Please feel free to visit my other blogs, me-ander and Shiloh Musings, which are updated much more frequently and deal with a wider variety of topics. Shabbat Shalom u'Mevorach!
In another week, it'll be the Month of Ellul, the month we prepare ourselves for G-d's judgement on Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur. For that reason, I want to be as careful as I can when discussing the NIF, New Israel Fund.
Judaism has a principle of "Hakarat HaTov," recognizing and point out the good. For that reason, I must say that a number of years ago I first became acquainted with the New Israel Fund's Shatil Department. I was then working with a small, struggling apolitical NPO, non-profit organization, and was sent to Shatil for training in fund-raising. They conducted workshops for a variety of organizations, mostly Left-wing or "alternative life-style," but there were a couple of groups like mine. One reason was to be able to say that they help "everyone," and the other was that, even today years later, there is no comparable service from the Right nor the religious. I was extremely impressed by their knowledge and professionalism.
Recently there have been expose`s about how the NIF supports organizations dangerous and disloyal to the State of Israel:
Yet while the New Israel Fund claims that it does not support groups that call for divestment from Israel, NIF funds the Coalition of Women for Peace, which recently hosted a meeting in Jaffa, where Naomi Klein spoke with local activists about the struggle against the occupation and the Palestinian call for BDS [boycott, divestment, sanctions].
The following is from the CWP’s description of the event.
“Klein's public meetings, in Ramallah, East Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa drew hundreds of people to hear her clear-eyed analysis of why it is time for a full boycott of Israel until the occupation ends, Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel have full and equal rights, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees is fully realized under international law... Her presentation of why BDS is right, now, was remarkable in that she consciously presented it as a positive, movement-building tool to build a joint future with Palestinians, rather than as simply a method to punish Israelis. She spoke clearly about BDS as a tool of non-violent solidarity, comparing not complying with the BDS call with crossing an invisible picket line.”
CWP has also called upon Norway to divest from Israel as did grantees Mossawa and Machsom Watch, as well as NIF affiliated organization The Israeli Committee against House Demolitions.
The New Israel Fund denies it, but it is clear that they are associated with NPO's which lobby for divestment. Divestment is not in Israel's interests.
I'd like to believe that the present situation is just the results of a mistake, misplaced good intentions. But the big problem is that whether intended or not, the New Israel Fund is empowering dangerous groups.
Av 21, 5769, 8/11/2009
Please Help Bring Amichai Home!
As you can read in the poster, Amichai Steinmetz, of Ma'ale Levona, has disappeared in India. There's more information and recent pictures of him on the Hebrew site.
Money and prayers are needed. The search is very expensive. Bank details are on the above poster.
Please pray for the soon and safe return of Amichai Steinmetz:
Amichai ben Dvora
Thank You
Av 19, 5769, 8/9/2009
Mind Control in High School Literature
A few months ago, the Israeli Ministry of Education decided to poll the "public" in order to decide which works of literature would be added to the resurrected required curriculum in EFL English studies.
Some of the suggested works proved controversial, and the debate even made the local press*. (*Strangely, now when I went back to the site/link, I found that the talkbacks have been deleted. There had been quite a public debate.) A number of teachers wanted the debut historical novel, Grains of Sand, by Shifra Shomron, who based her novel on her experiences as a teenager expelled from her home in Neve Dekalim, Gush Katif.
I'm considered a veteran high school English teacher here in Israel, and I admit to having encouraged Shifra with her writing and offered her to blog on Shiloh Musings. It's a good book and I think that its inclusion would have made the students think and encouraged Israeli students to try writing. But the book didn't make it into the official recommended list.
Ironically, while Shifra's book is very understated, personal and non-political, a much more controversial book did make it in. Actually, I'm overjoyed that The Wave by Morton Rhue is one of the two choices for top level (5 point Bagrut) Israeli students.
"The setting of the book is Gordon High School in 1969. The plot of the book revolves around around a history teacher (Mr. Ben Ross), his high school students, and an experiment he conducts in an attempt to teach them about how it may have been living in Nazi Germany. He hopes this answers the question of why the Germans allowed Adolf Hitler and the genocidal Nazi Party to rise to power, acting in a manner inconsistent with their own pre-existing moral values... Laurie, a student in Mr. Ross' class, starts to think that The Wave is having too much of an impact. A huge majority of the school is in The Wave, and its members attack students who refuse to join. Using her influence as the School Newspaper Editor, Laurie releases an entire issue of The Grapevine dedicated to showing the dangers of The Wave. While some thank her, especially teachers and parents, others do not. Laurie's boyfriend David, who has been in The Wave since the beginning, tries to get her to stop bad-mouthing The Wave. He eventually shoves her to the ground and this makes him realize how dangerous The Wave really is."
I think it should be required reading to prepare our students for IDF army service. We don't want "just following orders" Nazi-like robots in the army, and we certainly don't want our children to be mind-controlled.
Every time I see films of how our soldiers systematically, methodically and trained to overcome their emotion as they force innocent Israeli Jews from their homes, I'm spooked, scared out of my wits. It's inhuman and against Jewish Law how our soldiers behaved. I'm glad that my sons were already out of the army when Disengagement happened.
Descended from the same Jewish souls who sympathize with every underdog, even the fakes and antisemitic ones, our politicians, leaders, media and judicial must have undergone some perverse mutation. How else can this be explained?
It would be best if Israeli high school students would be exposed to the dangers of cults and brainwashing in their native Hebrew, but it looks like it's up to the English teachers to immunize the youth against the mind control of the "politically correct."
Batya Medad made aliya from New York to Israel in 1970 and has been living in Shiloh since 1981. Recently she began organizing women's visits to Tel Shiloh for Psalms and prayers. (For more information, please email her.) Batya is a veteran jblogger and recently stopped EFL teaching. She's also a wife, mother, grandmother, photographer and HolyLand hitchhiker, always seeing things from her own very unique perspective. For more of Batya's writings and photos, check out:
