Post to Maskil_Activity 03/31/2010

• ZEEK: Articles: Disenchanting Zionism

  tags: Zionism

  • Preminger’s Exodus is a reminder of a past when Zionism evoked different images than it does today. Then, anyone who believed that Jews had the right to live in peace could be considered pro-Israel. There was no requirement for the acceptance of a literal interpretation of futuristic Biblical prophecy.

    The negative connotation of the word “Zionism” today is frequently contributed to Muslim propaganda and anti-Semitism, a term which has been largely redefined to mean objections to Israeli government policies. Certainly, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian struggle has played the primary role in tarnishing its image. However, there is a factor in this equation which continues to be an elephant in the room when it comes to Jewish dialogue. The word Zionism is increasingly equated with the term “Biblical Zionism,” a worldview in which a partnership of Christian and Jews are working frantically to move the hands of the prophetic clock, and to advance their respective, albeit different visions of the messianic age. One does not have to be an anti-Semite or a “pro-Palestinian propagandist” to fear this agenda, and the explosive mix of those in all three Abrahamic faiths who are fixated on bringing an end to human history.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 03/30/2010

• Gov't voting on 5-year water plan (Haaretz - Israel News)

  tags: Water

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 03/26/2010

• 2010 KKL-JNF Land Development Authority Conference

  tags: JNF

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 03/25/2010

• The Problem with the AIPAC Conference (International - The Atlantic)

  tags: Zionism

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 03/24/2010

• TotallyJewish.com | News | Special Reports

  tags: no_tag

  • No longer is Diaspora support for Israel channeled exclusively through a single central United Jewish Appeal. Neither are the political lobbies, such as AIPAC in north America or BICOM in the UK allowed to spin their own single version of what is happening in Israel to groups of politicians and journalists � as though everything is really okay and the negative parts are just a media lie and part of a global conspiracy of anti-Semitism. And make no mistake about it, there is plenty of anti-Semitism out there disguised as anti-Israel critique.
    
    
    
    But today there are alternative narratives out there in the high street of Jewish pluralistic debate � no less supportive of Israel and its vibrant democracy but more critical of many of the policies are undertaken by its government. And, as a result, the establishment feels threatened. It no longer has sole access to the ears of policy makers, or the cheque books of philanthropists and donors � which anyway has become increasingly difficult in a period of global economic recession.
    
    
    
    Some of them have hit back in a very non-Jewish fashion, attempting to stifle debate and to delegitimise those who think otherwise by labelling them as anti-Israel, self-hating Jews, post-Zionists and the like � when they are in fact guilty of no more than a deep love for Israel and a growing concern over the way the state is moving.
    
    
    
    Liberal, progressive and pro-peace supporters of Israel are not illegitimate haters of the state in disguise. The bully-boy tactics that have hit the headlines over the past year are doomed to fail. Support for Israel will remain strong among all parts of the Diaspora while, at the same time, searching and difficult questions will be asked by those who fear for the future of Israeli democracy, human rights and a just solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
    
    
    
    Nothing will come from an attempt to silence or delegitimise these growing voices, whose love for Israel and its people is rightly reflected in a growing concern for the nature of its diverse and pluralistic society.
    

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 03/23/2010

• Op-Ed: A nuclear power plant in Israel would be disastrous (JTA - Jewish & Israel News)

  tags: Nuclear_Energy

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 03/19/2010

• Hagai El-Ad: Seeing Israel as it Is from Afar, but Not Keeping a Distance

  tags: Democracy

  • There is a price for the alienation between what many Jews regard as Jewish values and the various steps recently taken by the government of Israel. For many of us, Jewish identity in the 21st century is anchored less in orthodox religious traditions and more in the values of equality and justice for all those created in God's image. It then becomes excruciatingly difficult to reconcile such a Jewish identity with an Israel that is an occupying power, inegalitarian, extremist, and indifferent to the world.

    
    
    

    There are those who respond to this crisis with a wish to silence dissenting voices, as though if only Israeli and international human rights organizations were to stop their activities and reports, the image of the state of Israel might miraculously be rehabilitated and the underlying problems would disappear. Sadly, many Israelis share this attitude, including probably our current Foreign Minister. This approach, however, fails to recognize the world we all live in, and is deeply counterproductive.

    
    
    

    Those who genuinely care about the State of Israel should let issues of image rest for a while and turn to matters of essence. If a country operates in a democratic, egalitarian, and just way, its image will follow suit and take care of itself. The solution does not lie in PR campaigns in Israel or overseas. There are no shortcuts: The solution lies in an essential change in the set of values guiding Israel's leadership. Indeed, an Israel that is more democratic, egalitarian, and just will not only have a better international image and be a place that more people identify with, but, even more importantly, it will be a better place for all of its own citizens - Jewish and non-Jewish - to live in.

    
    
    

• He will bring us all down (Haaretz - Israel News)

  tags: Peace_Process

  • It is we who didn't realize the sun had set over the occupation. Even our best friends, who for years saved us from UN Security Council vetoes, believe that Israel must quit the territories and withdraw to the western side of the separation fence - a secure and widely recognized border - with or without an agreement. This is the conclusion one reaches with a fair reading of Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, the Bill Clinton parameters and the letters exchanged between George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon.
    
    
    
    Netanyahu must get the message that Menachem Begin, Sharon and Ehud Olmert - his predecessors on the right - all came to understand, that the scenery looks entirely different once you're in power. Then he will understand that only the radical Palestinians and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad don't want to divide the land. It's good for them that Israel is turning into an updated version of an apartheid state. Israel haters everywhere understand well that the community of nations won't allow the rebirth of the Afrikaners' South Africa, one forcing on the world a single state between the river and the sea. This would be a single democratic state in which everyone has a vote, and when the ballots open, Ahmed Tibi will be elected prime minister.
    
    
    
    This is a scary prospect, more than Qassam rockets and far more than a second "Hamastan." It would be the end of a Jewish democratic Israel. Netanyahu can jolt the steering wheel at the last second and change the end of this film - to return to the vision of Theodor Herzl and create a Jewish national home in recognized, defensible borders. He will not only receive a Nobel Peace Prize, but enter history as a second David Ben-Gurion.
    
    
    
    What must he do? Create a third Netanyahu government, distance himself from the ideas of Tzipi Hotovely and other lawmakers in her camp, and join up with Tzipi Livni. Livni could be given half the steering wheel, with a joint Livni-Netanyahu government set up to divide the land and end the occupation. Half and half in the cabinet, fifty-fifty in government - the new administration would be one-quarter bigger than the current one. Lieberman would be released to do as he wishes and Yishai simply released.
    
    
    
    And what about Barak? Let him remain defense minister. It's good for Israel and good for ending the occupation. Barak is, after all, experienced in unilateral withdrawals. He did a great job in Lebanon and would do the same in the West Bank.
    
    

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 03/18/2010

• A welcome or a wall? (Opinion | Jewish Journal)

  tags: Conversion

• Jewish National Fund: Affiliate Banners

  tags: no_tag

  • 

• East Jerusalem plan was supposed to be shelved, so what happened? (Haaretz - Israel News)

  tags: Peace_Process

  • A prophet walked the land
    
    
    
    The eulogies, which focused on his exploits as a Mossad spymaster turned diplomat, did not do justice to the efforts of Dr. David Kimchi. In a conversation I had with him in June 2007, on the occasion of 40 years since the Six-Day War, I discovered that there is no operation that Dave is more proud of than his peace initiative of June 1967. Nine days after the outbreak of the war, reserve intelligence officer Kimchi and his friend, Dan Bavli, formulated the idea of two states, Israel and Palestine, living alongside each other in peace and security.
    
    
    
    In this document, which they prepared after a series of meetings with Palestinian figures, headed by attorney Aziz Shehadeh, they suggested establishing an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
    
    
    
    The new state, they wrote, would be connected to Israel via defense, economic and tourism agreements and others. It would not have an army, only a police force and the Israel Defense Forces would secure the Jordan Valley, alone, or in joint patrols with Palestinian forces.
    
    
    
    Before the first Israeli brick was laid down in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, and after they checked the idea with the Palestinian leaders, Kimchi and Bavli wrote, together with two colleagues from the intelligence community, Yitzhak Oron and Aluf Hareven, who joined the initiative, the following lines: "Jerusalem will be annexed to Israel, with a special status for the holy sites, and an auxiliary municipality will be set up for the Arab part of the Old City. The Palestinian state will establish its capital at the closest possible point to Jerusalem."
    
    
    
    The young officers even thought of a territorial exchange: annexing the Latrun salient and the Gilboa mountain range in return for concession of several Arab villages in Israel's territory.
    
    
    
    Later on, as he contributed his great understanding to peace and conciliation efforts, Kimchi dropped this idea.
    
    
    
    Copies of the document were presented to prime minister Levi Eshkol, defense minister Moshe Dayan and ministers Pinhas Sapir, Yigal Allon and Israel Galili.
    
    
    
    Kimchi told me that Shimon Peres was one of the people who convinced the Mapai leadership to stick to the Jordanian option, and regretfully concluded "this was a rare opportunity that was missed, even for a state accustomed to not missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity."
    
    
    
    

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Could Israel Be the First Fur-Free Nation?

While there may or may not be an element of truth to this, it is off-topic and irrelevant.
About Israel
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Post to Maskil_Activity 03/12/2010

• Engaging Israel: Beyond Advocacy (Shalom Hartman Institute - Jewish Scholarship, Education, Leadership for Israel, Diaspora)

  tags: Hasbara

  • The Jewish community is not in need of an Israel advocacy campaign of facts and figures alone, but also of a new Jewish narrative based on Jewish ideas and values for engaging Israel in a way that will help integrate Israel into a modern Jewish identity. Jews today need to be able to address crucial questions for which they currently do not know the answer. For example: What is the role of "peoplehood" in modern Jewish identity? What is the meaning and purpose of Jewish sovereignty connected to territory rooted in the land of Israel to modern Jewish life? What are the requirements of morality of war, and how can Israel use its power in a way that is consistent with the highest standards of Jewish morality and values? How does Israel balance its legitimate right of self defense with the rights of others? Can a Jewish state be reconciled with the values of Jewish pluralism and freedom? Does the aspiration for a Jewish state automatically define Israel as a racist, apartheid state?

    
    

     

    
    

    These are just some of the questions that need to be addressed and answered by this new Jewish narrative of Israel and Zionism. If one cannot answer them, there is neither a foundation for connecting to Israel nor the ability to sustain a viable and meaningful relationship. We need to educate and empower the Jewish community to engage Israel in a meaningful way before we can even think about asking them to advocate on its behalf.

    
    

• 50 Years Ago: The Reclamation of a Man-Made Desert (Scientific American)

  tags: Desert_Reclamation

• Aurelio Peccei's Flawed Vision and The Club or Rome (The Nuclear Green Revolution)

  "First, we must ask if Peccei over rates the human ability to foresee the consequences of its haphazard decisions and underrate the human ability to successfully adapt to those consequences as they emerge. We have to ask what Peccei envisions as the human and ecological consequence of modernity. First, premodern human economies were also capable of producing significant environmental feedback as a 2000 report by the state of Israel on the On the Implementation Of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification noted,
  
  The arid regions of Israel suffered natural soil erosion due to climate change during early historical times, and ancient Negev populations invested commendable terracing efforts to halt this erosion and to develop run-off agriculture there. From the dawn of history nearly all parts of the country have been under intensive land use by humans, including pastoralism and cropping, though evidence for desertification or the lack of it during historical times is not conclusive. During the turn of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century exploitation of woody and herbaceous vegetation especially in the dry subhumid areas, for firewood and due to grazing, caused severe soil erosion and significant degradation of vegetation. Many lowland regions have become waterlogged and salinized. It is not known whether or not semi-arid drylands suffered desertification at that time.
  
  The report does not elaborate on the relationship of grazing practices to desertification, but these are well documented elsewhere. "Wildlife", and Internet site states.
  
  In the Near East, the plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers formed the ancient region of Mesopotamia. This area was known for its agricultural wealth, but it became an early victim of desertification brought about by humans.
  
  Ancient farmers knew that periodically leaving land fallow or unplanted, helped to renew the soil’s fertility. But they stopped this practice so that they could grow more crops.
  
  After 3000 B.C. irrigati

  tags: Desertification

  • First, we must ask if Peccei over rates the human ability to foresee the consequences of its haphazard decisions and underrate the human ability to successfully adapt to those consequences as they emerge. We have to ask what Peccei envisions as the human and ecological consequence of modernity. First, premodern human economies were also capable of producing significant environmental feedback as a 2000 report by the state of Israel on the On the Implementation Of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification noted,

    The arid regions of Israel suffered natural soil erosion due to climate change during early historical times, and ancient Negev populations invested commendable terracing efforts to halt this erosion and to develop run-off agriculture there. From the dawn of history nearly all parts of the country have been under intensive land use by humans, including pastoralism and cropping, though evidence for desertification or the lack of it during historical times is not conclusive. During the turn of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century exploitation of woody and herbaceous vegetation especially in the dry subhumid areas, for firewood and due to grazing, caused severe soil erosion and significant degradation of vegetation. Many lowland regions have become waterlogged and salinized. It is not known whether or not semi-arid drylands suffered desertification at that time.

    The report does not elaborate on the relationship of grazing practices to desertification, but these are well documented elsewhere. "Wildlife", and Internet site states.

    In the Near East, the plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers formed the ancient region of Mesopotamia. This area was known for its agricultural wealth, but it became an early victim of desertification brought about by humans.
    
    Ancient farmers knew that periodically leaving land fallow or unplanted, helped to renew the soil’s fertility. But they stopped this practice so that they could grow more crops.
    
    After 3000 B.C. irrigation be-came more widespread, proba-bly in response to a population increase. As a result, the soil be-came exhausted. Its fertility was also decreased by a buildup of salts left behind by evaporated irrigation water. Eventually the once lush plains became a des-ert, and the ancient Mesopo-tamian civilization collapsed.

  • At one time the lands north of Africa’s Sahara Desert supported a wide range of wildlife. Ancient rock paintings, murals in tombs, and Roman mosaics all depict deer and gazelle in grasslands, with predators such as leopards and lions hunting them.
    
    Under Roman rule, North Africa produced vast quantities of cereal grains such as barley and wheat. However, centuries of overgrazing by cattle, as well as harm to shrubs and trees by goats, have combined with climatic shifts to erode the land and destroy wildlife. Tunisia, for example, has lost approximately half its arable land.
    
    Some scientists believe desertification reintorce itself intensifying the changes in the climate. Whenever vegetation is destroyed on a large, long-term scale, ground temperature rise and rainfall decreases. In 1969 the Israelis built a fence across the Sinai-Negev Desert between Israel and Egypt. On one side the Egyptians continued grazing camels, sheep, and goats. On the other side the Israelis left the land uncultivated, and wild plants began to take hold. Satellite photographs re-veal dark patches of vegetation under hazy cloud cover on the Israeli side but a clear sky and a desert in the making on the Egyptian side.

    Thus the ecological damage caused by modern agricultural practices must be measured against the ecological damage caused by traditional practices of agriculture. Neither is desirable, but the superior resources available to modern agriculturalists, would appear to make mitigation more likely. A recent Chinese report of the mitigation of agriculture related desertification states,

    Transforming the traditional resource-consuming agriculture into modern agriculture is the only choice and fundamental way to improve agricultural and ecological conditions in the Northwest.
    Modern agriculture is a resource-saving and technology-intensive industry run by intensive management with the combination of planting, breeding, processing, trading, manufacturing and farming. The traditional way of extensive cultivation and management as well as the divorce of agriculture from animal husbandry must be replaced by the concept of modern agriculture. Only in this way, can the course of industrial management and adjustment of the agricultural structure be advanced, and a technology-industry system will come out of the combination of animal husbandry, cultivation of herbage, farming of fine breeds of livestock, water conservancy, processing of agricultural products, and management of agricultural energy.
    
    Both irrigation- and rainfall-dependent agriculture can form an expanding agro-pastoral circle centered on villages or oases, which is the outcome of harmonized relations between human and nature, and an optimized man-made ecosystem suitable for natural and cultural environments in the Northwest.
    
    If switching from grazing to rearing sheep in folds is to tackle the problems of desertification and degeneration of the grassland at the root on a large scale, speeding up the construction of modern agriculture is to resolve the issues of ecological improvement and agricultural development in the Northwest at a higher level. As fundamental measures to combat desertification, raising sheep in pens, stopping cultivating and grazing, and promoting the course of modern agriculture are emphases for the investment of capital and technology and deserve favorable policies.

    Thus not only may traditional agriculture cause far more ecological damage than modern agricultural practices, but modern agricultural practices offer routes to mitigation of the damages caused by traditional practices.

• Nuclear Power Does NOT Help to Combat Climate Change (Coalition Against Nuclear Energy)

  tags: Nuclear_Energy

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 03/11/2010

• Wild Wild North

  tags: Land

  • THE BATTLE for the lands of the Galilee is two-fold, and Hashomer Hahadash is determined to fight it on both fronts. Alongside their guarding and educational activities, the guardsmen, along with half a dozen other organizations, are involved in the 2009 version of "land liberations." In response to the recent surge in purchase of private lands by Israeli Arabs, often financially backed by money arriving from foreign states, these groups have taken to offering to purchase the land from its Jewish owners themselves, in an attempt to keep it in Jewish hands, and for use in agriculture.
    
    Kadima MK and former secretary-general of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip Otniel Schneller says that there currently exist two opposing trends that threaten to drastically change Jews' relationship with the land. "On the one hand, modern Israelis have increasingly come to view the land as real estate rather than national assets. You can see this in the recent privatization of the land that used to belong to the ILA, you can see it in the JNF's readiness to swap lands with the government."
    
    "On the other hand," he continued, "we see a reverse trend among Israeli Arabs. They are beginning to see the land as a strategic asset, and they are doing everything they can to both stop lands in their possession from being sold to Jews, and to take over lands illegally where they can get away with it."
    
    "The state has yet to realize, and I hope they will soon, that this is its most important battle. It is proper that the government start an organization with the sole purpose of safekeeping our national assets," says Schneller.
    
    He accuses other politicians and the media of keeping the problem under wraps because it lacks ratings and is not politically correct. "It's not easy for a politician to say it, but for me it's clear. Israel is a Jewish state before it is a democratic state."

• Improving The Performance Of Solar Thermal Power (The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand)

  tags: Solar_Energy

  • * Avoid environmental conflicts and transmission line costs by building smaller plants on brownfield sites near cities.
    
    
    

    We have a strategy at eSolar to never impact pristine land. And the way we address that is several-fold. First, we have a higher output per acre, so we take a smaller footprint. Second, we’re economical at a smaller size. We can be fully economical at our 46-megawatt size. Those two things combined let us use a small enough footprint that we can locate on private land closer to population centers.
    
    So rather than needing 2,000 acres contiguous to make the economics work — which you almost only can find far away on pristine land or [federal] land — we can locate on only 200 acres very close to a city and we can buy previously disturbed farmland or other properties that’s already been developed so we’re not causing any disturbance to natural habitat. And that’s an important part of our philosophy. It gives us an economic advantage because we’re locating closer to transmission. That’s probably even a bigger factor.
    
    It takes years and years to build the transmission out to the pristine lands. [But] the power plant, for example, in Lancaster [California], is across the street from a transmission line. We didn’t have to build miles and miles of transmission, which takes years and years to get people to approve.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 03/10/2010

• Put an end to monopoly (Israel Opinion, Ynetnews)

  tags: Secular

  • Before the modern period most of the ideas and practical approaches of what we know today as “streams of Judaism” co-existed side by side in the reality of the Jewish communities. Indeed, in the Mishna, the foundational text of Judaism as we know it, these streams are found side by side embedded in the variant opinions preserved as legitimate.
    

    
    

     

    In modern times, these ideas, for many different reasons, developed into discrete movements. The reality is that Jewish religion today includes all of these movements. Thus, in order for a State to claim that it is Jewish it must not, ever, establish one of the streams over any other. To that extent, the State must distinguish between its right to impose by force laws on citizens, and remove itself from imposing laws which violate any religious conviction of a legitimate Jewish stream.
    

    
    

     

    True, Judaism is a political religion, but the Mishna makes it clear that the founders of Judaism expected a politics which would protect, preserve and even encourage various interpretations of how to be Jewish. The Mishna includes mechanisms for rule in a situation of multiple opinions and practices. If Israel is to be able to claim that it is a “Jewish State” it must return to that original mentality and conception.
    

    
    

     

    
    

    In practice that would mean disestablishing the “religious establishment”, that is the Chief Rabbinate and its court system, and in its place create a “Religious authority” that would fairly and justly support and grant authority and State legitimacy to all streams of Judaism. Yes, there are issues on the boundaries, but there would be almost unanimous agreement on those boundaries. Indeed, the existence of established movements with members, institutions, history etc. would be a major factor in deciding who is included and who is not.
    

    
    

• Comment / Can Israel have its OECD cake and eat it too? (Haaretz - Israel News)

  tags: Diplomacy

  • Is this model sustainable? Can Israel afford itself to pick and choose its participation for the long run and advance its interests in multilateral economic institutions only? I am afraid the answer is negative. The line between global politics and business is becoming very ambiguous. Multilateral economic forums are constantly being influenced by non-economic factors and political agenda. Our experience with the World Trade Organization showed us that the expansion of its membership and its growing agenda, including politically sensitive areas such as environmental and health policies, have politicized this economic institution. China, for example, has been using it to advance its anti-Taiwan foreign policy.
    
    
  • Israel will have to choose its place in the world. Is it going to be an integral part of the future globalized world or continue to use cherry-picked international forums as long as we can control for the traditional bias? OECD membership may help Israel improve both its credit in international financial markets and the ability of Israeli companies to access liquidity, but it will make it very difficult for many Israeli diplomats and policy makers to explain why Europe should leave Israel alone in its fight for democracy and peace in the Middle East. The European interventionist sentiment is designed, among other places, in Paris, just couple of miles from the OECD headquarters.
    
    
    
    
    
    OECD membership is a good thing for the Israeli economy. The OECD will officially accept one of the most advanced economies in the world to its table. It will boost Israel?s fight for its legitimacy in the world of ideas. Yet, when the inauguration ceremonies are over, OECD diplomats and technocrats may use Israel?s membership to promote their own political agenda in the region. Israel should be prepared for this moment. At that point, postponing the peace process for too long may not be an option.
    
    

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 03/09/2010

• Unholy Matrimony (Israel - New Voices)

  tags: Religion_and_State

• A must-see for Israeli Jews (Haaretz - Israel News)

  tags: Jewish_Renewal

  • Atheist nuances
    
    
    
    Marshak represents other chapters - such as Chapter 1 and the beginning of Chapter 2 in the Book of Genesis - and additional chapters in the Pentateuch, the Prophets and Writings, which were harbingers of atheism, perhaps the first in Western culture. An approach akin to atheism always has been a part of Jewish culture, even in the pre-biblical period. Similarly, in traditional rabbinic literature, there are passages that express the views of the biblical-era atheistic school.
    
    
  • The only people who can easily meet Marshak are young Jews whose minds have not yet been molded. Marshak's principal activity is thinking. He does not give advice to anyone, not even a Bar Mitzvah boy. In addition to a large library, which Scott's and Nachtner's offices lack, Marshak's room contains the components of a scientific laboratory. Granted, the equipment is primitive and antiquated, as Marshak is quite an elderly man. Nonetheless, Marshak's surroundings attest to the fact that he is a person who investigates, asks questions, expresses doubts and is never satisfied. From his few words, we learn that he also has no answer to human suffering and that he knows this. Nevertheless, Marshak does the right thing when he has to.
    
    
    
    The three wise men are no doubt authentic Jews. "A Serious Man" lets every "good Jew" choose which of the three kinds of Judaism represents him. Since Jews and Judaism are manifestations of universal humanism, the movie is an invitation to every "serious man" or "serious woman" - whether Jewish or non-Jewish - to choose a worldview. All those who see this profound film will have no doubt about what the Coen brothers chose.
    
    
    
    

• Israel’s first ‘clean tech’ college opens its doors

  tags: Green_Zionism

  • The clean tech revolution is beginning to sweep the world. The UN predicts that 8.5 million people will work in the green sector by 2030, while the US, Europe and other countries have made available massive amounts of money for clean technology development.
    
    Israel is no exception. There are more than 150 companies in the clean tech field here that didn’t exist just two years ago, Mediatech CEO Yariv Inbar told The Jerusalem Post Monday. But, he said, there’s a problem.
    
    “Companies are looking for quality well-trained people, but they can’t find professionals. Many are self-taught, but few have learned how to work in the clean tech sector in an ordered fashion,” he said.
    
    To that end, Mediatech, which is part of the Matrix information systems company and runs their training colleges, have teamed up with GreenAgenda to create the first college to retrain mid-career professionals for the clean tech sector. Matrix Greentech College will begin its first course at the end of April. The two initial course offerings will be technical jobs management in the clean tech sector.
    
    “So far, no one is retraining people,” Inbar said, “though there are the beginnings of such programs within environmental engineering programs.”
    
    Matrix has colleges across the country that already train hi-tech professionals. While the first course will be held in Tel Aviv, they plan to offer future courses in Haifa, Jerusalem and elsewhere.
    

• OECD Review of Agricultural Policies: Israel 2010 (OCDE Librairie de l'OCDE)

  tags: Agriculture

  • Israel’s agriculture is unique amongst developed countries in that land and water resources are nearly all state-owned and that agricultural production is dominated by co-operative communities. Israel is a world leader in agricultural technology, particularly in farming in arid conditions. This Review measures support provided to Israeli agriculture and evaluates the effectiveness of current agricultural policy measures. Israel has made progress in removing policies that distort trade, and resource allocation and support to agriculture is lower than the OECD average. However, the government still plays an important role. The report suggests further agricultural policy reforms to reduce costs for consumers and taxpayers and to improve the efficiency of current policy measures.

    A special focus of the report is the environmental performance of Israeli agriculture. This is already an issue with scarce land and water resources, accentuated by the overarching issue of climate change. The Review examines agriculture’s performance with respect to water resources and pollution, soils, biodiversity, air emissions and climate change. It concludes that strengthening policy coherence, especially in improving the management of water resources in agriculture, is important.

    
    
    

    ---

    
    
    
    

• The High Cost of Jewish Living

  tags: Continuity

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 03/06/2010

• To preserve Zionism, Netanyahu must end the occupation (Haaretz - Israel News)

  tags: Zionism

  • At the celebratory cabinet meeting in Tel Hai this week, his government adopted a program for restoring and reinforcing national heritage. Once again, the decision was derided and ridiculed. Secular France invests greatly in commemorating its cultural and national heritage, while democratic United States glorifies its past and speaks incessantly about its uniqueness and greatness, and yet this is forbidden for Israel.
    
    
    
    It is forbidden to preserve David Ben-Gurion's home in Sde Boker, or the Herzl House in Hulda, or Kinneret Farm, or the Ben Shemen Youth Village. It is forbidden to preserve the water tower at Negba, or the homes of the first settlers at Kfar Giladi. It is forbidden to preserve the treasures of Hebrew song, Hebrew dance and Hebrew theater. It is forbidden to preserve the manuscripts, photographs and films documenting the beginning of the Zionist enterprise. It is forbidden because any attempt by Israel to preserve the assets of its past is an anachronism, unenlightened and tainted by flawed nationalism. It is forbidden because any attempt on the part of the Jewish people to tell its story deserves to be condemned and silenced.
    
    
    
    The absolute misunderstanding of the Herzliya speech and the mad assault on the effort to preserve national heritage sites suggests that Netanyahu touched a sensitive nerve. The original plan prepared by the cabinet secretary, Zvi Hauser, did not include the Tomb of the Patriarchs or Rachel's Tomb. This proves unequivocally that the values the government sought to renew are not the values of the settlers in Yitzhar or Itamar; these are the values of the settlers of Ruhama and Revivim, the founders of Gedera and Rosh Pina, and those who established Tel Aviv. These are the values of Bezalel, Habima, the National Library and Neve Tzedek.
    
    
    
    The unbridled assault on the plan, therefore, is not an attack on the right and the occupation. It is an attack on the values that have shaped and defined us. An attack on Israel's core identity.
    
    
    
    Something bad has happened to us over the last generation. The struggle against the war in Algeria did not lead the French left to turn against the French Republic. The struggle against the wars in Vietnam and Iraq did not lead the American peace movement to abandon belief in the United States. But in Israel, the drawn out and justified struggle against the occupation has led to us turning our back on Zionism.
    
    
    
    Netanyahu is doing something important in trying to revive Zionism, but without confronting the occupation his effort will fail. If Israel is to be a global technological leader, grounded in its values and moving toward peace from a position of power, it must gradually leave the territories. The prime minister deserves a good word this week, but he must know that only if he removes Israel from Yitzhar and Itamar will he have the strength to restore it to what was promised at Ruhama, Kinneret, Hulda and Rosh Pina.
    
    
    
    

• Who Is A Rabbi? (Shalom Hartman Institute - Jewish Scholarship, Education, Leadership for Israel, Diaspora)

  tags: progressive_Judaism

  • There are three fundamental options on how to confront this challenge. The ultra-Orthodox have chosen to create a community as insulated as possible from the voice of modernity and thus inoculate its followers from its influences. For the assimilated Jew, the choice has been to accept all of modernity and its ideas and values and to reject the claims and authority of tradition in their lives. The committed liberal Jew, amongst whom we can count the centrist or modern Orthodox and the religious Zionist communities, have chosen a third path, a path which lives in the modern world, learns from it and tries to engage in a dialogue between the world and our ancient tradition. The nature of what the synthesis entails varies amongst rabbis, not to speak amongst denominations, but what all have in common is a search for a new synthesis which will allow the best of modernity to participate in the shaping of the content, direction, and meaning of Jewish halakhah, thought, and life.

    
    

• A view from on high (Haaretz - Israel News)

  tags: IDF

  • While the IDF has vastly improved in many areas, its basic structure and mindset have remained virtually unchanged for half a century. Since its last decisive, albeit problematic, victory during the Six-Day War in 1967, it simply has not delivered the military-strategic goods to the political leadership. In contrast to its image as a lean and effective army, the IDF is increasingly becoming a large, ponderous institution, still struggling to provide security to the citizenry, despite its apparent technological and tactical combat abilities.
    
    
    
    The strategic balance of the last 40 years is as follows: There have been three successful campaigns - the war in 1967, the attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, and the successful handling of terrorist attacks by suicide bombers in 2000-2002. On the other side of the equation are five failures: the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1982 Lebanon War and 17 pointless years of involvement in Lebanon, the first intifada in 1987, the inability to handle ballistic missiles launched from Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, and the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
    
    
    
    Since 1967, the IDF has not developed a system-wide approach to operational maneuvers, and thus cannot exploit its technological and combat strengths. The IDF has not internalized that anticipating further developments is the essence of strategy. In general, the addiction to actual management of each military campaign has prevented the senior command from perceiving a reality beyond the prevalent paradigm. Due to a lack of research institutions and a failed education system for its high ranking officers, the IDF has not learned from its own history, or from the experience of others, and has not exploited the knowledge available outside.
    
    
    
    Thus, over 43 years in the Palestinian territories, successive governments have shattered perceptions of IDF command, authority and responsibility. All of these governments lacked the courage to determine the fate of the territories and left the IDF to rule, but undermined its authority in informal, indirect and, at times, illegal ways. Or, as one member of the General Staff once put it: "The government pisses on the army." The governments were unable to decide what came first - the state or the land of Israel - and amid the conquest of territories and of the displacement of Palestinians, the political echelon simply relinquished its role of demonstrating leadership, solidarity, responsibility and authority.
    
    
    
    Also over the years, in addition to its other problems, the IDF establishment has had to function in an atmosphere of social and political extremism. Such an environment often demands solutions to complex problems by means of brief military operations - in the style of the 1956 Sinai Campaign or the 1967 war - which bring about relatively few casualties and are deemed a great success.
    
    

• Case Malmö: What Happens When You Tolerate Intolerance? (CORRUPT.org: Conservation & Conservatism)

  tags: Conservative

  • It's pretty simple logic. A multicultural society, or any form of society, cannot build trust and community based upon tolerance for everything and everyone. If we do so, groups will misuse that tolerance principle to please their own self-interests. This is how kids began manipulating their parents in the 70s, how Muslims have forced European leaders to compromise with Western constitutional rights, and how women have created feminist lobby groups to compensate their own individual inertia in the work field with socialist policies.

    
    

    European leftism hasn't yet understood what Right-leaning leaders have trying to assert for a long time, and what the Danish government already is saying. No, we cannot and should not accept whatever culture takes root in our society. We need certain bedrock beliefs that we uphold above else. Call it cultural superiority if you will, or selective multiculture. We embrace diversity, but only if we stand on a firm platform. This viewpoint is unacceptable in the current European climate, as evidenced by how Right-wing leaders are attacked in the media:

    
    

  • For the Jews, however, this analysis is simply no longer true. The tables have turned. If liberal-leftism was dominant in protecting and defending the right of Jews after WWII, it's currently constructing conspiracy theories against them and Israel in an attempt to discredit the homeland and allies of the Jewish people. Instead the conservative Right-wing parties in Europe have become pro-Zionist and critical of the Arab-Palestinian movement.

    
    

    There are partly party political reasons for this, and they can rightly be criticized on their own. The main point, however, remains fundamental: centuries of Judeo-Christian culture has shaped the West and Israel is the only truly Western-oriented nation in the Middle East. There are no obligatory ties, but obvious ties for cultural reasons, and therefore the Right is correct in ceasing this opportunity to expose the liberal-leftist hypocrisy.

    
    

    Case Malmö is really case multiculti. We've essentially imported cultural conflicts, and since we lack the mojo to uphold our constitutional rights and traditional values, we lose the game, every time, along with any group too weak to defend itself against the crowd. Yes, this is how tolerance for intolerance paves way for decadence. Democracies, who are systematically weak on their own, self-destruct when they become tolerant of groups or ideas critical of their founding principles. This is what Constitutionalists feel about Obama in America and what Sweden Democrats feel about immigration in Sweden. And they're both Right.

    
    
    
    

    
    
    

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Post to Maskil_Activity 03/05/2010

• Envisioning Jewish Peoplehood (בית כנסת ישראל)

  tags: Jewish_Renewal

  • Rather than thinking creatively about how to engage this population of unaffiliated Jews who want to receive Jewish information, education, ritual and worship, they continue the status quo while watching their numbers decrease as they look out in the pews.  Ethan Tucker addressed this issue in the Zeek article, “What Independent Minyanim Teach Us About the Next Generation of Jewish Communities.”[3] He cites the following three reasons why Jews do not join synagogues.  The first is that “Jews live modern, autonomous lives outside of the sphere of coercive rabbinic power…and thus will make their own normative choices.”  The second is that highly educated Jews have been trained to think critically about texts as sources of wisdom and not authority.  And, lastly, despite the challenges from modernity, many young adults do care what Judaism has to say as a source of help when dealing with personal and communal concerns.[4] They need community of some sort to assist with decision-making and crisis.  This means they want and need something, they just know it isn’t the typical synagogue.

    
    

    Today the word “belonging” has new meaning when one can belong to any community in the world via a Facebook group or fan page.  In the free marketplace of the Internet membership no longer means paying dues but clicking “yes” to a request to join.  Dr. Ezra Kopelowitz and Dr. Shlomi Ravid, in their study entitled “Best Practices of Organizations that Build Jewish Peoplehood,” outline the historical context for opting into the Jewish collective belonging.[5] The shifts began in the 17^th century, with the first shift lasting until the early 20^th century.  This was a time of Traditional Belonging, in which membership was mandated by law.  The second shift is known as Enclave Belonging, and marked the early 20^th century until the time of World War II.  The Time of Affiliation, the third shift, where membership became a choice, extended through the 1960’s.  The sixties through current time is known as the fourth shift, or the time of no affiliation.  Now is the time for employing a new model of thinking about being Jewish to turn the tide.

    
    

• UN's Double Standard for Arab Refugees (Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News)

  tags: Whose_Land?

• Science, Religion and God (Books Jewish Journal)

  tags: progressive_Judaism

  • Who’s the better Jew? The Hassid who believes in the literal truth of the Bible, denies the findings of modern science and reprimands women who stray too far from the home or the Jew who goes to synagogue, observes the Sabbath, encourages his wife to get a PhD in astrophysics, and regards some of the Bible’s teachings as inapplicable to the modern world? If you said the Hassid, you are confusing literal-minded extremism with the true rabbinical tradition writes modern orthodox Rabbi Marc D. Angel, Ph.D., in his courageous new book, “Maimonides, Spinoza, and Us: Toward an Intellectually Vibrant Judaism” (Jewish Lights: $24.99). Angel smokes Jewish fundamentalists out of their lair and systematically destroys their claims to authority with his brilliance and peerless scholarship.

    
    
    

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.