San Diego Jewish World - San Diego's Online Jewish Newspaper-November 29, 2007

zina album A Great Holiday Gift

Zina Schiff plays Bloch

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A wonderfully cohesive program brilliantly executed ... Zina Schiff is a first rate violinist fully up to the music's tremendous technical challenges ... who can get inside the soul of Bloch's extravagantly expressive music

—James Leonard, All Music Guide

LETTER FROM JERUSALEM

No need to sell his apartment in Jerusalem

By Ira Sharkansky

ira_sharkansky JERUSALEM—We have heard the major speeches from Annapolis, and we see no immediate need to list our apartment for sale. Our neighborhood of French Hill abuts Arab neighborhoods to the east and north that might become part of a Palestinian state, but not this week. And probably not this year or next, despite the aspirations.

Ehud Olmert gave one of his better speeches. He began with a

Ira Sharkansky

litany of charges against the Palestinians, and noted several indications that they were not ready for an agreement. But he moved to optimism, and a commitment to be flexible and to work hard in order to reach an agreement. President Bush was even handed, but noted several times that Israel would remain a Jewish state. This put him in opposition to the Palestinians and other Arabs who cannot bring themselves to that concession. Mahmoud Abbas used the terms Israeli conquest or occupation more times that I could count. His narrative has no room for Arab aggression that led Israeli troops into the West Bank and elsewhere.

The participant from Saudi Arabia made the point that Arabs could not recognize Israel as a Jewish state because Israel has Muslim residents. He did not mention that most Arab states call themselves Muslim, once had substantial Jewish and Christian communities, until they dwindled under pressure, to almost nothing in the case of the Jews.

The Washington Post summarizes the skepticism. It describes a demonstration against the possibility of concessions by right-wing, mostly religious Israelis; speeches and demonstrations in Gaza against any recognition of Israel's legitimacy; and a riot against the conference in Ramallah that involved one death at the hands or feet of Palestinian security personnel, who were photographed beating, kicking, and shooting at protesters.

Israeli and Palestinian rejectionists—the term used to describe those who deny the other side's right to a state nearly six decades after Israel's founding— have hampered past negotiations and worked to undermine efforts to implement the few agreements that have been reached.

But the hawks on both sides are particularly powerful at the moment given the political weakness of Olmert, who is under criminal investigation for alleged graft, ill with prostate cancer and still being criticized for waging a poorly conceived war in Lebanon last year, and of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president whose electorate is violently divided.

A popular Israeli web site asks timely questions along with its continuous updating of the news. These are not representative surveys, but occasionally the great tilt to one side or another indicates something about the national mood.

The site asked four questions in the days prior to, and during the Annapolis conference.

The first asked opinions about why Prime Minister Olmert was going to Annapolis.
Nineteen percent answered that he wants to make peace and 16 percent said that he is being obsequious toward the Americans. Sixty-five percent thought that he wants to forget the inquiry into the Lebanon war, or the police investigations of corruption charges.

Another question asked which issues the respondents did not want to compromise: the division of Jerusalem, the return to the borders of 1967, the Palestinian refugees' right of return, or dismantling of Jewish settlements.

Fifty-one percent answered that they did not want to compromise on any of those issues.

A day before the conference began, a question asked about the readers' interest in Annapolis. Twenty-eight percent indicated that they paid close or occasional attention; 28 percent said that they were more interested in football; and 45 percent did not know that the conference was about to begin.

A final question asked if respondents thought that there would be an agreement before the end of 2008. Thirty-one percent thought that there would not be an agreement in coming years, and 51 percent said there would never be an agreement.

My guess is that we can stay in French Hill until it is time for a seniors' facility. Anyone looking to buy an apartment here can check the newspapers. Ours is not for sale.

Sharkansky is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem

seacrest-village

WAR AND LORE

Pardon the feeling of deja vu all over again

By Isaac Yetiv, Ph.D

isaac_yetiv

LA JOLLA, California— Einstein defined "insanity" as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." The Annapolis conference was the umpteenth repeat performance of the same methodology, ways and means, rhetorical jousting, and zero-result as other reunions before it, in other venues, Madrid, Oslo, Sharm-el-sheikh, Taba etc. And like them , it is doomed to failure, and may be followed by the third intifada, and possibly another mid-east war.

The reason is very simple; a failure by all involved, but especially by the U.S., to see the realcause of the conflict, which is the Arab adamant refusal to accept a Jewish state in their midst, andtheir long history of "rejectionism." Here are the main highlights:

Isaac Yetiv

The defeat of the Syrian army in the bloodiest battles of the 1967 war and the conquest of the Golan Heights ended what came to be called "the six-day war." I was stationed with my unit at the foot of the Hermon in the Golan when a loud rumor was heard in the camp: "PM Eshkol will soon meet with Nasser in the Sinai to sign a peace treaty with all the Arab belligerents, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, and return all territories just conquered." And we, soldiers and officers, believed it! So strong was our craving for peace! This was, of course, a hoax, but it proved more than anything that Israel did not go to war to conquer Arab lands but to foil another attempt
at extermination, not different from the 1948 war of survival.

A few weeks later, while still in uniform, I descended from the Golan on a special leave to attend an "important meeting" of the Haifa City Council to which I had been elected two years before. On the
agenda was an assignment by PM Eshkol to the Council. Haifa was selected because of its good relations with its important Arab community which, in 1948, heeded the call of the Jewish mayor not to flee as refugees but to stay and become Israeli citizens. Eshkol asked us to send a delegation to the Mayor of Hebron, Sheik Ali Jaabari,and to tell him, in quasi-biblical language: "Thus spake the Prime Minister of Israel: go and call all the Arab mayors of the West Bank, and convene your
first 'Arab Zionist Congress of Basel' --Eshkol is famous for his wit and imagery--and elect your representatives who will meet with us and sign a peace treaty and get back all the conquered
territories!"

As a speaker of Arabic, I joined the delegation that met Jaabari in Hebron. He received us with all the trappings of Arab hospitality; he swore fidelity and allegiance to the new sovereign, Israel; he
reminded us somewhat apologetically of his murderous role in the anti-Jewish riots of 1929
and 1936 , and marveled at the surprising high morality of the Israeli army which did not seek vengeance, exclaiming: "not one Arab killed"—Hebron surrendered without a fight--"not one looting, not one rape!..." He then inquired about the purpose of our visit, and promised to consult
with his closest colleagues and convey his response to our mayor as soon as possible.

At the next weekly meeting of the Council, then Mayor Abba Hushi read Jaabari's response in which he said : all Arab mayors consulted rejected "your magnanimous offer for fear they would be
assassinated."

This was not the first act of Arab "rejectionism of peace offers" in this protracted conflict; nor was
it the last, even when the benefits to the Palestinians were tangible, substantial, and irrevocable, and
undoubtedly conducive to autonomy, independence and possible statehood.

Why this adamant refusal to recognize the Jewish state and negotiate bona fide a live-and-let-live
solution? Simply because, like the protagonist in an Arabic tale who, when told that any wish of his would be granted on the condition that his neighbor would receive the double, asked that one of his eyes be gouged so that his neighbor would go totally blind. This is the crux of the matter, the
cultural force underlying the conflict. It explains, among other things, the "philosophy" of the suicide-homicide bombings: kill yourself so that you can kill many of your neighbor/enemy.

In his book, Time to Tell, David Hacohen , one of the Zionist Old-Guard, reports that already in 1921, Moshe Sharett (then Shertok) met in London with Palestinian leaders led by Musa Kasim Pasha and offered them "peace and cooperation for the benefit of both peoples," and they rejected his advances. This was 27 years before the birth of Israel, 46 years before the 6-day war and
the so-called "occupation."

In 1936, Jewish and Arab leaders met in Damascus;i t again ended in failure. In 1937, a meeting with King Abdallah of Jordan yielded the same results. In the same year, the Peel commission recommended partition in two states, one Jewish and one Arab; the Jews accepted, the Arabs
rejected.

In 1939, the Arabs rejected even the anti-Jewish British White Paper that gave them a state on 78 % of the land.

On September 15,1947, Abba Eban and David Horowitz met secretly with the Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, and told him that "the Jewish state to be was very interested in
being integrated into processes of regional development and...in joining with the Arab states in a single league" (Half a century later, this absurd suggestion was echoed by Beilin and Peres in their talks with Shaath and Abu Mazen, and Peres even dreamed it in his book, The New Middle-East in which he contemplated membership of Israel in the Arab League). Azzam rejected their offer and told them bluntly that "the Arabs resented the Jewish presence as an alien organism, which
had come without their consent...and that the Arabs would never accept the Jews," adding ominously: " For the Arabs, you are not a fact at all; you are a temporary phenomenon. Centuries ago, the Crusaders established themselves in our midst against our will and in 200 years we
ejected them..."

Ten weeks later, the UN Resolution on partition and the creation of a Jewish and an Arab state was accepted by the Jews —I remember Haim Weizmann declaring he would accept a Jewish state even
with the size of a tablecloth— and rejected by the Arabs who swore to "throw the Jews
into the sea" and attacked in force to fulfill that oath.

In June 1967, concomitant with the Haifa mission related above, Eshkol, Dayan,and Begin (!) offered to return the Sinai and the Golan with a peace treaty and demilitarization, and their offer was rejected.

Some time later in the same year, at the Khartoum Conference, the Arabs formulated their infamous " 3 No's" : "no negotiations, no recognition, no peace!"

Closer to us , the history, the same, is well known: Oslo, Clinton-Barak's offer, Arafat's rejection and launching of the Al-Aqsa intifada and the terror of the suicide-homicide bombings. "Et plus ça
change, et plus c'est la même chose"(the more it changes, the more it remains the
same).

This rejectionist attitude has dominated the conflict. One loud pronouncement,clearly and candidly
expressed, came from the late Faisal Husseini, former PA "Minister of Jerusalem affairs." In an interview dated June 24, 2001, he said: " ...The Palestinian borders, according to the higher strategy, are from the river to the sea. Palestine in its entirety is an Arab land, the land of the Arab nation, a land no one can sell or buy, and it is impossible to remain silent while someone is stealing it, even if this requires time and even if it means paying a high price." Faisal Husseini is considered a "moderate" even by many naive Jews.

In this neighborhood and under these circumstances, can anyone fault Israel for being sometimes tough and untrusting those who counsel restraint and concessions to the ogre whose lethal intentions are not even hidden anymore? The UN and the EU may bark as long as they wish. The
US may indulge in wishful thinking with periodic "international conferences" from Madrid to Annapolis which are dangerous exercises in futility, doomed to failure in advance. Only
the abandonment of rejectionism by the Arabs can open the window for an acceptable solution to the problems of the Middle-East.

Yetiv is a freelance writer and lecturer on the Middle East

A concert deep in Israel's Elah Valley

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

MEVASSERET ZION, Israel—Israelis like spending Saturdays in the open air. The working week begins on Sunday and Friday tends to be a day for running errands, so that the weekend is all too brief. Thus, Saturday is the only day many families can spend time together, as is evinced by the clogged state of the roads. Of course, those who consider Shabbat a day on which to pray and rest are not part of this equation, but they are a minority.

So on Saturdays the beaches are crowded and parks are full. Those shopping areas and markets which remain open are thronged with families
Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

out shopping, eating in crowded restaurants or hunting for bargains. Picnic areas abound with barbecues, or mangals; these are traditionally men’s work, though I confess that the sight of bare-chested males sweating over hot coals does not arouse my appetite.

There are, however, one or two oases of serenity where one can spend a Saturday outside without being subjected to the cut and thrust of life en masse. Deep in the heartland of Israel, in the area known as the Elah Valley, close to open fields and the JNF’s Britain Forest, there is an old Turkish building which was once a Khan or way-station for travellers.

The building houses a musical family. The mother, Kochava Taragan, an accomplished flautist, arranges chamber concerts which are held on the terrace or in the large living room every Saturday at noon. Before the concert everyone is treated to a bowl of nourishing soup with home-made croutons. The chamber ensembles, often including Kochava herself, play a selection of pieces for an hour or two, often interspersed by some words of explanation. Sometimes the birds outside add their own contribution to the music. Afterwards most of the audience repairs to one of the local restaurants for lunch, though if you have not booked a table in advance you might find yourself obliged to go home.

Shefer-Vanson, after making aliyah from Britain, has worked as a freelance writer and translator.

SAN DIEGO JEWISH WORLD THE WEEK IN REVIEW

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28

Shoshana Bryen in Annapolis, Maryland: Annapolis conference creates false symmetry between Palestinian terror, Israeli response
Garry Fabian in Melbourne, Australia: Jewish Museum lands top tourism award... Yeshiva costs increase could affect Aussies... Flap over Israel marks Australian election campaign.
Donald H. Harrison in Santee, California: Creationist museum seeks to prove Bible

plus...
An invitation to be a correspondent... Join our volunteer correspondents and keep us posted on the Jews of your community or country.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27

Shoshana Bryen in Washington, D.C. No negotiations expected at Annapolis
Donald H. Harrison in Lakeside, California: Jewish strands in the Lakeside tapestry
Eileen Wingard in San Diego: In Music, Number 1 is not always the best

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: 102-year-old ponders humanity's future
Joe Naiman: If Appel's involved, baseball history is safe
Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: The Bella family circle goes from the coast to The Breakers on the shore to the beach

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: A call for reinvigorating Thanksgiving
Rabbi Baruch Lederman in San Diego: This worker put his trust in his boss
Max Schindler in San Diego: The Chain, a story from the Shoah

FRIDAY-SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23-24

Natasha Josefowitz, PhD in La Jolla, California: Why I chose a retirement community
Dov Burt Levy in Salem, Massachusetts: ADL actions in Armenian controversy suggest leadership delusions of grandeur
Lynne Thrope in San Diego: Jewish community turned out en masse for San Diego Bay Wine and Food Festivalwish community turned out en masse for San Diego Bay Larry Zeiger in San Diego: Gay love bubbles among Mideast rivals

Shoshana Bryen in Washington, D.C.: Rice should be in Baghdad, not Annapolis
Rabbi Wayne Dosick in Carlsbad, California: 'Who by fire'—when the words of our liturgy crackle beyond our doorsteps
Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: Appreciating all our Rembrandts