(Video) Ayaan Hirsi Ali Speaks after Viewing "Crossing The Line 2"

In this video Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaks at a recent screening of our film, Crossing the Line 2, a new documentary from Jerusalem U that reveals the rise of anti-Israel activity and anti-Semitic rhetoric on North American university campuses, and demonstrates when reasonable criticism of Israel ‘Crosses the Line’ into anti-Semitism.

Jerusalem U..
12 April '15..

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a human rights activist, champion of free speech, and best-selling author. Time Magazine has listed her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

In this video she speaks at a recent screening of our film "Crossing The Line 2", and she talks about about anti-Semitism on college campuses and discusses how criticism of Israel is often fueled by hatred of Jews.



Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl41t5Fn2HI

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 
.

When BDS Drops Its Veil: Campus Anti-Semitism

...but the problem won’t be dealt with by ignoring the clear connection between the worldwide BDS—boycott, divest, sanction—movement and anti-Semitism. That’s a stand that many supporters of Israel have refused to take believing that crying anti-Semitism will cloud the issue and make it harder to advocate for Israel. But divestment advocates are making it increasingly obvious they have no scruples about the link between Jew hatred and treating Israel as a pariah state. BDS isn’t about a political dispute within Israel, its borders, or sympathy for the Palestinians. It’s a war on Jews.

Molly Horwitz, a Stanford
student council candidate, 
Jim Wilson/The New York Times 

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
15 April '15..

The most telling comment about the story of a Stanford University student who was quizzed about her Jewish faith when she tried to run for office came from her friend and campaign manager. Molly Horwitz, a Stanford junior, was running for the Student Senate and her campaign manager and friend Miriam Pollock told her what she had to do. According to the New York Times, Pollack advised Horwitz to “scrub” her personal Facebook page and remove anything that related to Israel or her support for the Jewish state. But that didn’t stop the Students of Color Coalition from demanding to know whether Horwitz’s “Jewish identity” impacted her stand on divestment—the economic war being waged against Israel. The episode in which some black and Latino students now think it is acceptable to treat Judaism as a disqualifying characteristic is a horrifying example of the way anti-Semitism—thinly disguised as anti-Zionism—has established a secure foothold on American college campuses.

Horwitz may have removed Israel from her Facebook persona but couldn’t escape being classified as a Jew and was therefore suspect in the eyes of those who have come to treat support for the war on Zionism as a litmus test of liberal bona fides. But the significance of the incident lies not so much in the snub of a Hispanic student (she was adopted from Paraguay and considers herself both a South American and a Jew) by a coalition that is supposed to exist to support such persons simply because she is also Jewish and unwilling to disavow Israel under questioning. Rather, it is the insouciance with which the members of the student group—including the chapter president of the NAACP—regarded the inquisition of a Jewish student about her faith as being not only acceptable but something that should be expected.

Horwitz has demanded a public apology, but she shouldn’t hold her breath waiting for it. Nor should she expect much comfort from the university that has also been asked to investigate what happened. The reason is that so long as support for a movement that singles out the one Jewish state in the world and its supporters for discriminatory treatment and opprobrium is not merely tolerated as an opinion but treated as a reasonable point of view about which decent people may differ, we can’t be surprised that Jew hatred is being normalized.

Had the coalition merely asked Horwitz about her stand about divestment without connecting it to her faith, that might pass the anti-Semitism smell test even if it would still be troubling that blacks and Hispanics have adopted the attack on Zionism as their own cause. But by linking this issue to Judaism they have acknowledged the fact that the divestment cause is not merely a political criticism of Israel’s government or its policies but primarily focused on singling out Jews for biased treatment.

The Presbyterian Church USA's Continuing Escalation of War on Jews

...But the point here is that it is drawing a line in the sand and labeling anyone who makes common cause with mainstream American Jewish groups as beyond the pale. In return, Jews and all Christians and people of faith who truly care about peace should make it clear that so long as the Presbyterian Church USA is waging war on the Jews, they will treat it as a hate group masquerading as a community of faith.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
07 May '14..

In February of this year I wrote about the latest instance of the Presbyterian Church USA engaging in hostile behavior toward both Israel and the Jewish people. A new study guide and companion CD about the Middle East published by an official Presbyterian group sought to delegitimize Israel and whitewash those who wage war and terrorism against it. Even worse, it compared Zionism to anti-Semitism and said that American Jews who supported Israel were not faithful to their religion. On top of the denomination’s past flirtations with the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement that seeks to wage economic war on Israel, the study guide demonstrated just how deep the hatred for Jews had become among some church officials. But an even more recent incident illustrates that these episodes are not aberrations but reflect a clear desire on the part of church cadres to treat any normal contact with Jews as beyond the pale.

What has happened is that a Virginia Beach pastor who was slated to take a leadership role in a church forum at its annual General Assembly has been pressured to resign by Presbyterian Church USA officials. What was his offense? Taking part in two trips to Israel sponsored by a Jewish group. As Rev. Albert Butzer relates in a piece he wrote about his experience for The Presbyterian Outlook, he had looked forward to being the official moderator of the Committee on Middle East Issues at the denomination’s General Assembly. But he was forced out when it came out that he had gone to Israel on trips organized by the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond, Virginia. Though he had previously been to the region on two trips organized by the Palestinians, the mere fact that he had been exposed to Israel’s side of the story in the conflict was enough to brand him as untrustworthy.

The BDS Movement’s War on Hummus

Alana Goodman
Contentions/Commentary
28 November '10

As I wrote last week, the U.S. version of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has been a resounding failure since its inception. Even the most radical college campuses have ignored its calls to divest from Israel.

Apparently realizing that traditional boycotts haven’t caught on, some BDS activists at Princeton University have launched a new campaign to increase “consumer choice” in the college food court. They say they want to expand the number of hummus brands sold on campus, arguing that the current product, Sabra, supports “crimes” against Palestinians:

The Princeton Committee on Palestine has sponsored a referendum in next week’s USG elections that asks Dining Services to sell an alternative to Sabra hummus in all its retail locations on campus.

PCP started a petition in support of the referendum last Thursday. More than 200 students have signed it, the threshold for getting a referendum on the ballot.

(Read full post)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Love, Labor, Loss?

Jon Haber
Divest This!
20 October '10

As I begin to segue into some international issues over the coming weeks, where better to start than with the international labor movement?

I’ve already pointed out the challenges BDS advocates have with regard to getting American unions to support their cause, given that (after Jews and Evangelical Christians), American labor is the most pro-Zionist community in the country. While BDSers may luck out with a fringe union here, or a local stunt there, the notion that the AFL-CIO is going to remove the bronze statue of Golda Meir in the lobby of their US headquarters (which reflects US labor’s appreciation of the role of American and Israeli Jews in the global union movement) is pretty fanciful.

Overseas (particularly in the UK) the story is quite different. There, boycott advocates have been steadily increasing their penetration of British labor, beginning with some small skirmishes in places like the education (UCU) and journalist’s (NUJ) unions, which eventually percolated up to the national umbrella group, the Trade Unions Council (TUC). While actual UCU and NUJ boycotts never got off the ground (thanks largely to their unpopularity with rank-and-file union members vs. more radicalized leaders who push anti-Israel boycotts within their organizations), it’s safe to say that the big question regarding labor and BDS boils down to whether American unions will begin to look more like their European counterparts in the coming years, or vice versa.

(Read full post)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Seattle Invests in Israel

Jon Haber
Divest This!
09 October '10

Now here’s an interesting little press release that came past the Divest This desk over the last 24 hours:

The board of directors of Bikur Cholim-Machzikay Hadath ("BCMH") Congregation in Seattle Washington, which is celebrating its 120th year as a congregation in Seattle, voted Tuesday evening, October 5, 2010, to require that a minimum of twenty five (25%) percent of its endowment fund invest in Israeli investments, products or services. This vote was specifically passed to proactively support investment in Israel especially in times when the general public is boycotting Israeli products to support the "Palestinian cause".

It is the opinion of the board of directors that it must set the example to other synagogues and Jewish organizations to encourage other Jewish institutions to "invest in Israel" both by giving moral support and financial support.


(Read full post)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

The Co-op Wars: Two More Wins!

Jon Haber
Divest This!
07 October '10

After writing about South Africa for the last week or so, I can feel the tug of international pulling on my interests (especially with regard to the role BDS is playing as a counter to peace efforts in the region itself). But before jumping into the rest of the world, an update on two more victories in the co-op boycott wars.

Most newsworthy (given its size and given the effort BDS activists put into getting them to become the second co-op to boycott Israel) is the unanimous decision by the Sacramento Natural Food Co-op to give boycott the heave ho. But I was also intrigued to read this letter sent to boycott activists by the President of the New Seasons Market Co-op in Portland, Oregon:

"...As a neighborhood grocery store, our first priority is to meet the diverse needs of our customers. Unlike some other grocery chains we are careful not to be the “food police”. We believe that customers vote with their dollars and if a product doesn’t sell well for us, then we discontinue it based on its relative sales movement compared with the overall category sales movement. We are not participating in the boycott and are not meeting with proponents of the boycott. We will, as we have always done, continue to carry the products that meet the many diverse needs of our community.”

(Read full post)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

BDS and South Africa – 3

Jon Haber
Divest This!
05 October '10


A BDS debate involving South Africa usually follows certain predictable patterns. BDS advocates claim that those involved in the struggle to topple Apartheid in SA see the Arab-Israeli conflict in the same terms with Israelis serving as stand-ins for the Boers. Various names are dropped, but since most Americans are unfamiliar with the cast of characters (and because most students at schools targeted for BDS campaigns weren’t even born when Apartheid existed or ended), the only two names with any resonance are Desmond Tutu and, of course, Nelson Mandela.

Because Reverend Tutu is a four-square champion for BDS, his support for a boycott or divestment program can only be trumped by invoking the name of Mandela whose relationship with Jews and Israel is more ambiguous. One of the reasons the recent attempt to break ties between the University of Johannesburg and Ben-Gurion University in Israel failed was because of Mandela’s involvement in the relationship between the two centers of learning. This is why the endorsement of Mandela is so sought after that BDS advocates are not beyond using fraud to pretend to obtain it.

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Port Townsend - What Went Right

Jon Haber
Divest This!
24 September '10

I must admit to having been out of the loop while the whole Port Townsend Co-op story was unfolding (for reason I hope to let you in on shortly).

The fact that Port Townsend continues the trend of co-ops rejecting boycotts of Israeli goods (a trend interrupted only briefly by the strange goings-on at the Olympia Co-op) is still the big story. But I thought it worth pointing out the many ways things went right in this one part of Washington (at least to contrast it with everything that went wrong just 200 miles away at Olympia).

Before starting, it’s important to point out that no community should have to go through the type of ugly conflicts that always accompany a BDS battle. So while Port Townsend is a success story vis-à-vis how a community deals with boycott and divestment issues when they are forced upon them, far more successful are those institutions that know enough to stop BDS at the door before it can drag the Middle East conflict into their organization.

All that said, no one can make the claim that the Port Townsend Co-op didn’t involve its members (all its members – regardless of their political opinion) in the communication and decision-making process vis-à-vis the boycott. Notices went out, public meetings were held, and (most importantly) members were listened to before the decision to boycott or not boycott was made. (Contrast this with most BDS “victories” in which members of an organization only find out that a divestment or boycott decision was made after the fact.)

(Read full post)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Courage

Jon Haber
Divest This!
02 September '10

Now and then (usually in response to comments) I’ve posed the question: what if the world is NOT as the BDSers perceive it? What if there’s even a one-percent chance that the suffering in the region is NOT fueled entirely by Israeli villainy directed at pristinely innocent Palestinians (with no role played by the rest of the nations in the Middle East)?

What if these non-Israeli players (including, God forbid, the Palestinians) have agency and what if their decisions (including decisions to reject one peace offer after another) contribute to the suffering of themselves and others? And what if there is even the smallest of chances that BDS (like other propaganda campaigns) send a message to the Palestinians that “help is on the way!” “Don’t compromise,” the message continues. “Don’t give up your hope of total victory. For eventually our activity (be it BDS or some other form of de-legitimization) will so cripple the Jewish state that you will get everything you want without having to give up a single thing.”

Even if you reject the premise that someone other than Israel has primary responsibility for the misery in the region, accepting that there is even a tiny chance that my counter-narrative might be true means accepting there is a non-zero chance that BDS is contributing to the very suffering it claims to be fighting to end.

(Read full post)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

The Accidental BDSer

Jon Haber
Divest This!
31 August '10

I recently had the unsettling experience of accidentally falling into the shoes of a practitioner of BDS.

Allow me to explain.

I joined a synagogue for the first time when I moved into my new hometown and, after a few years of getting to know the place, I took part in and now co-chair the temple’s Israel Action Committee (IAC). And despite my own strong views on the Middle East conflict, the committee’s work continues to be centered on opening up dialog within the temple community that takes into account the many differing opinions one would expect to find at a large synagogue of nearly 800 families.

Earlier this summer, our rabbi was contacted by a local pro-Israel organization about sponsorship for a major event they were having in the area and he, in turn, contacted me as head of the IAC to discuss whether or not we should participate. I informed him that it would be a good event to support, providing input as someone on the advisory board of the organization putting on the event who would also be speaking at the conference under discussion.

After agreeing that the temple should support the event, I informed the group that our synagogue was onboard, after which both I and our rabbi went on our own much-needed summer holidays. It was only after I got back that I discovered I had made a major blunder: failing to take a step I now know is required for such a sponsorship: getting approval for such a move by the temple’s board of directors.

(Read full story)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

We're Pretty Lame, Activists Say

Jon Haber
Divest This!
23 August '10

In re-reading the Globe piece on BDS last night, it occurred to me that a bit more research would have shown the weakness of the three examples (Elvis Costello, the SF Dockworkers refusing to unload an Israeli ship, and the Olympia Co-op boycott) being held up to demonstrate that boycott and divestment advocates have the wind at their back.

After all, the ripple effect of Elvis Costello’s decision to boycott the Jewish state didn’t extend to the rocker’s own bedroom (Costello’s wife Diana Krall played Israel this month). Nor did it prevent other aging pop stars like Elton John and Johnny Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) from flipping boycotters the bird as they traveled to Israel to play to packed audiences.

In San Francisco, the ship that local protestors demanded dockworkers refuse to unload turned out to be from the People’s Republic of China (not Israel). It was hours after the protestors left the docks patting each other on the back for a job well done that a ship containing Israeli goods arrives to be unloaded without incident.

(Read full post)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Harvard BDS Hoax Update

Jon Haber
Divest This!
16 August '10

Well great, big, fat surprise: the latest divestment “victory” celebrated across the BDS ether, the Great Harvard Divestment “triumph,” turns out to be yet another hoax (the biggest one so far this year).

I was beginning to think that the divestnistas had put hoaxes behind them after spending so much time last year shredding their credibility with embarrassing frauds regarding Hampshire, TIAA-CREF and Blackrock. But given the nature of the Harvard story, I’m beginning to think that someone in the BDS world knows enough about business and finance to anticipate purely economic decisions (the turnover of assets in the Hampshire portfolio, the abandoning of collapsing Israel-Africa real-estate stock by institutional investors, the transfer of Israeli stocks out of an emerging market fund once Israel is no longer classified an emerging market) so that they can pounce and claim that these ordinary business transactions actually represent political divestment from the Jewish state.

The Harvard story reveals three things about the current state of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions “movement”:

(Read full post)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Viewpoint: True colours of the BDS movement

Chris Dyszyński
Just Journalism
12 August '10

‘Rooted in a century of Palestinian civil resistance, and inspired by the anti-apartheid struggle, the campaign crowned earlier, partial boycotts to present a comprehensive approach to realising Palestinian self-determination’

This is how Omar Barghouti characterises the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which seeks to isolate Israel in every conceivable way, from banning Israeli-made goods for sale abroad to preventing Israeli-written books or academic papers to be made available to foreign universities. Writing in The Guardian, Barghouti's 'Beseiging Israel's seige' today celebrated the fifth birthday of the BDS campaign he founded and raises a number of questions about both the movement as a whole and Barghouti as an individual.

The most obvious question is this: Why does the BDS movement support Palestinian self-determination but deny the right to Jewish self-determination? There are many who believe that the Palestinians deserve an independent state, and oppose the continued occupation of the West Bank. Reading between the lines of his article, however, one notes that Barghouti is more interested with the eradication of an independent Jewish presence in the Middle East than he is with creating a sovereign Palestinian one.

(Read full report)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Israel is Just Great

Jon Haber
Divest This!
16 July '10


Well “Israel is Just Great Day” came and went yesterday and everywhere I went I saw person after person showing their support for the Jewish state by wearing clothing. Thanks to the six-billion plus people who participated, and anyone who wants to take part in a similar “BDS is a Joke Week” scheduled for the first week of August can demonstrate their disdain for the aptly named divestment “movement” by going to the bathroom anytime between August 1st and the 7th.

In the meantime, news is out that Israel may be passing anti-boycott legislation that would fine Israelis who advocate for boycotts directed against the country and punish non-Israeli BDSers by (among other things) potentially denying them entrance into Israel. Despite a certain curiosity regarding how brave the self-declared courageous divestniks might be if their squalid little project was finally associated with some personal cost, in truth I remain reticent about democracies passing laws to punish political activity, no matter how odious. Some further thoughts on the matter can be found here.

(Read full post)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Israel Skewered by Medical Journal

The Lancet publishes a multi-article series on Palestinian health written by Israel boycotters that goes way beyond accepted medical norms.


Honest Reporting
Media Critique
14 July '10

The history of politicization of science for political ends is long, and sadly, destructive.

As HonestReporting has previously highlighted, formerly credible medical media outlets such as the British Medical Journal have drifted away from scientific exploration to scientific exploitation, particularly when concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Lancet describes itself as "one of the world's leading medical journals" and claims an online registration of some 1.8 million users. On July 2, 2010, it published the "best peer-reviewed abstracts" from a meeting of the 2nd Lancet-Palestinian Health Alliance Conference.

A cornerstone of most peer-reviewed journals is freedom from bias. No conference or article today can be promoted or published without a clear declaration of conflict of interest by its authors or promoters. No such declarations are published in The Lancet series.

A medical background is no guarantee of objectivity or lack of bias when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After all, some of the Hamas leadership such as Mahmoud al-Zahar and the late Abdel Aziz Rantisi were medical professionals, while the Marxist Dr. Mads Gilbert pumped out propaganda from Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

Some research into the background of a number of contributors to The Lancet's articles reveals some disturbing information and calls into question the credibility of the content, particularly as most of those below are active supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

(Read full critique)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

“Nation” Writers Use a Fallacious Historical Analogy to Support their BDS Campaign

Ron Radosh
pajamasmedia.com
22 June '10

Writing in the June 28th issue of The Nation, Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz, present a lengthy article investigating the debate within the American Jewish community over supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement against Israel. (BDS) While most Jewish groups, including liberal ones, recoil from the movement’s effect of delegitimizing Israel, the authors seem to gleam hope for its inroads on college campuses, where there is pressure, especially on Jewish students, to support BDS resolutions.

At Berkeley, where such a resolution was ultimately defeated, Jewish students spoke out against it. Speaking for many of them, one said “We feel marginalized, we feel scared, we feel intimidated, we feel alienated” by the legislation. But not to worry, claim Weiss and Horowitz, such worries surely “accompany any transformative social movement.” To address their anxieties, Palestinian leader Mustafa Barghouthi told the Berkeley students that they should not “stand in the way like those angry Alabama students 50 years ago blocking integration.”

In their article, Weiss and Horowitz make another specious historical claim about Arab Palestinian boycotts in the past:

Boycotts are not a new tactic for Palestinians. As far back as the 1936–39 revolt against the British Mandate, Palestinians incorporated general strikes and boycotts into their struggle.

Anyone who knows about the 1936-1939 “Arab revolt” knows that its main thrust was against British support of Jewish immigration to Palestine. In his classic book A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, Howard Sachar writes that The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, demanded that “the British terminate Jewish immigration immediately.” The Mufti’s strong-arm men then saw to it that an Arab general strike was enforced — a step that primarily hurt Arab business and agriculture, and that ironically stimulated the Jewish economy. The cost of the strike, Sachar points out, “to the Arabs themselves became increasingly punitive.”

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

What Passes For Moral Authority These Days

Daled Amos
21 June '10

Captain Kirk: Nobody understands you in this century unless you swear every other word. You'll find it in all the literature of the era: Jaclyn Suzanne, the novels of Harold Robbins."
Spock: Ah, the giants.
Star Trek IV

Shelby Steele writes about today's moral giants?:

Rock bands now find moral imprimatur in canceling their summer tour stops in Israel (Elvis Costello, the Pixies, the Gorillaz, the Klaxons). A demonstrator at an anti-Israel rally in New York carries a sign depicting the skull and crossbones drawn over the word "Israel." White House correspondent Helen Thomas, in one of the ugliest incarnations of this voice, calls on Jews to move back to Poland. And of course the United Nations and other international organizations smugly pass one condemnatory resolution after another against Israel while the Obama administration either joins in or demurs with a wink.

Such is what the world has come to. Jay Nordlinger writes:

Couple of days ago, I was in a flower shop, and the owner is Israeli, I think. There was a customer who had on the counter a Hebrew newspaper. On the front page was a big, big picture of Elton John. He had performed in Israel. And the two men were saying, “Good for him.” (Yes, I guess the owner is Israeli.)

Has it come to that? Has Israel been so demonized in the world — so delegitimized by Islamists and their left-wing allies — that a concert by a foreigner in Israel is a big deal? Is an act of courage, cause for gratitude on the part of the locals? Has it really come to that? Is Israel now apartheid South Africa? That is moral perversion of so high a degree, it is dizzying.

(Read full post)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Israel and the Surrender of the West

One of the world's oldest stories is playing out before our eyes: The Jews are being scapegoated again.


Shelby Steele
Wall Street Journal
21 June '10

The most interesting voice in all the fallout surrounding the Gaza flotilla incident is that sanctimonious and meddling voice known as "world opinion." At every turn "world opinion," like a school marm, takes offense and condemns Israel for yet another infraction of the world's moral sensibility. And this voice has achieved an international political legitimacy so that even the silliest condemnation of Israel is an opportunity for self-congratulation.

Rock bands now find moral imprimatur in canceling their summer tour stops in Israel (Elvis Costello, the Pixies, the Gorillaz, the Klaxons). A demonstrator at an anti-Israel rally in New York carries a sign depicting the skull and crossbones drawn over the word "Israel." White House correspondent Helen Thomas, in one of the ugliest incarnations of this voice, calls on Jews to move back to Poland. And of course the United Nations and other international organizations smugly pass one condemnatory resolution after another against Israel while the Obama administration either joins in or demurs with a wink.

This is something new in the world, this almost complete segregation of Israel in the community of nations. And if Helen Thomas's remarks were pathetic and ugly, didn't they also point to the end game of this isolation effort: the nullification of Israel's legitimacy as a nation? There is a chilling familiarity in all this. One of the world's oldest stories is playing out before our eyes: The Jews are being scapegoated again.

"World opinion" labors mightily to make Israel look like South Africa looked in its apartheid era—a nation beyond the moral pale. And it projects onto Israel the same sin that made apartheid South Africa so untouchable: white supremacy. Somehow "world opinion" has moved away from the old 20th century view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a complicated territorial dispute between two long-suffering peoples. Today the world puts its thumb on the scale for the Palestinians by demonizing the stronger and whiter Israel as essentially a colonial power committed to the "occupation" of a beleaguered Third World people.

This is now—figuratively in some quarters and literally in others—the moral template through which Israel is seen. It doesn't matter that much of the world may actually know better. This template has become propriety itself, a form of good manners, a political correctness. Thus it is good manners to be outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza, and it is bad manners to be outraged at Hamas's recent attack on a school because it educated girls, or at the thousands of rockets Hamas has fired into Israeli towns—or even at the fact that Hamas is armed and funded by Iran. The world wants independent investigations of Israel, not of Hamas.

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Soft Targets

Jon
Divest This!
25 May '10

Like many of you, I’ve received a fair share of alerts that Elvis Costello has joined the ranks of entertainers planning to boycott Israel until the boycott “movement” gives them the all clear. A number of these alarms have been accompanied by condemnations of Costello as a hack, a has-been and a hypocrite, coupled with calls to counter-boycott the singer and (if it can be done with MP3s) burn his recordings for good measure.

In truth, I have a slightly softer spot for Elvis Costello than I do for Carlos Santana, another rocker who has decided to dabble in moral consciousness at the expense of the Jewish state, if only because I saw E.C. in concert once (at Brandies as a matter of fact) and a friend one succeeded in impersonating the British singer to get into a sold-out comedy club. The fact that celebrity endorsements (even ones in favor of causes I support) have always seemed pretty vacuous and imbecilic also keeps the danger signal of Costello’s choice flashing yellow instead of red.

Related article: Open letter to Costello

That said, if the last decade has taught us anything, it’s that BDS is pretty good at capitalizing on even small successes, at least in terms of keeping its militant project energized. So the recruitment of pop-stars as the latest anti-Israel bludgeon needs to be taken seriously. At the same time, placing this month’s BDS “triumph” in the context of how the whole boycott and divestment thing has been going over the last year or two might provide some guidance as to how to meet this latest challenge.

(Read full post)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.