Author hzPosted on December 11, 2016Categories Articles

By Avi Shafran: No matter what some American Orthodox Jews might wish to imagine, they did not play a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump. Still and all, a sizable number of them, according to polls, voted for him, and they were elated at the election’s outcome. After all, the Republican candidate campaigned on a number of issues – including school choice, abortion, Israel’s security, and the war on terror – in ways that resonated with most Orthodox. Among, it now seems clear, many other Americans.

What’s interesting, and significant, is the dovetailing of the incoming American administration’s apparent views on such issues and the remarkable demographic changes taking place on the American Jewish communal scene. Those developments may be heralding an American Jewish political and organizational future that will look very different from the current one.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.758295

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Author hzPosted on December 11, 2016Categories Articles

By Dogan Akman: Over the years — and more particularly since 2006 — various surveys and reports have told us that Jewish university students confronted with antisemitism on campus feel “uncomfortable,” “vulnerable,” alarmed,” frightened,” etc. These surveys also tell us the number of antisemitic incidents that students experience or witness each year.

Curiously enough, none of the surveys have probed the following three questions, which I consider fundamentally important for the future of the American Jewish community (both on campus and more generally):

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Author hzPosted on December 11, 2016Categories Articles

By Mitchell Kaye: President-elect Donald J. Trump said during the campaign that he would “love” to broker a deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Although he has been advised by many experts that a deal may be impossible, can the “master deal-maker” make one?

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Author hzPosted on December 10, 2016December 11, 2016Categories Articles

By Nicholas Kristof: After Donald Trump’s election, some universities echoed with primal howls. Faculty members canceled classes for weeping, terrified students who asked: How could this possibly be happening?

I share apprehensions about President-elect Trump, but I also fear the reaction was evidence of how insular universities have become. When students inhabit liberal bubbles, they’re not learning much about their own country. To be fully educated, students should encounter not only Plato, but also Republicans.

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Author hzPosted on December 9, 2016December 9, 2016Categories Articles

By Mark Moyar: Among global elites, Donald J. Trump’s recent phone call with Taiwan’s president has induced fear on a scale seldom matched since Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech. The Sydney Morning Herald warned that the phone call “risks provoking a cold war between the United States and China with potentially catastrophic economic and security implications.” The fright appears to confirm the narrative formed earlier this year by headlines like “Donald Trump Terrifies World Leaders.”

The fear is real. Mr. Trump has indeed terrified foreign leaders with his “America first” mantra, his promises to enlarge the American military and his tough talk on everything from the Islamic State to Air Force One. The good news is that his administration can turn this fear to the benefit of the United States.

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Author hzPosted on December 8, 2016December 9, 2016Categories Articles

By Bradley Martin: “If Christianity [in the Middle East] survives, it will not be because of any interest taken by Christians in our part of the world, but rather because the State of Israel, the people of Israel, and conscientious Jews everywhere are dedicated to saving it,” said Dr. Paul Merkley, Professor of History at Carleton University, last week in a panel discussion at Toronto’s Beth Radom synagogue.

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Author hzPosted on December 8, 2016December 9, 2016Categories Articles

By Liel Leibovitz: Here’s a single-question Rorschach Test that tells you everything you need to know about the mind-set of any Jew in America these days: Of all the menacing black spots blotting our political horizon, which is the most dangerous?

To some, the answer is Donald Trump and his delegation of deplorables, led by Stephen Bannon, alt-rightist in chief and purveyor of hateful bile. To others, the real perils lie leftward, with the contender for Democratic leadership, Keith Ellison, and his long record as an apologist for the noxious Louis Farrakhan and a sympathizer with all sorts of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic devils. A few particularly jittery Jews, like yours truly, look at the two camps and see evil lurking in both. And one prominent American Jewish leader, bless his rosy soul, finds fault with neither.

Such are the perks of being Charles Schumer, ranking Democrat and perennial pragmatist. When asked by Tablet’s Armin Rosen how the senator, a supporter of Israel, can also support the objectionable Ellison, his deputy communications director, Marisa Kaufman, urged us to trust Schumer with deciding just what constitutes standing with the Jewish State.

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Author hzPosted on December 7, 2016December 8, 2016Categories Articles

By Cary Nelson and David Greenberg: Since 2014, there has been a disturbing surge in the number of invited campus speakers being repeatedly interrupted or actually prevented from delivering a public lecture. A startling share of these silencing efforts have been directed at Israelis or other speakers sympathetic to Israel who have run afoul of the growing anti-Israel movement on campuses.

Behind this spike is an idea called “anti-normalization.” This concept, which anti-Israel organizations began vigorously promoting two years ago, holds that any activities that might “normalize” relations between Israelis and Palestinians — from children’s soccer leagues to collaborative environmental projects to university panel discussions with both sides represented — should be summarily rejected because they treat both parties as having legitimate grievances and aspirations. Joint projects are to be shunned unless they begin with the premise that Israel is the guilty party.

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Author hzPosted on December 7, 2016December 8, 2016Categories Articles

By Yigal Carmon and A. Savyon and U. Kafash: Since its beginning, the regime of Iran’s Islamic Revolution has championed the idea of exporting its Revolution to the entire Muslim world. This doctrine is rooted in the thinking of the Revolution’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, particularly in his book Al-Hukuma Al-Islamiyya (“The Islamic Government,” Beirut, 1979). In the book, he presented his perception negating the existence of peoples and states in Islam, and aspiring to actualize Islamic unity. Khomeini defined himself as a Muslim, not as an Iranian or a Shi’ite, and the Revolution as Islamic, not Iranian or Shi’ite. In his view, nationalism is an imperialistic plot to weaken and divide the Islamic world, and Islamic unity is the way to restore Islam to its greatness. The regime in Iran is the jumping-off point for a “comprehensive Islamic Revolution,” and exporting the Revolution is the tool for attaining Islamic unity.

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Author hzPosted on December 7, 2016December 8, 2016Categories Articles

By Lee Smith: Though some Americans may not want to hear it, the election of Donald Trump has changed Israel’s strategic situation dramatically for the better. Prepared to deal with what was presumably a somewhat friendlier version of the Obama administration run by Hillary Clinton, Jerusalem is now looking at what may be the most pro-Israel White House in the history of the bilateral relationship. The Israelis have been relatively quiet about their enthusiasm for the Trump administration—partly because the American public is still so dramatically split on the election, and partly because it was accused of siding with the 2012 Republican nominee for president. But the government of Benjamin Netanyahu had a favorite in the November race—and he won.

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