Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
Friday, 9 April 2010
The Anat Kam affair
RELEASE ANAT KAM NOW!
On December 4, 2008 Haaretz journalist Uri Blau published a story called called "Targeted Assassinations – a License to kill", in which he revealed operational discussions in which the fate of wanted men and innocent people was decided, in apparent disregard of the High Court of Justice decision, which set strict criteria regarding the policy of assassinations in the West Bank. Two Jihad militants were assissinated by the IDF, under responsibility of then Head of Central Command, Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh.
Uri Blau received the information from journalist Anat Kam, who was at the time completing her mandatory military service as a clerk in Naveh's office. Blau's article was screened by the Israeli security services and he got permission to publish it.
In December 2009, Anat Kam was accused of treason and placed under house arrest. At the same time Uri Blau was transferred to Asia, and in April 2010 Haaretz moved him to London. Anat Kam was still under house arrest in Israel. Haaretz's editor in chief, Dov Alfon, said Uri Blau would stay in London "as long as necessary".
A court-imposed gag order prohibited officials in Israel or Israeli media from releasing details of the affair. The attempt by Israel to suppress the story was first resisted by the British newspaper Independent, as well as Associated Press (AP), soon to followed by the rest of the free world, including blogs, newspapers and TV stations. However, no Israeli newspaper, or Israel-based foreign journalist, was allowed to even mention the affair. In the blogosphere Richard Silverstein's Tikun Olam, among others, played (and still plays) an important role in publishing the facts and the background of the Anat Kam affair.
Anat Kam is not allowed to reveil any details. Uri Blau fled to London because he feared that he might face charges in Israel in connection with his 2008 investigation. The gag order was finally lifted under pressure of many publications (blogs and newspapers alike), on April 8, 2010.
"I do not believe that a citizen can be arrested and tried for suspected security offences right under our noses without anyone knowing anything about it," wrote former Haaretz editor Hanoch Marmari.
"Trials do not take place here in darkened dungeons, nor do we have show trials behind glass or chicken wire. I have no doubt that such a strange, terrible and baseless scenario cannot take place in such a sophisticated democracy as our own."
Anat Kam is not allowed to speak about the affair, but on April 9, 2010, Uri Blau, still hiding in London, was able to publish his story in Haaretz. The same day Haaretz published the article "Harrass the IDF, not alleged whistleblower Anat Kam".
There is something very dodgy about this affair. First of all, Anat Kam is accused of espionage, and she is under house arrest. Never before in the history of Israel a spy suspect was put under house arrest -- they all were jailed. Second, the copied documents were not used to spy. They were used to write an article, and the article was published after the content was screened by the military censor. Never has the safety of the State of Israel been in danger because of this affair, and if it was, the military censor is to blame and not Anat Kam or Uri Blau.
Anat Kam blew the whistle, that's all she did, and now she has to pay for it, while the military commanders who ordered the assassinations, against the order of the High Court, are still walking free.
There's only one thing the Israeli government can do: immediately drop the charges against Anat Kam and Uri Blau, and start a serious investigation into the decisions of the military leadership throughout this affair, as well into the decisions that motivated Anat Kam to take action and hand the proof of the military crimes to Uri Blau.
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
- Woody Allen
This book isn't about religious Jewishness, it's about the Jewishness of ethnic Jews. It is a well known fact that life for Jews throughout the Jewish history hasn't exactly been a ball; many of them found it easier to hide their Jewishness from the outside world. Many were forced to convert to Christianity, Islam or atheism or would have been expelled from the countries they had lived in for centuries, but - more or less - secretly kept observing the Jewish traditions and laws within the privacy of the family.
These Jews, and their descendants, are called "crypto-Jews", or "Marranos", which literally translates to "pigs" in Old Spanish. Most of these convertions took place centuries ago and many descendants of these Jews may not be aware of their Jewishness.
So who is a Jew? According to an old joke there are two kinds of people: those who devide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't. The Jews are in the former category and their history plays a huge role in that. Many Jews see the world in bipolar terms - Jews versus gentiles, "us" versus "them". Can "them" ever become "us"? Can gentiles become Jews? That is a difficicult question. Reform Jews argue that Judaism is a religion, Bundists argue that it is peoplehood and Zionists argue that it is nationality. An Orthodox rabbi might tell you that any person born out of a Jewish mother is a Jew. The Nazis however had different ideas about that.
Some people want to convert to Judaism and become Jews. That ain't easy. If you find a Rabbi that works in conversions, he's not going to make it easy for you, because Jewish Law says he must continue to dissuade you, and he will do so by various means. He may push you off a few times, he may not show up for scheduled meetings; there's no telling what he will do to test your sincerity and perseverance.
And although converts should be accepted as if they were born Jews, they will still find it difficult to be recognised by born Jews, and sometimes they will meet downright discrimination. If you are converted and you want to marry a Jew, the parents may question your birthright and call the whole thing off.
Before the rabbis came and invented the matrilineal principle, the offspring of Jewish fathers were deemed Jews and the offspring of gentile fathers were deemed gentiles. And in our age the traditional rabbinic matrilineal principles (and other orthodox rabbinic laws) are less and less supported by a growing part of the Jewish community, so in ever-increasing Jewish circles the offspring of Jewish fathers and gentile mothers are deemed Jews. Nowadays Liberal Jewish communities are more readily recognising as Jewish without conversion the child of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, and we can clearly see Liberal and Progressive Judaism's readiness to celebrate homosexual partnerships in synagogues with more of the traditional symbolism associated with Jewish weddings. In many cases a male doesn't even have to be circumcised to be recognised as a Jew.
I discovered my Jewishness in school. I always felt drawn to a certain "type" of kids, I recognised familiarity in their faces and behaviour. When I was 12 years old I found out that all of them had one thing in common: they were Jews. (Many Jews I met later in my life told me a similar story.)
Curious about my own roots, I asked my grandmother about my ancestors; she confirmed that she herself was from a Jewish family (De Rozario Garça), and that my grandfather was also from a Jewish family (Pinto). But all this was a secret and she wasn't supposed to tell me about it.
About 18 months later, I discovered that my mother's family (Gershon) was Jewish too. So I am a Sephardi Jew on my father's side and an Ashkenazi Jew on my mother's side. Jewish enough to marry a Cohen!
When I was 15 years old I worked in a store owned by a Jewish family, which wasn't completely accidental because the son of the owner, David, was a good friend of mine. This was in 1967 and in May that year the owner of the store turned on the radio every hour, to find out what was going on in Israel. David and I secretly decided to join the International Volunteers (Machal Nachal), Jewish people from all over the world, notably the U.S. and Western Europe, who wanted to help Israel to defend itself against the military forces of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria.
David was killed in the Six Day War, in the Sinai Desert; I returned home. In remembrance of David, I had the Star of David tattood on my arm.
In my life I have met many ethnic Jewish people who want to know what it's like to be a Jew, and want to know more about their Jewishness. And because I don't want to repeat myself too often, I want to be able to say, "Hey, buy my book!"
Antonio Akiva Hernandez, a crypto-Jew, was born in Chicago and studied for the Catholic priesthood in his youth. At present, he is a Judaeo-Buddhist priest and anthropologist. He writes, "On the street, old Jewish people who do not know me somehow recognize me immediately as kindred and it is this recognition I most relish. All the people who come from far and wide, who lost everything in the Holocaust, some who even remember the pogroms recognize me! World War II veterans are always easy for me to spot, because they are the first to ask me if I am Jewish. Jews look at me once and don't ask."
It's that recognition that makes you aware of the fact that you belong to the ethnic group of Jews. As a consequence I had Jewish girlfriends and I have a Jewish partner.
Coming out (of the closet) as a Jew is something you have to think about, if you haven't already done so. If you found out about your Jewishness from other sources than your parents, your mom and dad might be shocked if you told them. My parents went into full denial when I told them, and when it finally hit them that it was true, they said, "Oh Nate, it's all such a long time ago! Anyway, we're not religious."
Finally they got used to the idea, but casually mentioning "Our son is an ethnic Jew" was as far as they could go.
But imagine you want to come out of the closet: how do you tell your wife, your children, your parents-in-law, your collegue-priests at the Catholic church? And do you really have to be circumcised?
To be serious for a change, once people know you are a Jew, your life changes. They expect you to have an I.Q. of at least 152, and they hold you responsible for everything the Jewish people have done for the last 4,000 years, so you need to know your shit, and that's one of the reasons I've written this book.
In response to an anti-Semitic comment in the British parliament, the famous Benjamin Disraeli memorably defended his Jewishness with the statement, "Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the Right Honourable Gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the Temple of Solomon."
Although he was probably right, nowadays (being a Jew) you can't say things like that anymore. Times have changed. The phrase "brutal savages" would be explained as discrimination of a person with a different culture, and "unknown island" would say a lot about your knowledge of geography. So, unless you want to end up in court, don't use Disraeli's words, not even when you're a Prime Minister.
By the way, there's no proof whatsoever that Disraeli's ancestors where priests. In his pedigree there are no links to the Cohens, not even to the Levi's, and for all we know his ancestors could have been merchants or taylors. Bernard Glassman describes Disraeli as "The Fabricated Jew in Myth and Memory", and one might say that Disraeli has used his "exotic" Jewishness as a spiritual hobby, something that made him different and interesting, while he was in the position to afford such deviant roots.
In this book I won't go deep into the Jewish religion. I'm an atheist, a Jewish atheist, and not particularly interested in religions. But I will go into the Jewish culture, the Jewish history and other aspects of (secular) Jewishness, for example, politics. To be honest, with so many - a significant majority - of right wing, Orthodox Jews in Israel, I wouldn't want to live there if they paid me for it. (However... Hey guys, it's negotionable!)
I'm not an Israeli citizen, so I'm not allowed to vote in Israel, but if I could I wouldn't have voted for this conservative government. (I hate it when people blame me for the actions of a government I didn't elect.) Writing about Israeli politics cannot be done without addressing the Palestinian situation, so I will have a go at that too.
Although I do not support the politics of the present right-wing Revisionist-Zionist Israeli government, I do support Israel's right to exist, and I will explain why. I am not a religious man and I didn't have any religious education. I don't believe in the Jewish people's Biblical Inheritance of the Land of Israel (the "Promised Land") and don't even start with me about the "Chosen People", because it's disgusting. I think "Birthright", a word which implies that ethnic Jews have the exclusive rights to own the Holy Land and to reside in it, is downright discrimination.
But I have studied the history of Israel, I have noticed that Jews have - more or less - always lived in the Land of Israel (ha-Yishuv ha-Yashan), I saw the development of the State of Israel and I saw generations of Jews being born there and growing up there. In my opinion there is no way back. The State of Israel is a fact and the citizens of Israel have the right to exist in that country.
Expanding the country and denying the Palestinians the right of having their Palestinian State in the West-Bank and the Gaza Strip is quite another matter. So is refusing to pay for the land that was stolen from the Palestinians.
On the one hand I'm extremely proud of my Jewishness, but on the other hand I feel deeply ashamed of the things Jews have done and still do. But I'm sure the Germans have similar emotions.
These are difficult times. Before you know it you're subject to Sharia, or people call you a "left-wing traitor" or a "self-hating Jew". Or they drag you into court. Therefore I make the following statement: "Any allegations in this book were based only on my intuition and personal impressions."
However, a Jewish fatwah might get me some publicity...
Nathan Pinto,
Nice, France, 2010
- About Jewishness (by Nathan Pinto)
- Introduction
- Ethnic Groups
- Culture
- Jewish Culture, Humour, Cuisine and Religions
- Jewish Religion
- Jewish Culture, Humour, Cuisine and Religions
- History and Migration
- My Family History
- The Jewish Diaspora
- Ancient Jewish History
- Roman Rule
- Middle Ages
- Early Modern Period
- 19th Century
- 20th Century
- 21st Century
- PTSD
- The Military Volunteers - A Forgotten Story
- Jewish migration
- Jews in Great Britain
- Jews in Ireland
- Jews in Holland & Antwerp
- Amsterdam
- Jews in Scandinavia
- Jews in France
- Jews in Italy
- Jews in Iberia
- Jews in Germany
- Jews in Poland
- Jews in Czechia & Slovakia
- Jews in Hungary
- Jews in Yugoslavia
- Jews in Romania
- Jews in Russia
- Jews in Greece
- Jews in Turkey
- Jews in Lebanon
- Jews in Syria & Jordan
- Jews in Iran & Iraq
- Jews in Egypt
- Jews in Mahreb
- Jews in South Africa
- Jews in America
- Right to Exist
- The Right To Exist
- Semites
- Anti-Semites
- Zionism
- Anti-Zionism
- Israel
- Israeli Politics
- Israeli Military
- Secret Services
- Road Map for Peace
- Peace
- Letter from Levi
- Our Love is Blind
- Addendum
