Year: 2019

המוסר הכי טוב: מעשי גלגולי נשמות – סיפור חייו של רב יוסף שני שליט”א

וואי איזה סיפור מדהים של רב מקובל !! הרב יוסף שני

Feb 7, 2013

גילגולי נשמות בירושלים הרב יוסף שני.

כל הסרטים שאנחנו מעלים כאן וכל התועלת שיהיה מהם:
מחצית מהתועלת תהיה לעילוי כל נשמות ישראל שנפטרו מאז בריאת העולם ועד עתה. ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.
ומחצית השניה מהתועלת תהיה לשמירה ולהצלחה ולברכה ולפרנסה טובה ובנחת לרפואה שלימה ולבריאות הגוף והנפש שלימה ולזיווג הגון אם עדיין אין. ולזרע בר קיימא ולחזרה בתשובה מהר וללא יסורים ולאחדות ואהבת חינם ולחיים טובים וארוכים ולחיי עולם הבא לכל היהודים והיהודיות בארץ הקודש ובעולם

מאתר יוטיוב, כאן.

אגב, ראה מדור ספרי הרב יוסף שני כאן באתר.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz: True Religion Makes DEMANDS, Not Endowments

Can Judaism Survive the State of Israel?

By Menachem Kellner
July 19, 1992

JUDAISM, HUMAN VALUES, AND THE JEWISH STATE

By Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Edited by Eliezer Goldman. Translated by Eliezer Goldman, Yoram Navon, Zvi Jacobson, Gershon Levi and Raphael Levy.291 pp. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. $39.95.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a native of Riga and a physician, chemist and philosopher, has long been a thorn in the side of the cultural, political and religious elites of Israel. An exciting lecturer and indefatigable polemicist, Mr. Leibowitz, who is now 89 years old, has a large and enthusiastic following in Israeli intellectual circles.

“Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State,” a collection of 27 essays, edited and introduced by the American-born Israeli philosopher Eliezer Goldman and ably translated by him and four others, for the first time makes Mr. Leibowitz’s writing available in America. The book reflects his strengths and weaknesses. The essays are incisive, provocative, fearlessly consistent; they are also repetitious, idiosyncratic and doctrinaire. But, whatever his faults, Yeshayahu Leibowitz faces hard questions head on, raising them in their sharpest possible form, and for that, if not for the answers he provides, his work continues to be important. No one interested in Israel, Judaism and the nexus of the two can afford complacently to ignore the questions Mr. Leibowitz refuses to stop asking.

At first glance, he appears to be a bundle of contradictions: an observant Jew, a Zionist and an Israeli patriot, he sees these identities as representing three distinct commitments, commitments that injure one another when they mingle. Thus he represents that rare breed in Israel, an observant Jew who argues forcefully for the separation of synagogue and state, not out of concern for the state but out of concern for the synagogue. In his view, political involvement corrupts Judaism: politicized religion is not truly religious, since it focuses on religion’s utility and not the demands it makes on the believer. No one has phrased the problem more sharply than Mr. Leibowitz: Can Judaism survive the state of Israel? His solution calls for the creation of new categories and structures in Jewish law to deal with new realities, and especially for the total divorce of Judaism from the state.

HE maintains that investing a state with sanctity (“fascism,” according to Mr. Leibowitz) both debases religion and endangers the state, leading to actions that “can be vindicated and even justified — and are nevertheless accursed.” Mr. Leibowitz has been vilified for criticizing Israel while remaining silent about Arab behavior. Yet this criticism misses the point. He is not unaware of crimes by Arabs; but as a Jew seeking to make Israel better, he is fundamentally uninterested in them — they are not his responsibility.

Mr. Leibowitz’s Zionism (“the endeavor to liberate Jews from being ruled by the Gentiles”) leads him to insist on a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the territories Israel occupied after it was forced into war in 1967. Continued occupation is bad for Jews, Judaism and Israel, he maintains. (This is something Mr. Leibowitz has been warning about since 1968.) Moreover, as a philosophical nominalist, he denies that nations have any extra-mental existence. Since purely mental entities can have no legal or moral rights, the dispute between Jews and Palestinians is not one that can be settled in terms of national rights, and the repartition of the land of Israel is the only practical solution. Mr. Leibowitz is a thorn in the side of almost all major Israeli politicians, of whatever persuasion; the winners of the recent elections will hardly find him more comforting than their predecessors did.

His fundamental insight is that religion properly understood makes demands of humans; it does not endow them with benefits. It is in this respect that Mr. Leibowitz — who reduces Judaism to a system of commandments, explicitly excluding from its purview theology and ethics — argues for the superiority of Judaism over Christianity and, by implication, over Islam. Christianity, which for him is fundamentally pagan and anti-Judaic, promises individual salvation, liberation from the “bondage” of law, permanent rest. Halakha (Jewish law) in his view recognizes no such thing: it sets a permanent challenge before Jews, a task that can never be completed but may never be abandoned. For him, Abraham, in his unhesitating willingness to sacrifice Isaac in order to fulfill the will of God, represents the highest ideal of religious behavior.

Mr. Leibowitz believes prayer, as the sincere outpouring of an anguished soul, is thus religiously irrelevant, since it reflects the needs of the person praying. Prayer achieves religious significance only when it is done as obligatory work, executed in fulfillment of a command, and without reference to the needs, feelings and desires of the individual praying. Only then is it worship. Supplicatory prayer is not worship; it is blasphemous, seeing God as an agent for the satisfaction of the individual’s needs and seeking to influence God. Mr. Leibowitz seems to accept St. Paul’s critique of Judaism as a burdensome set of obligations that cannot be satisfied; but he makes that a virtue, not a vice.

What Mr. Leibowitz calls “endowing” religions, pre-eminently Christianity and Reform Judaism, gratify certain psychic needs and are therefore popular, but they are not truly religious in his view; the ultimate perfection of religion can never be truly realized — whether by individual salvation in the world to come or by self-fulfillment in this world.

A consequence of this view is that Mr. Leibowitz must claim that the Messiah will never actually come, but “is essentially he who always will come . . . the eternal future. The Messiah who comes, the Messiah of the present, is invariably the false Messiah.” Messianism is thus always a goal, a task, never a benefit, gift or endowment. This idea — which Mr. Leibowitz borrows from the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen, and which has been defended by the American philosopher Steven Schwarzschild — leads him to reject as false messianism any attempts to see the state of Israel as part of the messianic advent. Thus, referring to the self-proclaimed 17th-century messiah Sabbatai Zevi, he labels as “Sabbatean” groups like the Israeli settler movement Gush Emunim, which emphatically understands the state of Israel as representing the first flowering of the messianic fulfillment and derives practical conclusions from that understanding.

Consistent with his view of Judaism as a religion of challenges and tasks is his insistence that mitzvah (commandment) and Halakhah (Jewish law) are central in a correct description of Judaism. Judaism is a religion of commandments, making demands, insisting on obedience for its own sake (lishmah, a fundamental category for Mr. Leibowitz). This Judaism is contrasted with religions of values and beliefs, endowing religions, which are “a means of satisfying man’s spiritual needs and assuaging his mental conflicts.” Indeed there is nothing in Judaism beyond the commandments. As such, the national identity of the Jewish people is nothing other than Judaism, life according to Torah. In this Mr. Leibowitz follows the 10th-century rabbi and philosopher Saadia Gaon (who said Israel is only a people in virtue of its Torah) and stands in stark opposition to Solomon Schechter, the founder of the American Conservative Jewish movement, who defined Judaism as the religion of the Jewish people, turning Judaism into a form of religious nationalism.

Commandments have profound educational significance to Mr. Leibowitz, marking off the realm of the sacred in life, reminding us that sanctifying anything outside of that realm, be it a place or a people or a value, is idolatry. This most emphatically includes the people of Israel, the land of Israel and specific places in the land. Mr. Leibowitz reserves some of his sharpest barbs for those Jews guilty of what he calls idolatry with respect to Erez Yisrael, the land of Israel, or the Western Wall in Jerusalem, or values like national security and military discipline. Only tasks can be holy.

As a religion of Halakha, Judaism has no specific moral system, no position on the best form of political or social organization; as a way of serving God, Judaism has no “particular conception of man, of the world or of history.” Halakhah is, furthermore, ahistorical, growing out of its own inner dynamic, essentially uninterested in and uninfluenced by social change. Mr. Leibowitz identifies as Christian the idea that human history can have religious significance; to make history religiously significant is to put humanity, not God, at the center.

But he does not mean that Judaism is a religion of mechanical practice. Proper observance of the commandments demands proper intention, or kavanah, without which the commandment is literally unfulfilled. Obedience by habit or rote is no obedience.

Mr. Leibowitz’s position on dogma reflects his understanding of faith: it is not a conclusion but an “evaluative decision that one makes, and, like all evaluations, it does not result from any information one has acquired, but is a commitment to which one binds himself . . . . Faith is the supreme, if not the only, manifestation of man’s free choice.” This position is very convenient for Mr. Leibowitz, allowing him to eat his cake and have it too. By denying that religion makes any truth claims whatsoever about the nature of the universe, he solves the problem of religion and science to his satisfaction: the two operate in entirely independent spheres and cannot possibly conflict. Religion supplies no information, science tells us nothing about how we ought to behave, and the two therefore cannot possibly come into conflict.

Mr. Leibowitz’s protestations to the contrary, his representation of Judaism is prescriptive, not descriptive. This raises a general problem: to what extent can he fairly speak about “Judaism” when the religious system he prescribes would be barely recognizable to most of the scholars, saints and sinners who, through the generations, have studied, practiced or violated the norms of what they took to be Judaism?

Students of Maimonides will also be surprised to find Mr. Leibowitz’s views consistently attributed to the great 12th-century philosopher and Talmudist. Many readers will feel that Mr. Leibowitz has not successfully risen to the challenges he sets. But those challenges, like the Judaism he espouses, cannot be ignored.

From The New York Times, here.

משמח את המקום, משמח את הבריות – הרב חיים גרינימן זצ”ל

‘השתדל להיות אי”ש’ – אחר מטתו של הגאון רבי חיים שאול גריינמן זצוק”ל

ד”ר יעקב אלטמן , כ”ו בניסן תשע”ה 15/04/15

משנתו ההשקפתית של ר’ חיים וחוגו רחוקה ונוגדת חזיתית את התפיסה התורנית מיסודו של הרב קוק והרב ריינעס וממשיכיהם.

בין שתי השיטות מפרידה תהום די עמוקה, ואני הכותב מצדד בבהירות בדרכו של ה’מזרחי’. עם זאת, איננו רשאים בענין זה להתעלם ממיגוון פניה של הגדלות הרוחנית. הווה אומר, כל אחת משתי תפיסות העולם עשויה להוציא מתוכה אישים מפוארים, המצטיינים בצדדים שונים של גדלות הנפש.

‘ר’ חיים’ כפי כינויו השגור בפי רבים, הלך לעולמו לפני כשבוע. היה אחיינו של החזון אי”ש ולמד תורה מפיו עד להיותו בן 30. מאז נפטר החזון איש מצטייר ר’ חיים כממשיך דרכו המובהק. לימודו בעיון הוא בסגנונו של החזו”א, דהיינו עיון מאומץ עד כלות בשקלא וטריא התלמודית ופסיקה הלכה למעשה ישירות מהגמרא, עם שימוש מצומצם יחסית בספרי ראשונים. ראש הישיבה ב’תפרח’ היה בזמנו מתבטא ע”ד החידוד “ר’ חיים מביא לעולם כל שנה , ספר וילד”. שכן לר’ חיים שבעה עשרה צאצאים, וספרי ‘חידושים ובאורים’ על הש”ס כולו.

במסגרת סקירה זו לא נחזור על דברים המצויים לכל דורש בכלי התקשורת, על דרכו המיוחדת בעבודת התפילה ובהלכה, ואודות פקחותו הנדירה ועצתו בכל תחומי החיים, ממנה נהנו רבבות מכל קהל עדת ישראל לאורך כחמישים שנה.

מִזה כחודשיים ימים יצא בגבעת שמואל ספר זכרון לחיליק דז’בינסקי ז”ל. במאמרי בספר זה ציינתי לאירוע בו היה שותף ר’ חיים, בזה”ל: “לפני עשרות שנים בימי השבעה לאבי יהונתן אליעזר ז”ל באו לבקרני אנשים שונים, רבים מהם נמנים על החברה החרדית. איש איש ופסוקו בידו, “ה’ נתן וה’ לקח” וכדומה. אחד מהם “יצא מן הכלל וכפר בעיקר” הזה, היה זה הרב חיים גרינימן שליט”א [היום מזקני חכמי התורה בציבור החרדי] שהתעניינותו נסבה לתאונת הדרכים בה נהרג אבי, ובקש לדעת את הפרטים המדויקים של אירוע התאונה, אותם פרטים שסבבו בראשי שוב ושוב מתוך כאב ותהיָה”.

נתוודעתי לר’ חיים ברציפות יחסית כ 10 שנים בהיותו בין הגילאים 45- 55, והרי כמה רשמים שנחרתו בנשמתי. ר’ חיים נטה לעסוק בכל עת בהכרעות והחלטות קשות, הן בגיבוש פסקי הלכה בספריו, הן בהלכה למעשה לפונים אליו, הן במענה לשאלות וספקות שהעלו לפניו המונים שצבאו על ביתו, לבטים שבענייני כספים, הקמת מוסדות, פקוח נפש רפואי וספק פקוח נפש, שלום בית, משברים אישיותיים, חינוך, ומה לא. למיטב הבנתי, סבר ר’ חיים שמוֹתר האדם הוא יכולתו להכריע לפי דרכה של תורה בין שני צדדים הנראים שקולים זה לזה. כח ההכרעה שלו נבע ועלה מתוך רצינות תהומית, ועם זאת חף לחלוטין מכּל בלבול, חולשה וחיטוטי מצפון. כמה טהרת הרצון ושלמות פנימית צריך אדם בכדי להשיג מעלה נעלה כזו.

מכאן לפלא בהתנהלותו. שכנו בו בר’ חיים זוג הפכים. מחד גיסא היה נתון יום יום תחת לחצן של שאלות חיים ומוות ומחלות שהובאו בפניו לקבלת הנחיה דחופה, ובכלל כמות בלתי נדליית של בני אדם היו ממתינים בתור ליד ביתו, וגם בלכתו בדרך מבית מדרשו אך טוב וחסד ‘ירדפוהו’. מאידך גיסא, כשהייתי משוחח עימו היו בו שקט ושלווה ונינוחות המזכירה ילד בן 5 המשחק בארגז חול שאין לו אלא את הרגע הרגוע. הצירוף הזה הוא עד היום הזה, חידה בעיני. יש באורח חיים זה מדת אמונה מופלגת עם כוחות נפש ושכל בריאים עד בלי די. כל מי שדיבר עם ר’ חיים 2 דקות או 10 דקות, זכה במשב רוח אבהי חמים שליווה אותו שנים אחר כך. בעת הפגישה חשתָּ כאילו אתה בנו יחידו. החיוך ה’שובבי’ שהיה משוך על פניו, היה בו האצלַת מדת הרחמים לכל בריה. וכמאמר החסיד בס’ חובות הלבבות “החסיד אבלו בלבו וצהלתו על פניו”.

תחילת היכרותי עימו, בחנוכה בהיותי בכתה י”א, אז שמעתי את שמעו ונסעתי לביתו. שאלתיו האם לעזוב את הישיבה התיכונית ולעבור לישיבה גבוהה. תשובתו במשפט אחד: “תבוא אלי בפורים אחרי שתשתה את היין” [קרי, כשהחלטתך תהיה שלמה]. תשובותיו הן לא פעם בנות שתיים עד ארבע מילים, הוא יורה אותן תיכף לסיום שאלתך המורכבת, ואחרי חמש עשרה שנים אתה סוף סוף מבין כמה חכמה וראיית הנולד היו מקופלות במילים ספורות אלו. המהירות בה היה סוקר ר’ חיים את כל הרכיבים הנוגעים לשאלה שהובאה בפניו, כמעט ואיננה נתפסת.

דומני, מי שראה את פניו של ר’ חיים, פנים שרצינות חמורה משוקעת בהן ופיקחות משמחת נשפכת מהן, לעולם לא יהיה טפש בדרכי חייו. וכמו שמצינו בגמרא עירובין י”ג: “אמר רבי: האי דמחדדנא מחבראי – דחזיתיה לרבי מאיר מאחוריה, ואילו חזיתיה מקמיה – הוה מחדדנא טפי. דכתיב, והיו עיניך ראות את מוריך”.

מחזה מפעים היה ההספק העצום של האיש הזה. הוא חלש על מערכות רבות במקביל, מוסדות, פסיקות הלכתיות לגופים ציבוריים, קשרים עם רופאים, סוגיות סבוכות בתלמוד, השתתפות בשמחות ובימי אבל, ‘כלל ופרט וכלל’, ולא נתן מנוחה לעיניו, והטרידוהו באמצע הארוחה ובאמצע הלילה, בחול ובשבת, ובהיותו בחיק משפחתו “הקטנה”.

עליו יש לומר בפרפראזה “אדם אחד שעושה אלף דברים, מצאתי”. מי שהתוודע ל”אורחות ר’ חיים” לא יכול להשתחרר מרושם חזק המוטבע בו, הרושם שמלאך מכה בו ואומר לו “גדַל”. דהיינו, עד שלא פגשת בר’ חיים היו שאיפותיך בינוניות ולכל היותר לגובה ההרים והעננים. אולם, משפגשת בר’ חיים אשר התנהל כגוף אחד המונה מאות אנשים, נגלו לפניך בבת אחת יכולותיך שלך החבויות היטב תחת אבק ההרגל והשטחיות. מעתה נפשך שלך לא תוכל לנוח ולהסתפק בעולם קטן- ותשים בשמיִם קִנך. מעכשיו תחל להאמין בעצמך, ועד יום מותך.

בשולי סקירתנו המצומצמת, אציין שני זכרונות קצרים מלפני למעלה מ 35 שנה. האחד: לר’ חיים נודע שאחד מראשי הישיבות המוכר לו, קנה עופות קפואים עבור תלמידי הישיבה, ו’שילם’ במודע בשיק חסר כיסוי, למען לא ייפסק קול תורה מהישיבה. ר’ חיים אמר לו “סגור את הישיבה, עליך לבחור, או או”. השני: בחור ישיבה מתלבט כרוני, בעל צדדי אופי נאורוטיים, נתפס לספקות בכמה מעיקרי האמונה. הוא ניגש לר’ חיים ובפיו טענה: “אני זקוק דחוף להוכחות, לתחושת וודאות בנושאים אמוניים. הלא יבוא משיח בקרוב, ואיך אוכל לעמוד בפניו כשיסודות התורה מעורערים אצלי?? “. ר’ חיים עונה במשפט אחד “המשיח יודע שאתה איש מאמין, ושהכל זה רק עצבּים”.

“משנתו” של ר’ חיים היא המשנה במס’ אבות פרק ו’: “רבי מאיר אומר כל העוסק בתורה לשמה זוכה לדברים הרבה ולא עוד אלא שכל העולם כלו כדי הוא לו… משמח את המקום משמח את הבריות ומלבשתו ענוה ויראה, ומכשרתו להיות צדיק וחסיד וישר ונאמן, ומרחקתו מן החטא ומקרבתו לידי זכות, ונהנין ממנה עצה ותושיה בינה וגבורה …ונעשה כמעין המתגבר וכנהר שאינו פוסק, והוי צנוע וארך רוח ומוחל על עלבונו, ומגדלתו ומרוממתו על כל המעשים”. חבל חבל על דאבדין.

מאתר ערוץ שבע, כאן.

Holocaust Education Is Very Often COUNTERPRODUCTIVE…

Be Harrison Ford, not Woody Allen

Posted on November 30, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

I just googled “combating antisemitism” and got 7.5 million results. Apparently a lot of people are thinking about this. And well they should, given that Jew-hatred is rising sharply everywhere in the world, especially in the West. The old-style “paleo” antisemitism is going strong almost everywhere, Muslims have added some of the older European themes to their Koranic and anti-Israel narratives, and the Left is taking its obsessive anti-Zionism to new heights. Meanwhile, Right and Left are coming full circle to tell neo-Nazi stories about Rothschild and Soros (as if Soros is a friend of the Jews!)

So while all this is happening, everyone is in a tizzy about “combating” it. For example, the European Union has a basketful of programs to do so, led by a “coordinator on combating antisemitism,” and including a working definition, Holocaust remembrance observances, a program to monitor and report on it, special legislation making it illegal, and of course above all, education. At the same time they are pumping Euros into subversive NGOs in Israel and financing illegal Palestinian construction in Judea and Samaria, but that is another story.

Everybody wants to get into the act. The US Department of State (the one that still refuses to put “Israel” on the American passports of people born in Jerusalem) has a “Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism” to, er, monitor and combat it. Jewish federations, Hadassah, Chabad, B’nai B’rith, the Union for Reform Judaism, Germany, the UK Labour Party, and countless other rights organizations, religious groups, political parties, and national governments are doing it. Even some people at the UN have joined in.

How do you combat Jew-hatred? Most of those fighting it seem to think that the answer is education: the theory seems to be that if you teach people about the horrors of the Holocaust and the moral evil of bigotry, they will stop hating Jews. A great deal of resources are expended on doing this, but antisemitic incidents keep increasing.

Which is not surprising, since the theory is ridiculous. Jew-haters love to hear about the Holocaust. For one thing, it reinforces their beliefs to know that they are not alone. It gives them a warm feeling to think that a major nation led by a charismatic figure actually tried to carry out a genocide they would heartily approve of. Ridding the world of Jews isn’t just an impossible dream, they realize; someone almost succeeded! It also provides ammunition for demonstrations and Twitter campaigns: without Holocaust education, who would know to shout “Jews to the gas” at football/soccer games? And how better to exacerbate hatred of Jews than by accusing them of fabricating the Holocaust for financial gain?

Of course it is absolutely essential to preserve the historical memory of the Holocaust out of respect for the victims, as well as to teach Jews or other peoples threatened with genocide to take the threats seriously. But while Holocaust education is necessary for these reasons, it doesn’t reduce Jew-hatred – it facilitates it.

Telling people “not to hate,” and explaining that bigotry is wrong is of very marginal utility. Nobody in the West thinks that hating an ethnic group is morally good, but that doesn’t change their feelings. And in the Muslim world, hating Jews is an indispensable part of their culture. Even if people can be conditioned to reject prejudice against individuals, there seems to be no moral stricture against irrational hatred of the Jewish state, which is both a form of Jew-hatred itself and an excuse for other forms of it.

Probably the least helpful kind of “education” is that which lists the accomplishments of Jews: so many Nobel Prizes, great composers, performers, artists, scientists, writers. Look how good they have been for society, runs the argument. It should be clear that this simply feeds the envy of the Jew-hater, something that is almost always part of his psyche. It also is evidence (not that evidence is needed in the mind of the Jew-hater) for the correctness of the theory that there is an massive Jewish conspiracy, even a secret ruling class. Of course the Jews can control the world, they are so smart!

So how do we “combat antisemitism?” We can’t, directly. But we can combat antisemites. This is especially clear for the kind of Jew-hatred that expresses itself as hatred of Israel. Recently Israel allowed herself to be humiliated by Hamas, which burned thousands of acres of her fields and forests, and then launched the most intense rocket bombardment in Israel’s history. Our response, bombing unoccupied military targets, was tactically significant but psychologically impotent. The Jew-haters were gratified, because the Jews lived up to the stereotype: powerful and controlling, and yet at the same time weaklings who are afraid to fight.

Suppose Israel had mounted a massive, “disproportionate” response. Perhaps we would have had to deal with legal and diplomatic attacks, as we have after previous conflicts. Perhaps there would have been strategic concerns, such as the possibility of a multi-front war. But from the psychological point of view, it would be a victory. The Jew strikes back! The Jew-haters wouldn’t stop hating us, but they would be the losers. Jew-hatred would be less attractive, because nobody wants to be a loser.

Continue reading…

From Abu Yehuda, here.

Please Let the ‘Palestinians’ Leave Israel!

INTO THE FRAY: The imperative for incentivized Arab migration

Once inconceivable, the dismantling of UNRWA; the naturalization of stateless Palestinian residents in Arab countries; and the emigration of Palestinians from Judea-Samaria & Gaza are slowly emerging as realistic outcomes.

 

Dr. Martin Sherman, 25/01/19
Dr. Martin Sherman
The writer served for seven years in operational capacities in the Israeli Defense establishment, was ministerial adviser to Yitzhak Shamir’s government and lectured for 20 years at Tel Aviv University in Political Science, International Relations and Strategic Studies. He has a B.Sc. (Physics and Geology), MBA (Finance), and PhD in political science and international relations, was the first academic director of the Herzliya Conference and is the author of two books and numerous articles and policy papers on a wide range of political, diplomatic and security issues. He is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategicisrael.org). Born in South Africa,he has lived in Israel since 1971.

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth” –Sherlock Holmes, in “The Sign of the Four”.

Over a quarter-century ago (in 1992), I warned of the consequences — for both Jew and Arab — if Israel were to evacuate Gaza.

I cautioned: “…the inevitable implications of Israeli withdrawal can be ignored only at great peril to Israelis and Arabs alike”, observing:“…no measure whether the total [Israeli] annexation or total [Israeli] withdrawal can be reconciled with either Israel’s security needs or the welfare of the Arab population there.”

Accordingly, I concluded that the only viable and durable policy was the resettlement and rehabilitation of the non-belligerent Gazans elsewhere — and I underscored: “this was not a call for a forcibly imposed racist “transfer” by Israel, but rather…a humane and historically imperative enterprise”.

Confusing economic enhancement with “ethnic cleansing”

Today, after a more than a decade-and-a-half of bloody confrontations, including three large scale military engagements — imposed on Israel to protect its civilian population from predicted assaults — and a fourth appearing increasingly inevitable; with the Gazans awash in untreated sewage, with their sources of drinking water polluted, and with perennial power outages, my predictions appear to have turned out to be lamentably precise.

Perversely, earlier this month I was excoriated for…being proven right — and my fact-based professional assessment as a political scientist that, because of the overtly unremitting enmity of the Gazans towards the Jewish state: “Eventually there will either be Arabs in Gaza or Jews in the Negev. In the long run, there will not be both”, was denounced as a call for ethnic cleansing.

Of course, my detractors conveniently ignore that, time and time again, I have called for providing generous relocation grants to help the hapless non-belligerent Gazans find more prosperous and secure lives for themselves elsewhere, in third party countries, outside the “circle of violence”; and to extricate themselves from the stranglehold of the cruel, corrupt cliques who have led them astray from debacle to disaster for decades.

Confusing an unequivocal call for economic enhancement with one for “ethnic cleansing”, they apparently believe — in their “infinite benevolence and wisdom” — that compelling the Gazans to languish in their current conditions is somehow more humane.

But, more on these wildly unfounded recriminations against me perhaps in a future column.

A tripartite plan

Several years after my 1992 article, I extended the idea of incentivized emigration to the Arab population in Judea-Samaria (a.k.a. the “West Bank”) and in 2004 I formulated a tripartite plan (The Humanitarian Paradigm) for the comprehensive resolution — or rather the dissolution of the “Palestinian problem”, which include the following components:

The first was the dismantling of UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency), an anomalous UN entity, charged with dealing exclusively with the Palestinian-Arab diaspora (a.k.a. Palestinian “refugees”), displaced by the 1948 and 1967 wars with Israel. As I pointed out back then, because of its anomalous definition of who is considered a “refugee” (which extends to the descendants of those originally displaced), and its anomalous mandate (which precludes resettling them anywhere but in the country from which they were displaced), UNRWA is an organization which (a) perpetuates (rather than resolves) the predicament of the stateless Palestinian “refugees”; (b) perpetuates (rather than dissipates) the Palestinian-Arab narrative of “return” to pre-1948 Israel. Accordingly, the continued existence of UNRWA is an insurmountable obstacle to any resolution of the “Palestinian problem” — and hence its dismantling — or at least, radical restructuring — is an imperative precondition for progress toward any such resolution.

The second component was the launch of an international campaign to induce the Arab countries to desist from what is essentially a policy of ethnic discrimination against the Palestinian diaspora, resident in them for decades, and to grant its members citizenship —rather than keeping them in a perpetual state of stateless “refugees”, as a political weapon with which to bludgeon Israel. To date, any such move is prohibited by the mandate of the Arab League.

A tripartite plan (cont.)

The reasoning behind this prohibition was made clear in a 2004 LA Times interview with Hisham Youssef, then-spokesman for the 22-nation Arab League, who admitted that Palestinians live “in very bad conditions,” but maintained that the official policy on denying Palestinians citizenship in the counties of decades-long residence is meant “to preserve their Palestinian identity.” According to Youssef: “If every Palestinian who sought refuge in a certain country was integrated and accommodated into that country, there won’t be any reason for them to return to Palestine.”

The significance of this is clear.

The nations comprising the Arab League are prepared to subordinate the improvement of the dire humanitarian conditions of the Palestinians, resident throughout the Arab world, to the political goal of preserving the “Right of Return,”

The nations comprising the Arab League are prepared to subordinate the improvement of the dire humanitarian conditions of the Palestinians, resident throughout the Arab world, to the political goal of preserving the “Right of Return” — i.e. using them as a pawn to effect the elimination of Israel as the nation-state of the Jews.

It is to the annulment of this pernicious policy that international pressure must be directed.

The third — and arguably the most controversial — element was to offer the non-belligerent Arab residents in Judea-Samaria generous relocation grants to provide them and their families an opportunity to seek a better and safer future in third-party host-nations, than that which almost inevitably awaits them — if they stay where they are.

Atomization & de-politicization

To overcome potential resistance to accepting the relocation/rehabilitation grants, I stipulated two elements regarding the manner in which the funding activity is to be carried out: (a) the atomization of implementation of the grant payments; (b) the de-politicization of the context in which they are made.

(a) Atomization: This implies that the envisaged compensation will be offered directly to individual family heads/breadwinners — not through any Arab collective (whether state or sub-state organization), who may have a vested interest in impeding its payment. Accordingly, no agreement with any Arab collective is required for the implementation of payment to the recipients — merely the accumulated consent of fate-stricken individuals, striving to improve their lot.

(b) De-politicization: The incentivized emigration initiative is not cast as a political endeavor but rather a humanitarian one. This reflects a sober recognition that, after decades of effort, involving the expenditure of huge political capital and economic resources, there is no political formula for the resolution of the conflict. Accordingly, efforts should be channeled into dissipating the humanitarian predicament of the Palestinian-Arabs, which the insoluble political impasse has precipitated.

These two elements – direct payments to individuals and the downplaying of the political nature of the relocation/rehabilitation grants and the emphasis on the humanitarian component are designed to circumvent—or at least attenuate — any claims that acceptance of the funds would in some way entail an affront to — real or imagined — national sentiments.

Once inconceivable, now slowly materializing

For many years, advocating these three elements — the dismantling (or at least the radical restructuring) of UNRWA; the naturalization of the Palestinian diaspora resident in Arab countries as citizens; and the emigration of Palestinian-Arabs from Judea-Samaria and Gaza — seemed hopelessly unrealistic.

However today, all three are slowly but inexorably materializing before our eyes in a manner that would have appeared inconceivable only a few years ago.

Of course, a major catalyst for this nascent metamorphosis has been the Trump administration.

The US administration has — despite hitherto unexplained and inexplicable Israeli reluctance — exposed the fraudulent fiasco of UNRWA. As its erstwhile biggest benefactor, the US has retracted all funding from the organization. But more importantly, it has focused a glaring spotlight on the myth of the “Palestinian refugees” and the spectacularly inflated number of such alleged “refugees” — which even include those who have long acquired citizenship of some other country!

This salutary US initiative has the potential to rescind the recognition of the bulk of the Palestinian diaspora as “refugees”. Thus, even if they continue to receive international aid to help ameliorate their humanitarian situation, this will not be as potential returnees to their alleged homeland in Israel.

Once the Palestinian diaspora is stripped of its fraudulent refugee status, the door is then open to settling them in third party countries other than their claimed homeland,  and to their naturalization as citizens of these counties.

Naturalization of the Palestinian diaspora in countries of residence

In this regard, the Trump administration has reportedly undertaken an important initiative — see here; here; and here. According to these reports, President Trump has informed several Arab countries that, at the start of 2019, he will disclose a citizenship plan for Palestinian refugees living in those countries.

President Trump has informed several Arab countries that, at the start of 2019, he will disclose a citizenship plan for Palestinian refugees living in those countries.

Significantly, Palestinian sources told the news outlet: “Trump informed several Arab countries that the plan will include Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.” According to these sources: “the big surprise will be that these countries have already agreed to naturalize Palestinian refugees.” Moreover, it was reported that senior US officials are expected to seriously raise an American initiative with several Arab countries — including stipulation of the tools to implement it, the number of refugees, the required expenses, and the logistics demanded from hosting countries for supervising the process of “naturalization of refugees”.

It is difficult to overstate the significance of such an initiative, which coincides precisely with the second element in the foregoing tripartite plan. For, it has the potential to remove the ominous overhang of a five million strong (and counting) Palestinian diaspora that threatens to inundate the Jewish state and nullify its ability to function as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

As such, the Israeli government and all pro-Zionist entities should strive to ensure its implementation.

Emigration: The preferred option of the Palestinians?

As for the third element of the tripartite plan, emigration of the Palestinian population to third-party countries, there is rapidly accumulating evidence that emigration is emerging as an increasingly sought-after option. Indeed, earlier this month, Israeli mainstream media highlighted the desire to leave Gaza in order to seek a better life elsewhere. For example, the popular website, YNet News, ran a piece entitled, Gaza suffers from brain drain as young professionals look for better life, with the Hebrew version appearing a few days previously, headlined The flight from Gaza: What Hamas is trying to conceal from the media. Likewise, the KAN Channel ran a program reporting very similar realities (January 13).

These items come on the heels of a spate of previous articles that describe the widespread clamor among Gazans to find alternative places of abode — see for example For Young Palestinians, There’s Only One Way Out of Gaza (Haaretz) ; Thousands Abandon Blockaded Strip as Egypt Opens Crossing  (Alaraby); As Egypt Opens Gaza Border, A Harsh Reality is Laid Bare (Haaretz); and How Turkey Has Become the Palestinian Promised Land (Haaretz).

The Ynetnews piece describes the fervor to leave: “Leaving Gaza is expensive, particularly for the residents of the impoverished coastal enclave…The demand is high, and the waiting list to leave is long…Those wishing to cut short their wait must pay for a place on a special list, which is run by a private firm in Gaza…The price for a place on this special list is $1,500 — a fortune for the average resident of Gaza…”

It would appear then, that the only thing preventing a mass Exodus from Gaza is…money. Which is precisely what the tripartite plan proposes providing.

Let their people go: A slogan for April’s elections?

There is, of course, little reason to believe that, if Israel were to leave Judea-Samaria, what happened in Gaza would not happen there. After all, the preponderance of professional opinion appears to hold that, if the IDF were to evacuate Judea-Samaria, it would likely fall to elements very similar to those that seized power in Gaza — and the area would quickly be transformed into a mega-Gaza-like entity, on the fringes of Greater Tel Aviv — with all the attendant perils that would entail.

Sadly, however, despite its clear strategic and ethical advantages over other policy proposals, few in the Israeli political system have dared to adopt incentivized emigration as part of their platform. The notable exception is Moshe Feiglin and his Zehut party –and, to a certain extent, Bezalel Smotrich, the newly elected head of the National Union faction in the Jewish Home Party, previously headed by Education Minister Naftali Bennett.

It is, however, time for the idea of incentivized emigration to be embraced by the mainstream parties as the only viable policy paradigm that can ensure the continued survival of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. It is time for the mainstream to adopt an election slogan that sounds a clarion call to “Let their people go”.

Martin Sherman is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

From INN, here.