Weekly Wrap: War. Hormuz. MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+. A Subdued Passover.
Yup. You read that correctly.....MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+
Before we get to Crazy Canada…….some late breaking drama as we finalize this weekly wrap.
President Trump is off to a roaring and early start to his Sunday. After 21 hours at the table in Islamabad, his negotiating team - led by VP J.D. Vance - called it quits. Iran reportedly refuses to agree to abandon its nuclear ambitions and it also seems to be unbending on its chokehold on the global oil supply that requires safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Among other cute stalling tactics, Iran pretended to have lost track of if and where they had laid mines in the Strait and Persian Gulf.
The day began with this social media post from President Trump. It’s long, so instead of reproducing it in full I’m including the link below…..it takes the Fox News anchor just under five minutes to read it aloud plus she provides quick context to the quickly developing events:
I’m going to be dropping a podcast with State of Tel Aviv and Beyond regular guest and familar pundit on international media, Lt. Col. (Res.) Jonathan Conricus…..focusing on this turn of events tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Now, from the middle east to……
Crazy Canada.
That is Leah Gazan in the video. She is a Member of Parliament in the New Democratic Party – or NDP. Historically, they’ve been soft socialists and drove many policies that have become sacred cows in Canada – like universal medical care.
(The problem is that the health care system in the country has been managed disastrously and accessing basic primary care is now a huge challenge. Depending on which data one chooses to accept, the best scenario is that 20% of Canadians have no direct access to either a primary care physician or nurse. The most recent studies peg that number closer to 50%.)
Leah Gazan has been spoofed the world over in the last week, but I thought this clip was one of the cleverest. As with any good satire, the really sad part is that it’s mostly true. Canada has become a really wacky place.
It would be disrespectful if I overlooked the Godfather of Canadian identity politics, former PM Justin Trudeau. Here he is at his smug finest:
This joke is serious business in Canada. And it is an apt metaphor for the state of the nation in every way these days. It’s a certifiable mess, by any metric.
The NDP was, once upon a time, a serious political party with an important voice and message in Canadian politics and society. What remains is a crazy rump of extremist “progressives”, but there is also significant policy overlap with the ruling Liberals.
Here’s a fabulous clip where Canadian journalist, Adam Zivo, does his best to explain to these British journos what all the letters in Leah Gazan’s alphabet soup mean and why she feels compelled to recite them. Zivo knows his stuff….he’s made a name for himself on intelligently explaining this madness that has seized the minds of so many in Canada…..and he does it with a sense of fun as well. At the end of the clip Zivo says that this kind of extreme word salad tendency is promoted by a fringe element of the NDP party. I respectfully disagree. This kind of nonsense is prevalent among NDPers and Liberals - the party helmed by current Prime Minister Mark Carney.
These identity acknowledgements have become pretty de rigeur since Trudeau took the helm in 2015 and are complemented by ubiquitous “land acknowledgements,” which recognize the ancestral title and right of indigenous people.
Canada has also grabbed significant attention globally in recent weeks due to a spate of shootings of synagogues and a popular Jewish-owned restaurant, as well as the US Consulate. All in Toronto.
I’ve been doing a lot of work on that issue and will be dropping two in-depth podcasts in the coming days – looking at the failures of law enforcement in Toronto – and Canada – to, well, enforce the law; particularly when Jews or Israel are involved. And we have some strong interviews with Israeli cabinet ministers expressing their deep concern with the transformation of Canada from a quiet, stable place to a hub of Jew-hatred and Islamist violence.
Now – back to Israel.
I am back from a much needed “time-out.”
And after a day or two of unplugging, somewhat, I realized just how badly I needed it. It has been a very long two and a half years, with no let-up on the horizon. Compared to so many, I am very fortunate. And when you live in a place where the tensions are so heightened, you are constantly mindful of those around you. Your family, community, country, region, the world. The hostility is unrelenting. Trauma so pronounced and life altering.
Sitting, peacefully, as I am doing now, with a morning coffee in a comfortable home reminds me of all those whose lives have been shattered. It’s not a masochistic guilt-addictive trait. It shows, I believe, that I am a sentient being aware of my surroundings. And this reality takes a toll on all of us. Nothing about this war is abstract for Israelis. Nor are the consequences.
Passover in Israel was muted. In the afternoon hours leading up to the eve of Passover – when the seder is celebrated – Iran sent a barrage of missiles our way. It was jarring, as intended. Many people decided at the last minute to stay home and skip the large, festive gatherings they had planned to attend. My daughter and I drove one hour to be with close friends and their extended family. Half the invitees did not show up. They all had young children.
We have been living in a state of war for close to three years now. People are worn out.
On the day before Passover began, four young men serving in the IDF fell in action in Lebanon. At least one was hit by “friendly fire.” He was 21.
Also in the days before Passover, Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, celebrated the passage of a Knesset law permitting capital punishment for convicted terrorists. The whole event was a charade, engineered to give Ben Gvir an opportunity to create a public moment. He revels in controversy and attention. A week before the law was passed he made a whistle-stop in Netivot – a city of 50,000 in southern Israel that overwhelmingly votes hard right in elections. Ben Gvir came to excite the locals. His pockets were stuffed with gold colored nooses – which he handed out like candy - pandering to a violent and extremist tendency among some.
He even came with stickers. Here’s a photo of one affixed to a street lamp post.
The visuals are self-explanatory. The text reads: “Support the law. Capital punishment for terrorists.” Between the noose and the photo of Ben Gvir is the name of his party: Jewish Power.
What Ben Gvir forgot to mention on his roadshow is that there is already a capital punishment law on the books but it has only been used once since the state was founded – to end the life of convicted Nazi and architect of The Final Solution – Adolf Eichmann.
Ben Gvir, clearly, fantasizes about hanging any terrorist he can snare. This law reportedly also requires that the convicted terrorist be put to death within three months of a conviction. That leaves no time for appeals, due process and all that stuff for which Ben Gvir has no time.
What he does not seem to have processed is that the law will also apply to Jewish terrorists. And there are more than a few of those who have been marauding quite freely in the West Bank – especially since October 7. In his former life, Ben Gvir acted as legal counsel for many Jews who were charged with violent crimes that were often terrorist in nature. Not surprisingly, he has been less than diligent – as Minister of National Security – in prioritizing the legal prosecution of such persons.
But just before Passover, he created an ugly spectacle in the halls of the Knesset; popping a bottle of champagne to celebrate this “new” law. Below is a portion of a video that went viral internationally. Asked what he’s celebrating, Ben Gvir responds (as he pours champagne in the halls outside the Knesset plenum) that he is happy that terrorists will now be subject to the death penalty. He refers to this law repeatedly as being “historic” and invokes G-d to support his intention that one by one the terrorists shall be dead.
(Moments earlier, Ben Gvir had been removed physically from the Knesset by security officers as he tried to perform his champagne stunt inside the plenum.)
Ben Gvir does not contemplate the hanging of Jewish terrorists in his glee.
Even PM Netanyahu, who wooed Ben Gvir to join his government in the lead-up to the last election, made a disingenuous attempt to distance himself from the Minister, saying, incredulously, that in his government (meaning in the future, one presumes) that Ben Gvir would not be appointed to a Ministerial portfolio.
Come again? I mean – Ben Gvir not only sits as a Minister in Netanyahu’s government today; but he has held a portfolio that was created specifically to meet his demands. Without Ben Gvir, Netanyahu would have no coalition.
The piece below- published in State of Tel Aviv at the time – may be of interest. They expose Netanyahu’s very aggressive courting of Ben Gvir and his right-wing colleague and current Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich.
(There is a lot of material in the STLV archives that is helpful in understanding the environment prevailing today. Access to archival material is available to premium subscribers only.)
Shortly after the latest episode of the Ben Gvir Show, PM Netanyahu’s government approved a budget bill, which allocated 800-million shekels to the ultra-orthodox educational system.
Below are excerpts from the excellent op-ed written by our regular podcast guest, Ya’akov Katz and published in The Jerusalem Post on April 3. (If you wish to read the piece it is at this link.)
Imagine, for a moment, that you are one of the thousands of IDF soldiers currently deployed deep inside Lebanon. You have left your family, your job, and your life and crossed the border into enemy territory, sleeping in abandoned buildings, some without running water, without the ability to shower, and without fresh food. Nights are cold. The ground is wet. Everything smells like mud and exhaustion….
So, you pick up your rifle, and you fight. But then, somewhere between operations, you get an update on the news back home. In Jerusalem, you read, the government has passed the annual budget, which is usually good news. But then, between the lines, you see that at the last minute, an additional NIS 800 million was allocated to ultra-Orthodox educational institutions.
You look around at your friends huddled in the Lebanese cold without understanding. How does this make sense? How can money go to a sector that is not there with you? To people who are not in the mud, not in the cold, and not under enemy fire? To people who did not have to leave their families, put their lives on hold, or cross into enemy territory.
Hours before the country shut down for the Passover holiday, the government slipped another 800-million NIS to the ultra-orthodox communities to fund their religious institutions. They dodge and shirk the draft. (Well, 97% do.) Most do not support their families financially, preferring to rely on state support. But they demand – and receive – massive amounts of money.
On Friday, April 3. Israel’s most watched television channel – 12- aired a special feature; a road trip with two regular commentators. Retired generals Israel Ziv and Dedi Simhi drove from central Israel to the north, which has been pounded by Hezballah rockets for the last month. These people – who live in small agricultural villages abutting the Lebanese border – were forced by the government to abandon their homes and livelihoods for 14 months after October 7. They were scattered all over Israel. Everything about their lives was disrupted. In recent months the government decided that the area was again safe to inhabit, declaring that the IDF had effectively destroyed Hezballah’s missile arsenal and fighting ability.
Turns out that they were wrong. Tens of thousands of northern residents returned home and are living through sheer hell.
Of the 24,000 residents of Kiryat Shemona, 16,000 returned. But many are leaving again and they are unlikely to ever return. Kiryat Shemona is a hardscrabble town which is dominated by Jews of north African and middle eastern descent. Life there is hard. Most people are religious, but the kind of pious that work and serve in the army.
One woman who was interviewed lives in an apartment that has become a shrine to her son who fell in battle since October 7. She has no safe room and the government allocated to her a an amount that covers two thirds of the cost of building one. “Where am I supposed to get that kind of money”, she asks, rhetorically.
She feels she has been abandoned by the state. In the meantime, she runs up and down flights of stairs every time a siren sounds, which is frequently.
There is money for ultra-orthodox education of draft dodgers but not for this woman’s physical safety?
At a nearby café, the Generals speak with locals. “Why did the government tell us it was safe to return?”
Four women living on Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, all with young children, also returned recently. They are dismayed at the complete disconnect between the government, IDF and the local population.
“What is it you want”, the Generals ask.
“They don’t even see us,” says one. “They don’t even come to visit us. Speak to us.”
The others chime in with similar comments. They feel used, forgotten, invisible, dispensable.
And in this environment, where there is no money for safe rooms, where wounded veterans are denied treatment due to budgetary shortfalls, where families are falling apart from close to three years of unending stress, where financial allowances and support for reservists whose businesses are failing because they are never there to run them, who have lost jobs because they are serving in the IDF – into this crazy scenario, PM Benjamin Netanyahu pours oil on an already raging fire and gifts close to $6-billion in Israeli shekels to the ultra-orthodox community that is anti-Zionist and refuses to serve in the IDF. (6-billion NIS is the equivalent of $2-billion USD or $2.7-billion CDN.)
If you missed the podcast discussion I had last week with Ya’akov Katz, I suggest you listen. We spare no one and nothing as we discuss this very dire circumstance. PM Netanyahu prefers to gloat about what he sees as victory. While we acknowledge achievements we cannot look away from reality. We are courting disaster, eyes wide open.
Ok, now to the south.
I live a stone’s throw from Sderot – a sort of companion town to Kiryat Shemona. From 2007, when Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, until the recent war, Sderot was a punching bag for the terrorists in the Gaza Strip. A city of 30,000, it is also a “development” town, a place where new immigrants are encouraged to live and economic prospects tend to be grim. The population is overwhelmingly Moroccan, North African, middle eastern, Russian, Ethiopian. An astonishing 90% of the people are estimated to have experienced PTSD symptoms.
Everything in Sderot has a big donation plaque thanking a North American community for its generosity, including my fabulous pool where I swim regularly. Most importantly, this fitness center also has a warm water pool that is equipped with state of the art rehab equipment to assist veterans and others with recovery from serious injury.
So – thank you. Profoundly. Without such support these communities would be quite desolate.
These days, however - unlike Kiryat Shemona - Sderot is a boom town. Many younger families are moving south, seeking refuge from soaring real estate prices and an insufferable population density, not to mention the fact that many Israelis living in the center do not have safe rooms.
Sderot is quite a lovely town; cheap, clean, fully serviced. I mean – fully serviced in a limited way. If you are looking for something other than a shawarama or schnitzel joint with blinding fluorescent lighting, you’re not gonna find it. Lifestyle choices are limited. There are trade-offs.
Before October 7, Sderot was pummeled constantly by rockets from Hamas. People had 15 seconds to run to a shelter. No one wanted to be there. Today, it is revitalized.
A little further south from Sderot is Netivot; the really big city with a population of 50,000 – give or take. That’s where I head to do serious business. Everything is better and bigger, including the branch of my favorite appliance shop. Recently, I had errands to do that I’d been putting off for months. So I headed south.
In addition to being closer to my home, Netivot is targeted far less frequently than the next closest city, Be’er Sheva, by Iranian missiles. So my chance of doing a clean run with no sirens were much better.
Netivot’s population is overwhelmingly Sephardic and middle eastern and votes 50% (50%!!!!) for Shas, unfailingly. Led by Aryeh Deri – a twice convicted felon who served several years of hard time from 1999-2003 – Shas’s fundamental platform is remedying historical grievances. Identity politics.
When he burst onto the political scene in the late 80s, Deri was seen as a wunderkind. Born in Morocco, his family moved to Israel when he was a toddler. He attended a Lithuanian orthodox yeshiva (beyond anomalous for a Moroccan Jew) choosing to learn in the most ascetic religious environment in Israel. It is also the snootiest. Litvackers are the self-anointed intellectual giants of the Jewish world. Their pre-war yeshivas in Vilna (Vilnius today), were renowned for educating thought leaders in Jewish law and life, among them the Vina Ga’on – the genius of Vilna.
It is bizarre that Deri – the proud Moroccan – who rails constantly against Ashkenaz (European Jewish) racism, should have chosen to immerse himself in the educational and living environment of thus particular tribe. But he did. And here I will indulge my inner armchair psychologist and proclaim the obvious; that Deri was desperate for acceptance by those he purported to reject.
Then again, perhaps he was just calculating. Prescient and pragmatic. No one can look down at Rabbi Aryeh Deri from Morocco and say he has an inferior understanding of Jewish law or practice. Not even the great Ashkenaz rabbis.
And it is on this foundation that Deri built his political persona. The Sephardic underdog with impeccable Ashkenaz credentials.
I wrote about Deri and others in this piece a few years ago.
The irony of resentment politics that permeates certain demographics in Israel has always taken me aback.
Jews of European origin (Ashkenaz) are at once loathed and revered.
Moroccan-born Deri – who has built a political persona based in racism directed at Sephardic Jews – chooses to be educated at a Litvack yeshiva.
Menachem Begin – long a hero of the dispossessed and oppressed – was a real-life caricature of an Ashkenaz Jew from Poland; short in stature, pale complexion, bespectacled.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the man who currently dominates political culture among Sephardic and Mizrachi voters – is also a poster boy for Ashkenaz Jews: a combat veteran of an elite IDF unit, well-educated, brilliant. An MIT graduate.
I mean….
The hard-core of the “Bibistim” – the tribe of Bibi devotees – are of North African and middle eastern of descent. “Only Bibi”, they chant. After October 7? “Only Bibi.”
Today? “Only Bibi.”
And therein lies the mystery.
Why?
And if not Bibi then they are likely to vote for Aryeh Deri’s Shas party. Or, these days, many are shifting to Jewish Power leader, Itamar Ben Gvir.
A proud disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane, Ben Gvir contrives a bellicose, clownish image. His family is originally from Iraq, and he grew up in a Jerusalem suburb. Radicalized at a young age, Ben Gvir was rejected for IDF service because he was viewed as being too politically extreme.
Today, he leads a party that openly advocates for full annexation of the West Bank and Jewish settlement of the Gaza Strip. His supporters tend to be thuggish. When they attack Palestinian villages, burning, looting, sometimes killing, Ben Gvir showers them with praise.
He likes to be under-estimated.
Itamar Ben Gvir has cultivated a disheveled look. His shirt is always untucked, his extra-large yarmulke constantly askew. And he has a thing for gesticulating dramatically. And yelling. He loves staging provocative, theatrical public appearances, and is quite masterful at it.
Here’s another piece I did in the lead-up to the last election. Ben Gvir made a campaign stop in a south Tel Aviv neighborhood that was poor and crime-ridden. He turned it into an opportunity to foment racism and his brand of extremism. And it was very effective.
For many years, Ben Gvir was treated like the Village Idiot.
No longer.
As always - I close this weekly wrap with a light touch.
On my recent errand day in Netivot, I ducked into this outdoor mall. Yes. That is a faux Eiffel Tower, adding a touch of glamor, I suppose, to the otherwise utilitarian development town aesthetic that prevails in Netivot. It was a slow day at the mall. Many businesses are shuttered permanently or some of the time. The effects of close to three years of war. we see it on the ground.
Alas, the ice cream parlour and smoothie stand were doing brisk business.
Thanks, as always, for being here. Until next time……
Quite a column this week Vivian!! Stay safe.