Whats Mine Is Mine

People need consistency in their lives. I think that is even more true as we get older. I used to like a good surprise here and there, but now I can do without it. That is one of the reasons I was complaining on my last post.

For as many years as I can remember, the nine days has always been a time in Israel when we have to remind ourselves what the true meaning of Sinat Chinam ( baseless hatred) is all about. It is similar to  getting into the holiday spirit in the USA in December.

Anyway, last time I was saying how the papers didn't report any incidences of little girls getting beaten up by grown men in Beit Shemesh due to their wardrobe, and it was making me uncomfortable, because I felt that something was off.

I am happy to say that there is nothing to fear. My faith has been restored. The world is still aligned properly. The sun still rises in the morning and sets in the evening. New York pizza is still better than Chicago and Haredi men are still hitting little girls in Bet Shemesh for their bad choice of clothing.

Thank G-d

The day after my last post a group of around 50 men chased 2 girls who were immodestly dressed and pepper sprayed them. Their house was surrounded and the crowd was chanting for the family to leave the neighborhood as the girls were defiling it. The offending family is newly affiliated with Chabad and is on the journey back to observance.

Welcome home guys

At least things are back to normal. I was starting to worry.

This would not have been an issue if the government would have held their ground and passed the "nation state " law they wanted to.

If you have not heard about this VERY controversial law let me fill you in.

For those of you who don't know, Israel ( and many other countries) does not have a constitution. They have a set of laws known as basic laws.

I don't want to get into that too much, suffice to say they just passed one solidifying the Jewish nature of the State of Israel.

The original version of this law would have, among other things,  allowed groups to build communities based on common religious beliefs. The intent of this was for Jews to be able to  build communities that could exclude non Jews. Sounds racist, and it is but I also found out recently  that Arabs have the right to do this in Israel already. More interestingly, had the law passed with this in it, I think at some point the Haredim would have used it to keep out others and secular Jews to keep out observant etc. but that was too over the top, so it was nixed . Yet it would have solved the little girls problem. They would have gotten thrown out of the neighborhood.

The main points of this law are . ( I have taken the liberty to paraphrase)

Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people who have the right to self determination in their land

It puts into law the flag, symbols, anthem etc...

Jerusalem is the Capital of Israel

Hebrew is the Language of Israel with Arabic having a special place. (This is a downgrading of Arabic which before was an official language). ( controversial)

Israel is open for Jewish immigration ( controversial)

Israel will act as the center for worldwide Jewry. It will do this by insuring the safety of Jews everywhere, by preserving the cultural , religious and historical heritage of the Jewish people and by strengthening the relationship with Israel and Jews in the Diaspora

Jewish settlement is seen as a national value ( this is the most controversial one)

The Hebrew calendar is the official calendar ( slightly controversial)

Independence day, Holocaust day and Memorial day are official holidays ( slightly controversial)

Sabbath and Jewish holidays are days of rest in the state. Every religion gets to maintain their days of rest

The law can not be amended unless by another basic law.

The ones I did not mark as controversial should be self evident. If they are not, sorry.

Making Hebrew the official language, is a downgrading of Arabic. That is a fact as Arabic was an official language two days ago and today it is not.

I am not sure what the implications of this is. Will they take it off signs and official documents? I am not sure. In the USA there is only one official language yet NYC has documents printed in more than 10. Try going to the airport in Miami and not speaking Spanish. It doesn't really matter that Spanish is not an official language, good luck.

I am also not sure why Arabic was an official language to begin with. It was a holdover from the British.

Spain has Spanish as it's official language, although many people speak Catalan. Latvia has Latvian, although 25%  of their population are  Russian.The same with many other countries. So the down grading might be the issue. Having only Hebrew as an official language should not be.

Israel gives automatic citizenship to any Jew. This seems racist and would be if Jews were a race. We are not. We are made up of many races. We are a nation with a common religious belief system. That is the reason for the first point( see above), making sure the connection to the country and the nation is established. It is not a nuance and not semantics. It is the fundamental argument between us and the Palestinians. We say we have a historical right to be here. The say we are colonialists.

Calendar - give me a break. I had to take a day off for Christmas my whole life. The whole world does this. Muslim countries, India, China etc.

Also, just because some of our citizens can not identify with our Holidays doesn't mean they shouldn't be there. If a British person becomes and American citizen, should he say independence day should not be celebrated because it offends him.

PLEASE.

I saved the best for last. You can look at this many ways. Zionism was the movement for Jews to return and settle our ancient homeland. Was it racist then? Just because something says one thing does it preclude everything else. None of these statements diminishes the rights of Non-Jews or minorities. It says that this country was set up for Jews.

Nowhere does it say that non-Jews can not live here. It does not say they can not vote. It does not say that they can not engage in any profession or own property. It does not say they can be discriminated against in any way. It says that Israel is a Jewish State

Now, if I was a an Israeli Arab would I be happy about this.

No I would not.

I would not if I was a Kurd in Turkey.

I would not if I was Basque and I lived in Spain.

I could give many other examples. Many countries in Europe are the country of a specific Nation. The Slavic people,The Latvian people is how they are referred to in those countries foundational documents.

I know that the comparison is not entirely equal. I do know that we are a nation and a religion. That is how we define our nationhood. It is our right to define it as such.

The Irony is the comments being espoused about this law really have no basis in reality . When you couple that with who is saying it , it becomes comical.

The EU says this makes it harder for a two state solution. They are right. If a two state solution was implemented, our Jewish state would be 20% not Jewish and the Palestinian state would be 0% Jewish as they have said many times.

The only thing that the EU can mean, is that with this law,  Israel must be rejecting the Palestinian demand of a right of return, which would be the end of Israel.

I will give them that.

Next up Turkey.

Look up Chutzpah in the dictionary, find Erdogan.

The man who represents the country that killed 1.5 million Armenians , denies self determination to their Kurdish population, and has  been illegally  occupying part of Cyprus, has the nerve to open his mouth and call Israel colonialist murderers. WOW

Was this the right time for this law? Yesterday someone said that the only reason that this law was passed was so that Netanyahu could take it away as a political issue from his rivals on the right ( sounds familiar). That may be true but why does it matter. At some point this needs to be done.

Why you ask? Why do we need to denigrate 20% of our population?

We don't.

What we do need to do is make it clear to the other side that in order for peace to actually happen we will need to recognize their realities and they will need to recognize ours.

This is ours.

A few weeks ago I felt that the timing of the moving of the embassy was wrong. I believed that Kushner and his team had a chance for some progress towards peace and the announcement of the move gave Abbas a way out. That is the problem with being an optimist. We want to believe and we want to hope. The reality is that Abbas does not want a deal. The only thing he will agree to is for a full acceptance of all his demands including a full right of return which of course is the end of Israel.

I must admit there is a lot in this law that does scare me. There is the possibility for abuse but it does not have to go that way.

I pray that it does not.

Yet the much more important thing is that I also believe that the time has come to make it clear to everyone, especially our enemies, that they understand that this country is as important to us as it is to them. They have led their people ( who I do not think are our enemies) to think it is not. That somehow our resolve is less than theirs

For too long we have denied saying the truth in order to be politically correct. This has led us to lose support amongst diaspora Jewry, whose blind faith in what they call social justice, has them taking sides with those who seek our destruction rather than defend our right to be here.

I have come to realize that the timing of telling hard truths is never right.

These are our hard truths are:

Israel is ours.

It is the Jewish Homeland.

Jerusalem is and always will be its capital.

We are willing to live here in peace with our neighbors if they like but will defend ourselves if needed.

We are not going anywhere.