CELEBRATING ISRAELS REVIVAL ON YOM HAALIYAH

YAAKOV HAGOEL

Throughout history, no other people has held so strongly to the memory of their homeland no matter what country they lived in.

59 lone soldiers make Aliyah on the August 17 Nefesh B’Nefesh Aliyah flight from New York. (photo credit: SHAHAR AZRAN)

I was born in Israel to parents who were also born in Israel. However my grandparents had the merit to make Aliyah to Israel.

Like many who are now reading this article, my grandparents left behind a house, a culture, and a language. Unfortunately, I will never experience the amazing challenge of liberating myself from exile and returning home to the promised land.

I will never deal with the difficulties of learning a new/old language and adapting to a new culture – an integral part of immigration.

The phenomenon of aliyah, which means to “arise to Israel,” began nearly 4,000 years ago.

Under divine command, the patriarch of the Jewish nation was called to “leave thy country, and thy people, and thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show you” as it states in the book of Genesis. He embarked on a long journey, a journey that has not yet come to an end.

It is not at all simple to leave a land of plenty and come to a land that seems lacking. However Abraham’s complete faith in making this huge step has deepened within our people the importance of taking this step ourselves. The essence of our life is here and this is where we can fulfill the aspiration to establish a “model society” as described by the Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl.

Throughout history, no other people has held so strongly to the memory of their homeland no matter what country they lived in. With prayer books in front of their eyes, Jews have been praying for thousands of years facing the direction of Jerusalem. Despite not living in the land, Jews have always studied the laws that pertain to the land such as shmittah and the Jubilee year. Every year the Passover seder ends with the words “next year in rebuilt Jerusalem.”

The renewed Zionist idea contains two basic concepts which cannot be separated: immigration and resettlement.

As Theodor Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization wrote, “throughout the long night of their exile, Jews have never ceased dreaming of their kingdom. We read ‘next year in Jerusalem’ throughout all generations. Now the time has come to make that dream a reality.”

Yom HaAliyah was formalized as a national holiday in Israel to be marked on the 7th of Cheshvan. However according to tradition, Joshua led the children of Israel into the holy land on a different date, the 27th of Nissan. But it was no accident that the 7th of Cheshvan was chosen to mark the Aliyah Day. It is on this week every year, that we read Parshat Lech Lecha in synagogue on Shabbat. It is in this Torah portion that Abraham hears the divine call to leave the land of his birth and forge a new path to the land of Israel.

Yom HaAliyah, or Aliyah Day, reinforces the right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. This date reminds us that despite the expulsion of the majority of the Jewish people from their homeland nearly 2,000 years ago, they remained faithful to the land throughout their Dispersion.

Throughout the generations, our ancestors aspired to immigrate to Israel. Many of us grew up seeing old photographs of immigrants ships, of Jews kissing the ground as they arrived in Israel, and of the Ma’abarot or transit camps with their rows of tents for homeless immigrant families.

Immigration to Israel in the days of our parents and grandparents was accompanied by a difficult transition. They came with little material possessions or money and lived in tent cities or development towns. They became a symbol both of the difficulty of making aliyah yet the importance of doing it in spite of everything.

With the development of the State of Israel and its prosperity, the procedure of aliyah and absorption has improved beyond recognition. The transit camps were replaced by apartments, poverty was replaced by an Absorption Basket, and language difficulties were replaced by the Hebrew Ulpan system.

From refugees of the Spanish Inquisition to those escaping the hardships in Africa and survivors from war-torn Europe steeped in blood, Israel has become the home of the Jewish people from all different walks of life.

In this new/old land, we have seen a new generation of scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, military experts, lawmakers, intellectuals, and religious leaders from countless different countries. They are now all part of this innovation nation called the State of Israel where immigrants from around the world share their talents in development, economics, high-tech and medical breakthroughs.

There are numerous challenges when it comes to being an immigrant. We must all recognize the importance of both absorption and integration into Israeli society, the removal of obstacles to success as well as maintaining ties with our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora.

The State of Israel is looking forward to the continued ingathering of the exiles from around the world, from South America from Australia from Europe from North America from Ethiopia and from all over the world.

Today, organizations and movements around Israel are marking Aliyah Day in their own way. World Likud has chosen to mark this day with an event that unites all immigrants who were touched by the Betar youth movement. Members of Betar young and old, and anyone raised with the teachings of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, learned the value of aliyah. They left behind the culture of their host country, learned Hebrew and arrived in Israel to set down their roots and establish a new generation of Zionist families.

As the vice-chairman of the World Zionist Organization, I consider it crucial to continue encouraging aliyah. We must remove any existing barriers for new immigrants and continue to raise awareness among Diaspora Jews with the truth that Israel is my home, your home, and a home for all of us.

Happy Aliyah Day!

Yaakov Hagoel is the Vice-Chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Chairman of World Likud.

Israeli Fire Kills Seven During Undercover Raid in Gaza, IDF Officer Killed

Reuters and Algemeiner Staff

The arrest of a Palestinian man. Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Office.

Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Sunday in air strikes and an undercover raid that Hamas said targeted one of its commanders and the Israeli military said left one of its officers dead.

The Israeli incursion and air attacks drew rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled enclave, with sirens sounding in Israeli communities along the border. The military said its defenses intercepted two of the launches. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage on the Israeli side of the frontier.

The violence prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cut short a visit to Paris, where he had been gathering with world leaders for a World War One commemoration.

Hamas said the incident began when assailants in a passing car opened fire on a group of its armed men, killing one of its commanders. Hamas gunmen gave chase as the car sped back towards the border with Israel, Hamas said in a statement.

During the pursuit, Israeli aircraft fired more than 40 missiles in the area, according to witnesses.

Medics and Hamas officials said at least seven people were killed, four of them militants, including Hamas commander Nour Baraka. It was unclear if the other fatalities included gunmen.

The Israeli military said in a statement that: “During an IDF (Israel Defense Forces) Special Forces operational activity in the Gaza Strip, an exchange of fire evolved.”

One officer was killed and a second was wounded, it said.

A return by Israel to a policy of targeting individual Hamas commanders – tactics largely abandoned in recent years – could significantly raise tensions along the border.

Violence has flared frequently on the frontier since Palestinians began weekly protests on March 30. Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations have been trying to broker a long-term ceasefire.

WHAT WAS THE IDF DOING IN GAZA AND IS A NEW WAR BREWING?

YAAKOV KATZ

What was so important that Israel was willing to endanger the ceasefire for it?

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and other top IDF personnel in a security meeting in Tel Aviv on Sunday, November 11.. (photo credit: ARIEL HERMONI/DEFENSE MINISTRY)

An IDF operation deep inside the Gaza Strip, no matter how covert, carries with it tremendous risk. What exactly happened late Sunday night in southern Gaza is still shrouded in mystery, but from the little detail that the IDF has permitted for publication, it seems that something in the Israeli operation went wrong.

In the days to come, Israel will face a number of challenges. One of the first will be explaining to the world why it sent troops into the Gaza Strip in the first place, especially with a cease-fire seemingly in place with the help of Qatar, which Israel permitted last week to transfer $15 million to Hamas.

What was so important that Israel was willing to endanger the cease-fire for it? 

To answer that question, the IDF will have to provide some details about the operation. Was it carried out to gather intelligence, to kidnap someone, to sabotage something or to assassinate someone? The results of Sunday night’s operation won’t help Israel if the current round of violence escalates into a full-fledged war. Israel will be blamed for sparking the conflict.

The appearance on some of the late-night TV news shows of former IDF general Tal Russo, a past commander of the Southern Command with a particular expertise in commando operations, seemed like an IDF effort to change the narrative. Russo said that the operation seemed to be for the purpose of gathering intelligence, the kind of which, he said, takes place all the time without the public knowing about them.

How this develops will depend to a large extent on Hamas and its response. As of three hours after the botched operation, Hamas was retaliating with rocket fire throughout the South but not farther, meaning that it could potentially decide to contain the incident with the overnight rocket attacks and end it there.

On the other hand, it could decide to continue to escalate the situation. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to cut short his trip to Paris, is an indication that for Israel, anything is possible.

NO HOLDS BARRED: WILL CLINTON, SCHUMER, BOOKER FINALLY CONDEMN FARRAKHAN?

SHMULEY BOTEACH

“But what I did not hear at all last week was that radical antisemites from the left, like Louis Farrakhan, had contributed to a culture of hatred of the Jewish people.”

NATION OF ISLAM leader Louis Farrakhan addresses of marchers at the Mall in Washington, DC, during the ‘Million Man March’ in 1995. (photo credit: MIKE THEILER/REUTERS)

We’ve spent the best part of a week in grief for 11 martyred Jews in Pittsburgh and largely hearing that they died because of Donald Trump. My good friend Bret Stephens, The New York Times Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist, wrote, “The blood that flowed in Pittsburgh is on [Trump’s] hands also.” 

Bret joined me in a public discussion on the subject, along with Elisha Wiesel, son of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, at our World Values Network headquarters. I challenged Bret, pointing out not only that Trump had protected Israel against Iran’s genocidal threats and ferociously defended Israel at the UN, but that it would be seen as extreme to accuse President Obama of having Israeli blood on his hands because he legitimized Iranian genocidal language with his nuclear deal. The audience was divided, with some agreeing with Bret’s argument, that Trump had stoked the fires of immigrant-hatred which expressed itself in the murder of innocent Jews, and some agreeing with me that, rather than condemning a president who has shown unprecedented support for Israel and friendship to the Jewish community, we should instead implore him to give a prime-time address categorically and unequivocally condemning white supremacist ascendancy. 

But what I did not hear at all last week was that radical antisemites from the left, like Louis Farrakhan, had contributed to a culture of hatred of the Jewish people, with Democrats refusing to condemn his recent and vile comparison of Jews to termites. 

It is right to demand that President Trump condemn neo-Nazis. But why should Democrats give Farrakhan a pass? And I ask this more than ever of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a proud supporter of Israel who has committed the Democratic Party to fighting antisemitism, and my close friend Cory Booker, who has received more pro-Israel financial support than almost anyone in American political life and enjoys a unique friendship with the Jewish community, ever since he served as my student President at Oxford University.

A week before the Pittsburgh massacre, a man got up on a stage in the United States of America, called the Jews termites, and received a standing ovation. 

That man was Louis Farrakhan. 

The civil-rights activist turned religious leader turned racist, sexist, homophobic, antisemitic incendiary is the official leader of the Nation of Islam. Both religion and social movement, the Nation was born from a combination of elements of traditional Islam with black nationalism. Added to the mix was a healthy infusion of race-based theology, with the group claiming that up until just a few thousand years ago there were no white people. It took an evil black scientist to develop such beings in a lab before setting them loose and allowing them to take over the world – a development which they believe needs to be corrected. 

The Nation of Islam is also one of the most powerful black organizations in the United States, with up to 50,000 members and a formidable list of powerful allies and celebrity patrons.

Martin Luther King famously called the Nation of Islam a “hate group.” The Southern Poverty Law Center did the same, adding on their website that the Nation has earned itself a “prominent position in the ranks of organized hate.” Under Farrakhan the Nation of Islam has emerged as one of our country’s leading springs of hatred against not only whites, but against homosexuals and, of course, Jews. 

About white people, Farrakhan insists that they have only the “potential” to be human since they “haven’t evolved yet.” “Murder and lying come easy for white people,” he said on another occasion, eventually topping off the accusation with the judgment that “white people deserve to die.” (He actually said these words with a massive banner directly behind him reading the name of his sponsor: the “Conflict Resolution Center.”) 

In 1984, he referred to the world’s only Jewish State as one “structured on injustice, thievery, lying and deceit.” He accused the Jews of “using the name of God to shield [their] dirty religion…”

Like all haters of Israel, Farrakhan’s antisemitism has nothing to do with a belief in Palestinian rights. On the contrary, it’s because Israel is filled with Jews. 

Louis Farrakhan hates Jews, pure and simple. 

Most often, Farrakhan parrots the oldest antisemitic tropes. Taking verbiage right out of the Nazi playbook, Farrakhan has on a number of occasions referred to Jews as “bloodsuckers” for having worked as landlords in black communities. 

He’s also taken time to point out the severely unoriginal idea that the Jews control Hollywood. He added to the conspiracy the even older idea that Jews use their influence to bring people all over the world “down in moral strength” by spreading “filth and degenerative behavior.” In this particular instance, he was referring to Hollywood’s belief that it’s OK to be gay. “It’s the wicked Jews, the false Jews, that are promoting lesbianism [and] homosexuality.” He didn’t say this decades ago. These quotes all come from speeches given in 2006 and 2018. 

Where he went further than almost any of his Jew-hating peers, however, was in his accusation that the Jews “have been conclusively linked to the greatest criminal endeavor ever undertaken against an entire race of people … the black African Holocaust.” Unlike the earlier examples, these words were not spoken in the heat of a speech or in the casual environment of a radio interview. These words came right out Farrakhan’s book, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. 

Two weeks ago, Farrakhan managed to surmount every one of those poisonous words, tweeting out a clip of a recent speech in which he declared “I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite.” In Farrakhan’s universe, Jews were no longer just bad people. Now, there were no people at all. They were vermin. Cockroaches. Termites. 

And we all know what you do with termites. You exterminate them. 

Throughout history, antisemites of all stripes have sought to cast the Jews as something utterly worthless yet massively destructive. It was a way of making the act of killing a Jew something that was not only necessary but meaningless. Hitler’s SS troops, therefore, were able to exterminate tens of thousands of Jews in a day. You see, they were killing an infestation, not people. 

It may be extreme to compare Farrakhan to Hitler. But he did it himself. During a radio interview, Farrakhan acknowledged the fact. “[T]he Jews don’t like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler.” Instead of rebuffing the comparison, he embraced it. “That’s a good name,” he said, “Hitler was a very great man.” He then reinforced it. “[Hitler] raised Germany up from nothing,” he explained, adding, “In a sense, you could say there’s a similarity in that we are raising our people up from nothing.” He’s also used the Holocaust as a metaphor to describe what awaited the Jews in hell. My late friend Christopher Hitchens personally heard Farrakhan punctuate a tirade against Jews with this: “And don’t you forget, when it’s God who puts you in the ovens, it’s forever!” 

The only question that remains is this: how could leading political figures like Bill Clinton have agreed to legitimize such genocidal hate by recently appearing on the same stage as Farrakhan at Aretha Franklin’s funeral? And given the unfortunate association, why didn’t Clinton immediately condemn Farrakhan’s genocidal Jewish reference? 

Just days before his “termites” slur, Farrakhan announced the release of a new music album made in collaboration with some of the most powerful men in music, including Stevie Wonder, Rick Ross, Snoop Dogg and Common. At least seven members of Congress — including Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Danny Davis, Andre Carson, Gregory Meeks, Al Green and most famously, DNC whip Keith Ellison, have all sat down for personal meetings with Farrakhan while representing the American people in Congress. Farrakhan even attended a 2005 meeting of the Black Congressional Caucus. At that meeting, former president Barack Obama even smiled for a photograph with Farrakhan just three years before becoming president. 

American Jews need to draw a line. 

It is not only neo-Nazis that need to be condemned by Republicans. It is Farrakhan and his ilk who should be repudiated utterly by Democrats. Never again must mean exactly that: Never Again.

THINK ABOUT IT: THE PITTSBURGH MASSACRE AND THE RABIN ASSASSINATION

SUSAN HATTIS ROLEF

Incidentally, it was Ambassador Ron Dermer who decided to mix Farrakhan’s name with the Pittsburgh massacre, apparently as a tactical ploy to divert attention from the true culprits in this affair.

A POLICE barricade around the synagogue that was the site of the Pittsburgh massacre. (photo credit: REUTERS)

The other day I asked one of my American friends, who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, whether he thought the US president was in any way responsible for the murder of 11 Jews in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

“Of course not”, he replied. “Trump is not an antisemite, and besides, Robert Bowers [the killer] does not support Trump, and is connected to the antisemitic Louis Farrakhan, who is one of Obama’s mentors.”

I checked. True, Bowers does not support Trump, because Trump, who in his opinion is not sufficiently right-wing, is not a true anti-globalist, and has too many Jews around him. The only connection of Bower, who hates blacks as much as he hates Jews, to Farrakhan is that both believe the Jews are the sons of Satan. As to Obama’s connection to Farrakhan, they both attended a Black Caucus meeting in the US Senate back in 2005, and Farrakhan supported Obama’s candidacy for president later on, but on various occasions Obama – as a true liberal – publicly condemned Farrakhan’s virulent antisemitism. What the two have in common is the color of their skin.

Incidentally, it was Ambassador Ron Dermer who decided to mix Farrakhan’s name with the Pittsburgh massacre, apparently as a tactical ploy to divert attention from the true culprits in this affair – extreme right-wingers.

This reminds me of the current attempts by the extreme Israeli Right to clean itself from any blame for the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, yesterday 23 years ago. A Martian landing on earth and viewing TV Channel 20 these days would get the clear impression that there was no connection between the man responsible for the assassination and the extreme religious Right – especially a few rabbis who claimed that din rodef applied to Rabin, who was consequently a legitimate target for a bullet in his back – and did not enjoy a tailwind from the inciting rhetoric that came from right-wing demonstrations, including ones organized by the Likud, in which Rabin was called a traitor who should be banished.

According to Channel 20 the main culprit in Rabin’s assassination was one Avishai Raviv, who was employed by the Jewish Department in the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) as a provocateur and informer, who had allegedly been seen distributing posters depicting Rabin dressed in an SS uniform at the infamous Zion Square demonstration (an allegation that TV presenter Rina Mazliah from Channel 13, who reported from that demonstration exactly one month before the assassination, totally denies). Whatever one might think of Raviv and his likes, his only responsibility for Rabin’s assassination was that he failed to inform the Shin Bet about Yigal Amir, to whose rhetoric he had been exposed. In fact, Raviv plays the same role in the case of Rabin as Farrakhan does in the case of the Pittsburgh massacre – that of a red herring.

As I said above, Trump cannot be described as an antisemite, even though a past saying of his – quoted in a 1991 book on him (in connection with the badmouthing of a black accountant employed in one of his casinos), that “the only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes” – smacks of benevolent antisemitism.

The problem is not whether Trump is or is not an antisemite, or what sort of Jews he likes, but the fact that much of his rhetoric – and toward the midterm elections this rhetoric has intensified – attacks liberal causes that the majority of American Jews are identified with, and to which they are committed at least partially as a result of Jewish history, such as refugees, gay rights, globalization, global warming etc. Bowers specifically mentioned support of refugees as one of the Jewish sins for which they deserve to die. Thus, one might say that through his rhetoric Trump gives the antisemites some very serious tailwind.

THE ISRAELI extreme Right – as demonstrated by Channel 20 and various right-winger spokesmen on other media channels – has started accusing the Left of incitement against Netanyahu that is much worse, according to them, than whatever incitement might have taken place against Rabin back in 1995.

As one of those whose writings frequently condemn Netanyahu’s allegedly unethical and possibly criminal personal conduct; his dictatorial inclination; his policy vis-à-vis the African asylum-seekers; his trucking with some of the most unwholesome and nastiest regimes in the world today; his steady sowing of seeds of disunity in society – I should like to answer this scandalous accusation.

First of all, neither I nor all the other left-wing, liberal publicists call Netanyahu a traitor, nor suggest that he should be physically harmed. At worst we call on the attorney-general to at long last decide whether there is sufficient evidence to indict him.

We do not deny that Netanyahu was legally and legitimately elected, and has a right to determine which policies Israel’s elected government follows, as long as he is prime minister. What we are doing is merely fulfilling our democratic right and duty to warn against the highly damaging, long-term consequences of Netanyahu’s continued rule.

Furthermore, there are no left-wing, liberal Yigal Amirs waiting on the sidelines for an opportunity to squeeze the trigger, nor left-wing, liberal spiritual and/or intellectual leaders saying that all the accusations we hurl at Netanyahu justify his assassination. Left-wing liberals do not advocate or implement political homicide, and they even object to death sentences against heinous criminals and terrorists (Nazi war criminals excepted).

A FINAL comment regarding Israel’s official reaction to the Pittsburgh massacre. We have already mentioned Ambassador Dermer’s deliberate attempt to divert attention from President Trump’s past or present neo-Nazi supporters to other antisemites who are in no way associated with Trump, but have nothing whatsoever to do with the current tragic event.

But there are several other disturbing official reactions to the massacre. No one publicly condemned Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau, who refused to refer to the Tree of Life synagogue as a synagogue, even though for millions of Jews in the US it is viewed as such, while the rabbi is now viewed by them as just another obscure, discriminating Orthodox rabbi. Can one imagine the pope refusing to refer to a Protestant church in which a massacre has taken place as a church, just because it is not Catholic?

And as to the decision to send Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett to the Jewish community in Pittsburgh to comfort the bereaved and represent Israel – the same Naftali Bennett who stayed away from the annual meeting of the Jewish Federations of North America which took place in Tel Aviv a week before the massacre, and which dealt with the crisis in relations between Israel and the Diaspora, and who refuses to grant official status to the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel – this was the epitome of Israeli chutzpah and insensitivity. The 11 victims of the massacre in Pittsburgh were all members of the Conservative Tree of Life Congregation, whose rabbis cannot perform weddings in Israel, and whose conversions are not recognized here. They are also not considered worthy of having an independent area for prayer at the Western Wall.

I think it would have been much more befitting and much less hypocritical for Israel at this time to be represented in Pittsburgh by a more uniting and less divisive figure, like President Reuven Rivlin.