7 Tammuz 5779
10 July 2019
The News On The Israeli Street
Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .
On the Gaza border:
More explosive balloons and more fires: the worst yesterday were this one at Kissufim, and another in the Eshkol Region.
Despite the fact that Hamas never carried out its commitments under the latest “agreement” last week (no fires and no attacks on the border fence), Israel continues to supply fuel to the terrorists, supply tunnel and bomb building materials to the terrorists, and facilitate the supply of money to the terrorists.
We in the southern Israel feel like we are living in the twilight zone.
In Judea and Samaria:
Yesterday saw the third bulldozer attack in three days: this time a terrorist attempted to run over an Israeli at the Givat Assaf Junction.
Palestinian terrorists carried out “rock’ and Molotov attacks against Israelis on Road 5 near Kabatim, on the Gush Etzion-Hevron Road, at Curve 160 near Hevron, near Al-Aruv, at the Tunnels Road entrance to Jerusalem, and near Tekoa among other places.
A Palestinian terrorist who threw a Molotov at a Border Policeman at the Salem Checkpoint near Jenin was shot in the leg by another Border Policeman.
One house at a time . . .
Another inroad was made into eastern Jerusalem yesterday when members of the Temple Mount Foundation moved into a home they had purchased:
Take a close look at all of the blue dots in the map insert.
Organizations like the Temple Mount Foundation and Ateret Cohanim deserve all of our support for the way that they are reclaiming Jewish neighborhoods, one house at a time, in eastern Jerusalem.
TODAY’S BLOG:
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A Conversation About North American Jewry:
What Do You Think?
A very interesting conversation took place at the weekly cabinet meeting this past Sunday. The item on the agenda was the annual report of the Jewish People Policy Institute. Delivering the report was the Chairman of the Institute, none other than Dennis Ross–long time policy adviser to a number of American Presidents.
In today’s blog, I am only going to give you one-sentence snippets from the comments of three Cabinet members: Rabbi Rafi Peretz who is the current Minister of Education, Yuval Steinetz who is the current Minister of Energy, and PM Netanyahu.
Their conversation:
Rabbi Peretz: “We have lost six million Jews since the Holocaust. In fact, the assimilation in the world and especially in North American Jewry is like a second Holocaust.”
Steinetz: “Assimilation is not a critical problem. First of all, we must stop disparaging Jews living in America who see themselves as Jews from a historical and cultural point of view.”
Netanyahu: “I am less concerned about the political trends among American Jews–support for Democrats and distance from Israel–than about demographic trends. There is a distance from Judaism of a large part of the Jews in the United States and it is very difficult to influence it.”
What do you think about this conversation and the respective positions?
Here’s your humble servant’s take one by one:
Rabbi Peretz should not have compared the loss of six million Jews to assimilation with the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, he is absolutely right that the assimilation of six million North American Jews is shocking. We now have Reform Synagogues in the United States in which 90% of the families are “interfaith.”
Yuval Steinetz is half wrong and half right. Assimilation is a critical problem, and it is a disaster for Judaism outside of Israel. Of course, no one should disparage people who see themselves as Jews “from a historical and cultural point of view.” However, people who no longer practice Judaism and only self-identify historically and culturally with Jews almost certainly will not self-identify themselves as Jews in another generation or two, and neither will their children and grandchildren.
As for Netanyahu, he is absolutely right that Israelis can do little to influence American Jews’ turning away from Judaism. But he is amazingly shortsighted not to place much emphasis on the political scene. Democrats will have the White House again one of these days and the Senate also–and a significant portion of their support will come from Jews who have become increasingly hostile to Israel.
But enough about my viewpoint, what do you think about this conversation?
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.