New Front In Israel-Hamas War
Nov. 4th, 2023 10:10 am
Since it went to war with Hamas early last month, Israel has stepped up strikes against Iran-backed militias in Syria who have moved close to the Israeli border.The development comes with a key shift in Israeli policy — it no longer always tells Syria’s patron Russia in advance about attacks on Syrian territory.
“As a general rule,” Israel isn’t informing Russia before its strikes in Syria, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Friday, according to the Interfax news service. “We find out after they happen.”
The change is worsening already troubled relations between Israel and Russia. And there’s a danger of Syria emerging as a new front in the Israel-Hamas war, a situation the US and regional allies are trying to avoid as they seek to contain the conflict. Tensions are already high on Israel’s border with Lebanon, Hezbollah’s base and from where it’s exchanging fire with the Israeli military on a daily basis.
“Spillover into Syria is not just a risk; it has already begun,” Geir Pedersen, the United Nations special envoy for the country, said this week. “Fuel is being added to a tinderbox that was already beginning to ignite.”
Over the last decade, Syria became a global battleground. The US has almost 1,000 troops there to counter Islamist extremists and Turkey is fighting Kurdish groups in the north. Iran and Russia, meanwhile, are helping President Bashar al-Assad stay in power. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, and millions forced to flee.
Today, all-out war has been replaced by more sporadic fighting but the conflict in Israel-Gaza is exacerbating tensions.
On Oct. 30, Israeli warplanes bombed a Syrian military base in the southern province of Daraa. That was after Israel had dropped leaflets warning Syrian forces against allowing Iran and its proxies to operate near the border with Israel, according to the people familiar with the situation.
Five days earlier, Israel struck a weapons depot at a large Syrian base in the south, where Iranian officers and operatives from Hezbollah are embedded with Syrian forces. The attack killed more than a dozen Syrian soldiers, according to the people. Israeli warplanes also hit air surveillance radars at a nearby facility, they added.
Members of the Russian military police are occasionally present at a facility next to this base. It’s unclear if they were there when Israel struck. The Syrian military acknowledged both attacks.
Also please take a note that Iran Doesn’t Want Hezbollah Fighting Israel...
Israel did not notify Russia in advance of the strikes, said the people who spoke about them.
And in the past three weeks, Israel struck Syria’s main two airports in Damascus and Aleppo several times, putting them out of service and forcing civilian aircraft to land in the Russian airbase in Hmeimim on Syria’s Mediterranean coast instead, said the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Israel has for years routinely struck targets in Syria, mainly to thwart Hezbollah militants or secure its own north-eastern border. Since Russia intervened in the Syrian war in 2015, it’s coordinated with Israel to ensure their forces don’t clash or mistakenly fire on each other.
Israel’s Defense Ministry declined to comment on the recent lack of warnings or whether leaflets were dropped on Syrian forces ahead of Monday’s strike.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said his forces were determined to stop Iran ferrying weapons to Lebanon through Syria.
“We will not allow a new Hezbollah front there or permit an Iranian military presence in Syria,” he told reporters Tuesday.
Hamas and Hezbollah receive extensive funding and training from Iran. They’re both designated as terrorist groups by the US.
The Israeli warnings to Russia served both countries. Five years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin assured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he would do everything to prevent Iran and Hezbollah from gaining a foothold in southwest Syria, across from the Israeli occupied Golan Heights.
But after Russia sent troops into Ukraine in 2022, Moscow tightened its alliance with Iran, straining relations with Israel. The war against Hamas, which rules Gaza, and the deep cooperation between Israel and the US have driven the two even further apart.
The US has moved two aircraft carriers to the region since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants swarmed southern Israeli communities and killed 1,400 people, many of them children. Washington stood by Israel as it launched a mass of airstrikes on Gaza and started a ground offensive. Russia has criticized Israel’s actions, which Hamas-led authorities say have killed more than 9,000 people.
Israel condemned Moscow for hosting a delegation from Hamas and Iran’s deputy foreign minister last week. And on Oct. 29, a mob invaded an airport in Dagestan in southern Russia to seek out passengers on an incoming flight from Israel. Putin blamed Ukraine and Western intelligence services for the antisemitic incident.
“Russia is basically supporting our enemies,” said Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, referring to Moscow’s military cooperation with Iran and its contacts with groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Jews In Ukraine
Sep. 12th, 2023 08:43 am
Nothing Russia can throw at them will deter up to 30,000 mostly foreign Jews from making their annual pilgrimage to the Ukrainian town of Uman, 200km south of Kyiv, this week. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, falls on September 15th-17th, and the visitors will mark it by praying at the grave of Nachman of Breslov, a rabbi who founded an important branch of Hasidism over 200 years ago.The pilgrimage has featured in recent quarrels between the Ukrainian and Israeli governments. Ukraine has threatened to ban Israeli pilgrims from entering the country because Israel has been deporting Ukrainians for alleged visa violations. But these arguments, which stem mainly from disagreements over the military help Israel is or is not willing to give Ukraine, have been largely resolved. Jewish-Ukrainian relations are in fact now enjoying something of a golden era.
For a start, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish. That fact is “very disturbing” for the Kremlin, says Rabbi Moshe Azman in Kyiv. It exposes its war aim of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine as nonsense. Still, Vladimir Putin persists in repeating it. On September 5th Russia’s president went into full conspiracy mode, saying that Mr Zelensky had been put in his position by his “Western curators” and that this made “the whole situation extremely disgusting, in that an ethnic Jew is covering up the glorification of Nazism.”
Last year, one day before the invasion, Kharkiv’s Jewish school celebrated its 30th anniversary. A few days later it was damaged in a Russian attack; the community’s nearby yeshiva, or religious college, suffered a direct hit. “Our schools aren’t able to function because rockets are hitting them,” says Miriam Moskovitz, director of the school. “It is nothing to do with Nazis”.
Before the second world war Jews were a large minority in the lands that now comprise Ukraine; 1.5m of them were to perish in the Holocaust. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian auxiliaries helped the Germans commit this crime, though more than 7m fought the Nazis as troops in the Red Army.
For older Jews the name Ukraine is almost synonymous with the word “pogrom”. National heroes of Ukraine like Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a 17th-century Cossack commander, are remembered by Jews as responsible for the deaths of thousands. Today many Ukrainians revere Stepan Bandera, whose followers fought the Red Army after 1944. They know, or choose to know, little about the murder of Poles and Jews at the hands of Bandera’s followers.
In the past Ukrainians often blamed Jews for everything, including the hardships of communism. Now, says Yevhen Hlibovytsky, an analyst, anti-Semitism is fading—as is Jewish fear of Ukrainians. “The generation of those who grew up in the Soviet Union reflected a lot of the anti-Semitism that the Soviet Union practised. My generation is much freer of that and the generation of my children treats ethnic and religious diversity as normal.”
The Pew Research Centre, an American institute, has found that Ukrainians are among the least anti-Semitic people in Europe. One of its polls found that just 5% of Ukrainians said they were not prepared to accept Jews as fellow citizens. That compared with 14% in Russia, 18% in Poland and 16% in Greece.
“That may come as some surprise” to many, says Edward Serotta, the director of Centropa, a Vienna-based organisation dedicated to preserving Jewish memory in central and eastern Europe. Not to him. Ukrainians are enthusiastically learning about their country’s Jewish past. This March 210 Ukrainian teachers applied for 60 places on seminars on how to use Centropa’s resources, and then travelled for many hours to get to them.
No one knows exactly how many Jews are left in Ukraine, and anyway the numbers depend on who counts as one. In 1989 the “core” Jewish population—those who identify as fully Jewish—was 487,000, according to the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Most emigrated after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, leaving an estimated 43,000 by 2021. (Counts that use broader definitions go above 200,000.)
The fading of Jewish scepticism towards Ukraine is borne out in the scale of aid Jewish organisations have brought to the country since the start of the war. World Jewish Relief, based in the UK, has helped 236,206 people, in various ways. Synagogues have sheltered those in flight, and helped with evacuations and humanitarian aid.
In Dnipro, in central Ukraine, families identifiable as Orthodox by their clothes can be seen in the streets around the Menorah Centre, a building that houses a Jewish museum, kosher hotels, a kosher shop and a synagogue. Men in uniform sporting kippahs smoke outside. Some of Ukraine’s Jewish soldiers were born or brought up in Ukraine before emigrating to Israel. Now they have returned to fight.
One of the most extraordinary changes for Ukraine’s Jews in the last three decades has been that of identity. For decades after the second world war, most Jews in Ukraine spoke Russian and identified as Soviet Jews. Now, those that remain identify as Ukrainian Jews. Jewish prayer books are being translated into Ukrainian for the first time.
In Ukraine today, Russians are the enemy. It is increasingly common to hear Israel, a thriving country surrounded by enemies, cited as a model for Ukraine’s future. Yet although Jews in Ukraine have never been freer from anti-Semitism, one deep-seated fear remains. If things go badly wrong in the war, runs the argument, Mr Zelensky’s heritage could become a lightning rod for renewed anti-Semitism, with Jews being blamed for Ukrainian defeats. One more reason for them to pray for victory.■
Roger Waters
Feb. 12th, 2023 10:07 am
Pink Floyd singer-guitarist David Gilmour and his wife, Polly Samson, who wrote lyrics for the band’s later songs, are not pulling any punches about Roger Waters, whose stances on Israel, Ukraine and Russia have alarmed many of the band’s followers in recent years. On social media, Samson called Waters “rotten to your antisemitic core” and “a Putin apologist,” among other things — and Gilmour emphatically cosigned his spouse’s statement, writing: “Every word demonstrably true.”Most of the epithets sent Waters’ way had to do with his global political stands, but thrown into the list of sins, as an aside, was a charge that the Floyd co-founder engages in lip-syncing on tour.
Wrote Samson on Twitter Monday: “Sadly
![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.”Gilmour quote-tweeted his wife’s missive, and added his own agreement, saying: “Every word demonstrably true.”
Waters has given many interviews in recent years that some fans who support Israel and/or Ukraine have considered a last straw. Samson and Gilmour did not say what it was that triggered this explosive statement, but the most likely source of their suddenly public ire is an interview the singer-bassist did in which he criticized his former bandmates for having reunited to record a pro-Ukraine song last year and otherwise doubled down on some of his most polarizing positions.
The interview with German newspaper Berliner Zeitung( was reprinted in an English translation on Waters’ website. In it, he said it was “sad” that Gilmour and Nick Mason joined up with Ukrainian musician Andrij Chlywnjuk to record a song protesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I have seen the video” released under the Floyd banner, Waters said, “and I am not surprised, but I find it really, really sad. It’s so alien to me, this action is so lacking in humanity. It encourages the continuation of the war. Pink Floyd is a name I used to be associated with. That was a huge time in my life, a very big deal. To associate that name now with something like this… proxy war makes me sad. I mean, they haven’t made the point of demanding, ‘Stop the war, stop the slaughter, bring our leaders together to talk!’ It’s just this content-less waving of the blue and yellow flag.”
Waters called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “probably the most provoked invasion ever.
“What everyone in the West is being told is the ‘unprovoked invasion’ narrative. Huh? Anyone with half a brain can see that the conflict in Ukraine was provoked beyond all measure,” he said.
The article found Waters reiterating that he would play in Moscow but never Israel, which, as a supporter of the Palestinian cause, he considers a “genocidal” nation. “Moscow does not run an apartheid state based on the genocide of the indigenous inhabitants,” said Waters. Challenged repeatedly on his anti-Ukraine statements, he said, “You seem to be asking me to see Russia from the current Russo-phobic perspective. I choose to see it differently.”
Waters has had concerts in Poland canceled over his views. In a statement on his website prefacing the interview reprint, he vowed not to back down. “Wild horses couldn’t keep me away,” he wrote, “and neither can this apartheid rabble.” He tore into what he called “an outrageous and despicable smear campaign by the Israeli lobby to denounce me as an anti-semite, which I am not, never have been and never will be.”
Waters, Gilmour and Mason last played together at a Waters show in London in 2011, a rare moment of detente between frontmen who have often been at odds, to say the least, since they last recorded together as Pink Floyd in the early 1980s. Their only other joint appearance since the “Final Cut” album was a reunion set at Live 8 in 2005.
Their business interests, nonetheless, remain aligned, for purposes that include the Floyd catalog reportedly being up for sale at a price in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Although it was Waters’ intent that Pink Floyd not go on when he left the group in the early ’80s, Gilmour, Mason and Rick Wright opted to continue without him under the Floyd banner into the ’90s, enjoying successful followup albums and tours, with Samson drafted to write some of the lyrics in Waters’ absence. Fans have continued to hope for a reunion, even as both Gilmour and Waters have made clear just how extraordinarily unlikely that is, with little coming of Mason’s peacemaking efforts.
Waters’ latest incendiary interview followed by a few months an argumentative conversation with CNN in which he suggested that China has a better record on human rights than the U.S. Describing China’s history of suppression of its own people as “bollocks,” Waters said, “The Chinese didn’t invade Iraq and kill a million people in 2003.”
Who will be next?
Nov. 2nd, 2018 09:10 am
Like most American synagogues, the Kehilath Jeshurun congregation in Manhattan flaunts its Jewishness. The Hebrew letters of its name are cut in the stone façade, under stained-glass windows bearing six-pointed Stars of David. On the Sabbath, when Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump prayed there (before moving to the White House last year), they would walk past the local Jewish day-school through streets filled with Orthodox families. More progressive Jews might go to the even more ostentatious Park Avenue Synagogue, or one of New York’s hundreds of other temples. In contrast, the Jewish Cultural Centre in Amsterdam is almost out of sight. No religious symbols or Hebrew script identify its exterior. Visitors must be buzzed by a receptionist into a vestibule through double doors. The city’s main Jewish day-school is equally nondescript, surrounded by fences and cameras. Security was tightened after a terrorist attack on a Jewish museum in Brussels in 2014. Some Jews who wear skullcaps no longer visit areas with large Muslim populations.
Such snapshots say much about Jewish life in the West: thriving and exuberant in America; nervous and under attack in western Europe. The new continent has been a promised land; the old one a museum or graveyard. Some American Jews have warned their European brethren to leave. Thousands have gone to Israel, notably from France, where, along with murders and other outrages, graveyards have been desecrated.
Yet this oversimplifies matters. Most Jews in Europe do not cower. Nor have American Jews been as safe as they presumed. That became tragically apparent on October 27th, when a white-supremacist gunman, named as Robert Bowers, shot dead 11 Sabbath worshippers in Pittsburgh. “I never thought that the kind of terrorism that we have seen in France and in other places in Europe would be raising its ugly head in America,” says Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish group. And he thinks “it’s only the opening round.” Suddenly, it is American Jews who have started talking about whether, when and how to leave.
It is futile to try to assess the true extent of Jew-hatred from the deeds of a lone gunman. The Anti-Defamation League (adl), which fights bigotry, says there was a sharp rise last year in anti-Semitic incidents, such as vandalism of Jewish sites and harassment (including bomb threats). But the number of assaults on Jews was small and fell. Worldwide, violence against Jews has declined sharply since 2014, according to an annual study by Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Centre.
Beyond such violence, defining anti-Semitism is harder because it is so protean. Historically, notes Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s former chief rabbi, “Jews were hated because they were poor and because they were rich; because they were communists and because they were capitalists; because they kept to themselves and because they infiltrated everywhere; because they clung to ancient religious beliefs and because they were rootless cosmopolitans who believed nothing.” These days, overt Jew-hatred is comparatively rare in the West, largely because of its association with the Nazi Holocaust. Often it is disguised. Rants about “globalists” on the far-right and “Zionists” on the far-left can be euphemisms for “Jews”. Yet both words have straightforward meanings, too, and not all who use them are bigots.
Michal Bilewicz of the University of Warsaw outlines three categories of anti-Semitism. The “traditional” kind is based on Catholic teaching (since abandoned) that Jews killed Christ, and on medieval blood-libels (accusations that Jews killed children to mix their blood with Passover flatbread). The second, “modern”, sort is based on a belief in conspiracies by powerful Jews. The last kind, “secondary” anti-Semitism, holds that Jews abuse the history of the Holocaust. Others seek to categorise the miasma differently: eg, as racist, economic, cultural and religious; or explicit and coded; or soft and violent.
Many see a “new anti-Semitism” that developed after Israel’s victory in the six-day war of 1967. The Soviet Union and its vassals purged Jews on the grounds that they were Zionists and thus agents of America. This overlaps with Muslim Jew-hatred, which not only denounces Israel but also presents Jews as the enemies of Muslims since the time of the Prophet Muhammad. This form has proven the most murderous in recent decades. Global jihadists say they are fighting against “Jews and Crusaders”. In the West anti-Semitic acts by Muslim migrants tend to spike with rises in Israeli-Palestinian violence. Speaking at a protest against the war in Gaza in 2014, Appa, a Dutch-Moroccan rapper, blurred the line between politics and religion: “Fuck the Zionists! Fuck the Talmud!”
A wave of jihadist attacks against Jewish targets in Europe in 2012-15 resulted in 13 deaths in France, Belgium and Denmark. Increased security, and caution by many about revealing their Jewish identity, led to a drop in attacks on Jews. Attention shifted to anti-Semitism on the radical left. Britain’s Labour Party, the main opposition and political home of many Jews, has torn itself apart this year over which kind of criticism of Israel should be regarded as an attack on Jews. Jeremy Corbyn, its left-wing leader, agreed only grudgingly to accept that utterances repudiating Israel’s right to exist, or accusing it of behaving like the Nazis, were anti-Semitic.
Yet it is odd that right-wing anti-Semitism, obsessed with Jews at home, and the left-wing variety, focused on Jews in Israel, survive at all. The number of Jews in the world is quite small—about 6m apiece in Israel and America, and another 2.5m scattered elsewhere. Indeed, some talk of “anti-Semitism without Jews”.
The Pittsburgh murders were a stark reminder of the threat lurking on the far right, particularly among white supremacists who lump Jews in with blacks, Muslims and other minorities as objects of hatred. American far-right groups benefit from a greater degree of free speech than do European ones—and easy access to guns.
Binding the disparate dislikes is a belief in conspiracies—that Jews control society, the economy, the media or the world. “Once you start down the path of interpreting the world in terms of conspiracies, sooner or later you stumble into anti-Semitism,” says Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust, a British charity that helps protect Jewish institutions.
Perhaps the most enduring fantasy, that Jews are plotting to dominate the world and destroy civilisation, was popularised by the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, a tsarist forgery from 1903. That trope has been turbo-charged by social media, which can turn rumours into accepted facts, and spread fringe ideas.
A study by the adl of more than 4m anti-Semitic tweets last year found that a favourite theme is the demonisation of George Soros, a Hungarian-born Jewish financier and donor to liberal causes. This seems to have begun in Russia, home of the Protocols, and spread to Serbia, Macedonia, Turkey and his birthplace in Hungary. There, the populist government of Viktor Orban in 2017 plastered the financier’s face on posters with the slogan “Let’s not let Soros have the last laugh.” The hysteria reached Britain, where Mr Soros is vilified for his role in helping to push the pound out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992. One newspaper ran a sinister front page accusing him of “backing secret plot to thwart Brexit”.
Soon enough, anti-Soros vitriol was poured by right-wingers in America and by President Donald Trump himself. In Pittsburgh, some Jewish mourners say they are “pulsating with anger”—at Mr Trump even more than at the gunman. A defining moment, for many, came during clashes in Charlottesville last year between white nationalists, some of them chanting “Jews will not replace us!”, and counter-protesters. Mr Trump all but equated neo-Nazis with anti-racists by saying there were “very fine people on both sides”.
That was “a mistake”, says Rabbi Hier, who led a prayer at Mr Trump’s inauguration. The president divides families and Jewish congregations, admits the rabbi. “But it is hard to say he is anti-Jewish. Of all the presidents who promised to move the American embassy to West Jerusalem, he is the only one who has done it.”
Several populists in Europe have also sought to embrace Israel, whether to cleanse themselves from the stain of neo-Nazism or because they regard Israel as a strong ethno-nationalist state. In France Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front (now renamed National Rally), has moved to cleanse the party of the anti-Semitic image it had under her father, Jean-Marie. She has described the Holocaust as the “height of barbarity” and claims to be “the best shield” for Jews in France against “Islamic fundamentalism”. An ex-adviser even set up a group called the Union of French-Jewish Patriots. Yet her charm offensive has its limits. During the presidential campaign in 2017, she enraged French Jews by stating that “France was not responsible for the Vél’ d’Hiv”, the wartime roundup of French Jews and their deportation to the death camp at Auschwitz in 1942.
Israel, for its part, has been happy to repay populists’ love. When Hungarian Jews persuaded the Israeli ambassador in Budapest to denounce the anti-Soros posters as inherently anti-Semitic, he was countermanded by the Israeli government. The Israeli foreign ministry described Mr Soros as a figure who “continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments”, and funds organisations “that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself”. Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, seems to see Mr Orban as a soulmate who can ease European pressure on Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. For Keith Kahn-Harris of Birkbeck College in London, Mr Netanyahu’s dalliance with populists “is splitting diaspora Jews from Israel”.
The rising climate of hatred alarms many Jews. For the most part, they have benefited from the liberal order which populists threaten to disrupt. Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University in Georgia, the author of a forthcoming book on anti-Semitism, argues that Jews in America have enjoyed a “golden age”.
Freed from restrictions on where they could live, study and work, Jews are well integrated among the elites of Western countries. But Jew-hatred, however latent, has never been wholly vanquished. And, as Rabbi Sacks argues, “anti-Semitism is the world’s most reliable early warning sign of a major threat to freedom, humanity and the dignity of difference.” It is sometimes said that violence against the Jews does not stop with the Jews. In Pittsburgh, the trail of bloodshed has run the other way. Murderous hatred, which had already killed black worshippers elsewhere, has now reached the Jews. Who will be next?
Israel against the Jews
Jul. 7th, 2017 11:00 am
WHO is allowed to pray where at the Western Wall in Jerusalem? An answer to this fantastically vexed question was found last year, and a deal was struck. But last month the Israeli government decided to halt its implementation. This has opened an unusual rift between the Jewish state and the world’s largest Jewish community, in the United States.According to a “historic compromise” overseen by the government in January 2016, the main plaza in front of the Western Wall would remain under the administration of ultra-Orthodox rabbis. But non-Orthodox Jews would be allocated a separate section, currently an archaeological site, which would be upgraded at public expense.
But ultra-Orthodox parties in the coalition of Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, were up in arms. They regard progressive Jews as perverting Judaism. And with 13 seats out of his 66-member coalition (the Knesset has 120 members), they have enough leverage to reverse government policy.
According to the Pew Research Centre, most American Jews are affiliated with the two progressive streams of Judaism, with 35% identifying themselves as Reform and 18% Conservative. Only one in ten American Jews are Orthodox. By contrast in Israel, religious life is monopolised by Orthodox Judaism even though most Israelis are not actively affiliated with a particular religious stream: they define themselves as secular or vaguely “traditional”. Few of them are much interested in these issues and the 10% of Israeli Jews who are ultra-Orthodox wield disproportionate political power by voting for parties that are willing to bring down the government over matters of state and religion.
Israel presents itself both as the Jewish state and the only nation in the Middle East which allows members of all faiths freedom of worship at their holy sites. It is odd, therefore, that so many Jews are not allowed to pray according to their customs at the Western Wall. “Bibi is supposed to be the guy who knows American Jews best,” said an Israeli official involved in talks with the Jewish diaspora, of the MIT-educated prime minister. “He sure misread them this time.” Or just as likely, the man who has claimed to represent all the world’s Jews is more interested in his own political survival.
Ассимиляция
May. 18th, 2012 09:33 amЧем отличаются ассимилированные люди друг от друга?
Начнём с...? Конечно же с евреев!
Если человека называют в России или Украине - "жидом", а в Израиле или США - "русским", то это и есть самые настоящие ассимилированные евреи. При этом часто их называют "советскими евреями", "русскими евреями" или "украинскими евреями".
С евреями, как мы с вами видели сами, всё довольно просто. А вот с русскими и украинцами - это сложнее, хотя в России и Украине существуют такие понятия как "москаль", "кацап" и "хохол" - они всего лишь однозначно символизируют тоже самое, что и ярлык "жида", который навешивают на любого еврея. К тому же понятия "русский украинец" и "украинский русский" - не существует, а в США и Израиле все выходцы из бывшего СССР, не взирая на "пятую" графу, именуются "русскими" - только из-за своей русскоязычности...
Мораль сей басни такова: ассимилированные люди отличаются друг от друга - языком на котором они думают. Так говорить они могут, как например в Израиле, на идиш, иврите или английском, а думают они все - на русском, проявляя при этом культурно-языковые признаки, которые отличают их от аборигенов.
Начнём с...? Конечно же с евреев!
Если человека называют в России или Украине - "жидом", а в Израиле или США - "русским", то это и есть самые настоящие ассимилированные евреи. При этом часто их называют "советскими евреями", "русскими евреями" или "украинскими евреями".
С евреями, как мы с вами видели сами, всё довольно просто. А вот с русскими и украинцами - это сложнее, хотя в России и Украине существуют такие понятия как "москаль", "кацап" и "хохол" - они всего лишь однозначно символизируют тоже самое, что и ярлык "жида", который навешивают на любого еврея. К тому же понятия "русский украинец" и "украинский русский" - не существует, а в США и Израиле все выходцы из бывшего СССР, не взирая на "пятую" графу, именуются "русскими" - только из-за своей русскоязычности...
Мораль сей басни такова: ассимилированные люди отличаются друг от друга - языком на котором они думают. Так говорить они могут, как например в Израиле, на идиш, иврите или английском, а думают они все - на русском, проявляя при этом культурно-языковые признаки, которые отличают их от аборигенов.
Евтушенко и евреи
Mar. 23rd, 2012 03:12 pmВерните евреев!
К властям: «Проявите усилье,
Немедля, как можно скорее,
Верните евреев в Россию,
Верните России евреев!
Зовите, покуда не поздно,
На русском ли, иль на иврите.
Верните нам «жидо-масонов»
И всех «сионистов» верните.
Пусть даже они на Гаити
И сделались черными кожей.
«Космополитов» верните,
«Врачей-отравителей» тоже...
Верните ученых, поэтов,
Артистов, кудесников смеха.
И всем объясните при этом -
Отныне они не помеха.
Напротив, нам больше и не с кем
Россию тащить из болота.
Что им, с головой их еврейской,
На всех у нас хватит работы.
Когда же Россия воспрянет
С их помощью, станет всесильной,
Тогда сможем мы, как и ране,
Спасать от евреев Россию».
Евгений Евтушенко, 2011
Ответ «Евтушенко»
Еврей не вернется в Россию…
Евгений, спросите у власти,
Нужны ли России евреи?
У власти уже там все сласти,
Народ же стошнит от идеи.
Евреи ушли безвозвратно,
Судьбой по планете гонимы.
Так было уже многократно
И все еще необъяснимо.
Еврей не вернется в Россию,
Она была временным домом.
Ее, не дождавшись Мессии,
Он оставил народу другому.
А вот это жестокая шутка:
Еврей чернокожий в России.
От шутки становится жуткo:
Еврей, да еще черно-синий!
В Америке, Европе, Израиле
Устроен еврей, процветает.
Тоскует по России? Вряд ли…
Хоть и часто ее вспоминает
Ну а если еврей понаедет,
“Потянет”, проявит свой гений,
Россия погромом ответит?
И такое…не скажет Евгений.
Роман Сорока, 2011
З.Ы. Стихотворение «Верните евреев!» написал не Евг. Евтушенко, а поэт Исай Шпицер. Просто в интернете ходит сплетня, приписывающая авторство Евтушенко. Вот что говорит по этому поводу Эмиль Каменир: "Первоначально 01.09.2011(13:19) эти строки были опубликованы от другого имени, что неверно. Приношу И.Шпицеру и Е.Евтушенко свои извинения." А затем добавляет: "Дорогой Исай, прости, что приписал твои замечательные строки, абсолютно созвучные моим мыслям о евреях в России другому. Так загадывалось, что б этом скажет знаменитый русский, что я ухватился за письмо, даже не проверив авторство. Видно такие мысли не у меня одного, если стихи рассылают по имэйл. Хочу верить, что у этого стиха будет и песенное будущее."
К властям: «Проявите усилье,
Немедля, как можно скорее,
Верните евреев в Россию,
Верните России евреев!
Зовите, покуда не поздно,
На русском ли, иль на иврите.
Верните нам «жидо-масонов»
И всех «сионистов» верните.
Пусть даже они на Гаити
И сделались черными кожей.
«Космополитов» верните,
«Врачей-отравителей» тоже...
Верните ученых, поэтов,
Артистов, кудесников смеха.
И всем объясните при этом -
Отныне они не помеха.
Напротив, нам больше и не с кем
Россию тащить из болота.
Что им, с головой их еврейской,
На всех у нас хватит работы.
Когда же Россия воспрянет
С их помощью, станет всесильной,
Тогда сможем мы, как и ране,
Спасать от евреев Россию».
Евгений Евтушенко, 2011
Ответ «Евтушенко»
Еврей не вернется в Россию…
Евгений, спросите у власти,
Нужны ли России евреи?
У власти уже там все сласти,
Народ же стошнит от идеи.
Евреи ушли безвозвратно,
Судьбой по планете гонимы.
Так было уже многократно
И все еще необъяснимо.
Еврей не вернется в Россию,
Она была временным домом.
Ее, не дождавшись Мессии,
Он оставил народу другому.
А вот это жестокая шутка:
Еврей чернокожий в России.
От шутки становится жуткo:
Еврей, да еще черно-синий!
В Америке, Европе, Израиле
Устроен еврей, процветает.
Тоскует по России? Вряд ли…
Хоть и часто ее вспоминает
Ну а если еврей понаедет,
“Потянет”, проявит свой гений,
Россия погромом ответит?
И такое…не скажет Евгений.
Роман Сорока, 2011
З.Ы. Стихотворение «Верните евреев!» написал не Евг. Евтушенко, а поэт Исай Шпицер. Просто в интернете ходит сплетня, приписывающая авторство Евтушенко. Вот что говорит по этому поводу Эмиль Каменир: "Первоначально 01.09.2011(13:19) эти строки были опубликованы от другого имени, что неверно. Приношу И.Шпицеру и Е.Евтушенко свои извинения." А затем добавляет: "Дорогой Исай, прости, что приписал твои замечательные строки, абсолютно созвучные моим мыслям о евреях в России другому. Так загадывалось, что б этом скажет знаменитый русский, что я ухватился за письмо, даже не проверив авторство. Видно такие мысли не у меня одного, если стихи рассылают по имэйл. Хочу верить, что у этого стиха будет и песенное будущее."
Если в Иерусалиме нужно разобрать какое-то старое здание, для того, чтобы добраться за тем, что находится за ним, или для реставрации, то сначала каждый кирпичик подписывается (стена здания, номер кладки, номер кирпича в кладке), а затем заново собирается в первоначальной последовательности.
Рецепт еврейского чолнта
Apr. 7th, 2011 09:48 amКак-то раз Иван подошел к соседу: "Мойше, каждый раз, в субботу, когда я встаю - ты ложишься спать. Как можно ложиться спать в 11 утра?" Мойше вместо ответа пригласил его на утреннюю трапезу. Иван навернул неслабую тарелку чолнта, поблагодарил, и ушел домой. В воскресенье вечером: "Мойше, мне понятно, почему ты идешь спать в субботу в 11 утра, я только не пойму, как тебе удается встать в воскресенье утром!"
Выберем мясную кастрюлю побольше - лучше заполнить ее наполовину, чем потом судорожно искать, куда бы перелить неуместившийся чолнт. Эту кастрюлю надо поставить на газ, на самый большой. В кастрюлю наливаем растительное масло (не очень много - так, чтобы покрыть дно на несколько миллиметров). Пока масло греется (я сказал - греется, а не горит) - нарезаем одну большую луковицу кубиками размером один куб.см. (мерять не обязательно, а то масло сгорит). Этот лук надо забросить в кастрюлю, и пока он жарится - промыть мясо. Это может быть говядина (номер 4 или 8), индюшатина (горла или крылья) или курица (вся, кроме грудинки). Посчитайте количество по числу ртов (и не забудьте, что самый младший, как всегда, обязательно потребует добавку). Лук надо перемешивать. Иногда. До тех пор, пока он будет слегка поджаренным. Теперь сгребаем его в сторону, и на освободившееся пространство помещаем мясо (резать его не надо - само потом развалится). Пока мясо поджаривается - ставим чайник. Полный. Жарим мясо с разных сторон до появления румяной корочки. Чайник уже закипел. А сейчас главное - не пропустить момент. За тридцать секунд до того, как лук превратится в угли - наливаем воду из чайника. Мясо должно полностью утонуть. Пока все это варево кипит - почистите картошку (прикиньте, сколько Вам нужно). Когда Вы разберетесь с картошкой - вода в кастрюле приобретет темно-коричневый цвет. Не пугайтесь. Все идет, как надо. Попробуйте ее на вкус. а теперь понемногу, постоянно пробуя, добавьте соль и немного сахара. Пока не станет вкусно. Теперь можно заряжать туда картошку (если она слишком крупная - можно разрезать ее пополам - но делать это надо до того, как Вы положили ее в кастрюлю). Если надо - добавьте воду из чайника, чтобы все было покрыто. Когда закипит - уменьшите огонь и накройте крышкой (подберите примерно по размеру кастрюли). Перемешивать не надо.
Выберем мясную кастрюлю побольше - лучше заполнить ее наполовину, чем потом судорожно искать, куда бы перелить неуместившийся чолнт. Эту кастрюлю надо поставить на газ, на самый большой. В кастрюлю наливаем растительное масло (не очень много - так, чтобы покрыть дно на несколько миллиметров). Пока масло греется (я сказал - греется, а не горит) - нарезаем одну большую луковицу кубиками размером один куб.см. (мерять не обязательно, а то масло сгорит). Этот лук надо забросить в кастрюлю, и пока он жарится - промыть мясо. Это может быть говядина (номер 4 или 8), индюшатина (горла или крылья) или курица (вся, кроме грудинки). Посчитайте количество по числу ртов (и не забудьте, что самый младший, как всегда, обязательно потребует добавку). Лук надо перемешивать. Иногда. До тех пор, пока он будет слегка поджаренным. Теперь сгребаем его в сторону, и на освободившееся пространство помещаем мясо (резать его не надо - само потом развалится). Пока мясо поджаривается - ставим чайник. Полный. Жарим мясо с разных сторон до появления румяной корочки. Чайник уже закипел. А сейчас главное - не пропустить момент. За тридцать секунд до того, как лук превратится в угли - наливаем воду из чайника. Мясо должно полностью утонуть. Пока все это варево кипит - почистите картошку (прикиньте, сколько Вам нужно). Когда Вы разберетесь с картошкой - вода в кастрюле приобретет темно-коричневый цвет. Не пугайтесь. Все идет, как надо. Попробуйте ее на вкус. а теперь понемногу, постоянно пробуя, добавьте соль и немного сахара. Пока не станет вкусно. Теперь можно заряжать туда картошку (если она слишком крупная - можно разрезать ее пополам - но делать это надо до того, как Вы положили ее в кастрюлю). Если надо - добавьте воду из чайника, чтобы все было покрыто. Когда закипит - уменьшите огонь и накройте крышкой (подберите примерно по размеру кастрюли). Перемешивать не надо.
Основное мы сделали. Теперь - добавки.
Самая главная добавка - кишкэ. Те, кто не хочет иметь себе всяких неприятностей на свою голову - может забросить в чолнт кишкэ, купленную в готовом виде (есть много разных видов, по-моему, самая удачная - "кишкэ Рубинфельд" в синей коробке). Нужно только не забыть вытащить ее из упаковки. Из целофана вытаскивать не надо, просто проделать несколько дырок зубочисткой. Как вариант - сойдет малауах или джахнун (их закладывают без целофана). Примечание: малауах или джахнун - йеменские лепешки. Ну, а тот, кто решился приготовить кишкэ самостоятельно - делает это так: в глубокую одноразовую тарелку положите мелкомелко нарезанный лук (примерно две ст. ложки), брызните сверху немного растительного масла, добавьте пару ложек коричневой воды из чолнта (постарайтесь зачерпнуть побольше плавающего лука), чуть-чуть соли, щепотку אבקת אפיה (baking powder) и засыпьте все это мукой. Когда перемешаете, консистенция должна напоминать оконную замазку. Теперь сложите это в кулек для выпечки (простой целлофановый пакет не подойдет), завяжите узлом, проделайте несколько дырок зубочисткой и определите в кастрюлю, желательно поглубже под водой.
Можно, как опция, сделать еще добавки: фасоль, рис или гречку. Фасоль перед этим нужно на ночь замочить в воде, а рис - перебрать. Еще лучше использовать уже сваренный позавчера женой. Опять же - сложите вашу добавку в кулек, добавьте воды из чолнта, немного масла и соли, а потом - узел, дырки - и в кастрюлю.
Все, что Вы накидали в кастрюлю, должно кипеть на маленьком огне до тех пор, пока не придет время ставить плату (блэх). Установите кастрюлю на плате так, чтобы вода в чолнте была на грани легкого кипения. Проверьте герметичность крышки. Если крышка, которую Вы нашли - выступает за пределы кастрюли или проваливается внутрь - поищите другую, а эту - помойте и положите, где взяли.
Через 18 часов, дом будет наполнен ароматом Вашего чолнта, а домашние изойдут слюной. Подавать все ингредиенты (включая подливу) нужно на отдельных тарелках, только не забудьте вынуть рис и кишкэ из целлофана.
Если сразу после чолнта Вас непреодолимо потянет спать - знайте, что Ваш чолнт удался.
Парад Гордости
Jun. 21st, 2007 03:45 pmПроведение прошедшего сегодня в Иерусалиме шествия представителей сексуальных меньшинств охраняли крупные силы полиции. Несмотря на это, менее чем за час до начала Парада гордости в Иерусалиме и его окрестностях были совершены умышленные поджоги.
На Храмовой горе был задержан религиозный еврей, который просил разрешить ему пройти к мусульманскому комплексу, чтобы принять там ислам. По его словам, он решил перейти в мусульманскую веру, разочаровавшись в государстве, где возможно проведение Парада гордости.
На Храмовой горе был задержан религиозный еврей, который просил разрешить ему пройти к мусульманскому комплексу, чтобы принять там ислам. По его словам, он решил перейти в мусульманскую веру, разочаровавшись в государстве, где возможно проведение Парада гордости.
