The ideological roots of media bias against Israel

by Matti Friedman for FathmJournal.org

On 26 January 2015 the former AP reporter Matti Friedman delivered the keynote speech at BICOM’s annual dinner in London. Expanding on a widely-noted argument first set out in Tablet and The Atlantic, Friedman spoke about how the media dissect and magnify Israel’s flaws while purposely erasing those of its enemies. He spoke about a fashionable and extravagant disgust for Israel among many in the West, and the rise of a ‘cult of the Occupation’ which positions Jewish arrogance and perfidy at the heart of all the problems of the Middle East.

One night several years ago, I came out of Bethlehem after a reporting assignment and crossed through the Israeli military checkpoint between that city and its neighbour, Jerusalem, where I live. With me were perhaps a dozen Palestinian men, mostly in their 30s – my age. No soldiers were visible at the entrance to the checkpoint, a precaution against suicide bombers. We saw only steel and concrete. I followed the other men through a metal detector into a stark corridor and followed instructions barked from a loudspeaker – ‘Remove your belt!’ ‘Lift up your shirt!’ The voice belonged to a soldier watching us on a closed-circuit camera. Exiting the checkpoint, adjusting my belt and clothing with the others, I felt like a being less than entirely human and understood, not for the first time, how a feeling like that would provoke someone to violence.

Consumers of news will recognise this scene as belonging to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which keeps the 2.5 million Palestinians in that territory under military rule, and has since 1967. The facts of this situation aren’t much in question. This should be an issue of concern to Israelis, whose democracy, military, and society are corroded by the inequality in the West Bank. This, too, isn’t much in question.

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‘Yoetzet’ or rabbi?

Harry Maryles, Opinion, in The Times of Israel

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is an Modern Orthodox Rabbi who does not compromise his principles. He showed his mettle when at age 23 was approached by New York’s Lincoln Square Synagogue (LSS) to serve as their spiritual leader. LSS was a Conservative Shul and did not have a Mechitza at the time. His condition was that they install a Mechitza and the Shul become Orthodox. They agreed and the Shul has been Orthodox since

Rabbi Riskin has many other accomplishments – including being in the forefront of the movement to free soviet Jewry in the 60s and 70s. An ardent Religious Zionist, he made Aliya in 1982 and settled in the city of Efrat where he serves with distinction as Chief Rabbi to this day.  He prides himself as a student of Rav Joseph Dov Solovietchik who gave him Semicha.

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The Devil Is in the (Jewish) Details

by Philip Jenkins, The Anxious Bench, on patheos.com

The Devil’s Progress

I remarked that Satan is difficult to trace in the canonical Old Testament, but that he becomes prominent in later centuries, in the so-called Inter-Testamental period (a phrase I hate, but let that pass).

Moving the diabolical story forward to 200BC, we are clearly entering a different world, and the volume of material is impressive. Probably in the late third century, the Book of the Watchers (now part of 1 Enoch) describes the evil angels who descended to earth to mate with human women, and here we find such later infamous names as Azazel. These are clearly associated with the coming of evil to the earth, a curse cured only by the Great Flood. Also in the late third century, the Book of Tobit features the evil and destructive angel Asmodeus, who was defeated by one of God’s own archangels, Raphael.

A few decades later, the Enochian mythology also appears in the Book of Jubilees, where Mastema (Hostility) fills a role very close to that of the later Satan. Mastema, in fact, is a transitional figure between the divine servant found in Job and the cosmic adversary of New Testament times. I quote the summary of R. H. Charles:

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What France Stands to Lose If Its Jews Flee

The anti-Semitic derangement

By Jeff Jacoby for The Boston Globe

EVEN BEFORE last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris, the French prime minister was concerned about the continued viability of Jewish life in France. In an interview with The Atlantic prior to the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket massacres, Manuel Valls made a grim prediction:

“If 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure.”

His misgivings were far from groundless. An exodus of French Jews is already underway and accelerating rapidly. In 2012, there were just over 1,900 immigrants to Israel from France. The following year nearly 3,400 French Jews emigrated; in 2014 approximately 7,000 left. For the first time ever, France heads the list of countries of origin for immigrants to Israel, and the ministry of immigration absorption expects another 10,000 French Jews to arrive in 2015.

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