Angie

Ehud Banai--In Concert

Avishai Cohen-- Shuvi Elai

David Broza

Meir Banai-- Lechi Eli (summer of '09)

SHI 360-- United

Why Is Israel Unpopular? By Tzvi Freeman (Chabad.org)

Question (from a citizen of India):

There is an anti-Israel feeling growing around the world. Especially after the First Gulf War and 9/11. Almost all means of media are contributing to this anti-Israel feeling. There are different lobbies working behind this. I am wondering why Israel is not doing enough to stop or control this. It is truly a total failure. This is high time to do something. War is not an option. Think about it.

Response:

Thank you for taking the time to provide these comments.

You write that Israel's popularity has suffered since the First Gulf War in 1991. This is surprising to hear. As far as I can recall, I do not remember any time that Israel was popular, from the time she was granted autonomy to the present day. In fact, I cannot recall a single act that Israel ever did on the international stage that gained her acclaim and admiration.

Does it have something to do with our occupation of a strip of land on the Mediterranean? Or perhaps because we are not nice to our neighbors?

I doubt it. We were not too popular in Europe, where most of us lived beforehand. But that may have had to do with our involvement in science and the arts. After all, what business did Mendelsohn, Heine, Mahler, Freud, Einstein, Chagal et al have mixing their noses into European culture?

But that doesn't work either, because when we lived in the ghettos and minded our business, our popularity was also somewhat under par.

I wish I could say it was just a European thing, but my history lessons tell me that we never quite won an award for popularity from the Arabic-speaking world. Neither were we too popular under the Byzantines, the Persians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Babylonians or the Pharaohs of Egypt.

It's not as though we didn't try. We offered them many new ideas, and they accepted most of them—our alphabet, architecture, crafts such as glassmaking and metalwork, monotheism and divine providence, our prophets and what they call "the book of books," most of our ethics, the idea of the equality of all human beings before G‑d. They happily took it all, even claimed it for their own. But for whatever reason, we remained even less popular than those who contributed somewhat less.

So today things have not changed much. Whether Israel defends herself or grants concessions, assassinates terrorists or frees them, speaks out or shuts up, she receives the same degree of criticism and outrage. Even when, only a few months ago, Israel provided the most advanced medical aid of any country in the world to the suffering people of Haiti, her motives were questioned and not a thing changed.

You will say, "So what did you people do to deserve this bad rap?"

And I will ask you in return: What did the peace-loving Ahmadiyya of Pakistan, whose motto is "Love for all, hatred for none" do to deserve a massacre of 86 of their following in a mosque last June? What did the peace-loving monks of Tibet do to deserve the torture and persecution of the Chinese conqueror while the world remains quiet? What did Gabriel Holtzberg and the tourists in Bombay do to deserve the bloodthirsty cruelty of terrorists? Since when were the peaceful and virtuous touted as heros among humankind, rather than simply trampled beneath the horses' hooves, the chariot's thunder and the grinding battalions of war?

In truth, there was one time that Israel gained a small window of popularity. When Israel's young men fought back Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Saudi and Iraqi troops directed and armed by Soviet aid to victory in six days, then there was a short outburst of admiration. Even our enemies were truly impressed. Why? Because they don't admire wimps who try to live in harmony. They admire tough men and winners of war.

Perhaps Jews are the woman of the nations. Our forefathers are praised for many traits, but prowess at war is not one of them. Look in the Talmud and you'll be hard put to find the sages extolling the virtues of their people as warriors and the mighty heroes. Rather, they describe "three virtues of this people: they are compassionate, they bear a sense of shame and they do acts of kindness"—all very feminine virtues. Perhaps as macho men beat their wives, so the nations of the world are obsessed with beating down the Jews.

Or perhaps, as Paul Johnson writes in his History of the Jews, Jews represent G‑d to the world. G‑d is what provides people with guilt and shame. They don't like guilt and shame. So they don't like Jews.

Or perhaps we should go to the greatest anti-Semite of all time and ask him. Adolph Hitler, may his name and memory be forever erased, wrote that, "The Jews have provided the world with two blemishes; one on their bodies and one on their psyches. On their bodies, they have provided circumcision, and on their psyches, they have provided a conscience."

It's simple: You're told that Hitler gassed the Jews while the world looked on, that those nations who had a chance to save Jews deliberately failed to do so, and those lands to which Jews fled refused to let them into their borders. How do you rid yourself of this horrible guilt? By pointing to Israel, reinterpreting the facts and saying, "See, they're just as bad as the rest of us!"

Perhaps that's it. Perhaps if we stop being the conscience of the world, then they will let us come to the prom and even dance with us.

Perhaps. But if we do, we will no longer be who we are.

So I have a better idea. Maybe we'll just stop apologizing for everything we do, lift our heads high and be who we are without regard for the world's opinion.

One day soon, all the world will turn upside down and those who loved peace and compassion will rise to the top while the emperors and conquerors will fall to the bottom. I'm quite sure that at that time we will gain some popularity. Until then, we can wait.

The Decemberists- Hazards of Love

Modest Mouse-- Float On

Band of Horses-- On My Way Back Home

Thievery Corporation-- Richest Man in Babylon (H/T: Keath Blatt)

John Lee Hooker-- I lay Down

CSS-- Let's Make Love and Listen Death From Above

The Knife-- Heartbeat

What's a moderate muslim?

An Interview with Zeyno Baran, senior fellow of the Hudson Institute and editor of The Other Muslims: Moderate and Secular. (Palgrave-Macmillan), 190 p., $21.60

Barry Rubin: Zeyno, you begin your book with this sentence: "The most important ideological struggle in the world today is within Islam." Can you explain the nature of this struggle and how it is going?

Zeyno Baran: This struggle is essentially a Muslim civil war over whose definition of Islam will be accepted as "mainstream": will it be the version of the Islamists (shared by all political-religious radicals, both non-violent and violent) or that of traditional Muslims (cultural, secular, and pious) One will become accepted by a majority of Muslims, and by extension, of non-Muslims. Since the 1970s Islamists have made tremendous headway in this struggle thanks to money from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region; they were thus able to establish institutes and networks all over the world to spread Islamism.

Today, many Muslims don't even realize what they believe to be authentic Islam is in fact a primarily political ideology of recent origin. Non-Islamists are still lacking in the financial resources-whether state or private-necessary to organize effectively against the Islamists; this is true as much in the West (the focus of this book) as in Muslim-majority countries. So, in the short term I argue that Islamists will continue to be winning in this struggle. That said, I believe in the longer term both non-Islamist Muslims and non-Muslims will eventually wake up to the realization that Islamism is a serious ideological challenge to universal human rights.

Barry Rubin: Precisely what is a "moderate Muslim"? Hasn't that term been subject of a lot of misuse and misunderstanding?

Zeyno Baran: You are exactly right-the misuse of the label "moderate Muslim," by Islamist groups operating in the West, has indeed led to major misunderstandings. This is precisely why I used this term in this book-to clear up this misunderstanding and reclaim the term from the Islamists, many of whom represent themselves as "moderates" to Western policy makers. American and European policy makers have accepted as "moderate" people who do not commit violence; to me, however, that is a very narrow definition.

An Islamist that participates in the electoral process yet does so with the goal of limiting women's rights or of introducing a sharia regime is not moderate. The contributors to this book are all true moderates-those who fully support both universal human rights and the teachings of the Islamic faith. Being "moderate" does not mean they are not pious, which is another common misunderstanding of the term.

Barry Rubin: Why is it wrong to base the definition of a "moderate" Muslim on simply those who don't use violence?

Zeyno Baran: The true divide within Islam is not between violence and nonviolence, but between moderation and extremism. Few Muslims resort to violence-but many more share the thinking of the violent extremism. Unless the ideology of Islamism is understood as the root cause of the violence, I don't believe we'll see an end to the terrorism and radicalism among Muslim communities. Moderation has to start with thought; if we are giving a free pass to those with extremist ideologies as "moderates," then the true moderates will continue to be weakened.

Barry Rubin: How have the U.S., Canadian, and European governments helped the radicals and hurt the moderates?

Zeyno Baran: Western governments, in their desire to "engage with Muslims," have often reached out to well-established Islamist organizations as their "partners". In doing so, these governments did not realize that they were lending legitimacy to these Islamists in the internal struggle against their moderate opponents. With the Islamists being the main "go-to Muslims" for Western governments, it has been much harder for the true moderates to make their voices heard.

Barry Rubin: Why are Western media and institutions so easily fooled by radicals, and why do they seem to favor them?

Zeyno Baran: I think when Western media and institutions look for "Muslim voices," they automatically gravitate to those who most closely resemble their preconception of what an "authentic" Muslim sounds like-a conception that has, of course, been shaped by Islamist propaganda. In recent years, an "authentic" voice has been one that is opposed to US policies, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that is strongly critical of Israel. Many in the media share these views as well, so it is in some ways a natural fit.

The true moderates are often accused of being neo-conservative or "not really Muslim" when they support US policies or express a more balanced view of the state of Israel; these ideas seem to Western journalists and policymakers to be "un-Muslim," as if there were a single Muslim way of thinking! Certainly, the Islamists argue there are certain "Muslim opinions" on some issues-such as the Middle East peace process-but that's because they are trying to establish their own view as the single dominant one. It is as wrong as saying there is a "Christian opinion" on an issue, given the vast range of views held by individual Christians.

Barry Rubin: How does assimilation and acculturation work with Muslim immigrants in the West and how should it work?

Zeyno Baran: Each country has had different policies and different experiences, but in general, European countries for many decades paid little attention to assimilation; in particular, the UK and the Netherlands followed an openly multiculturalist policy that avoided any mention of assimilation and/or acculturation. This led to Muslim immigrant enclaves being formed in parts of European cities; when an area becomes heavily Islamic, then Islamists come in with their institutions and mosques, and establish themselves as the interlocutors between the immigrant community and Western authorities.

Even after many of these governments decided to change their policies and developed programs for increased acculturation, they continued to work with the Islamists, whose ultimate responsibility is not to Muslim immigrants, but to the global Muslim umma (community) as they understand it. Since these "representatives" had no interest whatsoever in promoting the integration and assimilation of European Muslims, this led to frustration on the part of Western governments and societies, which began wondering whether Muslims can ever truly become "Western." In turn, this frustration-directed towards all Muslims, not just the extremists-fostered a sense of anger and victimization on the part of the Muslim immigrants, who felt they would never be accepted as long as they remained Muslim.

A better way to ensure social cohesion would be to address the pragmatic needs of Muslim immigrants-jobs, education, equal rights-in accordance with the social norms of the country, with a sensitivity to different religious/cultural backgrounds. In practice, this would mean allowing the establishment of dignified prayer places for Muslims, while not assuming all Muslims go to the mosque all the time, or that the mosque is the only social place for Muslims. There need to be many other places where Muslims can go to socialize with each other and non-Muslims; these will develop naturally if Europeans can move away from characterizing these populations as "Muslim first."

Barry Rubin: Has the concept of multiculturalism helped or hurt in this struggle?

Zeyno Baran: Despite being born of good intentions, the Western policies of multiculturalism have made it harder for Muslims to become Western. The pendulum of respect for cultural/religious difference has swung too far, and Muslims have been trapped into their Muslim identity as "the other," instead of being assisted in becoming one of "us."

One of the recent and most clear examples of this is the wearing of the burqa in the West. For years multiculturalists have looked the other way when seeing women covered from head to toe in a style contrary to most Western norms as well as to Islam itself. Islam simply mandates modesty in dress, which for many women traditionally meant the headscarf, but never the full covering. Yet, until recently, in another unintended consequence of multiculturalism, few Westerners were willing to tackle this issue as they did not want to be seen as intolerant or bigoted. The few that have spoken out have been silenced with threats of being labeled "racist"; thus, intolerable forms of social behavior have continued to the point where they have become acceptable.

Barry Rubin: How can Western societies "win over" Muslims without losing their own identity or surrendering to the Islamists?

Zeyno Baran: The question is which Muslims? The Islamists would never be won over since their long term goal is to see a world that is ruled with sharia. If Western societies continue to try to judge their success in "winning over Muslims" by giving into Islamist demands, then they'll continue to lose their identity and their basic freedoms. But if Western societies were to side with non-Islamist Muslims, and learn from them how best to counter the short- and long-term goals of the Islamists, then I would say there is a great possibility that the West will not only successfully defend its own values and norms, but also help Muslims usher in a desperately-needed Islamic Renaissance.

Barry Rubin: How can moderates justify their interpretations of Islam when they appear to differ with the most important and basic Islamic texts?

Zeyno Baran: Many of these texts have been written centuries ago and in a particular context. Many moderates read them recognizing that what may have been a great social advancement in the 8th century cannot be taken literally in the 21st century. Over the centuries, there were many different voices widely debating how to interpret the Qur'an or the hadiths; moderates follow the tradition of those who have used their rationality and interpreted revelation as well as historic developments within their correct context. There are also many moderates who have not read many of the basic Islamic texts; yet they are no less legitimate, because 1) many of the radicals have never read many of these texts either and 2) Islam is not just about the written text but the living tradition. Indeed, for centuries Muslims learned the basics of their religion orally, passing down teachings from one generation to another.

The recent radical trend we see among Muslims is due to radicals picking and choosing certain passages from the Qur'an and other key texts, interpreting them in a way to make their case, and then presenting them as the most legitimate interpretations. Again, I'll draw an analogy with Christianity-it is as if saying that only one denomination's interpretation of basic texts is the correct one. Paraphrasing Bernard Lewis, the situation we face within Islam is as if a KKK-controlled state found major sources of oil, and used the money to spread its own version of Islam as the most correct form and the whole world gradually began seeing them as the most authentic voices.

Barry Rubin: The Islamists are so well financed and well-organized how can the moderates compete? How can they win?

Zeyno Baran: This is the most difficult question. The moderates have not been able to compete and won't be able to compete unless there is help from the West. Theoretically some of the Muslim-majority countries that are threatened by Islamists could help, but in practice they are often too afraid to challenge them for fear of being labeled as "apostates."

The West knows from its own history the damage religious extremists cause to societies and the religion itself; they can help the moderates by no longer giving Islamists a free pass while their activists are working to undermine Muslim moderates and Western (or universal) values. They can also help by increasing visibility of the moderates' work, such as those in The Other Muslims who argue for secular rule using Islam's own texts and history, or those who push for Islamic Renaissance, without which I believe we'll never quite win against the radicals who are increasingly becoming the mainstream.

The Like - He's Not A Boy

Liberal Hypocrisy by Bret Stephens of Wall Street Journal

Israel and Its Liberal 'Friends'
Why don't they apply the same tough love to the Palestinians?

By BRET STEPHENS

Questions for liberals: What does it mean to be a friend of Israel? What does it mean to be a friend of the Palestinians? And should the same standards of friendship apply to Israelis and Palestinians alike, or is there a double standard here as well?

It has become the predictable refrain among Israel's liberal critics that their criticism is, in fact, the deepest form of friendship. Who but a real friend, after all, is willing to tell Israel the hard truths it will not tell itself? Who will remind Israel that it is now the strong party, and that it cannot continue to play the victim and evade the duties of moral judgment and prudential restraint? Above all, who will remind Israel that it cannot go on denying Palestinians their rights, their dignity, and a country they can call their own?

The answer, say people like Peter Beinart, formerly of the New Republic, is people like . . . Peter Beinart. And now that Israel has found itself in another public relations hole thanks to last week's raid on the Gaza flotilla, Israelis will surely be hearing a lot more from him.

Now consider what it means for liberals to be friends of the Palestinians.

Here, the criticism becomes oddly muted. So Egypt, a country that also once occupied Gaza, enforces precisely the same blockade on the Strip as Israel: Do liberal friends of Palestine urge the Obama administration to get tough on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as they urge him to do with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? So a bunch of "peace" activists teams up with a Turkish group of virulently anti-Semitic bent and with links both to Hamas and al Qaeda: Does this prompt liberal soul-searching about the moral drift of the pro-Palestinian movement? So Hamas trashes a U.N.-run school, as it did the other week, because it educates girls: Do liberals wag stern fingers at Palestinians for giving up on the dream of a secular, progressive state?

Well, no. And no. And no. Instead, liberal support for Palestinians is now mainly of the no-hard-questions-asked variety. But that is precisely the kind of support that liberals decry as toxic when it comes to Western support for Israel.

I leave it to others to decide whether this is simple hypocrisy or otherwise evidence of how disingenuous claims by certain liberals to friendship with Israel have become. Still, these liberals insist that their remonstrances are necessary because, without them, Israelis won't get the tough love they need.
Really? Consider a sample of recent clippings from the Israeli press. An editorial in Haaretz: "Like a robot lacking judgment . . . that's how the [Israeli] government is behaving in its handling of the aid flotillas to the Gaza Strip." A columnist in the Jerusalem Post: "As evil as these jihadists [aboard the flotilla] are, they were acting in a cause the whole decent, democratic world knows is right: Freedom for Gaza. Freedom for the Palestinians. And end to the occupation. An end to the blockade." A member of Israel's cabinet: "We need to ease the population's conditions and find security-sensitive, worthy alternatives to the embargo."

None of this indicates a society lacking in a capacity for self-criticism. Yet that capacity hardly has any parallel in the closed circle of Palestinian media or politics, a point that ought to bother Western liberals.

It doesn't. One wonders why.

Part of the reason surely has to be intellectual confusion, an inability to grasp the difference between national "liberation" and genuine freedom. Ho Chi Minh was not a "freedom fighter," and neither was Yasser Arafat. How many times does the world have to go through this drill for liberals to get the point?

There's also a psychology at work. Harvard's Ruth Wisse calls it "moral solipsism"—obsessive regard for your own moral performance; complete indifference to the performance of those who wish you ill.

Finally there's the fact that liberalism has become a politics of easy targets. Liberals have no trouble taking stands against abstinence educators, Prop 8 supporters or members of the tea party. But when it comes to genuine bigots and religious fanatics—and Hamas has few equals in those categories—liberals have a way of discovering their capacity for cultural nuance and political pragmatism.

Today, by contrast, the task of defending Israel is hard. It's hard because defenders must eschew cliches about "the powerful" and "the powerless." It is hard because it goes against prevailing ideological fashions. And it's hard because it requires an appreciation that the choice of evils that endlessly confronts Israeli policy makers is not something they can simply wash their hands of by "ending the occupation." They tried that before—in Gaza.

Is there a liberalism that is capable of recognizing this? Or are we again at the stage where it has been consumed by its instinct for fellow-traveling? In 1968, Eric Hoffer wrote: "I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us." By "us," he meant liberals, too, and maybe most of all.

Manu Chao-- Mr Bobby

Who's to Blame for Gaza Misery?

Humanitarian Crisis? No, Gazans Are Bored!

Jonathan Tobin - Commentary  07.14.2010 - 11:03 AM

Left-wing propagandists have spent the last several years successfully painting a picture of Gaza as a place where children starve and where all are in need. In reply, Israel and her defenders have attempted to point out that such tales are pure myth and that, in fact, there is no shortage of food or medicine in Gaza despite the limited blockade that has been imposed on the region since Hamas seized power there in a bloody coup. But there’s no need to listen to the Israelis on that point. As the New York Times makes clear in a 2,500-word dispatch published today about life in Gaza, the residents of the strip have no reticence about refuting the lies about a humanitarian crisis:

There are plenty of things to buy in Gaza; goods are brought over the border or smuggled through the tunnels with Egypt. That is not the problem. In fact, talk about food and people here get angry because it implies that their struggle is over subsistence rather than quality of life. The issue is not hunger. It is idleness, uncertainty and despair.

The picture painted in this story of life in Gaza is not pretty. But it makes it clear that what is really bothering Gazans is how boring life in Hamasistan can be. The Gazans chose to be ruled by an Islamist terrorist group dedicated to perpetuating the war against Israel and to the idea that Israel can someday be destroyed. But they think it is unfair to pay any price for the state of belligerency that exists with Israel — even if their basic needs are guaranteed by both the international community and the country they wish to destroy.
To their credit, authors Michael Slackman and Ethan Bronner make clear that the Palestinians’ biggest problem is the civil war being waged between the Hamas and Fatah organizations, as the latter’s decision to shut off electricity to Gaza to get even with Hamas illustrates.
As far as Israel, Palestinians are a bit confused. They desire its destruction, but at the same time, they think it is unfair that they should not be allowed to work there or that trade between Israel and Gaza should be halted because of the terrorist campaigns waged against the Jewish state by the groups Palestinians support. They want war and vote for Hamas but think it is unjust that they have lost income because of Israel’s measures of self-defense that were created because of Hamas terrorism. This confusion is well illustrated in the quote from Abdel Qader Ismail, 24, a former employee of the military intelligence service who now produces anti-Israel plays:

Our play does not mean we hate Israel. We believe in Israel’s right to exist, but not on the land of Palestine. In France or in Russia, but not in Palestine. This is our home.

It never seems to occur to Ismail that Israelis have no wish to live in France or Russia but instead want their own homeland, which they have demonstrated time and again that they are willing to share with the Palestinians if only they will finally accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state in part of that small country.
The tales in this report of Gaza’s abused wives and hopeless idle men are sad. But the answer to their isolation is an end to their war against Israel. If Palestinians would reject Hamas and an ethos of war to the death against Israel and accept a two-state solution with a Jewish state, Gaza’s isolation would end, and the Palestinian people could then concentrate their energies on development rather than on war. Until the Palestinians’ sense of identity is bound up with something more than merely rejection of Israel, the pathetic life they lead in Gaza will continue. And though they — and their foreign supporters — may prefer to rant about Israel, the truth is, the blame for their unenviable fate is largely their own.

The Specials-- Too Much Too Young

Dust Bowl

Palestinian Dreams

What If Palestinians Were Jeffersonian Democrats?
Jennifer Rubin - 07.12.2010 - 8:52 AM

As Nicholas Kristof’s Israel venom and infatuation with the Palestinian-victimhood narrative have increased, his columns have become other-worldly. His most recent contribution is a plea for a Palestinian women’s movement of Gandhi-like proportions on the West Bank:

But imagine if Palestinians stopped the rock-throwing and put female pacifists in the lead. What if 1,000 women sat down peacefully on a road to block access to an illegal Jewish settlement built on Palestinian farmland? What if the women allowed themselves to be tear-gassed, beaten and arrested without a single rock being thrown? Those images would be on televisions around the world — particularly if hundreds more women marched in to replace those hauled away.

“This is what Israel is most afraid of,” said Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, a prominent Palestinian who is calling for a nonviolent mass movement. He says Palestinians need to create their own version of Gandhi’s famous 1930 salt march.

No, I think Israelis are most afraid of having their children blown to smithereens by terrorists. Or incinerated in a nuclear attack. Or killed by rockets launched from behind the skirts of Palestinian women.

But let’s get back to Kristof. What if Palestinian women didn’t delight in their children’s martyrdom? Yes, what if they didn’t send their offspring to Hamas summer camps? What if Palestinian women in ever-increasing numbers didn’t themselves resort to suicide-bombing? Yes, then it would just be a question of convincing the Palestinian men not to slaughter Israelis. But in the real world, far too many Palestinian women are either victims or enablers of the cult of death (and sometimes both).

Despite all evidence to the contrary, Kristof stubbornly clings to the notion that Israel is engaged in violence for violence’s sake against innocents. When he asks, “What if the women allowed themselves to be tear-gassed, beaten and arrested without a single rock being thrown?” you wonder if he’s serious. I mean, obviously, there wouldn’t be a need for tear gas if the rock-throwing stopped – and no need for checkpoints and fences if the terrorists stopped killing Jews. But let’s not let logic or reality mess up another ode to the nobility of the Palestinian cause.

Nevertheless, maybe Kristof is on to something. So let’s play along. What if Palestinian leaders had spent the past 60 years building civil institutions, training scientists and architects rather than terrorists, naming squares after artists rather than murderers, instituting the rule of law, stamping out terrorism, spending billions in aid for the welfare of their people rather than squirreling it away for themselves, and reading Gandhi rather than Nazi tracts? Not only would Palestinians have had their own state but we would also have been spared years of Kristof’s drivel.

Tesla-- Love Song

Robert Pattinson-- Never Think

Depeche Mode-- Enjoy the Silence

Eric Clapton-- Groaning the Blues

Imogen Heap-- The Moment I said It

Coldplay-- Green Eyes

The Stars-- Vanilla Twilight

Eli Kamano-- Ou Va L'Afrique

Campy Love for Israel

Franky Goes to Hollywood-- The Power of Love

Moby-- 18