Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

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• Chayei Sarah open thread
• Christian Biblical ethicists claim God didn't promise Israel to Jews
• Latest Latma
• Muslim Brotherhood going public in Libya
• City of David, then and now
• USS Liberty tapes released by Israel's Channel 2
• Pro-PalArab writer tacitly admits the UN is corrupt
• My mail is down
• A small example of muddled anti-Zionist thinking

Chayei Sarah open thread Posted: 18 Nov 2011 11:47 AM PST There will be many tents pitched in the streets of a famous city today. But I am not talking about wannabe anarchists in Zuccotti Park in New York, or even people asking for social justice in Tel Aviv. I'm talking about Hebron. This Shabbat the Torah portion is Chayei Sarah, which starts off with Abraham buying the burial plot for his beloved wife Sarah - in Hebron, in the spot that is now called the Cave of the Patriarchs. Because of this biblical connection to the city, every year tens of thousands of Jews cram into every available space in Hebron and Kiryat Arba. A great description of the annual event can be seen here: Well over six months prior to this Sabbath we begin receiving phone calls and emails requesting places to sleep and eat on this auspicious day. Dozens of tents are pitched outside Me'arat Hamachpela, the Cave of the Patriarchs, and Matriarchs. Public buildings are transformed into dormitories, with separate facilities for men and women. It's the only time of the year when my living room is wall-to-wall people sleeping on the floor. One year, on Saturday night, a young woman walked into our kitchen to thank my wife. She asked what for. The woman said she had slept in one of our rooms. We had no idea she was there, or where she slept, because the room was already packed. A huge tent is constructed outside the Avraham Avinu neighborhood, providing meals thousands of guests. Literally every nook and cranny in Hebron is utilized, with people sleeping and eating wherever they can find a few free meters. All hours of the day and night the streets are full of people walking to and from the various neighborhoods in Hebron. Saturday afternoon, multitudes tour the city, visiting the Hebron Heritage Museum at Beit Hadassah, the tomb of Jesse and Ruth in Tel Rumeida, and the Avraham Avinu synagogue in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood. Special Casba tours are also included in the day's agenda. The heart of the day's events takes place at Me'arat Hamachpela. On Friday night, literally thousands of people gather at this holy site, inside and out, to offer joyous Sabbath prayers. Singing and dancing during a huge "Carlebach minyan," conducted in the Machpela courtyard, is unbelievably uplifting. Here's a video from last year's festivities (a shot of the tents starts at 1:21): I wish all the visitors to Hebron, and all my readers, a Shabbat Shalom. (h/t Daled Amos via G+)

Christian Biblical ethicists claim God didn't promise Israel to Jews Posted: 18 Nov 2011 09:23 AM PST In September, David P. Gushee and Glen H. Stassen, two Christian ethicists, wrote "An Open Letter to America's Christian Zionists." The main point of this letter was to dispute the biblical idea that God gave Israel to Jews alone: Not to put too fine a point on it, we wish to claim here that the prevailing version of American Christian Zionism—that is, your belief system—underwrites theft of Palestinian land and oppression of Palestinian people, helps create the conditions for an explosion of violence, and pushes US policy in a destructive direction that violates our nation's commitment to universal human rights. In all of these, American Christian Zionism as it currently stands is sinful and produces sin. We write as evangelical Christians committed lifelong to Israel's security, and we are seriously worried about your support for policies that violate biblical warnings about injustice and may lead to the outcome you most fear—serious harm to or even destruction of Israel. We write as evangelicals to you, our fellow evangelicals. On the shared basis of biblical authority, we ask you to reconsider your interpretation of Scripture, for the sake of God, humanity, the United States, and, yes, Israel itself, the Land and People we both love. We acknowledge that your evangelical-fundamentalist American Christian Zionism (henceforth simply "Christian Zionism") is a product of a Christian community that loves and reads the Bible. This is on its face a good thing--for there appear to be fewer and fewer American Christians whose love of the Bible and whose devotion to reading it can be taken for granted. We commend your love for the scriptures. Both now and in the past, whenever Christian Zionism emerges its essential origin is simply Christian reading of the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians call the Old Testament. Our love of the Bible takes Christians into the pages of the Old Testament; there we cannot help but discover the centrality of a Promised Land for the Jewish people. The trajectory of the canonical Old Testament moves inexorably toward and away from the Promised Land—the patriarchal narratives in which a people and land are promised despite humble origins; enslavement in Egypt; the miraculous Exodus and grim wilderness wanderings under Moses; the conquest of the Promised Land; the establishment, split, and eventual conquest of Israel as a political entity; the Babylonian exile and dispersion of the Jewish people; and a partial return to the land, at which point the OT historical narrative ends. ... We suggest to you that contemporary Christian Zionism is well-intentioned but needs correction at some very important points. This requires some careful biblical and theological work—from within the basic framework of evangelical Christianity. This means that the relevant scriptural texts need to be studied in detail, and that Christian theology needs to do its proper work with those texts. For example, we suggest that Christian Zionists who move from a generalized love of Israel to a specific claim that the contemporary state of Israel has divine title to the entire Holy Land, need to take more seriously the complexity of what the Bible actually says about God's promises to Abraham. Genesis 15:18 reads: "On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, 'To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates." The next verse goes on to name the various peoples to whom the land belonged at the time. The territory denoted by the space between these two rivers includes modern-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, half of Iraq, half of Egypt, parts of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the modern state of Israel, as well as the occupied Palestinian territories. A literal reading of the text that assumes that the descendants of Abram are only the Jewish people faces a problem here. Either God is not very good at keeping his promises, or God's plan is for contemporary Israel ultimately to conquer all of these other countries and occupy their land. That would result in an Israel ruled by its 90% majority Arabs, or an Israel attempting to subjugate that 90% by force. But the promise looks very different if we take seriously all of the offspring of Abraham. Genesis 15:4-5 has God taking Abram outside and telling him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of the heavens. Genesis 17:4, probably the pivotal text, has God saying to Abraham: "This is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations." Many nations, a multitude of nations; many offspring, many kings—read Genesis 17 again and see the plural nouns here. Close readers of Scripture will know that in fact Abraham did become the father of many nations. With Sarah he became the father of Isaac and the ancestor of all in his line, via Jacob and Esau. With Hagar he became the father of Ishmael and all in his line. And with the long-forgotten Keturah (Gen. 25:1) he became the father of Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. The Old Testament clearly positions Abraham as the father/ancestor of not only the Jewish people but of a vast number of other peoples, all scattered through the territories promised in Genesis 15. Abraham becomes the father of dozens of peoples, exactly as the Bible says! It is certainly true that the Old Testament primarily tells the story of the line of Isaac and therefore of what became the Jewish people, but that cannot cancel the significance of the promises to Abraham and the many peoples credited to him in Genesis. ...Perhaps you will respond by saying that God promises the land of Canaan specifically to the Jewish people. You might cite here Genesis 17:8: "I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding." This interpretation would require restricting the "offspring" in question to Abraham's offspring through Sarah via Isaac and then on to Jacob and excluding Esau. But the promise to possess the land includes the offspring of Isaac, and the offspring of Isaac includes Esau, with his five Edomite sons and their offspring, as Genesis 36 states, and that includes multitudes of Canaanites, not only Jews. It would also require the assumption that we know what Gen. 17 means territorially with the term "Canaan" and that it corresponds with the Zionist's version of the proper boundaries of the modern state of Israel. In a later letter, published November 12, the same two wrote: The responses that disagreed did not discuss the biblical passages, but shifted the topic to the politics of the present government of Israel and the West Bank, and Hamas, and whether Israel forced Palestinians out of their homes or not. These are important topics, but we are hoping for biblical discussion. What we are asking is whether our readers see Genesis 15 and 17 saying that Abraham is the father of many nations, with descendants as many as the stars of the universe. And whether the territory includes all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates, which of course includes many nations, most all Arab. We believe ours is the plain, literal reading. No one has explained a different reading in response. I have no idea why no Christian Zionist took it upon themselves to answer this letter within the worldview of Christian theology. Honestly, if it is true, it is a bit disappointing. So, even though I am not a Christian nor a Jewish Biblical scholar by any means, I would like to make a point. It seems strange that the authors' arguments that God's promises apply to all of Abraham's descendants do not take into account later declarations by God. For example, God explicitly told Jacob in Genesis 28:13 that "I am the LORD, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac. The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed." This happened at Bet El (Bethel). One can argue about the size of the land promised by God at that point, but one cannot argue that the promise was made to anyone but the Jewish people. And Bet El is on the "wrong" side of the Green Line. Would the authors admit that, Biblically, this must remain a part of Israel? More explicitly, in Exodus 23, God tells the Israelites: But if thou shalt indeed hearken unto his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. For Mine angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Canaanite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; and I will cut them off. ...And I will set thy border from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness unto the River; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee. And in Deuteronomy chapter 1: The LORD our God spoke unto us in Horeb, saying: 'Ye have dwelt long enough in this mountain; turn you, and take your journey, and go to the hill-country of the Amorites and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the Arabah, in the hill-country, and in the Lowland, and in the South, and by the sea-shore; the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD swore unto your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.' The straight translations of these passages are somewhat contradictory and without further study I imagine it is difficult for Christians to know how to reconcile them. But it is extraordinarily dishonest to interpret only one of God's promises to Abraham and his children in a vacuum without even considering the more explicit promises He made later to Jacob, Moses and the children of Israel. Is it not the same God who made all of these promises? Are not all of them of equal weight? If so, then the issue is not interpreting one of them, but reconciling and interpreting all of them together. Beyond that, it seems to me that the entire Biblical narrative would be problematic if most of the peoples who were God's covenental partners simply disappeared from the story or played only bit parts. If the children of Israel were not the main intended recipients of God's promises, then why would the Bible spend so much time only dealing with them and all but ignoring the Ishmaelites and the Edomites? The writers make other arguments about whether today's Jews should still be considered to be within the same covenant, but that is a much bigger topic. And before I spend time on that, I would love to know how they interpret and reconcile the many other Biblical verses tying the Land of Israel with, specifically, the Jews. (Parenthetically, I think it is not clear at all that you can consider Esau's progeny to be "Canaanites." While Gen. 38 says they lived in Canaan, the Canaanites were presumably the descendants of Canaan, Noah's grandson through Ham. Which means, ironically, that Canaanites are not Semites, but rather "Hamites." So don't accuse me of anti-Semitism :) ) I am afraid that this might turn into a very big theological thread, and I am not really comfortable with that here; Christian theology is not a topic that belongs on this blog. Hopefully  it will spark discussion among Christians that will take place elsewhere.

Latest Latma Posted: 18 Nov 2011 09:10 AM PST

Muslim Brotherhood going public in Libya Posted: 18 Nov 2011 08:20 AM PST From Al Arabiya: Libya's Muslim Brotherhood, repressed under the regime of fallen strongman Muammar Qaddafi, has opened its first public congress inside the country for almost 25 years. "This is a historic day for us and for the Libyan people," its leader Suleiman Abdelkader told AFP at the opening late Thursday of the three-day congress in the eastern city of Benghazi. Brotherhood officials said it was their first public meeting inside Libya in almost quarter of a century, although it met underground during Qaddafi's rule for fear of reprisals or held their congress abroad. The meeting of about 700 people was at a wedding hall in Benghazi, the eastern city where the revolt against Qaddafi began. Officials of Libya's ruling National Transitional Council, including Islamic Affairs Minister Salem el-Sheikli and Defense Minister Jalal al-Degheili, attended the opening in Benghazi. The congress was due to elect a leader and discuss strategy, notably whether to form a political party, said Abdelkader. The Brotherhood supports the idea of a "civil" state but founded on Islamic values, he said. "This country belongs to all its people and everybody must participate in its construction." As Libya emerges from a bloody civil war, many observers believe the next elections could pit religious political groups against secular parties, with better-organized Islamists such as the Brotherhood having a tactical advantage. After so many years of secrecy, they said they were eager to show the Libyan public that there was nothing sinister about their group ̶ an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, that country's most popular and organized political force. "There's nothing secret. We're not planning to destroy the country," said Abdou Majid Saleh Musbah, 56, an engineer from Tripoli who joined the movement in 1979. Just to make it Islamist.

City of David, then and now Posted: 18 Nov 2011 07:20 AM PST Dan tweeted me with this wonderful photographic comparison of how the City of David looked in 1915 and how it looks today (actually 2005), from the BiblePlaces.com site: View from Southwest, ca. 1915 Photo from the Jerusalem volume of the American Colony and Eric Matson Collection/Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-matpc-05424. View from Southwest, August 23, 2005 The Matson Collection has tens of thousands of beautiful old photos of the Land of Israel, some of them with astonishing clarity. It would be a wonderful project for any Israelis who are reading this to match the photos, duplicating the vantage point as was done here. I'd happily publish them. Honestly, it would make a great coffee-table book!

USS Liberty tapes released by Israel's Channel 2 Posted: 18 Nov 2011 06:30 AM PST From Egypt's Al Masry al Youm: Forty-four years after Israeli pilots bombed the American ship USS Liberty during the 1967 War, an Israeli news outlet Wednesday evening revealed purported evidence that the bombing was accidental. According to the report, the pilots carried out the attack, killing 34 American seamen and injuring dozens more, because they mistook the American ship for an Egyptian vessel. Although both Israeli and American reports previously concluded that the attack was an accident, some speculation persists that the bombing was deliberate. The incident, widely remembered as the greatest crisis ever to have occurred between Israel and its long-time ally America, happened on the third day of the war, while Israel was fighting Egypt in the Sinai and Jordan in the West Bank. Israel's Channel 2 aired an audio tape purportedly proving that an Israeli pilot involved in the attack, as well as someone working in the squadron's control tower, believed that the ship was Egyptian. The control tower is recorded as directing a pilot to bomb the "Egyptian" target, but the pilot reports back shortly after the bombing that he thinks he saw an American flag on the ship's staff. The control tower repeatedly directs him to circle back and confirm what he saw. Another clip has the control tower giving rescuers instructions about what to do with the sailors – depending on whether they turn out to speak English or Arabic. "Within a short time, the sense intensified that the attack was a tragic mistake against Israel's greatest friend, where Israeli pilots attacked an American supply ship," the channel's news caster reports. According to the station, the tapes come from an American spy plane that happened to be circling above at the time, recording the conversation as it took place between the pilot and the control tower. However, the report does not explain how the news network got their hands on the tapes, nor does it seek to explain why the tapes are emerging only now, 44 years after the incident occurred. Following the bombing, the damaged boat made its way to an American naval base in Malta, and Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol apologized to American President Johnson. Israel agreed to compensate the injured and the families of those killed to the tune of several million dollars, even though it declined to take responsibility for the incident – a fact which the report says "contributed to the proliferation of conspiracy theories regarding the affair." "The tapes decisively reveal that the incident was an accident," it concludes. The NSA released three tapes showing the same facts - and their English translations - years ago. However,  I do not believe that there was any indication earlier that any Israeli pilot thought he had seen the US flag, so this looks like it is indeed a new tape. (h/t Yoel)

Pro-PalArab writer tacitly admits the UN is corrupt Posted: 18 Nov 2011 05:26 AM PST The Sydney Morning Herald has an amazing op-ed by Richard Woolcott, former Australian ambassador to the UN. Our national interest requires a rethink on the Middle East. The importance of Australia's candidature for election next October as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for a two-year term (2013-14) should be better understood and supported by our politicians and the Australian public. Unfortunately, our prospects have been undermined by our recent vote against Palestine's admission to the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation. ...Putting it bluntly, I consider that if we again vote against Palestinian ''statehood'' when it comes to the General Assembly, we are most unlikely to be elected to the council. At worst we should abstain. ...We can and should win a seat on the Security Council. But I fear we will be defeated again, as we were in 1996, if we continue to vote against upgrading Palestinian representation, especially when it comes before the General Assembly. This will be a matter for regret and it will not be in our national interest. Woolcott is saying that the UN decides on UNSC membership based in no small part on their anti-Israel attitude! This year, Lebanon is the head of the UNSC. A state that is effectively ruled by a terror group whose very raison d'etre is the destruction of another UN member state has no problem obtaining a leadership position at the Security Council. But Western states who support a liberal democracy in the Middle East and who are reticent about unilaterally strengthening a corrupt entity that has no defined borders or population (part of the very definition of a state to begin with) must toe the anti-Israel line in order to get ahead at the UN. We must thank Woolcott, a UN insider, for exposing how deeply corrupt and systemically anti-Israel the UN is. (Mark Leibler answers Woolcott here.) (h/t Ian)

My mail is down Posted: 18 Nov 2011 04:32 AM PST For some reason my main Yahoo mail account is not working and has not been working since yesterday evening. If you need to send me something, or you did send something since last night, please resend to elderofziyon -at- gmail.com . On the good side...it's Friday.

A small example of muddled anti-Zionist thinking Posted: 18 Nov 2011 03:00 AM PST Just in case anyone thinks that the "Russell Tribunal" that I mentioned yesterday has any objectivity whatsoever, here is a paragraph from their London final report: Israeli corporations are world leaders (with significant turnovers) in developing weapons technology, which is used during military operations against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, such as the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) developed by Elbit Systems. A significant number of foreign states, including EU and western states, procure Israeli weapons technology, such as the UAVs (for instance Australia, France, Canada, UK, Sweden and USA). Recent evidence suggests that drone attacks may involve high civilian deaths in military operations. For instance, a 2009 report published by the Brookings Institution, suggested that it was difficult to confirm civilian deaths in drone attacks, but that reports suggest that for every one military target killed it results in approximately 10 civilian deaths. Israel is a leader in drone technology. Other countries buy Israeli drones. Other countries may accidentally kill many civilians with drones - Israeli or otherwise. Therefore, the tribunal broadly implies, Israel is responsible for the deaths of everyone killed by every drone worldwide! Otherwise what is the relevance of mentioning the Brookings report? And if you look at the Brookings report itself, you see that they were talking only about targeted drone killings by the US in Pakistan. And the author concludes that the reason for the poor record is not because targeted killings by drones are inherently problematic: To reduce casualties, superb intelligence is necessary. Operators must know not only where the terrorists are, but also who is with them and who might be within the blast radius. This level of surveillance may often be lacking, and terrorists' deliberate use of children and other civilians as shields make civilian deaths even more likely. Now, since the escalation in rocket attacks at the end of October Israel has killed some 16 terrorists in Gaza with targeted drone attacks - and not one civilian. And while their record is not always perfect, at the time this report was written it was well documented that it was far better than a 10:1 ratio of civilian to terrorist deaths. Moreover,if you accept the logic of the report, any country that manufactures drones should share the blame for every civilian death, since there is no indication in the Brookings report that Israeli drones were used in Pakistan. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce the latest attack drone - from the United Arab Emirates: Emirati group Adcom Systems introduced an armed drone at the Dubai Airshow on Thursday, developed at a time when many military powers continue to import the unmanned aircraft increasingly used in warfare. The MALE (Medium Altitude Long Endurance) plane should begin testing in early December and be available to customers in February, Ali al-Dhaheri, the president of the Abu Dhabi-based company, told AFP. The device, known as United 40, can carry eight 60-kilometre (37-miles) range "Nemrod" missiles in its fuselage. Those are also developed by Adcom and are to be tested in January. Adcom Systems, a conglomerate of 37 companies, mainly manufactures drones used for air force training. Dhaheri stressed that the technology for the United 40 was developed by his company. "All systems are ours. We are a leading innovator in aerodynamics," he said. My, my. What would the "tribunal" say to this? This tiny example shows how deeply anti-Zionist hate affects people. You can be sure that the "tribunal" tried very hard to make their report seem as unbiased as possible, carefully choosing their words to forestall any accusations of them having an agenda. Yet they are so blinded by their seething hate for the Jewish state that they wouldn't even notice how untenable their words are. And last night a book based on the London joke of a tribunal was released at an event that was filled with people who share that hate.

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