A shootout in Ramallah. Jews settle their differences another way. They talk.

How Jews settle their differences

Our disagreements have not boiled over into Ramallah-style gun battles. But do not assume the Jewish world is immune to lunacy.

A recent news item from Ramallah, the capital of the Palestinian Authority, caught my eye. At first glance, you might not think it can teach us much about Israeli or Jewish affairs. But it can. It seems that a nephew of Khalil Al-Sheikh, the brother of a Palestinian Authority cabinet minister, got into a personal quarrel with a member of the Palestinian security forces (the PA’s de-facto army). Determined to defend his nephew’s honor, Khalil Al-Sheikh “arrived at the scene with a group of gunmen,” according to a news report. Al-Sheikh and his gang got into a gun battle with the security forces, and Al-Sheikh ended up dead. 

Feuds? Family honor? Shoot-outs? At this point in the story, you may be wondering if you’re reading about an incident from America’s Wild West. But it didn’t end there. 

Al-Sheikh’s relatives then rampaged through downtown Ramallah, “firing into the air and at government buildings.” The news reports note that this all comes amidst “a surge in violence in recent months, including clashes between rival clans and villages.” 

Let’s see if we can translate this episode into American terms. Imagine that, say, the brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos showed up in downtown Washington, D.C., with a group of heavily armed friends, because his nephew was having an argument with the Capitol Hill police. In this absurd scenario, the police shot Devos’s brother dead, and other DeVos family members responded by running through the city streets, firing into the Smithsonian Institution, the Supreme Court building, and assorted trendy restaurants. And this all happened amidst a series of recent armed clashes between Republicans and Democrats, capitalists and socialists, and meat-eaters and vegetarians. 

Ridiculous? Impossible? Of course. Because reasonable, civilized people don’t settle their arguments with gunfire. Americans, like Israelis, may raise their voices and argue vigorously with each other (my granddaughter Michal once remarked that Israelis are not really mad at each other when they argue, they just talk very loudly,) but they don’t then reach for their rifles. They shake hands and move on. 

It seems that now and then, some of the Jewish community’s more vociferous pundits need to be reminded of the rules of civility. It seems that now and then, some of the Jewish community’s more vociferous pundits need to be reminded of the rules of civility. 

Stephen M. Flatow and Dani Dayan, 2016

When Dani Dayan was named Israel’s consul general in New York City four years ago, some on the Jewish left responded with unbridled hysteria. Dayan had previously chaired the Yesha Council, which represents Jewish towns that lie beyond the pre-1967 armistice lines. Passionate Jews on the left who demonize “settlers” expected Dayan to have horns, and branded him The Enemy before he even stepped foot on American shores. 

Four years have passed, and this week, as Dayan prepared to depart the U.S. after completing his service, a few voices on the left—but not enough—admitted how wrong they were to assume Dayan must be some sort of monster. 

Michael Koplow, a leader of the Labor Party-created Israel Policy Forum, tweeted: “No matter what the policy differences he has with anyone, he is unfailingly a first class mentsch and treats people with respect. Something we should all try to emulate.” 

Abe Silberstein, writing in The Forward, confessed his bewilderment that Dayan did not live up to his demonic stereotype of the Israeli diplomat. Four years ago, Silberstein urged New York Jews to “shun” Dayan. Then Silberstein discovered that Dayan is human. What a shock! “I found Ambassador Dayan to be a genial and unassuming presence who was as eager to learn my perspective as he was sharing his,” Silberstein now concedes. Thanks to Dayan’s “friendly disposition” and willingness to interact with those with whom he disagreed, he became “well-liked and respected throughout the community.” Dayan was, in short, “a mensch,” and therefore Silberstein now considers himself “among Dayan’s progressive well-wishers.” 

Kudos to Koplow and Silberstein for remembering that Jews, even those with whom they disagree, are all human and, in fact, we are all part of an extended family. I wish more people would remember that. 

There are those among us who seem to spend a lot of their time hurling mud, demanding that their critics be fired, or threatening lawsuits in order to intimidate their foes. Namecalling too often replaces civil discourse. Angry press releases and accusations of disloyalty too often substitute for calm discussion. 

Thank goodness that our disagreements have not yet boiled over into Ramallah-style gun battles. But nobody should assume that the Jewish world is immune to lunacy. We’ve all seen, in recent months, the ratcheting up of the shouting and finger-pointing on both sides of the aisle. We’ve read the long lists of grievances and strident accusations. It’s time for all of us to take a deep breath, dial back the overheated rhetoric, and remember that, at the end of the day, the alternative to Jews recognizing each other’s humanity is the madness of Ramallah. 

Well, that's what I have to say. 

Stephen M. Flatow

A Proposal for American Colleges and Universities During Covid-19 - CLOSE!

Prof. Benjamin Goldfrank had his say, "Re-opening universities will contribute to the spread of COVID-19," on the op-ed pages of the Star-Ledger about the need for New Jersey's colleges and universities to continue remote learning.

I, too, think colleges and universities should close, but I mean lock the doors, shutdown, cease to operate, for the coming school  year.

He writes,

After years of proclaiming its exceptionalism, the U.S. today distinguishes itself mainly for leading the world in cases and deaths from COVID-19. Yet our leaders – including many university presidents – continue pretending everything is fine. As a result, college faculty, staff, and students face a triple threat: a malevolently* incompetent federal government, state governments pressured to restart their economies, and anxious university administrations bringing students back to campus prematurely. Even in states like New Jersey, which managed to lower rates of transmission, reopening universities next month could have terrible consequences.

(Ed's note - he just had to get that comment in there, didn't he.)

To many in academia, American exceptionalism is a sin, something to recant at every opportunity including in what could have been a more thoughtful column on the alleged dangers of reopening schools.

In any event, I wrote a letter to the editor that did not see the light of day in either printed or on-line pages of the Star-Ledger in response to Prof. Goldfrank.  Here it:

July 29, 2020

Via E-mail to eletters@starledger.com
The Editor
The Star-Ledger
1 Star-Ledger Plaza
Newark, NJ 07102

Re Re-opening universities
Prof. Goldfrank

Dear Sir:

If re-opening colleges is the problem that Prof. Goldfrank says it is, I recommend this solution:  All universities and colleges close for the next school year.  No classes via Zoom, no webinars, no tuition, no anything.

Giving America’s college students the year off will allow them to volunteer for many worthwhile causes, the Peace Corps comes to mind, and I’m sure Star-Ledger readers could name dozens, if not hundreds, of charities here in New Jersey that could use some help.  A year of helping others is just the type of education our New Jersey boys and girls need.

With campuses closed, money will be saved on the reduction of hard costs associated with running a campus and by furloughing staff (including teaching staff.)  It will also save on the costs of defending lawsuits brought by students and parents who claim a remote education is not what they bargained for when they enrolled.

Stephen M. Flatow

You can read Prof. Goldfrank's column on-line at NJ.COM
If you have a problem viewing, let me know and I'll send a PDF file.

Well, that's what I have to say.  What do you think?

Seth Rogen is a funny guy when it comes to Israel

Seth Rogen is a funny guy when it comes to Israel

But he's got it all wrong

And for that, he qualifies as being an a**hole

This piece by David Harsanyi in National Review on-line deals with the sometimes funny Seth Rogen's recent visit to Marc Maron’s podcast studio.  As he pontificated about Israel, Rogen clearly displays his ignorance.

Here's the lede, the link to the full column is below.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Seth Rogen has, at best, a facile understanding of basic history, faith, or politics. We shouldn’t expect anything else. His job is to act. The problem, though, is that Rogen increasingly feels the need to share his illiterate opinions about serious issues with millions of people.

Why Seth Rogen’s Anti-Israel Rant Matters

Thanks National Review and David Harsanyi for getting this out there.

Well, that's what I have to say.

Stephen M. Flatow

I spent a fortune on giving my kids a yeshiva education. 

Were they shortchanged on things American?

My recent column in Jewishpress.com:

Frum Jews Must Do Their Share To Save America

By

 Stephen M. Flatow

 -

 2 Av 5780 – July 23, 2020

In a recent edition of The Jewish Press, comments by Rav Avigdor Miller, zt”l, caught my attention. In response to the question, “Should we celebrate July 4?” he answered, “Yes” – to show that we “appreciate the great gift of America.”

I agree fully with that statement, but, in light of recent events, I wonder if our children do and if our grandchildren will.

I think back to my New York City public school education in the 1950s before I moved to Rockland County. One of the hallmarks of that education was the requirement that boys carry a handkerchief. It was so engrained in us that to this day – 65-plus years after entering kindergarten at PS 87, Middle Village, Queens – I still carry and use a handkerchief, despite the turned-up noses of my grandchildren.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Another hallmark was the weekly assembly in the school auditorium. It was a Wednesday morning ritual, and I was a proud sixth-grader when I put on the flag carrier strap and marched the flag onto the auditorium stage. At the top of the rear wall of the stage was an inscription attributed to Francis Bacon, “Knowledge is power.” When we were done with the Pledge of Allegiance and singing of the Star-Spangled Banner (verses one and four), I put the flag into its holder on the stage and returned to my seat.

Assembly continued with a series of announcements from the school principal and then a program. Perhaps it would be a play put on by one of the classes, but there was always singing.

We would sing American folk songs. Songs like “My Darling Clementine,” “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain,” and “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” And then there was a patriotic song or two. Maybe “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” or “America the Beautiful.” We stood when we sang those songs.

I didn’t know it at the time, but “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” uses the tune of England’s national anthem, “G-d Save the Queen.” That’s not really important. What was important was how the lyrics resonated within me, a grandchild of immigrants from the Pale of Settlement.

My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From ev’ry mountainside
Let freedom ring!

Even as a child, I understood that none of “my fathers died” establishing the United States nor were they part of the original pilgrims escaping religious persecution in England. Yet, my grandparents were pilgrims in the modern sense, escaping the twin hells of czarist Russia and Polish anti-Semitism. Maybe it was for that reason that the lyrics resonated within me then – and still do today.

What an opportunity they found here! My grandfather sold fruits and vegetables from a pushcart in Brooklyn and then opened a store in bucolic Middle Village. They weren’t rich by any means, but my father told me they always had food to eat during the Great Depression.

Three sons served in the U.S. Army during World War II; one of them got a bullet in the backside during the Battle of the Bulge.

Having now made aliyah, I look at what’s happening in America from afar and feel sad for it. Monuments being torn down, municipal names being changed, educators, writers, and newspaper people being “canceled” for writing things 20 years ago when they were teens or saying things out loud that are on the minds of so many.

I fret for the future of my children and their families who still live in the United States. I also feel a sense of regret that, while I was happily spending a fortune on giving my children a yeshiva education, the education they received – while long on Torah – was very short on things American.

While I succeeded in raising educated Jews and my children are raising their children as educated Jews, they are woefully ignorant of the political world around them. Sure, the adults have a sense of political right and wrong, but I am not certain they vote. Neither they nor my grandchildren know that you’re supposed to put your hand on your heart when saying the Pledge of Allegiance or singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

I’m sure they don’t know there are four stanzas to the national anthem. They certainly don’t know the words to “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and have never heard Kate Smith’s version of “G-d Bless America” (written by another Jewish immigrant, Irving Berlin).

Maybe at another time I would have been flip about it and said, “Bask in your ignorance.” But I – we – cannot be flip. Some think that everything that America has represented for almost 250 years has been wrong; they are the loudest voices we hear today.

But I believe America needed a Christopher Columbus, a Theodore Roosevelt, and even a Woodrow Wilson, warts and all. America became great because of them, and others like them, but it will not remain great when the monuments to them and others are ignominiously removed down from America’s streets, parks, and academic buildings.

A battle for America has begun. If America still means something to us and if we take to heart Rav Miller’s wise advice “to do the opposite” of those trying to tear down America, I, my children and grandchildren, and their yeshivot must take a part in that battle and oppose them.

As Pirkei Avot (2:21) teaches us, “It is not your responsibility to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but you are not free to desist from it either.”

Well, that's what I have to say.

Stephen M. Flatow

Slavery, racism, racists in light of America's struggles.

Uses of a Cocktail of Grievances

by Amir Taheri

The below is a column from Gatestone Institute addressing the fact that slavery is not an American invention, that it was part of history for many centuries, and that the death of George Floyd was "hijacked by merchants of grievances always on the lookout for an excuse to attack Western democracies, especially the United States."

Here's the full column

• [The United States] is something of an exception in being the only major nation-state to have struggled with and, as time went by, against, racism.... The War of Secession, successive civil rights movements, the fight against segregation and methods such as positive discrimination tell the story of a nation seeking to move away from racism.
• Slavery was a routine part of human existence from the start, and in some lands still is. Nor were black Africans the only human beings to become slaves.... In Persian and Ottoman Empires, slaves came from the Caucasus, Scandinavia, and what is now Russia. Again, no black Africans were involved.... Slavery was a common disease that affected every community on earth; a shameful secret of the whole human family.

Slavery was a routine part of human existence from the start, and in some lands still is. Nor were black Africans the only human beings to become slaves.... Slavery was a common disease that affected every community on earth; a shameful secret of the whole human family. Pictured: "The way in which Christian prisoners are sold as slaves at the Algiers market," an engraving from 1684 by Jan Luyken. (Image source: Amsterdam Historic Museum/Wikimedia Commons)

As the outrage inspired by the death of George Floyd in a botched arrest operation calms down, it may be time to consider what has been achieved by the anger it unleashed in dozens of cities across the world.

Sadly, I fear, not only that much of that anger was wasted but that it may have contributed to deeper communitarian ressentiments.

There are at least two reasons for this.

To start with Floyd's death was hijacked by merchants of grievances always on the lookout for an excuse to attack Western democracies, especially the United States. They translated Floyd into a "martyr" of American "imperialism" and pretended that the United States, along with other Western democracies, was a bastion of "racism."

Using rhetorical tricks, they dubbed Floyd's death as "murder", ignoring that the word has a precise meaning that can't be applied to the unfortunate incident in Minneapolis.

Floyd did die because a police technique used in more than 20 countries went badly wrong. But the policeman who became the agent of Floyd's death had not wished or planned to murder him. This is why English language has alternative terms such as manslaughter and premeditated murder.

The next trick used was to pretend that Floyd was killed because he was black. They ignored that the same choking technique of arrest in 2019 claimed several other lives, white and black, in the United States and France. Thus the real issue, the need for reviewing and/or dropping a technique of arrest that could lead to the death, was forgotten?

With extrapolation, the self-styled defenders of humanity saw the Minneapolis incident as an example of state-racism. However, racism is one thing and racial prejudice, even hatred, is another.

Racism denotes a world-view developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, dividing mankind into five races distinguished by real or imagined color of their skins. Like other monistic world-views that reduce human beings into a single element of their complex existence, racism, though deceptive in its simplicity, served as a barrier to scientific ethnography until the 20th century, preventing serious study of humanity in its rich diversity.

Other monochrome doctrines, for example Marxism with its division of mankind into classes -- proletariat good, bourgeois evil -- have a similar effect.

The racist world-view was an element in the composition of enduring state structures in all pre-modern Westphalian nations. In that regard the United States is no exception. However, it is something of an exception in being the only major nation-state to have struggled with and, as time went by, against, racism.

The War of Secession, successive civil rights movements, the fight against segregation and methods such as positive discrimination tell the story of a nation seeking to move away from racism. This does not mean that there is no racism in the US; there is, but it would be unfair to present it as a structural ingredient. By claiming that the US is a racist state, one would only encourage the white supremacists who wish that were the case.

Extrapolating further, the merchants of rage linked their claim of racism to the trans-Atlantic slave trade in a bid to cast all Western democracies as the devils incarnate.

However, slavery was a routine part of human existence from the start, and in some lands still is. Nor were black Africans the only human beings to become slaves.
According to Xenophon, some 30 percent of the population of Athens, the birthplace of Hellenic civilization, was slaves, all white men and women from the Balkans and Asia Minor.

Even earlier than that, the first states in human history -- Sumer, Akkad and Babylon -- held slaves, none of them from Africa.

The Roman Empire was a great slave-holding power. Crassus, the notorious general, was a leading slave merchant as was Julius Caesar, dealing in slaves from Western and northern Europe, today's France and Britain.

The famous revolt of slaves led by Spartacus almost exclusively involved captives from the European continent. Crassus had 10,000 of them crucified on the Appian Way.

In Russia, slavery took the form of serfdom and again, concerned almost exclusively white and Asian victims.

Slavery was also a major trade in the American continent long before Christopher Columbus ended up there by mistake. Again, none of the slaves there were from Africa, which was unknown to Incas and Aztecs.

In Asia, Khan Balugh, the seat of power in medieval China, was a major center for slave trade, as was Khiva in what is now Uzbekistan. Again, Africans were not involved in that dastardly trade in Asia that claimed countless victims for more than 1,000 years.

In Persian and Ottoman Empires, slaves came from the Caucasus, Scandinavia, and what is now Russia. Again, no black Africans were involved.

Seizing black Africans as slaves may have started under Ramses II, the Egyptian Pharaoh who needed Nubian laborers to build the Ouaji-Seboua temple.

Next, there was some exporting of black slaves by the Carthaginians to Rome after the dismantling of Hannibal's empire. Once the Romans had annexed northern Africa they used Garmant and Afri tribes of black warriors to procure slaves for the empire. Within a decade, slave-taking raids were extended beyond Tibesti and close to Lake Chad.

Thus started the history of black African involvement in capturing fellow Africans for sale as slaves.

Without the service of African tribal chiefs and rulers, no outside power would have been able to raid deep into Africa to tap endless sources of slaves.

In 652 AD, Arab General Abdallah bin Sa'id signed a trade treaty, known as "bakht", with the ruler of Darfur for the supply of 20,000 slaves a year in exchange for gold. The "bakht" remained in operation for 13 centuries.

Black African rulers and tribal chiefs were also deeply involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Sardona of Sokoto, in West Africa, made his fortune by selling slaves to Portuguese, British and French slave-traders. In his book Timbuktu School for Nomads, British author Nicholas Jubber introduces a slave trader from the Sahel who had become the richest man in the world of his time.

It is unfair to demand the removal of Colbert's status in Paris because he enacted the first slave code designed to impose legal control on the obnoxious trade and ensure some rights for the victims, and forget about African rulers who kidnapped and sold their own people.

Slavery was a common disease that affected every community on earth; a shameful secret of the whole human family.

In fact, although it lasted four centuries, black Africans of the transatlantic trade accounted for a smaller number than Europeans and Asians victims, not to mention Africans "exported" from the Horn of Africa and Zanzibar.

When it comes to slavery, we were all involved both as perpetrators and victims. Expiating that shame from our human existence is a task for us all, regardless of color and creed. Only thus the current cocktail of grievances may produce useful results.

Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987. He is the Chairman of Gatestone Europe.
This article was originally published by Asharq al-Awsat and is reprinted by kind permission of the author.

Well, that's what I have to say. Stephen M. Flatow