Israel’s’ government of denial and deception

For those of you who have been in a self-induced political comatose state for the past few months, I understand your predicament and psychological need to disconnect. It hasn’t been easy for many in Israel since the Lapid-Bennett coalition took control of the government. To fully grasp the crisis of trust and sense of betrayal that we in Israel are experiencing, it is imperative that we understand the radical ideas that are taking root in complete denial of the founding principles of the State of Israel. Ancient customs, religious norms, democratic principles, fair play (evenhandedness, impartiality), and justice in its broadest sense have all lost meaning due to the daily melodramas being played out. An accelerated process is being implemented diminishing the sovereign power of regular Israeli citizens who voted in the last elections, leaving them feeling powerless opposite a political leadership they did not vote for; moving ahead with a radical agenda that our founders never envisioned, nor did the Israeli public when they voted in the last elections.

The Lapid-Bennett government has adopted a progressive political platform similar to what’s transpiring in the United States. In America where progressive forces have united in adopting “Critical Race Theory” and using the false and deceptive accusation of “white privilege” to rip apart the very fabric of American society by rejecting the historical narrative where the United States of America was perceived by the world as one of the few successful multiracial and multiethnic democracies throughout history. In Israel, the Lapid-Bennett coalition has embarked on a similar progressive agenda albeit with an Israeli twist. So what do they have in store for the people of Israel?

During the latter part of the 19th century, Jewish leaders harnessed the long collective memory of the Jewish people to create a movement for returning Jews throughout the world to their ancient Jewish homeland. For 2,000 years, Jews have prayed to return to the land of Israel. Over the past 150 years, Jews have made that ancient yearning a reality. “After being forcibly exiled from their land, the Jewish people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion,” proclaims the Israeli Declaration of Independence.

Despite this being an accepted historical national narrative overwhelmingly representing the large majority of the people of Israel, our current and newly elected governing coalition has decided to throw this historical and accurate narrative out the window. Instead we find ourselves facing a coalition of many small political parties who are all dependent for the survival of the governing coalition on Ra’am, a small Muslim party associated with the Muslim Brotherhood; a global organization that has been linked to Islamic terror and bloody conflicts throughout the Middle East over the past century.

The Arab Israeli party Ra’am has done its homework well and has been an astute observer of the current Israeli political scene. Their major observation about the progressive parties in the governing coalition has been that when Lapid and Bennett encounter their counterparts among the nations of the world, they react out of a psychological state of inferiority and a subjective feeling that the Western nations of the world are superior to a “primitive”, “tribal” and outdated national Jewish identity of exceptionalism and distinctiveness. Instead of “white privilege”, they have adapted the local equivalent of “Jewish privilege” and have willingly expressed their progressive rejection of this. Lapid and Bennett long to be accepted as part of the international community, having no response to the toxic and false accusations of “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, and “apartheid”. Rather than deal with the normalization of anti-Semitism at unprecedented levels unseen in recent history all in the name of anti-Zionism, the Lapid-Bennett team have simply blamed Israel’s previous government and have begun to accept Palestinian Arab demands alongside Ra’am’s coalition demands, something that all previous Israeli governments rejected outright. No “Jewish privilege” and no accusations of anti-Semitism against Jew haters will hinder this coalition's acceptance among the progressive forces of the world.

Ra’am, the Israeli Islamic party that holds the balance of the governing coalitions political survival understands that the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not all those issues that we have been told to believe; it’s not about the so-called military occupation of Judea and Samaria (West Bank), it’s not about East Jerusalem, and it’s not even about the “settlements”. Ra’am understands that the Palestinian Arab demand to settle inside the sovereign territory of the State of Israel, what is known as ‘The Right of Return’ or what is pejoratively known as “family reunification” is what it’s all about and they have conditioned this demand for their continuing support of the governing coalition.

This past week we witnessed the beginning of an incremental process of the “the right of return” with thousands of Palestinian Arabs, the majority from the Gaza Strip and the remaining living in Judea and Samaria being given status of residents. For the Palestinian Arabs, “the right of return” is not only about getting residency status or even citizenship, but rather it’s about reversing prior events and “undoing” the establishment of the State of Israel, and it seems as if this is only just the beginning.

To bring home the point of the coalition's abandonment of Israel as the Jewish national homeland, the head of the Shas haredi Sephardic party emphasized that point when he spoke this past week at the Knesset. Rabbi Aryeh Deri sharply criticized Bennett after he stated publicly that the political power of the haredim should be limited. "Come and tell the million people who together received 16 [Knesset] seats in the election campaign that their power should be limited - who are you anyway and in whose name are you talking? You're a clown”. The former interior minister continued: "The person who made this statement is not a prime minister whom the people supported and expressed confidence in. It came from a man who formed a government through theft, fraud and deception."

The Lapid-Bennett leadership will gladly and willingly modify or gloss over or even erase Jewish identity altogether to promote a progressive political agenda. The last time a similar leftist progressive political leadership was at the wheel in Israel, we got the Oslo Accords with tens of thousands killed and wounded by Palestinian suicide bombers terrorizing the streets of Israel for a number of years.

With the Hamas terror organization priming themselves to attack Israel, and Hezbollah doing the same on a much larger scale in Lebanon, and with Iran orchestrating the timing of when to employ their proxy forces, it seems as if Lapid’s and Bennett’s progressive credentials will do little to deter these terror organizations from unleashing their missile terror on Israel.

Danny Lewin H'yd: The very first victim of 9/11

Danny Lewin first walked into Samson’s Gym in Jerusalem in 1985 accompanied by his best friend, Aviad, the son of Peace Now pioneer activist Janet Aviad. Despite Danny not yet being 15, came armed with a series of questions about Jerusalem’s legendary fitness facility, the first of its kind in Israel, and the much-talked-about new attraction in Israel’s capital. After asking about the equipment, the rates, the hours, and the type of workout program that he had hoped to get from one of the muscular instructors who seemed to epitomize the gym’s name, Danny asked a question that would seem haunting a decade and a half later. “Why are there no Arabs here and what are you afraid of?” His question seemed more a comment that stood to support the argument that would soon follow when his close friend brazenly challenged the gym’s unspoken policy.

The gym owner’s responded in his typically blunt manner: “Because we don’t want any trouble—”; yet, before he could further clarify, Danny Lewin boldly asked again: “What about the good Arabs?!” Less than a month into their initial three-month membership, Aviad dropped out. The sport was simply too demanding. Danny, on the other hand, became more and more committed, visiting Samson’s Gym even on the days he didn’t train. He saw it as his home away from home, convinced that it would serve as the vehicle by which he would transform his life, helping to develop a fine-tuned body that would complement his noticeably gifted mind. His friends marveled, and the mirror reflected evidence of the rapid development of a determined, motivated, and aspiring muscle man.

There was something special about Danny; he radiated a sense of independence more fitting of someone twice his age. Only weeks into his membership, he asked if he could get a job at the gym and join the small team of instructors who were already well recognized as they walked the streets of Jerusalem wearing the coveted Samson’s Gym trainer tee shirt. Not taking no for an answer, he asked again a few weeks later. And yet again, a few weeks later, offering to “do anything” to become part of the team. Anything! And so it was. Still new to the iron game, 15-year-old Danny Lewin rushed to Samson’s Gym from school every day—to sweep the floors, mop the showers, and, yes, to clean the toilets. He could finally call himself part of the Samson’s team. A year and a half later, the now-muscular Lewin was ready to be an instructor—training a cadre of Jews, young and old, to believe in themselves and the inner strength that they possess.
After breezing through high school and matriculation exams, Danny volunteered and served in Sayeret Matkal, the IDF’s most elite commando unit. He married at 21 and raised two young boys with his wife. He received his B.S. from the Technion, working long hours as a teaching assistant there and as a researcher for IBM in Haifa.

In 1996, Danny accepted a scholarship to study computer science and mathematics at MIT. Two years later, while working on his Ph.D., he founded Akamai Technologies which offered a new and revolutionary way to deliver content over the Internet. By 2001, Danny was widely recognized as one of the most influential technologists of his generation. One well-known trade publication ranked him as the seventh most important technologist in the world. His impact on people was so strong that, even today, battle-hardened CEOs and IDF sharpshooters get choked up when talking about him, in part, because his rise was so quick, so spectacular, and so tragically short. On the morning of September 11, 2001, Danny Lewin boarded American Airlines Flight No. 11 in Boston, expecting to reach Los Angeles. Instead, the flight was hijacked and commandeered by Arab terrorists, crashing into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. On that fateful flight, Danny Lewin became the very first victim of the largest terrorist attack in history in which almost 3,000 Americans died. An internal memorandum of the Federal Aviation Administration says “that in the course of a struggle that took place between Lewin, a graduate of Israel’s elite commando unit, Sayeret Matkal, and the four hijackers who were assaulting that cockpit, Lewin was murdered by Satam Al Suqami, a 25-year-old Saudi.”

Sometime after the attack, the Lewin family in Jerusalem received a telephone call from the FBI offices in New York. On the line was the agent responsible for the investigation of the attack on Flight 11. He told Danny’s parents that there is a high degree of certainty that Danny tried to prevent the hijacking. The FBI relied, among other things, on the testimony of the stewardess Amy Sweeney. Sweeney succeeded in clandestinely getting a call out during the flight to a flight services supervisor in Boston, from the rear of the plane: “A hijacker slit the throat of a passenger in business class and the passenger appears to me to be dead.” To this day the American investigators are not convinced that Danny Lewin was murdered on the spot. An additional stewardess, Betty Ong, who succeeded in calling from a telephone by one of the passenger seats, said that the passenger who was attacked from business class seat 10B was seriously wounded. It turned out that 10B was the seat of Danny Lewin. The Lewin family, Danny’s parents and brothers, have no doubt that Danny battled the hijackers. And it is for them a tremendous consolation. “I wasn’t surprised to hear from the FBI that Danny fought. I was sure that this is what he would do,” Yonatan, his younger brother, said. “Danny didn’t sit quietly. From what we heard from the Americans, the hijackers attacked one of the stewardesses and Danny rose to protect her and prevent them from entering the cockpit. It is a consolation to us that Danny fought. We see it as an act of heroism that a person sacrifices his life in order to save others. That battle in the business section ended quickly. Lewin was overcome and bled to death on the floor. Two additional flight attendants were knifed and the captain was murdered. The hijackers were already inside the cockpit. They announced to the passengers to remain quiet in their seats.

As we fathom the tragic details of the incredible life journey of Danny Lewin, Hy’d, from mopping up the locker rooms of Samson’s Gym in Jerusalem to the pinnacle of the high tech industry in America, I am reminded of Danny’s question back in 1985, “What about the good Arabs?” Indeed, as we grasp the dimensions of 9/11 from a 20-year perspective, where were these “good Arabs” who rejected this compulsive need to murder one’s way to Islamic glory? Where are they today?

Danny Lewin H'yd –father, husband and son, a veteran of the Israel Defense Force’s elite commando team, the outstanding graduate of Israel’s Technion Institute, an accomplished PhD student at MIT and co-founder of the Internet giant Akamai Technologies will be forever remembered for his heroic attempt to prevent the hijacking of Flight 11 becoming the very first victim of 9/11.

*this article was prepared with the assistance of Mr. Meir Jolovitz. the legendary founder of Samson's Gym in Jerusalem

**this article was cited as a footnote in Wikipedia for being the first source ever to name by name the very first victim of 9/11

“Let them eat cake” vs the sanctity of life

The phrase was supposedly said by Marie Antoinette in 1789, during one of the famines in France during the reign of her husband, King Louis XVI. “Let them eat cake” is the most famous quote attributed to Marie-Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution. As the story goes, it was the queen’s response upon being told that her starving peasant subjects had no bread. Because cake was more expensive than bread, the anecdote has been cited as an example of Marie-Antoinette’s obliviousness to the conditions and daily lives of ordinary people. In 1792, the French monarchy was abolished, and King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were condemned for treason. Marie Antoinette suffered the same fate as her husband: execution by guillotine.

For the many in Israel, The Bennett-Lapid government is very much out of touch and indifferent to the national mood and public expectation that in the struggle against the coronavirus they are to take responsibility and act decisively. Instead we have witnessed over the past weeks and months, a lack of accountability, and a seeming indifference to the well-being of the public similar to the historical anecdote concerning Marie-Antoinette above.

The most blatant example of the Marie-Antoinette’s mentality in the Bennet-Lapid government was articulated by Interior Minister Ayelet Shaket who showed her apathy towards the Israeli public when she nonchalantly informed us all that we should just get used to dying from corona; " [Israel] needs to know how to accept severe cases and severe deaths because this is a pandemic, and in a pandemic, people die.” This, rather than taking responsibility for the government's negligence in its dealings with the pandemic when returning Israelis brought the new strain into the country; from bringing Israel’s almost 0 daily corona infection rate only three months ago to over 9000 daily infections and bringing Israel’s hospitals to a near-state of collapse.

As of today, seven of Israel’s public hospitals say they will refuse to accept corona admissions. The newly elected Bennett-Lapid government’s helplessness and inability to function when faced with health-related challenges such as the coronavirus pandemic is only the tip of the iceberg. Israel which was not too long ago seen as an example, a kind of perfect model of a country that managed to beat the coronavirus pandemic become in a matter of just a few weeks, just another red country that failed to contain the coronavirus.

The overwhelming national mood for many Israelis is as if the country is sitting on a ticking time bomb waiting for it to explode. Alongside the national sense of impending doom, the Israeli and Jewish value of the sanctity of life seems too have been lost on the Bennett government. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the sanctity of life has always been at the top of Israel’s moral compass. Over the years, the countries of the world have always been amazed to what lengths Israel was willing to negotiate prisoner exchanges, or negotiate the retrieval of fallen soldiers held by our enemies, or even rescue Israeli’s in distress in the far reaches of the world.

During the Syrian civil war, thousands of wounded Syrians were treated for medical conditions in northern Israel, despite the border being closed and declared a war zone. Let’s not ignore the thousands of Gazans that have received and continue to receive lifesaving medical treatment in the center of Israel despite the thousands of missiles, rockets, and arson balloons fired into Israel over the years by Hamas, the Palestinian Gaza based terror organization. This Israeli and Jewish value has allowed us to rise above the daily conflict between Israel and her neighbors only because the sanctity of life has been at the forefront of our value system and an integral part of what differentiated Israel from her neighbors.

With Prime Minister Bennett in charge, and corona virus cases soaring, it becomes increasingly frustrating not to be angry, even infuriated by the irresponsible behavior of our newly elected government and their abandonment of what was always an integral part of Israel’s national identity and a timeless Jewish value; the sanctity of life. The Bennett government has lost control in the war against the corona virus and is guilty for getting us to where we are today with one of the highest infection rates in the world despite the previous Netanyahu government bringing Israel to almost zero infections just three months ago.

However, what has emerged from the governments “new” approach to tackling the coronavirus is far more sinister, delegating the sanctity of life and the loss of life to become an acceptable norm in Israel while the economy takes first place. Justifying dead victims of the coronavirus and explaining away the normalcy of these deaths is reminiscent of a previous leftist government that propagated the equally sinister belittlement of dead Jews; known then as “victims of peace”.

Those of us here in Israel who went through the second intifada twenty years ago as the Oslo agreements fell apart, vividly remember the streets of Israel become killing fields with Palestinian suicide bombers blowing up packed buses at a rate of two a day. The leftist government led then by Yitzchak Rabin also had a dilemma concerning the thousands of Israeli’s that were murdered and wounded by Palestinian terrorists. How to explain and justify the Israeli lives lost to an ill-conceived and bogus peace agreement? The Palestinian Arab leadership at the time abrogated the Oslo Accords immediately after signing the agreement, leading to the second intifada, a Palestinian Arab terror campaign.

The media and the media influencers of that period devised a media campaign based on the notion of “victims of peace”. The thousands of Israeli’s killed and wounded by the Palestinian suicide bombers where not - according to this campaign - victims of terror, but “victims of peace”. This rebranding of unnecessary Jews deaths to be palatable and accepted by the Israeli public has been resurrected by the current Bennett-Lapid government to explain and justify the many unnecessary coronavirus deaths as a result of their negligence on a national scale.

I, like many others in Israel, have never had any real expectations from Israel’s current governing coalition. From its very inception, the Bennett-Lapid government has made a conscious and manipulative effort to project their daily failures in a positive light, with the media cooperating.

However, the far reaching consequences of their “let them eat cake” mindset and the dismissal of an eternal Jewish value such as the sanctity of life may very well have far reaching consequences for the fabric of trust between the people of Israel and their elected officials.

There are moments in the history of a nation in which governments lose their legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Are we approaching this critical junction? Hopefully and with God’s help, the ticking time bomb can be diffused. With Rosh Hashanah just around the corner, I would suggest that the cabinet members of the Bennett-Lapid government conduct a serious Chesbon Nefesh (soul searching) before it’s too late.

The “End of history” of anti-Semitism

It’s been two weeks since Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, spoke about anti-Semitism at the Global Conference on Combating Antisemitism gathered in Jerusalem, were he explained to the world and to the Jewish public here in Israel and abroad that anti-Semitism is not unique in the history of the world but rather is one of the many bigotries expressed in the annals of human hatred. In one swoop Lapid brought to an end the historical uniqueness of anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust. Unbelievably and without hesitancy or remorse, he continued and stated:” antisemitism, exists everywhere…. The anti-Semites weren’t just in the Budapest Ghetto”, “The anti-Semites were slave traders who threw chained slaves overboard into the ocean. The anti-Semites were the members of the Hutu tribe in Rwanda who massacred members of the Tutsi tribe. The anti-Semites are the Muslim extremists who killed 20 million fellow Muslims in the last decade. The anti-Semites are Islamic State and Boko Haram. The anti-Semites are people who beat to death young members of the LGBT community.”

Foreign Minister Lapid, a high school dropout and former journalist turned politician dismissed without the bat of an eye the across the broad conclusions of all major historians in the modern era; that anti-Semitism is a murderous ideology that aims to exterminate all the Jews, but instead is nothing more than just another phobia like Islamophobia, or even Homophobia. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Lapid’s comments as “scandalous and irresponsible, warping history and emptying the concept of antisemitism of all content.” Additional oppositional political leaders in Israel accused Lapid of seriously weakening Israel’s and the Jewish world’s ability to combat anti-Semitism.

The late Tommy Lapid, a Holocaust survivor, a former Justice Minister and a journalist turned politician was the father of Yair Lapid. I have no doubt that he is turning in his grave again and again. As Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council back in 2007, Lapid senior spoke on behalf of the survivors during the official state ceremony marking Holocaust Martyr’s' and Heroes' Remembrance Day: “The Holocaust, which we commemorate here today at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel; the Holocaust in which 6 million innocent Jews were murdered, was a unique event in history. This is because in the Holocaust, man used modern technology to annihilate a people [Jews] in a calculated, scientific manner – a death industry. The viruses of the fatal disease known as antisemitism have developed antibodies that are not impressed by the lessons of past events and do not accept today’s norms. Instead, they lie in wait for the day when evil will once again rear its head.” The Late Tommy Lapid had no doubt about the distinctive role that anti-Semitism has played against Jews throughout history, and it would never have crossed his mind to dilute and universalize what has been an exclusive and multi-generational hatred of Jews throughout history.

How are we to understand the sudden burst of revisionist history of anti-Semitism that Lapid junior has brought to the world from a leftist and progressive perspective? At the Global Conference on Combating Antisemitism Lapid insisted that “the cure could not be achieved by Jews changing their behavior” meaning that the Jews are to blame for the hatred expressed by anti-Semites. Sounds very similar to the current wave of Critical Race Theory that has swept America. In the same manner that Jews bring upon themselves the inter-generational hatred of anti-Semites, white Americans have brought upon themselves the violent insurrection by Black Americans that have turned Main St. into Mean Streets. Throughout America, Jews have been getting attacked in the streets: hunted, chased, beaten, burned, and stabbed. French courts have recognized inebriation as a legitimate alibi for murdering Jews and Holocaust survivors. In recent months, we’ve seen Jews assaulted in Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. Dozens of “pro-Palestine” rallies calling for the genocide of Israel’s Jews and the murder of Jews everywhere have swept through American streets from the Bay Area to Boca Raton. Jewish students and faculty are bullied, demonized, and terrorized on American college campuses. Corporate America and teachers’ unions are pushing new racialist narratives and curricula that single out Jews as a “white” identity group uniquely deserving of hostility. So what is Lapid getting wrong?

In the summer of 1989, the American magazine The National Interest published an essay entitled "The End of History?” Its author, political scientist Francis Fukuyama, announced that the great ideological battles between East and the West were over, and that Western liberal democracy had triumphed. The ascendancy of Western liberal democracy would not only end the cold war but would lead to a general calming in world affairs. Fukuyama claimed that humanity has reached "not just ... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

The "end of history" thesis has been repeated so often over the years that it has acquired a ring of truth, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. That is, until the current day anti-Semitic pandemic appeared seemingly out of nowhere in recent years to challenge this almost uncontested given in current modern intellectual thought. The notion that nations and anti-Semites of the world would all adopt a kind of liberal democratic model and join together in a fraternal bond of human society seems to have been largely overlooked by today’s torch bearers of Jew hatred. It seems that the expectation that “the end of history” would sway anti-Semites to succumb to the universalization of Western liberal democracy with its balance of liberty and equality has been proven false. So why does Lapid insist on preaching what clearly is a disproven understanding of history and anti-Semitic hatred?

Yair Lapid has joined the ranks of America’s Jewish progressive vanguard by accepting the new normal in the battle against anti-Semites. His new found progressive understanding of anti-Semitism in the battle against the surge in Jew hatred is based on a simple and dangerous misconception and at the end of the day will only fan the fire of anti-Semitism. Progressive Jews view today’s world exclusively through the prism of oppressors versus oppressed, privileged versus under privileged, black versus white. According to Lapid’s progressive mindset, Jews are guilty of being guilty on all three counts: oppressor, privileged, and white. Extending this condemnation of Jews onto Israeli’s and the State of Israel is the logical extension of this kind of warped thinking,

Yair Lapid is doing nothing more than promoting classical anti-Semitic stereotyping of Jews. These efforts by Lapid will only empower an indifference to anti-Semitic violence and behavior. Voicing concern over anti-Semitism will be treated as an insult to other minority groups. Raising concerns of anti-Semitism or expressing sympathy for Jews who are threatened by anti-Semites will become and has become an indefensible offense. This kind of dangerous thinking on the part of one of Israel’s leading politicians can only be understood as an existential threat for Jews everywhere and for the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.