The following piece appeared in the Jerusalem Post on November 3rd to which I responded. My response is below the piece by Ray Hanania who is an American of Palestinian origin and an outspoken activist for peace. His syndicated pieces appear regularly throughout the US and in the Jerusalem Post as well. I felt that this particular item needed a strong response and that even Hanania had to know the differences between Israel and its neighbors, whose blatant violations if human rights rarely make it into the world press.
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http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=193732
JERUSALEM POST
11/032010
Yalla Peace: Unfazed and unafraid
By Ray Hanania
The case of Haneen Zoabi exposes flaws in Israeli democracy. Israel claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East, but sometimes it doesn’t really act like it. A case in point is the growing animosity in Israel toward Haneen Zoabi, an Arab member of Knesset from Balad who insists on testing Israel’s democracy.
Zoabi was among those on the Mavi Marmara – part of the flotilla which attempted to break the Gaza blockade in May. She is resolute in speaking about what she calls discriminatory policies against Arab citizens. I caught up with Zoabi during one of her stops in a tour of the US where she made the case that Israel talks the talk when it comes to democracy but fails to walk the walk.
“I am not afraid of what the Israelis are trying to do to me,” Zoabi told me at a Chicago convention of Palestinian Americans.
“The attacks by right-wing members of Knesset and politicians do not bother me. I am not afraid to stand up to them. I am strong.”
Zoabi is defiant, and her views can’t easily be brushed aside.
The first woman elected on an Arab slate to the Knesset in March 2009, and the third Arab woman elected to the Knesset altogether, Zoabi comes from a long line of Arab Israelis from Nazareth who have engaged in politics.
She is related to Seif el-Din e- Zoubi, a former mayor of Nazareth who served in the Knesset between 1949 and 1959, and from 1965 until 1979, and to Abed el-Aziz el-Zoubi, a deputy health minister and the first Arab member of an Israeli government.
But none of her relatives faced the anger and hostility that has been directed against her over the past year. Her support for the flotilla ignited a wave of harsh criticism. Jewish Knesset members have called for her to be prosecuted and stripped of the immunity that Knesset members enjoy.
Zoabi brushed aside the rising criticism as “a reflection of the new realities in Israel” that have pushed the Jewish state from the center to the extreme Right.
“Actually, this bothers the [Jewish] Israelis more than it bothers me. The criticism and anti-Arab hatred has become more severe, growing in intensity since the second intifada. It escalated even more after the Lebanon war,” Zoabi said.
She said the backlash against Arabs citizens challenging Israeli policies started with Azmi Bishara, a Knesset member who was very critical. Following the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Bishara was accused of high treason and charges were brought against him following allegations that he aided the enemy during wartime, was in contact with a foreign agent and involved in money-laundering activities. After being stripped of his immunity, Bishara fled Israel and resigned from the Knesset in 2007 via the Israeli Embassy in Cairo.
“The deterioration between Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis began with Bishara,” Zoabi said. “But it has reached a tipping point.”
CRITICISM IS a hallmark of true democracies.
The more Israel tries to silence Arab critics, the more it exposes the limits of its democracy.
“Israelis have always been racist against Arab citizens. It is growing,” Zoabi argued. “But I don’t see that as a threat to me as a Palestinian. It is a threat to the normalcy of life of the Israelis themselves. At one time, the racism was rational, a part of the Jewish character of the state. Today, that racism is more and more irrational.”
The only satisfaction that Israelis might get from all this is that Arabs in America are politically dysfunctional.
Although they can draw large crowds to conferences marked by angry speeches, like the one held in a suburb of Chicago this past weekend, the events get little or no coverage in the mainstream media. Americans are not hearing Palestinian complaints. Yet.
Palestinians in America do most of their talking to themselves. But one day that will change and Americans will look more closely at Israel’s policies toward its Arab citizens. Zoabi symbolizes a crack that continues to grow in the wall of Israel’s claim to the “only democracy in the Middle East.”
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http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Letters/Article.aspx?id=193909
JERUSALEM POST
November 4, 2010
She should thank her lucky stars
Sir, – When Ray Hanania speaks about MK Haneen Zoabi and her claim that Israel only claims to be a democratic state (“Unfazed and unafraid,” Yalla peace, November 3), he misses a major point.
If Zoabi was a citizen of any other country in the region, whether Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq or Iran, and then boarded a boat to break a blockade that the country maintained against an enemy entity, she would probably disappear one day and never be heard from again.
Even American citizens, living in that great democracy of the West, would have been arrested 10 years ago if they attempted to travel to Cuba.
Our legislators have to understand that being a Knesset member carries with it certain obligations to uphold the laws of the country they serve. Attempting to run a government blockade is nothing less than the willful breaking of the law.
Zoabi should be arrested and tried for treason – that’s what real democracies would do. So I guess she is right, this is not a real democracy and she should thank her lucky stars for that.
SHERWIN POMERANTZ
Jerusalem
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Insulting God
Insulting God
The pictures at Ben Gurion Airport of last week’s migration of Jews traveling to Uman for Rosh Hashona to be in the city where Rabbi Nachman z’l is buried generated a mixed reaction in me.
On the one hand, to see close to 18,000 people traveling to one place to join together in celebrating the Jewish New Year is, as the Yiddishists among us might say, Gevaldik (i.e. loosely translated as “grand:).
On the other hand some male travelers chose to wear a scarf under their traditional hats, with nothing but the slimmest of slits for their eyes, while others made original use of airlines’ sleep masks to cover their eyes. The move, according to a report in Yedioth Ahronoth, was meant to “protect” their eyes from immodest views, read “women.”
The Hasidim involved went through the entire airport security check with the covers on or briefly off and looking down, followed by what can only be described as a mad dash towards the safety of the plane, as reported in local papers. The makeshift blindfolds were taken off only when they were seated on the plane. They were put back on when the female flight attendants began making the rounds with the food carts.
The Kiev airport saw a repeat performance, to the surprise of its security personnel, especially, of course, the females among them.
After the shock of seeing this mimicry of the Taliban, I thought about it a bit more and realized how insulted God must be by the behavior of those who, in the name of religion, tamper with His creations.
According to tradition, God created man in his own image (Genesis 1:27). Although, according to biblical text, man sinned very early in the game, as it were, the fact is that man remains created in God’s image albeit now with the ability to judge right from wrong, to make choices and to attempt to live the kind of righteous life that God intended. To live righteously God provided all of us with the tools necessary to make judgments and avoid temptations, so as not to stray off the straight and narrow as it were. Given all that has been bequeathed to us as human beings, why do we need to insulate ourselves further from supposed temptations by tampering with God’s work?
It seems to me that putting on a scarf to shield one’s eyes from looking at women, is nothing more than an insult to God and his work. After all God endowed us with the capacity to keep such things in perspective. By adding a scarf, for example, those who do so are basically saying to God “you really did not create such a perfect being and I am too weak to carry out your injunctions without such an addition to my clothing.”
No doubt those who chose to dress themselves in this manner will object to this line of thinking on my part. They may say that they are doing this in an attempt to observe God’s laws. But the obvious fact is that by dressing thusly, they are putting the final nail in the coffin of our people’s ability to observe God’s laws without multiple physical aids which, by their use, testify to their belief that man, as created by God, does not have the ability to live the kind of life that God intended for him.
What a sad commentary on the status of religious life today and what an insult to the Creator. How disappointed He must be in some of his children.
The pictures at Ben Gurion Airport of last week’s migration of Jews traveling to Uman for Rosh Hashona to be in the city where Rabbi Nachman z’l is buried generated a mixed reaction in me.
On the one hand, to see close to 18,000 people traveling to one place to join together in celebrating the Jewish New Year is, as the Yiddishists among us might say, Gevaldik (i.e. loosely translated as “grand:).
On the other hand some male travelers chose to wear a scarf under their traditional hats, with nothing but the slimmest of slits for their eyes, while others made original use of airlines’ sleep masks to cover their eyes. The move, according to a report in Yedioth Ahronoth, was meant to “protect” their eyes from immodest views, read “women.”
The Hasidim involved went through the entire airport security check with the covers on or briefly off and looking down, followed by what can only be described as a mad dash towards the safety of the plane, as reported in local papers. The makeshift blindfolds were taken off only when they were seated on the plane. They were put back on when the female flight attendants began making the rounds with the food carts.
The Kiev airport saw a repeat performance, to the surprise of its security personnel, especially, of course, the females among them.
After the shock of seeing this mimicry of the Taliban, I thought about it a bit more and realized how insulted God must be by the behavior of those who, in the name of religion, tamper with His creations.
According to tradition, God created man in his own image (Genesis 1:27). Although, according to biblical text, man sinned very early in the game, as it were, the fact is that man remains created in God’s image albeit now with the ability to judge right from wrong, to make choices and to attempt to live the kind of righteous life that God intended. To live righteously God provided all of us with the tools necessary to make judgments and avoid temptations, so as not to stray off the straight and narrow as it were. Given all that has been bequeathed to us as human beings, why do we need to insulate ourselves further from supposed temptations by tampering with God’s work?
It seems to me that putting on a scarf to shield one’s eyes from looking at women, is nothing more than an insult to God and his work. After all God endowed us with the capacity to keep such things in perspective. By adding a scarf, for example, those who do so are basically saying to God “you really did not create such a perfect being and I am too weak to carry out your injunctions without such an addition to my clothing.”
No doubt those who chose to dress themselves in this manner will object to this line of thinking on my part. They may say that they are doing this in an attempt to observe God’s laws. But the obvious fact is that by dressing thusly, they are putting the final nail in the coffin of our people’s ability to observe God’s laws without multiple physical aids which, by their use, testify to their belief that man, as created by God, does not have the ability to live the kind of life that God intended for him.
What a sad commentary on the status of religious life today and what an insult to the Creator. How disappointed He must be in some of his children.
Friday, August 13, 2010
A Cautious Vote for Co-Existence.
August 12, 2010
I was shot by a Palestinian terrorist nine years ago on the pre-1967 side of the so-called green line marking the 1949 armistice line between Israel and Jordan, so no one has to persuade me that a terrorist attack can occur at any time or any place and that the relative quiet which has prevailed in the past few years is a fragile one that could evaporate in an instant.
It was August of 2001, one of the worst months of the Intifada. A half dozen other shooting incidents occurred on that same night and most victims didn’t fare quite as well I did escaping with relatively minor wounds. Survivors of the horrendous suicide bombing at the Sabarro restaurant were on the same floor of the hospital as I was. I also know that while the vast majority of terrorist attacks in the world are carried out by Moslems, probably 99% of Moslems would never themselves engage in a terrorist attack. I know sadly though that a large number would cheer the others on. Nonetheless while I remain very cautious, I have never really given up on the notion that perhaps some kind of co-existence can work here in this volatile part of the world. Arabs and Jews seem destined to live side by side for a long time and ultimately we ought to find a way to make that work.
The other night on my way home from an evening work-out, I stopped to get gas at the Gush Etzion intersection not far from Efrat where I have lived for 16 years. Efrat is what people refer to as a settlement, though to me, it is simply a community on land which has been Jewish owned long before Israel was established, about ten miles south of Jerusalem which is home to something on the order of ten thousand people in the midst of a block of communities with about sixty thousand people. It is an area with a long and intensive Jewish history going back to period of the Bible.
The entrance to the gas station was backed up quite a distance and on getting a bit closer I could see that the reason was a line up of cars trying to get in to the recently opened branch of a discount supermarket adjacent to the gas station. It was a Tuesday night and not usually the busiest shopping night of the week, especially not at 9:15 in the evening. Once I got a bit closer I could see that most of the cars bore Palestinian license plates and I remembered that this was the end of the first day of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Moslem calendar. A month from now, it will be Israelis shopping for the Jewish New Year.
In fact, from the moment the supermarket opened it has been something of an island of co-existence, though not without some generating some controversy. Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Moslems, and Christians from nearby Bethlehem, shop and work at the store. Interestingly the opposition to this has not focused mainly on security worries even though there was a nearly catastrophic attempt by a Palestinian to blow up a supermarket in Efrat in 2002. Security is a concern of course and it seemed to me that the security guards at the entrance took their job seriously. I certainly hope so. Most of the noise has been about the possibility that the mingling of young Jewish and Arab employees could lead to inter-marriage. If that will be the biggest worry that Israelis face in this increasingly hostile world, I think we can handle it.
It’s an experiment of course, and God forbid like any experiment it could fail. I actually hope it succeeds and becomes one more place among the paltry few were Jews and Arabs can face each other as neighbors and not as enemies.
Benjamin Dansker
August 12, 2010
I was shot by a Palestinian terrorist nine years ago on the pre-1967 side of the so-called green line marking the 1949 armistice line between Israel and Jordan, so no one has to persuade me that a terrorist attack can occur at any time or any place and that the relative quiet which has prevailed in the past few years is a fragile one that could evaporate in an instant.
It was August of 2001, one of the worst months of the Intifada. A half dozen other shooting incidents occurred on that same night and most victims didn’t fare quite as well I did escaping with relatively minor wounds. Survivors of the horrendous suicide bombing at the Sabarro restaurant were on the same floor of the hospital as I was. I also know that while the vast majority of terrorist attacks in the world are carried out by Moslems, probably 99% of Moslems would never themselves engage in a terrorist attack. I know sadly though that a large number would cheer the others on. Nonetheless while I remain very cautious, I have never really given up on the notion that perhaps some kind of co-existence can work here in this volatile part of the world. Arabs and Jews seem destined to live side by side for a long time and ultimately we ought to find a way to make that work.
The other night on my way home from an evening work-out, I stopped to get gas at the Gush Etzion intersection not far from Efrat where I have lived for 16 years. Efrat is what people refer to as a settlement, though to me, it is simply a community on land which has been Jewish owned long before Israel was established, about ten miles south of Jerusalem which is home to something on the order of ten thousand people in the midst of a block of communities with about sixty thousand people. It is an area with a long and intensive Jewish history going back to period of the Bible.
The entrance to the gas station was backed up quite a distance and on getting a bit closer I could see that the reason was a line up of cars trying to get in to the recently opened branch of a discount supermarket adjacent to the gas station. It was a Tuesday night and not usually the busiest shopping night of the week, especially not at 9:15 in the evening. Once I got a bit closer I could see that most of the cars bore Palestinian license plates and I remembered that this was the end of the first day of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Moslem calendar. A month from now, it will be Israelis shopping for the Jewish New Year.
In fact, from the moment the supermarket opened it has been something of an island of co-existence, though not without some generating some controversy. Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Moslems, and Christians from nearby Bethlehem, shop and work at the store. Interestingly the opposition to this has not focused mainly on security worries even though there was a nearly catastrophic attempt by a Palestinian to blow up a supermarket in Efrat in 2002. Security is a concern of course and it seemed to me that the security guards at the entrance took their job seriously. I certainly hope so. Most of the noise has been about the possibility that the mingling of young Jewish and Arab employees could lead to inter-marriage. If that will be the biggest worry that Israelis face in this increasingly hostile world, I think we can handle it.
It’s an experiment of course, and God forbid like any experiment it could fail. I actually hope it succeeds and becomes one more place among the paltry few were Jews and Arabs can face each other as neighbors and not as enemies.
Benjamin Dansker
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Building Rawabi
Building Rawabi
In mid-January of this year I was in Tel Aviv for a presentation by Bashar Masri, President of Massar, a Ramallah-based holding company with investment interests in a number of projects in what may one day become a Palestinian state. Masri, having lived in America most of his life, moved to Ramallah some years ago to share his business acumen, know how, and connections with the locals in order to assist in building the economic trappings of a new Palestinian society.
The purpose of the meeting in Tel Aviv was to hear about the new Palestinian city of Rawabi north of Ramallah. Rawabi will be the first ever Palestinian municipality built according to a master plan which, when completed, will provide housing, work and recreation for 40,000 people. At the time I clearly saw the positive ramifications of this project for those interested in seeing the development of responsible Palestinian governmental leadership.
The planned City of Rawabi is a major undertaking of the Palestinian leadership funded in great part by the Qatari government through one of its real estate arms.
This morning’s Jerusalem Post carries a story headlined “Settlers [I really don’t like that term] Protest New Palestinian City” which says the following:
Settlers who believe a Palestinian state is being unilaterally built in their backyard plan to march on Thursday afternoon, to protest against what will soon be the new Palestinian city of Rawabi. Rawabi is 9 km northwest of Ramallah, 25 km south of Nablus and 20 km north of Jerusalem. …..Settlers have opposed the city’s construction, fearing that it is part of a plan by PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to unilaterally seek statehood.”
My reaction is that we simply cannot have things both ways.
For years those of us living in Israel have lamented the fact that the Palestinians have no visionary leadership, that the leaders they do have allow their people to live in squalor and that the only objective of the leadership is to stay in power. Now along comes Salam Fayyad with an actual plan to create something that begins to look like progress and development, and yet we still complain.
I, for one, applaud the plan to build this new city because for the first time in the 62+ years of the history of the State of Israel, our neighbors who, for the moment, live under our control, are actually doing something constructive about creating a framework that bespeaks economic and social progress.
As for where they will build this city, of course it will be near existing population centers. After all, we share a small land mass that, at its widest in the center of the country only spans 66 km or 40 miles. So no matter where the city would be built, if it is close to Palestinian population areas it will be close to Israel as well. And as for the inclination of the Government of Israel to cede 50 hectares of land to the project in order to build a decent access road, that is an absolute necessity as the present 1-lane Ottoman-built cow path is hardly sufficient to handle the regular arrival of building materials and construction vehicles.
Again, we cannot have things both ways. We cannot continue to complain that the Palestinians are guilty of letting their people live uneducated and in squalor and then complain, yet again, when they try to do something constructive about the situation.
True, that Salam Fayyad may not be the great white hope. True, that he may not even be such a great friend of Israel. True, that the city will be built close to existing settlements such as Ateret. All that may be true but what is also true is that someone has finally come along with a reasonable plan to begin addressing some of the social and economic issues of Palestinian society and is prepared to do without using Israel as an excuse why it cannot progress. Regardless of our discomfort, we should support such initiatives as economic progress remains the only hope for peace.
Sources tell us that Ezra the Scribe urged his disciples not to shy away from a task simply because they knew, in advance, that they could not complete it. The lesson has meaning for us today as well. The task of peace may very well not be completed in our time but we, nevertheless, have an obligation to pursue it.
Sherwin Pomerantz
Jerusalem, August 11, 2010
In mid-January of this year I was in Tel Aviv for a presentation by Bashar Masri, President of Massar, a Ramallah-based holding company with investment interests in a number of projects in what may one day become a Palestinian state. Masri, having lived in America most of his life, moved to Ramallah some years ago to share his business acumen, know how, and connections with the locals in order to assist in building the economic trappings of a new Palestinian society.
The purpose of the meeting in Tel Aviv was to hear about the new Palestinian city of Rawabi north of Ramallah. Rawabi will be the first ever Palestinian municipality built according to a master plan which, when completed, will provide housing, work and recreation for 40,000 people. At the time I clearly saw the positive ramifications of this project for those interested in seeing the development of responsible Palestinian governmental leadership.
The planned City of Rawabi is a major undertaking of the Palestinian leadership funded in great part by the Qatari government through one of its real estate arms.
This morning’s Jerusalem Post carries a story headlined “Settlers [I really don’t like that term] Protest New Palestinian City” which says the following:
Settlers who believe a Palestinian state is being unilaterally built in their backyard plan to march on Thursday afternoon, to protest against what will soon be the new Palestinian city of Rawabi. Rawabi is 9 km northwest of Ramallah, 25 km south of Nablus and 20 km north of Jerusalem. …..Settlers have opposed the city’s construction, fearing that it is part of a plan by PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to unilaterally seek statehood.”
My reaction is that we simply cannot have things both ways.
For years those of us living in Israel have lamented the fact that the Palestinians have no visionary leadership, that the leaders they do have allow their people to live in squalor and that the only objective of the leadership is to stay in power. Now along comes Salam Fayyad with an actual plan to create something that begins to look like progress and development, and yet we still complain.
I, for one, applaud the plan to build this new city because for the first time in the 62+ years of the history of the State of Israel, our neighbors who, for the moment, live under our control, are actually doing something constructive about creating a framework that bespeaks economic and social progress.
As for where they will build this city, of course it will be near existing population centers. After all, we share a small land mass that, at its widest in the center of the country only spans 66 km or 40 miles. So no matter where the city would be built, if it is close to Palestinian population areas it will be close to Israel as well. And as for the inclination of the Government of Israel to cede 50 hectares of land to the project in order to build a decent access road, that is an absolute necessity as the present 1-lane Ottoman-built cow path is hardly sufficient to handle the regular arrival of building materials and construction vehicles.
Again, we cannot have things both ways. We cannot continue to complain that the Palestinians are guilty of letting their people live uneducated and in squalor and then complain, yet again, when they try to do something constructive about the situation.
True, that Salam Fayyad may not be the great white hope. True, that he may not even be such a great friend of Israel. True, that the city will be built close to existing settlements such as Ateret. All that may be true but what is also true is that someone has finally come along with a reasonable plan to begin addressing some of the social and economic issues of Palestinian society and is prepared to do without using Israel as an excuse why it cannot progress. Regardless of our discomfort, we should support such initiatives as economic progress remains the only hope for peace.
Sources tell us that Ezra the Scribe urged his disciples not to shy away from a task simply because they knew, in advance, that they could not complete it. The lesson has meaning for us today as well. The task of peace may very well not be completed in our time but we, nevertheless, have an obligation to pursue it.
Sherwin Pomerantz
Jerusalem, August 11, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
From Moscow to Rehovot
Could it be? Earlier this week I was proofreading a report that one of our senior staff people had prepared for a client in Ireland when I saw the name Alex Pinarov. A unique name to be sure but down deep I felt that years ago, in another life, in another place, I had seen a variation of that name.
The date was June 15, 1988 and the place was a Moscow apartment on Znamenskaya Street where I met someone named Moshe Finarov on my first day in the former Soviet Union. Remember this was before Glasnost and Moscow was a place full of secret meetings, clandestinely made appointments and underground Jewish activity.
Two of us who had both US and Israeli passports were sent there by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to meet with refuseniks, Jews who had applied for permission to emigrate but who were “refused,” who had lost their jobs and were waiting for the day when they would be allowed to leave that place where fear and uncertainty were the hallmarks of life.
Moshe managed an underground Jewish school which today sounds more than a bit strange but in those days was relatively commonplace among the refusenik community throughout the country. His name was intriguing because it was very close to the Yiddish expression “fun a Rov” which meant “from a Rabbi.” I remember asking him if he had rabbinic ancestors and he said that indeed he did and his family name most probably described his lineage. We spoke in Hebrew and as I was to find out later his reaction to the visit was, in his words, “you came from a different world, from the Holy Land.” To him and his family we represented his dream.
Well, two weeks later and after many meetings with other refuseniks in Kiev and St Petersburg (then Leningrad) as well, it was back to Israel, and back to daily life. There was, of course, no internet, no e mail, and very few refuseniks had phones so making contact was spotty at best and I basically lost contact with everyone that I met during that visit.
Until this week! Until I saw the name Alex Pinarov and it rang a bell. I checked my notes from those two weeks in the former Soviet Union and saw that Moshe Finarov told me that he had a brother living in Israel who had immigrated to here a year earlier and was living in Rehovot. So I called Alex on Wednesday night, introduced myself and started asking questions. Well, as one can expect, the old fears of being questioned surfaced pretty quickly and before Alex would respond he questioned me as to why I wanted to know this information. Of course, when I started reading from my notes of the visit to the apartment on Znamenskaya Street, he realized it was safe to speak with me and it all came out.
Yes, he is the brother who came in 1987. Yes Moshe Finarov (Hebrew tends to mix up Ps and Fs) was the brother I met in Moscow 22 years ago. Yes, the children I met there are indeed his niece and nephew. And where is Moshe Finarov, of the rabbinic lineage? Also in Israel, also in Rehovot officing just a few blocks from Alex in the Weizmann Science Park.
I contacted Moshe after my exchange with Alex. All of his family is now here and he speaks with his sons mainly in Hebrew. Both have served in the Israel Defense Forces and graduated from Israeli universities, one from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the other from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His wife is a doctor at the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, specializing in X-ray diagnostics. Moshe himself has developed a satisfactory career in Israel in the high-tech industry having founded several start-up companies in the microelectronics and solar industries.
What does one say when one hears such a wonderful story? What blessing does one pronounce when seeing such a miracle? I’ll leave the blessings to the rabbis, but one thing I know. The Finarov family, formerly of the Soviet Union and now proud citizens of the State of Israel epitomizes the Hebrew expression, Am Yisrael Chai……The People of Israel Live. And the miracles continue as long as we are prepared to acknowledge them. Shabbat shalom!
Could it be? Earlier this week I was proofreading a report that one of our senior staff people had prepared for a client in Ireland when I saw the name Alex Pinarov. A unique name to be sure but down deep I felt that years ago, in another life, in another place, I had seen a variation of that name.
The date was June 15, 1988 and the place was a Moscow apartment on Znamenskaya Street where I met someone named Moshe Finarov on my first day in the former Soviet Union. Remember this was before Glasnost and Moscow was a place full of secret meetings, clandestinely made appointments and underground Jewish activity.
Two of us who had both US and Israeli passports were sent there by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to meet with refuseniks, Jews who had applied for permission to emigrate but who were “refused,” who had lost their jobs and were waiting for the day when they would be allowed to leave that place where fear and uncertainty were the hallmarks of life.
Moshe managed an underground Jewish school which today sounds more than a bit strange but in those days was relatively commonplace among the refusenik community throughout the country. His name was intriguing because it was very close to the Yiddish expression “fun a Rov” which meant “from a Rabbi.” I remember asking him if he had rabbinic ancestors and he said that indeed he did and his family name most probably described his lineage. We spoke in Hebrew and as I was to find out later his reaction to the visit was, in his words, “you came from a different world, from the Holy Land.” To him and his family we represented his dream.
Well, two weeks later and after many meetings with other refuseniks in Kiev and St Petersburg (then Leningrad) as well, it was back to Israel, and back to daily life. There was, of course, no internet, no e mail, and very few refuseniks had phones so making contact was spotty at best and I basically lost contact with everyone that I met during that visit.
Until this week! Until I saw the name Alex Pinarov and it rang a bell. I checked my notes from those two weeks in the former Soviet Union and saw that Moshe Finarov told me that he had a brother living in Israel who had immigrated to here a year earlier and was living in Rehovot. So I called Alex on Wednesday night, introduced myself and started asking questions. Well, as one can expect, the old fears of being questioned surfaced pretty quickly and before Alex would respond he questioned me as to why I wanted to know this information. Of course, when I started reading from my notes of the visit to the apartment on Znamenskaya Street, he realized it was safe to speak with me and it all came out.
Yes, he is the brother who came in 1987. Yes Moshe Finarov (Hebrew tends to mix up Ps and Fs) was the brother I met in Moscow 22 years ago. Yes, the children I met there are indeed his niece and nephew. And where is Moshe Finarov, of the rabbinic lineage? Also in Israel, also in Rehovot officing just a few blocks from Alex in the Weizmann Science Park.
I contacted Moshe after my exchange with Alex. All of his family is now here and he speaks with his sons mainly in Hebrew. Both have served in the Israel Defense Forces and graduated from Israeli universities, one from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the other from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His wife is a doctor at the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, specializing in X-ray diagnostics. Moshe himself has developed a satisfactory career in Israel in the high-tech industry having founded several start-up companies in the microelectronics and solar industries.
What does one say when one hears such a wonderful story? What blessing does one pronounce when seeing such a miracle? I’ll leave the blessings to the rabbis, but one thing I know. The Finarov family, formerly of the Soviet Union and now proud citizens of the State of Israel epitomizes the Hebrew expression, Am Yisrael Chai……The People of Israel Live. And the miracles continue as long as we are prepared to acknowledge them. Shabbat shalom!
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Lessons from the Flotilla
The most important consideration in planning any action is to evaluate the decision using the test of “realistic benefit.” If the “realistic benefit” cannot be identified, then the decision not to proceed is the only alternative.
A retrospective of the “flotilla incident” of May 31st leads me to believe that recent actions of the Israeli government were not sufficiently evaluated against this rule of thumb. Permit me to explain.
When one is confronted by an enemy the best defense is an offense that removes the ammunition from his arsenal. But there are two kinds of ammunition. There is physical ammunition such as weaponry and there is non-physical ammunition such as public relations and the newest weapon of a smart enemy, social networking.
Based on our experience over the last 62 years, Israel will be criticized whenever it tries to remove ammunition of any type from the hands of the enemy. But the criticism is generally less volatile and even somewhat muted when the ammunition is physical. For example, when Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reaction in 1982, there was initial criticism, some of which was far from muted. But it dissipated relatively rapidly and, in retrospect, the world ended up being somewhat grateful for Israel’s actions in crippling an element of Saddam Hussein’s war machine.
Similarly, when Israel’s military captured the Karine A vessel in January 2002 and demonstrated that the ship was carrying 50 tons of weaponry headed for Gaza, there was again muted criticism. But there was also an understanding that there could be no argument with a country’s sovereign right to protect itself from attack.
Even when Israel allegedly attacked the nuclear reactor installation inside Syria in 2007, while there was, as expected, criticism of Israel’s incursion into another country Syria did not respond and the world understood why Israel took such action.
In all of these cases Israel acted to take physical ammunition out of the hands of the enemy.
The later blockade of Gaza after its takeover by Hamas, was yet another attempt to control the inflow of physical ammunition into what Israel defined as hostile territory. And while the sea blockade was Israel’s alone, the land blockade of Gaza was joined by Egypt as well, as Egypt is also concerned about the proliferation of weapons in that area. After all, once someone has weapons capability there is no telling in which direction those weapons will be pointed.
The decisions required to take these steps also seemed to pass the test of whether there was “realistic benefit” to be gained from these actions. Of course, one can argue that blockade or no blockade Hamas was able to continued its arms buildup in any event, albeit somewhat more slowly. Nevertheless, there was “realistic benefit” to be gained from these actions.
However, when it comes to removing non-physical weapons from the hands of the enemy, or from the hands of people who sympathize with the enemy, such an effort is much more difficult to manage, and, if handled incompetently, results in much more world condemnation. In this area, and the “flotilla incident” is just the most recent example of this, Israel has not learned how to handle these situations and generally suffers badly as a result. Many decisions related to this aspect of Israel’s efforts do not seem to have passed the test of “realistic benefit.”
The government here knew that regardless of how the flotilla was handled Israel would look bad in the world press. If we did nothing, and let the ships dock in Gaza, as we had done previously, Hamas would have said that they had captured the upper hand and that Israel’s threats to foil the voyage were just that, threats and no more. Given the fact that we knew who was organizing the flotilla, and that while many participants were pro-peace activists, we also knew that the leadership was seeking to provoke Israel into action, it was clear that stopping the ships would be seen by the world as yet another example of Israeli intransigence. Worse, if there were people injured or, heaven forbid, fatalities, the entire situation could blow up in our faces. And yet, knowing all this, we failed to apply the test of “realistic benefit” and went ahead with the operation which ended with all of our worst fears being realized.
At this early date there is no telling how bad the fallout will be from this latest exercise which seemed to accomplish nothing more than creating more casualties in the ongoing battle for legitimacy, and a world diplomatic community bent on using this incident for its own less than objective purposes. But the key error here, I am sure, will turn out to be the failure to evaluate “realistic benefit” and the concomitant lack of understanding of how to handle the public relations aspect of crises when they occur, as they do time and time again.
Frankly, we had better learn how to apply this test rapidly and figure out, as well, how to leverage today’s social networking technologies to our benefit. Else, one day, we will find ourselves so incredibly isolated as to be non-functional. At that point, the enterprise we call Israel will simply crash.
A retrospective of the “flotilla incident” of May 31st leads me to believe that recent actions of the Israeli government were not sufficiently evaluated against this rule of thumb. Permit me to explain.
When one is confronted by an enemy the best defense is an offense that removes the ammunition from his arsenal. But there are two kinds of ammunition. There is physical ammunition such as weaponry and there is non-physical ammunition such as public relations and the newest weapon of a smart enemy, social networking.
Based on our experience over the last 62 years, Israel will be criticized whenever it tries to remove ammunition of any type from the hands of the enemy. But the criticism is generally less volatile and even somewhat muted when the ammunition is physical. For example, when Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reaction in 1982, there was initial criticism, some of which was far from muted. But it dissipated relatively rapidly and, in retrospect, the world ended up being somewhat grateful for Israel’s actions in crippling an element of Saddam Hussein’s war machine.
Similarly, when Israel’s military captured the Karine A vessel in January 2002 and demonstrated that the ship was carrying 50 tons of weaponry headed for Gaza, there was again muted criticism. But there was also an understanding that there could be no argument with a country’s sovereign right to protect itself from attack.
Even when Israel allegedly attacked the nuclear reactor installation inside Syria in 2007, while there was, as expected, criticism of Israel’s incursion into another country Syria did not respond and the world understood why Israel took such action.
In all of these cases Israel acted to take physical ammunition out of the hands of the enemy.
The later blockade of Gaza after its takeover by Hamas, was yet another attempt to control the inflow of physical ammunition into what Israel defined as hostile territory. And while the sea blockade was Israel’s alone, the land blockade of Gaza was joined by Egypt as well, as Egypt is also concerned about the proliferation of weapons in that area. After all, once someone has weapons capability there is no telling in which direction those weapons will be pointed.
The decisions required to take these steps also seemed to pass the test of whether there was “realistic benefit” to be gained from these actions. Of course, one can argue that blockade or no blockade Hamas was able to continued its arms buildup in any event, albeit somewhat more slowly. Nevertheless, there was “realistic benefit” to be gained from these actions.
However, when it comes to removing non-physical weapons from the hands of the enemy, or from the hands of people who sympathize with the enemy, such an effort is much more difficult to manage, and, if handled incompetently, results in much more world condemnation. In this area, and the “flotilla incident” is just the most recent example of this, Israel has not learned how to handle these situations and generally suffers badly as a result. Many decisions related to this aspect of Israel’s efforts do not seem to have passed the test of “realistic benefit.”
The government here knew that regardless of how the flotilla was handled Israel would look bad in the world press. If we did nothing, and let the ships dock in Gaza, as we had done previously, Hamas would have said that they had captured the upper hand and that Israel’s threats to foil the voyage were just that, threats and no more. Given the fact that we knew who was organizing the flotilla, and that while many participants were pro-peace activists, we also knew that the leadership was seeking to provoke Israel into action, it was clear that stopping the ships would be seen by the world as yet another example of Israeli intransigence. Worse, if there were people injured or, heaven forbid, fatalities, the entire situation could blow up in our faces. And yet, knowing all this, we failed to apply the test of “realistic benefit” and went ahead with the operation which ended with all of our worst fears being realized.
At this early date there is no telling how bad the fallout will be from this latest exercise which seemed to accomplish nothing more than creating more casualties in the ongoing battle for legitimacy, and a world diplomatic community bent on using this incident for its own less than objective purposes. But the key error here, I am sure, will turn out to be the failure to evaluate “realistic benefit” and the concomitant lack of understanding of how to handle the public relations aspect of crises when they occur, as they do time and time again.
Frankly, we had better learn how to apply this test rapidly and figure out, as well, how to leverage today’s social networking technologies to our benefit. Else, one day, we will find ourselves so incredibly isolated as to be non-functional. At that point, the enterprise we call Israel will simply crash.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
The Brandeis University Commencement
The Real Issue at Brandeis University
By Sherwin Pomerantz
In the discussion of the suitability of inviting Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren to be the commencement speaker at Brandeis University later this month, graduating senior Tara Meital is quoted in the Post as opposing the invitation, given that it “will make some in the audience feel uncomfortable, such as the Palestinian graduates.”
And there you have it. Once again the essence of the discomfort among some Jews is not really that the speaker is controversial, but that inviting the official representative of the State of Israel to speak at a university founded by the American Jewish Community in the name of the first Jewish Supreme Court justice, will make non-Jews who chose to attend that university uncomfortable.
The situation takes me back to the late 1970s when I was very active as a national officer of my college fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi. The fraternity was founded in 1913 by a group of Jewish college students at New York University given that, at the time, Jews were generally excluded from membership in the Waspish Greek letter student societies on US campuses. The fraternity/sorority system remained segregated by race and religion until after the end of World War II when America became much more sensitive to such issues. Slowly but surely the system opened up and Jewish fraternities began to accept non-Jews while the Christian groups accepted some Jews as well. Racial integration took a few more years to become accepted.
At an annual convention held that year at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, I, as the resident traditional Jew on the National Board, was asked to conduct the memorial service for those members of the fraternity who had passed on during the previous year. The service was, of course, in English but my tradition was to close the service with the recitation of Kaddish, the prayer traditionally recited at such times and, of course, it was in Hebrew.
After the service a few of the Jewish undergraduates came up to me and voiced their displeasure over the fact that I had used Hebrew as part of the ritual. Their logic was that now that we had non-Jewish members in the organization it might be offensive to them for us to use Hebrew in any rituals of the organization. At the same convention a resolution was then drafted and passed prohibiting the further use of Hebrew in any ritual of the organization. (It was at that point in time, by the way, that I left the active service of the fraternity and decided to devote my time to causes that were more proudly Jewish.)
So there we were. A fraternity who voluntarily accepted members who were not Jewish, but all of whose members swore allegiance to its goals and objectives which were personified by its coat of arms which bearing, until today, both a Star of David and a Menorah, the historical symbols of the Jewish people for over 2,000 years, now deciding to change its policies for fear of offending “them.” In the case of the fraternity the “them” was the small cadre of non-Jews who, themselves, chose to affiliate with an organization that was identifiably Jewish. And, as always, it was not “them” that raised the objections but “us.”
Fast forward 40 years and we stand today in the very same place. Brandeis University, founded as the outward symbol of the success of the Jewish experience in the USA, with a student body, some of whom, themselves the beneficiaries of the American Jewish experience, concerned that inviting the appointed diplomatic representative of the State of Israel to the U.S. might make the Palestinian students uncomfortable.
I fly with some regularity on Royal Jordanian Airlines and every flight begins with a public reading, in Arabic, of the prayer for a safe journey. No one ever seems concerned that I might be offended by that, nor do I expect them to be. It is forbidden to enter Saudi Arabia with any non-Muslim symbols, Christian or Jewish prayer books and the like, and no one seems to be concerned that I might be offended by that. But we, of course, always seem to be ready to bend over backwards to accommodate others, even if (a) it is not in our best interests and (b) we know that the people for whom we are making the accommodation given the opportunity would not return the favor.
The University is to be commended for having stood its ground while the students who objected hopefully will never have to thank their lucky stars that there is an Israel ready to welcome them home should their native country ever cease to be the welcoming place that it is today.
Sherwin Pomerantz, a 26 year resident of Israel, is President of Atid EDI Ltd., a Jerusalem-based economic development consulting firm.
By Sherwin Pomerantz
In the discussion of the suitability of inviting Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren to be the commencement speaker at Brandeis University later this month, graduating senior Tara Meital is quoted in the Post as opposing the invitation, given that it “will make some in the audience feel uncomfortable, such as the Palestinian graduates.”
And there you have it. Once again the essence of the discomfort among some Jews is not really that the speaker is controversial, but that inviting the official representative of the State of Israel to speak at a university founded by the American Jewish Community in the name of the first Jewish Supreme Court justice, will make non-Jews who chose to attend that university uncomfortable.
The situation takes me back to the late 1970s when I was very active as a national officer of my college fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi. The fraternity was founded in 1913 by a group of Jewish college students at New York University given that, at the time, Jews were generally excluded from membership in the Waspish Greek letter student societies on US campuses. The fraternity/sorority system remained segregated by race and religion until after the end of World War II when America became much more sensitive to such issues. Slowly but surely the system opened up and Jewish fraternities began to accept non-Jews while the Christian groups accepted some Jews as well. Racial integration took a few more years to become accepted.
At an annual convention held that year at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, I, as the resident traditional Jew on the National Board, was asked to conduct the memorial service for those members of the fraternity who had passed on during the previous year. The service was, of course, in English but my tradition was to close the service with the recitation of Kaddish, the prayer traditionally recited at such times and, of course, it was in Hebrew.
After the service a few of the Jewish undergraduates came up to me and voiced their displeasure over the fact that I had used Hebrew as part of the ritual. Their logic was that now that we had non-Jewish members in the organization it might be offensive to them for us to use Hebrew in any rituals of the organization. At the same convention a resolution was then drafted and passed prohibiting the further use of Hebrew in any ritual of the organization. (It was at that point in time, by the way, that I left the active service of the fraternity and decided to devote my time to causes that were more proudly Jewish.)
So there we were. A fraternity who voluntarily accepted members who were not Jewish, but all of whose members swore allegiance to its goals and objectives which were personified by its coat of arms which bearing, until today, both a Star of David and a Menorah, the historical symbols of the Jewish people for over 2,000 years, now deciding to change its policies for fear of offending “them.” In the case of the fraternity the “them” was the small cadre of non-Jews who, themselves, chose to affiliate with an organization that was identifiably Jewish. And, as always, it was not “them” that raised the objections but “us.”
Fast forward 40 years and we stand today in the very same place. Brandeis University, founded as the outward symbol of the success of the Jewish experience in the USA, with a student body, some of whom, themselves the beneficiaries of the American Jewish experience, concerned that inviting the appointed diplomatic representative of the State of Israel to the U.S. might make the Palestinian students uncomfortable.
I fly with some regularity on Royal Jordanian Airlines and every flight begins with a public reading, in Arabic, of the prayer for a safe journey. No one ever seems concerned that I might be offended by that, nor do I expect them to be. It is forbidden to enter Saudi Arabia with any non-Muslim symbols, Christian or Jewish prayer books and the like, and no one seems to be concerned that I might be offended by that. But we, of course, always seem to be ready to bend over backwards to accommodate others, even if (a) it is not in our best interests and (b) we know that the people for whom we are making the accommodation given the opportunity would not return the favor.
The University is to be commended for having stood its ground while the students who objected hopefully will never have to thank their lucky stars that there is an Israel ready to welcome them home should their native country ever cease to be the welcoming place that it is today.
Sherwin Pomerantz, a 26 year resident of Israel, is President of Atid EDI Ltd., a Jerusalem-based economic development consulting firm.
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