The case for a secular new Jerusalem, by Offra Yeshua-Lyth.  Hebrew edition, Nymrod Publishing House, Tel Aviv, Israel,  English edition, CreateSpace Independent Publishing, N. Charleston, South Carolina.

Allan Brownfeld Global News Centre

(WASHINGTON DC)  Although Israel refers to itself as a “democracy,” and in many ways it is, that term does not mean that there is genuine religious freedom.  There is no separation of church and state.  Instead, Israel is a theocracy, with an established religion, which is Orthodox Judaism.  Reform and Conservative rabbis have no right to conduct weddings, funerals, or conversions.  According to Hiddush, an Israeli non-government organization (NGO) working toward religious pluralism.  Israel is among 45 nations with “severe restrictions” on marriage.  Most of the others are governed by Islamic law.

Eeta Prince-Gibson, the former editor of THE JERUSALEM REPORT, notes that, “This places the Jewish state in the dubious company of nations such as Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.  The chief rabbinate, which falls under the jurisdiction of Israel’s Ministry of Religious Services, maintains and supervises a massive religious government bureaucracy made up of a network of rabbinic courts consisting of regional, municipal, community and neighborhood rabbis.  In addition to marriage and divorce, the rabbinate is responsible for all ‘personal status’ issues, such as conversion, which is closely related to marriage; burial; kashrut certification; supervision of ritual baths and other religious services.”

The Israeli government, Prince-Gibson points out, enforces a variety of religious laws, such as one in Deuteronomy which holds that if a childless woman is widowed, and has a brother-in-law who is single, she is compelled to marry him:  “It stipulates that the late husband’s unmarried brother must marry the widow in order to produce a child who will carry on the name of the deceased.  If the brother doesn’t want to marry his sister-in-law, he must stand before the elders of the community, which in modern Israel means the rabbinate, and announce, ‘I will not marry her.’  The woman must then perform a ceremony called halitzah by taking off her brother-in-law’s shoe, spitting in front of his face, and loudly declaring, ‘So shall be done to a man who refuses to build up his brother’s house.'”

RABBINIC COURTS

In 1953, the Knesset passed legislation that placed all matters of marriage and divorce for Jews in Israel under the jurisdiction of these rabbinic courts.  Religious leaders became civil servants.  Religious court verdicts, like civil ones, are implemented and enforced by the police, bailiff’s office, and other law enforcement agencies.

In an eloquent book, part memoir, part plea for an Israeli society with genuine religious freedom and pluralism, Ofra Yeshua-Lyth tells her own story and that of contemporary Israel.  She is a veteran Israeli journalist and author and served as a foreign correspondent in Washington, D.C. and Germany for the Israeli daily newspaper MAARIV. Later, she founded a media consulting firm.

In the Introduction, Aharon Amir, a leading Israeli poet and editor, noted that, “Israel is one of the few countries that has yet to make a distinction between religion and the codex of civil litigation.  Internal conflicts—communal, ethnic and social—are a result of this failure, which also lies at the heart of the regional conflict.  Ofra Yeshua readily understands that ‘only blindness or serious fatigue can explain’ why non religious Israelis ‘almost totally refrain from confronting the rigidity and sanctimoniousness with which Judaism defines their national identity.’  She clearly sees that ‘Left and Right are united in their aspiration to fight for any price to maintain a Jewish majority in the State of Israel,’ and the only difference between them is that the ‘enlightened Left’ want to achieve this goal by evicting Jews from parts of the country where non-Jews live, while ‘the Right’ expect to achieve it by evicting non-Jews from those parts of the country ‘coveted by the Jews.'”

IMAGE OF ISRAEL WAS WISHFUL THINKING

The author recalls that, “I had to drop the fantasy of becoming a ballerina at a relatively early age, having realized that I was not properly designed to dance for my living.  It took much longer to realize that the image I had of the wonderful, earnestly hardworking Jewish state I grew up in was also a product of wishful thinking and grand desires, based on faulty architecture.  In the 1950s and 1960s, thoroughly dipped in innocence and devotion, nobody had any reason to worry that by its definition of being the Only Jewish State in the world, the State of Israel was doomed to be serving aims that have little or nothing to do with the welfare of most of its inhabitants.  We had a rich national folklore, we had venerable traditions;  it was not to be expected that a few anachronisms in this tradition would so soon be leading to a dead end.”

In Yeshua-Lyth’s view, the many hardworking immigrants who arrived in the Middle East from Eastern Europe about a hundred years ago had an opportunity to start the kind of liberal democracy  they seemed to be pining for.  “Instead,” she writes, “they stuck to a Messianic vision intended to redeem only people with a supposedly similar blood group.  Religious identity had always been the only common denominator for the so-called Jewish self-determination.  It was therefore a religious code, lacking any functional relevance to most of the state founders and to the majority of the population at the time that became the single valid ingredient determining ‘Israeli nationality.’  No wonder it soon became the dominant element in Israel’s political structure….the combination of separatist religious ideology and a vigorously built military ability created a political reality dominated by unacceptable principles.  The builders of the supposed ‘New Society’ allowed themselves to be swept far into the gloomy regions of their forefathers’ past, chained into the patterns from which Zionism was supposed to have set them free.”

Orthodox Judaism is not merely a monopoly for the business of religion in Israel, but is also the exclusive ingredient in the definition of the national identity and state entity.  “Orthodox Judaism,” the author points out, “is perfectly programmed for the mission of preserving a religious minority that lacks a sovereign territory.  It is a paradigm totally inadequate for—and until recently, totally disinterested in—running a state apparatus…The revolving doors of traditional Jewish society cannot stop its sons and daughters from turning their backs on it, but they effectively block anybody from entering.  The Jewish state fully adopted the principles of the Jewish religion.  As a result, Israel turned into a political entity devoid of any ability to sustain internal partnerships.  It would not accept non-Jews as equals.  As a side effect, it alienates Jews who object to blatant discrimination.  The state is, therefore, a handicapped entity, acting in a self-destructive manner.  The citizens belonging to the caste identified with the state’s religion live in constant anxiety of becoming outnumbered.  Their attitude to the others who live with them and around them is shaped accordingly.”

RELIGION AND STATE POWER

Once religion and state power become intrinsically connected, the hope for a society welcoming and embracing diversity becomes increasingly difficult to achieve.  “Judaism is neither meaner nor more fanatical than any other religion,” argues the author.  “But all religions are faulty in one way or another once they are allowed to possess real political power over a community…Although rooted in the small towns of Eastern Europe, veteran Israelis—otherwise known as Ashkenazi Jews—are convinced it (Israel) is based on the highly prestigious ‘Western liberal’ model.  And while the Arabs of the land are stigmatized for their ‘Islamic, non-liberal culture,’ Jews of Arab origins have always been considered to be affiliated with this undesirable population…The indigenous inhabitants of the New Country and their offspring have been expected, from day one of the Zionist settlement, to accept the status of second-class citizens that was accorded to them by the newcomers.  This is the attitude that culminated with the declaration of a Jewish state in 1948, when hundreds of thousands eventually lost their houses and became permanent refugees.”

It is not only Palestinian Christians and Muslims who have been treated as less than equal citizens.  Jews from Arab countries have faced widespread discrimination at the hands of Jews whose origins were in Europe.  Ofra Yeshua-Lyth’s father was an immigrant from Yemen and her family felt less than equal in Israel as she was growing up.  She notes that, “The Arab Jews landed in the new country with a mother tongue and cultural traditions that were embarrassingly similar to those of the native Arabs who had just been kicked out.  They were met with a double message that would characterize their life here for the past decades:  they were welcome by the veteran immigrants from Eastern Europe, as members of the specially privileged Jewish nationality, and therefore superior to the local Arabs. At the same time, they were openly despised as culturally inferior, patronizingly defined ‘The Second Israel,’ chastised for their blatant Arab manners, and thrust into the deep end of poverty, humility and ignorance of the new Israeli society.”

While Zionism has generally been considered part of Western civilization, it is, in fact, a religious entity, although some of its founders did not anticipate the direction it would take.  Yeshua-Lyth makes the case that, “The thin democratic veneer that is used to disguise the uncompromising nature of this religious state of ours is much cracked already.  While the so-called civilized world regularly panics over the belligerence of violent, religious fanatics, it has for years failed to pay attention to the growing religious fanaticism that characterizes this supposed ‘spearhead of Western civilization,’ as Israel’s lovers would have it described…Israel is one of two states that were started during the 20th century with an official intention to create an ethnic-religious homogeneous political entity.  The other state is Pakistan, which is also still struggling under this legacy.  Nothing but a full separation of church and state might put an end to the present messianic frenzy that carries the ‘Jewish state’ into ever more dangerous abysses…Taking religion out of politics would mean the removal of the mechanism that allows the state to rob over a fifth of the citizens—and all the inhabitants of the occupied territories—of their equal, legal civil liberties.  It is a move essential for the abolition of the special privileges granted to one favored religious (though it insists on calling itself ‘national’) group.”

HERZL’S ORIGINAL VISION

In Theodor Herzl’s original formulation of Zionism, the Jewish state he envisioned would have equal rights for all of its citizens, regardless of their faith.  And in his imagined state, the rabbis would have no political power whatever.  The State of Israel which has emerged is quite different from what Herzl thought he was in the process of creating.  It was Herzl’s vision that Jews and the indigenous Arab population would live peacefully together in a well-integrated society.

Instead, writes Yeshua-Lyth, “In Israel today one would not find a single affluent, well-educated Arab who had integrated well into the local Jewish elite.  The reasons for this have nothing to do with Herzl’s colonialist vision and everything to do with serious deviations from its original layout.  Reading ‘Altneuland’ today, one is struck by the adequacy of its economic and technological predictions, compared to the seeming irrelevance of its social and political vision…Herzl spoke out unequivocally against any religious meddling in the affairs of the state, and he warned against tampering with his design.  He clearly foresaw the risk that certain Zionist leaders might be attracted to a national religious ideology that he was not prepared to tolerate.  But he could not guess that this, eventually, would become the winning ideology in the Jewish state.”

Herzl had no intention of letting the rules of the ghetto be involved in the actual running of his future Jewish state.  He wrote:  “We shall keep our priests within the confines of their temples in the same way as we shall keep our professional army within the confines of their barracks.  Army and priesthood shall receive honors as high as their valuable functions deserve.  But they must not interfere in the administration of the State which confers distinctions upon them, also they will conjure up difficulties without and within…And if it should occur that men of other creeds and different nationalities come to live amongst us, we should accord them honorable protection and equality before the law.”

HERZL’S  VALUES ARE REJECTED

While Herzl is hailed in contemporary Israel, his vision has been rejected by those who have been in control of the State of Israel since its creation in 1948.  In this regard, the author writes:  “No priests interfering in the administration of the state?  No professional soldiers allowed out of the barracks?  No wonder that ‘men of other creeds and different nationalities’ are unable to be accorded ‘honorable protection and equality before the law.’  Religion and the military are the predominant forces of Israeli politics and society.  Together they devour the lion’s share of the country’s resources…It would have been inconceivable to Herzl that rabbis should have sovereign status in the bureaucracy of the state, and that an enormous religious-political establishment should openly and successfully oppose the very idea that non-Jews might become citizens with equal rights.”

While Israel continues to congratulate itself on being the “only democracy in the Middle East,” Yeshua-Lyth reports that, “…when the principles of democracy clash with Jewish edicts, as interpreted by the Orthodox school of Judaism, democracy inevitably gives way.  Above it all hovers the specter of the ‘Demographic Problem’ that paralyzes the good judgment of secular Israeli liberals…Cultivating cultures and religions is one thing, but enforcing the special whims of these cultures and religions on others with the heavy hand and the armed forces of statehood…is something else altogether,  As soon as religion is, once and for all, banned from the realms of the economy and the legal system of the State of Israel, once religious considerations no longer dictate building regulations, food regulations, taxation, budgeting, leisure patterns, and funeral arrangements, it will be possible to turn the Holy Land into the flourishing haven it was meant to be….A hundred years ago, Theodor Herzl’s plan seemed just as unlikely, but this did not deter him.  The bottom line of his book is the golden rule of every successful entrepreneur, ‘If you really want it, it is no fairy tale.'”

Traditionally, Orthodox Jews opposed Zionism and the concept of a sovereign Jewish state.  Some still do.  While in the U.S. as a correspondent for the Israeli newspaper MAARIV, Ofra-Lyth visited the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Monsey, New York, where she interviewed and spent time with Rabbi Abraham Weinfeld.  He was very critical of the Israeli National Religious Party (NRP)  and its declaration that “Jewish national unity counts more than religious teaching.” She recalls that he was, “passionate and entertaining” and “made no secret of the fact that as far as he was concerned, there was little affinity between people like myself—a secular Jewish woman—-and his own flock.”

TORAH LIVED BEFORE THE STATE

Rabbi Weinfeld declared:  “The Torah lived in our people before the state was established.  we do not need you (the nonbelievers) to take care of it.  Do us no more favors.  We wish to have no more crumbs from under your table.  We do not want any compromises and humiliation.  The time has come to break up this unnatural partnership between Orthodox Jewry and the institutions of the Zionist state.”

He scornfully rejected the common pious warning, often used by those of the NRP, that the country risks a “rift” in the Jewish people in Israel, if civil procedures for marriage and divorce ever should be allowed.  Truly religious Jews, he said, have no business worrying about how secular Jews marry and divorce.  He expressed support for civil marriage for those Israelis who do not wish an Orthodox wedding.  He noted that anyone who does not adhere to the Torah is considered unacceptable to the Orthodox community in any case.

At the time of the interview with Rabbi Weinfeld, the new legislation on the agenda in Israel was the so-called “Pig Law,” aimed at forbidding the sale or consumption of pork in any Jewish-populated area.  “He understands perfectly why people like most readers of the newspaper I was writing for were angry at the very idea that the law should have a position on what we are allowed to eat, and when,” writes the author.  “He considered it a complete waste of time.  Eating pork or not did not make the slightest difference to the fact that we were already outside what he considered the proper Jewish community..’The sad reality is that you are no longer children and we have no authority over you,’ he said.  ‘We cannot enforce things upon you.  One cannot use state law to interfere in the private affairs of people, other than in extreme cases of violence and crime.  We cannot send a policeman to arrest every person who lights a cigarette on the Sabbath.'”

NATIONALISTIC MANIPULATION

Those who are educated in Orthodox religious schools, a growing number in today’s Israel, have not, Yeshua-Lyth notes, been educated to have an interest in democracy, human rights and civil liberties.  These schools, she laments, “…are a fertile ground for nationalistic manipulators of the worst possible kind, the likes of ‘Rabbi’ Meir Kahane supporters and groups worshipping the ‘martyrdom’ of mass murderer Baruch Goldstein.”  In promoting this agenda, many in Israel are reverting to a kind of religious extremism mainstream Judaism has rejected.

She cites William Winwood Reade’s 1872 book, “The Martyrdom of Man,” which surveyed the rise and demise of the West’s major religions.  In the chapter dedicated to Judaism, Reade expressed admiration for Diaspora Jews following the destruction of the Second Temple.  He considered them a uniquely important intellectual elite who had contributed greatly to the cultural progress of both the Middle East and Europe.  He compared them to the provincial religious extremists of Judea who did not go into exile.

Reade wrote:  “Those Jews of Judea, those Hebrews of the Hebrews, regarded all the Gentiles as enemies of God:  they considered it a sin to live abroad, or to speak a foreign language, or to rub their limbs with foreign oil.  Of all the trees, The Lord had chosen but one vine;  and of all the flowers, but one lily;  and of all the birds, but one dove, and of all the cattle, but one lamb; and of all the builded cities, only Sion;  and of all the multitude of people, he had elected the Jews as a peculiar treasure, and had made them a nation of priests and holy men.  For their sake God had made the world.  On their account alone empires rose and fell.  Babylon had triumphed because God was angry with her people;  Babylon had fallen because he had forgiven them.  It may be imagined that it was not easy to govern such a race.   They acknowledged no king but Jehovah, no laws but the precepts of their holy books…It is only in severity that the Jews can be admired.”

THE CHOSEN PEOPLE

The author remembers that, “Expressions like ‘the Chosen People’ or ‘Thou hast us Chosen’ were used sneeringly when I was young, merely to express some dismay about the less appealing aspects of contemporary society.  These days it is no longer amusing. Too many Israeli Jews sincerely believe that boons and privileges have been designated for them personally by the good Lord, who had marked us as his special favorites.  The dominant versions of present-day Jewish Orthodoxy have very little in common with the Spanish Golden Age poets and philosophers who considered their Jewish faith a spearhead of progress and morality for all mankind…The Halacha’s rituals keep religious Jews busy most of their waking hours.  To outsiders, the multitude of rules and regulations in Judaism seems tiresome and bizarre.  But a simple analysis indicates that almost every one of the commands of our religion is cleverly conceived to achieve two chief strategic goals:  the preservation of the community in isolation from its non-Jewish environment, and the preservation of community control in the hands of the elders.”

Despite the fact that the majority of Israelis do not consider themselves Orthodox and secular political movements have emerged calling for an end to the domination of civic life by state-employed Orthodox rabbis, this has not changed the fact that, as the author explains, “Our country is the only so-called Western-style place where one may not become legally married without religious certification.  Interdenominational marriages are therefore impossible.  Nonreligious Israeli Jews have long given up complaining about this infringement of their personal freedom…Cyprus and Tuscany are the most popular destinations for the growing number—some say 20 per cent—of Jewish Israeli couples (and obviously all mixed couples) wishing to or having to be legally wed without a rabbi officiating.”

For thousands of Israelis, marriage abroad is the only way to institutionalize their relations, due to a variety of state-enforced religious taboos.  “For a start,” Yeshua-Lyth points out, “Non-Jews may not marry a Jew.  A Jewish man may not marry a divorcee or a convert if his name is Cohen or Kaplan, or any other derivative of the tribal name of Jewish priests.  Nobody is to be married if his or her father is not the man his or her mother had been legally married to at the time of…conception…The marital laws of the State of Israel make a maze of unintelligible instructions that might be mildly amusing if not for the hassle and real pain they inflict on so many innocent people.”

ZIONISM AS A COLONIAL MOVEMENT

While many have referred to Zionism as a colonial movement, Yeshua-Lyth identifies an important distinction between the colonialism practiced by imperial powers such as Britain and France, and that embraced by Theodor Herzl and his followers:  “Zionism was making its first moves in the era when colonialism was considered an act of progress, which is why it was such a source of inspiration for Theodor Herzl.  The father of modern Zionism was convinced that the tragedy of Eastern European Jews would be solved if these people were to reinvent themselves as enlightened colonial people.  There was only one problem:  the Jewish religion blocked any chance for colonial dynamics of the kind that might have been beneficial for the indigenous inhabitants of its new territories…Just like their parents in the small towns and in the allocated Jewish regions of Poland and Russia, the Jewish pioneers of Palestine were committed to the legacy of self-segregation.”

Traditionally, national and ethnic groups moving to new lands—-such as Greek, Roman and Muslim occupiers or European empire builders, never failed to make efficient use of their deities on the way to achieving control, and preferably cooperation, of the indigenous population.  “Priests and missionaries always came along with either armed forces or settling civilians,” writes Yeshua-Lyth, “effectively supporting the territorial takeover with the word of whatever god they had on offer.  Judaism, a religion that for hundreds of years has devoted most of its energies to fending off the ‘danger of assimilation,’ could never offer even the pretense of opening arms and ranks for newcomers.  The new, dynamic, ambitious, ethnic-national group that landed in Palestine with the Zionist message was hermetically sealed to outsiders.  It had nothing to offer the veteran inhabitants of the land or any newcomers who were not Jewish…Zionist ideology adopted the view that Jews were the ‘true natives’ of the land it settled, and managed to regard the non-Jewish natives as invaders;  with the great taboo on any social mingling, the Zionist paradox started its unholy, precarious role.”

Many outside of Israel see a major distinction between the Labor Party and Likud but Ofra-Lyth shows that in their attitude toward the Palestinians, both parties are largely in agreement.  She points to the fact that, “The socialist secular Israeli Labor Party continued to run the political scene for ten years following the Six Day War.  It did not even occur to a single Labor leader that the new, devoted laborers from Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip should be given access to the Hebrew ‘Melting Pot.’  This was not because they spoke Arabic, or because they were poor or different culturally, or too dark skinned for the ruling classes in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.  After all, this also characterized most of the Yemenites, the Moroccans, and the Iraqis in the shack camps that still decorated the cities’ fringes.  The Palestinians actually learned Hebrew very fast, many of them were well paid, and their standard of living rose accordingly, some of them had skins as fair as any Israeli Jew, and quite a few had academic qualifications or academic ambitions.  But they were not of the Jewish religion, which meant they did not belong in the Jewish Israeli nation.  There was no way that even a single one of them could make his or her way into the society that took their services for granted.”

ORTHODOX JUDAISM AND ISLAM

Ironically, in the author’s view, Orthodox Judaism and Islam have a great deal in common, particularly when it comes to the treatment of women.  “Islam, very much like Judaism, considers itself a religion of charity and mercy, but is entrenched in a staunch masculine hierarchy.  Both religions force a very strict modesty code on women, dictating dress instructions that should neutralize the sexual provocation that they are supposed to embody.  In both religions, women may not be actively involved in public prayer, or any other form of worship except within the home environment, while serving husbands and other family members.  Mosques are men-only areas, while the synagogues have special alcoves to keep women concealed.”

The immigrants from Russia have reinforced Israel’s right-wing politics.  “These newcomers,” writes the author, “have developed a political frame of mind fervently supporting the occupation and passionately hating the ‘Arabs.’  In heavy Russian accents, they recite the worn-out mantras about our ‘rights over the country’…Never mind that so many of them have nothing to do with Judaism, except sometimes having a grandmother who married a Jew many years ago and forgot about it until it was discovered to be a key to a better socio-economic future for her all-Russian or Moldavian grandchildren….At the roadblocks that make their lives miserable in the occupied territories, our Palestinian cousins often come across Russian-speaking Israeli soldiers who find it hard to follow their own fluent Hebrew…”

Yeshua-Lyth finds it difficult to “fathom Israeli liberals who are truly appalled by the spirit of their fellow nationals;  who are prepared to demonstrate, protest, and sign petitions against the land grabbing, the separation fence, the checkpoint harassments, the looting of olives, the destruction of homes…but they do it all to protect their fantasy of a would-be proper, democratic Jewish state.  It never occurs to them;  they would adamantly deny that by making our religion the law of the land, we renounce any claim to proper democracy.”

SEPARATE RELIGION FROM STATE

She tells her readers that, “Religious and cultural communities, just like bird flocks, need no state laws to preserve their unique heritages.  Jewish preservation of the last 2,000 years is the best proof…In this small area blessed by God as a meeting of three continents, some of our ancestors managed to launch useful social paradigms and produce truly sublime texts.  The whole of humanity took notice…They have little or nothing to do with the present, weird, flawed, political-religious regime…If you want to save Israel, you might as well just declare it a normal state and start to consider all people under its sovereignty as equal citizens living in one territory.  It is not such an impossible mission.  The world is full of such states and of such nations, which do not waste time and energy grading inhabitants according to what religion that their mothers were born into.”

The author concludes that, “I know for a fact that my fellow Israelis—some of them my dearest friends and beloved family—honestly believe that we ‘happen’ to live in a complicated, unstable, explosive area.  I try my best to make them see that there is nothing wrong with the area or with the neighbors, our ‘cousins’ of other denominations.  It is our own peculiar choice of differentiating people according to their mother’s religious affiliation that created most of the present mess.  How dare we criticize the Muslim Brothers for trying to change the Egyptian Constitution in favor of Sharia-when our own state never even ventured to produce a constitution, for fear it might not be compatible with the Halacha?  Would our own ‘dear brothers’ of the faith ever stand up for equal rights for their sisters?  And as for my so-called secular Israeli Jewish fellows:  why are the only Halacha laws they truly respect and follow the reshaping of baby boys’ organs and the strict bans on fraternizing with non-Jews?”

This book is an eloquent plea that Israel separate religion and state and move toward becoming a genuinely democratic society.  It comes from one who loves her country, but wants it to become the kind of society in which she can truly take pride.  #

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Allan C. Brownfeld received his B.A. degree from the College of William and Mary, his J.D. degree from the Marshall-Wythe School of Law of the College of William and Mary and his M.A. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland. He has served on the faculties of St. Stephen’s Episcopal School, Alexandria, Virginia, and the University College of the University of Maryland.

The recipient of a Wall Street Journal Foundation Award, Mr. Brownfeld has written for such newspapers as THE HOUSTON PRESS, THE RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH, THE WASHINGTON EVENING STAR and THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER. For many years he wrote three columns a week for such newspapers as THE PHOENIX GAZETTE, THE MANCHESTER UNION LEADER, and THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER. His weekly column appeared for more than a decade in ROLL CALL, the newspaper of Capitol Hill. His articles have appeared in such journals as THE YALE REVIEW, THE TEXAS QUARTERLY, THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, ORBIS and MODERN AGE.

Mr. Brownfeld served as a member of the staff of the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and was the author of that committee’s 250-page study of the New Left. He has also served as Assistant to the Research Director of the House Republican Conference and as a consultant to such members of Congress as Reps. Phil Crane (R-Il) and Jack Kemp (R-NY) and to the Vice President of the United States.

He is a former editor of THE NEW GUARD and PRIVATE PRACTICE, the journal of the Congress of County Medical Societies and has served as a Contributing Editor AMERICA’S FUTURE and HUMAN EVENTS. He served as Washington correspondent for the London-based publications, JANE’S ISLAMIC AFFAIRS ANALYST and JANE’S TERRORISM REPORT. His articles regularly appear in newspapers and magazines in England, South Africa, Sweden, the Netherlands and other countries. You can write to Allan at [email protected]