The 90`s

"In Perspective"

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel Published on April 30, 1995

Get your front seats to the decline and fall of American Jewry.  Orchestra seats can be found in the demimonde of Jewish singles. A first-hand tour of these precincts should cause concern.

Intermarriage is running at around 52 percent -- a figure that masks a far deeper crisis, because secular Jews are opting out at 75 percent to 80 percent, with more observant Jews bringing down the average.  Virtually all Jewish singles have dates, are presently dating or have no objection to dating non-Jews. Dating non-Jews is incredibly easy. All you have to do is ask one out.

In synagogue a few weeks ago, my rabbi trenchantly observed that "everyone wants to marry Jews today except the Jews themselves."  Secular American society and the American Jewish march towards liberalism have converged successfully to make us all Americans with the same cultural reference points, styles and interests.  Unless you're religious or an ardent Zionist, there's no difference between you and the next person. 

The media is ride with examples of intermarriage and inter-dating.  There is never any shock, objection or indignation. Likewise this winced tolerance permeates the bulk of American Jewry on their own intra-familiar dalliances and marriages.  I'm O.K., you're O.K.

The most visible chink in our armor is the near total lack of respect for Jewish womanhood in the secular community.  The JAP stereotypes have transcended mere humor and are now deeply ingrained beliefs among Jewish men. Jewish men will, disgracefully, disparage Jewish women, publicly and with non-Jews.  If, say, Italian, Greek, Puerto Rico, Cuban or black women were repeatedly insulted either individually or collectively, you can be sure the males of those groups would not take it lightly.  But Jewish men just join right in. When Jews no longer respect Jewish women, by extension there is no respect for the institution or idea of the Jewish family and this leads to the destruction of Jewish society.

We live in a goyische medina -- a non-Jewish country.  There are millions upon millions of single, attractive and very nice non-Jews out there.  The cult of narcissism, inculcated by our mass media, has set-up for many Jewish men the Aryan ideal -- the Nebraska/Minnesota/California tall blonde blue-eyed look that many Jewish women, with or without Miss Clairol, can't physically duplicate.   Single, Jewish women, especially in college, date non-Jewish men heavily. This is carried on into the workplace. Many Jewish women I know actually brag about never dating Jewish men! Often, a Jewish ale is dated purely by accident, not with any plan in mind.  Non-Jews are often very nice to their Jewish partners, something that sadly can't be said between Jews. 

Go to any of the many Jewish singles parties (there is a whole industry devoted to assuaging Jewish loneliness) and you will see Jews looking their noses down on each other with disdain and condescension.  People barely talk to one another and proffer instantaneous judgments on prospective suitors in milliseconds. Smiling at one another is quite out of the question. It reminds me of the old Groucho Marx line, "I'd never belong to a club that would have someone like me as a member."

Ask many attending Jewish singles functions (even those run by major Jewish organizations) why they want to date or meet Jews? Most will be hard-pressed to give you any kind of coherent answer.  Ask why it would be important to marry a Jew, and you have the same befuddlement -- this from highly educated professionals.

A new twist: Non-Jews have been attending Jewish singles functions and advertising in the personal ads for Jews.  They do very well. Protracted singlehood is made possible by the belief in young marriage as completely uncool, careerism, materialism, impatience and the plethora of potential dates.  Dating in the 90's is a snap for most and most know there's always another phone number next week. In New York, this serial dating helps in great measure to keep the restaurant industry alive.

Intermarriage is no longer just the provence of the young.  Older Jews (40-plus) have increasingly been marrying non-Jews in their second or third marriages.  Some Reform Rabbis publicly date non-Jews prior to any conversion; Prominent captains of industry such as Henry Kravis and Ron Perelman marry-out as do media moguls like Larry King and Ted Koppel.  Many older people are following their children's example.

The 90`s

"In Perspective" 

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published April 27, 1995

 In these, the weeks after the Israelites Exodus from Egypt, as they wandered into the desert until arriving at Sinai, provides the perfect time to ponder the fate of wandering Jews.  The twentieth century has seen the most dramatic movements of Jewish populations since the expulsion from Spain and the defeat by Rome.

While we exult and rejoice over the ingathering of the exiles from what our holy books call "the four corners of the earth," we must remember just how and why they've been ingathered, especially when the place in question is Israel.

Most Jews have arrived in Israel not so much as a matter of choice but under duress or fleeting persecution.  We all know about the Soviet Jews, the survivors of the Holocaust and so on, but we seldom discuss that silent segment -- Jews from Arab countries -- Jews who today comprise half of Israel's total population. 

Over the past two months there have been meetings in Amman, Jordan between Israel, the PLO, Jordan and Egypt  on the subject of refugees.  

With much ballyhoo and fanfare, the Arabs trumpeted their claims to millions of Palestinian refugees and unabashedly demanded "repatriation" for at least a cool million of them post haste if the Israel-PLO deal is to work-out.  The PLO also wants millions more after a deal is signed.

The Israeli government, while publicly scoffing at the million-person request and stating that the Arab's refugee figures are dubious, has not been forcefully articulating the Jewish claim vis-a-vis refugees.  Moreover, reliable Knesset sources indicate that the Israeli government is seriously considering acceding to 200,000 to 300,000 Arab "returnees." Soon.

From 1948 to 1955 some 850,000 Jews from places like Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Morocco, et. al. were forcefully ejected from their homes, often at a moment's notice.  The personal and business property of these Jews was seized, Nuremberg-like, never to be retrieved again. Billions in assets, homes, shops, factories. Most of these Jews arrived penniless and toughed it out in the flimsy immigrant ma'abarot and eventually became Israelis.  World Jewry came to the rescue and due to Jewish philanthropy there are no Jewish refugees anywhere in the world today.

The Arabs on the other hand, cynically, for over four decades have imprisoned their own people in squalid, fetid camps -- breading-ground for hatred and misery and have registered any and all attempts to ease the lives of these people or integrate them into greater Arab society.

Moroccan-born David Levy, the former Foreign Minister, maintains that a population exchange has taken place in the region, much as occurred between India and Pakistan, Germany and Poland and so forth.  The PLO's demand for one million "1967 refugees" goes to the heart of their anti-Israel intrinsic ideology. First, by sticking to the canard of victimization (they were driven from their homes) they paint us as the villains.  Second, by pressing for admission of hundred of thousands, they seek to swap the Land of ISrael with a human tidal wave designed to alter the population balance in their favor and kill-off Jewish settlement in the territories.

By striving for parity between Israel's Law of Return and their own desires, they hope to whittle-away at Israel's legitimacy in general.  Knesset Member and Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman asserts these Arabs won't be living in the steaming-hot Jordan Valley. "They will climb over the mountains and settle right along the pre-1967 borders.  Why? Because the climate is better, there is water and its close to jobs in Israel. We will see big, new Arab settlements teaming with people." 

Without strongly asserting that a population exchange has taken place -- that the 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries and their descendants (now over two million) are entitled themselves to reparations -- that Jewish immigration and settlement rights have precedence and primary legitimacy -- that Israel is a Jewish land, we will find ourselves with our backs to the sea in short order and a Palestinian state bristling in our faces.  

Immigration.  The PLO will be one stage closer in their phased plan to destroy Israel.  Combin this with a possible legal foothold in Jerusalem (their desire is to wrest Mount Zion from the Zionists and the government has the status of city up for negotiation) we will be worse-off than in 1948, with more hostile Arabs in our midst with more dangerous weapons at their disposal and more Jews living in harm's way.  "Next Year in Jerusalem" isn't just jingoism for Arafat's boys, it's gospel. Unless we get serious real quick on immigration and Jerusalem we may be reading from Lamentations sooner than we think.

The 90`s

And the death toll continues to rise

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of February 14 - February 20th, 1995

"There's a new play running Off-Broadway by the prolific playwright Bruce Jay Friedmand called Have You Heard from Any Jews Lately?  This show is set in a not-too-distant future when Israel has ceased to exist, having been transplanted to Miami Beach. Israel's former leaders, like those of the now-defunct South Vietname, are ensconced in Collins Avenue hotels: Shamir is at the Fontain-bleau Hilton, Yitzhak Rabin is at the Doral and Arik Sharon gets Isaac Bashevis Singer's old condo.  The two main characters also believe they're the last two Jews left in America. Clear metaphors for the crises being faced by the Jewish people today.

On Sunday, Jan. 22, Anwar Sakr, 25, of Gaza City and Salah Mohammed, 27, from the Gaza town of Rafah managed to saunter into central Israel - to the Beit Lid junction East of Netanya and blow themselves and 20 Jews to smithereens.  More than 60 others were wounded and we're not talking about scratches treatable with Band-Aids and Bactine. Most of the dead were young male and female soldiers not yet 21. 

On the streets of Gaza thousands danced and pranced exultantly while paying their "respects" to the "martyrs" relatives.  Typical of the well-wishers was one leader who said "the Islamic movement gives its condolences to the hero of the attack that led to the killing of 20 pigs and the injuring of 60 monkeys."  Some of the other Gaza homeboys had similar things to say: "When I saw the flesh and blood of the Jews, I was happy," said Anwar Sukar's brother Abdel. Another said, "we're dead now. We live when the pieces of our bodies are collected in Tel Aviv."  Hit sons in Gaza have lyrics like "we are Palestinian Muslims fighting the Jewish army" and have titles like Inflicting Misery on the Sons of Zion." 

Islamic Jihad, responsible for this incident, and Hamas, responsible for many of the other operate openly and freely in Gaza.  No efforts are made on the part of Arafat's people to curtail what goes on there. The PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have a deal going whereby there will be no killing in Gaza or near it, only in the heart of Israel, so it won't reflect too poorly on the Palestinian Authority, this according to Benjamin Netanyahu.  The PLO-controlled press praises these attacks to the hilt as does PLO Radio and TV. The government chooses to ignore it.  

Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, said to me this week, "I get it - the PLO, the Palestinians want Israel dead."  Thomas Friedman, writing in The Times on Jan. 29th, asserts that "the Israeli doves are realizing that maybe these Palestinians don't just have a problem with the 'occupation,' maybe their problem is with Jews in Israel."

Spencer Tracy in Inherit the Wind said that "fanaticism and ignorance are forever busy and constantly needs feeding."  The leftwing, responding to the latest deaths, has been advocating a Palestinian State - full independence and separation now.  Tinker Bell's magic wand. Barbara Eden's blink, Elizabeth Montgomery's nose-wiggle. Presto-chango, if we totally capitulate, they'll love us and leave us alone.  

In the somewhat sophomoric new film Miami Rhapsody, Sarah Jessica Parker has one really trenchant observation.  Arguing with her screen fiancee Gil Bellows about the need for great amounts of compromise in marriage, Parker declares that "not everyone compromises.  Arabs. Arabs and Republicans don't compromise."

The Israeli government has agreed to recognize Palestinian passports issued by the PLO.  Guess who's going to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta? Palestine. In last December "Palestine" was declared the 195th member of the International Olympic Committee. 

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has removed three previously-sacred sites from the mandatory itineraries for foreign leaders visiting Israel.  They are, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and Memorial, Masada and the Golan Heights. No more foisting suffering and security on the foreigners. 

A little known fact about the Israeli government's retreat from Efrat in late December:  Remember all those local Arabs demonstrating about the supposed seizure of their land? It seems that they were organized in a series of "home meetings" throughout December by guess who?  The PLO? Hamas? The previously peaceful villagers of Al Hadar were turned-out by the Israeli Jews of Hebron Solidarity Committee - a Peace Now, the Quakers and the Menonite Church. In the demonstrations against Efrat on Dec. 30 there were 1,000 protesting.  Arm-in-arm were the villagers, the PLO, Hamas and Peace Now. It was the first time since 1967 that Peace Now had organized and enlisted Arabs in anti-settlement protests. That the people of Efrat legally purchased the land they want to build on is of no importance.  The Efrat City Council has filed criminal complaints against Peace Now for incitement of Palestinian Arabs in an area under military rule. 

Yasser Arafat's is heading the new Palestinian Anti-Settlement Committee.  They've been demonstrating against Jewish construction sites in the territories and have been illegally planting olive trees on Jewish and state-owned land in attempts to seize it. 

The government has abandoned even the communities around Jerusalem - capitulating to Arab demands to cease or curtail Jewish construction in the various "ring communities."  Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in the Jan. 26 issue of The Times said, "there is no such thing as 'Greater Jerusalem," it is literary work not a political term."

Lastly, in Cairo on Feb 2., Rabin and Peres, meeting Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, King Hussein and Yasser Arafat subjected themselves to withering criticism and pressure for no reason whatsoever.  The "peaceful" Arabs used this "summit" as an opportunity to pressure Israel to totally abandon Jewish construction and housing in the territories, withdraw Israeli forces and settlers from the area, agree to Palestinian statehood and acquiesce to Egypt's demands that Israel eliminate her nuclear defense capablities.  Appeasement breeds contempt - as Israel concedes ever more, Egypt becomes more hostile and the Palestinian territories kill more Jews. The death toll is now 122 since the signing go the Oslo Accords, far greater and far worse than anything we endured or imagines even at the height of the intifada.

The 90`s

Newt World Order In Line With Likud

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of December 2nd - December 8th, 1994

Welcome to the Newt World Order, the Republican agenda as defined by House speaker apparent Newt Gingrich leading the House and Bob Dole heading the Senate.

Among the many changes in the offing are those in foreign policy.  Jesse helms takes over the Foreign Relations mantle in the Senate, and he's got some very definite views that cheers the hearts of Likud supporters.  Helms has stated categorically that U.S. troops on the Golan Heights are a bad idea. Charging that the "whole peace process [with Syria] is a fraud," the North Carolina Republican asserts that "Syria doesn't want peace, they want the Golan Heights," and that through the lifting of pariah status from the U.S. aid like that given to Egypt and Israel. Helms says the Syrians "want access to the pocketbooks of American taxpayers," and says "no way" to placing American soldiers in harm's way.

Helms isn't alone.  Sen. Al D'Amato has flatly said that any peace agreement between Israel and Syria necessitating U.S. troops to ensure it is "not a good deal" and the U.S. should have no part of it.  (Peace with Jordan requires no such guarantees.)

Even Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan has said that "friends of Israel should be disappointed by any peace agreement that would require highly armed American troops to enforce the peace."  He does not believe that either the current or future Congress would grant a request for U.S. troops it it were made.

A new study conducted by some dozen former top generals, admirals and Defense Department officials asserts that "no missions for a U.S. Golan troop deployment would justify the costs and risks."  The study, sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, posits that the net effect of U.S. troops on the Golan "could be negative for Israel's security and regional stabilty." It also says that consequences could "include the loss of U.S. lives and possibly a credibility-damaging retreat for U.S. forces under terrorist fire."

The study also asserts that "such deployment [of U.S. troops] would increase the danger of direct U.S. involvement in a future Middle East war and undermine Israel's standing with the U.S. public as a self-reliant ally."

An exit poll conducted by a major polling organization on Election Day for the Middle East Quarterly on found that of 1,000 Americans surveyed, 64 percent opposed and only 18 percent were in favor of placing the U.S. troops on the Golan.  Seventy percent were in favor of requiring congressional approval before the administration could deploy American troops on the Golan.

Things won't be getting much easier for Yasir Arafat and the PLO, either.  Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-Rockland) is the incoming chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee.  Gilman has launched an investigation of Arafat's billions of dollars in financial assets, which include PLO ownership of airlines and duty-free shops and factories in Nicaragua, Africa and Eastern Europe.  Additionally, billions are supposedly squirreled away in Swiss vaults.

The U.S. has pledged $1.2 billion to Arafat over the next several years.  The new Congress will cast a wary eye at Arafat's inability to accurately account for how the funds are spent and will look to have Arafat liquidate his existing holdings before asking the U.S. taxpayer to subsidize his operations.

Arafat has yet to rescind the PLO covenant calling for Israel's destruction.  He keeps on making inflammatory statements about liberating all of Palestine, of making Jerusalem his capital; he can't even command the loyalty of his own appointed council.  Arafat's popularity is at rock botom.

Recent rioting in Gaza and rampant terrorism (where Hamas acts as Fatah's surrogates) have finally stiffened the resolve of Yitzchak Rabin.  The prime minister has announced he won't agree to Palestinian elections or Israeli troop withdrawals in the territories unless Arafat lives up to his word to repeal the PLO charter.  Keep your back straight, Yitzchak.

"Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin" read the handwriting on the wall in Belshazzar's palace in ancient Babylon.  The prophet Daniel told Belshazzar the writing foretold his demise and that of his kingdom. And so it was.

Hopefully, Rabin can read the handwriting on today's wall.  Israel Gallup polls show that 77 percent of Israelis are opposed to resuming negotiations with the PLO; a Ma'arvi poll shows the Likud winning if elections were held today; and there are the results of the American midterm elections.  All these signs spell a simple message: Go slow and take heed, for hasty agreements and suicidal concessions are not popular anywhere now but in the offices of far-left politicians and politically correct media pundits.

The 90`s

"In Perspective"

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published November 7th, 1994

Fifty-six years ago the Nazis formally launched the Holocaust with Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938.  The smashing of windows, the destruction of synagogues, Jewish homes and businesses was a metaphor for the grizzly acts that were to come.

One of my rabbis recounted his recent visit to Poland.  At a concentration camp near Lublin he tells of six ton pile of human ashes -- there is no way to accurately compute the number of human beings those ashes once were.

It seems not to matter one whit how many warehouses full of luggage, shoes, hair, eyeglasses and such are on full display at many of the camps -- the documentary films were made by the Nazis, the testimony at Nuremberg, the recollection of witnesses -- none of this matters to the purveyors of Holocaust Revisionism in all their forms.

Holocaust Revision is pseudo - scholarship that puts forth the notion that the Holocaust was a hoax, engineered by the Jews to engender world sympathy and extract reparations.  Revisionism manifests itself in many ways, from the most insidious outright denials to the more subtle lobbying efforts for even-handedness from the actual perpetrators and their spiritual heirs.

Two of the most recent manifestations of low-grade Holocaust Revisionism were recounted in two recent news reports.  The first concerns the heirs to the Topf family, formerly of Eastern Germany.

The Topfs, hard working people from Erfurt are asking for restitution for their factory and other assets which were seized by the Soviets in 1945.  They are making their claim under provisions of the new law enacted when Germany was reunified in 1990. The Topfs are seeking some $2 million -- not the biggest claim in the pile but wait until you hear what the J.A. Topf and Sons Company was manufacturing: Crematoriums.  Crematoriums used in the concentration camps. 

The Topfs were so good at building crematoria and so technologically advanced that they actually hold patent number 861,731, issued by the West German Patent Office in 1953 for the "process and apparatus for incineration of carcasses, cadavers and parts thereof."

The World Jewish Congress has been leading the fight to block any financial restitution for the Topfs.  Germany's Social Democratic Party asserted that the Topf demand "can hardly be surpassed by shamelessness" and that it was indicative of the overall climate in Germany that the heirs would feel confident enough to even apply.

The Second revisionist assault comes from German civilians interned in Polish prison camps after the war and the subsequent expulsion of millions of Germans from what was once West Prussia, Silesia and so forth.

In a New York Times article on November 1st, Craig Whitney reports on the specious claim of made by these Revisionists that some two million Germans died in the wake of forced relocation into East and West Germany with seven million forced from their homes.

Whitney reports on the witch-hunt over one Solomon Morel, Polish/Jewish/Communist commander of the converted Nazi concentration camp of Swietochlowice.   Morel fought with the Communists during the war and lost his parents and brothers to the Nazis. Germans who were incarcerated in the camp after the war charge the Mr. Morel and the other Jewish officers and guards tortured, beat and killed hundreds of German civilian prisoners.  Morel stated that typhus was the cause of prisoner deaths. Morel now lives in Tel Aviv, having immigrated in 1993. The Times accuses him of "fleeing Poland," presumably to avoid possible arrest for alleged war crimes against Germans!

These Germans bellyaching about their treatment after the fall of Nazi Germany and their pining for restitution for their lands and property in what was Prussia is one huge example of the pot calling the kettle black.  So many revisionists and apologists blame everything solely on the Nazis -- as though Nazis were a breed apart from most Germans, as though they weren't even really Germans. As though no one in Germany other than Nazis had any role to play in the Holocaust. 

The big lie these days (aside from denying the Holocaust) is that the Nazis were some small lunatic group that had nothing to do with the German masses.  Foohey!

The German people wholeheartedly embraced Hitler, his people, his cause, his ideology and his war.  They served him with pride and devotion until the bitter end. That some people in Germany have the temerity to seek redress and recompense after what they unleashed on humanity is the height of hubris and tells us that despite all the contrition of the Germans over the past few decades, they will have a good deal more work to do on their souls. 

As to the punishments the German people received at the close of the war, many Jews share my view that they hardly suffered enough and that perhaps the first use of the atomic bomb was waster on the wrong people.

The vast Jewish graveyards that are Germany, Poland, Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe are places of no return for the Jewish people.  Likewise there should be no return of assets to merchants of death and no apologies made to anyone over what happened to Germans in 1945 and 1946 as a direct consequence of their actions.