Carry this story with you for Shabbat. It made me smile.

A Jewish man who had no wife, no children, no family, and almost no connection to Judaism but his birth, left his fortune to Israel, and he is helping to make the desert bloom.

Mack Ness, a Jewish farmer and recluse, who lived his life in deprived circumstances in Watchung, New Jersey, willed a fortune to Israel when he died in January 2004. As a result, Ness is helping to make the Negev bloom posthumously.

In his 90s when he died, Ness never married or had children and had no connection to the local Jewish community until a short time before his death.

A non-Jewish attorney took care of his affairs, and never took a cent for his trouble. The lawyer had lived on the Ness farm as a student, but ran out of money and couldn’t pay the rent. He was about to leave when Ness offered him a deal that lasted for well over half a century. He told the young man that he could stay on the farm free of charge and continue with his studies, but that after he became a lawyer, he would have to give his services to Ness free of charge.

[...] Ness left more than $15 million to the Federation, with two provisions - that the money go to Israel and that a memorial be established for himself, his mother, Ann, and his brother Sanford.

The upshot is the Ness Loan Fund for the Negev, which in Hebrew is called Keren Ness, which translates back into English as the Miracle Cornucopia.

And indeed that’s what it is. According to the fund’s chairman, Gerald Flanzbaum, who lives with his wife, Marilyn, in Givat Olga, more than 85 business loans have been disbursed, mostly to people who were unable to get loans from a bank. The Flanzbaums travel to Beersheba every month to meet loan applicants. Some of the ventures have been so successful that they are repaying the loans ahead of time.

May Mack Ness’ name be long remembered. His memory is already a blessing.

via memeorandum

Chess champion Bobby Fischer died

Bobby Fischer, the reclusive chess genius who became a Cold War hero by dethroning the Soviet world champion in 1972 and later renounced his American citizenship, has died. He was 64.

I first learned of Bobby Fischer when I was about 9 or 10 and someone bought me “The Jew in American Sport” that featured profiles of 3 chess players: Emanual Lasker, Sammy Reshevsky and Bobby Fischer. Given that Bobby Fischer first gained notice as a chess player when he was only a few years older than I was at the time, he became something of an idol. Of course my chess playing abilities were never championship caliber. But I don’t think that I comprehended that at the time. (See Just One Minute too.)

(It did happen that I had the opportunity to play Sammy Reshevsky at a demonstration as a freshman at YU. He played 30 students at once and won 29 games and drew one. Needless to say he beat me with ease. Bill Jempty, though, got a chance to get drubbed by Fischer. Of course, he’s also a more serious chess player than I am.)

In the Mad Genius of Bobby Fischer Bill Ordine writes about the state of sports and, I guess, detente at that time:

I was there for Fischer-Spassky. I was in the Navy, stationed at the NATO base in Keflavik doing pretty much what I still do. I was a Navy journalist. In between my normal duties, I occasionally got to go to the big city down the road. One of those days, I covered the chess match. I recall it went on forever and the hot dogs were made of lamb. And even with the confrontation being what it was — the young, brash American genius from Brooklyn against the established Soviet champion — it became increasingly difficult to root for Fischer as his eccentricities overwhelmed even an overwhelming sense of nationalism many of us felt at the height of the Cold War.

In short, Fischer was a jerk complaining about everything, making incessant demands. Spassky was gracious and urbane. Imagining what might happen to the Soviet back home if he lost, you could almost have some sympathy for him. In the end, Fischer prevailed and it was a great triumph for the U.S. But at the same time, the Summer Olympics were going on in Germany. The United States lost that controversial basketball game to the Soviets. And, of course, the Munich Massacre, where members of the Israeli delegation were killed, stunned the world and obliterated everything else going on in sports.

It’s funny that he was there. We flew over Iceland one of the days the match was going on; though I don’t know if a match was going at the time or if we even flew over Reykjavik. We were on our way back from Israel at the time.

A few years ago, amateur chess player and (one time) professional psychiatrist, Charles Krauthammer asked “Did Chess make him crazy?”

Why such proximity between genius and madness in chess? There are three possible explanations. One is that chess is a monomania. You study it intensively day and night from childhood if you are going to rise to the ranks of the greats, and that kind of singular focus constricts your reality and makes you more vulnerable to distortions of it. “A chess genius,” wrote George Steiner, “is a human being who focuses vast, little understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise. Almost inevitably, this focus produces pathological symptoms of nervous stress and unreality.” Plausible, perhaps, but there are lots of folks who are monomaniacal in other “trivial” spheres and who come out psychically intact. Tiger Woods was raised from infancy to be a great golfer and is not just intact but graceful and charming. The ranks of great golfers, swimmers and Dominican shortstops are not more noticeably skewed to the deranged than the general population.

Well, then, this must be monomania of a certain sort. Chess is a particularly enclosed, self-referential activity. It’s not just that it lacks the fresh air of sport, but that it lacks connections to the real world outside–a tether to reality enjoyed by the monomaniacal students of other things, say, volcanic ash or the mating habits of the tsetse fly. As Stefan Zweig put it in his classic novella The Royal Game, chess is “thought that leads nowhere, mathematics that add up to nothing, art without an end product, architecture without substance.”

But chess has a third–and unique–characteristic that is particularly fatal. It is not just monomaniacal and abstract, but its arena is a playing field on which the other guy really is after you. The essence of the game is constant struggle against an adversary who, by whatever means of deception and disguise, is entirely, relentlessly, unfailingly dedicated to your destruction. It is only a board, but it is a field of dreams for paranoia.

However in Bobby Fischer’s perfect death Gabriel Schoenfeld concludes not:

And while there have been several deranged grandmasters, whether the frequency of mental illness in this group is higher than the average rate among geniuses is doubtful.

But not before he recalls the contents of a disturbing letter that Fischer wrote to the Encyclopedia Judaica.

Two years later, he wrote to the Encylopedia Judaica asking for his entry to be removed (the underlinings are as in the original): Gentlemen:Knowing what I do about Judaism, I was naturally distressed to see that you have erroneously featured me as a Jew in ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA. Please do not make this mistake again in any future editions of your voluminous, pseudo-authoritative publication. I am not today, nor have I ever been a Jew, and as a matter of fact, I am uncircumcised.I suggest rather than fraudulently misrepresenting me to be a Jew, and dishonestly abusing my name and reputation as a kind of advertising gimmick to improve the image of your religion (Judaism), you try to promote your religion on its own merits — if indeed it has any!In closing, I trust that I am not being unrealistically optimistic, in thanking you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter.

Truly yours,
Bobby Fischer
The World Chess Champion

A passionate hatred of Jews was to stay with Fischer for the rest of his life.

A passionate hatred of Jews was to stay with Fischer for the rest of his life.

A passionate hatred of Jews was to stay with Fischer for the rest of his life.

Whatever the source of his madness, Bobby Fischer was once the best in his field.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

Twenty-eight Thirty more missiles rained down on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory that Israel withdrew from in 2005 in the hopes of creating a more peaceful existence with the Palestinians. Funny how that didn’t work.

The AP, which can’t bring itself to use the words “over rocket attacks” in the headline, actually manages to get things close to right in the lede. Let’s see how long that lasts.

Israel Closes Gaza Border Crossings
Israel has closed all border crossings into Gaza, cutting off food and humanitarian supplies to the coastal strip in a bid to pressure its Hamas rulers to stop a barrage of rocket attacks on Israeli towns, defense officials said Friday.

Ten rockets slammed into southern Israel on Friday, one damaging a day care center in the town of Sderot and another hitting Ashkelon, a town of 120,000 people. No injuries were reported.

Israeli aircraft fired on rocket launchers in northern Gaza in retaliation. Hamas security officials said two Palestinians were killed - a Hamas militant who had just fired rockets and a 17-year-old civilian who apparently was an onlooker.

The rocket attacks escalated following an Israeli anti-rocket raid in Gaza that left 19 Palestinians dead Tuesday, including the son of a prominent Hamas leader.

CNN takes three grafs to get to the reason why the borders are closed. The highlights manage to blame the rocket attacks, but also highlight Palestinian deaths. The headline?

Israel closes Gaza border, raids West Bank camp

Reuters explains all in the first graf. I’ve been finding them more informative than the AP for some time now. That’s frightening, as the Reuters anti-Israel bias is much stronger than AP’s. Of course, the Reuters headline is a bit more biased.

Israel closes Gaza crossings, blocks aid shipments
JERUSALEM, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Israel tightened its closure of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Friday in response to cross-border rocket fire, preventing even U.N. humanitarian supplies from getting in, officials said.

The decision came after Israel vowed to broaden its military campaign against Gaza militants who have fired more than 110 rockets at southern Israel in the last three days.

What you don’t see in most stories, however, is this:

In Sderot on Thursday, Eliyahu Cohen, 65, was surveying the damage to his home, which was struck during an early barrage about 8 a.m. His wife, Marcelle, had been alone in the house at the time, and had managed to reach a fortified basement room, escaping injury. At best, the municipal alert system gives residents about 20 seconds to find shelter from incoming Qassams.

The rocket crashed through an outside wall into the Cohen family’s kitchen, sending the refrigerator flying across the room and blasting off its door, which lodged in the ceiling. The ground floor was covered with broken glass and debris, and the aroma of sweet Sabbath wine from a shattered bottle hung in the air.

The house next door, where the Cohens’ daughter, Nofit, lives, was also carpeted with glass and debris.

“I’m calm,” said Mr. Cohen, who owns a bus company. “I’m happy that everyone was miraculously saved.” As he spoke, another alert sounded, and about a dozen friends, relatives and local officials who had been standing outside tramped through the daughter’s house, glass crunching underfoot, and crammed into a tiny fortified room.

The New York Times is finally noticing the victims of Palestinian rocket attacks, not just the deaths caused when the IDF goes after the terrorists firing the rockets. Perhaps the AP might start sending around secondary stories featuring the fact that most houses in Sderot are equipped with a safe room, and that Sderot residents will often sleep in those rooms. I imagine they did last night, and the night before, and will do so tomorrow night as well.

But then, even the Times led with this headline:

Rockets Hit Israel, Whose Strikes Kill 5 Palestinians

Uh-huh. It’s that tired old cycle-of-violence syndrome. The cause of those deaths is terrorism, plain and simple. When the Palestinians stop trying to bomb, rocket, shoot, stone, and stab Israelis, the IDF will no longer have to send Hellfire missiles into terrorists’ cars.

I read the editorial “Reckless in Gaza” in today’s Forward with a growing sense of disbelief. Then I reached this paragraph.

Now, however, the whole deal may be off, including Shalit’s freedom. Among the dead in the Gaza incursion was the 24-year-old son of Muhammad Zahar, a leader of the hawkish wing (yes, there is one) of Hamas. Zahar is now gaining stature along with sympathy, strengthening Hamas opponents of cease-fire and accommodation.

“[Y]es there is one”!?!?!? There’s a “hawkish wing” to Hamas? Really? Why, I never knew.

I can’t quite grasp the naiveté of that line. Do the editors mean to imply that there’s a “dovish wing” to Hamas or are they assuming that such is true? And what does “hawkish” mean in this context. In the context of a legitimate government it would refer to those who would more readily resort to force. But given that Hamas is a terrorist organization, by definition it’s “hawkish” in that it believes in the use of force against civilians.

What’s the gist of the editorial? Israel ought not to fight back. Fighting back is counterproductive. Earlier the editorial informs us:

In the past two years, Israeli forces killed 810 Palestinians in Gaza, as the director of the Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, told a Cabinet meeting last week. Of the total, about 200 were not clearly linked to terrorist organizations — that is, bystanders. A separate study by the Ha’aretz newspaper found that the civilian toll was actually higher, totaling about 360, of whom 152 were under age 18, including 48 children under age 14.Israel’s death toll from terrorism in 2007, reported this month by the human rights group B’Tselem and confirmed by the military, totaled 13, including seven civilians. That was the lowest toll since 1999. The toll that year, the last full year that the Oslo accords were in effect, was zero.

For all that, the Palestinian war against Israel “is not being checked, but is actually intensifying,” the internal security minister, Avi Dichter, reported at the same Cabinet meeting. Dichter, a former Shin Bet chief, estimated that there are some 20,000 Palestinian fighters in Gaza, of whom Israel has killed about 5%. He said the army should shift gears and step up its efforts. It wasn’t clear how much killing he thought would suffice.

I find it fascinating that the editorial states that

the last full year that the Oslo accords were in effect, was zero.

Are the editors implying a causal relationship here? Make peace and there will be no terror? Well how do they explain the terror of 1994, 1995, and 1996?And it’s interesting that 1999 was a year of no terror. For half the year Binyamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister. But terror started up again the next year, with a vengeance, when Ehud Barak was Prime Minister. Netanyahu was widely vilified (especially by folks sympathetic to this sort of mushy-minded thinking) as hurting peace. But under his leadership - when he actually had the gall to demand compliance from the Palestinians - terror actually dropped. It picked up when his successor, Barak tried to make peace. Hmm. Is there a correlation?

Let’s go the last paragraph. Minister Dichter estimates that Israel has killed 5% of 20000 terrorists in Gaza. So how does the editorial respond.

It wasn’t clear how much killing he thought would suffice.

What shortsightedness! My guess is that if 95% of Gaza’s terrorists survive, then there aren’t nearly enough of them are scared of Israel yet. Need Dichter spell out an estimate? Or maybe we ought to just let Israel continue fighting Hamas as it needs to. Killing the significant leaders of the organization might also have a positive effect on terror as we’ve seen in the past when Israel killed Sheikh Yassin and Dr. Rantisi as Elder of Ziyon observed.

I could go on, but the whole editorial is based on assumptions that have been disproved time and again. Israel must kill those who seek to destroy it. It’s not a matter of bloodthirstiness, but of necessity.

Then there’s a column by Markus Bouillon and Michael Shtender-Auerbach that argues Push for Peace Now, Before Bush and Abbas Step Down

Like no other Palestinian leader, Abbas has been committed to peaceful coexistence with Israel and a negotiated, nonviolent end of the Israeli occupation. Reaching back to the 1980s, he was the first and most important proponent of negotiating with Israel. He was a key protagonist during the Oslo years, and in 1995 presented the first-ever draft of an Israeli-Palestinian final status accord with Yossi Beilin.Abbas also spearheaded attempts to reform the Palestinian Authority as its first prime minister, but was pushed out of office by the self-serving Yasser Arafat. Still, when Arafat passed away, it was Abbas who inherited the mantle of the unifying Palestinian leader. There are simply no alternatives to him.

Even if Abbas was convinced to run again, in the absence of a true peace process or signaled agreement, he would most likely lose. Worse still, as of now it is entirely unclear who might succeed him.

Even assuming that this columns portrayal of Abbas as a moderate is correct, what does it say when even now, 14+ years since Oslo, he’s the only Palestinian of political importance who is dedicated to coexistence with Israel. Clearly, he hasn’t built a constituency for these views. If there’s no one who could carry the mantle of coexistence in negotiations, there is also no one could do it maintain peace once Israeli concessions were agreed to and implemented. Even if Israel could come to an agreement with Abbas as head of the truncated PA, whose left to carry on those peaceful policies. When you’re only choice with the necessary “street credibility and popular appeal” is a man convicted of multiple counts of murder, you realize that the problem isn’t the failure to make peace but the absence of anyone to make peace with.

The Forward ought to be a bulwark against such dangerous nonsense, instead it promotes it.

In a different (but parallel) context, Asaf Romirowsky writes:

A disturbing variable in the equation, which complicates the situation further, is the unwillingness of many American Jews to take a strong stand on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In particular, rabbis and Jewish educators — no matter where they stand on the political spectrum — often behave in an apologetic manner when it comes to Israel, rather than make assertive arguments from a Zionist point of view.This unwillingness to confront the pro-Palestinian propaganda being nurtured by Middle Eastern-studies departments is one of the major sources of confusion among Jewish students. For example, so long as liberal American Jews fail to speak up about the issue of post-1948 Jewish refugees from Arab lands, and instead, merely allow the discussion to center on a Palestinian “right of return,” Jewish students will be on the defensive.

If pro-Israel advocates on campus are discussing the Jewish state only in terms of “Israeli oppression,” rather than in debunking such notions, the result is always going to favor the anti-Israel forces. That is why college campuses today have become podiums for those who denigrate Israel, as is apparent from the different human rights, anti-globalization and anti-imperialism groups that have adopted the Palestinian cause.

Here we have a Jewish newspaper, that instead of fighting the propaganda undermining Israel’s right to defend itself (and to exist) contributes to the cause of its enemies in the name of phony humanitarianism.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

The AP reads my blog. They’re getting closer and closer to admitting that the rocket barrage of Sderot actually causes problems for the residents.

Gaza militants, led by Hamas, fired dozens of rockets and mortars at Israeli towns, causing no serious injuries but further traumatizing residents who have been putting up with daily barrages for many months. One rocket slammed into the side of a house, slightly injuring two people, police said.

And gee, in the seventh paragraph. The Israeli casualty count is moving up in the world of AP editors. However, let’s check out the last three grafs of the story—the ones most likely to be cut:

Israel’s vaunted military has been baffled by the low-tech, homemade rockets with a range of only a few miles that have been plaguing Israel’s south for years. Airstrikes and pinpoint ground operations have killed hundreds of Gaza militants, and full-blown invasions have caused widespread casualties and damage - but none of the measures has stopped the rocket fire for long.

All hail the conquering terrorists, eh? The sneer is practically dripping off the writer’s pen in that paragraph. Wow. Talk about your unbiased news sources, huh?

Shyeah.

Israel is working on an elaborate system to shoot down the rockets, but it would not be deployed until 2012.

Militants have launched some 4,000 rockets and mortar rounds at southern Israel since Israel evacuated Gaza in the summer of 2005 after a 38-year occupation. The rockets have killed 12 people since 2001. Recently militants have been extending their reach as well, with one Iranian-made rocket flying 10 miles and hitting an Israeli city.

It’s astonishing how the AP can constantly blame Israel even when not blaming Israel. Israel is no longer in Gaza, but the implication is that rockets are being launched because of the former occupation of Gaza. Yep. My buddy Ibrahim Barzak–he never fails to impress.

Ehud Barak has ordered the complete closure of the Gaza crossings—at least, the ones controlled by Israel. I’m quite sure that Egypt will do whatever it wants.

At present time only authorized personnel and goods are allowed through the crossings, but Barak’s instructions call for all movement in or out of Gaza to be halted. Only humanitarian cases will be allowed special consideration. Israel’s supply of fuel and electricity to Gaza will also be cut back under the defense minister’s orders. The measures approved by Barak will, for now, only be in effect for several days and are intended to increase pressure on terror groups and sever connections between Israel and Gaza as much as possible.

More than 130 rockets have landed in Southern Israel in the last three days, and more are promised by the democratically-elected government of the Palestinians.

Meanwhile Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, declared a series of responsive measures will be taken against Israel, including massive rocket barrages and numerous terror attacks – this in response to the IDF’s operations in Gaza over the past several days.

Best of all, in the midst of these terrorist attacks, with Mahmoud Abbas calling the IDF’s killing of terrorists a “massacre,” the world is promising the Palestinians even more money than they’d offered before. Yeah, keep sending those messages. I’m sure the Pals will stop killing Jews because every time they do, the world gives them more money. Yep. What an incentive for peace.