With God on Their Side

[Meshuga]

It's time for the vast secular majority in Israel (and other Jewish Movements) to say "enough of this shit!"

Writing in Foreign Policy, Professor Noah Efron of Bar Ilan University, a member of the Tel Aviv City Council, tells of his distress at the state of life in Israel today. “To be a secular Israeli in 2009 is a demoralizing and demoralized affair. We are tired: tired of the Palestinians, tired of the bombs, tired of UN and EU condemnations, tired of having so much of our daily wages taxed to buy guns and missiles, tired of the army reserves, tired of being hated, tired of waking up to reports of kids—Jewish kids, Palestinian kids—watching their parents die or dying in their parents’ arms. We are tired of our lives and tired of ourselves.”

But the main thing Efron is tired of is the increasing role the ultra-Orthodox (call them the ultras) play in Israeli life.

The picture Efron paints is downright depressing. Frankly, I cannot imagine what it is like living in a country where religious fanatics have so much political clout. Yes, we Americans have the Christian right that has successfully insinuated itself into America’s bedrooms. But the Constitution (and specifically the First Amendment) puts limits on just how far they can go. In Israel, there is no First Amendment so the ultras are not just lurking around peoples’ bedrooms but are in every room in the house.

In the last few weeks alone a violent battle (replete with death threats) has been raging over a new (and much needed) parking lot that is open for business on the Sabbath. Another battle is being waged Bin Jerusalem over whether special bus lines should be established for women so that male ultras can be spared close proximity to female passengers.

Then there is the case of the yeshiva student who ran over a young female parking attendant for demanding he pay his parking fee. She suffered brain damage but he was spared prison on the grounds that he is a brilliant Torah scholar whose scholarly undertakings would be damaged if he were jailed.

But this takes the cake. Prof. Efron writes about the latest horror show, which has been page-one news for a week. It was discovered that an ultra-Orthodox woman had starved her three-year-old son down to 15 pounds and was denying the child medical care. Social workers and the police were called in and, following an investigation, the boy was picked up and hospitalized at Hadassah Hospital. The mother was jailed, pending trial.

Efron writes:

“And then all hell breaks loose. A rabbi declares the event a blood libel, comparing the police to Cossacks. Immediately, young men in black robes and fur hats take to the streets, setting bus stops and dumpsters ablaze, pelting police with stones, and decrying the doctors of Hadassah as latter-day Josef Mengeles. Someone sets aflame the government welfare and social services building in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Me’ah Shearim; others enter the building, smashing computer screens as they go. In the first three days after the toddler is taken for treatment, dozens more are sent to the hospital with wounds from stones and broken glass, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of city property are burned or smashed.”

For the vast majority of Israelis, who are secular and choose to live in the twenty-first century, these ultras are the worst thing about living in Israel. The good news is that they are still a minority in the country, albeit a growing one... http://israelpolicyforum.org/commentary/god-their-side

[frebrd]

1. K&R n/t

[charlie]

2. There's something jarringly incongruous

about thuggery from guys in frocks, sidelocks, and 19th century hats. It'd be Pythonesque if it weren't so ugly.

I've always been struck by polls that show how much more sober and reflective the public is about Israel's lot than any of their governments. How do reactionary nitwits so often manage to grab outsized influence over sane majorities (he asked rhetorically)? It happens everywhere and it's disheartening.

[DeSwiss]

3. What I find even more appalling is that:

(1) These welfare whores http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haredi_Judaism">WILL NOT GET A FUCKING JOB!!!

(2) They are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haredi_Judaism#Israel">exempt from military service. (Fucking pussies)

(3) And they are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Messiah">opposed to the very existence of the government from whom they cash a monthly welfare check.


K&R

[starroute]

4. One thing this doesn't mention is the Neocon connections

The article cited in the OP also mentions that "the United States and Israel spent this past week engaged in a battle over a hotel in East Jerusalem that Irving Moskowitz, a casino millionaire from Miami Beach, wants to turn into an ultra-Orthodox settlement in the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood."

Irving Moskowitz is one of those names that's so anonymous it doesn't catch much attention, but the guy does seem to get around. Mother Jones ran an article on him and his bingo club in 2000 that noted:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2000/09/bingo-connection

The operator of the club, a retired Miami Beach physician named Irving Moskowitz, has made international headlines for inflaming tensions in the Middle East. In 1996, Moskowitz helped finance a tunnel in Jerusalem next to land considered sacred by Muslims; the opening sparked days of riots that resulted in the deaths of 60 Palestinians and 15 Israelis. The following year, with peace talks at a delicate stage, Moskowitz moved Jewish settlers into a house he owned in an Arab neighborhood, prompting more demonstrations and arrests. And with negotiations now at another critical juncture, he plans to open a Jewish settlement with 134 units in an Arab section of East Jerusalem -- a move many fear will incite more confrontations. "Moskowitz creates more violence and tension in the city," says Barak Zemer of Peace Now, an Israeli group based in Jerusalem. "He makes life harder for the people who live here."

A close examination of tax records reveals that much of the money that ends up in the Middle East settlements comes from the bingo riches Moskowitz harvests from Hawaiian Gardens. Since the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation took over the bingo club in 1988, it has handed out nearly $50 million in grants -- much of it to groups in the United States and Israel that help fund settlements in East Jerusalem, Hebron, and the Golan Heights. At least $7 million has gone to an American conduit for Mercaz Harav Kook, which one scholar calls "the intellectual leadership and core of the settler movement." Nearly $5 million has gone to a U.S. branch of Ateret Cohanim, an Israeli organization that pledges "stone by stone, house by house" to restore Jerusalem "to her rightful owners." Another $522,000 has gone to Americans for a Safe Israel, whose director denounces efforts to create a Palestinian state as "another Holocaust in the making."

"Moskowitz and the settler organizations are in close, close relations," says Daniel Seidman, an attorney in Jerusalem who has challenged Jewish settlements in court. "He has a title among them: the 'renowned contributor.' He is of mythic proportions. I know of nobody else who funds and supports them to this extent."

But it's his Neocon connections that are really eye-catching. Here's a 2002 article from The Nation that mentions his funding of Frank Gaffney and ties to JINSA:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020902/vest/single

Gaffney's operation has always been a small one, about $1 million annually--funded largely by a series of grants from the conservative Olin, Bradley and various Scaife foundations, as well as some defense contractor money--but he's recently been able to underwrite a TV and print ad campaign holding that the Palestinians should be Enemy Number One in the War on Terror, still obsessed with the destruction of Israel. It's here that one sees the influence not of defense contractor money but of far-right Zionist dollars, including some from Irving Moskowitz, the California bingo magnate. A donor to both CSP and JINSA (as well as a JINSA director), Moskowitz not only sends millions of dollars a year to far-right Israeli settler groups like Ateret Cohanim but he has also funded the construction of settlements, having bought land for development in key Arab areas around Jerusalem

Here's a little more on how Gaffney hooked up with Moskowitz, from 2006:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HB25Ak03.html

In the 1980s, Perle, by then a senior Pentagon official under Ronald Reagan, hired Gaffney, who eventually rose to become assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. In that role, he became a vociferous advocate of Reagan's "Star Wars" programs and a determined foe of high-technology arms transfers to Washington's European allies, before being forced out in 1987 by the more moderate national security leadership that took power in the wake of the Iran-contra scandal.

When he left government, he founded CSP and, with Perle's help, quickly gained the backing of key defense contractors, particularly those positioned to benefit from Reagan's "Star Wars" program. He also found favor with US followers of Israel's right-wing Likud Party, the most notorious being Irving Moskowitz, the California "casino king" who has sent millions of dollars to the most aggressive elements of the West Bank settlement movement.

And here's one from 2003 on David Wurmser, titled "New Cheney Adviser Sets Syria In His Sights":

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/lobe102103b.html

In the book's acknowledgments, Wurmser praised those who most influenced his work, a veritable "who's who" of those neo-cons most closely tied to Israel's far right, including Perle himself, another AEI scholar, Michael Ledeen and Undersecretary of Defence for Policy and the man in charge of post-Iraq war planning, Douglas Feith.

He listed former CIA director James Woolsey, who has called the conflict in Syria the early stages of "World War IV," Harold Rhode, a Feith aide who has also called himself Wolfowitz's "Islamic Affairs adviser" and INC leader Ahmed Chalabi.

Wurmser also gave thanks to Irving Moskowitz, a major casino operator and long-time funder of Israel's settlement movement, whom he described as a "gentle man whose generous support of AEI allows me to be here."

[Wednesdays]

5. K&R

:kick: