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My Israel Home
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous – and Generous
By Gedaliah Borvick
An Israeli stamp depicting Dona Gracia
My company’s Netanya maven, Ruthie Yudin, texted me from Dona Gracia Street in Netanya. Googling the street name, she was blown away by Ms. Gracia’s life and wrote: “Her story must be told!”
Although streets in Tiberias and Haifa are also named in her memory, I was surprised that Dona Gracia’s accomplishments are unfamiliar to most people, as her biography reads like a best-selling novel, replete with espionage, adventure, intrigue, and highstakes finances.
In the 16th century, Ms. Gracia, affectionately known as La Senora, was the richest Jew in the world. She viewed her financial strength as a responsibility and expended considerable funds and leveraged her vast network of powerful connections to save thousands of persecuted Jews during the Inquisition. Let’s investigate the life and times of this heroic, trailblazing woman.
Dona Gracia Mendes was born in 1510, almost two decades after her family fled Spain to Portugal in 1492. Just a few years later, it was decreed in Portugal that all Jews should be expelled or forced to convert. These converts, who continued to practice Judaism secretly, became known as “Marrano Jews.”
At the age of twelve, Dona’s parents revealed to her the family’s secret, and she began to learn Jewish customs. Six years later, she married her uncle Francisco Mendes, whose real name was Tzemach Benvenisti. He was born into an affluent family that dealt in silver, gems, and spices. In addition, the family’s Mendes Banking House was the world’s second largest bank, with branches in commerce hubs across the globe. Tzemach passed away nine years after they wed, and Dona Gracia, at the tender age of 27, was left with a huge fortune and a vast business empire.
Dona Gracia expanded the family’s trading enterprise and purchased a fleet of ships to distribute the spices. Her strategy to control the global movement of cargo was a precursor to Amazon, which came to the same realization and has acquired shipping companies and cargo planes.
Gracia’s activities were extremely unusual, as a woman living in the 16th century was only permitted to independently manage her life if she had the status of “widow.” Before marriage, a woman legally belonged to her father, and during marriage, she belonged to her husband. This brilliant woman understandably was not going to relinquish her vision and control of her empire and therefore never remarried.
During the Inquisition, a period infamous for the severity of its persecution of Jews and Muslims, Gracia was on the move for many years – residing in Portugal, London, Antwerp, Venice, Ferrara, and finally Istanbul – staying one step ahead of the authorities who wanted to confiscate her assets. Always focused on the community’s needs, Gracia operated an extensive network of agents who clandestinely aided the Marranos as they fled the Inquisition, and Bank Mendes’ global branches secretly assisted them to transfer money and not lose their assets.
In Ferrara, Gracia began to live a publicly Jewish life and devoted significant time and resources to address the needs of the Jewish world. One interesting example of her creative generosity: with the invention of the printing press, she established printing houses that published the Bible and other holy books, as a corrective to the book burning of the Christian Inquisition.
A few years later, Ms. Gracia moved to Istanbul, where the Sultan welcomed the Jews and allowed the Marranos to practice Judaism openly. She began to be called by her Hebrew name, Hana Nasi, and opened synagogues and Jewish schools and supported Jewish scholarship.
Towards the end of her life, Gracia appealed to the Sultan to lease her cities in Israel, and he consented to lease her family the city of Tiberias and several surrounding villages. She spent large sums of money to create a community, which served as a refuge for Jews who were persecuted in Spain and Portugal. Unfortunately, this project was shortlived, and the community petered out after only one generation.
Dona Gracia passed away in 1569 at the age of 59. Her life’s work underscored her courageous and inspirational devotion to Judaism, and her legendary personality epitomized triumph and hope over adversity and despair.
Gedaliah Borvick is the founder of My Israel Home (www.myisraelhome.com), a real estate agency focused on helping people from abroad buy and sell homes in Israel. To sign up for his monthly market updates, contact him at gborvick@gmail.com.
The Jewish Home | JANUARY 5, 2023 The NarraTIve BaTTle
The Real Challenges Facing the New Knesset
By Shammai SiSkiNd
In early September, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer, now the Minister of Strategic Affairs in the newly sworn in government, was interviewed on his thoughts on future of Middle East politics.
It was a month before national elections. A sixth government led by the Likud party was already looking like a foregone conclusion. Listeners wanted to know what Dermer, as well as his long-time boss Benjamin Netanyahu, envisioned for Israel.
During the conversation, Dermer related an anecdote about his time as a diplomat in the United States. After arriving in Washington in 2013, he quickly began setting up meetings with fellow ambassadors from other countries that were also residing in the capital.
His first sit-down was with the ambassador from an up-and-coming East African nation. During the exchange, Dermer was impressed by how much the ambassador knew about Israel’s economic and technological achievements. But what he found notable was the total misconception of Israel’s history and even regarding current events in the country.
As expected, the conversation eventually turned to the Arab-Israeli conflict. At one point, the ambassador said he “lamented all the death and destruction” that had been inflicted on the Palestinian people over the decades. Dermer calmly asked the African diplomat how many Palestinians he thought had been killed by Israel.
“I think around 1 million, no?” the man responded. When Dermer told him that there had been approximately 20,000 deaths on both sides combined since the beginning of Israel’s existence, the African was visibly shocked.
“I thought ‘this has to be one-off,’” said Dermer to the interviewer. There was simply no way this perception of the conflict was common. “I decided I would take a survey.” So, in all of his talks with fellow ambassadors on the subject of the conflict, Dermer would steer the conversation to this question: what is the total number of casualties since the beginning of the Israeli-Arab conflict?
In the decade since Dermer landed in Washington, these misconceptions have only intensified.
Shortly after the 37th Knesset was sworn in last week, the Palestinian Authority issued a statement urging the world to “refrain from all engagement” with the new government, a body “committed to carrying out international crimes, including annexation, political persecution and racial discrimination.” The document further pushed the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes by Israel, referring to claims pushed by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that Israel has committed “50 holocausts” against Palestinians. Sadly, these types of claims aren’t always dismissed as the unhinged rantings that they are.
It’s striking to consider the wide array of outlandish accusations that have been leveled at the Jewish people over the centuries. But what’s even more striking is that each recurring generation lacks all self-awareness when reflecting on the smallmindedness of the last. Ron Dermer’s enlightened colleagues would never entertain the belief that Jews have horns or that they poisoned the wells of Medieval Europe. That would be bigoted. But the notion that they slaughter hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in a matter akin to Nazi genocide is today, in 2023, completely acceptable.
The Uphill Narrative Battle
Dermer’s story is actually quite useful for understanding the challenges facing the new government of Israel.
As the imminent American policy analyst Joseph Overton noted some thirty years ago, politics is very much determined by what is perceived as the range of acceptable options. What’s equally as important, noted Overton, is that tactics can be deployed by political actors to shift what’s in that spectrum of acceptability – and what isn’t.
Over the past several years, many important understandings about how Israel should be run internally and relate to the international community have emerged and developed. Some of these developments have clearly been for the better. The Abraham Accords, for example, orchestrated by Netanyahu’s last
The Jewish Home | JANUARY 5, 2023 government in tandem with the Trump administration shattered the mistaken idea that Israel could not make any progress reconciling with its neighbors until the Palestinian issue had been completely resolved. Demonstrating that this understanding was wrong and introducing a new peace paradigm for the Middle East was a very positive thing.
But other shifts in Israel’s Overton Window have not been as good.
Each major ministry in the 37th Knesset has their own false narrative to combat. The challenges they’ll face won’t be limited to practical solutions. There will also be a fight against deeply entrenched perceptions, ones that have taken root both at home and abroad.
Law and Order
The first issue on the list is the problem of Israel’s internal security.
The narrative that has developed around this issue is that the right-wing government is grossly exaggerating the law-and-order problem and using it as a tool to further their extreme agenda. It’s unfortunate to see this idea even being peddled by Israeli media outlets. Of course, the factor most supporting this story is the newly appointed Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir.
Ben Gvir has made his political career exposing issues in Israel’s internal security, always making a lot of noise but never managing to gain enough of a base. A few years ago, the man couldn’t even manage to garner sufficient votes to enter the Knesset. Today, he is a major political figure, his party has six parliamentary seats, and he heads one of the most important ministries in the country.
Ben Gvir’s caustic personality and his history as a Rabbi Meir Kahana loyalist make it easy to present the picture of a right-wing government using security as an excuse for extremist policies.
However, the actual facts speak for themselves.
Over the past year, Israel has experienced a major spike in both crime and terrorist violence. Thanks to the incredible devotion of the army and police, most parts of the country, especially in urban areas, have experienced relative quiet. But the rise in violence has been real. Regarding terror emanating from Judea and Samaria, an end-of-the-year IDF report stated that 2022 saw 7,589 rock throwing incidents – up from 5,532 in 2021, 4,002 in 2020, and 3,805 in 2019.
There was also a substantial rise in 1,268 Molotov cocktail incidents, up 26% from 1,022 in 2021, 751 in 2020, and 839 in 2019. Most troubling were the 285 shooting incidents, almost five times the 61 incidents last year and nine times the 31 that took place in 2020.
In tandem with the rise in terror, another internal security issue has been the marked rise in crime, especially in the southern regions. This has been fueled by the slow but steady movement of illegal weapons to criminal organizations. According to one Bedouin activist group, currently working with the government to address the spike in crime, there are today some 70,000 contraband firearms being held by criminals in the Negev today.
The reason Ben Gvir received the electoral mandate that he did is that Israel, in fact, has a serious internal security problem, plain and simple. Ben Gvir seems more than willing to act – the real challenge will be communicating the effectiveness of his policies to both Israeli citizens and the world.
The Face of Foreign Policy
When it comes to the Palestinian issue, Israel’s foreign policy stance has largely been one of appeasement. By this I mean relating to the Palestinian side as an equal and reasonable partner with whom real progress is feasible.
This conception has no basis in reality.
Perhaps the biggest strategic error ever made by Israel was allowing the Palestinian Authority to be created. At the time, during the height of the Oslo Accords process, it could have seemed like a good idea – “let’s outsource the Palestinian problem to their own, and let them deal with their issues.” However, the decision to normalize the Palestine Liberation Organization, until that point a recognized terror group, in the form of the PA created a monster, one that Israel is still dealing with today.
On this point you do not have to take the word of any Israeli. Just go straight to the PA’s constituents. According to a poll taken less than a month ago by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, more than 80% of Palestinians consider the PA a corrupt institution. This is due to unabashed
Members of the 37th Knesset bribery that takes place throughout its agencies, a near total incompetence in all matters of administration, and decades of brutal crackdowns by a security apparatus that couldn’t care less for the wellbeing of its citizens. Mere months ago, in September, the entire world witnessed the horror show in Nablus (Shechem) after the PA made an arrest of a popular Hamas figure. The city quickly became an all-out war zone, not because of clashes between IDF troops and Palestinians, but from the PA battling its own people. The new foreign minister is seeking to invert the narrative that has for long been a common understanding and instead shine light on the depravity of the Palestinian leadership. In one of his first remarks as FM, Likud member Eli Cohen stated that the International Criminal Court in The Hague should try members of the PA for their an end-of-the-year IDF report stated involvement in terrorism. “It is the Palestinian leadership which should be on trial, not Israel,” he asserted. Cohen’s call for prosecuting the PA was clearly a that 2022 saw 7,589 rock throwing brash statement, meant to push back on similar calls by the PA that Israeli leaders should be tried as war criminals. But the point that was made was clear: the incidents – up from 5,532 in 2021, apologetics by Israel vis-a-vis the Palestinian leadership must end. Any international conversation must focus on the PA as an enabler of (and profiter from) the 4,002 in 2020, and 3,805 in 2019. never-ending stream of violence targeting Israelis, as well as their fundamental corruption as a governing body.
Power of the Courts
This was one of the parting messages of former Prime Minister Yair Lapid before the formation of the current Knesset. It summarizes quite well a widely held belief that the Israeli Right seeks to completely undermine the judicial branch of Israel’s government.
The reality, however, is – to put it lightly – a bit more nuanced.
In Israel today, the judiciary has an enormous degree of power over the laws and policies elected officials seek to implement. The issues cited by reform advocates are, by any objective measure, quite serious. In Israel, Supreme Court Justices have veto power over who gets appointed to the Court, meaning elected officials do not have full control. There is no such thing as limitations of standing with regards to Supreme Court petitions, meaning anyone, regardless of their connection with the case, or even if they were affected at all by the case in question, can submit a case for review. An extreme example of this took place recently when a case was submitted to the court challenging Israel’s immigration laws by the ambassador of Ukraine. In how many countries can a foreign official petition the highest court in the land?
Similarly, the concept of justiciability, namely, that there are topics outside of the court’s purview, does not exist. This gives the Court de facto authority over all governmental issues, even those clearly within the domain of specific agencies – say, for example, issues of war and security. As renowned former Justice Ahron Barak once declared, “Everything is justiciable by this court.”
Most notable of all is the power of the Court in striking down laws. Typically, the power of a high court and voted-in legislation falls into one of two categories: either the country has a recognized constitution which binds the court’s decisions, or, as is the case in commonwealth countries, the court gives recommendations on laws passed but does not outright disqualify them. This is not the case in Israel, which does not have a constitution per se, and yet the Supreme Court can (and has on multiple occasions) invalidated laws passed by a Knesset majority.
Now, these things are admittedly complicated. The balance of powers and branches within a functional government is a topic that requires prudent assessment. But considering the above issues, all of which are very serious, is it fair to classify anyone who wants to address them as an outright enemy of democracy?
At the end of the day, the most important initiatives of the new government are not all that revolutionary. They are simply addressing the objective realities of Israel’s challenges head on, as they are. But this won’t make their jobs any easier. To succeed, the new Knesset will have to overcome years of deeply rooted misconceptions about Israel, produced by a narrative machine that is still working overtime.
Ministers Yoav Gallant, Aryeh Deri, Benjamin Netanyahu, Yariv Levin and Eli Cohen
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