Obama is better for Israel

With American election season marching on, there isn’t a Jew in the American Exile who isn’t worried sick over who to vote for. There has been a lot of uptalk about McCain, and for Obama, downtalk. One friend, a generally liberal, socially conscious Jewish girl, told me blunt, “A vote for McCain is a vote against Israel.” Another friend, generally more conservative, helped me come to the following thoughts:

On domestic issues, Obama is much more in tune than McCain with Jewish values. Obama will act with compassion to help the downtrodden in America, through universal health insurance and poverty programs. He will also do far more than McCain to combat problems that cross national boundaries, such as hunger and AIDS. He is better for the Earth. Most importantly, Obama will put good judges on the Supreme Court.

The best side of Israel?

Nicholas Kristof wrote the following in a New York Times editorial a few days ago:

Yet it is also here [in Judea and Samaria] that you see the very best side of Israel. Israeli human rights groups relentlessly stand up for Palestinians. Israeli women volunteer at checkpoints to help Palestinians through. Israeli courts periodically rule in favor of Palestinians. Israeli scholars have published research that undermines their own nation’s mythologies. Many Israeli journalists have been fair-minded toward Palestinians in a way that Arab journalists have rarely reciprocated.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, raq rega! The best side of Israel is when “Israeli courts periodically rule in favor of Palestinians”? That doesn’t make any sense:

To live as a Jew

When someone asks about or mentions Israel, I always feel a rush of emotions. There are triggers that make me giddy with excitement, triggers that give me goosebumps, triggers that make me sad. I have been fortunate enough to visit Israel 7 times. One of the first things I always mention is the energy of Israel. There’s just something in the air that is evident as soon as one steps off the plane, almost a spiritual caffeine. In some ways, my identification with Israel shapes my identity as an American. My father often tells stories of high holiday services where the rabbi would not continue with the service until enough money had been raised for Israel. He understood that without Israel, American Jewry, and more importantly all Jews could not survive.

Trusting Abbas

When I saw PA leader Abbas’ claim last week that Israel and Hamas were holding secret negotiations, which both Israel and Hamas immediately denied, I couldn’t help being amused. The only possible benefit of Abbas making such a claim is that he might be taken more seriously as a leader if he decided to tell the truth while Israel and Hamas continued to lie to the public.

Truth is, I expected such negotiations might be going on (as did many other writers) but when Israel explicitly denied such talks, one of two outcomes were possible. Either Israel was in fact not negotiating with Hamas, or the government was so politically inept as to believe that it could actually stop people from finding out the truth.

So, when I read this morning in the JPost that negotiations are in fact taking place, and that “Israel is demanding that a formal calm with Hamas be preceded by a 30-day “feeling the pulse” period,” I couldn’t help but smile a little.

The Terrorist Opposition Party?

There are a couple of interesting articles this morning I’d like to write about, but this one was by far the most outrageous. For the last few years there have been various efforts in Britain to attack Israel politically, the most recent being an academic boycott. Yet just as it seemed the redcoats had finally given up picking fights Israel, the British government announced yesterday that Likud leader Moshe Feiglin was banned from entering the U.K. on the grounds that his actions

foment or justify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs; seek to provoke others to terrorist acts; foment other serious criminal activity or seek to provoke others to serious criminal acts and foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK.

What continues to confound me about stories like this is that Britain is supposed to be a world leader in academics. The Ivy Leagues in the US all imitate the academic style of Cambridge and Oxford.

Masada Sun

Since this is a Zionist blog, I thought I would make my first post about why I am a Zionist. Much of what I have to say, and will be saying on this blog, may seem on its face radical; out of context my points can be grievously misconstrued. For this reason I want to start out by emphasizing that I was not always a Zionist, that I understand from personal experience the logic of anti-Zionism, that my Zionism is a carefully considered conclusion. The following essay, which I wrote after returning from my first trip to Israel two summers ago, does not detail my logic and views – you’ll get plenty of that in the future – instead hoping to give an emotional glimpse of the moment I became a Zionist.

Two millennia ago, the Second Temple’s razing fresh, Jewish zealots, called by the Romans sicarii, daggers, silently scaled Masada’s shear cliffs.

An Eye Gazes Toward Zion

As of about two weeks ago I didn’t know the words to Hatikvah. I speak almost no Hebrew, but since I’ve been planning to spend this summer in Israel, I figured that even if I came in knowing nothing else, at least I could sing along with the crowd and not look like a fool.

It took me a while to learn the whole thing. The refrain was the easy part, but I still mix up Nefesh yehudi homiyah with Ayin letziyon tzofiyah when I’m thinking about it too much.

The interesting byproduct of this process has been my study of the meaning behind the words. The refrain is by far my favorite part of the song musically, but it’s the last phrase of the first stanza that I keep going back to when I forget Nefesh yehudi homiyah.

LaShuv L’Tzion: To Return to Zion

Mention the word “Zion” to five of your friends and you’re likely to get five different answers ranging from “you mean Israel?” to “Oh Shit, I loved the Matrix!” For those of us who have visited the true Zion, I think the feeling in many ways matches the sentiment expressed in the movie: “If the war was over tomorrow, Zion is where the party would be.”

That being said, the politically charged climate in which Israel exists as it approaches its 60th anniversary allows for a truly fantastic range of viewpoints on how Israel should make its way forward in the next sixty years. The goal of this blog is to be a sounding board for a panoply of viewpoints on the state of the State of Israel. It is an experiment, and hopefully, much like that of our subject, one which will grow and change over time while staying true to its most fundamental goals.