Denigrating the rights of half the Jewish population of Israel - Part 2

"The overwhelming majority of Jews arriving in Israel and the West from Arab countries were refugees forced from their homes. The 1948 war, started by their own side, caused a Palestinian exodus. What these two groups of refugees have in common is that roughly equivalent numbers exchanged places in the Middle East."

Lyn Julius..
thedailybeast.com..
14 Augst '12..




Lyn Julius Responds to Lara Friedman

In her rebuttal to my response, Lara Friedman makes various accusations against me. I do not want to bore Open Zion readers with a sterile debate about semantics—rather, allow me to re-state certain incontrovertible truths.

The overwhelming majority of Jews arriving in Israel and the West from Arab countries were refugees forced from their homes. The 1948 war, started by their own side, caused a Palestinian exodus. What these two groups of refugees have in common is that roughly equivalent numbers exchanged places in the Middle East. This irreversible exchange, a not unusual feature of 20th century conflicts, opens a political window of opportunity for settling the Arab-Israeli dispute.

The Jewish refugees differ from the Palestinians in two ways: The Jews were non-combatants hundreds of miles from the theatre of battle, scapegoated only for being Jews. They were victims of mass ethnic cleansing: only 4,000 Jews remain in the Arab world out of a million.

Once displaced persons are granted full civil rights in their new countries, they cease to be refugees. No one should ever remain a refugee—except Palestinians, whose refugee status, with the UN’s blessing and connivance, is preserved in perpetuity. (Where are the protests condemning the non-resettlement of Palestinian refugees as an abuse of their human rights? The silence is deafening.)

Becoming a citizen of a new country, however, does not detract from a refugee’s right to obtain redress for past wrongs. Outstanding claims must be dealt as a matter of justice: this is what the US congress bill and other initiatives are all about. Human rights law, developed in the 1980s, emphasises the right to recognition, memory and redress, no matter how much time has elapsed since the injustice was committed.

Denigrating the rights of half the Jewish population of Israel

Denigrating Jewish Refugees..

Lyn Julius..
thedailybeast.com..
09 August '12..
h/t Bataween..

For Lara Friedman, a lobbyist for Americans for Peace Now, the sun was not shining last week. Jews from Arab countries are being cynically exploited, she claimed on Open Zion, by a two-pronged drive that seeks to abolish the hereditary status of Palestinian refugees, while pushing for the rights of Jews from Arab Countries. A Congressional Bill, coupled with an Israeli diplomatic initiative, will, she fears, pit the refugees against each other.

Jewish refugees from Arab countries do indeed outnumber Palestinian refugees– by 850,000 to 750,000. According to economist Sidney Zabludoff, Jews lost 50 percent more in assets. Two sets of refugees were created after 1948—one by violence and persecution, the other by war. Jewish refugees were absorbed in Israel and the West; the Palestinians were left to fester in camps.

But the new initiatives do not, as Friedman alleges, set new terms for the peace agenda: they mean to correct a historic distortion.

Friedman’s main argument echoes the radical Marxist professor Yehuda Shenhav: after conceding that Jews from Arab countries have legitimate rights, she proceeds to question if Jews were ‘refugees’ at all—a ‘degrading’ term. Although Yisrael Yeshayahu and Shlomo Hillel, who arrived before Israel was born, are on record as saying they came as Zionists, they are exceptional. Jews fled because certain push factors made life hell after 1948—murderous riot, anti-Jewish incitement, arrests, executions.

For ethnocentric reasons, Israel discouraged the Jews from seeing themselves as refugees, but as immigrants returning to their ancestral homeland. Bizarrely, Friedman seems to believe that unless Jews want to return to their countries of birth, they cannot be real refugees: “They are either refugees, or they are new immigrants—they can’t be both.”

I say they can be both. Were they dispossessed, their ancient, pre-Islamic communities destroyed, their families dismembered—of their own free will? Did Jews choose to spend up to 13 years in tents or huts (ma’abarot) with inadequate sanitation and food?

A grand newspaper or a political rag sheet?

Yisrael Medad
Green-Lined/JPost
11 July '10

I cannot even begin to grasp the embarrassment and shame some half-dozen New York Times reporters feel in the wake of their atrocious labor of disdain and professional sloppiness directed against the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Entitled "Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank", its authors (Jim Rutenberg, a former a correspondent in the paper's Washington bureau; Mike McIntire, an adjunct Assistant Professor at NYU and one of a group which merited a Pulitzer Prize in 1999; Ethan Bronner, New York Times Israel Bureau head, also a Pulitzer Prize winner who began his journalism career at Reuters 30 years ago, Isabel Kershner, currently New York Times Israel correspondent and formerly of The Jerusalem Report and Myra Noveck who, as it happens, is married to extreme left-winger and ideological opponent of Jewish residency beyond the Green Line, Gershom Gorenberg) purvey rumors, insinuate, hint, contradict themselves in self-correction, claim and then withdraw the accusation and generally botch a fairly simple topic. As Dr. Alex Safian of CAMERA writes, the story has "no news, no scoops, no revelations, few facts and plenty of errors and omissions."

The many critical of the story are probably snarling at the piece's blatant "proactive" negative attitude in relation to the article's focus subject, but the authors have been criticized before on topics unrelated to Israel. For example, Rutenberg had a run-in with Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, who mulled after his encounter with Rutenberg, "I was used to make a point Rutenberg wanted to make before he talked to me." By the way, Berkeley economics professor and former Clinton Administration official Brad Delong, reflected on Rutenberg's treatment of Rosen and observed "if the journalist is looking for a particular quote, figure out whether you want to be the person who gives that quote - and if not, get off the phone." If only reporters were obliged to reveal as much about themselves as they want their interviewees to do.

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Thoughts on the Situation, Part 3 -- J Street Defends the Letter of 54

Lenny Ben-David
I*Consult
22 February '10

Today’s Jerusalem Post carries an Op-Ed column by officials from J Street and Americans for Peace Now.

They defend the recent letter they sponsored with 54 Members of Congress to President Barack Obama which “express[ed] concern for Israel's security, for the humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip, and for the urgency of reaching a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

But that was not the reason for the letter. Read the letter here. The Members themselves state, “We write to you [Obama] with great concern about the ongoing crisis in Gaza.”

Note that for the Jerusalem Post, J Street and APN argue that first they were concerned for “Israel’s security,” but the text of the letter indicates that Israel’s security is of little concern.

Defending the Gaza 54

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
22 February '10

J Street and Peace Now rush to the pages of the Jerusalem Post to defend the letter sent by 54 Democratic congressmen (one subsequently fell off the Israel-bashing bandwagon) calling on the lifting of the Gaza blockade. It’s what we have come to expect from those who find Israel’s reasoned self-defense measures to be gross violations of human rights. It is also deeply misleading. As others have noted:

Note that for the Jerusalem Post, J Street and APN argue that first they were concerned for “Israel’s security,” but the text of the letter indicates that Israel’s security is of little concern. More than 90 percent of the letter deals with the “collective punishment of the Palestinian residents” of Gaza and easing their plight. This accusation of Israel’s “collection punishment” helps explain why J Street failed to condemn the Goldstone Report. This is not a letter from “pro-Israel” sources, but from “pro-Gaza” sources. And in the case of Hamas-occupied Gaza, the two are mutually exclusive.

There always seem to be those — the Gaza-letter brigade and their boosters at J Street, most prominently — who offer themselves as true friends of Israel, knowing better than the Israelis what sacrifices are to be taken. Lift the blockade, they say from the cozy confines of New York, waving off the notion that more Israeli children will die from the bombs smuggled among the “construction supplies” they seek to allow into Gaza.

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Going Left on J Street

Lenny Ben-David
National Review Online
12 February '10

When 54 congressmen sent a letter to President Obama on January 21 asking him to press Israel (and nominally Egypt) to lift the blockade on Gaza and provide “immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza,” I looked for J Street’s fingerprints. Since its inception two years ago, the well-heeled PAC has rarely missed an opportunity to attack the policies of the Olmert and Netanyahu governments: It criticized Israel’s military operation in Gaza, held out the option of negotiating with Hamas, called for freezing all Israeli building in east Jerusalem as well as in the West Bank, refused to support sanctions against Iran, and more. But, lo and behold, there was nary a word about the Gaza relief letter on the J Street website or in the press materials of the supposedly “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization.

Others, however, did credit J Street with supporting the letter, and even with sponsoring it. According to Ha’aretz, “In addition to members of Congress, several leftist organizations also signed the letter, including Americans for Peace Now and J Street.”

Wrote Michael Rosenberg, one of Israel’s harshest critics, “The [54 members of Congress] deserve our thanks as does J Street and Americans for Peace Now which pushed the letter.”

And who appears first on the Minnesota Independent’s list of the letter’s backers? “Among the groups supporting the letter: J Street, The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF), The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), The American Near East Refugee Association (ANERA), The Methodist Church, The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), and Rabbis for Human Rights.”

With the exception of the rabbis, none of J Street’s colleagues on the letter are known for their fraternal feelings toward Israel.

(Read full article)
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Funds, horns and a thumbs-up from Hell

Fresnozionism.org
03 February '10

In my last post, I wrote about how a Zionist student group in Israel called Im Tirtzu exposed the way a ‘progressive’ American foundation, the New Israel Fund (NIF), supported the Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that provided 92% of the negative citations from Israeli sources in the Goldstone report.

Im Tirtzu held a demonstration in front of the home of the NIF President, former Meretz MK Naomi Chazan, and bought full-page ads in Israeli newspapers showing Chazan wearing a rhinoceros-like horn (the Hebrew word for ‘fund’ and ‘horn’ are the same, keren).

Here is the English version that ran in the Jerusalem Post:



NIF and friends are furious. NIF called it a “particularly despicable attack.” Rabbi Brant Rosen, a proud supporter of the anti-Zionist J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace, calls Im Tirtzu a “right-wing ultra-nationalist group” and describes the ad as having “anti-Semitic overtones”. J Street itself said the ad was “reminiscent of propaganda from the darkest days of recent Jewish experience.” Americans for Peace Now uses almost identical language, saying that the campaign is “reminiscent of dark times in our people’s history.” Even the center-left Ron Kampeas said

Call it keren, call it horn, this is an anti-Semitic ad. No getting around it. This makes Naomi Chazan looks like she eats babies for breakfast. For lunch. And dinner. And snacks.

Sorry, but all of these accusations of antisemitism strike me as remarkably stupid.

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The Bogeyman in The Hills of Judea and Samaria

Ariel Harkham
JPost
07 September 09

Earlier this month, Ori Nir, a spokesman for Americans for Peace Now and former Haaretz reporter, revealed an alarming, even terrifying, bit of news in an opinion piece for the Washington Jewish Week: There are bogeymen in the hills of Israel. Citing only an incident in 1988, and one in 2000, Nir argued that the "brutality" of soldiers and settlers in the West Bank has spread across the Green Line, causing the wave of violent crime the country seems to be experiencing lately.

Never mind, for the moment, that Israel has one of the lowest murder rates in the world - a statistic that even the most basic level of research would have confirmed for Nir. But the fact that the Peace Now spokesman so vigorously set out to identify the settler movement as the cause of a pseudo-effect goes to show just how much this cause is an apparition conjured by fear mongering, a moral bogeyman in the hills of Judea and Samaria.

NIR'S OPINION piece, like the logic of the entire anti-settler machine, reminds me of the story of the man who walked into a bar, only to be physically assaulted by another customer. Rising to defend himself, the man inadvertently broke a few bottles and glasses. After tensions had cooled, the bartender took the man aside and berated him, but left the instigator alone with his drink. The man, indignant at being unfairly targeted, retorted, "Why aren't you saying this to the other guy? I mean, he's responsible." The bartender stared at him incredulously, and said, "It wouldn't make any difference. That guy is deaf."

It's this logic that's on display in Nir's piece. Israel is the man walking into a bar only to be subjected to violence, and when all is said and done, is the only actor held responsible. As a result, it alone is subject to censure. As with the man in the bar, this is due not to any actual guilt on its part, but is simply on account of the fact that it is the only one able to listen.

This bears little on the arguments of people like Nir in the anti-settlement camp. While 'anti-settlers' in and outside the country say that both sides need to distribute land and share the burden of peace, they refuse to distribute blame or share the burden of culpability. But it takes a callous intellect to blinker out Israel's multiple offers of Palestinian autonomy and statehood, and the subsequent replies in the form of terror and rockets. Rather, Nir and the like trumpet the notion that when the effect is violence, the cause is Israel. And when the identity of that cause is investigated, the settlers - far removed from the power centers of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, few in number, lacking cash and unrepresented by the major political parties - are the easy target.

Reading the news, one would be utterly convinced that the settler community is at best a nuisance. According to this school of thought, the IDF's defense of this so-called nuisance is spreading a toxic pathogen inside Israel.

Yet the reality is far different. The West Bank settler population is the fastest-growing Israeli demographic, serves disproportionately in the IDF officer corps and suffered disproportionate casualties in the 2006 Lebanon war. Not to mention that its presence protects vital water resources and strategic high ground that would pose major national security liabilities if in the hands of hostile Palestinians.

FAR FROM Nir's assertion that "the occupation burdens Israel politically, economically and militarily," the settler community is the real "salt of the earth," standing on the frontlines of a 100-year war as a buffer for cities like Haifa, Beersheba and Tel Aviv.
(Continue)

Right of Reply: Americans for Peace Now: A case of misleading dogma

By Martin Sherman
JPost
03 August 09

The recent article, "Obama means what he says" on July 22 by CEO of Americans for Peace Now (APN) Debra DeLee, was a breathtaking display of misplaced arrogance and misleading dogma. One can only marvel at how, after well over a decade and a half of support for a disastrously failed policy, the proponents of a two-state solution still behave as if they have not only a monopoly on the moral high ground, but also the inside track to enlightened political wisdom. Indeed, one can only wonder how much more tragedy has to befall both Jews and Arabs before these smug, self-satisfied proponents of a Palestinian state muster the intellectual integrity to admit they were wrong.

In the heady days of Oslowian-Optimism (Oh-Oh?), a case might have conceivably been made for placing the burden of proof on the opponents of a two-state concept to provide a convincing case that this was a policy whose chances of success were negligible and the cost of failure unacceptable. But today the onus has shifted. Today - after 16 years of disaster, death and destruction - a more sober approach is called for. Today, the burden of proof must be on the proponents of the two-state solution to show that their preferred policy not only has (a) an reasonable probability of success, but (b) the risk it entails is tolerable. Given the post-Oslo experience, it is not immediately evident how they would go about this - on either count.

FOR WHAT are the security risks implicit in a two-state solution? Consider the following list of strategically significant items: major airfields in the country (civilian and military) including the only international airport; major sea ports and naval bases; vital infrastructure installations; the sweet water system; main land transportation axes (road and rail); principal power plants; the nation's parliament; crucial centers of government and military command; and 80 percent of the civilian population and of the commercial activity in the country.

If a Palestinian state were established atop the limestone hills east of the 1967 frontier, in any territorial configuration even remotely acceptable to the Palestinians, all of these would be in range of weapons being used today from territory transferred to Palestinian rule (misrule?). This is not a statement that reflects any political proclivity. It is a statement of verifiable fact that is a consequence of topographical elevation and geographical distance. It reflects a reality, the prospect of which can no longer be dismissed as "right-wing scaremongering," but merely one that reflects past empirical precedents.

So before Ms. DeLee and her like-minded comrades urge Israel to expose itself to such imminent dangers, one might expect that the exigencies of intellectual honesty would induce them into first proffering a plan for how Israel would address the situation should it face the same reality on its eastern frontier as its northern frontier in the summer of 2006 and its southern one in the winter of 2008. For merely hoping that dangers will not materialize - which is all that DeLee seems to be suggesting - is not a responsible approach to risk management. Especially when experience suggests there is little hope they will not.
(Full article)
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