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5 Things You Need to Know About the U.S.-Israel Relationship Under President Obama

from WhiteHouse.Gov March 1, 2015 ** Full Article Links HERE

NOTE: Truth is always difficult. Facts, though, can be reviewed, studied and verified if correct. Much of what we think we know should be questioned. 

Here are the five key facts you need to know about the U.S.-Israel relationship under President Obama: 

1. A strong defender: President Obama has strengthened Israel's defense in concrete and unprecedented ways: 

• Israel remains the leading recipient of U.S. foreign military financing (FMF), receiving over $20.5 billion since 2009. 
• The United States in Fiscal Year 2014 provided Israel with more security assistance funding than ever before. In Fiscal Year 2016, which marks the eighth year of a 10-year, $30 billion Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel, we have asked Congress for $3.1 billion in FMF funds for Israel.
• The President has provided $2.9 billion in funding for missile defense programs and systems. Since 2011, the United States has provided Israel with over $1.3 billion for the Iron Dome system alone, including $225 million in short-fuse funding last summer.
• The U.S. and Israel regularly conduct joint exercises to improve our military capabilities and strengthen our bilateral security.

2. An international ally: Under President Obama, the U.S. has led global efforts to defend Israel's legitimacy on the world stage: 

• Last year, the U.S. opposed 18 resolutions in the UN General Assembly that were biased against Israel.
• On five occasions last year, the U.S. cast the only “no” vote against unfair anti-Israel measures in the UN’s Human Rights Council.
• The U.S. worked with Israel and the European Union to organize the first UN General Assembly session on anti-Semitism in UN history, held in January 2015.

3. A proponent of peace: The President has strongly supported Israel in its quest for peace with its neighbors:

• President Obama has repeatedly stood up for a two-state solution that ensures the peace and security of Israelis and Palestinians.
• Under the President’s direction, Secretary Kerry initiated an intensive, collaborative effort to facilitate negotiations for a comprehensive peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.
• The President prioritized Israel’s security by asking one of our foremost military experts to help develop security arrangements that ensure a two-state solution leaves Israelis more secure, not less.

4. An economic partner: Under President Obama, the U.S. has a strong and robust commercial relationship with Israel:

• This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the United States-Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which was the first FTA entered into by the United States.
• U.S. goods exports to Israel in 2014 were $15.1 billion, up 9.6% ($1.3 billion) from 2013, and up 64% from 2004.  U.S. exports to Israel are up 587% from 1984 (Pre-FTA).
• U.S. goods imports from Israel were $23.1 billion in 2014, a 1.1% increase ($242 million) from 2013, and up 58% from 2004. U.S. imports from Israel are up 1,203% from 1984.
• The U.S. continues to invest in the BIRD Foundation, a U.S.-Israeli partnership between private sectors to expand private high tech industries. Since its founding in 1977, the $295 million in grants have been awarded to 800 partnerships, generating over $10 billion in product sales.

​5. A support system for refugees and migrants: Under President Obama, the U.S. has invested millions in helping Israeli immigrants:

• In the last 6 years, U.S. humanitarian assistance to refugees and migrants travelling to Israel totaled $140 million. This funding is used to help transport eligible migrants to Israel, transitional shelter, intensive Hebrew-language programs that focus on ne
• wly-arriving immigrants, or youth programming in Israel.
Since Israel’s founding, the U.S. has provided Israel with more than $120 billion in bilateral assistance and, under President Obama’s leadership, the U.S. will continue to be Israel’s strongest ally and staunchest supporter in its pursuit of peace and security in the Middle East. 
Share this information with everyone who needs to know. 

Dayenu, Coming Home

ok, a couple of years old, so?

Billionaire Ronald Lauder Talks Hugo Chavez, Bomb Shelters in Israel and Anti-Semitism

from Forbes March 29, 2015 by Chloe Sorvino *** Full Article Links HERE

After roughly a week of campaigning for a tougher U.S. response to rising global anti-Semitism, billionaire Ronald Lauder was preparing for his final public speech in D.C. on Wednesday — a lecture later that night atGeorgetown University centered on how Jews and Christians should come together against radical Islamic groups.

It’s been a busy trip: On Tuesday, Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, testified before a House of Representatives subcommittee on the surge in attacks against Jews in Europe, and his schedule has been dotted with other high-profile meetings with top Senate officials, Russian diplomats and Vice President Joe Biden.

As he sat in a meeting room at the ritzy Willard Intercontinental Hotel, just a few blocks from the White House, he seemed energized by a week spent rallying Congressmen to support Israel — and pushing them to attempt shutting down any nuclear deal with Iran that he would find unfavorable for the Jewish communities he lobbies for from about 100 countries.

Lauder has focused on diplomacy for decades and was the U.S. Ambassador to Austriafrom 1986 to 1987. But his estimated $3.9 billion fortune comes largely from a stake in the Estee Lauder cosmetics conglomerate his mother founded. Sensing a market research opportunity, he was quick to ask me if I use a top coat after doing my nails, and what I think of M.A.C., an Estee Lauder brand. I sat down with him in the midst of his D.C. tour to talk about running to bomb shelters in Israel, breaking the ice with then-president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez and the progress of his campaign to return art stolen by the Nazis to the rightful owners’ descendants. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

During your testimony in front of Congress, you asked “Where is the United States?” That’s a big question. What would you want to see the U.S. government actually do?  

(Much more to this excellent interview, continues HERE )

Israelis Haven't Lost Hope in Peace, but Are More Prudent About the Process

from ME Forum March 27, 2015 by Asaf Romirowsky Article Links HERE

NOTE: Cautiously optimistic, but very uneasy about the simmering hatred from the Arab side of the fence and the increasing intransigence of the Jewish right... how do we deal with that?

Prior to the Israeli elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came under fire for securing his right-wing base when he stated, "I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel."

Those on the left, he cautioned, are ignoring reality by "burying their heads in the sand." From there he went on to say that he would not support such a Palestinian state.

But would any Israeli government support such a state?

Netanyahu ran on a national security ticket and underscored the growing threat of Islamism and Iran. He did not need to remind Israelis about their last war with Hamas in Gaza, but rather pointed to growing regional instability. All represent real predictors of a radicalized West Bank, especially under a Hamas-Fatah coalition. If one looks at Gaza, the West Bank in its current state could easily be transformed into an ISIS like environment, and a clear and present danger to Israel perhaps worse than those Israelis face along their southern and northern borders.

Moreover, Netanyahu has always argued for a demilitarized Palestinian state. His recent statement was not a policy departure about the kind of neighbor Israel seeks.

Critics have concluded that Netanyahu's pre-election comments abandoned the two-state solution proposed in his 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University, but a closer look reveals more about animosity towards Netanyahu.

This was only one of the misreadings surrounding the election. The Israeli media badly misread the pre-election signs and exit polls. These showed that while there were a plethora of domestic problems articulated by Isaac Herzog, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid and company, the majority of Israelis see the real threat to Israel as Islamist. For them, Netanyahu still represents a reassuring voice.

Diplomatically, the two-state solution is still the basis for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, as advocated by most of the international community, spearheaded by Washington. Reaching it is the official policy of both the government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but it is no secret that Hamas does not support this notion, with or without PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

More importantly, from Yasser Arafat to Abbas, we have witnessed generations of Palestinians support rejectionism rather than statehood. They cling to the notion of being a refugee for life rather than a citizen of any country. Neither Herzog nor Netanyahu can overcome this.

In the heyday of the Oslo peace process, the push for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement was done on every possible level, socially, politically and militarily, and even reached a point where being "anti-Oslo" connoted being anti-Israel. But 20 years of bitter experiences later, Oslo has lost its allure and has been replaced by a more skeptical prism of the region.

The alleged centrality of the "settlements" is really an empty issue, which deflects attention from the real issues that obstruct a negotiated settlement. There is little debate over the fact that – should a peace agreement be completed – there will be a redistribution of land. Most of the bargaining is about whether these exchanges will take the shape of a total phased Israeli withdrawal, or exchanging the most populous Israeli towns for lands in the Jordan Valley or Negev desert. But this must be left to the parties to decide and not imposed by outside powers.

The Israeli commitment to a two-state solution predates Netanyahu and represents a consensus that encompasses both the left and the right. As the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stated during his UN speech in 2005:

The essence of my Jewish consciousness, and of my belief in the eternal and unimpeachable right of the people of Israel to the Land of Israel. However, I say this here also to emphasize the immensity of the pain I feel deep in my heart at the recognition that we have to make concessions for the sake of peace between us and our Palestinian neighbors. The right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel does not mean disregarding the rights of others in the land. The Palestinians will always be our neighbors. We respect them, and have no aspirations to rule over them. They are also entitled to freedom and to a national, sovereign existence in a state of their own. I am among those who believe that it is possible to reach a fair compromise and coexistence in good neighborly relations between Jews and Arabs. However, I must emphasize one fact: There will be no compromise on the right of the State of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, with defensible borders, in full security and without threats and terrorism.

Sharon's final caution clearly mirrors that of Netanyahu and represents the majority of Israelis.

Israelis have not lost hope in peace, but they are more prudent about the process. Netanyahu still underscores that "just as Israel is prepared to recognize a Palestinian state, the Palestinians must be prepared to recognize a Jewish state."

Both sides need to make concessions, but Israel's security and Jewish identity concerns deserve as much attention as Palestinian territorial claims.

Asaf Romirowsky is a fellow at the Middle East Forum, and co-author of Religion, Politics and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

John Boehner's Double Standard on Bibi — and Obama

from The Forward March 30, 2015 by J.J. Goldberg  Article Links HERE

NOTE: Kudos to J.J. for writing this. Utter (and irrational) hatred of Obama is de rigueur among too many Jews nowadays. 

In case you missed it: The No. 1 best comedy line of the weekend came from one of our best deadpan straight men, House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio.

It came during a Sunday interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” They were talking about the Israeli prime minister’s flip-flop on Palestinian statehood just before and after Israel’s March 17 election — how on March 16, in Bash’s words, “he disavowed the two-state solution, and then right afterward he said ‘never mind’ and took it back. Isn’t this a little brazen?” No, Boehner said, “because he doesn’t have a partner.” He said he believes Netanyahu still believes in Palestinian statehood as “an aspirational goal.” Well, Bash asked, “Can you blame the White House or the president for not believing what he’s saying on where his position is on this?”

Boehner’s reply:

I think the animosity exhibited by our administration toward the prime minister of Israel is reprehensible. I think that the pressure that they’ve put on him over the last four or five years has frankly pushed him to the point where he had to speak up.

Get it? The animosity exhibited by our administration toward the prime minister of Israel is “reprehensible.” This from a guy who’s been virtually silent for six years — four of them as the leader of the Republican party — while members of his caucus and his party have directed an unending barrage of slander, character assassination and borderline obscenity at the president of his own country.

Think I’m exaggerating? In January 2011, days after Boehner’s Republicans took over the House and elected him speaker, Brian Williams asked him during an NBC Nightly News interview what he had to say to members of his party who claimed Obama wasn’t born in America, wasn’t a citizen and wasn’t legitimately president. Boehler’s reply:

Brian, when you come to the Congress of the United States, there are 435 of us. We’re nothing more than a slice of America. People come, regardless of party labels, they come with all kinds of beliefs and ideas. It’s the melting pot of America. It’s not up to me to tell them what to think.

Translation: Shucks, I’m only a politician, head of the Republican Party. I can’t advise Americans on how to view the world. What am I, a leader?

Six weeks later, during an interview on Meet the Press, Boehner repeatedly denied he had any responsibility to speak out when Republicans claimed the president was a foreign-born Muslim.

He noted that the state of Hawaii said Obama was born there, and that the president himself said he was a Christian, and “I’ll take him at his word” — strikingly, the same phrase Obama himself used last week to say that he believed Prime Minister Netanyahu’s March 16 disavowal of the two-state solution: “I take him at his word.”

But, Boehner said several times, “It’s not my job to tell the American people what to think.” (Which, when you think about it, is an odd stance for a political leader to take when discussing truth, falsehood and the affairs of the Republic. “Not my job to tell the American people what to think”? Has he been joking all these years about Obamacare, taxes, freedom?)

Host David Gregory had led off by playing a Fox News clip showing Iowa Republicans in focus groups saying they believed Obama was a Muslim. Here’s what followed:

Gregory: Do you not think it’s your responsibility to stand up to that kind of ignorance?

Boehner: David, it’s not my job to tell the American people what to think. Our job in Washington is to listen to the American people. Having said that, the state of Hawaii has said that he was born there. That’s good enough for me. The president says he’s a Christian. I accept him at his word.

Gregory: But isn’t that a little bit fast and loose? I mean, you are the leader in Congress and you are not standing up to obvious facts and saying these are facts, and if you don’t believe that it’s nonsense?

Boehner: I just outlined the facts as I understand them. I believe that the president is a citizen. I believe the president is a Christian. I’ll take him at his word.

Gregory: But that kind of ignorance over whether he’s a Muslim doesn’t concern you?

Boehner: Listen, the American people have the right to think what they want to think. I can’t — it’s not my job to tell them.

By way of context, the exchange came after several polls over the preceding months had shown Republicans holding a whole range of bizarre views of Obama, which the national leadership, including Boehner, had made no effort to dispute.

In March 2010, a Harris Interactive poll found that majorities of Republicans believed Obama is a socialist (67%), wants to take away Americans’ right to own guns (61%), is a Muslim (57%) and “wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one-world government” (51%).

Moreover, Harris reported, 47% of Republicans believed Obama “resents America’s heritage”; 45% believed he “was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president”; 45% believed he “is the domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitution speaks of”; 41% believed he “wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers”; and 38% believed he “is doing many of the things that Hitler did.”

Also, 24% of Republicans believed Obama “may be the Anti-Christ” and 22% believed he “wants the terrorists to win.”

Here’s what Boehner had to say about the widespread Republican, um, animosity toward the president of the United States: [nothing].

In the years since then Boehner has been true to his principles, sitting silently while members of his own caucus have come up with a wide range of baroque insults to direct5 at the president. During the 2014 State of the Union address, for example, Texas Rep. Randy Weber tweeted from the House floor that Obama was “Kommandant-in-Chief” and a “Socialistic dictator.”

In January 2015 Weber complained about Obama’s failure to attend the Paris rally following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in a tweet that compared him (unfavorably) to Hitler: “Even Adolph [sic] Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn’t do it for right reasons.”

Weber apologized the following day — not to Obama but to Holocaust survivors:

It was not my intention to trivialize the Holocaust nor to compare the President to Adolf Hitler. The mention of Hitler was meant to represent the face of evil that still exists in the world today. I now realize that the use of Hitler invokes pain and emotional trauma for those affected by the atrocities of the Holocaust and victims of anti-Semitism and hate.

Here’s what Boehner had to say about Weber’s slurs against the president: [nothing].

It should be borne in mind, by the way, that Obama’s rough treatment of Netanyahu follows six years in which Netanyahu has repeatedly humiliated, undermined and sabotaged the president publicly. And while both leaders have tried to keep their very profound disagreements on the substantive plane and avoid descending into personal invective, Netanyahu’s allies and surrogates haven’t been so delicate. Recall the moment in January 2014, at the height of Secretary State John Kerry’s effort to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, when Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon was quoted (accurately) saying that Kerry was “acting out of a misplaced obsession and messianic fervor” and that the “only thing that can save us is for John Kerry to win a Nobel Prize and leave us in peace.” That actually drew a mild scolding from Netanyahu on the Knesset floor, followed by a non-apology apology from Ya’alon (who “didn’t mean to insult” Kerry).

From Obama’s point of view, though, the relationship probably reached a breaking point on Israel’s election day. That was the day Netanyahu mobilized his voters by warning in a video that his incumbency was “endangered” by Arab Israeli citizens “streaming to the polls in droves.” It was just 10 days earlier that America’s first African American president had flown to Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the sacrifices made by blacks and whites a half-century ago in the struggle for minority voting rights.

It’s worth recalling an incident last October, after Jeffrey Goldberg (no, that’s not me)reported in The Atlantic about an unnamed White House official calling Netanyahu “chickenshit.” The anonymous insult prompted a reply from Israel’s economics minister, Naftali Bennett, leader of the settler-backed Jewish Home party, warning on his Facebook page — in a phrase borrowed from former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney — that Obama was “planning on throwing Israel under the bus.”

Bennett went on to write:

The prime minister is not a private individual, but the leader of the Jewish State and the Jewish world as a whole. Serious curses such as these against the Israeli Prime Minister are harmful to millions of citizens of Israel and Jews worldwide.

Exactly. The thing is, it goes both ways.

Anybody’s Judaism

from eJewishPhilanthropy March 30, 2015 Article Links HERE by Maayan Jaffe

NOTE: As long as we keep talking, sharing, evolving, its all good.... 

For generations it has been clear who sets the Jewish agenda and trends: A group of older men in a boardroom backed by major funders and philanthropists. This packaged Judaism wasn’t unique to the Jewish people. Trends – be they in automobile or clothing industry – were for generations set by major retail establishments that had the funding necessary to access advertising venues and reach the masses. Similarly, the news we read was that which appeared on the front page of the New York Times.

The world has changed.

The model of the all-knowing leader and the passive constituent has come to an end and in its stead is a “me model,” a model of the empowered consumer who demands to be heard by the ranks. And those who don’t have ready access to leadership, do have the tools at their fingertips to share their opinions – on the Web, through blogs, social media or other electronic means. This leads to an information glut, a fusion of data-driven, fact-rooted opinions combined with endless rumors, misinformation, and questionable variations on the truth, which we all have to navigate.

Who decides the Jewish present? Who will decide the Jewish future? When you have “the voice of the individual in dialogue with the voice of mainstream organizations,” as well-known educator and author Dr. Erica Brown puts it, who wins?

She says decisions are made by those who can fund them (or get the funding for them). Well-established philanthropic organizations or funders will likely always determine the Jewish agenda “because of the dollars they put behind particular issues,” she reasons. The issues, however, could shift.

Alan Edelman, a Jewish communal professional and philanthropist for more than three decades, takes this idea a step further. In his role as associate executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City, he says he sees an increase in Jewish philanthropic giving. However, those dollars are not being funneled toward traditional Jewish objectives or streams.

“In the past, the only way to give to Israel was through Israel Bonds, Jewish National Fund or the Federation. Now, they are so many NGOs in Israel that relate to people’s interests: religious pluralism, Women of the Wall, those concerned about the condition of democracy in Israel, about settlers in the West Bank. The same way Jews are choosing to express Judaism in new ways that are meaningful to them – and not always the traditional way – it’s the same thing when it comes to philanthropy,” he says.

“Less trustful of institutions and more keen on making a direct impact, this generation of funders tends to tailor its giving to particular areas of interest and expects an active role in molding the projects it funds,” writes philanthropist Jay Ruderman in a blog postpublished earlier this year.

Edelman says legacy organizations, such as the Federation, will have to broaden the programs they provide and support to meet the changing needs of their constituents and funders – “I don’t think our institutions can keep doing the same old programs,” he says.

But how should these organizations and philanthropists determine investments in programs and services presented in this new social marketplace of ideas? As always, says Brown, individuals express their Jewish identity through a variety of means: culture, food, social networks, religious institutions, etc.

“People define Jewish identity and then others gravitate to it,” Brown says, and where the masses are is a place to start. “We can serve people more efficiently when we know what people really want.”

She charges organizations with creating an “open space for a structured Jewish conversation.”

Times of Israel (ToI), believes it has done that.

Blogger as Expert

More than 4,000 people have used ToI as a platform for expressing their Jewish, Jewish-political or religious ideas over the past three years, according to Ops & Blogs Editor Miriam Herschlag.

“That is a critical mass saying how we want to talk with each other and where we want to meet up,” Herschlag says. “Two years ago, we averaged eight blog posts a day. Today, there are around 35 every day and that number is really growing.”

Herschlag describes the blogger acceptance criteria as “extremely open,” something which worries Brown who feels that such a site should have “higher level filters” to help readers differentiate between expert and non-expert voices. Again, a “structured dialogue.”

“If you can print anything on a platform then it lacks credibility,” she says.

Edelman, too, is concerned.

“It has always been two Jews, three opinions. But we are in a world, unfortunately, where people take sides too strongly and have forgotten the grain in the middle. … It has created a negative discourse,” he says. “The Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam [baseless hatred].”

Herschlag acknowledges this tension but says the value outweighs the worry. ToI has successfully allowed the establishment to “make meaningful contact” with its constituents in an “unprecedented,” way. For example, prospective leaders have been able to float to the top much sooner and in a way that has never happened before.

A blog by Bethany Mandel, “Why you won’t see my name on a Freundel-related suit,” published January 20 shortly after Rabbi Barry Freundel was charged with voyeurism, led to Mandel’s being asked to sit on a Rabbinical Council of America panel to review conversion policies.

“She wrote this treatise on how conversions happen and what shouldn’t happen and it was from the popularity of that piece that she was invited to be on the panel,” says Herschlag.

Moreover, organizational leaders can get a zeitgeist on what is important to their broader constituent base – and prospective constituents – by keeping an eye out for blogs with similar themes or by seeing which blogs are shared widest.

“Those who understand who to communicate [with] in this noisy environment can really be effective. How does this – or should it – impact how decisions might be made for the Jewish future? They used to be top down. Is there more of a bottom up, grassroots way of doing things now? The answer has to be yes,” Herschlag says.

William Daroff, vice president for public policy and director of the Washington Office of the Jewish Federations of North America sits somewhere in the middle. A self-proclaimed “social media evangelist,” Daroff sees social media platforms as “the great democratizers.”

“It is a way that Jewish leaders can be less like the Sanhedrin – unapproachable by mere mortals – but rather 140 characters away. Social media opens doors for regular folks who aren’t blessed to live on the upper east side of Manhattan … to interact and engage with Jewish leadership in a way that would have been unthinkable a decade ago,” says Daroff, noting that is the responsibility of the establishment to use social media as it is intended – as a place to listen and respond.

Daroff acknowledges there could be “some guy in his underwear in his parents’ basement who has designed a website that is more colorful, helpful and user-friendly” than the Federation’s website and who makes his message easier to relate to than the important one being conveyed by an organization with a more than 100-year history. But he doesn’t see that as a bad thing.

“It encourages the traditional organization without the splashy web presence to up their game,” he says. He has faith that the masses can discern the difference between something Abe Foxman with 60 years of experience and the backing of hundreds of constituents might say and the message of “a person who speaks for no one. … And certainly there are times that Jewish leaders get things wrong and a random person in his basement gets things right and hopefully the marketplace of ideas will settle that.”

“Just as corporations hold an annual meeting with their stockholders who vote on the direction of the company, mega-donors should treat the larger Jewish community as stakeholders in their communal giving enterprise and factor in their aspirations and priorities,” writes Ruderman, noting donors need to stay in sync with the people they are serving and he implies that social discourse is one positive way to do that.

Matt Rissien, whose original Purim rap music video has more than 32,000 views on YouTube, has been leveraging YouTube video as a means to express his Judaism for the last half-decade. He started the endeavor as a way to “adapt my Judaism to the generation I’m living in.” Overtime, he has seen the power of the platform.

“Everyone who makes a Jewish YouTube video is really helping spread the word to kids and families that Judaism is fun and that it’s still cool to be Jewish,” he says.

Says Daroff: “If we are going to survive and thrive as a Jewish community, as Jewish organizations, we need to meet people where they are and among those places are Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and any others.”

Passover Cleaning

ARTICLE LINKS HERE

from the Times of Israel March 29, 2015 

THE HEROIC AND VISIONARY WOMEN OF PASSOVER

by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Rabbi Lauren Holtlzblatt  Article Links HERE

NOTE: Also known as the notorious RBG! 

On Passover, Jews are commanded to tell the story of the Exodus and to see ourselves as having lived through that story, so that we may better learn how to live our lives today. The stories we tell our children shape what they believe to be possible—which is why at Passover, we must tell the stories of the women who played a crucial role in the Exodus narrative.

The Book of Exodus, much like the Book of Genesis, opens in pervasive darkness. Genesis describes the earth as “unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep.”1 In Exodus, darkness attends the accession of a new Pharaoh who feared the Israelites and so enslaved them. God alone lights the way out of the darkness in Genesis. But in Exodus, God has many partners, first among them, five brave women.

There is Yocheved, Moses’ mother, and Shifra and Puah, the famous midwives. Each defies Pharaoh’s decree to kill the Israelite baby boys. And there is Miriam, Moses’ sister, about whom the following midrash is taught:

[When Miriam’s only brother was Aaron] she prophesied… “my mother is destined to bear a son who will save Israel.” When [Moses] was born the whole house… filled with light[.] [Miriam’s] father arose and kissed her on the head, saying, “My daughter, your prophecy has been fulfilled.” But when they threw [Moses] into the river her father tapped her on the head saying, “Daughter, where is your prophecy?” So it is written, “And [Miriam] stood afar off to know what would be[come of] the latter part of her prophecy.”

 Finally, there is Pharaoh’s daughter Batya, who defies her own father and plucks baby Moses out of the Nile. The Midrash reminds us that Batya knew exactly what she doing:

When Pharaoh’s daughter’s handmaidens saw that she intended to rescue Moses, they attempted to dissuade her, and persuade her to heed her father. They said to her: “Our mistress, it is the way of the world that when a king issues a decree, it is not heeded by the entire world, but his children and the members of his household do observe it, and you wish to transgress your father’s decree?”

 But transgress she did.

These women had a vision leading out of the darkness shrouding their world. They were women of action, prepared to defy authority to make their vision a reality bathed in the light of the day.

Retelling the heroic stories of Yocheved, Shifra, Puah, Miriam and Batya reminds our daughters that with vision and the courage to act, they can carry forward the tradition those intrepid women launched.

While there is much light in today’s world, there remains in our universe disheartening darkness, inhumanity spawned by ignorance and hate. We see horrific examples in the Middle East, parts of Africa, and Ukraine. The Passover story recalls to all of us—women and men—that with vision and action we can join hands with others of like mind, kindling lights along paths leading out of the terrifying darkness.

 Genesis 1:2 2 Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 14a 3 Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 12b

Jews From Muslim Lands: The Forgotten Refugees

NOTE: This article is a couple of years old. Borrowed from FrontPage Magazine CLICK HERE for link to original article. Always good to re-read. 

June 20 was World Refugee Day, dedicated to nearly 60 million people worldwide who were forcibly displaced by conflict or persecution. One group of refugees rarely acknowledged is the Jews who were indigenous to Muslim lands but compelled to flee around the time that the State of Israel was established.

A Google search for “1948 refugees” produces about 6 million results. All but a few (at least through page six) are about the Palestinian Arab refugees, as if they were the only refugees of 1948. But it is estimated that from the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War through the early 1970s, up to 1,000,000 Jews fled or were expelled from their ancestral homes in Muslim countries. 260,000 of those refugees reached Israel between 1948 and 1951 and comprised 56% of all immigration to the fledgling state. By 1972, their numbers had reached 600,000.

In 1948, Middle East and North African countries had considerable Jewish populations: Morocco (250,000), Algeria (140,000), Iraq (140,000), Iran (120,000), Egypt (75,000), Tunisia (50,000), Yemen (50,000), Libya (35,000), and Syria (20,000). Today, the indigenous Jews of those countries are virtually extinct (although Morocco and Iran each still has under 10,000 Jews). In most cases, the Jewish population had lived there for millennia.

Few know this history because the Jewish refugees of 1948 were granted citizenship by the countries to which they fled, including Israel. By contrast, many Muslim countries refused to integrate the Palestinian refugees, preferring to leave them as second-class citizens in order to maintain a domestic demographic balance and/or a political problem for Israel.

Media bias also explains why so few people know about the 1948 Jewish refugees from Muslim lands. A search for “1948 refugees” on the BBC news site generates 41 articles (going back to 1999); 40 discuss the Palestinian Arab refugees of 1948. Only three of those 40 (dated 9/22/11, 9/2/10, and 4/15/04) even mention the Jewish refugees from Muslim lands, and two do so only in a single, superficial sentence that presents the issue as a claim rather than a historical fact.

A search for “1948 refugees Jews from Arab lands” on the New York Times site produces 497 results (replacing “Arab” with “Muslim” halves the results), while “1948 Palestinian refugees” yields 1,050 results. Consider a comparison using Sri Lanka, another war-torn, multi-ethnic country that gained its independence from Britain in 1948. The nearly 26-year ethnic conflict there began in 1983 and claimed 80,000–100,000 lives, many multiples of the total casualties from the nearly 100-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sri Lanka’s conflict also produced hundreds of thousands of refugees, including at least 200,000 Tamil refugees in Western Europe alone. Yet a search for “Tamil refugees” generates only 531 articles – less than 5% of the 11,300 results for “Palestinian Arab refugees.”

Institutionalized favoritism at the UN has also enabled the Palestinians to monopolize the refugee issue, which undoubtedly reinforces the media’s bias. All non-Palestinian refugees around the world (nearly 55 million) are cared for by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which works under the guidelines of the Convention on Refugees of 1951. But Palestinian refugees (whose original population was under one million) have a UN agency dedicated exclusively to them (UNRWA).

UNRWA’s unique definition of “refugee” includes anyone “whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.” So, in addition to families who lived in the area for generations, UNRWA’s definition includes any migrants who arrived as recently as 1946 but were then displaced. And because the definition includes “descendants of fathers fulfilling the definition,” UNRWA’s refugee population has grown from 750,000 in 1950 to 5,300,000 today (making resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue even harder). Despite these problems, the United States continues to support UNRWA (with over 4.1 billion dollars since 1950).

The rest of the world’s refugees are assisted by the High Commission, which is mandated to help refugees rapidly rebuild their lives, usually outside the countries that they fled. Jewish refugees from Muslim lands did just that: they rebuilt their lives in Israel and elsewhere. But the fact that they quietly adapted and Israel granted them full citizenship doesn’t lessen the wrongs committed by their countries of origin. These Jewish refugees from Muslim lands suffered legal and often violent persecution that resulted in immeasurable emotional and physical loss. They lost billions in property and endured huge socioeconomic disadvantages when forced to rebuild their lives from scratch. Israel was unfairly burdened with the colossal social and economic cost of suddenly absorbing so many refugees. So any suggestion that Jewish refugees from Muslim lands don’t deserve compensation is resoundingly wrong.

On the recent World Refugee Day, the Israeli Knesset member Shimon Ohayon, whose family fled Morocco in 1956, called on the Arab League to “accept their great responsibility for driving out almost a million Jews from lands [in] which they had lived for millennia.” He explained that “In 1947, the Political Committee of the Arab League drafted a law that…called for the freezing of bank accounts of Jews, their internment and [the confiscation of their assets]. Various other discriminatory measures were taken by Arab nations and subsequent meetings reportedly called for the expulsion of Jews from member states of the Arab League.” Ohayon challenged the League to accept responsibility for “the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population from most of the Middle East and North Africa…[and] to provide redress to the Jewish refugees.”

A just and comprehensive Mideast peace is possible only when Muslim states recognize their role in two historic wrongs: 1) displacing one million indigenous people only because they were Jews, and 2) perpetuating the plight of Palestinian refugees by denying them citizenship. The first wrong requires financial compensation to the families of Jewish refugees from Muslim lands, which reparation can be administered by the states that absorbed them. The second wrong should be remedied by granting full citizenship to Palestinian refugees (and their descendants) who have resettled in Muslim lands. Both wrongs have festered for too many decades.

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What John Bolton Gets Wrong About Iran

From the New York Times  March 27, 2015 by Carol Giacoma Article Links HERE

NOTE: All views welcome here. 

John Bolton’s best quality may be that he says what he thinks. Diplomats are trained to set aside personal beliefs as they fulfill their professional duties but even when Mr. Bolton was a senior official in the administration of President George W. Bush, and supposed to be exercising discretion, he was brash and outspoken.

In an op-ed published by the New York Times on Thursday, he advocated bombing Iran with characteristic force. “Time is terribly short but a strike can still succeed,” he argued.

Mr. Bolton has been pushing a hardline — military action and regime change — against Tehran for at least a decade. But he leaves out some important context — that he was part of an administration that never seriously sought a negotiated solution with Iran. Nor were they capable of putting together the kind of sanctions against Iran — with buy-in from the major powers — that Mr. Obama did and that Mr. Bolton still finds grievous fault with.

Most people believe the various sanctions helped persuade Iran to come to the negotiating table, where an agreement is said to be within reach, perhaps next week.

Mr. Bolton also avoids two major questions: First, if bombing Iran is such a great idea, why didn’t the Bush administration do it years ago when Iran’s program had a fraction of the equipment and facilities it now possesses and when military action would have been easier? As David Sanger reported in The Times, President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel in 2008 for specialized bunker-busting bombs that Israel wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex.

The options for dealing with Iran have always been pretty straightforward: Accept the fact that Iran has an advanced nuclear program that has yet to produce a weapon but could lead to one. Try to maintain sanctions and a system of containment indefinitely. Take military action against Iran’s many nuclear facilities, which experts say would set back the program by only two years or so. Or negotiate an agreement that would curb the program and guarantee long-term international monitoring.

Mr. Obama is pursuing the only sensible solution.

Embracing Israel Boycott, Jewish Voice For Peace Insists on Its Jewish Identity

from The Forward.com March 28, 2015 by Evan Serpick Article Links HERE

NOTE: So, do you get angry at this or do we try to understand how things are going so horribly wrong? Shouting at JVPers is pointless. But not dealing with this exodus to ignorance is fatal. 

At the opening plenary of Jewish Voice for Peace’s recent national conference, Rabbi Alissa Wise, JVP’s co-director of organizing, asked the crowd of some 600 how many were attending their first such gathering; about three-quarters of the room shot up their hands.

For the group whose advocacy of boycotting, sanctioning and divesting from Israel makes it a pariah in most of the rest of the Jewish community, these have been boom times. And for many of its members, the reason appears to be a continuing desire to assert their opposition to Israel’s fundamental policies in a Jewish context rather than abandon their Jewish identity altogether.

One of those raising his hand was Noah Knowlton-Latkin of California’s Claremont Colleges. Like many of those in attendance, Knowlton-Latkin, a sophomore, was involved earlier in Students for Justice in Palestine, a campus group devoted to organizing students to oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza. The group also pushes college administrations to cut their economic and academic ties to Israel.

But last summer, Knowlton-Latkin reached out to JVP to express his concerns in a Jewish context. “It was great to find out that this existed,” said Knowlton-Latkin, who came to the conference with two other Jewish Claremont students, both members of SJP.

JVP’s recent conference, which took place in Baltimore from March 13 to 15, was notable for several new developments. Two weeks earlier, after a lengthy process that included study committees and membership surveys, JVP’s board of directors voted to fully support the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, or BDS, as it is popularly known. JVP’s call for a full economic boycott of Israel comes after years of supporting a more limited boycott of only companies that operated in the occupied territories.

JVP’s full embrace of BDS includes endorsing a right of return for Arabs and for descendants of Arabs who fled or who were expelled by Israel’s army in the 1948 war that established the state. That population, most of whom remain stateless refugees, now numbers more than 5.2 million. Israel and its supporters, including even dovish Zionist parties such as Meretz, argue that full implementation of the United Nations resolution calling for their return would render Jews a minority in their own state. It would mean, they say, the end of Zionism.

But JVP’s president, Rebecca Vilkomerson, told the Forward: “For there to be a sustainable and just peace, that is one of the issues that we have to grapple with. We believe that there can be a homeland for Jewish people that is not based on the systematic denial of rights of Palestinians.”

JVP does not offer details on how that could be if such a return indeed took place.

Most striking at this conference was the way Israel’s hard-right turns, and particularly last year’s war in Gaza, have fueled JVP’s growth among a cohort of mostly young people who find the response of other Jewish groups, including the dovish group J Street, simply inadequate. JVP’s leaders anticipate that this trend will only quicken following the recent election victory of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They point to his election eve disavowal of a two-state solution and his election day warning about Arabs voting, plus the prospect that he will soon lead an even more right-wing government.

There are now 65 JVP chapters, up from 40 a year ago. Vilkomerson says JVP now has 9,000 dues-paying members, compared with 600 when the Forward last profiled the group in 2011. In the tax year that ended in June 2013, JVP had $1.1 million in donations. Vilkomerson said she expects this year’s total to top $2 million, almost all of it from individuals. The group has more than 204,000 Facebook followers, more than twice as many as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and about eight times as many as J Street.

For all their alienation from the mainstream community, JVP members seem to share an urgent need to voice their angst in a Jewish context, and to project it outward to the world, also citing their status as Jews. Critics condemn this as mere exploitation of their Jewishness in order to gain a hearing the group would otherwise be denied.

But many JVP members do come from backgrounds of serious Jewish engagement. The conference itself opened on a Friday night, with the group celebrating Kabbalat Shabbat, and included a memorial service for those killed in the war in Gaza, during which members chanted the Mourner’s Kaddish and the prayer for the dead, El Maleh Rachamim. JVP says the group offers the members a place to be their “whole selves.”

“21yrs in many jewish spaces & I’ve never felt so at home,” one participant, Talia Bauer, wrote on the group’s Facebook page after the conference.

Another participant wrote, “For three days, I was immersed in a Jewish community unlike I have ever been a part of, one rooted in justice that welcomed all of me.” She wrote anonymously, she said, to avoid her family learning of her involvement with JVP.

In Vilkomerson’s view, “the mainstream Jewish community should be thanking us. We are bringing many people back into a Jewish community. There’s so much angst in the Jewish community about the loss of community, and losing the young people, and what is going to happen, and the apathy. Nobody here is apathetic; nobody here is unconnected. To the contrary.”

Some in the mainstream grant them this point. “Any sort of Jewish engagement by young people is a positive thing,” said Steven M. Cohen, a professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion who studies the American Jewish community. He said that JVP, along with anti-democratic far-right groups and “any group that represents lots of Jews,” should be invited to be members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and similar mainstream organizations. “JVP doesn’t show concern for the security of the State of Israel and doesn’t care if there is a Jewish State of Israel or not,” he added. Nevertheless, he said, “We should not exclude JVP from conversations — we should engage them.”

That view is unthinkable to many Jewish community standard-bearers.

“The positions and actions taken by Jewish Voice for Peace are anathema to mainstream Jewish organizations,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, in a statement to the Forward. “The group’s activities, which include partnerships with anti-Israel organizations that deny Israel’s fundamental right to exist, put them at the farthest fringe of the Jewish community and would certainly preclude their participation among mainstream organizations.”

JVP, he said, “uses its Jewish identity to provide the anti-Israel movement with a veneer of legitimacy and to shield the movement’s most demagogic supporters from allegations of anti-Semitism.”

For many, the decision to join JVP was a painful, personal one, reflecting a lost faith in the State of Israel. Rabbi Brant Rosen, a co-chair of JVP’s rabbinical council, who served as a congregational rabbi in suburban Chicago for 17 years, joined in 2009, after Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, its military campaign into Gaza, with numerous reports — contested by Israel — of high civilian deaths rates.

Michael Davis, a congregational cantor in the Reform movement and a member of JVP’s rabbinical council, grew up Orthodox in Israel. He said that his own worldview changed after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin at a fateful Tel Aviv peace rally in November 1995. “That was the end of the dream for me,” he told the Forward.

For Vilkomerson, it was the second intifada, starting in 2000. “There are these moments of cracking open, where people sort of make the leap,” she said.

Rosen added, “Historically, that’s how JVP has grown, unfortunately, tragically.”

Speaking after the Israeli election, Vilkomerson says she now expects another wave of people to come into the JVP fold. “Given that the American Jewish community is generally interested in peace and democratic values, we expect a lot of self-reflection about how to support a true peace in the days to come,” she said.

Contact Evan Serpick at feedback@forward.com

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/217528/embracing-israel-boycott-jewish-voice-for-peace-in/#ixzz3VhiLllLW

Israeli Center-Left Leader Seeks Path Forward

From The New York Times March 27, 2015  Article Links HERE

Tel Aviv- Isaac Herzog is not acting like a sore loser. He is not seeking scapegoats to blame for his center-left Zionist Union’s failure to capture enough votes in Israel’s election last week to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is not shouting “I told you so” as the Obama administration and Europe threaten to isolate Israel as never before.

Instead, Mr. Herzog is both promising to lead a “fighting opposition” if Mr. Netanyahu, as expected, forms a narrow coalition of right-leaning and religious parties, and leaving at least a crack in the door for the long-shot possibility of joining a unity government. He does not see the campaign in simple win-loss terms: The Zionist Union, after all, will have 24 of 120 seats in Israel’s next Parliament, more than the 21 its two parties had in the last one.

“I’m pleased with the result, and I’m not pleased with the outcome,” Mr. Herzog said in an interview. “We’re already moving on,” he added. “People stop us in the street all the time, stop me and say thank you for giving us hope and make sure Netanyahu doesn’t screw us up.”

The postgame analysis in Israel is, roughly, that after a surprisingly close battle, Mr. Netanyahu used the power of incumbency and scare tactics to turn the tables in a 72-hour blitz in which he tacked hard to the right. Mr. Herzog, a consensus-builder short on charisma, was slow and soft in his response to the onslaught, and never quite crossed the threshold as a strong-leader alternative.

Yet beyond any shortcomings of candidate and campaign tactics, the election has raised profound questions about the prospects for Israel’s moribund political left and amorphous center. Though the Zionist Union and other parties spent most of their time talking about kitchen-table concerns, in the end it was existential questions like peace with the Palestinians and the Iranian nuclear threat, along with internal, tribal rifts, that seem to have been the deciders.

If Mr. Herzog was selling hope against Mr. Netanyahu’s fear, fear won in part because Israelis are not hopeful about the situation they see surrounding them.

“Of course they made mistakes, but not terrible mistakes, not tragic mistakes. It’s much deeper than that,” said Yossi Sarid, who served as a leftist Parliament member and minister from 1974 to 2006.
“Philosophical arguments, theoretical arguments, are not for influence — the only factor which influences sometimes is reality by itself,” he added. “People think what they see, and as long as our reality is like the reality of the Titanic before the collision, or in Pompeii in the last days before the eruption, so nobody will influence them or convince them.”

Ari Shavit, a prominent columnist and author, said the Zionist Union also failed to articulate what, exactly, Israelis could be hopeful for, promising only to improve relations with Washington and try to return to negotiations with a Palestinian leadership that most Israeli Jews do not see as a partner for peace.

“Hope was very hollow, and fear is much deeper,” Mr. Shavit said. “The peaceniks have never internalized the fact that the right got something right, and the only way to fight the right is by giving an answer.

“They didn’t market the utopian peace because no one in this country will buy it,” he continued. “Instead, they sold ignoring the occupation, and ignoring the traumas. They didn’t bring a new, benign peace context that is solid and realistic.”

Some say a better strategy would have been to fight fear with fear. “Instead of shouting ‘things are terrible,’ the left wing should have told the public the truth,” Sever Plocker argued in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. “ ‘Yes, right now your situation is good, but Netanyahu’s policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians is necessarily leading to the establishment of a binational state in which things will be bad, very bad, for you and us. Truly scary.’ ”

But Mr. Herzog said in the interview that Israelis had been warned of isolation and a binational state “for 50 years, that’s long term.” And in any case, he said, “If you hit too hard on that people view it as a kind of lefty position, you’re with our enemies.”
He complained that Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign consisted of “a lot of lying, a lot of false blame and false rhetoric,” and acknowledged, “We found ourselves kind of defending ourselves uselessly about it.”

“What could be our hate rhetoric?” he asked rhetorically at one point. “I’m trying to think.”
The son of Israel’s sixth president and grandson of its first chief rabbi, Mr. Herzog has since 2003 served in Parliament as a member of the left-leaning Labor Party. Yet for the bulk of a 40-minute conversation, he spoke of the center, not the left, and then ultimately defined his camp as “the center-center-left.”

“I have huge respect for the left — the left is bold, the left is very focused and is very ideological — but most of the rank and file of the Israeli public wants something more pragmatic,” he said. “I moved my party to the center and I will continue forcefully to stage my party to the center. The only way to win in Israel is by being in the center.”

The center, though, is already occupied — by Yair Lapid, who refused to meld his Yesh Atid party into the Zionist Union and won 11 Parliament seats last week, and now by Moshe Kahlon, who broke from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party to form his own, called Kulanu, which won 10 seats and is expected to join the coalition. Both campaigned on the economy, not the security issues that have long defined Israel’s political map.

Mr. Herzog acknowledged that his campaign failed to expand the center-left base. Next time, he said, he would reach out more to the working-class and children of immigrants. He would emphasize Jewish tradition, understanding the damage caused when the Israeli artist Yair Garbuz derided Israelis who hold old customs dear at the left’s big pre-election rally.
He said he would also try to forge a deeper alliance with Arab lawmakers who have until now operated outside the political and parliamentary mainstream.

Last weekend, Mr. Herzog made a brief getaway with his wife to an upscale spa resort in Israel’s north.

By Tuesday, he had resumed meeting with activists in the Tel Aviv suburbs of Petah Tikva and Yehud. On Wednesday, he was taking meetings in the back room of Shine & Sharp, a Tel Aviv steakhouse, fueled by a bottle of Coke Zero.

He said he had not spoken with Mr. Netanyahu since calling him to concede on the morning after the election, despite persistent rumors that they might yet join forces — rumors he did not definitely deny.

“Netanyahu said there’s a huge chasm between us. He said during the elections that we are anti-Zionists, and he said during the election that I will basically sell the country to the Arabs,” Mr. Herzog said. “I haven’t heard anything to the contrary. I’m not intending to be the troubleshooter or the fixer or the bleaching element in his government.

"We will try to expose the weakness of this coalition," he said "my goal will always be to bring hope, to show that there is a sincere, reasonable and sensible voice in the arena."  Click HERE to keep reading.

Making Sense of Chaos in the Middle East

Full Article Links HERE


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Volcanic changes in the region are under way, with the outbreak of Sunni-Shiite wars in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, unprecedented tension between Washington and Israel, and U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks that appear on the verge of breakthrough.

To discuss the urgent and longer-term implications of this unfolding chaos, The Washington Institute will host a Policy Forum with senior fellows James Jeffrey, Dennis Ross, and Robert Satloff, moderated by Michael Singh.

Join us for a live webcast of this event starting at 12:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 1, 2015.  (HERE)

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James Jeffrey is the Institute's Philip Solondz Distinguished Visiting Fellow and former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Turkey.

Dennis Ross is the Institute's William Davidson Distinguished Fellow and former special assistant to President Obama.

Robert Satloff is the Institute's executive director and Howard P. Berkowitz Chair in U.S. Middle East Policy.

Michael Singh is the Institute's Lane-Swig Senior Fellow and managing director.

Netanyahu looks for way out of rightist coalition

from al-monitor.com March 27, 2015  Full Article Links HERE

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has often, including in recent days, spoken with longing of his second government, established in 2009 in partnership with his ultra-Orthodox allies and the Labor Party headed by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. It was a fairly stable government that saw out almost four years of its term, during which it enjoyed international support by dint of the close ties between Barak and the US administration and the expectations generated by Netanyahu’s 2009 Bar Ilan speech. As long as Barak served in the government, the diplomatic stalemate of Netanyahu’s second government was considered bearable and something that could be contained.

The guidelines of that government expressed a commitment to restart negotiations with the Palestinians, including Barak’s demand that the government work to advance the Middle East peace process within the framework of a regional peace conference. This demand helped Barak obtain the approval of his party’s institutions for joining the Netanyahu government. Labor’s accession to the government put an end to the direct and indirect contacts for entering the coalition Netanyahu was conducting with then-chairwoman of the Kadima Party, Tzipi Livni, whose party had gotten 28 Knesset seats in the elections. In talks held at the time, the parties spoke extensively of negotiations with the Palestinians, which at that point had gotten to a very advanced stage between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The makeup of the coalition that he formed with Barak could not have been better as far as Netanyahu was concerned: It created a false impression of a desire to move the diplomatic process forward through the Labor Party and gained him relative calm on the international front. In fact, Netanyahu did not advance the process, but rather he put it on hold, something that won him relative calm from the settlers and the extreme right wing of the Likud. A truly magic formula.

After the 2013 elections, Netanyahu resorted to the same formula. The first coalition agreement was signed with Livni, who by then was heading a new party called Hatnua, which ran on a diplomatic process ticket. Livni was determined to join the government and not to revert to her frustrating time in the opposition, and was quick to clinch a deal. Netanyahu promised that he would be committed to the diplomatic process and Livni was put in charge of the negotiations with the Palestinians and tasked with reaching an agreement ending the conflict. But this time, too, Netanyahu had no intention of pushing the negotiations forward.

Netanyahu did, in fact, have a broad-based government with a diplomatic agenda in the spirit of two states for two people; Livni, who was also appointed justice minister, traveled the world and met with Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. Netanyahu, on the other hand, through his special envoy to the talks, attorney Yitzhak Molcho, made sure that nothing concrete would emerge from the closed-door meetings. As far as he was concerned, the illusion of negotiations had an important role vis-a-vis the United States.

Netanyahu is now facing a new reality. On the one hand, he won the elections and strengthened the Likud, bringing it 30 Knesset seats. On the other hand, the emerging coalition is composed of right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties, at a time when relations with the United States are sliding uncontrollably down a slippery slope.

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