Comments for South Jerusalem: Gershom Gorenberg and Haim Watzman

Comment on More on Gay Families: The Halachic Challenge by tirtzah

tirtzah — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:02:45 +0000

Thanks for your reflective posts. I love that halacha has a way of encountering everything and eventually knowing what to do with it- even when the solution is a surprising one. I think you are right, that if we approach the subject of queer people in halacha with humility and faith, we will find answers, even if it will take a long time. While we wait for answers, though, I hope the thing we can take for granted is that- in absence of anything else “v’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha” always applies, that jewish tradition always asks us to love our fellow person as we love ourselves.

Comment on Is Hamas Looking For a Two-State Solution? Should We Listen? by Spot the rejectionist « The Heathlander

Spot the rejectionist « The Heathlander — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:39:17 +0000

[...] statements from Hamas indicating the organisation’s acceptance of a two-state settlement. In a recent interview with a pro-Fatah Palestinian newspaper, for example, Hamas chief and traditional hardliner Khaled [...]

Comment on Nostalgia Makes Bad Military Policy by Military Personal Checks

Military Personal Checks — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:04:26 +0000

I think everyone should be given the chance to opt out of joining the military in England there is no drafting..

Comment on At a Settlement, a Battle Over Both Law and Judaism by george a. hilborn

george a. hilborn — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:52:48 +0000

As a Christian observer to Israel in March and as a trial lawyer and a history major in undergrad Israel is a most interesting study of complex problems. There is a segment of the international community and the “homegrown” Palestinians who say the settlements are illegal and should be torn asunder, but who is going to enforce the evacuation order? Let’s move to a more reasonable practical solution: withdraw the financial underpinning for the maintenance and construction of these settlements ;like roads ,sewage,embarqoing building materials. electricity and water. As an outsider I saw the destructive and corossive effects these settlements are having on normalcy in the country. The state that the Palestinians are to get is something right out of Rube Goldberg and any half-intelligent person looking at the proposed map would come away saying “you got to be kidding!” There has to be a land link between Gaza and the East Bank or your going to have the old West Pakistan/East Pakistan problem Reducing the number of settlements would greatly reduce the effect of the radical elements’ stature in any future negotiations.The equity argument in regard to the land upon which the settlements set can be viewed either from the English equity tenet of “adverse possession” or proscribes from Torah or “might makes right “Israel needs strong and wise leadership and counsel now not tomorrow and to get the financially and morally compromised out of the “seats of power”
Israel is a miracle in this modern age but as a Bulgarian Jew told me after I asked why the City of Tel Aviv didn’t take better care of the Rabin Memorial outside the City Hall ,he said “miracles last only three days in Israel” I guess the translation for me would be “out of sight,out of mind” In the long run ,legal abuses may be remedied but moral abuses sanctioned by clergy whether they be rabbis’,priests,inmans or any other interpreters are not easily remedied or forgotten by those most affected especially those whose land is taken from them. The book ,The Lemon Tree , a true story, helped me understand those things Iwitnessed in March on just this issue

Comment on The IDF: All Conscripts, All Volunteers, Or Something In Between? by Nostalgia Makes Bad Military Policy « South Jerusalem: Gershom Gorenberg and Haim Watzman

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:39:23 +0000

[...] At this week’s conference on The Decline of Citizen Armies in Democratic States (see my post on Wednesday), he offered a list of reasons why an all-volunteer army would be the end of the IDF. [...]

Comment on The IDF: All Conscripts, All Volunteers, Or Something In Between? by Barbara

Barbara — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:16:14 +0000

“Many Israelis, and admirers of Israel, decry this state of affairs and see it as a threat to Israeli society. Without military service to unite it, and without the kind of collective spirit that universal military service creates, the country cannot survive, they worry.”

This is quite terrible–the idea that a society has to unite through military experience to survive. Why not unite through something else? I don’t know… Great successes in sports, for instance? Common language and culture? Why arms of all things? If Israeli society could not survive without a military base unity (which I don’t believe is true) then there would be something very wrong about this society.

Comment on Gaza: The Peace of the Clumsy by george a. hilborn

george a. hilborn — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:28:41 +0000

Y. As I recall the Stern gang and their cohorts included those who murdered innocents in the name of the future State of Israel and one of them became Prime Minister.It seems that their conduct was justified because the Jews had been historically oppressed and the outrageous Holocaust gave them justification for their actions to achieve a country of their own. Now you ask who can trust this murderer to speak for an oppressed people(I'm sorry you don't think their oppressed)?King George and Lord North thought the military revolution by the Colonys'was the handiwork of terrorists like Jefferson and Adams who were responsible for the deaths of innocent British "Red Coats ";sound familiar doesn't it? My wife , who had a Jewish grand father,after going to Israel is convinced that Israel has the biggest propaganda machine running in the Near East and she thinks Americans' have been "brainwashed" to buy their B--S--T.I don't subscribe to that approach but I think we spend too much time worrying about what happens to Israel rather than getting out of the Near East altogether and getting us out of policing the world which brought down the British Empire. Further I feel the former Democrat Joe Lieberman should formally acknowledge his de facto status with Likud and get a job driving Rev.Hagee's church bus down there in Sugarland Texas where the collective I.Q.of the congregation is the same as his hat size.

Comment on Hagee, McCain, Aipac: The Audacity of Cynicism by Jim

Jim — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:37:36 +0000

Have any of you people actually read the Bible? If you read Daniel and Revelation, it clearly outlines the end-time events, specifically Revelation. If you choose to ignore what God has given you to read, that’s your choice. This is not about anybody hating or trying to undermine the Jewish people. It’s not about fulfilling anyone’s personal agenda. It is about what God has said would happen. All John Hagee, and others like him, are trying to do is bring awareness to what is taught from God’s Word. And, just as a side-bar, the refusal of the Jewish people to believe it is also written about in there. If you don’t believe it, go read it for yourself.

Comment on The IDF: All Conscripts, All Volunteers, Or Something In Between? by Lloyd Tuchman

Lloyd Tuchman — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:17:09 +0000

Haim:

Your post reminded me of the contrast between 300 professional Spartans holding off thousands of Persians and 400 New Hampshirites touching off the American Revolution by overwhelming six (6) British soldiers at Fort William and Mary.

I Agree . . . the unorganized militia of the U.S. is the supposed cushion until the professionals show up . . . supposing Canada ever invaded. In Israel, geography doesn’t allow for much of a cushion. Keep your draft, put weapons in the hands of every non-felon adult, and put the ultra-orthodox on the front lines with a prayer book and a pistol. My two cents.

Comment on Gaza: The Peace of the Clumsy by Y. Ben-David

Y. Ben-David — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:58:33 +0000

A couple of further points:

(1) Regarding supposed support for the “2-State Solution” by Barghouti and a majority of Palestinians according to Shikaki’s poll, it is important to ask if this phrase means the same thing them as it does to Israelis who want it. Does it include full implementation of the so-called “Palestinian Right of Return”? Does it guarantee Jewish access to Jewish holy sites in Palestinian control?
Israelis assume that the Palestinians will accept only a limited, “symbolic” right of return of some tens of thousands of refugees, but no Palestinian leader has ever agreed to that. Israelis like Tzippi Livni say that it means a “right of return” of refugees to the Palestinian territories, but the Palestinians could never agree to such a thing because there is no room for them and the current Palestinian residents of those territories view the refugees as aliens and don’t want them there as neighbors.
Regarding the Jewish holy places, I can only remind everyone that Barak was willing to hand over sovereignity of Judaism’s holies place, the Har HaBayit (Temple Mount) but with the minor condition that the agreement contain a clause that the Palestinians recognize the fact that the Jews also view it as a holy place. Arafat adamantly refused, even after being berated by Bill Clinton on the matter. Official Palestinian propaganda says the Jews have no business being in the country at all, so don’t count on them protecting our holy places.

(2) Regarding freeing Barghouti since some feel that “he is the only one who can make peace” in spite of the minor technicality that he is serving a life sentence in prison because of five counts of first-degree murder-
It is important to keep something in mind. Those who advocate freeing him will say “you can’t choose your peace partners”. That is simply not true. While it is true that Churchill and Roosevelt had no choice but to deal with mass-murderer Stalin in the Second World War, we must remember that Stalin was already the leader of the USSR at the time their alliance with him was forged. Churchill and FDR also refused to deal with the Nazi regime in power. They said it had to be defeated totally and didn’t claim “you make peace with your enemies”. Barghouti is not now and never was the recognized head of the Palestinians. Those who advocate freeing him have all sorts of Machiavellian tricks up their sleeve saying “the fact that he is a murderer will give him more credibility in the Palestinian street”. This is simply morally unacceptable. How can anyone think that someone like him really would make peace anyway? It is this sort of thinking that got Israel into the Oslo disaster in the first place, and I would like to think that those who advocate things like this would be discredited.