The Things They Carried:
The Israeli Settler

A peek inside the bag Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari schleps to work each day in Jerusalem.

INTERVIEW BY OREN KESSLER | MARCH/APRIL 2012

Tefillin, tallit: For morning prayers (tefellin are leather straps with boxes containing Torah scrolls; a tallit is a Jewish prayer shawl). "Before I interact with anyone else, I use these to connect to God."

 

 

 

Wallet: Cash, credit cards, driver's license, and a small siddur, or prayer book. On top is his Knesset ID -- "the key to my office," he says, "and, in a way, to every other door in the state of Israel."

 

 

 

Book: The Hebrew edition of Rabbi Meir Kahane: His Life and Thought -- Volume One: 1932-1975, by Kahane's wife, Libby. Ben-Ari recalls Kahane as a "wise, courageous, and committed" teacher. 

 

 

 

 

 

Pedometer: "Reminds me I need to walk at least 10,000 steps a day. Some days I use the Knesset gym, but only during the men-only hours."

 

 

 

 

Car key: All Knesset members are given vehicles -- Ben-Ari's is a seven-seat Mazda5, almost roomy enough for the entire family.

 

 


Photos by Marc Israel Sellem

 

Oren Kessler is Middle East affairs correspondent for the Jerusalem Post.

BASE

8:27 AM ET

February 27, 2012

Thank you FP

For this gripping and hard-hitting expose. Is it really that slow of a news day? I don't think so.

 

GRANT

2:09 PM ET

February 27, 2012

They've done articles with

They've done articles with far less relevance both to foreign policy and newsworthiness. Remember the article on Newt Gingrich and sex in outer space? Of course if they really wanted to focus on something that's actually important for foreign policy and underreported they could give more attention to the constantly deteriorating situation in Libya or more on South America than the occasional article about Brazil or Venezuela. But I'm sure that even this has some niche audience that wants to read about it.

 

BETZ55

11:59 AM ET

February 27, 2012

Who cares what he has in his bag?

Israel's occupation and settlement policies are morally and politically wrong and feed the entirely valid delegitimization process that Israel currently faces abroad

Kach, a terrorist group founded by the late racist Rabbi Meir Kahane, was officially labeled as such and outlawed by the Israeli government in 1994, following the massacre of 29 Palestinians and wounding of 125 others by a Kach follower, Baruch Goldstein. Yigal Amir, another Kach follower, assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

Since then, though officially outlawed, Kach members continue to operate in settler communities on the West Bank and have an extensive network on Facebook. As reported Kach member, Michael Ben-Ari, actually holds a seat in the Knesset; Ben-Gvir and Marzel are his aides.

The U.S. government asked Israel to intervene last fall when Ben-Ari tried to stage an official Knesset tribute to his late terrorist mentor, Kahane.

All three of these Kahanist troublemakers reside in illegal West Bank settlements. All three specialize in staging protest marches by settler extremists in Palestinian towns in Israeli and in the occupied West Bank.

This man is a terrorist. Keep this man out, his ilk are not wanted here.

 

BENIYYAR

8:45 AM ET

February 29, 2012

Oddly enough, both Bashir Assad and Achmadinejad are welcome

I find it unsettling that the Obama administration is willing to treat the Butcher of Syria Bashir Assad and the mad mullah from Teheran, Achmadinejad with the greatest respect while refusing a visa to a parliamentarian from a loyal ally and a sister democracy.
And while Meir Kahane may have had a provocative past, I don't recall that he actually ever killed or even hurt anyone, indeed, all he ever did preach was that most Arabs and Moslems hated Jews and Israel, and that made them dangerous. In point of fact, Rabbi Kahane was himself murdered by an Arab assassin, legally living in the United States.
On the other hand, Yassir Arafat, abu Mazen, all of Hamas, and most of the PLO have actually preached the murder of innocent Jews and Israelis and many of them have actually murdered Jews and Israelis.
Your silly, really almost irrational accusations that the settlements are illegal are a product of your overheated imagination. If they were illegal, the ICC and the Security Council would have stepped in long ago.
If you are concerned that Baruch Goldstein committed a mass murder, fine, you are welcome to keep him out of the US. This should not be a problem, Baruch's been dead for 17 years.

 

KUNINO

1:14 PM ET

February 27, 2012

The iPhone is mightier than the sword?

Apparently so. The parliamentarian seems to carry no pen.

 

BENIYYAR

8:54 AM ET

February 29, 2012

The Obama Doctrine

The refusal of the State Department to issue a visa to an Israeli Knesset member is just another example of the Obama Doctrine in action.
The Obama Doctrine, simply put, is to betray or abandon American allies and befriend, support, or at least remain harmless to rogue regimes and American enemies.
But the Obama Doctrine has a special animosity towards Israel, given that Obama himself views the Jewish State as a aggressive and violent colonial entity which preys on the peace loving and humane Arab Islamic states of the Middle East. This is in line with Obama's view of the United States as a militaristic and aggressive predator nation which has pillaged and raped the rest of the world with it's military and economic power to enrich Americans and impoverish everyone else.
So I suppose that at least this article is innocous, and not the usual biased, misinformed, and half fabricated anti Israel and anti Jewish nonsense that so often passes for journalism on this site.

 

JBGODZILLA

1:28 PM ET

February 29, 2012

I first heard Kahane in 1968 in Brooklyn College

during a tough period of power struggle between Brooklyn Jews and Blacks, and he went on to form the Jewish Defense League. He was a rousing Jewish demagogue, something rather unique in otherwise mostly liberal Jewish Brooklyn.

I later heard him while living in Israel, in the 1980s, in a park across the street from my then apartment, wherein he argued that the Arabs should be paid to leave, and was booed by the mostly liberal Rehovot Jewish crowd. His party, KACH, was barred as a racist party from the Knesset for merely suggesting that Arabs BE PAID to emigrate elsewhere! He was subsequently assassinated by an Arab on one of his visits back in New York.

Today, I am a Kahanist! He was right; I was Left and WRONG. The other side still wants to throw the Jews into the sea; my side wants to PAY the ARabs to go away to the 21 Arab countries.

But seeing what is going on in Arab countries, Israeli Arabs are not going anywhere, and neither are Jews. So that's where it stands.