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Stop the Presses: Ha’aretz Discovers Jews on Upper West Side (But the Times Beat Them to It)

Writing in Ha’aretz, Marco Greenberg offers an ode to Jewish life on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and drops the following bombshell: “Even the New York Times has recently picked up on the UWS-Jewish connection.”

Greenberg goes on to observe that the “Upper West is perhaps the last spot on earth where people walk rather than drive.” Clearly, he has never been to the Upper East Side.

I Heart Ha’aretz’s ‘Family Affair’

The Ha’aretz Magazine’s “Family Affair” column is one of my favorite regular journalism features. Each column looks at a different Israeli family — some ordinary, some less so — and probes their lives, their dreams, their beliefs, their values, their family histories.

As watchers of reality TV know, glancing into the lives of others has its own inherent allure. But Israel’s tremendous diversity and the tumultuous history of the Jewish people over the past century makes “Family Affair” consistently engrossing.

This week’s is a particular winner, focused on Miki and Yehudit, two Israeli sisters in their 60s who were born in Holland with Hitler on the march, hidden by their parents with non-Jewish farmers during the war and then grew up in a succession of orphanages and boarding schools.

Theirs is a tremendously moving story about two women whose childhoods were marked by enormous tragedy and dislocation — as is the case for so many of their compatriots of a certain age — but managed to build normal lives for themselves in Israel.

Here’s their story.

Something’s Happened — That ‘Something’ Is the Occupation

Ha’aretz editorializes in response to an investigative broadcast that exposed abuse of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank:

This time, it was regular soldiers in the Kfir Brigade. They exposed their backsides and sexual organs to Palestinians, pressed an electric heater to the face of a young boy, beat young boys senseless, recorded everything on their mobile phones and sent it to their friends. One of their “mischievous acts” was to test how long a Palestinian who was being choked could survive without breathing. When he passed out, the experiment was stopped. The soldiers described activities to “break the routine” that consisted entirely of abuse. It was enough for a boy “to look at us the wrong way” for him to be beaten.

Earlier, at the trial of First Lieutenant Yaakov Gigi, officers spoke of burnout, of “something bad happening to the brigade,” of a Wild West, of a moral crisis. The commander of the brigade, Colonel Itai Virov, said “we failed on several parameters.” His words reflect a denial of the depth of the failure. This continuing routine, far from the eyes of the commanders, must lead to a series of investigations, and perhaps to dismissals as well. It is unconscionable for the head of the Hebron Brigade, the division commander, the GOC Central Command and even the chief of staff to ignore the ongoing behavior of soldiers in the brigade responsible for routine security in the West Bank. Colonel Virov admitted that there was a conspiracy of silence in the brigade - in other words, a norm of abuse and its concealment. To change norms, one has to shock and be shocked, not be satisfied with a few imprisonments and empty words about a loss of values.

Perfectly ordinary people, as the American psychologist said of the Abu Ghraib abusers, are capable of behaving like monsters when they receive a message from the top that it is permissible to abuse, beat, choke, burn, make people miserable and generally do anything that man’s evil genius is capable of inventing to others who are under their control. Something bad is happening to us, they are saying in the Kfir Brigade. That “something” is the occupation.

Ha’aretz to Hamas: We’re Not Gonna Take It

The dovish Israeli daily Ha’aretz takes a tough line on the ongoing Qassam fire from Hamas-controlled Gaza in an editorial titled “Restraint is not possible”:

If the limited military actions Israel is undertaking in an effort to bring an end to the Qassam rockets will not bring an end to the shooting; if the moderate states, and first and foremost Egypt and Jordan fail to contain Hamas — Israel will have no option but to embark on a broad military operation.

The Israel Defense Forces raison d’etre is to protect the country’s citizens from attack. Even if the success of a military operation is not guaranteed, that concern must not prevent the government from doing what is necessary in order to protect the lives of its citizens and the state’s border. The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is political, and should always be pursued. At the same time, Israel must prove that the blood of its citizens cannot be forfeited — so that in the future, its neighbors will abide by the agreements to which they have committed.

Hat Tip: Marty Peretz

Ha’aretz: Stop Blocking Conversion of FSU Immigrants

An impassioned editorial in Ha’aretz rails against the Orthodox rabbinate for erecting barriers to the conversion of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union who were brought to Israel under the Law of Return:

Bitter infighting, saturated with political power plays, deal-making of the lowest form, and strong-arm tactics driven by personal animosity have brought division to the national religious camp. In matters of conversion, just like in matters of matrimony, liberals in that camp side with the view that as many immigrants as possible must be helped to attain that desirable entry ticket into Israeli society with relative ease. On the other hand, all roads to conversion are blocked by pedants and purists, who succumb to ultra-Orthodox rabbis on all issues. They transform conversion into an ongoing nightmare, which may repel the new immigrants from the entire process and alienate them from Israeli society and Judaism.

Conversions are being carried out by the most stringent guardians of the halakha, who are essentially a minority group among world Jewry. They pose halakhic requirements for the converts and their families that are very strict. At the gate to the national home established by Zionists now stand representatives of the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodoxy.

What’s noteworthy here is that a liberal Israeli daily wants so badly for immigrants to have access to Orthodox-recognized conversion. If the Orthodox establishment, however, continues its intransigence, don’t be surprised when Israeli liberals simply throw up their hands and cease to care about conversion. Instead, secular and liberal Israelis will simply become resigned to the idea that Israeli Jewry is divided into two peoples. If this comes to pass, the Orthodox establishment will deserve much of the blame.

Indeed, there is also an implicit threat within the editorial: “[for] those who do not wish to convert and those who are unable to do so — the government must find an appropriate solution outside the parameters dictated by religion.”

The editorial concludes on the following note:

The State of Israel encouraged and brought to the country hundreds of thousands of immigrants on the basis of their connection to the Jewish people. It thus has a historic and Jewish responsibility to complete the process of fully accepting them into Israeli society.

Read the full article.