An Open and Wide Tent

For years now, Israel has been under attack by the anti-Semitic BDS movement, their affiliate organizations, their supporters in the Palestinian Authority, and unfortunately their Jewish and Israeli radical left-wing supporters (not to mention those who pretend they are Jewish for the effect). The calls have been to boycott Israeli books, to boycott Israeli academic institutions, to boycott products from the settlements (even those whose companies support hundred and thousands of Arab families), to boycott Israeli investments, and even to boycott companies doing business with Israel.

Israel and the Jews have a terrible habit of not reacting or responding to these attacks. The underlying reasons stem from trying to not rock the boat, hoping the problem will go away, fear, indecision, confused ethics, and often no idea how to even respond – to name just a few explanations

But much of the Jewish people still have an instinctual community self-defense mechanism. They recognize when something has gone too far, when something has crossed the line between being within the tent or without, when an attack has reached a level where if it isn’t responded to it will expand to a level beyond reversal.

The Scottish Whisky Counter-boycott initiated by the Muqata was one such example. That Scottish boycott of Israel was expanding, driven by anti-Semitism, and quite probably part of a larger, more organized attack.

The response to the Scottish boycott among Jewish laymen (though not all Orthodox Jewish leadership I'm embarrassed to say) indicated that they internally felt and understood the threat, and in this case there was a clear action that could be taken in response. And as a result, the Scottish boycott, while not killed, has at least been contained and perhaps even blocked from future expansion.


Boycotts are a tricky thing. The Left loves to call for them against Israel, I would even say that some of our radical Leftists in Israel are the standard-bearers for some of those calls to boycott, but sometimes they bite back and you find yourself on the receiving end.

The Jerusalem Post made a business decision when they decided that keeping Larry Derfner on staff was hurting their bottom line rather than helping it (or even keeping it neutral). While unpopular for a while among certain circles, his expressed opinions weren’t far enough along, until now, to “provoke” a wholesale instinctual community self-defense reaction.

This time, Jerusalem Post subscribers felt that Derfner had stepped outside the very open and wide tent that is within acceptable Jewish opinion and debate, going to a place many Jerusalem Post’s subscriber’s apparently consider as being on the enemy’s side.


I’m not going to discuss which part caused this community response, his statement that he believed that Palestinian terror is “justified”, or the inherent disclosure of his internal narrative where he sees Israel as so evil that it actually led him to this incredible conclusion.

Personally, I see nothing surprising about his statements. It’s clear that this has been his belief for a while. But I would assume that expressing it so openly – despite whatever caveats and stipulations he tried to wrap around it “provoked” many to instinctually respond and demand he be placed outside the camp.

But this whole story raises and creates a number of interesting questions.

One might ask, where are the limits of free speech? But then, no one has actually taken Derfner’s free speech away. He has merely been removed from standing up on someone else’s private soapbox.

One might ask, how far is outside the camp? And that is an interesting question, as Derfner wrote nothing different than what’s regularly written in Haaretz. Though admittedly, most of Haaretz readers outside of Israel don’t identify with the mainstream Israeli narrative (you know what I’m trying to say here) and their readership in Israel is relatively fringe compared to the mainstream Israeli papers (I believe that even the Jerusalem Post prints more copies of their paper than Haaretz). So his views (and Haaretz's) place him (and them) at the same distance as Neturei Karta in so many similar ways.

One might ask, why are some on the radical Left so upset? After all, some of them are the same exact people that support (and introduce) some of these calls to boycott Israel and/or the settlements. Isn’t this how the game works? Or is it only good when it’s going one way? And furthermore, this wasn’t an organized attack like what one sees around the BDS movement and friends, but a natural grass-roots response by the people.


I will leave you with this thought. Boycotts like these are a dangerous game. Yes, this time it was a Leftist who expressed solidarity (or at least understanding) with terrorists and mass murderers, and quite possibly broke various Israeli laws in the process – not that the system will ever investigate him.

But perhaps there is a lesson here.

Perhaps the radical Left in Israel should stop supporting, aiding and demanding boycotts of any parts of Israel or the Jewish people (including calls for no religious Jews in Yafo, for instance). It should obvious to them now that it’s not enjoyable to be on the receiving end of these boycotts, and apparently, when the good Jewish people manage to stand together in solidarity, it’s not on the side of the radical Left.

So how about we call a truce (and not the Gazan version of a cease fire). Stop aiding and abetting in any way, manner, and form the various boycotts and attacks against Israel and your fellow Jews, and perhaps the majority of Jews will see to invite you back into their open and wide tent.


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Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

Which Newspaper is Lying?

Clearly, both of these utterly opposite stories cannot be true. Either the Jerusalem Post or Haaretz is completely misrepresenting and inverting what Kitty Schenker (wife of Hadassah-University Medical Center obstetrician and gynecologist Prof. Joseph Schenker ) said about Nobel Prize winner Dr. Robert Edwards.

Jerusalem Post, today:

How Nobel laureate went from Israel opponent to admirer

Nobel Prize in Medicine winner Dr. Robert Edwards’s antipathy for the Jews of Palestine dissolved into great admiration for the Jewish state in 1989, thanks to a two-hour car tour with Kitty Schenker, the wife of Hadassah-University Medical Center obstetrician and gynecologist Prof. Joseph Schenker, who had invited him to a Jerusalem conference on in-vitro fertilization.
...
"From then on, he had changed views of Israel," Schenker recalled.

Haaretz, today:

Nobel-winning IVF pioneer has little love for his No. 1 consumer - Israel

"In 1946, he began his service at the Tzrifin army base [near present-day Rishon Letzion], where he belonged to a special unit," said Professor Joseph Shenkar, an associate of Edwards and formerly the director of obstetrics and gynecology at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem.

"During a retaliatory operation carried out by the Etzel underground, five officers from his unit were kidnapped and executed near Netanya. Since then, he has not expressed a fondness for the Zionist homeland, and his attitude toward Israel became chilly."

Lying or intentionally misrepresenting Israel? I'd put my money on Haaretz.

hat-tip: Lurker

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Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

CSI Israel

A guest post by Lurker:
From today's Jerusalem Post:

A haredi man [was] found dead with one hand cuffed in an empty building in Beit Dagan last Friday...
...
...police say an autopsy revealed no signs of foul play.... "No evidence of criminal wrongdoing was found", [said a police spokeseman].

Once again now: The dead body was found handcuffed in an empty building. But according to the Israel Police, there is "no evidence of criminal wrongdoing".

Anyone besides me see something wrong with this picture?

Note: Given the subterranean editorial standards at the Jerusalem Post, I realize that the idiots here might possibly be the JPost staff, rather than (or in addition to) the police...


Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

Journalistic standards at the Jerusalem Post

Take a look at the article on Tu B'Av (which is today) in Wikipedia.

Then take a look at this article by Yonatan Sredni (well, not really) in today's Jerusalem Post. [Cached version available here.] (The identical article also appears here on Arutz-7.)

Lazy kids in elementary school sometimes get caught doing this sort of thing on their homework, but one might have expected somewhat higher ethical standards from a professional newspaper. Apparently, that would have been expecting too much...

The funniest part of all: In the byline, Sredni is billed as having "an MA in creative writing from Bar-Ilan University". That's rich.


UPDATE: In case you thought this might have been nothing more than a momentary lapse of editorial professionalism by the Jerusalem Post: A couple minutes of googling shows that the Post — and Arutz-7 — have been publishing articles that Sredni has plagiarized from Wikipedia for some time now. A few examples:

On Lag B'Omer:

• Wikipedia article
• Jerusalem Post article

On Shavuot:

• Wikipedia article
• Jerusalem Post article
• Arutz-7 article

On Yom Yerushalayim:

• Wikipedia article
• Jerusalem Post article
• Arutz-7 article

On the 17th of Tammuz:

• Wikipedia article
• Arutz-7 article

A pretty sad commentary on the editorial standards of the the Post and Arutz-7.


UPDATE: Not long after I wrote this post, the JPost took down Yonatan Sredni's Tu B'Av article. You can see a cached version of it here, however. The other plagiarized articles that I listed are still up (as of this writing.)

Arutz-7, meanwhile, has not taken down any of the plagiarized articles. Furthermore, they blocked publication of the comments I posted pointing out that the articles were plagiarized.


UPDATE: I was asked (quite legitimately) by a commenter if we can be certain that Sredni indeed plagiarized, since it is theoretically possible that he authored the Wikipedia articles in question. The first answer is that I ruled this out by checking the history pages for the Wikipedia articles, and saw that the various sections in question were authored by different users.

But if there remained any doubt, it was removed after a reader wrote a talkback on Sredni's Tu B'Av article, pointing out that much of the text was lifted directly from Wikipedia. Sredni replied to this in a talkback of his own, openly admitting that he copied from Wikipedia -- and arguing that this was actually OK, since he wrote the remainder of his article all by himself. (Yes, really. Follow the links to see for yourself.)


UPDATE: An additional note: As noted above, the Jerusalem Post has taken down Sredni's most recent copy-and-paste job (the Tu B'Av article). Amazingly, however, they have allowed all his other plagiarized articles (see the list above for a bunch that I found) to remain up on their website, unmodified. There can hardly be a louder confirmation than this of the Post's lack of editorial professionalism — and its lack of shame.

Even worse is Arutz-7. They have not removed the Tu B'Av article, or any of the others. They are fully aware of the fact that those articles are plagiarized — because I posted two comments saying so, in which I provided the links to the Wikipedia articles that Sredni copied from. Their reaction to this was not to remove any of the plagiarized articles (even the current one), nor was it to modify them with appropriate statements of attribution. Instead, they chose to respond to my comments by censoring them, so that no one should see them.

Shame on Arutz-7, and shame on the Jerusalem Post.


Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

JPost Discovers "The Muqata" and "Israel Matzav"

DovBear's not the only one who gets recognized.

The JPost had a nice write up about "The Muqata" and "Israel Matzav."


hat-tip: Holy City Prayer, our kids' dentist, and the Simpsons.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

JPost acknowledges, defends censorship

Guest post by Lurker:

To David Horovitz [Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief]:

I am disappointed that you have chosen not to respond to my query below, regarding the Jerusalem Post's censorship of Edwin Bennatan's blog article.

Today, I found a new notice* posted on this same blog, which surprisingly acknowledged that "the Jerusalem Post found nothing improper in Mr. Bennatan's article itself". In spite of this, the notice says, the article "was removed from this site last week in resolution of a legal dispute concerning 'talkback' comments posted in response to his article".

If there were indeed defamatory or libelous talkback comments, then I can certainly understand why the Post would remove them. I can even understand why the Post might pay Mr. Freedman damages for libel. But what legitimate explanation can there possibly be for removing the article itself, which, according to Post's own statement, contained "nothing improper"?

It is painfully clear what happened here: Mr. Freedman obviously threatened legal action, and blackmailed the Post. Removal of the offending talkbacks along with an apology was not enough for him, and neither was an offer of a cash payment. No, Freedman wanted more, didn't he? He wanted the Post to censor an article that contained embarrassing criticism of his political opinions. And the Post cravenly complied.

The Post's capitulation to extortion raises serious questions about your paper's commitment to fundamental journalistic ethics: If a little-known two-bit extremist blogger is somehow capable of forcing the Post to completely censor an opinion piece that politely criticizes his opinions, then who is to say that powerful political figures cannot – and do not – force the Post to do the same thing, or worse? What reason is there to assume that the Post is not refraining from publication of criticism, or embarrassing information, regarding individuals far more important and powerful than Seth Freedman – people who might blackmail the Post into hiding things they don’t want the public to see, just as Freedman has?

If you have a legitimate explanation for your paper’s behavior in this matter, I’d certainly be interesting in hearing it.

In a related matter, I ask you once again: To which "charity", exactly, has the Jerusalem Post contributed money at Mr. Freedman's behest?

Want to let the Post know what you think, too? Send an e-mail to David Horovitz and/or their blog administrator.

UPDATE: This morning, the notice was at the top of this page. But apparently, the Post had second thoughts, and removed the notice a few hours later. However, they seem to have forgotten to remove it from this other page containing the same blog article. I changed the link above to use the page that still contains the notice. And I've saved a copy, of course, in case the Post removes the notice from the second page as well.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

Censorship in the Jerusalem Post

Guest post by Lurker:

Thanks to JoeSettler for bringing to our attention the Jerusalem Post's recent outrageous act of censorship. I sent the following letter tonight to the Post's editor-in-chief, David Horovitz:

To David Horovitz:

Why has the Jerusalem Post censored this blog article by Edwin Bennatan? (The link is a snapshot from Google's cache.)

The entire article has disappeared, and has been replaced with this apology.

I understand from the apology that there were some user comments to the article that were deemed “defamatory, threatening, and inappropriate”, and I can certainly understand why the Post would delete such a comment.

But why was the article itself taken down? Did it contain something that you find to be “defamatory, threatening, and inappropriate”? If so, then what was it, exactly? And if it did not contain anything “defamatory, threatening, and inappropriate”, then why has it been deleted and replaced with an apology?

I would point out that the Post's censorship of this article has already become a subject of discussion in the blogosphere. (See here for an example.) This action calls into question the Post's journalistic standards, and its commitment to freedom of speech.

Mr. Horowitz: In the past, I have admired you for your defense of Israel against egregious media bias against Israel. The article by Bennatan was very similar to many such defenses that you yourself have presented in the past. His article was well-written, reasoned, and free of any ad hominem attacks or anything even remotely inappropriate. I am shocked that the newspaper under your editorship has chosen to censor it. I would not have expected this from you.

I (along with many others) am interested in an explanation of why the Post has done this.


P.S.: I am also quite curious to know which charity Mr. Freedman has selected for the Jerusalem Post to make a contribution to.

If you are also disturbed by the Post's censorship of this article, why not tell them? Here is David Horovitz's e-mail address.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

JPost: Biting the Hand that Reads You?

This post will probably kill my chances for being ever linked to the Jerusalem Post again, but I'm so annoyed at their current ad campaign that I had to post about this.

Last week, while driving through Kfar Sava, I saw the above huge red billboard.

Sorry, Stanley.

What the heck?

An ad for the Hebrew-only business magazine of the Jerusalem Post -- it's a nasty swipe at the head of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fisher.

Stanley's an American, who was brought to Israel by then-Finance Minister Netanyahu. With an impeccable record, it's about time that Israel appointed professionals, rather than petty, incompetent political hacks -- even if they are "imported" from outside of Israel.

So, the ad people working for the Jerusalem Post thought it would be "clever" to make fun of the fact that Stanley Fisher is "imported from America" and they attempt to imply that his Hebrew is sub-par to understand the Hebrew-language Jerusalem Post Business Magazine. (FYI, his Hebrew isn't bad at all)

Not only are they insulting one of the most respected people in Israel's financial community, but *I* was insulted.

Making fun of olim for their lack of Hebrew skills?

And from the company that runs the primary English Language paper in Israel?

What the heck are they thinking at the Jerusalem Post?

They think that's funny?

Shame.



A special thanks to my wife for taking the pictures of the billboard for the blog while we were driving :)

On second thought, it would have been much funnier is if they wrote:

Olmert: You won't be able to read this in jail!

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael