthal Center is urging both the Dept. of Homeland Security and the US Attorney to investigate Imam Ammar Shahin’s recent sermon at the Islamic Center of Davis.  He said that Muslims – everywhere – are obligated to slaughter all Jews – everywhere. 

“The Prophet Muhammad said: “Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews…” …. Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews…. Oh Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them…Oh Allah, make this happen by our hands. Let us play a part in this. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds.”  (Translation: MEMRI, emphasis ours)

There is no known cure for terrorism, but we know how the disease takes hold. Recruitment takes place via social network or via face-to face indoctrination. Fanatic clergy like Imam Shahin and Mahmoud Harmoush, who delivered a similar screed in Riverside, California on the same day, play an outsize role inciting true believers against enemies. It’s not just about Jews and synagogues. Massacres of tourists in London, concertgoers in Manchester, Christian clergy in Normandy, innocents in Paris, Brussels, and San Bernadino, prove that jihadists see enemies everywhere.

What can be done?

In Canada, police served an arrest warrant against Jordanian Sheikh Muhammad bin Musa Al-Nasr for willfully promoting hate when he invoked the same hadith as Shahin, calling for the murder of Jews during a sermon in Montreal.

Hate speech is generally protected in the US, but not when it can be shown to be “inciting imminent lawless action.” Shahin’s call to kill Jews comes at a time when FBI stats confirm American Jews are the #1 target of religion-based hate crimes. Terrorists around the world have heeded other extremist clergy to kill in G-d’s name. Shahin’s threat is “imminent” enough to warrant action.

When targeting religions, the theologically-validated hatred of the Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda, Al Shabab knows no bounds.

Remember the 2015 ISIS video showing beheading of 21 Coptic Egyptians, identified as “people of the cross, followers of the hostile Egyptian Church.”

Yet, the Obama administration balked at acknowledging the victims were targeted because they were Christians, referring to them only as Egyptian “workers”. For years, the US, fearful of sparking a holy war, turned a blind eye to the religious fanaticism that plays a key role in this struggle.

But that holy war is already here. The Davis Imam followed the same jihadist script that spawned terrorism and mayhem on every continent.

If he isn’t jailed for incitement to mass murder, his parishioners and the public should banish the bigot.

If his mosque stands behind Shahin’s murderous calls, then the IRS should reevaluate its charitable status.

Shahin’s screed came just as a group of 60 courageous imams from Belgium, France, the UK and Tunisia participated in a peace march. They prayed at the sites where Jihadists butchered innocents. Voices like theirs should be given prominence everywhere, starting with San Bernadino and Davis, California.

Shahin’s screed also challenges both President Trump’s and previous administrations’ policies. How many more people who carry the same hatred driving Shahin got through the old vetting process? Yet, Shahin is from Egypt, a country not on President Trump’s list. The Davis Imam proves that takes more than knowing the zip code of origin to keep such people out. We need to know about their schools, mosques and social media ties. Young people indoctrinated to a culture of death represent a threat to virtually anyone-including other Muslims– who doesn’t embrace their jihadist worldview.

The Davis Imam seeks to ignite a holy war between religions. Jews in Davis and Riverside California and around the US hoped that Muslim groups who have been getting vocal Jewish support to oppose any religious test for immigrants from Muslim countries, would take on the religious bigotry in their midst. For one week, there was wall-to-wall silence, except for those groups endorsing an intifada for Israel’s audacity at installing metal detectors after murderous gunfire from al Aqsa. This Friday MPAC released a statement stating it was “disturbed” by the sermon of Imam.  But for the rest, could it be some silently cheer on the bigoted pulpit thumpers? Do they actually believe that the G-d of Abraham sanctions the murders of Jews and Christians?

After Davis no can say for sure.

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Rabbi Abraham Cooper is Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein is the Director of Interfaith Relations for the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

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The week Israel won Jerusalem

It’s easy to see the latest brouhaha over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as a defeat for Israel. After all, Israel had to cave to Arab and Muslim pressure and take down the metal detectors it had installed after Arab terrorists had smuggled weapons into the compound and killed two Israeli security guards.

Israel takes action, Arabs protest, Israel caves, Arabs win, right? Wrong.

The Middle East is a nasty jungle where what counts, above all, is power. Israel’s enemies know this. They know that screaming and demonstrating is not real power. It’s the power of a kid throwing a hissy fit. The real power belongs to the party who has ultimate control—to the party, in other words, who has the power to install and take down metal detectors.

This is why Palestinian leaders haven’t stopped calling for protests even after Israel took down the detectors. They’re angry and humiliated that Israel flexed its power so blatantly at a holy place they consider theirs and theirs alone. They’re still lashing out because, well, that’s all they can do. That’s the only power they have.

But protests or no protests, the world saw last week who has ultimate control over security at the Temple Mount, and it is Israel.

Why does Israel have all this power? Because it knew how to get it.

It was the strength and savvy of the Israeli army that enabled Israel to take control of all of Jerusalem after Arab armies tried to destroy Israel in 1967. Forget all the debates and fancy arguments you hear about who has rights to what in Jerusalem. Forget the pipe dreams of neatly dividing the city under a peace process that is comatose on a good day. For now and for the foreseeable future, Israel’s control of Jerusalem isn’t going anywhere.

That is the fact on the ground that I’m sure drives Palestinian leaders nuts. They understand real power. They practice it all the time. If they could, they would do to Israel what Israel did to Jordan in 1967 and take control of all of Jerusalem. But they can’t. They’re too weak.

So, devoid of real power, they’re forced to fall back on the pathetic power of the blustering bully—lies, incitement and rage.

I’m not saying all this has no effect. The lashing out against Israel undermines Israel’s reputation and exacerbates the mutual animosity and divisions on the ground. And yes, the Palestinians are great at playing victim and winning PR battles in international forums. But Palestinian leaders also know that when the demonstrations and the rage stop, it is Israel that is on top.

It is Israel that has the most powerful army in the Middle East.

It is Israel that has the most successful economy in the Middle East.

It is Israel that has the most advanced technology in the Middle East.

It is Israel that has the most democratic society in the Middle East.

It is Israel that controls all of Jerusalem.

The “days of rage” at the Temple Mount are sure to continue, but Israel has shown its resilience, even in the face of terror. No matter how many attacks are inflicted on the Jewish state, the country never cracks. If anything, the evil of terror only strengthens the Israeli resolve never to relinquish power to those who seek to destroy it.

After seeing the vile hatred directed at Israel over something as innocuous as metal detectors designed to protect all visitors (including Muslims!), why would Israelis ever risk giving up even one inch of Jerusalem to its enemies?

What’s extraordinary about all this is that Israel has used its power in Jerusalem for good. Instead of oppressing other religions, as is common in the region, it did the opposite. It turned Jerusalem into an open international city where tourism is thriving and all religions are honored and protected.

This must also drive Israel’s enemies nuts— they’re victims who can’t even claim the moral high ground. They know very well that when an Arab country (Jordan) controlled the Old City of Jerusalem, they didn’t protect Jewish synagogues and holy sites—they destroyed them.

I’m not buying the conventional narrative that Israel lost last week. It didn’t. It tried to protect a holy site with a security measure that is ubiquitous around the world, and Arab Muslims went into a rage. Their rage was not directed at the metal detectors but at the Jews who had the power to put them there.

Arabs know real power when they see it. The more rage they direct at the powerful Israeli security forces guarding the Temple Mount, the more proof they give us that Israel is in charge of the world’s holiest city.

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David Suissa is president of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal and can be reached at davids@jewishjournal.com.

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A double standard for Trump on Israel

The double standard that too many Jewish supporters of Donald Trump apply to this president was on sad display last week.

A young Palestinian man entered the home of a Jewish family in the village of Halamish on July 21 and stabbed Yosef, Chaya and Elad Salomon to death. No justification. No mercy. No humanity. 

Our hearts cried out for universal condemnation. Our president needed to set the example of moral leadership. As of this writing, he has said nothing. 

Well, not nothing. Immediately following news of the butchery, President Donald J. Trump did tweet. This is what he said: “It’s very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President.”

Trump was so focused on the perceived treachery of Republicans who refuse to go along with some half-baked Obamacare repeal that he passed on the opportunity to call out terrorists, fanatics and their enablers.

My reaction to Trump’s bizarre tweet was, What if President Obama had done this?

What if Barack Obama had said nothing about the indescribably awful photos of the Salomon family murder scene? His Jewish detractors would have pilloried him — and rightly so.

The contrast points to something more and more apparent: a double standard applied by the pro-Israel community to Trump and his predecessor.

Three weeks ago, Trump recertified Iran’s compliance with the Iran nuclear deal. I believe this was the right thing to do, but then again, I supported the deal originally.  Trump didn’t. But when he reversed himself, did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fly to Washington and speak to Congress to publicly condemn Trump? Did Trump’s Jewish supporters call him a traitor to Israel and an Iranian puppet? Nope. Double standard.

One week ago, the Trump administration cut a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a Syrian ceasefire that leaves Hezbollah troops close to Israel’s northern border.  Israel vehemently opposed the idea. But Trump sided with Putin. “The Americans completely conceded to the Russians,” a senior Israeli military official told Al-Monitor. “The very names of Iran or Hezbollah do not appear in the agreement, and there is no expression of Israeli concerns at all. Our security needs are completely ignored.”

I’m not sure the ceasefire wasn’t the right move. But I do know what holy hell the pro-Israel right would have raised if Obama had signed that deal. In this case, they said nothing. Double standard.

During the presidential campaign, Trump promised he would move the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem  “on Day One.” Jewish and Christian audiences leapt to their feet at Trump’s promise.

Two months ago, Trump declined to move the embassy. The protest from those who applauded him? Barely a word. Double standard.

Keep in mind these all are examples from the past couple of months. Want to go back further? Imagine what the Republican outcry would have been if Obama refused to mention Jews on Holocaust Remembrance Day? Or if Obama had said he “doesn’t know anything about” Louis Farrakhan, as candidate Trump said of KKK Grand Nincompoop David Duke.   

A healthy swath of the Jewish community, and the larger Republican crowd, reviled Obama. But time and again they grade Trump on a curve. Obama signed a $38 billion aid deal with Israel, helped fund its Iron Dome program, stood by Israel during the Gaza War and firmly declared anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism — two years before French President Emmanuel Macron did. Did it matter? Nope. Double standard.

With one notable exception — the Zionist Organization of America’s Morton Klein — the president’s Jewish supporters give him a pass on issues, statements and actions they would have slammed Obama for.

Obama could do no right, Trump can do no wrong. Can you even imagine the derision if Obama’s State Department had blamed Israel for Palestinian terror, as Trump’s State Department did in a report released this week?

Here’s what I wonder: Why? Maybe United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley buys Trump all the indulgences he will ever need. Maybe Obama haters simply used Israel as a wedge issue to gain Jewish votes when their real concern was other Democratic policies. Or maybe these supporters cut Trump slack because they believe he supports Israel deep down in his kishkas, or guts, and — so they like to say– Obama just didn’t.

If it’s the last reason, then I have one question that Jewish supporters of the president must consider: Does it matter if you have Israel in your kishkas if you are otherwise incompetent, unprepared, uniformed and relentlessly self-concerned?

In July 2014, the bodies of three Israeli teenagers were found murdered by Palestinian terrorists — a horror no less shocking and unjustifiable than the Salomon murders last week. Almost immediately, then-President Barack Obama sent his condolences to the families of the teenagers and condemned the “senseless act of terror against innocent youth.”

It’s not asking too much of a president to respond with humanity to inhuman acts. And it’s not expecting too much of his supporters to call him out when he falls short.

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ROB ESHMAN is publisher and editor-in-chief of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal. Email
him at robe@jewishjournal.com. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter @foodaism
and @RobEshman.

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A double standard for Trump on Israel

The double standard that too many Jewish supporters of Donald Trump apply to this president was on sad display last week.

A young Palestinian man entered the home of a Jewish family in the village of Halamish on July 21 and stabbed Yosef, Chaya and Elad Salomon to death. No justification. No mercy. No humanity. 

Our hearts cried out for universal condemnation. Our president needed to set the example of moral leadership. As of this writing, he has said nothing. 

Well, not nothing. Immediately following news of the butchery, President Donald J. Trump did tweet. This is what he said: “It’s very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President.”

Trump was so focused on the perceived treachery of Republicans who refuse to go along with some half-baked Obamacare repeal that he passed on the opportunity to call out terrorists, fanatics and their enablers.

My reaction to Trump’s bizarre tweet was, What if President Obama had done this?

What if Barack Obama had said nothing about the indescribably awful photos of the Salomon family murder scene? His Jewish detractors would have pilloried him — and rightly so.

The contrast points to something more and more apparent: a double standard applied by the pro-Israel community to Trump and his predecessor.

Three weeks ago, Trump recertified Iran’s compliance with the Iran nuclear deal. Did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fly to Washington and speak to Congress to publicly condemn Trump? Did Trump’s Jewish supporters call him a traitor to Israel and an Iranian puppet? Nope. Double standard.

One week ago, the Trump administration cut a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a Syrian ceasefire that leaves Hezbollah troops close to Israel’s northern border.  Israel vehemently opposed the idea. But Trump sided with Putin. “The Americans completely conceded to the Russians,” a senior Israeli military official told Al-Monitor. “The very names of Iran or Hezbollah do not appear in the agreement, and there is no expression of Israeli concerns at all. Our security needs are completely ignored.”

I’m not sure the ceasefire wasn’t the right move. But I do know what holy hell the pro-Israel right would have raised if Obama had signed that deal. In this case, they said nothing. Double standard.

During the presidential campaign, Trump promised he would move the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem  “on Day One.” Jewish and Christian audiences leapt to their feet at Trump’s promise.

Two months ago, Trump declined to move the embassy. The protest from those who applauded him? Barely a word. Double standard.

Keep in mind these all are examples from the past couple of months. Want to go back further? Imagine what the Republican outcry would have been if Obama refused to mention Jews on Holocaust Remembrance Day? Or if Obama had said he “doesn’t know anything about” Louis Farrakhan, as candidate Trump said of KKK Grand Nincompoop David Duke.   

A healthy swath of the Jewish community, and the larger Republican crowd, reviled Obama but time and again grade Trump on a curve. Obama signed a $38 billion aid deal with Israel, funded its Iron Dome program, stood by Israel during the Gaza War and firmly declared anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism — two years before French President Emmanuel Macron did. Did it matter? Double standard.

With one notable exception — the Zionist Organization of America’s Morton Klein — the president’s Jewish supporters give him a pass on issues, statements and actions they would have slammed Obama for.

Obama could do no right, Trump can do no wrong. Can you even imagine the derision if Obama’s State Department had blamed Israel for Palestinian terror, as Trump’s State Department did in a report released this week?

Here’s what I wonder: Why? Maybe United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley buys Trump all the indulgences he will ever need. Maybe Obama haters simply used Israel as a wedge issue to gain Jewish votes when their real concern was other Democratic policies. Or maybe these supporters cut Trump slack because they believe he supports Israel deep down in his kishkas, or guts, and Obama just didn’t.

If it’s the last reason, then I have one question that Jewish supporters of the president must consider: Does it matter if you have Israel in your kishkas if you are otherwise incompetent, unprepared, uniformed and relentlessly self-concerned?

In July 2014, the bodies of three Israeli teenagers were found murdered by Palestinian terrorists — a horror no less shocking and unjustifiable than the Salomon murders last week. Almost immediately, then-President Barack Obama sent his condolences to the families of the teenagers and condemned the “senseless act of terror against innocent youth.”

It’s not asking too much of a president to respond with humanity to inhuman acts. And it’s not expecting too much of his supporters to call him out when he falls short. n

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Letters to the editor: Ben Shapiro, intermarriage, embracing the stranger

Prager’s Premise

I’ll bet you get a lot of letters that start with “Dennis Prager … ” Here’s mine.

Dennis Prager writes that taking in Muslim immigrants is causing Europe to go into a “death spiral,” and that this is somehow due to those immigrants’ non-European values (“Wisdom vs. Compassion,” July 21). I cannot help but read this in the context of the Holocaust. After the Nuremberg laws went into effect in 1938, Americans opposed letting in Jewish immigrants, and many Jews died as a result. Prager’s lead uses the Four Sons from the haggadah to derive the idea that wise is the opposite of bad. Does the famous line from Leviticus count for anything? “When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall not do them wrong. The strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Levitcus 19:33-34).

Jacob Schaperow
via email

New Voice in the Journal

I appreciate having Ben Shapiro’s voice be heard in the Jewish Journal. As an almost lifelong Democrat for 54 years and a conservative since 9/11, and a proud dual citizen of Israel and the United States, I think leftist values are not the predominant ones that will preserve Judaism, Israel and the Jewish people. Silencing conservative voices does not help Judaism nor the world at large. Giving articulate, knowledgeable, caring people like Shapiro a platform in the Journal will help our people and mankind, together with other respectful, knowledgeable, caring voices along the political and religious spectrum. Kol ha-kavod to the Jewish Journal.

 Gershon Weissman
Fundraiser at Emek Lone Soldiers

Intermarriage and
Genetic Disease

I am neither opposed to nor a proponent of intermarriage (“Marrying In,” July 21). I am a proponent of informed consent when it comes to any couple deciding to begin a family. With 42 percent of Ashkenazi Jews (observant or otherwise) related to one of four women who lived in the 12th to 13th century, we have a far greater burden of genetic disease than most populations. In fact, 1 in 4 Ashkenazi Jews is a carrier for a genetic disorder found to be more prevalent in our population. This includes any person who is or was of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, including those descendants of Crypto-Jews. Therefore, part of the dialogue about whether intermarriage can be done correctly should include providing the couple with genetic counseling and, if the couple desires, testing for disease burden.

Just a thought.

Gary Frohlich
Senior Patient Education Liaison
Rare Business Disease Unit, US Genetics

Those Were the Days
(on the Westside)

The folksy article by Jonathan Kirsch (“A Nostalgic Trip Down the Westside’s Memory Lane,” July 14) recalls fond memories of my youth.

For pure nostalgia, I’d attend the silent movie theater on North Fairfax to see Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, and for more contemporary films, the Fairfax Theater, providing part-time work for Fairfax High School students, who’d let their friends in through the side door.

Billy Gray’s Band Box, a nightclub, the one semblance of “Borscht Belt/Catskills” humor on the West Coast, with hilarious satires such as “My Fairfax Lady, “The Cohen Mutiny” and “Goldfinkle,” and where Mickey Cohen, the head of L.A.’s “Kosher Nostra,” conducted business after hours, was ideal for teenage parking lot attendants. After all, where else but Fairfax Avenue could you feel the atmosphere of New York, Eastern Europe and the Middle East?

Ed Cress
Sylmar

A Kind Word for
Yona Sabar’s Word

Toda rabba (thank you) for publishing professor Yona Sabar’s “Hebrew Word of the Week.” It is always informative, often revealing new, unexpected insights into Hebrew words, both biblical and modern, while also telling readers about related words and concepts in a wide spectrum of other languages.

I look forward to reading more of Sabar’s words of week, and hope that he will publish a collection of his Jewish Journal column writing in a book.

Rivka Sherman-Gold
Yodan Publishing

Source Material for
‘Tycoon’ Miniseries

Judging from comments by director Billy Ray in the Journal’s story on his upcoming miniseries based on “The Last Tycoon” (“Miniseries Adds Jewish Context to Fitzgerald’s Unfinished Hollywood Novel,” July 21), it’s unfortunate Ray hadn’t caught wind of Steven Ross’ forthcoming book about Hollywood’s dealings with the Nazi regime (“Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America”). As Ross discloses, the Jewish moguls were far from the Hitler patsies Ben Urwand claimed in his wildly overstated book “The Collaboration,” and which Ray states he used to ground his treatment of the moguls in the series.

Although the heads of MGM, Paramount and Fox did indeed “cave,” for pecuniary reasons, to many of the Fuhrer’s demands in Germany, on the homefront, these and other studio bosses were working ardently behind the scenes to thwart assassinations and other terrorist plots by a Nazi fifth column in Los Angeles.

Also, for a more balanced rendering of Hollywood’s interactions with Hitler in general, Ray would have been far better served by Thomas Doherty’s “Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939.”

Vincent Brook
Lecturer, UCLA

A Lesson in Embracing

the Stranger

Yasher koach to Rochel Groner (“Photos of Jewish Woman Comforting Autistic Boy on Plane Go Viral,” July 21) for embracing the opportunity to befriend a young Muslim boy in pain. Rochel lovingly created a sacred space for the boy and all those on board were able to witness her caring for a stranger who is very different from her. I wish we could publicize and see more of these magical moments in the world today, especially toward those who have special needs.

Friendship Circle of Los Angeles offers programs for Jewish children in the community just like this little boy and we welcome new families and volunteers to join us.

Gail Rollman
Development Director
Friendship Circle of Los Angeles 

Story on Gaza Is 

Great First Step

I want to thank Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib for offering me (us) a glimpse of hope regarding a solution to the seemingly hopeless conflict in the Middle East — and especially in regards to the situation in Gaza (“The Hard Truth,” July 14). I like Alkhatib’s idea of bringing in the U.N. to stabilize the Strip “by preventing another war, reversing the deterioration of living conditions, initiating infrastructure renovations and managing aid money in a professional, nonpartisan manner.” He has explained his idea well and why he thinks it would work.

Now, how do we get this idea to the right people so that it can be transformed into action and fulfillment? Any suggestions, Ahmed?

Lori Levy
Sherman Oaks

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After Nazis: Sex, art and Israelis

It was not inevitable that Berlin would recover.

The thought occurred to me as I stood in the doorway of a massive Berlin building with walls 6 1/2-feet thick in one of the strangest and most brilliant examples of the city’s postwar reinvention: a Nazi bunker turned private art museum.

Since it launched in 2008, the Boros Collection — Sammlung Boros in German — has become one of the hottest tickets in town. Reservations for guided tours of no more than 12 people at a time book months in advance and remain the only way to see the carefully curated exhibition of contemporary art, which includes sculpture, painting, photography, film and installation.

The eccentric and amusing collection is a worthy enough draw, but for some, not as enticing as the building itself: a five-story, above-ground bunker built in 1942 by Nazi architect Karl Bonatz that has undergone more reinventions than Madonna.

Imagine telling Hitler that the city in which he preached ethnic cleansing and racial superiority would one day
become a multicultural melting pot.

The Berlin bunker, like the city itself, has been transformed from its hideous history into something almost beautiful, a trend fueled by a growing economy that is attracting emigrants from all over Europe — and Israel. Berlin has become the America of Europe, a multicultural melting pot.

But its history still shows. Outside, slabs of stark, gray concrete are riddled with bullet holes and shrapnel gashes. Inside, black paint from the bunker’s days as a fetish club are splashed beneath an artist’s methodical brushstrokes.

The symbolism is self-evident: You can reinvent the past, but you cannot erase it.

The harsh exterior of the bunker suggests the conditions in which it was built. Assembled by forced laborers (these were the Nazis, after all), it was designed as a civilian air-raid shelter. Later, the Red Army took it over for use as a prisoner-of-war camp. During the years of Communist East Berlin, its weather-impervious interior made it a suitable storage facility for imported produce, earning it the nickname “the banana bunker.”

By the 1990s, it fell into disrepair and entered a phase as a hardcore sex club — replete with techno music and fetish parties — before Christian Boros, a Polish-born advertising mogul, purchased it in 2003. Boros commissioned a major renovation of the building, which included a glassy, fifth-floor penthouse for him and his family. Nazi bunker, meet McMansion.

“This building isn’t meant for art,” Boros told The New Yorker in 2015. “How the art fights against the ugly building is very interesting to me.”

Boros offers an apt metaphor for Berlin itself: perhaps not meant for art, but determined to fight its ugly past with tools of transformation.

Modern Berlin may have bullet holes and Holocaust museums, but it also hums with the currency of the times: art, architecture, fashion, food and young people. To walk its streets is to witness a city redefining itself as a place of refuge, open borders and progressive policies. Today it is Berlin, not Paris, its overindulgent neighbor to the west, that can claim the mantle of most dynamic avant-garde culture on the continent.

Imagine telling Hitler that the city in which he preached ethnic cleansing and racial superiority would one day become a multicultural melting pot. How it must roil him in his burnt grave that the progenitor of Jewish extermination now hosts a thriving community of Israelis who have decamped from their mother nation, the Jewish state.

But Berlin’s reasserting itself as the cultural and economic capital of Europe does not come without political scrapes or scars. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy to admit 1 million refugees from war-torn states in the Middle East remains a divisive issue. Some wonder whether migrants will integrate; others worry if integration will steal jobs.

Despite the rise of multiculturalism, I met young Muslims who report discriminatory treatment at jobs and schools. Anti-Semitism is denounced in public but persists in private. And there’s no telling if or when a terrorist attack could plunge the country into cultural and political regression. As one young Muslim representative in the Bundesrat — Germany’s upper house — put it, “Merkel is praying every single night that a terrorist attack doesn’t happen here.”

A Berlin on the brink has existed before. And yet, as Christopher Isherwood captured in his 1945 book, “Berlin Stories,” which spawned the play on which the musical “Cabaret” is based, the young, idealistic intellectuals and artists of the time pressed on in the face of moral and political collapse. Today, young Berliners press on despite the shame of their history and the millions of ghosts that haunt their streets.

It makes sense that a place that massacred so much human potential would later strive through every means possible to re-create meaning and beauty after brokenness.

German-Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno famously wrote, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”

No one really knows exactly what he meant; Adorno’s words still are the subject of much dispute and debate. But it’s clear he perceived a powerful relationship between suffering and creation.

It’s possible he meant that there was no point to art after Auschwitz because humankind had proved itself irredeemably evil and human striving was, therefore, meaningless.

I prefer to see his words as a call to arms: That there can never be enough poetry after Auschwitz. No amount of art or reinvention will ever be adequate to the task of portraying the horrors of the Holocaust, or atoning for it.

Sorry, Berlin.

But that doesn’t mean art should be surrendered. On the contrary, I admire today’s Berliners for making so much more of it.

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Learning from ‘sons of monkeys’

In a Facebook post a few hours before he stabbed three Israeli Jews to death as they were enjoying a Shabbat meal, 19-year-old Omar al-Abed made clear what he thought of Jews:

“You, sons of monkeys and pigs, if you do not open the gates of Al-Aqsa, I am sure that men will follow me and will hit you with an iron fist, I am warning you.”

A century of Arab lies, delusional swagger and Jew-hatred can be found in that one sentence.

First, the lies. The gates of Al-Aqsa were not closed. They were open. They just had metal detectors for everyone’s protection. Those detectors were installed after two Israeli security guards were killed by Arab terrorists using weapons that had been smuggled into the compound.

The hysterical and violent Arab response is very much about symbols. The metal detectors were a concrete, visible reminder to the world that Israel has ultimate sovereignty over the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, where the Al-Aqsa mosque is located and where the Jewish Temples of biblical times once stood.

Removing the detectors won’t remove the deep, 3,000-year Jewish connection to Jerusalem, which Arab leaders consistently reject. As Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas once put it, Jews defile the Temple Mount with their “filthy feet.”

Of course, such blatant lies and incitement against Jews have long been par for the course for Arab dictators desperate to distract attention from how they oppress and fail their own people.

Next, the delusional swagger. The killer thinks that murdering a few Jews during a Shabbat dinner will encourage an army of Muslims to hit Israel with an “iron fist.” These kind of grandiose dreams date to the very beginning of the Jewish state, when Arab armies invaded the infant state but failed to destroy it. They have been failing ever since.

Recognizing this reality — that Israel is too powerful to be destroyed — is out of the question. Better to demonize and demean the Jews as “sons of monkeys and pigs” and spin military defeats as battles in a never-ending war against the Zionist monster.

Finally, the Jew-hatred. It crucial to note that the Jew-hatred that permeates Arab consciousness long predates any settlements in the West Bank. Decades before anyone ever heard of an Israeli “occupation,” Jews were hated for trying to assert their sovereign rights in their ancestral homeland.

Arab countries rejected the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine of 1947 — which allocated land for an independent Arab state and a Jewish state — because they couldn’t stomach the very idea and legitimacy of a Jewish state. For centuries, Jews were tolerated in Arab and Muslim societies only because they kept their heads down and accepted their status as second-class citizens.

Then, with the backing of the United Nations, these lowly Jews had the chutzpah to return to their biblical homeland and build their own country with universities, hospitals, roads, farming communities and a modern economy. On top of that, all of the Arab armies combined could not chase them away.

The “iron fist” that is killing Arab hope is coming from Arab leaders who demonize Jews and use excuses like metal detectors to start holy wars.

In a culture that prides honor and is repulsed by shame, can you imagine how much humiliation has been felt by failing Arab states next to the extraordinary success and power of the Jewish state?

Needless to say, there was another way. Had the Arab nations accepted the U.N. Partition Plan and started building their own state next to Israel, there never would have been an Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Had the Palestinian Arabs looked at Jews as potential allies who could help them succeed, there would be a Gaza Riviera today that would compete with the Tel Aviv beachfront as one of the world’s hot spots.

There would be a thriving high-tech sector in Ramallah that would compete with Israel’s Startup Nation, and elite Palestinian universities, research centers and a cultural scene that would be the envy of the Arab world.

But instead of partnering with the Jews, Arab nations chose to hate the Jews. Instead of taking responsibility for their future, they blamed the Jews for their misery.

As pro-Israel activist Chloe Simone Valdary wrote last week on Facebook, in a message to Palestinians: “It’s the belief that Israelis are holding you back that’s holding you back. Holding you back from letting go of all the hatred and the envy and the jealousy which is just so damn exhausting to hold on to.”

The “iron fist” that is killing Arab hope is coming from Arab leaders who demonize Jews and use excuses like metal detectors to start holy wars. What a tragic irony that if Arabs ever wanted to build a better future, it would be in their interest to learn from people they’ve been told are subhuman. 

---

David Suissa is president of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal and can be reached at davids@jewishjournal.com.

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Learning from ‘sons of monkeys’

In a Facebook post a few hours before he stabbed three Israeli Jews to death as they were enjoying a Shabbat meal, 19-year-old Omar al-Abed made clear what he thought of Jews:

“You, sons of monkeys and pigs, if you do not open the gates of Al-Aqsa, I am sure that men will follow me and will hit you with an iron fist, I am warning you.”

A century of Arab lies, delusional swagger and Jew-hatred can be found in that one sentence.

First, the lies. The gates of Al-Aqsa were not closed. They were open. They just had metal detectors for everyone’s protection. Those detectors were installed after two Israeli security guards were killed by Arab terrorists using weapons that had been smuggled into the compound.

The hysterical and violent Arab response is very much about symbols. The metal detectors were a concrete, visible reminder to the world that Israel has ultimate sovereignty over the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, where the Al-Aqsa mosque is located and where the Jewish Temples of biblical times once stood.

Removing the detectors won’t remove the deep, 3,000-year Jewish connection to Jerusalem, which Arab leaders consistently reject. As Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas once put it, Jews defile the Temple Mount with their “filthy feet.”

Of course, such blatant lies and incitement against Jews have long been par for the course for Arab dictators desperate to distract attention from how they oppress and fail their own people.

Next, the delusional swagger. The killer thinks that murdering a few Jews during a Shabbat dinner will encourage an army of Muslims to hit Israel with an “iron fist.” These kind of grandiose dreams date to the very beginning of the Jewish state, when Arab armies invaded the infant state but failed to destroy it. They have been failing ever since.

Recognizing this reality — that Israel is too powerful to be destroyed — is out of the question. Better to demonize and demean the Jews as “sons of monkeys and pigs” and spin military defeats as battles in a never-ending war against the Zionist monster.

Finally, the Jew-hatred. It crucial to note that the Jew-hatred that permeates Arab consciousness long predates any settlements in the West Bank. Decades before anyone ever heard of an Israeli “occupation,” Jews were hated for trying to assert their sovereign rights in their ancestral homeland.

Arab countries rejected the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine of 1947 — which allocated land for an independent Arab state and a Jewish state — because they couldn’t stomach the very idea and legitimacy of a Jewish state. For centuries, Jews were tolerated in Arab and Muslim societies only because they kept their heads down and accepted their status as second-class citizens.

Then, with the backing of the United Nations, these lowly Jews had the chutzpah to return to their biblical homeland and build their own country with universities, hospitals, roads, farming communities and a modern economy. On top of that, all of the Arab armies combined could not chase them away.

The “iron fist” that is killing Arab hope is coming from Arab leaders who demonize Jews and use excuses like metal detectors to start holy wars.

In a culture that prides honor and is repulsed by shame, can you imagine how much humiliation has been felt by failing Arab states next to the extraordinary success and power of the Jewish state?

Needless to say, there was another way. Had the Arab nations accepted the U.N. Partition Plan and started building their own state next to Israel, there never would have been an Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Had the Palestinian Arabs looked at Jews as potential allies who could help them succeed, there would be a Gaza Riviera today that would compete with the Tel Aviv beachfront as one of the world’s hot spots.

There would be a thriving high-tech sector in Ramallah that would compete with Israel’s Startup Nation, and elite Palestinian universities, research centers and a cultural scene that would be the envy of the Arab world.

But instead of partnering with the Jews, Arab nations chose to hate the Jews. Instead of taking responsibility for their future, they blamed the Jews for their misery.

As pro-Israel activist Chloe Simone Valdary wrote last week on Facebook, in a message to Palestinians: “It’s the belief that Israelis are holding you back that’s holding you back. Holding you back from letting go of all the hatred and the envy and the jealousy which is just so damn exhausting to hold on to.”

The “iron fist” that is killing Arab hope is coming from Arab leaders who demonize Jews and use excuses like metal detectors to start holy wars. What a tragic irony that if Arabs ever wanted to build a better future, it would be in their interest to learn from people they’ve been told are subhuman. 

---

David Suissa is president of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal and can be reached at davids@jewishjournal.com.

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Truly free speech absent at colleges

Words are not violence.

You’d think this truism would be easy for some on the left to swallow; the entire workability of the First Amendment rests on that principle. Because words are not violence, we say that in a civilized society, we should be able to speak freely, that we should be entitled to our opinion, and that anyone who reacts to our words with violence should be punished for that crime.

Yet that perfectly obvious logic seems to elude more and more of the left these days.

Several weeks ago, the Berkeley College Republicans and Young America’s Foundation invited me to campus to speak. For context, I spoke at the college in April 2016; there was no violence, and nary a protester. Instead, I spoke with several hundred students, many of whom disagreed. The event was cordial and friendly and fun.

Last week, UC Berkeley announced that it would not be able to ensure a venue for my scheduled speech in September. Officials said they didn’t have a venue available on the date in question, and then didn’t provide alternative dates. Only after a public hubbub did they pledge to allow me to speak on campus as well as covering the relevant fees.

What changed? Between April 2016 and July 2017, Berkeley saw several major violent protests held by opponents of President Donald Trump. First, in February 2017, alt-right provocateur and Trump acolyte Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at the campus. Anti-fascism protesters, allegedly along with some Berkeley students, crashed the venue, began destroying property and setting things on fire, and posed too much of a security risk for the event to continue as planned. Then, in April 2017, Berkeley canceled a planned event with Ann Coulter, moving the date and place for the event, alleging that the university had been “unable to find a safe and suitable venue.” That same month, anti-Trump protesters clashed with pro-Trump protesters who set up shop in Berkeley to stump on behalf of free speech.

Berkeley’s decision-making process has become more and more common across the country. As leftist protesters grow more outrageous, administrators seem more than willing to grant them concessions, up to and including cancellation of events that anger the protesters.

When I spoke at Cal State Los Angeles in February 2016, the administration attempted to cancel the event outright; I showed up, anyway. Protesters blocked the entrances and assaulted students who wanted to come to the event; they pulled the fire alarm. Students had to be spirited into the venue secretly, two-by-two. They eventually were trapped there until the crowd outside dispersed. Meanwhile, the police allegedly were told by the administration to stand down. When I spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, protesters invaded the speech in an attempt to shut it down. When I asked police to remove the protesters, they responded that the administration had told them that if they did that, they’d have to shut down the event entirely.

Too many leftist administrators are playing an inside-outside game in which they capitulate to violent protesters who seek to shut down free debate. They wouldn’t cave to such protesters from the right — if writer Ta-Nehisi Coates were victimized by violent protesters, you can guarantee that administrators would send the cops in force. But violence is a convenient excuse for excluding unwanted viewpoints.

And exclusion of unwanted viewpoints has become nearly universal on college campuses. Administrators now tell students that they can expect college to be a “safe space,” a protected area where they need never feel uncomfortable. To that end, all “microaggressions” must be policed. Microaggressions, as professor Jonathan Haidt of New York University states, are “small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless.” By thinking of words as violence, actual violence can be justified as a natural, decent response to verbiage you don’t like. In fact, one of the professors at Cal State Los Angeles, in anticipation of my speech, posted a note on his door saying as much: “The best response to micro-aggression is macro-aggression.”

We cannot have a political conversation with one another if we’re going to label one another’s arguments a form of brutality, to be prevented at any cost. That merely incentivizes violence as a rational response to words. It actually promotes the logic of violence, since the very act of violence in response to words now can be seen as an expression of righteous indignation: The more violent you are, the worse the microaggression must have been.

Furthermore, the microaggression culture that culminates in leftist rioting on campuses and administrative sycophancy to it generates a generation of mentally unhealthy people. As Haidt states, the use of “trigger warnings” — warnings designed to alert people to the risks of microaggressions — actually make students more paranoid, less prone to engage with the world, unduly emotional and upset. Instead, students should be exposed to ideas with which they disagree, and learn to control their emotional response to them. Get angry, by all means — but speak about your anger, rather than using it as an excuse to avoid thinking about the implications of views you hold or oppose.

I’m currently scheduled to speak at Berkeley in September, after testifying about the dangers of microaggression culture before Congress this week. The administration now says that it’s fully committed to the event moving forward. I certainly hope that’s the case. And I hope that leftists across the country stop burying themselves in the solipsism of the microaggression culture and heed the words of former President Barack Obama: “I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view.”

We’ll be a better country if we stop the coddling, fight the violence and begin listening to one another once more. 

---

Ben Shapiro is editor-in-chief at The Daily Wire, host of the most-listened-to conservative podcast in the nation, “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and author of The New York Times best-seller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear Silences Americans.”

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Singer-Songwriter merges Jewish and gospel influences

Growing up in Norfolk, Va., in a Conservative Jewish home, singer-songwriter Karen Hart was intrigued by how the chants she heard in her synagogue resembled gospel music.

“I never felt connected to the God part,” she said. “What I loved most was listening to the cantor sing. To me, it sounded like the Black singers I was exposed to, the wailing, the sliding from one note to another.”

Hart and I were chatting on the front porch of a Santa Monica house after she had performed in the backyard for the annual music festival held there, “Jeffest.”

My friends Claudia Luther and Tom Trapnell had told me about Hart, who lives near them in the West Los Angeles neighborhood of Mar Vista with her husband, Bryan. I was intrigued by the first song on the CD Tom gave me, “Judah and His Maccabees: A Hanukkah Gospel Story.”

Growing up, I was unhappy about the shortage of winners in Jewish history as well as — admitting my youthful superficiality — on the sports and main news pages of the newspapers. I admired King David and overlooked the Bathsheba episode. I seized on  the story of Judas Maccabee, the Jewish priest who led the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire (167-160 B.C.E.) and restored Jewish prayer at the Temple in Jerusalem.

When Claudia and Tom told me about Hart, I said, “I love that story. I have to write about her for the Jewish Journal.”

At her performance on a hot Saturday afternoon, Hart, accompanied by her band, Jennifer Leitham and Randy Drake, demonstrated her lovely voice and a warm manner. It was as if she was inviting the receptive audience to join her at a party. She is reminiscent of her idol, Joni Mitchell, the Canadian singer-songwriter, and part of Hart’s repertoire is a  “Salute to Joni Mitchell.”

Hart told me she studied classical music at East Carolina University and then took off with her dog in a Volkswagen camper to sing and write songs.

“I hit the road and played in any club that would have me,” she said. She’d buy the local paper and look up the clubs. “I’d go into the club, talk to the manager and ask if I could play there,” she said. She made her way to Los Angeles. “If I was going to make it as a songwriter, L.A. was the place to be,” she said.

Then she got a break. Her best friend in B’nai B’rith Girls back in Virginia had a brother who was a movie producer. He was producing a 1985 comedy called “Lust in the Dust,” starring Tab Hunter, Divine and Lainie Kazan, and Hartcomposed the songs for it, as well as continuing to play clubs. She even ran into Joni Mitchell at a clothing rack in Bullock’s and gave her one of her CDs after a brief and pleasant chat.

A dispute with a manager interrupted her singing career.

“I put down my guitar and didn’t touch it for five years. So I had to make a living. I had heard of word processing,” she said. She said she memorized word processing manuals and eventually developed a business teaching computer skills in what was then a new field.

Eventually, she returned to singing, joining choirs. And she returned to songwriting and thought of her youth.

“I thought the Chanukah music was horrible,” she said. “So I am going to write something for Chanukah but in the Negro spiritual style.”

The result is a rousing piece that sounds great, especially when sung by a choir.

Others have commented on the confluence of the Jewish and African-American experiences as reflected in each group’s music.  In 2010, J. The Jewish News of Northern California wrote about the popularity of Cantor Stephen Saxon, who composed a number of gospel songs based on Friday night prayers.

Black gospel singer Josh Nelson discussed the relationship in an article in the Jewish Chronicle the same year.

Nelson said, “Gospel is closely connected to the African experience of slavery in America. It’s a bittersweet sound because without such hard experience we could never have the good music. That kind of hardship is so close to the Jewish experience. Jewish people have always been isolated within communities in Europe over centuries. The sounds are closely aligned, too — there is a deep similarity between the wailing of the cantors from the shtetls in Europe and the groaning of the African slaves.”

Like these artists, Hart is demonstrating the diversity of American life, performing “Judah and His Maccabees” around the country, showing how two cultures, so different in the popular mind, have much in common.

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BILL BOYARSKY is a columnist for the Jewish Journal, Truthdig and L.A. Observed, and the author of “Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times” (Angel City Press).

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U.S. anti-boycott bill not as bad as some critics say

A bill being weighed in Congress that would target boycotts of Israel and its settlements is sparking widespread outrage, especially after investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald claimed it “criminalizes free speech.” The post relied on a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) expressing First Amendment concerns over the Israel Anti-Boycott Act. By contrast, the co-sponsors of the bill insist that it in no way hampers free speech.

So, who is right?

Statutory analysis is complex under the best of circumstances, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not tend to bring out people’s sense of care and nuance. What has been largely missing from the discussion over the Israel Anti-Boycott Act is a close, careful reading of the bill’s text and relevant statutory law — a non-hyperbolic read, but also a non-apologetic one. In short: This law has issues. It poses genuine speech concerns, and it seems to respond to a nonexistent problem. But the more extreme claims that it bans boycotts of Israel are untrue.

A bit of background can help set the stage. While Arab countries have boycotted Israel since before there was an Israel, in the 1970s they became far more aggressive in demanding that their trading partners join them in refusing to do business with Israel. They imposed a secondary boycott whereby companies had to prove they weren’t doing business with Israel in order to do business with the Arab countries.

In response, the United States passed a law prohibiting several actions if they were taken “with intent to comply with, further, or support any boycott fostered or imposed by a foreign country against a country which is friendly to the United States.” These included:

• Discriminating against a person “on the basis of race, religion, sex, or national origin.”

• Providing information “with respect to the race, religion, sex, or national origin” of any American person or their employees.

• Providing information regarding whether one had any business dealings with the boycotted country.

And, of course:

• Boycotting the country.

This law has been upheld against First Amendment challenges. And the most anodyne way of describing the new bill is to say it merely extends the pre-existing ban on boycotting an ally of the United States at the behest of a foreign country (e.g., Qatar) to include doing so at the behest of an International Governmental Organization (IGO), e.g., the European Union (EU) or United Nations (U.N.)

Importantly, neither the current law nor the proposed one bans boycotts of Israel generally. The existing anti-boycott law only prohibits actions taken “with intent to comply with, further, or support any boycott fostered or imposed by a foreign country.” Obviously, it is not generally unlawful to say whether one has business dealings with Israel. And likewise, even under this law, it is not illegal to boycott Israel — unless the reason you’re doing it is to comply with a foreign country’s demand that you do so.

If one says, “I boycott Israel because I think Israel is terrible,” that remains perfectly lawful (the ACLU is simply wrong when it suggests that the law targets those who boycott Israel “because of a political viewpoint opposed to Israeli policies”). In fact, if one says, “I boycott Israel because the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) tells me to,” that’s entirely lawful, too (PACBI is neither a foreign government nor an IGO). Only boycotts done at the behest of the EU or the U.N. would be newly prohibited by the law.

The ACLU’s letter suggests that this represents unlawful viewpoint discrimination. But many laws are like this: They prohibit certain actions only when they are taken with a particular intent. For example, it is illegal to fire a Latino employee if one is motivated by racial prejudice against Latinos. Both the action and the intent are perfectly lawful on their own — it is not illegal to harbor racial prejudice, and it is not illegal to fire employees — but conjoined together they become illicit. One could characterize this as (to quote the ACLU’s letter) punishing persons “based solely on their point of view” — the same action, taken with a different (non-prejudiced) viewpoint, is lawful — but doing so would throw the entirety of American anti-discrimination law into question.

Understanding the proposed anti-boycott measure requires grasping this distinction. Critics see provisions that target “support [for] any boycott fostered or imposed by any international governmental organization against Israel,” and assume that this motive alone is being criminalized. But a close parsing of the text — and in fairness, the paragraph in question is a convoluted nightmare — shows that this phrase does not prohibit supporting a boycott of Israel, it only prohibits those aforementioned actions (e.g., discrimination against an employee, certifying one does no business with Israelis) if one is doing so to support a boycott call from a foreign government or, now, IGO.

But just because the hyperbolic reactions are off base does not mean the law is worth backing. There is a legitimate free speech objection in how the law treats “support” for an IGO’s announced boycott. Whereas in current law the term “support” for a boycott is modulated by terms like “comply with” or “further” — suggesting more than pure expressive sympathy — in the new bill the term “support” stands unadorned. This poses a significant risk of chilling speech because whether or not Israel boycotters are doing so because they personally find the nation terrible versus because they wish to “support” a U.N. declaration that Israel is terrible often will be quite blurry. In any event, it’s not clear why that should be legally dispositive.

Other new language regarding statutory penalties — I do not believe the bill carries the risk of imprisonment, but it would be simple for its writers to make this clear — and how “requests” for a boycott are treated also are troublesome and at the very least need reworking.

Even if these flaws were all fixed, however, there would still be a substantial difference of context: Namely, there is no serious threat that either the U.N. or the EU will call for a secondary boycott. Whereas the current law reasonably is categorized as a shield for American corporations — protecting them from being forced by foreign diktat into a boycott they do not actually endorse — this law is not responsive to any such threat.

That may or may not affect the First Amendment analysis, but it significantly undermines the law’s policy rationale. Most of the litigation over the current law came because companies were providing documentation to Arab countries showing that they were boycotting Israel in order to avoid the former nations’ secondary boycott. But if the U.N. or EU are not imposing a secondary boycott, there would be no occasion to furnish this information and thus virtually no situation where anyone could violate the law unless they admitted “we are boycotting Israel because the U.N. said to.”

Laws can be bad without being apocalyptic and inadvisable without being unconstitutional. Discussions of Israel-Palestine, in particular, suffer from a marked propensity from people on all sides to abandon care and perspective as they race to extremes. This bill does not do the more outrageous things it stands accused of. That does not mean it is well drafted, necessary or worth the tempest it is stirring up. 

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David Schraub is a lecturer at the law school and senior research fellow at the California Constitution Center at the UC Berkeley School of Law and a doctoral candidate in political science at Berkeley. He writes the blog The Debate Link, where a version of this article first appeared.

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Lessons from the house of mourning in Halamish

Three days after an Israeli father and two of his children were stabbed to death on Shabbat by a Palestinian in a West Bank settlement, I found myself with 16 other progressive rabbis sitting shivah for the deceased, the Salomons, in a Charedi neighborhood.

It was perhaps the hardest moment of a recent visit to Israel — sitting with the other Americans, our shoulders, heads and legs covered as we paid our respects to this grieving family. We stood out among the others and were stared at by many, and yet, we found many surprising similarities between us and were received by the family with such grace and warmth and real gratitude that it moves me deeply just to recall it.

I have been coming to Israel for more than 20 years, and these visits have never been picture perfect. I lived here as a rabbinical student in the 1990s, during the huge marches for peace, which then brought about the tragic assassination of Yitzhak Rabin after he signed the Oslo peace accords. Shortly after I arrived with a group from my congregation in 2006, the second Lebanon war broke out. And a few years ago, when I brought another group, our ice-breaker the first morning ended with the sound of sirens and instructions to head to shelters because missiles had been launched and Iron Dome activated.

I’m used to arriving in Israel and having things change dramatically within hours or days, but I was hoping this time would be different. It wasn’t.

As Tisha b’Av approaches — it begins the evening of July 31 — I am keenly aware of the dual realities that animate Israeli life. The destruction of the Temples in flames, the massacre of other Jews in so many other times and places, all of the hatred that has been and still is directed at us as a people is real and palpable here as Israel continues to fight for legitimacy and the safety of her people. It pervades every political conversation, every heated argument, every major decision. The pain of the past and the fear our people have internalized, coupled with the fact that this is the Middle East, makes this place a tinderbox ready to ignite at any moment.

It took no time for me to be reminded of all this when I came last week for the American Israel Education Foundation Rabbinic Seminar to travel across the country with colleagues and learn from experts about the complex issues at play here. We arrived hearing that the government had rescinded the agreement that took years to craft, granting egalitarian services at the Western Wall. Local people and delegations from the United States turned out and protested the government’s reversal of policy.

But that was just the beginning. The big news as we arrived was the government response to a challenge from the Israel Religious Action Center, opposing government discrimination against gay and lesbian couples wanting to adopt children. The government alleged that being raised by a same-sex couple would prove harmful to a child because it would “load extra baggage on the child.” As a social liberal and as a lesbian mother, this was particularly painful and disappointing for me, as it was for all of our delegation.

We stood out among the others and were stared at by many, and yet, we were received by the family with such grace and warmth and real gratitude.

Immediately, 90,000 people signed a petition against the decision, including professional organizations of psychologists, mental health professionals, social workers and others. They argued that all research proves that children are better off in a loving home with loving parents of any kind. What amazed me was that, in Tel Aviv, 15,000 people turned out to protest the government’s position. I was deeply moved by how far ahead of the government so much of the Israeli public is on issues like this.

But as soon as there is a march to further the cause of social justice, there is another mass gathering resulting from another kind of deep tension here. Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians we’ve met with all agree on one thing: Narratives and symbols have great power here in Jerusalem and go beyond reason to powerful emotion very quickly. Actions taken even for good reasons become flash points because they trigger a deeper struggle — the struggle between two peoples and the narratives that express their existential understandings of themselves and their place in the world. And this is what is at the heart of what’s been happening recently on the Temple Mount.

On July 14, two Israeli Arabs murdered two Israeli Druze police officers guarding the Temple Mount. As a result, the government decided to place metal detectors at the entrance to the area. The decision to physically put them in place just hours after the shooting prompted a heated reaction from Palestinians, who saw this as a breach of the status quo at their holy site. Protecting Israelis from those who would murder them makes sense, and the Israeli government has every right to take any action it deems necessary to protect its citizens. What is so sad and shortsighted is that the decision was implemented in a way that completely ignored how this action would be perceived and used by extreme elements within the Arab world.

And it was used: Extremists claimed that Jews were preventing Muslims from praying at Al-Aqsa and called on their faithful to protest in massive numbers. Clashes with police happened on a large scale hours after 15,000 Israelis marched for LGBT adoption rights in Tel Aviv.  

After incitement by Hamas and other radical groups, thousands of Palestinians clashed with police July 21 in the West Bank, and three Palestinians were killed. Later that night, a 19-year-old Palestinian climbed the fence of a Jewish settlement in the West Bank where three generations of the Salomons were celebrating Shabbat and the birth of a new baby. The suspect stabbed three people to death and wounded another, leaving a bloody scene in his wake.

In the same 24 hours, Israel moved from a place with an active debate that would be celebrated in any democracy about social policy to a place where one action that should have made sense tore apart society.

The scene of the Halamish attack. Photo courtesy of IDF

The deep divides between the secular and religious, Palestinians and Israelis, haves and have-nots, hawks and doves will not be bridged in our lifetimes — if ever. As a wise teacher told us on this trip, the oldest Hebrew texts talk about peace and justice in terms of seeking, not of achieving. We are not a people of arrival but of journey “toward.” If there is a people who can model for the world that humans can vigorously pursue ideals they know they never will see fully realized, it is the Jewish people. If there is any country that can make titanic struggles into creative new paradigms, it is Israel.

Our teacher also taught us that he does not view the glass as half full but believes it is important to celebrate that the opportunity exists to pour water into the glass. We break a glass at every Jewish wedding to symbolize what is still broken in our world.

Tisha b’Av reminds us of this so well. What I love about Israel and her people is that even with all that I’ve described, there is a spirit of innovation, creativity, lust for life and defiant hope that also is ingrained in our people. While biblical Israelite religion was destroyed when the Temple burned, Rabbinic Judaism was born at the same time. With every tragedy and act of brutality that happens here, something new and unanticipated is created.

May we have the continued strength to crush glass at our most joyful times so that we remain mindful of the shattered and broken world we live in, the world of conflicting and sometimes flammable confrontation with one another. May we also bless the fact that we are given a glass and the opportunity, as our wise teacher said, to pour water into it at all.

Amid all of the tension and all the misunderstanding and mistrust in Israel these days, our experience of sitting with the Salomons, people in such pain, as a sacred act is an example of the only solution — encountering one another as human beings. As someone very wise once said, “If our hearts must break, let them break open.”

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Rabbi Amy Bernstein is senior rabbi at Kehillat Israel Reconstructionist Congregation of Pacific Palisades.

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Films present dark side of Israeli policies

In 2013, two Israeli films — “5 Broken Cameras” and “The Gatekeepers” — were nominated for an Academy Award for feature-length documentary. It was a great kavod to the Jewish state, no doubt.

Except that supporters of Israel had mixed feelings about these films. “How can we defend Israel,” they moaned, “when Israelis themselves produce such damning films?”

And, as we learned earlier this month at the Jerusalem Film Festival, which screened “West of the Jordan River” and “Born in Deir Yassin,” that was just the beginning of the cinematic self-criticism. 

In 2013, it was clear that both Israeli Oscar contenders were not the products of the Israeli Foreign Ministry or of any pro-Israeli advocacy group, for that matter. “5 Broken Cameras” details the travails of the Palestinian village Bil’in with the defense barrier, the Israel Defense Forces and the neighboring settlers. In “The Gatekeepers,” five former heads of Israel’s Shin Bet secret service reflect candidly on their years of chasing Palestinian terrorists and Jewish extremists. There is a consensus among these five experienced men: Occupation corrupts Israeli society, and it is in the best interest of Israel to make peace with the Palestinians.

Israeli journalist Igal Sarna was shocked by “5 Broken Cameras,” writing in Al-Monitor in 2012, “What I saw scared me and caused me shame, as an Israeli who loves his country, because these actions of occupation and expropriation, uprooting of olive trees and land theft — are our actions, our stupidity.” On the other hand, J.J. Surbeck, executive director of the nonprofit T.E.A.M. (Training and Education About the Middle East) called it “a manipulative pro-Palestinian movie” that contains “manipulative emotional content to better rile viewers against Israel.”

While die-hard supporters of Israel could perhaps dismiss “5 Broken Cameras” as a propaganda film colluded by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, its Palestinian and Israeli directors, “The Gatekeepers” was a tougher case to handle. As director Dror Moreh said in an interview, the criticism these security chiefs had expressed “didn’t come from the leftists, it came from the heart of the defense establishment. If they say such things, then, OK, there must be something to it.”

Yet “5 Broken Cameras” and “The Gatekeepers” were only a harbinger for more films looking critically at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The 34th Jerusalem Film Festival, which ran from July 13-23, fired another salvo of films that will undoubtedly frustrate people who hate to see any artistic questioning of Israel’s policies and conduct.

“West of the Jordan River,” a documentary directed by Amos Gitai, tells the stories of Israelis and Palestinians, who — with the absence of any political solution — struggle daily with the hardships of life in the West Bank. Gitai last dealt with this issue 35 years ago with his documentary “Field Diary,” which at the time didn’t win him many friends. Here, he makes no bones about where he stands. Talking to i24News in May, he said that “[we] are not in a good moment of history. …  I would say this is a film by Israeli citizens concerned about the direction that the country is taking. … I think I have to take my responsibility as a citizen and talk to the world.”

He did talk to the world in May at the prestigious Cannes International Film Festival, where his film was screened. Variety magazine mentioned that Gitai went out of his way to grant Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Hotovely a chance to air her “relatively mystical approach to Israeli geopolitics,” but then contrasted it with his 1994 interview with the pragmatic Yitzhak Rabin. And anyway, says Variety, the film reflects “Gitai’s clear anti-government position.”

If this is bad enough news for people who believe that we shouldn’t air our dirty laundry, then they are up to an even harsher blow with “Born in Deir Yassin.” Director Neta Shoshani took on one of the most sensitive landmarks of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — the bloody conquest of the Arab village Deir Yassin on the western outskirts of Jerusalem in April 1948 by Etzel (the Irgun) and Lehi (the Stern Gang). After the death of 110 of the villagers — many of them the elderly, women and children — the Arab population panicked and started to flee Palestine, thus becoming refugees for generations.

Shoshani interviewed the people who had taken part in the operation in 1948 and again, like in “The Gatekeepers,” these are far from being leftists or liberals. Now in their early 90s and obviously still haunted by the gory scenes of the battle, these men proudly defended their brutal acts by saying — not without justice — that it was “either us or them.”

It’s not only pro-Israel advocates in the Diaspora who resent these kinds of films that seem to badmouth the beloved Jewish state. Last year, Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev proposed a bill, referred to as “Loyalty in Culture,” which conditions state funding to cultural institutions on the respect they show to Israel. And recently, she demanded that movie foundations hand over information about lectors who had discussed movie-funding proposals over the past five years and the reasons they gave for their decisions.

My advice to anyone startled by these films is to take a deep breath and relax. The Israel that survived a surprise attack on both fronts in the Yom Kippur War surely can survive these critical films. Furthermore, this is a cleansing process that shows the self-confidence and maturity of Israeli society, which is ready to confront unpleasant chapters of its history. When a reconciliation with the Palestinians finally is reached, these films will be remembered as the first positive steps.

But when will Palestinian films begin to echo some soul searching on the other side, confessing atrocities and admitting the rejection of any compromise? Probably not so fast.

And yet, this year’s Jerusalem Film Festival also included “Gaza Surf Club,” which tells the story of Palestinian youth in that Godforsaken place, who instead of joining Hamas, becoming suicide bombers or butchering a Jewish family with a knife, are poised to become world-renowned surfers. In our gloomy environment, this looked to me like a little sign of hope.

Am I daydreaming here? Maybe, but isn’t that what movies are made for? 

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Uri Dromi is director general of the Jerusalem Press Club. He served as spokesman of the Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres governments from 1992 to 1996, during the Oslo peace process.

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