Justifications abound for having prostitution be legal. Some claim that prostitution is a source of easy money or that its lengthy history points to its inevitable continuity. There’s even the dubious claim that it is a necessary conduit allowing men to fulfill their biological needs. Such myths clash dramatically with the truth and conceal a sordid underworld of violence, rape and the worst forms of abuse.

Merely utilizing terms such as “employment” and “profession” to describe prostitution lends credence to a system that preys on women who have faced severe physical and emotional oppression. More than 80 percent of women in prostitution have been sexually or physically abused in their youth, often by family members, according to reports shared with the task force. Entry is not a matter of choice but an unwitting endpoint in a cycle of abuse and despair.

Even with its recent decline — attributed to pressure from civil society organizations and the United States — Israel remains a destination country for human trafficking. The industry thrives on the vulnerable and exploits the troubled past of victims of abuse.

So why, especially if the negatives are even more disturbing than we had imagined, is this practice allowed to continue — with emphasis on the word “allowed”? For in the most basic sense, not enough has been done to combat an “industry” that thrives on the degradation and abuse of women and is supported by human traffickers. Allowed because though it is illegal to traffic human beings, run a brothel or work as a pimp, becoming a “consumer” of prostitution is still legal in Israel.

Essentially, though it is illegal to sell women, buying them is deemed acceptable. Though the world of prostitution is a hub for physical abuse, the transmission of fatal diseases and the restriction of freedom, it is still legal to fuel this horrid practice. The result should come as no surprise.

With no attempt to reduce demand, there is a constant incentive for criminal bodies to provide the supply. Targeting pimps and brothel owners is simply not enough, as evidenced by an average of more than 1 million brothel visits every month in Israel and a trade that accounts for more than $500 million each year, according to the reports.

Some argue that regulation and control of prostitution is needed, not prohibition. It’s a route that could provide for safer environments, less criminal involvement and an end to human trafficking. However, when such laws were enacted in Germany and Holland, conditions for women failed to improve and the laws were proven to be abject failures.

On Feb. 12, Zuaretz will bring a law to the Knesset that places criminal responsibility on those who purchase sexual services. What’s more, the legislation, which was proposed in 2010 to a ministerial hearing and is based on a Law that has been enacted in Sweden, Iceland, Norway and, most recently, France, would allow Israel to join the ranks of those nations working tirelessly toward a world free of modern slavery.

The result of this legislative action speaks of far more than simply whether we Israelis will choose to punish individuals who perpetuate these crimes. It will ask us to determine where we as a society stand in a debate centered on how we appropriate human rights. Do we feel that all individuals deserve liberty and justice, or have we set criteria that ultimately strip those less fortunate of the opportunities that freedom entails?

The challenge has been issued, but whether Israel decides to place itself on the right side of history has yet to be determined.

(Gili Varon, an attorney, is the director of the Task Force on Human Trafficking, a joint project with ATZUM that aims to engage the Israeli public and government agencies to confront and eradicate modern slavery in Israel.)

Here was a Jewish newspaper publisher providing fodder for something the Anti-Defamation League regularly deplores as a pernicious anti-Semitic canard: that Jews are more loyal to Israel than the United States.

In his Jan. 13 column, Andrew Adler outlined what he said were three possible responses by Israel to Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon: a pre-emptive strike against Hamas and Hezbollah, a direct strike on Iran, or “three, give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.”

He continued, “Yes, you read ‘three’ correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?”

Condemnations rained from every corner, and Adler quickly apologized. By Monday, the publisher announced that he was resigning his position and putting up his newspaper for sale.

“I very much regret it, I wish I hadn’t made reference to it at all,” Adler told JTA last Friday. On Monday he said he was “relinquishing all day-to-day activities effective immediately.”

As wacky as Adler’s column was, it was an extreme expression of a viewpoint that carries some currency among Obama’s Jewish critics: that the president represents a serious danger to Jews and to Israel.

While few of those critics might go as far as Adler, it doesn’t take much discussion in certain Jewish circles to find those who see something far more sinister in Obama than a president whose policies are bad for the Jews and Israel.

“I think Obama’s overriding goal is to have Israel destroyed,” said Randy Silver, a businessman from Glenview, Ill. “He puts steps in motion to bring about the destruction of the State of Israel.”

Noah, a physician from New York’s Westchester County suburb who asked that his full name be withheld, told JTA: “I will admit to serious questions about whether he’s a Muslim and whether he hates Jews. It’s a possibility. I’m very uncomfortable with him.”

To be sure, such views constitute a minority viewpoint even among Obama’s Jewish detractors, and the American Jewish community has been — and largely remains — a stronghold of support for Obama. In 2008, Obama won an estimated 78 percent of the Jewish vote, and even though his popularity in the Jewish community has dwindled during his Oval Office tenure, it has declined far less among Jews than among the general U.S. population. A Gallup poll released four months ago showed Obama with a 55 percent approval rating among Jews, though an American Jewish Committee poll released at approximately the same time showed the president with a 45 percent approval rating. Still, the AJC poll showed that Obama would win the Jewish vote against any hypothetical Republican candidate by at least 18 percentage points.

Obama is hardly the first president to be called an anti-Semite or hostile to Israel. In 1991, George H.W. Bush found himself the subject of withering Jewish criticism when he sought to delay $10 billion in loan guarantees for Israel unless Jerusalem agreed to a settlement freeze in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, said he remembers holding a news conference to denounce Jewish characterizations of Bush as Satan and evil.

But the rhetoric and conspiracy theories against Obama seem to constitute an unprecedented level of vitriol, say many longtime observers of the Jewish political scene.

“I’ve never seen as much enmity toward a president by American Jews as I do toward Obama,” said Morton Klein, the national president of the Zionist Organization of America. “I’ve never heard people say, as they say to me, ‘I hate him.’ ”

Klein, who called on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to disinvite Obama from its annual policy conference last year and thinks AIPAC should bar Obama from this year’s conference, lays the blame on the president.

“Among those who care about Israel, he surely is to blame for it,” Klein said. “Every chance he gets he blames Israel.”

Foxman says that extreme hatred of Obama is not so much about the president’s policies as it is about America’s economic troubles, the sense that Israel faces greater existential threats today than at any time in the last 30 to 40 years, and the Internet, which amplifies and spreads radical voices and conspiracy theories.

“All of these add an anxiety element that intensifies fear and anxiety,” Foxman told JTA. “Attitudes have intensified.”

Then there’s Obama himself — a black president with the middle name Hussein who has been accused even by some Jewish Democrats of not being able to show sympathy for Israel in his kishkes.

Democrats blame the Republicans for the vitriol; Republicans say Democrats are practicing divisive politics.

Obama’s most vehement Jewish critics are not the only ones who accuse Obama of being a secret Muslim, a socialist and a threat to America. Many Tea Party activists have sounded similar themes, with some going so far as to decry his adminsitration as pursuing Nazi-like policies.

But Obama’s most extreme Jewish critics also accuse him of seeking to erase the Jewish character of the Jewish state and plotting to wage war against Israel or the Jews. They see anti-Semitic overtones even in Obama’s hiring of Jewish advisers.

“A Jacob Lew or a Rahm Emanuel is a danger to the Jewish people because they make treif look kosher,” Silver, the Illinois businessman, said of the current and former Obama chiefs of staff. “I think these are anti-Jewish Jews. They make Obama look like he’s not a threat, but he’s a clear and present danger to Israel.”

Pamela Geller, a Jewish writer whose blog, Atlas Shrugs, is a popular source of information for anti-Obama conspiracy theorists, says Obama is trying to stir up Muslim enmity toward Jews.

“The President of the United States is advancing jihad against the oath of office that he took,” Geller wrote in April 2010. “If he is agitating Muslims against Jews, will he declare war on Israel?”

Obama administration officials repeatedly have denounced these sorts of accusations as patently false and waged a campaign in the Jewish community to highlight the president’s record on issues of Jewish concern, ranging from domestic issues to Obama’s pushes for Iran sanctions and endorsement of unprecedented U.S.-Israel military cooperation.

But ultimately, for that subset of the Jewish community that sees ominous signs in Obama’s record, the concern isn’t so much what Obama has done so far in his three years in office as it is what he might do in the future.

“He takes baby steps and is slowly putting things in play to do Israel damage in the long run,” Silver said. “There’s a strategy behind this.”

Robert Wistrich

The Muslim Brotherhood did not initiate the current upheavals in the Middle East, but the Islamist parties in Egypt, as in Tunisia and Libya, have been the chief beneficiaries of the collapse of longstanding authoritarian repressive regimes across North Africa.

In Egypt itself, the two largest Islamist groups — the Brotherhood and the Salafists — won about three quarters of the ballots in the second round of legislative elections held in December, while the secular and the liberal forces took a battering.

The Brotherhood (which garnered over 40 percent of the votes) is an organization founded by an Egyptian schoolteacher, Hassan el Banna, back in 1928. It has never deviated from its founder’s central axiom: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Koran is our law; jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

It is this radical vision which animates all those in the region who seek a fully Islamic society and way of life. The Muslim Brotherhood has always been deeply anti-Western, viscerally hostile to Israel and openly anti-Semitic — points usually downplayed in Western commentary on the so-called Arab Spring. Indeed, the anti-Jewish conspiracy theories promoted by the Brotherhood and its affiliated preachers are in a class of their own.

This is especially true of Egyptian-born Yusuf al-Qaradawi, undoubtedly the most celebrated Muslim Brotherhood cleric in the world. The still vigorous 84-year-old, often misleadingly depicted in the West as a “moderate,” flew in from Qatar to Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Feb. 18 to lead a million-strong crowd in Friday prayers, thereby ending 50 years of exile from his native land. He called for pluralistic democracy in Egypt while at the same time offering the hope “that Almighty Allah will also please me with the conquest of the al-Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem].”

Two years earlier, in a notorious commentary on Al-Jazeera TV (Jan. 28, 2009), the “moderate” Qaradawi had provided religious justification for both past and future Holocausts: “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption … The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them — even though they exaggerated this issue — he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them … Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers.”

In other words, the loathing of Jews, the Holocaust and the destruction of Israel by Muslims were linked by Qaradawi as things mandated by God himself.

Regarding Israel and the Jews, fundamentalist Muslim attitudes have not deviated since the 1940s. Islamist ideologues, despite their virulent anti-Westernism, have had no problem drawing on Western sources for their radical anti-Semitism — whether these libels come from “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” forgery, Henry Ford’s “The International Jew,” Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” fantasies about Judeo-Masonic plots, Christian anti-Talmudism, medieval blood-libels or the slanders of contemporary Holocaust deniers in America and Europe.

The current swelling of Islamist ranks within Egypt and across the Arab world has hardly improved matters. At a vocal Muslim Brotherhood rally in Cairo’s most prominent mosque on Nov. 25, Islamic activists ominously chanted “Tel Aviv, judgment day has come,” vowing to “one day kill all Jews.” The rally, which sought to promote the “battle against Jerusalem’s judaization,” was peppered with hate-filled speeches about the “treacherous Jews.”

There were explicit calls for jihad and liberating all of Palestine as well as references to a well-known hadith (saying) concerning the future Muslim annihilation of the Jews. Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb, the head of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University (the most senior clerical authority in Sunni Islam) even claimed that Jews throughout the world were seeking to prevent Egyptian and Islamic unity, as well as trying to “Judaize al-Quds [Jerusalem].”

This kind of incitement and the pressure from the Egyptian street does not mean that the fragile peace treaty with Israel will be cancelled overnight. But calls for such a step have been repeatedly heard in recent months even from the “liberal” and “progressive” sectors of the political spectrum as well as from the Islamist parties.

Dr. Rashad Bayoumi, the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, bluntly told the Arabic daily al-Hayat on the first day of 2012 that his organization will never “recognize Israel at all,” whatever the circumstances. Israel, he emphasized, was a “criminal enemy” with whom Egypt should never have signed a peace treaty in the first place.

If this treaty is not to be abrogated, much will depend on the United States making clear to Egypt how dire the economic and political consequences would be.

It is particularly chilling to note that the Islamic wave already dominates not only in Iran, which is on the verge of nuclear weapons, but also in Turkey, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, the Gaza strip under Hamas and the Lebanese state, currently in the iron grip of Hezbollah. Apart from seeking to impose sharia (Islamic law), and to further downgrade the status of women — while repressing Copts and other non-Muslim minorities — the neo-Islamist movements and regimes remain as determined as ever to wipe out Israel and to radically reduce American influence in the region. Needless to say, like the Brotherhood itself, Islamists consider themselves to be the sole authentic interpreters of divine will.

In the face of this mounting fundamentalist danger, Israel has no choice but to consolidate its deterrent capacity, close ranks and treat with the upmost skepticism any siren voices calling on it to take unreasonable “risks for peace.” At the same time, it will have to develop a new regional strategy that takes into account the seismic changes currently shaking the Middle East.

Prof. Robert Wistrich is the director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of AntiSemitism (SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of “A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad” (Random House, 2010).

Rabbi Sid Schwarz

About a year and half ago, I participated in a fact-finding mission to Israel sponsored by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arabs (IATF). Established in 2006 as a consortium of some of the major organizations in American Jewish life — including the Joint Distribution Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee — the IATF is committed to raising awareness of the circumstances of the 20 percent of Israel’s citizens who are Arab.

The issue was not new to me. A large part of my rabbinate has been devoted to advancing human and civil rights at home and abroad. Because I love Israel deeply, I was long concerned that issues of human and civil rights were raised only by progressive organizations, both in Israel and abroad. It was long overdue for the Jewish communal establishment to understand why the rights of Israeli Arabs should be a priority for anyone concerned with Israel’s future.

Upon my return from the mission we established the first local affiliate of the IATF in the country in Washington, D.C. The Greater Washington Forum on Israeli Arab Issues was dedicated to educating the local Jewish community about Jewish-Arab relations in Israel, including the economic, educational and social challenges faced by Israel’s Arab citizens.

The test of any democracy is how it treats it minorities. It is all the more challenging in Israel because it was founded as a Jewish state. However, there have always been non-Jewish citizens living in Israel and the country’s Declaration of Independence guarantees them full equality.

Arabs today make up 20 percent of Israel’s population, yet they represent only 1 percent of the gross domestic product. There are vast inequalities between Jews and Arabs in Israel in terms of the schools they attend, the municipal services they receive and the employment opportunities available to them. Israel’s own government admits that they have a long way to go to create true parity for Israeli Arabs.

It is worth noting that in forming the GWFIAI, we were committed to having the representation of the full range of our Jewish community. Our steering committee now includes the Israeli Embassy, the Washington Jewish Federation and the Jewish Community Relations Council. At our first Community Education Day last January, 300 people showed up for a four-hour program on a Sunday afternoon.

We succeeded in drawing many younger Jews who are thirsty for a conversation about Israel that is rigorous and honest but who, for the most part, have absented themselves from the Israel conversation sponsored by Jewish communal groups. Even more importantly, we were able to attract to our event both those who would identify with the political right as well as with the political left. Nonetheless, the conversation at our event last year was both civil and respectful.

I am well aware that there are those in the community who would deem this effort to be misguided. They will offer a list of reasons why Israel is still a country at risk. They are not wrong about that sad reality, but their disdain for efforts that might help Israeli Arabs enjoy full equality is shortsighted.

There are dangerous trends in Israel today that threaten the country’s democratic character. Racist attitudes are on the rise and the Knesset is now considering several pieces of legislation that are overtly discriminatory. It is clear that Israel is not immune from the religious extremism that has poisoned Islam in recent years.

Jews who care about Israel should pay as much heed to the Jewish state’s democratic character as they do to its security. This position was eloquently framed at last year’s program by Noam Katz, the Israeli Embassy’s minister for public diplomacy.

He said, “The Israeli-Arab and the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts are full of bitterness, bad blood and mistrust. The self-identity of Arabs in Israel is strongly linked and connected to the Arab nation and the Palestinian people. It makes the effort more difficult.

“However, it doesn’t exempt us, as a nation, as a society and as a government, from trying to make it work … These relations are a test of our national vision and morals, and a vital issue to the survival of Israel as a Jewish state and democratic society.”

Democracy is not a right/left issue. At the core of democracy is a respect for the infinite value of every human being, a central premise of the Jewish teaching that every person is made b’tzelem elohim, “in the image of God.”

In its brief history, Israel can boast many great achievements. If Israel could successfully meet the aspirations of its Declaration of Independence and accord its Arab minority the same opportunities and rights enjoyed by its Jewish citizens, it will have accomplished something that few other countries in the world have done — and under the most challenging of circumstances.

This is a cause worth rallying around.

Rabbi Sid Schwarz is the founder of the PANIM Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values and the co-chair of the Greater Washington Forum on Israeli Arab Issues. He is the author of “Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World.”

“This protest,” said one of the rally’s organizers, “reflects the Zionists’ persecution of the haredi public, which we see as worse than what the Nazis did.”

The image of one particular boy at the demonstration raising his hands in mock surrender to re-enact the famous photograph of a terrified Jewish child being rounded up by the Germans in the Warsaw Ghetto struck a very personal chord within me. Sixty-nine years ago, another little Jewish boy named Benjamin was living with his parents in the city of Sosnowiec in southern Poland. The previous month he had celebrated his fifth birthday. He was a smart, good-hearted, totally innocent child who had never done any harm to anyone. Only he had already been sentenced to death.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the other Allied leaders knew full well that Benjamin and virtually every other Jewish child in Nazi-occupied Europe were about to be brutally and systematically murdered. On Dec. 17, 1942, the United States, Great Britain and the USSR had condemned the German government’s “bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination” of Jews in Nazi-occupied or -controlled Europe.  Yet Benjamin’s fate and that of other Jewish children like him was not a priority for any government official anywhere.

“Suffer the little children to come unto me,” said Jesus according to the Gospel of Mark. “Forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” This fundamental Christian imperative was ignored by the U.S. State Department bureaucrats who deliberately frustrated any attempt to come to the rescue of European Jewry.  Even in the midst of World War II, if the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and other Western democracies had announced a willingness to give refuge to Jewish children, Benjamin might still have had a chance.

Instead, as Gregory Wallance chronicles in his forthcoming book, “America’s Soul in the Balance, The Holocaust, FDR’s State Department and the Moral Disgrace of an American Aristocracy” (Greenleaf Book Group Press), after Gerhard Riegner, the director of the Geneva office of the World Jewish Congress, had sent a telegram through U.S. diplomatic channels in Switzerland in January 1943 reporting that 6,000 Jews “are killed daily” at one location in Poland, and Romanian Jews are similarly being murdered under dire circumstances, Secretary of State Cordell Hull instructed the American legation in Bern not to accept similar “private messages” in the future.

On the night of Aug. 3-4, 1943, Benjamin arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp with his parents and grandparents. In her posthumously published memoirs, his mother, our mother, recalled her final moments with my brother: “We were guarded by SS men and women. One SS man was standing in front of the people and he started the selection. With a single movement of his finger, he was sending some people to the right and some to the left. … Men were separated from women. People with children were sent to one side, and young people were separated from older looking ones. No one was allowed to go from one group to the other.  Our 5 1/2-year-old son went with his father.  Something that will haunt me to the end of my days occurred during those first moments. As we were separated, our son turned to me and asked, ‘Mommy, are we going to live or die?’ I didn’t answer this question.”

Benjamin, his father and my grandparents were murdered that night in one of the Auschwitz gas chambers. Since my mother’s death in 1997, he has existed inside of me. I see his face in my mind, try to imagine his voice, his fear as the gas chamber doors slammed shut, his final tears. If I were to forget him, he would disappear.

Tragically, the hundreds of thousands of children who were killed in the subsequent 20th century genocides in Rwanda, Darfur, the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere fared no better. The 1948 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was supposed to protect them. So was the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Rwanda, Serbia and the Sudan are all parties, which affirmed that “every child has the inherent right to life.” The mutilated corpses of children and infants hacked by machetes in Rwanda or buried in mass graves in Bosnia epitomize the international community’s failure to live up to this most fundamental of all aspirations.

My brother and every other child murdered in any genocide deserve to be remembered as fragile flames extinguished in tsunamis of hatred, intolerance and bigotry. Exploiting their memory to score cheap political points is obscene.

(Menachem Z. Rosensaft, the son of two survivors of the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, is general counsel of the World Jewish Congress and vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. He teaches about the law of genocide at Cornell Law School, Columbia Law School and Syracuse University College of Law.)

Rain is a blessing. We pray for it. Patience is a blessing. We pray that we have enough of it for each other.

It’s a good day to stay inside and reflect on my trip to Israel and to Beit Shemesh, a city about half-hour west of Jerusalem. Beit Shemesh and the Washington Jewish community have been partners for many years, and partners share responsibility for each other.

In Beit Shemesh, the friction between some extremist haredim and others took a recent explosive turn. Add international media coverage of the separation of men and women on selected bus lines and the removal of images of women on certain billboards in Jerusalem, and we have a combustible mixture of concern by many Israelis and American Jews about the status of civil society, tolerance and women’s rights in Israel.

While a majority of haredi men are not working or serving in the military, we are beginning to see — and the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington is supporting through training programs — a growing number of haredim entering both the workforce and military service. We will also be funding expanded programs to promote dialogue and tolerance in the Beit Shemesh community.

We must all do more to encourage those who are adapting to the changing environment while standing up to resistance within their own communities. We cannot afford to become two people. We have to learn to live together. We need the rain. We need the patience.

Many in Beit Shemesh told me how proud they are of their community. They point to excellent schools, the beautiful countryside, good jobs and friendly mixed neighborhoods of haredi, secular and Modern Orthodox Jews. They urged me to help tell the story of the “other Beit Shemesh,” the part of the community that is not in the news. Non-haredi members of the community reminded me repeatedly that the extremists do not reflect the vast majority of haredim in the community who oppose the harassment and violence. They tell a more nuanced story.

A haredi man with whom I spoke lamented the situation and is urging members of his community to pursue a dialogue with the non-haredim — to create trust with the goal of living peacefully side by side with others. Everyone has an opinion — this is Israel after all — but most I’ve spoken with are worried about the willingness of everyone to find ways to live side by side.

“All politics is local,” said Tip O’Neill, the late speaker of the U.S. House of Represenatives, and that’s true in Israel, with a twist: local is national and vice versa. Coalition governments make for strange bedfellows and even stranger deals. The net result is a mixture of national policies with significant local ramifications, such as a plan to build more housing units in Beit Shemesh and the struggle over who will live in those units.

What is going on here and how can we help? These are the two questions we must face as American Jews.

Israel is a vibrant democracy, with guaranteed civil rights for all its citizens. We do not need to lecture Israelis about democracy, free speech and advocacy. This past summer’s protests, with up to 400,000 Israelis taking to the streets to demand affordable housing and education, is the latest and largest example. Israelis are actively and passionately addressing these issues.

But I do worry about the image of Israel. No, this is not another article about hasbara. Rather it’s a call for the American Jewish community, though we come from different backgrounds and may not agree on multiple issues, to engage with like-minded Israelis to denounce acts of intimidation and violence, promote dialogue and create safe space for different communities in Israel to live beside each other in greater harmony.

And when it comes to the public relations of the State of Israel, we are all on the front lines. This is not someone else’s story. It’s our story and our responsibility to paint a complete picture of Israel as an extraordinarily free and democratic country facing up to and dealing with its challenges.

It’s a tale of two countries but also a tale of one people — our people. It’s a story that encompasses everything: the challenging and the beautiful, the reality and the promise, the present and the future, all built on a miraculous past. It’s a tale that must aspire to the happy end expressed by Isaiah: “And I shall submit you as the people’s covenant, as a light unto the nations.”

(Steven A. Rakitt is CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, a Partnership 2Gether community for the past 15 years with South Africa and the Mateh Yehuda/Beit Shemesh region.)

The question naturally arises: Will the United States act in accordance with its role as guarantor of the peace and demand that the new Egyptian government give Sinai back to Israel? Because if the Obama administration or whatever administration is in power when Egypt abrogates the treaty does not issue such a demand, and stand behind it, and if the European Union does not support the demand, the entire concept of land-for-peace will be exposed as a hoax.

Indeed the land-for-peace formula will be exposed as a twofold fiction. First, it is based on the false proposition that the peace process is a two-way street. Israel gives land, the Arabs give peace. But the inevitable death of the Egyptian- Israeli peace accord under an Egyptian jihadist regime makes clear that the land-for-peace formula is a one-way street. Israeli land giveaways are permanent. Arab commitments to peace can be revoked at any time.

Then there are the supposedly iron-clad U.S. and European security guarantees that accompany signed treaties. All the American and European promises to Israel – that they will stand by the Jewish state when it takes risks for peace – will be exposed as worthless lies. As we are already seeing today, no one will stand up for Israel’s rights. No one will insist that the Egyptians honor their bargain.

As it has become more apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist parties will hold an absolute majority in Egypt’s democratically elected parliament, Western governments and media outlets have insistently argued that these anti-Western, and anti-Jewish, movements have become moderate and pragmatic. Leading the charge to make the case has been the Obama administration. Its senior officials have eagerly embraced the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood Yusuf Qaradawi is reportedly mediating negotiations between the United States and the Taliban.

Qaradawi, an Egyptian who has been based in Qatar since 1961, when he was forced to flee Egypt due to his jihadist politics, made a triumphant return to his native land last February following the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak. Speaking to a crowd of an estimated two million people in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Qaradawi led them in a chant calling for them to invade Jerusalem.

Over the years, Qaradawi has issued numerous religious rulings permitting, indeed requiring, the massacre of Jews. In 2009, he called for the Muslim world to complete Hitler’s goal of eradicating the Jewish people.

As for the United States, in 2003, Qaradawi issued a religious ruling calling for the killing of U.S. forces in Iraq.

Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists are happy to cater to the propaganda needs of Western journalists and politicians and pretend that they are willing to continue to uphold the peace treaty with Israel. But even as they make conditional statements to eager Americans and Europeans, they consistently tell their own people that they seek the destruction of Israel and the abrogation of the peace deal between Egypt and Israel.

As the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs’ Jonathan D. Halevi documented last week in a report on Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist positions on the future of the peace between Egypt and Israel, while speaking to Westerners in general terms about their willingness to respect the treaty, both groups place numerous conditions on their willingness to maintain it. These conditions make clear that there is no way that they will continue to respect the peace treaty. Indeed, they will use any excuse to justify its abrogation and blame it on Israel. And they will do so at the earliest available opportunity.

It is possible, and perhaps likely, that the United States will cut off military aid to Egypt should Cairo abrogate the peace treaty. But it is impossible to imagine that the Obama administration will abide by the United States’ commitment as the guarantor of the deal and demand that Egypt return Sinai to Israel. Indeed, it is only slightly more likely that a Republican administration would fulfill the U.S. commitment as guarantor of the peace and demand the return of Sinai to Israel after Egypt’s democratically elected Islamist regime finds an excuse to abrogate the peace treaty.

It is important to keep this sorry state of affairs in mind when we assess the prospects for a land-for-peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Last week, following months of intense pressure from the United States and the European Union, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met face to face for the first time in 16 months. According to Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, who hosted the meeting, the Palestinians submitted their proposal on security and border issues to Israel.

There are several reasons that these talks are doomed to failure. The most important reason is that even if they lead to an agreement, no agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is sustainable. Assuming for a moment that P.A. Chairman Mahmoud Abbas goes against everything he has said for the past three years and signs a peace deal with Israel in which he promises Israel peace in exchange for Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, this agreement will have little impact on the Palestinians’ view of Israel. Abbas today represents no one. His term of office ended three years ago. Hamas won the last Palestinian elections in 2006.

And Hamas’s leaders – like their counterparts in the Muslim Brotherhood – make no bones about their intention to destroy Israel. Two weeks ago at a speech in Gaza, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh proclaimed, “We say today explicitly so it cannot be explained otherwise, that the armed resistance and the armed struggle are the path and the strategic choice for liberating the Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river, and for the expulsion of the invaders and usurpers [Israel]… We won’t relinquish one inch of the land of Palestine.”

In his visit with his Muslim Brotherhood counterpart, Mohammad Badie, in Cairo last week Haniyeh said, “The Islamic resistance movement of Hamas by definition is a jihadist movement by the Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian on the surface, Islamic at its core, and its goal is liberation.”

The time has come for Israel to admit the truth. Land-for-peace is a confidence game and we are the mark.
(Caroline B. Glick is a columnist for the Jerusalem Post. caroline@carolineglick.com)

Kenneth Bob

David Ben Gurion, who later became the founding prime minister of Israel, was the leader of the Labor Zionist movement that led the pre-state Jewish Palestine community and provided the core values to the emerging state. It was not a coincidence that when it was necessary to establish communities to define and protect the future borders of Israel, the socialist kibbutz and its cooperative cousin, the moshav, were the chosen formats. In short, at the time of the establishment of the state and for years to come, progressive Zionism was synonymous with Israel. These progressive Zionists fully supported the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine that recommended the division of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab.

These founding pioneers would find it inconceivable that today many in and out of the Jewish community identify Zionism exclusively with right-wing political views that oppose a two-state solution and view ideological settlers living in far-flung West Bank settlements as the true Zionist pioneers of today. This perception is propagated by the right both in Israel and the Diaspora.

In the United States, some American Jewish organizations and leaders actively promote the delegitimization of progressive Jewish and Zionist organizations, suggesting that expressing views in opposition to Israeli government positions is equivalent to being anti-Israel and disloyal to the Jewish people. Synagogues have been threatened with withdrawal of financial support for holding events that promote views critical of official Israeli government policy. Jewish Community Centers have drawn criticism for screening films about the challenges faced by Israeli Arab citizens.

The left, however, is not blameless in this situation. There has been a tendency to cede the field to the right and opt out of the Zionist debate. Young Jews, turned off by the image of a theocratic, recalcitrant Israel, are developing new forms of a communal Jewish identity that avoid the “Z word” and relegate Israel to a minor role in their lives. The recent Repair the World study on young Jewish adults showed that while a large majority of respondents engage in some sort of volunteer activity, only 1 percent of respondents cited Israel or Middle East peace as the primary focus of their volunteer work.

This trend, if not addressed, could have far-reaching impact on future Israel-Diaspora relations and American Jewish support for Israel. The American Jewish community has to acknowledge and embrace the fact that the Middle East conflict is complicated and affirm that you can be a Zionist and disagree with government policies. The same is true about the concerns for the strength of Israel’s democracy and the discouraging state of religious affairs in the country. To be a Zionist means to celebrate the successes of Israel and to try and help fix that which needs repair. Instead of ignoring these differences of opinion within the community, financial and logistical communal support should be provided to initiatives that address these questions.

This is important not only to ensure

long-term, ongoing Diaspora engagement with Israel, but also because the very people who are disengaging from Israel are critical to a central communal initiative currently underway. There is a consensus in the organized American Jewish community

regarding the need to combat the campaign that questions the legitimacy of Israel. These attacks, by and large, emanate from the left and include no small number of Jews. Who better to fight this battle then progressive Zionists who speak the language of the left? To enlist their active involvement, those leading the charge both on a national level and in local communities must be willing to support those who employ effective language and tactics, even if it creates discomfort or conflict with more right-wing members of the communal coalition.

The question remains: How do we create a personal connection for liberal American Jews with Israel today? One approach is to develop opportunities for Diaspora Jews to engage with the progressive activists of Israel. The good news is that there are a large number of Israeli grassroot activists who share liberal values with their Western counterparts and are engaged in a wide range of areas that can capture the imagination of young adults … and older ones as well. These include groups:

• addressing the social and economic rights of Arabs in Israeli society

• working toward government recognition of the Jewish liberal religious streams

• meeting the needs of the LGBT community in Israel

• dealing with the social gap and growing economic insecurity

• continuing the coexistence work between Palestinians and Israelis

• defending the human rights of all Israeli citizens and residents

• from Israeli and Diaspora Zionist youth movements establishing urban kibbutzim and working in the field of education as the new pioneers of Israeli society.

There are a variety of structures that can be utilized to enable engagement between these Israeli and Diaspora cohorts. They can include service learning programs of Diaspora groups to Israel as well as scholars-in-residences from Israel coming to the Diaspora. Bidirectional internship placements can be facilitated between groups so that each can learn about the mission and organizational culture of their counterparts. The Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization could recruit shlichim (emissaries) and teachers from among the ranks of these Israeli social activists. Their interaction with the local Jewish communities where they work could serve to expand the picture Diaspora Jews receive of the reality in today’s Israel.

Progressive Zionism, a world view of how the Jews can realize their national aspirations in a socially just manner, is as relevant today as when Ahad Ha’am, Berl Katznelson, Ben Gurion and others brought these ideas from Russia to then Palestine. The 21st century version of this ideology, linking tikkun olam, Jewish values and Zionism with reaching a secure and just peace with Israel’s neighbors, should and can be an important part of the Diaspora Jewish community’s connection with Israel.

Kenneth Bob is national president of Ameinu. This article originally appeared in Contact: The Journal of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life, Autumn, 2011.

Danny Danon

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The State of Israel has always prided itself on being not only a home to its native citizens but a haven for Jews from across the globe. For years the Ministry of Immigration Absorption has successfully focused on attracting Jews from around the world to make aliyah and reconnect with their homeland. This past year alone, more than 19,000 Jewish people chose to leave their countries of residence to start life anew in the Jewish state.

With so much effort spent on welcoming Jews from abroad, the ministry runs the risk of losing sight of another pressing concern: the deflating number of our own citizens.

Despite Israel’s ever-growing economy, some of our citizens choose to leave Israel in search of a more prosperous future. While they more often than not retain their Israeli identities by living in areas populated by other sabras, these mini-Israel communities abroad can never really live up to the real thing.

In an effort to remind our Israeli emigrants of the unique qualities of their homeland, the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption launched a series of television and billboard ads. Though controversial in nature, the ads were meant to remind Israeli expatriates that no matter where they currently reside, there’s no place like home.

Some American Jews were offended by the ads. Admittedly, like any successful campaign, the commercials were intended to get people talking; however, they certainly were not meant to offend.

Israeli and American Jews have shared an extremely tight relationship that is not to be taken for granted. Legions of Zionist supporters abroad have ensured Israel’s continued survival, and their tireless support has helped many an Israeli sleep easier.

Having spent some time working in the United States as a shaliach, an emissary, for the Jewish Agency in Miami, I have come to know the unique challenges facing American Jewry. Living as an integrated part of American society while fighting the effects of assimilations is arguably the most difficult task with which Jewish communities outside of Israel must cope.

While North American Jews have grown accustomed to weathering these challenges and working hard to maintain their unique identities, many Israeli emigrants have never had to cope with these added social pressures.

Though I can readily see why some Jews living abroad would be uneasy with advertisements whose subtext may seem to suggest that it is more difficult to maintain a Jewish identity outside of the State of Israel, it is essential to note that the intention of this campaign was not to pass judgment on our American brothers and sisters.

Sensitivities aside, the fact is that each year thousands of well-trained, highly skilled Israeli professionals are leaving the country to find employment elsewhere. These expatriates represent an invaluable human resource for our country, and the job of the Israeli government is to do whatever possible to direct them back to their home.

While the ads caused a huge stir in Jewish communities, the initiative was far from an unprecedented approach. Countless nations have created government programs aimed at reversing the effects of brain drain.

Israel will always be a homeland of the Jewish people. That being said, not every domestic policy pioneered by Israel’s government is necessarily aimed at the Jewish Diaspora.

With Israeli and Jewish culture being so closely intertwined, the truth is that the Israeli national character, including the Hebrew language, civic holidays and remembering our fallen heroes, is by no means exclusive to residents. American Jews and Jews from all across the Diaspora are always encouraged to embrace Israeli customs and pass them on to their children.

However, there are certain trappings of Israeli culture that cannot be emulated in America, such as bustling streets freezing completely in time while pedestrians and drivers commemorate our war dead, or sufganiyot and latkes lining the windows of shops rather than gingerbread. These are the charms that our government hopes to portray to woo our talented expatriates back home.

To ensure that we do not find ourselves in this situation again, my committee has recommended to all the relevant agencies and organizations that a higher level of coordination be implemented. This means that Israeli ministries such as the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Absorption, the Ministry of Information and Diaspora Affairs and the Foreign Ministry must coordinate before setting out on such an ambitious campaign.

We as Israelis also must be much more sensitive to our brethren in the Jewish communities around the world. A higher level of consultation with them probably would have enabled us to avoid this whole situation.

Admittedly, for all the celebrated charms of the Israeli character, subtlety is not among our strongest attributes. This is something I am confident that American Jewry can appreciate and recognize the intention and reasoning behind this campaign. Israelis are a passionate and honest people who say what we feel, and believe in what we say. It is an aspect of our character that has allowed us to survive and thrive.

Through mutual respect and admiration I am sure that our two communities will move beyond this incident and continue to focus on the important issues that are truly important to us all.

(Danny Danon is the deputy speaker of the Knesset and chairman of its Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs. He also is the chairman of World Likud.)

When Hamas is smuggling missiles, and Iranians are building A-bombs deep underground, to whom can Israel turn? 007? No way. He’s busy playing baccarat or keeping the world from being fried by space lasers. He hasn’t time for the Middle East.

But Israeli secret agent Israel Bond, code named Oy-Oy 7? Now he’s the man to call, or was, when author Sol Weinstein first created him in the 1960s.

With the recent reissue of Weinstein’s four novels parodying the works of Ian Fleming, we can discover if Bond — that is, Israel Bond — can again rise to the occasion and save the day.

Originally published in 1965, the books feature the yiddishe derring-do of an Israeli secret agent whose cover is as a salesman for Mother Margoles’ Old World Chicken Soup. Looking at them now, the titles seem much like a precursor to the bubbling over of American Jewish pride that was to follow the Six-Day War in 1967. In other words, they are good for the Jews.

According to Weinstein, the four books — “Loxfinger,” “Matzohball,” “On the Secret Service of His Majesty, the Queen” and “You Only Live Until You Die” — were reported to have sold a million copies. Looking back at that figure now, Weinstein feels it was lower.

“Certainly a few hundred thousand,” he said. “I was wallowing in total obscurity, and now I was a semi-unknown.”

Before the publication of the books, Weinstein was a writer for The Trentonian, a New Jersey daily. “Loxfinger,” the first title in the series, originally appeared in condensed version in Playboy magazine. It imagined a Jewish secret agent fighting evil in a world where swimming pools are filled with chicken soup and the Israeli spy headquarters is shaped like the giant can from which the soup might have been poured. It’s such a Jewish world, the praying mantises come with their own prayer shawls and poison darts are shot from mezuzahs.

The book is unadulterated Jewish slapstick, a world away from the sober Federal District of Sitka created by Michael Chabon in “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.” In the 1960s, I remember seeing one of the titles, “Matzohball,” on my parent’s nightstand. Having just seen “Thunderball,” I felt in on the Jewish joke: Israel Bond was our secret agent, saving Israel from destruction in a quick-reading cartoonish plot.

Now, more than 40 years later, with the battle for Israel’s security front-page news and Jewish humor 10 notches broader than the Borscht Belt, are the books still goods for the Jews? Hitting the market when 1960s-themed shows like “Pan Am” and “Madmen” are drawing an audience, I wonder if “Loxfinger” would work now as a touch of Jewish retro, a test of how yesterday’s Jewish sensibilities would play today.

As I read “Loxfinger,” I saw how Weinstein’s hero still successfully played off of Fleming’s tall, suave and murderously gentile James Bond. Everyone, including the original Bond’s archenemies, know that he likes his vodka martini shaken, not stirred. Israel Bond, we soon discover, prefers egg creams — and not just any old way.

“The seltzer should be cold enough to stand on its own with a 3.5 ratio of pinpoint carbonation,” says Israel Bond in “Loxfinger.”

“A fourth of the glass should be filled with Walker Gordon non-pasteurized milk,” he continues. “Only Fox’s U-Bet syrup should be used … mixed delicately with an 1847 Rogers Brothers spoon, dairy silver of course.”

Of course.

“And maybe served with a little kasha varnishkes,” said Weinstein, when I asked what his character might like to have as a nosh with it.

Like 007, Weinstein’s Oy Oy 7 has a license to kill, but when he is attacked by a bear in his hotel room, he is reluctant to use it. He only has his milchig knife with him and does not want to mess up his kashrut.

But his most dangerous weapon is his wit, or at least half of it; the puns and one-liners he flings with far deadlier aim than Oddjob tosses his derby. (That’s a “Goldfinger” reference, kids. Look it up). In a hotel room he picks up the phone and asks, “Operator, this is a Princess phone isn’t it? Good! Well, I’d like to speak to Princess Margaret.”

I asked Weinstein, now in his 80s and living in New Zealand, and who wrote jokes in Hollywood for Bob Hope, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., to explain his incorrigible punning.

“I’m a paronomasiac,” he answered, which he defines as a person addicted to wordplay and puns.

Even the book’s femme fatale, always a key element in a Bond tale, does not escape his pen. “If Ian Fleming can have a character named Pussy Galore, I can call my character Poontang Plenty,” Weinstein reasoned.

In fact, in contrast to the Jewish sexual neuroticisms of Philip Roth novels, Weinstein’s Bond is a bold, self-assured, wise-cracking Jew — “quite a hunk of man,” even if Weinstein has him hailing from “the Land of Milk and Magnesia.”

As to why reprint the books now?

“I want to make a few bucks,” said Weinstein, whose reply this time seemed to come from a man for once playing it straight. “I want to spread a few laughs around, and some Jewish feeling.”

The Goods: “Loxfinger,” “Matzohball,” “On the Secret Service of His Majesty, the Queen,” and “You Only Live Until you Die,” available in paperback, $12.99-14.99 (also in Kindle versions). Also,“The Israel Bond Omnibus,” all four titles, $29.99. All available from Combustoica http://oy-oy-7.com/, and amazon.com.

Do you have a product that might be good for “Goods of the Jews?” Please send candidates to edmojace@gmail.com.