2018’s Not-So-Coveted Awards for Anti-Jewish Homeland Activities
Poison Ivy League Defective Diploma Award to Harvard Alumna Natalie Portman for Getting It Despite an ‘F’ in Homeland Jewish History: This award is proudly presented to Harvard alumna Natalie Portman, not for, this spring, refusing to accept Israel’s Genesis Award because the Prime Minister of the land of her birth would speak at the ceremony, or, this week, calling that country’s Nation-State Law “racist,” but for having declared in her Genesis award statement: “Israel was created exactly 70 years ago as a haven for refugees from the Holocaust.” Wrong, Natalie, though Iran and “the Palestinians” agree with you. Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people that never left, gained its independence, for the third time, exactly 70 years ago as the land of Israel’s next native state after Roman-destroyed Jewish Judaea.
Holy Roman Empire Award to British Royalty’s Publicists for Calling Jerusalem’s Old City Part of “Occupied Palestinian Territories”: The detailed itinerary of Prince William’s June visit to “Jordan, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories” lumped Jerusalem’s Old City into “the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Historic Jerusalem, which Palestinian Arabs have not ruled for one day in history, has been the capital of three states in the past three thousand years, all of them Jewish, and has had a renewed Jewish majority since 1800’s Turkish Ottoman rule. So Jerusalem’s Old City is not Jewish-“occupied,” it’s not “Palestinian,” and it’s not a “territory” but an integral part of an historically undivided Jewish homeland capital city, Jerusalem.
Can’t-Say-It-Without-Smiling Award to Airbnb for Defining “the Core of the Dispute Between Israelis and Palestinians” as “Israeli Settlements in the Occupied West Bank”: The next day after Airbnb delisted rental listings in Judea-Samaria, but only if they were owned by Jews, the organization Human Waste Watch released a two-year study titled “Bed and Breakfast on Stolen Land: Tourist Rental Listings in West Bank Settlements.” It’s incumbent on us to contest Airbnb’s action as a matter of self-respect and to discourage other enterprises from following suit under similar pressure. But what seems most disingenuous is Airbnb’s claimed recognition of “historic and intense disputes,” on which it has “deep respect” for all views, between Jews and Arabs over what it nonetheless characterized as “Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.” At least one article in a Jewish publication, the Jewish Press, referred to “Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria,” and so should we all.
“Et tu, Brute?” Award to the Jewish Federations of North America and American Reform Judaism Movement for Piling Onto International Bashing of Israel’s Nation-State Law: The international community, as it’s called, instantly reacted negatively to Israel’s adoption this summer of its Nation-State Law. “The Arab Republic [n.b.] of Egypt” howled about “occupation and racial segregation.” Turkey rejected “this racist move that amounts to erasing the Palestinian people from their homeland physically and legally.” The EU said it was “concerned about a new Israeli law which declares that only Jews have the right of self-determination,” etc. So it was not helpful that, as Times of Israel headlined, “Reform and AJC Leaders Bitterly Criticize Israel’s Nation-State Bill,” and, as Israel World News headlined, “Reform Judaism Head Slams Law Enshrining Israel’s Jewish Character,” quoting Reform leader Rabbi Jacobs that he “passionately opposes this new law because of the harmful effect on Arab-Jewish relations in Israel ….” As many Jewish commentators have written, there is inexcusable chutzpah in American Jews lecturing Israel on matters in the domain of sovereign states, and in this context particularly piling onto international impingement of Israel’s prerogatives as a sovereign state.
Alav Ha-Shalom Achshav-Offering Award to EU Nations: US Amb. Nicky Haley didn’t mention “Palestinian State” in her UN speech this month, previewing Pres. Trump’s “deal of the century” Israel-Arab peace plan. This “did not sit well with France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Holland, Sweden, Belgium and Poland.” They issued a joint statement: “The EU is truly convinced that a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital of both states” is the only viable and realistic solution. Eban rightly called the 1949 Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines, expressly not political borders, militarily indefensibly nine miles wide in the lowland middle, “Auschwitz lines.” The “1967 borders” is an irresistible invitation for Israel’s obliteration, and it would be suicidal for Israel to retreat to them. But, beyond that, is a sans-historic Jerusalem, nine-miles-wide in the lowland middle ghetto what the Dream of Generations for Israel’s redemption should come to? And as for those nations on the Dark Continent, Europe, that would see us interned there, Jews believe that the Almighty has a Hand in history, and that He has said to these nations of Europe: “So for two millennia you didn’t like having Jews living among you? Watch this!”
Brooklyn Dodgers’ “Just Wait Till Next Year” Award to European Nations for Voting in the UN for Calling the Temple Mount By Its Muslim Name Only, While Threatening To Change Their Vote Next Year if “Temple Mount” Isn’t Mentioned: Jerusalem Post, 12/2/18: “The European Union, which supported both texts [“that ignored Jewish and Christian ties to the Temple Mount”] warned that it could [emphasis added] stop doing so” unless more inclusive language was used next year to reference holy sites in Jerusalem. Gentlemen, place your bets.
“Back of the Bus” Award to Even Some of Our Best Commentators Who Use “West Bank” and Other Jewish Homeland Delegitimizing Expressions: Even some of the otherwise most self-respecting and persuasive Jewish commentators on Israel use “West Bank” and “Israel’s 1967 borders” and other Jewish homeland-delegitimizing expressions in the very course of making otherwise compelling cases for Jewish presence in the land of Israel, including beyond the old 1949 lines. These terms were designed to delegitimize us, and no style book of no Jewish or general publication should compel us to use them. If that’s the price of getting published in ‘A’ List publications, that price is too high. Arguing from inside “West Bank”-excluding “Israel’s 1967 borders” is arguing from the Back of the Bus.
NY Times-inspired America’s Newspaper of Rectum Award is Presented to Philadelphia Inquirer: For years, I read my hometown’s daily paper, the Philly Inquirer (Inq), more regularly than I now do. I recall, e,g., an instance back in 2008 in which the Inq ran an AP squib about the Israel army killing four terrorists planting explosives near the Gaza fence, which quoted Hamas calling them its members on a “jihad mission.” The Inq headlined that article “Israeli Army Shoots Four Palestinians.” Fast-forward a decade to 2018 in which participants in a Gaza fence-rushing mob, some of whom broke through it, which was hurling rocks, firebombs and grenades at Israeli troops, were killed by the IDF. The Inq headlined, sans context: “Five Palestinians are Shot Dead by Israeli Forces.” The Inq’s sub-head, “Militants Later Fired Several Rockets into Southern Israel,” did provide those “militants’” actions context. That there will be further fighting with civilian-embedded Hamas and Hezbollah “militants” seems inevitable. We have to stop averting our eyes from the “mainstream” American media portraying the Jewish homeland’s people’s army as targeting Arab civilians.
“Not Quite Making the Case” Award is Presented to Us: Historian James Parkes, who rightly wrote that the continuous, tenacious homeland-claiming physical presence of Jews all through the long, dark post-biblical foreign rule centuries, in spite of every discouragement, wrote the Zionists’ “real title deeds,” bitterly criticized us for talking about “exile and return” instead of about that continuous homeland-claiming physical presence. One wonderful Israeli commentator, with whom I agree that Jordan is the Arab Palestinian state of the two-state solution, wrote an important column this year on why there weren’t more Jews in Palestine (600,000 vs. c. a million Arabs) in 1948. He rightly wrote that the British exerted their level best, during and after the Holocaust, to keep Jews from coming in. What he didn’t write was that that succession of post-biblical foreign empire rulers, and not exclusively the Byzantines and Crusaders, did their own level best to slaughter homeland Jews who were already there. We – all of us – have to make that case that we Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel – Israel & Judah, Yehud, Judaea, western Palestine – who never left. But is it true? James Parkes and others and I wrote books on it.