From the JI – Page 40

Model response to injustice

Seventy-two years ago yesterday, two Polish women, Zofia Kossak and Wanda Filipowicz, founded the Council for the Assistance of the Jews. By 1942, awareness of the intent of the Final Solution was becoming widespread. By creating an underground movement to assist and shelter Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, these women and all who assisted them put their own lives at immense risk.

Throughout the Second World War, countless individuals, at great risk to themselves and their families, undertook to assist their Jewish neighbors. These included Christians in every part of Europe and also Muslims, notably in Albania.

There are, of course, plenty of stories of collusion, betrayal and collaboration. There are, we remind our children, good and bad behaviors among any group of people, but the redemptive stories of people doing the right thing help restore humanity to our collective self-understanding.

Today, Jewish people still face challenges in various parts of the world. By sheer numbers, however, the vast majority of Jews live in Israel and North America, where life is free of the systemic bigotry Jewish people experienced in much of the world through much of history. Especially now, from our place of relative security and privilege, we should be turning our attention to the atrocities playing out against other minorities around the world.

In the world today, Christians are being persecuted and murdered in Africa and Asia. In North Korea, an estimated 50,000-70,000 Christians are held in the country’s notorious labor camps. In Nigeria last year, more than 300 churches were destroyed and more than 600 Christians killed; and mosques are being targeted with deadly attacks against clerics who speak out against the Islamist group Boko Haram, as happened – again, tragically – earlier this week. In Yemen and elsewhere in the Muslim world, those who convert to Christianity face the death penalty. In China, government forces oppress Uyghur Muslims in the west of the country. In Cambodia, members of the Buddhist majority have been attacking the Muslim minority. And, in India, systematic violence against Muslims is widespread. The list goes on and on – and this list only includes instances of persecution against Muslims and Christians; there are many other populations around the world under threat of discrimination, persecution and brutality.

The Jewish value of adam yachid, a single human being, means that humankind descended from one individual so that no one can say, “My father is greater than your father.” As Jews, but more especially as people who enjoy the freedom to express ourselves without fear of retribution from government or mob, we have an obligation to speak out on behalf of those who cannot. This is something we should do not because others did it when we were oppressed, but because their actions are the model of the human(e) response to injustice.

What can we do? In small and large ways, we can inform ourselves and our circles of influence about the issues facing minority communities worldwide. There are plenty of organizations working quietly on these topics. Consider supporting one. Inform yourself on events in other parts of the world that affect specific populations. When elected officials – and those who hope to become elected officials – knock on our doors in the federal election next year, we should let them know that the issues that are important to us go beyond those that impact our immediate lives.

“Jewish state bill” should be nixed

A proposed “Jewish state bill” may be up for a Knesset vote next week. An amalgamation of previous drafts, the bill would, among other things, enshrine in Basic Law Israel’s Jewish identity, reserve the right of national self-determination to Jews only, institutionalize Jewish law as the basis for Israeli law, and de-list Arabic as an official language, relegating it to “special status.”

Passed by a 14-6 majority of cabinet ministers on Sunday, the bill – which includes some 14 principles – still requires Knesset approval. With Yesh Atid and Hatnua threatening to leave the coalition government in reaction to the proposal, the Knesset vote was postponed until the middle of next week, at least.

“The vote set off a stormy cabinet session in which two of his most centrist coalition partners voted against the proposed bill and voiced fierce opposition, claiming that at this sensitive juncture it would likely just escalate tensions,” reported CBC.

President Reuven Rivlin is against the bill, saying it undermines the country’s Jewish character and calls into question the success of Zionism. Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein also has come out against the bill, writing a legal opinion that was published in Hebrew on Walla, indicating, according to various news reports, that the planned proposal features “significant changes in the founding principles of constitutional law as anchored in the Declaration of Independence and in the basic laws of the Knesset, which can flatten the democratic character of the state.”

Despite these and many other criticisms and concerns expressed within Israel by Israelis, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said he is determined to pass the bill, “with or without consensus.” He confusingly added, “I don’t know a country that is more democratic, or a more vibrant democracy than Israel in the world, certainly not in our region.” Yet this point of pride would no longer exist if the bill passed.

Outside of the country, the United States State Department cautioned that Israel should “stick to its democratic principles.” This warning was roundly rejected by Jewish Home party MK and Economic Minister Naftali Bennett, who reportedly said, “We will manage the affairs of the state of Israel. We have to deal with the ramifications of what sort of state we want. In the end, this is our problem, an internal problem, and I don’t think anyone has the right to wade into it.”

Just what kind of state this bill is proposing is not clear. Not to wade into it too deeply but we find ourselves agreeing with the U.S. State Department and the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman, who made a statement about how “well-meaning” (we’re not sure about that) and “unnecessary” the bill is, the latter being an opinion expressed by many of those that lean to the right in Israel. We even find ourselves agreeing, at first blush, with those on the left in Israel who are calling the bill racist.

In his Nov. 25 Haaretz column, Bradley Burston writes, “Listen to the words of Mahmoud Seif, uncle of sergeant-major Zidan Nahad Seif, the Druze Arab Israeli policeman slain … as he fought to stop the terrorist murder of Jews at prayer in a Jerusalem synagogue…. ‘The “nation-state law,” is saying, in other words: “Only the Jews should remain here.”’

“‘What about the Druze? What about the many, many Arabs who are loyal to the country?’ he asked on Army Radio this week.

“‘What are they going to do now? This is a law for Jews only.’”

Twenty percent of Israel’s population – one in five – is not Jewish.

All logic, all compassion, all pragmatism – everything! – cries out against this bill. Please, Knesset, vote it down.

Are we Bolsheviks?

Israel’s Knesset gave preliminary approval to a bill that would make it illegal to distribute free newspapers. On the face, it seems an odd move. Why prevent the (literally) free circulation of ideas? On principle, it is worse. Democratic governments should not be getting involved in who can print news and how much they must charge to distribute it.

A nearly identical bill was defeated in 2010, and the target of both bills is Israel Hayom, a free-distribution newspaper that is owned by Sheldon Adelson, the mega-rich American casino owner and right-wing funder. Israel Hayom has shaken up Israel’s media and political scene, recently becoming the country’s most-read (or, at the very least, most-printed) newspaper. Critics see the paper as a shill for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and causes associated with the political right.

The Labor party MK who initiated the bill puts it another way.

“This is a bill in favor of pluralism and multiple opinions,” said Eitan Cabel, according to JTA. “It is a battle so that, in a few years, we do not become a country with only one newspaper. Sheldon Adelson wants to bury a market that is fighting for its life. Israel Hayom does not exist because of its success as a newspaper but because of the hundreds of millions in gambling funds that are funneled to it from overseas. Does anyone in this room honestly think that this is how a model for a normal newspaper looks? That this is how fair competition looks?” He assured the public, Israel Hayom “will continue to be published after the law comes into effect, and can even be sold for a symbolic price.”

He is certainly correct that print media is fighting for its life, and he is likewise correct in his implication that print media plays a crucial role in the diversity of ideas and information. But he is wrong to condemn the business model Adelson has employed. For one thing, in an ostensibly free market (society), the government should not be making arbitrary judgments about how a business funds its operations, even when that business is one as vital as the news industry, whose freedom is integral to the health of democracy.

The recent bill “would ban distribution of a free daily newspaper that is published six days a week and has at least 30 pages on weekdays and 100 pages in its weekend edition. The bill allows free distribution only for six months.” According to the Jerusalem Post, the text of the bill claims it seeks to “strengthen written journalism in Israel and ensure equal and fair conditions of competition between newspapers,” but the bill is impotent, its rules easy to circumvent. Even if they weren’t, the drowning out of voices is not the way to increase competition and free speech.

There are many threats to traditional newspapers – the internet chief among them and, if that hasn’t bled print dry yet, then neither will Israel Hayom.

A robust democracy requires a chorus of competing ideas and free-flowing public discourse – and not just for the sake of freedom. It is only on such a path that we can hope to find solutions to the problems we face, from poverty and illness to what form our news media takes.

Likud MK Moshe Feiglin probably summed it up most succinctly. “What is this?” he asked. “Since when do parliaments close newspapers? Are we Bolsheviks?”

It is heartening to see that, according to the Jewish Press, 77 percent of Israelis oppose the bill. Banning newspapers is not the way to save newspapers. Let’s hope that after the second or third reading, this bill ends up in the Knesset’s recycling bin.

Misdirecting attention

U.S. President Barack Obama has sent a letter to the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei requesting Iran’s support in the battle against ISIS. At a time when Israel’s relationship with the American administration is strained, the letter (which was apparently sent back in October and whose existence was recently reported by the Wall Street Journal) has sparked a great deal of reaction.

Stopping the Islamic State is and should be a global priority, but the softening of attitudes toward Iran’s regime is a concern. While there appears to be some progress in talks on Iran’s nuclear program – negotiations that are rapidly approaching a Nov. 24 deadline for an agreement – the hatred directed at Israel is as vibrant as ever. Just days ago, Khamenei tweeted an infographic titled “9 Key Questions About Elimination of Israel.”

The graphic design is better than the English grammar, but the message is unmistakable. No less than ever – and regardless of what we may read suggesting schisms in the highest reaches of the regime – the top leader is as committed as he ever was to the annihilation of Israel.

While insisting that, “of course, the elimination of Israel does not mean the massacre of Jewish people in the region,” the emphatic message is, put mildly, unwelcoming. Still, the world seems convinced that it’s a bluff. To see events at the United Nations, one would think it was Israel that was threatening to obliterate another member-state. Commentators dismiss destructive rhetoric like Khamenei’s as propaganda for domestic consumption, but most Jews, and anyone with a sense of history, take seriously threats like this at any time, but particularly in the week that we commemorate both the 76th anniversary of Kristallnacht and Remembrance Day.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry insists any Iran overture is unrelated to the broader issues of the Middle East, as if the interconnected web of intrigues, hatreds and alliances could be unraveled from one another. And then, as if there are not enough issues in the world with which to be concerned, European states are lining up to recognize the “state of Palestine.” These legally meaningless but symbolic votes by Britain and Sweden, with more legislatures intending to follow suit, are meant to force negotiations toward a two-state solution, with an underlying assumption that Israel is to blame for the lack of progress. All the incitement to violence by Palestinian leaders and the recent upsurge in vehicular murders and stabbings of Israelis are blamed on the Israelis themselves, who must somehow deserve what they get.

Often, commentators, including Kerry recently, state that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the lynchpin to resolving the broader conflict in the region. By obsessing about Israel, the UN, European powers and others are wasting their energies on a sideshow while the feature presentations get short shrift.

Fresh, solemn significance

For a great number of Canadians, particularly those too young to remember the Second World War, Remembrance Day is not the day of intimate commemoration it was for previous generations. Canadian engagement in Afghanistan, however, has once again bestowed on this solemn occasion more immediacy. That said, most young Canadians who file into school auditoriums for the recitation of “In Flanders Fields” and a moment of silence understandably may not experience the same emotional reaction as their parents or grandparents who participated in or lost loved ones in the world wars.

This Nov. 11 will probably have poignancy beyond the routine, though, because of the tragic events of recent days. Our country is mourning Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, who was murdered last month in Quebec, and Corporal Nathan Cirillo, who was shot at the National War Memorial in Ottawa two days later.

The murder of Cirillo was immediately followed by a dramatic shootout at the heart of our democracy, the Parliament Buildings, in which the assassin and thankfully no one else was killed.

The symbolism of the latter shootings is unambiguous. A killer – maybe deranged, maybe driven by ideology, maybe a bit of both – kills a military official standing guard at the icon of Canada’s military sacrifices, then heads directly to the legislature of our country, apparently intending further destruction.

Reaction has varied intensely. American 24-hour news outlets treated the occasion with typical spectacle. Canadian media have been credited with exhibiting characteristic Canadian moderation. Canadians have not, evidence so far suggests, gone hog-wild in demanding the swapping of human rights for physical security. A typically Canadian assessment will be made about whether elected officials should have greater protection, but there has been minimal hysteria about an imminent invasion by terrorists.

These incidents, of course, raised the inevitable fears and allegations. Both crimes were perpetrated by men who were newly observant Muslims. Yet, there is minimal evidence that either was in any way connected to a larger Islamist network or that religious fanaticism was a greater driver than grave psychological or emotional troubles.

Still, there was reaction in the unlikeliest of places. In Cold Lake, Alta., a mosque – talk about a little mosque on the prairie – was a hate-crime target with, among other things, “Go home” spray-painted on its exterior. In what was the perfect Canadian response, locals showed up to clean off the graffiti and festoon the place with signs, including one with the message “You ARE home.”

There may be a place for hate-crimes legislation and certainly there are laws against vandalism, but the greatest reaction of all is individual members of a community coming together to undo – literally and figuratively – the hatred purveyed by a minority of bigots.

As we prepare to mark Remembrance Day Tuesday, members of our community also gather Sunday night to mark the 76th anniversary of Kristallnacht. This date marks the horrible moment when the incremental threats of the Nazi regime moved from words to deeds, and the intimidations of successive antisemitic laws moved toward the grisly realities of the Final Solution.

Kristallnacht also holds particularly fresh import in a world where Jewish shops and people this year have been subjected to attack in Europe and elsewhere. Both of these solemn days call on us to consider events of the past and to be vigilant in the present. Lest we forget.

Horribly wrong advice

Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who came to our attention as the conduit for Edward Snowden’s Wikileaks cache, has a theory on why members of the Canadian military have been killed in terror attacks like the one last week in Ottawa. They died for the sins of Canada’s foreign policy.

Greenwald wrote a piece after the incident in Quebec on Oct. 20, in which two soldiers were run over – Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent fatally – in a deliberate attack. Greenwald’s article was rerun at rabble.ca on Oct. 22, apparently posted to the site about the time another attack was taking place on and around Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

“It is always stunning,” Greenwald wrote, “when a country that has brought violence and military force to numerous countries acts shocked and bewildered when someone brings a tiny fraction of that violence back to that country.”

Greenwald shifts blame for the soldiers’ deaths from their murderers to Canadian involvement in Afghanistan, Canada’s newly announced air support for the Western battle against ISIS, and on Canada’s being “an enthusiastic partner in some of the most extremist War on Terror abuses perpetrated by the U.S.”

The article has been shared around social media and similar assertions have been made by other commentators.

It needs to be said that both of these incidents, in which the perpetrators themselves were also killed, were apparently “lone-wolf” attacks. Also popping up in social media are demands for greater attention to mental illness in Canada, the implication being that mental instability may have trumped ideology for one or both of these perpetrators. This is an important issue to consider.

Greenwald anticipates the inevitable comeback to his argument – that Islamists are not driven by reaction to our foreign policy but by hatred of our values. That is, they hate us not for what we do, but for who we are.

“They even invent fairy tales to feed to the population to explain why it happens: they hate us for our freedoms,” wrote Greenwald. “Those fairy tales are pure deceit. Except in the rarest of cases, the violence has clearly identifiable and easy-to-understand causes: namely, anger over the violence that the country’s government has spent years directing at others.”

It’s not a stupid idea, but it’s simplistic in the extreme. It suggests not only a self-deception about the ideology driving worldwide terror, but an almost understandable, desperate hope for safety: if we just stop provoking the terrorists, they will leave us alone.

What his position ignores – though it is shared by many – is that the perpetrators are fundamentalists, seeking the destruction of the existing order not only in Syria and Iraq, but worldwide. The deceitful fairy tales are those told and believed by those who refuse to acknowledge evil when they see it beheading people on the internet.

Greenwald’s position, in fact, is a version of the Western colonialist mentality. The actions and worldview of ISIS and other extremists are not born of ideology or theology. No, they are solely a reaction to our actions. It’s all about us. It’s a weirdly imperialist view in its own way.

But even if he is correct, even if the attacks we saw last week and those endured by other democracies including Israel in recent years, were motivated by government actions and policies, his solution is suicide.

Even if there were proof positive that terrorists were motivated by our policies, rather than the fact that we like freedom, equality, an after-dinner drink and mixed-gender dancing, the solution would still not be to change our policy.

For a country to base its foreign policy on whether or not it will be liked or hated by ideologues who scythe off the heads of innocents is a map to self-destruction. The idea that terrorists will target our soldiers and civilians because our government is engaged in far-off conflicts is not completely outlandish, but its corollary – that we should change our foreign policy to one more agreeable for the worst elements in the world – is horribly wrong. That is, to use a hackneyed and ridiculed phrase that is nonetheless spot on, how the terrorists win.

Make Mideast bloom

Zionism promised to make the desert bloom. Of course, as they were literally making this happen, the chalutzim could not have imagined the figurative blooming that would come decades later, when Israelis would lead the world in new technologies and other economic innovations.

A new report from Credit Suisse quantifies just how successful Israel has been. And while it isn’t a surprise, in some ways, it is a symbol of astonishing achievement when taken in historical context.

The Swiss bank’s Global Wealth Report takes into account the assets, minus debt, of households and individuals, including savings, real estate and investments. By this measure, Israelis are the sixth wealthiest people in the Middle East and Asia, bested only by Australia, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand and Taiwan. With a per capita net worth between $150,000 and $175,000, Israelis are on par with, or exceed, the average European. And the wealth is distributed more evenly than it is in the United States. Not only that, but the trajectory is especially impressive for Israelis, with assets growing about 14 percent in the past year. (In Canada and the United States, the world’s wealthiest region, the average net worth of an adult is $340,000.)

The tiny country with effectively no natural resources, facing adversity and existential threat since its inception, has built a thriving economy that delivers for its citizens economic outcomes that exceed its oil-rich neighbors.

Of course, Israel’s detractors will not be impressed. Economic success is anathema to many of those who seek to boycott, divest from and sanction the Jewish state. To BDS supporters, every Israeli success is merely proof of misbegotten advantage due to exploitation or imperialism or worse.

Yet all the economic and social misery that surrounds Israel can be attributed in part back to the fatal decision nearly seven decades ago by the Arab League to have no truck nor trade with the Jews.

It is not a coincidence that the Credit Suisse report considers Canada and the United States in a single unit. Our economies are integrated enough to enjoy synergies (and yet distinct enough that the full impact of the 2008 global recession did not slam Canada as hard as it did the United States).

Were Israel as integrated into its regional economy as Canada’s is in ours, the economic miracle it represents could have spawned parallel, related success stories all around it. It still could.

A few voices in the Arab Middle East are finally speaking up to suggest that the decades-long isolation of Israel should end. Such a rapprochement would be good for Israel, to put it mildly. But it would be economically beneficial for the entire region. If economic self-interest were the defining impetus for Arab Middle East foreign policy, peace might be not so distant a dream.

Lessons from Nobel Prize

Last week, Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The former may be more familiar to most of the world than the latter but, in pairing the two, the prize committee was making some very blunt statements about girls, children and long-held international enmities.

Yousafzai is a Pakistani Muslim. When she was 11 years old, she began writing a blog for the BBC about life under the Taliban in the Swat Valley area of northwest Pakistan. Her family operated schools in the area and the Taliban banned girls from attending. She persisted – not only in attending school but in becoming an international voice for girls’ education. When she was 15, in 2012, a gunman boarded her school bus, asked for her by name and shot her. Yousafzai survived and continues her activism with more determination.

Satyarthi is an Indian Hindu who has devoted himself to the cause of children’s rights, particularly opposing child labor and advancing education for all. His organization has rescued and rehabilitated 80,000 child laborers.

The Nobel’s choice of Yousafzai and Satyarthi made a statement not only about the value of childhood and education, but by choosing laureates from the belligerent neighboring countries of India and Pakistan, they were also underscoring the need to overcome long-standing animosities for the greater good.

There are many reasons why children do not receive the education they deserve – intertwined factors of poverty, violence, oppression, forced early marriage and more – but gender is a particularly gnawing factor in many parts of the world. The more a country limits girls’ education, the more backward the country is – and not in the culturally relativist sense of backwardness that is no longer politically palatable terminology, but in objective, empirical, economic terms. The statistics are staggering.

Every extra year of education a girl in the developing world receives can increase her income 15 to 25 percent. When mothers are responsible for household income, there is a 20 percent increase in child survival rates. Every additional year of schooling a mother receives reduces infant mortality by five to 10 percent.

The more education a girl receives, the fewer children she is likely to have – and they are likely to be healthier and to go to school themselves. And education reduces the likelihood that a girl will be pushed into marriage in adolescence.

As is so often the case, oppression of one group harms the larger society. Ameliorating the oppression of some advantages the whole. A 10 percent increase in girls’ school attendance can increase a country’s GDP by three percent. If all the moral and human justifications do not persuade governments, the numbers should convince them that girls’ education is an economic benefit.

Israel is a case study. From before the state was proclaimed, women have played central roles and been leaders in all aspects of civil society. It is not a coincidence that Israel – a barren, resourceless nascent state in 1948 – has emerged as one of the world’s most successful economies. There are a number of obvious and less obvious reasons for this, but the inclusion of women is one of them.

This is not to suggest that everything is roses. Men still dominate professorships and the sciences in Israel. Arab schools in Israel receive fewer resources than Jewish schools, though efforts are advancing to close this gap. (Christian Arabs, though, statistically have better graduation exam results than Muslim or Jewish students and attend university in numbers above the Israeli median.) Israel is also investing large sums in revamping Charedi education to better prepare religious men and women for the workforce.

But girls in Israel are more likely than boys to graduate high school and continue to university. The high school dropout rate for boys is almost three times that of girls. More than 56 percent of students in university are female.

Of course, such is the state of the world today that what lessons Israel may offer will be rejected out of hand due to the source but, by selecting an Indian and a Pakistani, the Nobel committee was clearly making a statement that urgent issues must be addressed regardless of old antagonisms.

The Nobel committee was also clearly recognizing the impact that a single person – or two individuals – can have on the way the world thinks and behaves.

The state of impermanence

As a harvest festival, Sukkot is infused with thanksgiving for the bounty that Jews in Canada and, mercifully, in most of the world today, enjoy. The holiday is also an earthy affair, as we move out into our backyards (or, in some cases caused by this hot housing market, our sliver of a balcony) and into temporary shelters inspired by those used by the Israelites during the 40 years of exodus in the desert. The emphasis of the sukkah is on impermanence and inhabiting one, even if just for a meal, inspires reflection on the impermanence in our lives, including life itself.

Sukkot is immediately followed by Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah – and the juxtaposition is striking. On Simchat Torah, we celebrate the most permanent thing the Jewish people have experienced. On this day, we complete the annual reading of the Torah and immediately begin again, missing not a beat between the end of Devarim, Deuteronomy, and the beginning of Bereisheet, Genesis.

For a people who have known – who, indeed, have just finished a week of reenacting – historical impermanence, Simchat Torah is a reassurance that, in the face of all historical, social and technological change, at least one thing remains constant: the book that binds us in spirit and practice.

The Torah is a constant in times of change, and it is easy to take for granted that, in the long history of the Jewish people, we are living out one of the most dramatic epochs our people has ever known. For millennia, our forebears yearned for Zion, longing to celebrate next year in Jerusalem and to be a free people in our land. In our generation, this dream has come to pass.

The creation of the state of Israel has changed Jews, Judaism and Jewish practices in small and large ways. One of the most significant ways is the sense of permanence provided by a Jewish homeland. Yet, there have been times of war and terror when the dream has turned nightmarish. And there remain many in the world who would like Israel to be an impermanent way station, merely another sukkah, for the Jewish people.

Jews – in Israel and around the world – are determined that Israel should remain as permanent and enduring as the Torah. Yet, unlike the Torah, which has a definitive beginning and end, Israel’s borders are not recognized by the international community, nor is there a consensus in Israel about where precisely they should be in the event of a final status agreement for a two-state solution.

While Jews worldwide were contemplating construction of their sukkot, the United States and others were condemning Israel’s recent announcement of additional housing construction in East Jerusalem.

Such settlements do nothing to convince the world that Israel is acting in good faith vis-à-vis a two-state outcome. On the other hand, condemning construction as the primary obstacle to peace in the region is a difficult pill to swallow: there are more pressing impediments to peace on both sides of the conflict.

However, while settlements may not be the main impediment to peace, they are an attempt to build something relatively permanent in a region without clear borders. It seems a considerable waste of resources – human labor, building materials, money, time, even Israeli and Palestinian PR efforts and goodwill – to keep building, especially knowing that the area is disputed and, therefore, impermanent.

Such construction also raises the hopes and dreams of those who ultimately will live there – what happens if they are forced to move? Israel has demonstrated its willingness to uproot Jewish residents in Sinai and Gaza in exchange for the faint hope of peace.

Through history and ritual, Jews understand that most things are temporary, like settlements that eventually give way to compromise. We also understand that some things are meant to last, like Torah and like the irreversible redemption of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

Netanyahu at UN: danger, opportunity ahead

Last week at the United Nations, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas once again accused Israel of heinous crimes, including “genocide.” And, once again, the global community demonstrated its collective gullibility. It was left to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Monday to stand at the same lectern before the UN General Assembly and deliver what has become an annual rebuttal to the most preposterous allegations against the Jewish state.

It was not a cheery speech, but nor was it all doom and gloom. In that half-empty assembly hall – many delegates, apparently, cannot even bear to listen to the words of an Israeli leader – Netanyahu took on one accusation after another.

“I’ve come here to expose the brazen lies spoken from this very podium against my country and against the brave soldiers who defend it,” he said, holding up the Israel Defence Forces as representative of “the highest moral values of any army in the world” and insisting that “Israel’s soldiers deserve not condemnation, but admiration … from decent people everywhere.”

He slammed the UN’s Human Rights Council, which he declared an oxymoron.

“By investigating Israel, rather than Hamas, for war crimes, the UN Human Rights Council has betrayed its noble mission to protect the innocent,” the prime minister said. “In fact, what it’s doing is to turn the laws of war upside-down. Israel, which took unprecedented steps to minimize civilian casualties – Israel is condemned. Hamas, which both targeted and hid behind civilians – that, a double war crime – Hamas is given a pass. The Human Rights Council is thus sending a clear message to terrorists everywhere: use civilians as human shields. Use them again and again and again. And you know why? Because, sadly, it works.”

Then he turned his sights toward Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He warned that, while Iran may have softened its tone, its aim is the same as that of ISIS, Hamas and other militant Islamists – world domination.

These common dangers – “a nuclear-armed Iran and militant Islamist movements gaining ground” – provide an opening for peace between Israel and its neighbors. And not only militarily, but also in terms of regional development.

“Together we can strengthen regional security,” said Netanyahu. “We can advance projects in water, agriculture, in transportation, in health, in energy, in so many fields.

“I believe the partnership between us can also help facilitate peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Many have long assumed that an Israeli-Palestinian peace can help facilitate a broader rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world. But, these days, I think it may work the other way around: namely, that a broader rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world may help facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

If Israel’s prime minister can talk about the potential for “new opportunities” in the Middle East alongside the dangers, and of “the indispensable role of Arab states in advancing peace with the Palestinians,” perhaps it’s not so naïve to remain hopeful.