Don't Divide Jerusalem

Just about everyone who makes utterances on the topic assures everyone else that an essential part of reaching peace between Israel and Palestine must include the division of Jerusalem.

I am convinced a division of Jerusalem will lead to war, for reasons I have described elsewhere. Yet no matter how optimistic or starry eyed one chooses to be, decision makers have the responsibility to prepare for negative outcomes of their actions. Telling yourself everything will work out fine is OK for a story-teller, a rejected lover, or investment bankers. Political leaders must relate to the possibility their actions might not have the hoped-for result. Dividers of Jerusalem are welcome to hope for the best, but must also prepare for less than the best. They must explain what will happen if their rosier expectations prove misguided. Put more bluntly, they must explain what will happen if the line of division deteriorates into a hostile border.

In this new series of blogposts it is my intention to show pictures and short films from the city, demonstrating what it looks like right now, with a call to explain what will happen if that hostile border is inserted into it.

Here are two films from the area of the Jaffa Gate. Once you've finished with them, the next segment in this series is here. If you've started here for some reason, the enite series is introduced here.

Adsense

In the previous post I retracted a statement; now I'm going to apologize.

This blog generates no revenue: which is fine, I hadn't intended it to. However, alongside it I've got a real job, or something sort of like one, and in that part of my life I need to experiment with various Internet features such as Twitter and Google advertising. So I've just inserted Adsense to this blog, as part of my testing process. I'm likely to tweak it this way or that, and I apologize in advance for any aggravation.

Blood Libel Correction

Following the ferocious response by Alex Stein and Did Remez to my previous post, I'm issuing a correction.

The lie about Israel gearing up to deport tens of thousands of Palestinians, repulsive as it is, probably isn't extreme enough to justify the title I gave it, "blood libel". A blood libel is when enemies of the Jews propagate a story about how Jews are murdering innocents. While there is no dearth of such stories in the reportage on Israel, this particular lie is not that serious. Its propagators are reporting on an Israeli policy which doesn't exist, but they're not saying Jews are murdering anyone.

So, here's my retraction of that terminology.

As for placing some of Israel's own radicals in the camp of its enemies, that unfortunately is something they have done. I'm merely reporting on it, though with great reluctance and some real pain.

Blood Libel

A few days ago Haaretz splashed a new story across the top of its front page, knowing perfectly well that it would spread like wildfire all over the world: Israel is gearing up to deport tens of thousands of Palestinians. And of course, it did. The fools and the knaves all hugged the story to their hearts and ran with it as far and as fast as they could.

Nothing about this is surprising: not the willingness of Haaretz to harm the country by spreading lies, not the eagerness of our enemies to wield them.

If there's anything at all about the story that's remotely surprising, it's the ease with which it can be disproved. Any reasonable observer of Israel knew immediately that the story couldn't be true as told; the fact that its originators were one of our radical Left NGOs (Hamoked) reinforced this gut feeling. Elder of Ziyon, an anonymous blogger with no public position, sent an e-mail to the appropriate official, who explained that the reality is more or less the opposite of that reported by Haaretz. Here's the full response, though I recommend following the link to read Elder's important comments about the case:

1. The new military order was signed 6 months ago.

2. There are no changes to the repatriation system or the authority/means to repatriate illegal residents in Judea and Samaria. The only difference is that now the process includes a judiciary review.

3. The decision to establish a judiciary committee to review the administrative process of repatriation was taken in response to the Israeli High Court of Justice (בג"ץ) decision that there should be judicial oversight.

4. Any illegal resident who stands to be repatriated will be brought before the judicial committee within 8 days of receiving the order, they will have the right to legal council, and will be able to appeal the judicial decision to the high court.

5. When making decisions about whether or not to repatriate an individual, the administrative and the judicial committees consider family ties.

6. Currently there are very few illegal Palestinian residents in Judea and Samaria - over the past several years, as a goodwill gesture to the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli government has approved an amnesty for nearly all of the 32,000 illegal residents whose names were submitted to the population registry by the Palestinian authorities.

7. Since the beginning of 2010, there have only been 5 Gazans who have been repatriated to Gaza.

8. The current system allows Israeli authorities to arrest, detain and deport illegal residents (specifically those who came in on a tourist visa and decided to stay) - these are the same powers that every sovereign nation in the world possess. The establishment of the Judicial Committee to oversee the process is the only change. (Bold: Elder; italics: me)

So what are we to make of all this:

1. A lie about Israel will cross the world in minutes, the truth won't travel at all.
2. Fringe elements in Israel are eager to lie.
3. Haaretz is courting the fringes (and hundreds of its subscribers have canceled their subscriptions this week. We don't know how many hundreds, it may be many, and their pool of subscribers was not large to begin with).
4. While loudly trumpeting the importance of a free press in a democracy and its own centrality in it, the level of journalism at Haaretz is lower than that of one private blogger.
5. The official agencies who might have confronted this lie, didn't. They waited for a blogger to ask them. Hamoked and Haaretz are malicious; officialdom is incompetent; the country gets by in spite of them all.

Consistently lying about Jews eventually gets people killed. This has been the pattern for millennia; the difference is that now the casualties come from both sides of the lies. You'd think this might matter to the people who propagate the lies, but you'd be wrong.

Update: I'm retracting the title of this post, tho not its content, here.

The Second Banned Song

In 1969 the military band of the Nachal brigade was at the peak of its creativity and fame. The story of shirim ivri'im in the 1960s and 1970s is unimaginable without the military bands, and the Nachal band was the best of them all. Any new creation of theirs was bound to catch everyone's attention.

No-one saw this one coming, however: Shir Lashalom, Song for Peace, with Miri Aloni as the lead.

First, the music. It was of a type the military bands had never used. Electrifying.

Second, the content: while it was a full-throated call for peace, and that was fine, it contained an enigmatic line: al tabitu leachor, hanichu lanoflim. Don't look back, leave the fallen behind.

It was an immediate smash, and almost as swiftly it was banned. As I noted when presenting Hasela HaAdom of 1954, songs can't be banned in Israel, but in 1969 the state control of the radio was still significant enough that an order not to play the song there was largely effective. But not fully: if the 1954 ban created mystery, the 1969 one aggravated, and never really succeeded. Everyone knew the song, and it was sung all over, accompanied by arguments (Israelis love to argue). I don't remember how long the official ban stood, but it couldn't have been very long.

No-one ever said so out loud, but there is reason to believe the unorthodox music was an added aggravation for the old codgers who felt it was their job to protect the purity of Israeli music. It was only five years since they had forbidden the Beatles to visit Israel (damaging cultural influence, they had called it).

In the 1970s the national disagreement about the price of peace versus controlling the occupied territories got worse, and shir lashalom became the anthem of the peace camp; in those years it definately wasn't part of the consensual canon of shirim. Miri Aloni never really took off as an important singer, either.

On Saturday night, November 4th 1995, middle-aged Miri Aloni was brought out of semi-retirement to sing shir lashalom at the end of a massive demonstration in Tel Aviv, called to bolster the declining political standing of the Rabin government in the face of rising Palestinian terror and broadening Israeli public dissatisfaction with what was then called the peace process. She was flanked by Rabin to her right, Peres to her left, and assorted apparatchiks on either side, and they fervently sang for peace. (Well, Rabin didn't really sing. But he tried).

A few minutes later Rabin was dead, shot by Yigal Amir. Rabin had folded the sheet with the song's words into his pocket, and at his funeral Eitan Haber, his top aide, presented the blood-stained page. Israel was plunged into deepest shock... and shir lashalom was elevated to the pinnacle of consensus, where it remained for a number of years.

After 2000 and the Palestinian determination to terrorize Israel into positions it wouldn't take, the song lost luster. Today it's solidly part of the canon, and everyone knows its words and melody, but it isn't a religious article anymore. It's a nice song, with lots of historical baggage if you care to reflect on it.

Hebrew words
English translation
Let the sun rise
light up the morning
The purest of prayers
will not bring us back

He whose candle was snuffed out
and was buried in the dust
bitter crying won't wake him up
and won't bring him back

Nobody will bring us back
from a dead and darkened pit
here,
neither the victory cheer
nor songs of praise will help

So just sing a song for peace
don't whisper a prayer
Just sing a song for peace
in a loud shout

Allow the sun to penetrate
through the flowers
don't look back
let go of those departed

Lift your eyes with hope
not through the rifles' sights
sing a song for love
and not for wars

Don't say the day will come
bring on that day -
because it is not a dream -
and in all the city squares
cheer only for peace!

The first video has pictures of Rabin, with the original, 1969 version of the shir. The second has a segment of the Nov. 4th 1995 performance.

Even Wikileaks are Propagandists

Andrew Sullivan, of all possible sources of information, sends us (in a slightly roundabout way) to a fascinating interview of Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, by Stephen Colbert. Colbert seems uncharacteristically serious. He gets Assange to admit that 90% of the viewers of his leaked tape of American pilots shooting Iraqis didn't watch most of the tape; the title (Collateral Murder) was enough for most of them; he himself wrote that title, and if it was a bit high-handed, well, he promises his sources he'll get their leaks wide public attention, so he's got to be creative with the way he present the materials.

He also claims that the story about a fire-fight near the event that was filmed is not true, or mostly not true, but by the time he gets to that part of the story there's not much left of his credibility: the man has admitted he edits sources and sets them up to be inflammatory, then earnestly assures us he's trustworthy. Not in my book.

Assange, by the way, has yet to leak anything about Israel; I expect there's too much competition so he stays away from such a crowded field. I would however deeply appreciate if he'd start leaking documents about the operation and decision-making process in places such as the UN and its subsidiaries, or the IAEA, or those guys. Not that he'd gain trustworthiness thereby, but at least for the propaganda value.

Palestinian Opinion Poll Data

Noah Pollak cites a recent poll. Palestinians, it appears, are ever less enthusiastic about Hamas. That's good. They're also not particularly interested in peace alongside Israel. Not surprising.

I continue to say it's not my job to tell about what the Palestinians think: I don't speak their language, and am not closely familiar with their culture. I may be better informed than, oh, 94% of Western media types who regularly pontificate on the matter, but that's not saying much. These numbers, however, come from a Palestinian pollster, and they fit into other long-term findings that Israelis can disregard only by making an effort.

Report on Dead Civilians

If even the Guardian feels the need to report, it must be serious.

At least 71 civilians were killed by a misdirected air strike in Pakistan's tribal zone against suspected extremists, locals claimed today, as thousands of people flee a western-backed military offensive against Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in the area.

Moreover, they're even willing to admit that the story isn't really interesting most days of the year

Separately, the UN warned this week that aid groups were running out of funds for Pakistan's internally displaced people, with 1.3 million still homeless as a result of military operations, including the offensive in Orakzai which escalated a month ago and has pushed around 200,000 out of their houses.

"This situation is not only forgotten by the international community but by Pakistanis too," said Kilian Kleinschmidt, the deputy director of the United Nations refugee agency in Pakistan. "The crisis here is not over."

International interest in the internal refugee crisis in Pakistan had dried up since the 1.6 million displaced people from Swat returned home last year, he said, with an emergency UN appeal this year only 20% funded.

Never Use Violence Except When You Should

Mohamed elBaradei has been in the international public eye for many years, as the boss of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In that capacity he has always been a moderating voice, sometimes perhaps even too moderate for the successful securing of international interests.

Now he's seeking a new job, president of Egypt, and he's singing a new tune:

Former IAEA Chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who is considering contending in Egypt's presidential elections next year, expressed his support for the "Palestinian resistance" while slamming Israel. In a report published Tuesday, the experienced diplomat said that Palestinian violence was the only path open to the Palestinian people, because "the Israeli occupation only understands the language of violence."

Nice.

Update: Elder of Ziyon followed the sources of this story and thinks it's not true. Some Palestinian source simply invented it, out of thin air.

Rescuing Lust from Extinction

The following story appears at least twice in the Talmud, the more detailed version (if memory serves) near the end of the Yoma tracate. However, having recently passed it in Sanhedrin, I'm posting from there.

The context is a discussion of the laws of idolatry. As is standard practice in the Talmud, there's lots of extremely detailed discussion of hypothetical matters that don't happen in the real lives of the scholars doing the discussing. Sometimes (tho often not) these discussions eventually mention the fact that they're religious and intellectual exercises, not practical discourses. So in this case. Having spent days on the minutiae of idolatry, the Gemara wonders how it came to be that the Jews lost their interest in the practice. After all, it was clearly a major issue in the early biblical times, yet the scholars of the Talmudic era apparently had never heard of Jews engaging in it for many centuries.

If you're into modern historical analysis of documents as a primary way to decipher the events of the past, the Gemara's answer won't satisfy you, because it's a fable (or myth, or metaphor, or allegory, or something. The literary folks will better know which term it is). According to this fable, the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem once managed to capture the flaming lion cub of idolatry which had emerged from the Holy of Holies in the Temple. Its roars were terrible to hear, but the prophet Zachariya told them to force it into a cage and pore molten lead over it; lead apparently having special sealing properties, as any reader of Superman comics will confirm.

(If you're less than 40-some years of age and don't know what I'm talking about with the Superman allusion, forget it. Not important).

Since they were having such a good day (Et ratzon) the Sanhedrin decided also to do away with lust. They prayed that the beast of lust be handed over, and when it was they caged it for three days, waiting to see the implications. (They realized the danger of their actions, and were being careful). As they had feared, the absence of lust in the world wreaked havoc; as the Gemara describes it, during those three days even the hens stopped laying eggs. Wondering if they might request that Lust be so limited than men would have it only for their rightful wife, the Sanhedrin recognized that this would not be granted. So they blinded the Beast of Lust but then let it free; as a result, men no longer lust after their immediate female relatives, and incest became rare.

Sanhedrin 64a

This thread is introduced and explained here.

A Window to Hope and Despair

One more day with Yehuda Poliker's 1988 Holocaust record and we'll move on.

The Jewish calender has cycles. One ancient one is from Pessach, signifying liberation from bondage, until Shavuot (Pentacost), seven weeks later, signifying liberation to live as Jews. There has always been a tension to the period, in which the nation is free but still lacks positive content for its freedom. About 1,800 years ago an additional layer was added, when it was decreed that a month of those seven weeks were a period of mourning for the destruction of Judea by Hadrian (143CE), and the end of any hope for political renewal following the earlier destruction of the temple (70 CE). Weddings are forbidden, men don't shave, music isn't played and so on.

Then, in the 1950s, a new cycle was inserted into the double-layer ancient one. The date of the independence of the State of Israel was decided by the British who left on May 14th 1948. After the ensuing war, however, the Knesset decided (twice, in 1953 and again in 1959) that the day before Independence day would be Yom HaZikaron, the day of commemoration for the fallen soldiers; the day one week before that was designated to remember the Shoah. These decisions were the result of political horse-trading, but sometimes even politicians get it right, even beyond their wildest dreams, and without intending it they had added modern depth to the traditional cycle. (I once read the record of their deliberations: they really didn't intend anything so profound)

So now we're in the week of trepidation. It's a week of palpable sensitivity, even as everyone goes about their normal business. What better a way to introduce it, I tell myself, than with Poliker's Chalon el hayam hatichon, a Window to the Mediterranean Sea.

The lyrics were written by Poliker's partner Yaacov Gil'ad, but the story is that of Poliker's father. A man who had lost his entire family including his children at the hands of the Nazis. His wife, likewise. Now, in December 1950, he has traveled to Israel without his new wife and son, to scout for a better future. He has found a one-room apartment in Jaffa, and he writes her (no iPhones in those days) to tell that perhaps, perhaps (ve-ulay) there's a chance, one in a million, that they can still somehow forge a new, better life. Maybe there's a slim hope, climbing in the window.

To add to the poignancy, the window faces west, back to Europe, to where there's no hope only despair. On that level, the window is false; the hope, if it's there, is climbing in from the street of Jaffa, the local reality, not from beyond the view. But that's just my reading.

Hebrew lyrics
English translation
I promised to write when I left you
but I didn't write for a long time
now I miss you so much
such a pity you are not here
after I arrived in Jaffa
hopes were born out of despair
I found my self a room and a half
on the roof of a deserted house
I have a folding bed here
if the three of us want to sleep
you the kid and I
against a window looking out
to the Mediteranean Sea

And maybe from afar
there is a one in a million chance
and maybe from afar
some joy is sneaking up to the window

The end of December 1950
outside there is war between the winds
suddenly we had snow fall
so white and reminds me what I already forgot
The wound is still open
if only you were here with me
I would have simply told you
what ever a letter will not say
If you want you have a home here
and you will have me
much kid's laughter coming to the house
and a window looking out
to the Mediterranean Sea

And maybe...

The Story Keeps Coming

The Anat Kamm story continues to supply interesting insights, so I'm still on it; apologies if I'm boring you.

A friend told me today that during a recent visit to Tel Aviv she saw graffiti from the gag-order period,encouraging pedestrians to "Google Anat Kamm": a way to spread the word as widely as possible. Yet it's becoming increasingly clear that the original story was false: long long ago, say, early last week, the line was that the entire story was well known outside Israel but gagged at home. By now it's clear that what was widely known abroad was a selective, carefully tailored story disseminated by Kamm's ideological fans, who were feeding foreign sources with the story they wished everyone to believe; once the authorities began releasing their version the story changed significantly.

Yesterday we saw the publishing of a court decision from February, when Kamm was sent to house arrest. This document contains various points of interest. Kamm is under mere house arrest, for example, not because the allegations aren't serious but because the assumption is that shorn of her special access to secret documents she isn't dangerous. If she's eventually convicted, she'll go to jail. She made two disks of copied documents, one of which she lost, and the other someone else lost (we aren't told who). The security measures in the general's office were so shabby as to be criminal; after having copied thousands of documents in a folder, Kamm simply asked a colleague to burn them onto disks, and it was done.

On the matter of her intent, it seems I was wrong. My initial reading was that she was out to promote her investigative abilities; apparently, she really did see herself as a whistle-blower - though on this point the story still seems to support both versions.

Regarding the prosecution's contention that Kamm intended to harm state security, the judge wrote that a high probability of harm to state security was enough to attribute such intent.

This is an interesting comment: when the probability of an outcome is plausible, the law sees action towards it as intent. Ponder that for a moment, because it isn't obviously so; one could easily argue that a plausible outcome is not enough to tell of intent to reach it; nor is the matter trivial. Any criminal proceeding that requires intent for conviction - and there are many such - will be influenced by it.

On the other hand, the judge cites Kamm's own words telling about her intent to uncover wrong-doing:

Hammer also referred to Kam's testimony regarding her motives to give material to Blau. He quoted her as saying, "there were aspects of the [Israel Defense Forces'] activity in the territories that I thought should be brought to the knowledge of the public."

"[When] I copied the materials I thought that as far as history is concerned, people who have warned of war crimes, they are forgiven .... I hadn't managed to sufficiently change enough of the things that were important to me at the time of my army service, and I thought exposing them would bring about change, so it was important to me to bring the IDF's policy in the territories to the knowledge of the public."

She said she contacted Israeli journalists because she assumed the military censor "would not allow publication of any material that was especially highly classified or [involved] danger in their publication." The judge noted that under questioning, Kamm had admitted that she knew of the practice of Israeli journalists to circumvent censorship by leaking information to the foreign media. (My italics: so she gave it to an Israeli journalist, knowing full well it might not go through the censor. So much for that argument).

From Kamm's perspective, the tragic part of the story is that she broke the law to warn Israelis their generals were breaking the law, when they weren't, but she was. She was so immersed in the lefty political narrative whereby Israel's military authorities are mostly wrong when dealing with Palestinians, that she was incapable of understanding that the actions she was warning about were in no way illegal. On the contrary. She was merely supplying documentation that the IDF indeed is acting within the law. She's now facing jail for bravely warning us from a danger that was invented by her friends and political colleagues, but which was never there at all.

Talmudic Cows

I don't know if Norm ever studied Talmud; I haven't thought of asking him. Whether he has or not, he certainly has the knack of it: he's a natural, one might say, assuming one might agree what constitutes being a natural.

Every Man Has a Name

Not long ago I read an article which made the distinction between songs and poetry: that poetry stands on its own, while a song needs music to have value.

Many shirim are songs, but some are poetry (and I'm not certain where to draw the line). The creations of Zelda are poetry, even though some have become famous shirim, with music.

Zelda was born in what is now Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, in 1914, to a family of important Lubavitcher rabbis; she was a cousin of the last Rebbe. She came to Jerusalem with her parents in 1926, and died here in 1984. There is a touching description of her in Amos Oz' masterpiece A Tale of Love and Darkness (If you still haven't read it, forget all these blogs and read it). Zelda was his teacher, and apparently an influential one; she also lived in the same hard-working neighborhood he grew up in and describes so well. She and her husband never had children.

I don't know when she started writing; her first book of poetry appeared many years after she began, in the 1960s. So I can't tell if she wrote Lechol Ish Yesh Shem, Every Man has a Name, before or after the Shoah. The poem itself never mentions the Holocaust, never even alludes to it, yet sometime in the 1980s it became the single most important Shoah song; perhaps even the emblematic one.

Hebrew original
English translation
Every person has a name
that God gave him
and which his father and mother gave him

Every person has a name
which his height
and the style of his smile gave him
and which his tapestry gave him

Every person has a name
which the mountains gave him
and which his walls gave him.

Every person has a name
which the star signs gave him
and which his neighbours gave him.

Every person has a name
which his sins gave him,
and which his longing gave him.

Every person has a name
which his enemies gave him
and his love gave him.

Every person has a name
which his festivals gave him,
and which his work gave him.

Every person has a name
which the seasons gave him,
and which his blindness gave him.

Every person has a name
which the sea gave him,
and which his death gave him.

Chanan Yovel (born 1946) composed the music and sings it in the first recording; the second recording is by Chava Alberstein; she's a better singer.

Deporting Out of Context

Alex Stein asked me yesterday if Haaretz is lying about their new story, whereby a military order is about to launch the deportation of tens of thousands of Palestinians. The story was published by Amira Haas, here; it is based, apparently, on a story from Hamoked, an Israeli far-left ogranization, here; and today's editorial of Haaretz deplores it here.

I don't know if Haaretz is lying. Probably not: there's a limit to the amount of dishonesty a newspaper can engage in at once, and Haaretz is already in trouble on other matters. On the other hand, it may well be that they're not telling the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Were there to be an Israeli policy to deport tens of thousands of Palestinians - or even only hundreds, if they were innocent civilians, or even any innocent civilians at all - this would be wrong. I'll state that unambiguously, lest there be any misinterpretation. In the context of achieving peace I'm in favour of uprooting tens of thousands of Israeli Jews who have settled in the West Bank over the past 40 years. Not because of international law, which isn't relevant, but because a significant section of the Israeli political body always told them very clearly that given the appropriate context they would have to move. I do not however see a scenario in which Israel deports Palestinians by group. An individual delinquent, yes; many delinquents if they acted illegally, yes, but not a group arbitrarily defined by someone they have no control over. That's the important distinction: that the Israeli settlers participate in a political decision which will effect them; the Palestinians don't participate in the Israeli political discussions. (Well, not directly).

Yet in spite of the heat coming out of Haaretz on this new story, I doubt the events they are warning of are poised to happen. I'm going to wait a day or three before commenting further, so as to give the agencies who know, time to explain; later on I'll either return to the story or not, depending upon whether there is a story at all.

On Following Orders

Yom Hashoah seems as as good as any to re-visit the issue of soldiers following orders. The other day a reader posted a comment asking if perhaps Anat Kamm might not be protected under the concept of soldiers who must think of the morality of their actions and may not hide behind the mere fact that they're ordered.

Set aside the matter that stealing cabinets of documents cannot easily be construed as a refusal to be immoral. Set aside also the fact that even with the documents as published by Haaretz, it's hard to see what illegal actions might have happened on which she was allegedly reporting. Set aside the fact that the Attorney General looked into the matter, just in case, and found that the "crimes" Uri Blau was alleging didn't happen, and the army acted according to the law. (Link here, relevant paragraph only in Hebrew: interesting, isn't it).

Setting aside all that, there's still the principle whereby a soldier must obey orders, but sometimes a soldier may not obey orders. Israel worked out this conundrum back in the 1950s. I wrote about this in Right to Exsit, and am reproducing the relevant page or two here (p. 123-124):

Israel’s second war, the Sinai Campaign, began on October 29, 1956. On the first afternoon, fearing that the war might spill over to the Jordanian front, an order was given to harshly enforce a curfew in the Israeli-Arab towns along the Jordanian border. The commander of one of the units of the Border Police, stationed at the town of Kfar Kassem, interpreted this in an extreme manner, and his troops shot 47 villagers in cold blood – workers returning from work without having heard about the curfew. It was a cold-blooded murder of innocent villagers, with no alleviating circumstances.

This time the killers were put on trial; two of the commanding officers were sentenced to many years prison, although they were later pardoned, and this pardon was a blot on Israel’s record. The long-term significance of the case, however, was in its legal and educational import. Henceforth Israeli soldiers were told that it was their legally binding duty to disobey what were called “categorically illegal orders.”

Categorically illegal orders are a modern version of the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not murder.” Soldiers are expressly forbidden to murder, even if ordered to do so on the field of battle; if they do, they will be court-martialled. The order they were given will not be relevant to their defense, since their moral duty as human beings supercedes their duty as soldiers. Such a ruling can be applied only rarely: a merely “illegal order” must be obeyed; the “categorically illegal orders” must be disobeyed. The definition given by the court was hardly helpful, unless you came from a tradition that had been using the distinction between killing and murder for three thousand years: a categorically illegal act is one above which a black flag flutters.

With such a literary metaphor, 18 and 20-year-old youths are armed and sent to battle. They must obey the orders of their commanders, under threat of court-martial, because otherwise an army cannot function; but they must not obey when they see the black flag, under threat of court-martial, because otherwise the society they defend with their lives may not be worthy of the sacrifice. This is the Israeli definition of Jus in Bello. It is not a philosophical construct for academic seminars but a component of training for battle. Israel’s record prior to the murders at Kfar Kassem hadn’t been bad; it was generally to improve from here on. The cold-blooded lining up of civilians to be shot has never repeated itself.

Purveyor of Secret Documents

Shamai Liebowitz, extreme-left-wing Israeli who moved to the US because he no longer felt comfortable being in Israel, found work translating Hebrew documents for the FBI. Not documents of the FBI, mind you: for the FBI. At some point he leaked five of them (5) to an unnamed blogger, who talked about them on his blog. Liebowitz is now looking at 20 months in jail. No-one seems to be claiming he was merely bolstering American democracy, as any good citizen ought.

(How far extreme, I hear you asking? Well, in 2002, when he was serving as Marwan Barghouti's lawyer, he told a court his client compared favorably to Moses, the fellow from the Bible. The judge wasn't amused).

Ministry of Truth

Yuval Elbashan is a lawyer by training. I dare you to find even the remotest vestige of respect for the law in his op-ed today, in which he castigates any and all journalists who didn't line up to support Uri Blau, possessor of illegally stolen documents, and perhaps obstructor of a criminal investigation. On the contrary: everything that has been written or said that does not support Haaretz, is cited as evidence of the failure of reporters and pundits to do their job.

An outsider scrutinizing their conduct in this affair will not be able to avoid feeling shame. Of all people, they are the ones who took on the role of spokesmen for the establishment, as if they were still conscripts. With enthusiasm they reiterated the claim that the material held by Blau has the potential to cause harm. They are the ones who disseminated the claim - without being able to check or verify it - that the case involves hundreds of documents that constitute state secrets. And they are the ones who volunteered the claim that the quantity of documents held by Blau is what makes him qualitatively different from them and their documents, and hence justifies his persecution.

- When did you last beat your wife?
- But I'm not married and never beat anyone!
- Aha! So you're also a liar, not only a wife beater!

Elbashan isn't on the payroll of Haaretz, so his position may be a sincere expression of a worldview. Back in the early days of this blog I created a tag called "Rational Discourse?", which I use to flag cases when such discourse is not possible. Maybe I now need to add a tag "Rational Discourse Not Possible!" Not because Elbashan isn't entitled to his own opinions or those of this groupthink colleagues; rather for his thought process. If anyone agrees with us, he's right. If they don't, it's further proof, not only that we're right, but also that the others are dominated by the Evil Ones.

The Evil Ones being the authorities of the State of Israel.

In a related matter, Anat Kamm's lawyers seem to have come to their senses. Rather than sacrifice their client for an ideal, they're bending over backwards to assist the authorities (or, as Elbashan might put it, the dangerous authorities). They have announced that Kamm revokes any claim she might have had to Uri Blau's protection of her as a source. On the contrary: her/their position is that he should return immediately to Israel and hand over to the authorities whatever documents he received from her. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Interesting, and instructive.

Learning Can be Bad for You

Maureen Dowd recently returned to the USA from Suadi Arabia. Upon her return she understood that the oppression of woman over there is more or less the same as their oppression by the Catholic Church.

I spoof you not. Her column is at the top of the list of popular stories at the NYT website.

The only interesting part of this otherwise silly story is that her insight is the result of her trip. Her encounter with the reality, that's what did it, not the other way around. You might have expected an ignoramus to make a thoughtless comment, then to correct it once shown reality. You'd be wrong: it works in exactly the opposite direction.

Ashes and Dust

The climactic annual shirim ivri'im events are Yom Hashoah, the commemoration day for the Holocaust, and Yom HaZikaron, the commemoration day for the fallen in Israel's wars, a week later. Both begin, like any Jewish holiday or holy day, on the previous evening. On both all institutions of frivolity ("batei inugim"), i.e restaurants, bars, clubs and normal theaters are closed (restaurants may open the next day); this is mandated by law, and in the 1950s when the law was new it was not always effective, but that was long ago. I can't think of any restaurateur even dreaming of opening on either evening, law or no law.

The media is also effected. All normal programs are either called off, or dedicated primarily to the subject of the day - or they're replaced by shirim. Hours and hours of shirim ivri'im. This begins in the late afternoon before the official beginning of the day of commemoration, but there are gradations. Experienced listeners (which means, any Israeli ten years of age or above, more or less) will notice that the shirim of 3pm before the evening are getting ever more somber, while those of 3pm the next afternoon may be getting slightly less so, at least on some channels.

There are some shirim which are more Holocaust related and will be less likely to be played on Yom HaZikaron and vice versa, at least to an extent.

Shir Hapartizanim, which I posted yesterday, is a bit problematic. At the time, no more than a few thousand Jews sung it; the rest never knew of it. In the early years of Israel, on the other hand, the survivors of the partisan units and ghetto fighters enjoyed significant prominence, and "their" anthem reverberated nationally. As the decades went on, this changed.

Yehuda Poliker was born in 1950 to two parents from Thessaloniki who had each lost their entire family including children, then met after the war and moved to Israel in the hope of building a new life (The few survivors who returned to Thessaloniki after the war didn't stay. Almost all moved to Israel). Poliker stutters when he talks... but never when he sings. He has been around since the 1970s, and is one of the most creative musical artists in Israel.

He composes music and produces for himself and for many others; only rarely does he write lyrics. Many of his songs were written by Yaacov Gil'ad. Gil'ad, born in 1951, is also the child of survivors, from Poland. He rarely sings, but has written important shirim for many artists; his partnership with Poliker was the longest and most important.

In 1988, at the peak of their fame, they produced a record which - so they tell it - was intended to be a private enterprise, of little interest to the broader public. It was titled Efer ve'Afar, Ashes and Dust, about growing up as children of Holocaust survivors. All indications are that it will outlive them longer than anything else they've done. Indeed, a year after it appeared and was a smashing success, a third child of survivors, filmmaker Orna Ben David, convened them with their parents in a harrowing documentary film called Biglal Hamilchama Hahi, Because of That War.

Here are two shirim from the record.

Tachana Ktana Treblinka - TheLittle Station of Treblinka was written in Polish, in the Warsaw Ghetto, in 1943, by Wladislaw Szlengel; it was translated into Hebrew by Halina Birnbaum, Gil'ad's mother. I'm not finding an English translation, but the most memorable line is "Sometimes the ride takes the rest of your life"
Hebrew lyrics

Then there's Lean at Nosa'at?, Where Do You Think You're Going? in which Yaacov Gil'ad asks his mother why she's going back to visit Poland, after all there's nothing there, only ashes and dust.
Hebrew words
English translation
A spring day the smell of lilac
Between the ruins of your city
A beautiful day to fish in the river
Inside me my heart is broken
There it was and it wasn't
Your child is a small woman
People that no-one knows
There isn't even a house that you'll remember

And if you're going, where are you going
Forever is just ashes and dust
Where are you going, where are you going
Years and nothing is erased…

Take a coat, it'll be cold
Money in your pocket, sugar crystal
If the days are hard
Remember me sometimes
And if it's a more desperate journey
To the hut, to the plot
On the path of the old city
No one will wait in the station…

Chorus…

Who will sweeten your nights
Who will listen to your crying
Who will stay by your side [while you are] on your way

Take a coat, it'll be cold.