Dear Latest Woker - Jews aren’t indigenous to Israel? According to whom? - by Jonathan S. Tobin

A woke rabbi who launched a Twitter war over the meaning of a word demonstrated how leftist politics pollutes language and cancels Jewish rights.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
09 July '20..

There are a lot of things wrong with woke culture. While the impulse to demonstrate solidarity with the oppressed and opposition to bad things like racism is, in principle, praiseworthy, the virtue signaling is insufferable. As is the tone of self-righteous disapproval emanating from the woke towards all those that don’t measure up to their standards.

As a friend’s daughter eloquently summed up the problem, no matter how hard you try, “there’s always a woker fish” who will wind up shaming you for insufficient ardor for supposedly righteous causes. That means the competition to out virtue signal and shame lesser beings can lead even seemingly nice people to do and say things that are not only obnoxious, but actually have dangerous implications.

And that is the problem with Rabbi Andrue J. Kahn, assistant rabbi at New York’s famed Temple Emanu-El, the landmark Reform cathedral on Fifth Avenue. “Rabbi Andy,” as he styles himself on social media, seems like a well-meaning young man and posts lots of cute pictures on Instagram. And although he’s just one out of a staff of five rabbis (plus two with emeritus status) at that historic institution, he’s generally regarded as a comer in the world of liberal Judaism. So when he decided to rant on Twitter about something, it provoked a controversy that made news.

As his Twitter account demonstrates, Rabbi Andy is up to date as far as supporting things that woke rabbis should support, like abortion rights, Native American rights, why Black Lives Matter and smearing President Donald Trump’s supporters as anti-Semites. He also knows what to oppose, including America’s Founding Fathers, the Zionist Organization of America and, significantly, a letter signed by famous writers and artists against “cancel culture” and the repression of free speech that it encourages.

In other words, Rabbi Andy, like so many other well-meaning young liberal Jews, is just fine with cancel culture. Indeed, he’s ready to cancel the entire Jewish people, and by implication, Zionism and Israel, to demonstrate his impatience with the non-woke.

As part of his sermonizing about the wrongs of white supremacy and its companion evil, “white Jewishness,” the rabbi is particularly upset with the notion that the Jews are “indigenous” to Israel.

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Actually Gil, the real fabrication is the tendentious Palestinian narrative - by Vic Rosenthal

...The truth, that Israel is populated by all kinds of people who are not alienated from their society and not suffering from endemic racism; that many Ashkenazim, Mizrahim (emphatically not “Arab-Jews”), Ethiopians, Druze and others, like each other and are friends; that many Israeli soldiers, Druze included, actually are overtly joyful from time to time, is simply too much for the social-justice-warrior conceptual scheme espoused by Hochberg and her ilk.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
27 November '17..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2017/11/whos-appropriating-whom/

Sick and tired of “Israel Apartheid Week” and other projects to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state, some Columbia University students have established “Hebrew Liberation Week” during which they emphasize Jewish peoplehood and the Jewish connection to the land.

One of the exhibits (which was placed near the “apartheid wall” built by Students for Justice in Palestine) showed a Jew wearing a tallit standing together with other indigenous people in their traditional outfits. The idea, of course, was to drive home the point that the Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel, and not “settler-colonialists” as the progressive gospel insists.

But the sight infuriated a new professor at Columbia, Gil Hochberg. Hochberg, who is in some sense Jewish, previously taught Comparative Literature and Gender Studies (of course!) at UCLA, and received her doctorate from UC Berkeley. And she was outraged.

There is, of course, nothing wrong in suggesting an alliance between Jews and Indigenous people, and in the context of Jews living in Europe and elsewhere as “inside outsiders” and as part of internal European colonization (too much has been written about “The Jewish Question” for me to summarize here) it indeed makes sense to compare and point out similarities between the position of Jews as a fragile minority and the position of other oppressed groups, like the indigenous, colonized, enslaved, and more. However, placing such images underneath the Israeli flag makes them, at best, tasteless depictions of a pseudo alliance. Suggesting, as the posters do, that Jews have been driven out of their land (like indigenous people) and have finally returned to Israel–a trajectory that all indigenous people should unite behind–is a crude and cynical manipulation of (Jewish) history and a vulgar fabrication that not only makes no sense, but is also offensive in its use and abuse of indigenous peoples’ histories of oppression. (my emphasis)

What is crude, cynical or fabricated here? Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel, were driven out “like indigenous people,” and did – unlike so many indigenous groups – succeed in reestablishing a sovereign state in their historical home.

The real fabrication is the tendentious Palestinian narrative. Do I need to remind readers yet again that the ones trying to steal the Jewish historical narrative – the real “cultural appropriators” – are the so-called “Palestinians,” most of whom are descended from late-19th or 20th century migrants? And that even the few that could trace their patrimony back to the 7th century Muslim conquest are, after all, descended from foreign colonialist invaders? And that the Palestinian story of Jewish ethnic cleansing is mostly false? And that the Palestinian Arabs and their allies fully intended to finish Hitler’s genocide of the Jewish people and were only prevented by hard-fought Jewish victories in 1948 and 1967? And that the “Palestinians” have no unique language, religion, or common place of origin, and have only even considered themselves a people since the 1960s? The essence of their peoplehood, that which separates them from other Arabs and makes them uniquely Palestinian, is just their commitment to eternal hatred for and confrontation with Israel!

Apparently Jews Are From Mars . . . Or Perhaps From Ross 128? - by Sheri Oz

...When I am feeling almost totally drained by the hatred, I feel like calling out: “Beam me up, Moishele!” But that moment passes and I know that Israel is in my heart and in my soul and there is no place else that I am from but here.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
16 November '17..

Well, not really Ross 128 itself, because Ross 128 is a star. Like our own sun, it is a star that has a planet near it that looks habitable. Astronomers have not yet named Ross 128’s nearby, possibly-habitable-planet. But since Mars does not seem to be able to sustain human life, then let us assume that Jews are from that planet circling Ross 128. Unless you do not really believe that Jews are human, in which case we really could be from Mars.

But why all this discussion about the extraterrestrial origin of the Jews? Because we apparently do not come from anywhere on Earth. If you believe the antisemites spewing anti-Israeli propaganda, then you believe that all the ancient archeological artifacts found in the Land of Israel are not relics of Judaism but, rather, of the ancient peoples from whom the Palestinian Arabs claim they are descended. That means that the Jews are colonizers and occupiers in Israel — we are really Europeans, you see. (I do not know how we are supposed to classify the Jews from Arab lands, but, regarded by some as second-class Jews in Israel, they may not matter much to anyone anyway. So we can just ignore them, even if they are about half of our population. :-J )

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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. 

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The Balfour Declaration at 100 and How It Redefined Indigenous People - by Judea Pearl

...“Professor Khalidi, can you name a Canaanite figure that you are proud of? A Canaanite poem that you enjoy reciting? A Canaanite holiday that you celebrate? A Canaanite leader who is a role model to your children? Replace the word “Canaanite” with “biblical” and you will find four questions that every Israeli child can answer half asleep.

Judea Pearl..
JewishJournal.com..
03 November '17..
Link: http://jewishjournal.com/opinion/226997/balfour-declaration-100-redefined-indigenous-people/

It has been 100 years since the Balfour Declaration – issued by the British government on Nov. 2, 1917 – offered the first international recognition of Jewish national aspirations. In many ways, its importance is obvious: it encouraged some 400,000 European Jews to emigrate to Palestine in the years 1917-1940, and made it possible to lay the groundwork for the State of Israel.

But there is another significance that has not been fully recognized among modern historians, even though it tells us more about the current obstacles to peace than any of the usual explanations. I am speaking of the politico-philosophical precedent set by the Balfour Declaration regarding national identity, land ownership, self determination and the notion of “indigenous people.”

On the surface, the declaration’s text touches on none of these issues. Known as “history’s most famous letter,” this 67-word text actually reads like a holiday greeting card: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice that civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

A close examination, however, reveals two asymmetries which, by today’s standards, would probably evoke bitter objections. First, the words “people” and “national” are attached to Jews, not to the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, who are referred to as “communities.” Second, the non-Jewish communities are assured “civil and religious” rights, not national rights, let alone a “national home.”

This asymmetry is probably what infuriated Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi who, in an emotional lecture on Sept. 25 this year, reportedly pounded the table and blasted the Balfour Declaration as “a declaration of war by the British Empire on the indigenous population of the land it was promising to the Jewish people.”

Reason #8109 - Why peace is impossible - by Elder of Ziyon

...But the Arab reaction reveals much more: the idea that Jews actually belong in the Middle East is horrifying and they will never be accepted as people who truly belong where they are actually more indigenous than most Arabs.

Elder of Ziyon..
13 August '17..

According to an op-ed in Jordan's Ammon News, there was a Haaretz article suggesting that Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians would be better off as a single confederation.

This is about as progressive an idea as one can imagine to help Jews integrate into the Middle East.

So the reaction by this op-ed writer, Helmi Al Asmar, is instructive.

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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. 

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Balfour, indigenous rights and the Jewish People's more than two millennia in its ancestral homeland - by Amb. Alan Baker

...The Palestinian “Balfour Apology Campaign” to demand the annulment of the Balfour Declaration is part of a consistent policy of denying the rights of the Jews to their national homeland as a people indigenous to the area. Yet the Jewish People for more than two millennia has consistently maintained the strongest claim to be the aboriginal people in its ancestral homeland, and their existence and roots are widely documented, acknowledged, and recognized.

Amb. Alan Baker..
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs..
No. 612..
August '17..

The present, ongoing, and cynical attempt to rewrite and manipulate historic and legal realities would appear to be part of today’s radicalized Arab and Muslim rejection of any non-Muslim historic or legal right to land or any religious heritage apart from Islam.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the character of the Jews as perhaps one of the oldest indigenous peoples who remains a distinct people and to consider the nature and implications of such distinctness in the practical realities of today’s international community.

With the 2017 centenary of the November 2, 1917 Balfour Declaration and its acknowledgment of the right of the Jewish people to their national homeland in Palestine, the international community is witnessing a concerted attempt by the Palestinian leadership to cast doubt and undermine the historic and legal basis, veracity, and justification for the indigenous character of the Jewish people and the rights of the Jews in the area.

This attempt to nullify the Balfour Declaration is not new.

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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. 

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Question. Are Jews Indigenous to the Land of Israel? Answer? Yes. - by Ryan Bellerose

...Building a monument over our sacred places does not make them yours (Mount Rushmore, anyone?) Not any more than UNESCO declaring the Temple Mount to be a Muslim sacred site because they built a mosque over the church that was built over the ruins of the Jewish Temple. It’s a basic tradition in the Western ethos to respect those who came before you; it’s even built into most of our laws to respect prior claim, and that’s what indigenous rights are really all about. Respecting the rights of those who came before you.

Ryan Bellerose..
Tabletmag.com..
08 February '17..

As an indigenous activist—I am a Métis from the Paddle Prairie Metis settlement in Alberta, Canada—there is one question I am most often asked by the public, one that can instantly divide a community due to its intense and arduous subject matter.

Yet, regardless of the scenario, each time I hear the words, “Are Jews the indigenous people of Israel?” I’m inclined to answer not only with my heart but with the brutal, honest truth, backed by indisputable, thousands-year-old historical and archaeological fact: yes.

While evidence in favor of this view is overwhelming, activists who oppose Israel’s right to exist and deny the Jewish people’s connection to the land—perhaps before learning where indigenous status stems from and what it means—still have an issue with this claim, supporting a narrative built on falsehoods that today is basically acknowledged as fact.

It is my belief that strengthening Jewish identity is the optimum way to fight against the perpetuation of false narratives and lies. This can be achieved only through an indigenous decolonization of Jewish identity, which would urge Jews to see themselves through a Jewish lens and manifest the indigenous aspects of Jewish identity in a meaningful way.

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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. 

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The Myth of Palestinian Arabs as the Indigenous Population of Mandatory Palestine

...To be sure, some Arabs are descendants of the indigenous occupants. But waves of immigration into the Holy Land brought Jews, Arabs, and others to the territories, to the point that most of today's Arabic-speakers do not trace their roots back for centuries.

Sheree Roth..
Middle East Quarterly..
Fall 2016..

The assertion that Palestinian Arabs are the indigenous population is central in their dispute with Israel. The message is that Jews stole and now occupy the land of the indigenous Arab population. Rarely challenged, the claim is widespread, such as this statement from Henry Cattan, a Palestinian Christian jurist and writer born in Jerusalem:

The Palestinians are the original and continuous inhabitants of Palestine from time immemorial.[1]

Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas elaborated this claim in a recent speech:

Our narrative says that we were in this land since before Abraham. I am not saying it. The Bible says it. The Bible says, in these words, that the Palestinians existed before Abraham. So why don't you recognize my right?[2]

Saeb Erekat, the PA's chief negotiator, stated:

I am the son of Jericho. ... the proud son of the Netufians and the Canaanites. I've been there for 5,500 years before Joshua Bin Nun came and burned my hometown Jericho.[3]

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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. 

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Fanciful narratives aside, who’s actually indigenous here? by Vic Rosenthal

...The Zionists did not arrive as colonists from Europe after 1945 and dispossess the long-rooted Palestinian people, as their narrative tells us. The true story is that Jews were here all along, an oppressed and colonized indigenous people like many others. One of our distinctions, though, is that we succeeded in throwing out the European colonialists and achieving the self-determination that is the highest political goal of an indigenous people. Now it’s up to us to keep it against those, like Khamenei, who wish to end it.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
21 August '15..
http://abuyehuda.com/2015/08/whos-indigenous-here/..

Take up the White Man’s burden, The savage wars of peace— Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought. – Rudyard Kipling, 1899

The other day I was talking with friends and the discussion turned to the unique situation of Israel as a nation-state that constantly has to justify its existence. Other countries may be engaged in struggles over who will be the dictator, president or ruling party, but I can’t think of another one whose very being is controversial.

For example, last year Iranian ‘Supreme Leader’ Ali Khamenei called for the destruction of the “barbaric, wolflike & infanticidal regime of Israel” and the dispersal of the Jews that had emigrated to Israel from some other place:

All the original people of Palestine including Muslims, Christians and Jews wherever they are, in Palestine or in refugee camps in other countries or just anywhere else take part in a public and organized referendum. Naturally the Jewish immigrants who have been persuaded into emigration to Palestine do not have the right to take part in the referendum. …

the ensuing government … will decide whether the non-Palestinian emigrants … can continue living in Palestine or should return to their home countries.

This is illuminating, because it exposes the narrative that underlies most anti-Israel arguments. You know, when you say “Israel is completely legitimate under international law” and they say “who cares, you stole Palestinian land and colonized the indigenous inhabitants.”

That is the line that always ends the discussion. Israel is gay-friendly? Who cares, you are just bringing that up to distract us from your crimes against the Palestinian people. Israel is a democracy? Who cares, it’s built on someone else’s property. Because Israel is said to be a “settler-colonial state,” a European interloper parasitizing an indigenous Middle Eastern people, we have no moral or legal right to be here.

In the 19th century, colonialism was considered legitimate. “Take up the White Man’s burden,” wrote Kipling, and do the natives a favor despite their often violently-expressed ingratitude. But today, there is no greater national sin than exploitation of indigenous peoples.

There is only one small flaw in this argument, so beloved by leftists and academics: the Jewish people are indigenous to the Land of Israel, and the so-called ‘Palestinians’ are the colonists, invaders and occupiers of other people’s land. Like so much of their rhetoric, Arabs calling themselves ‘indigenous’ to our land is a precise inversion of reality, an employment of the big lie technique.

Here is one modern definition of ‘indigenous people’:

Californians and Jewish Palestinians

...So, yes, everyone who resides in the former British Mandate of Palestine is "Palestinian," if we insist on using outmoded and counterproductive terms of expression. But if we must use the term "Palestinian" than we should make it clear that this recent social construction of an identity is entirely "racist" and discriminatory in its essence because those who claim that identity do so in an exclusionary manner. Not that Jews want to be "Palestinian," of course, but everyone who resides in what was the British Mandate of Palestine is, in that sense, a "Palestinian." The local Arabs have no exclusive rights... unless you want to embed their hatred into eternity.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
18 February '15..

Here is a question. If there are Palestinian Muslims and there are Palestinian Christians, how is it that there are no Palestinian Jews?

Here is a possible answer.

Prior to 1948 the Jews of the British Mandate of Palestine referred to themselves as "Palestinian" in a manner not unsimilar to the way that I refer to myself as a "Californian." The Jerusalem Post was the Palestine Post, the Israeli Opera was the Palestine Opera and so forth and, therefore, the Arabs did not use that attribution. It was only after the formal establishment of Israel that the Arabs could start comfortably calling themselves "Palestinian" and most did not do so until the late 1960s.

{In this way, I am myself older than are the "Palestinians" as a people.}

So much of our approach to understanding the Arab war against the Jews is trapped in outmoded tendencies of thought that are buttressed by loaded terminology derived from the so-called "Palestinian narrative." "West Bank," for example, always leaps to mind. The very term "West Bank" deletes 4,000 years of Jewish history on Jewish land, yet it is used daily by almost everyone who discusses the ongoing war.

The term "Palestinian" serves a similar function, except inside out and backwards. If "West Bank" erases Jewish history, "Palestinian" invents a distinct nation, with a contrived history, where no such nation was previously understood to exist. "Palestine" is simply a word that the Romans used to rename Judea and Samaria after the Philistines. Once the Romans destroyed and scattered the Jewish remnant in the First Century CE they renamed Judea and Samaria (or Yehuda and Shomron in the Hebrew, if you prefer) after the ancient enemies of the Jewish people.

In the twentieth-century, of course, "Palestine" referred to the British Mandate of Palestine. In this way "Palestine" was merely considered a region or a district and the people who called themselves "Palestinians" were mainly the Jewish residents of the area. The term was never meant to denote a distinct ethnicity or nation any more than, say, Saharan represents a distinct ethnicity or nation.

Or, for that matter, Californian.

Everyone who resides in the state of California is a "Californian." No specific ethnic group who live here get to decide that they, and only those of their choosing, can legitimately refer to themselves as "Californian." Any effort to legalize such ridiculous distinctions would be laughed directly out of the halls of Sacramento.

Zionism, The Moral Struggle by Ryan Bellerose

...I want young Jewish people to understand this simple truth. YOU ARE THE GOOD GUYS, no matter what the leftists would have you believe. The return of a displaced indigenous people is never a tragedy. The creation of the world’s first modern indigenous state is a triumph for all indigenous people. Your country is a lantern in the darkness – Lux lucis Obscurum, is latin for “ light from the darkness”; this is Israel, the Middle East’s only actual democracy, the only state in the Middle East where human rights are actually respected.

Ryan Bellerose..
Israellycool..
15 December '14..

I find myself writing about things that I think are common sense. I wrote extensively about the indigenous status of the Jewish people, and in a bemused fashion, watched as people tried to deny something that is verified not just in religious texts of every major faith, but through genetics, history, archaeology, and anthropology. I never really concerned myself with the hurt feelings of people who had bought a false narrative, or the feelings of a people who went from being the dominant group who colonised and oppressed the entire region, to being stateless refugees used as pawns by their brethren.

It’s amusing to me that something I saw as common sense, was such a groundbreaking argument and is only now coming into the mainstream.

Now I am gonna blow some more minds with my next statement. I am taking back a word that has long been misused by ignorant people. I am proud to call myself a Zionist, and every Zionist should be.

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A member of the indigenous Metis people, Ryan grew up in the far north of Alberta, Canada with no power nor running water. Ryan was unsure if his real name was "Go get water!" or "Go get wood!" In his free time, Ryan plays Canadian Rules Football , reads books, does advocacy work for indigenous people and does not live in an Igloo.

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, 
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(+Video) Yes, History Counts

...The indigenous people of the land of Israel are the Jews, who had an empire there for hundreds of years. They suffered invasions and genocides, and were (partially) dispersed throughout the world by a succession of pagan, Christian and Muslim conquerors. But they never wholly abandoned their land and the Diaspora never gave up its yearning to return. This reality was recognized by the international community when it granted Britain the Palestine Mandate to govern the land in trust for the Jewish people (as we know, Britain betrayed this trust, but that’s another story).

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
01 September '14..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2014/09/history-counts/


Melanie Phillips spoke in Jerusalem last week. In 55 minutes, she dealt with the relationship between anti-Zionism and Jew hatred, media bias, Israel’s poor performance in the global information war, and the future of Europe, and more. Watch and you will agree that it was 55 minutes well spent. And then I want to discuss just one of the things she said.



Phillips pointed out that history is important, particularly in this case, where a massive distortion of Jewish history provides the underpinning to the delegitimization of Israel so rampant in Europe (and to a lesser extent in the US).

The story is told, Phillips explained, that Israel was created to expiate the guilt of Europeans for the Holocaust and to solve the refugee problem it caused. Millions of European Jews were sent to Palestine where they displaced an indigenous ancient ‘Palestinian’ civilization. So no wonder, the story goes, the ‘Palestinians’ are angry. Why should they pay the price for Hitler’s actions (which, by the way, they will praise in a different context)?

I add to this the idea that the Jews are ‘colonists’ who ‘oppress’ the ‘non-white’ Palestinian Arabs, which opens a whole other reservoir of European guilt. Is it surprising that on the basis of this story even the most liberal (in the non-political sense) fair-minded person will think that while perhaps Hamas is a little indiscriminate in its rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, on the whole its behavior is understandable?

The problem is that the story is wholly false.

The indigenous people of the land of Israel are the Jews, who had an empire there for hundreds of years. They suffered invasions and genocides, and were (partially) dispersed throughout the world by a succession of pagan, Christian and Muslim conquerors. But they never wholly abandoned their land and the Diaspora never gave up its yearning to return.

This reality was recognized by the international community when it granted Britain the Palestine Mandate to govern the land in trust for the Jewish people (as we know, Britain betrayed this trust, but that’s another story).

Native American Studies and the Big Lies About Israel

...By attempting to portray the Palestinians as the “indigenous people” of the territory on which the State of Israel and the administered territories exist and the Jews as the colonial settlers, they are perpetrating the big lie of Palestinian history. Jews are not foreigners in Israel as Europeans were in Africa. They happen to be the indigenous people of their ancient homeland and efforts to deny this isn’t scholarship. Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and those who would deny them the same rights accorded other peoples are practicing bias, not scholarship.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
18 December '13..

We’ve reported about the decision of the American Studies Association to join the boycott of Israel. Supporters of the economic war against the Jewish state calling for institutions to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel have failed to gain much traction even in academia, let alone mainstream sectors of American society. As Jonathan Marks noted here the national council of the ASA that endorse the BDS resolution is largely compose of radicals. But they are not alone. The latest group of academic outliers to back the boycott is the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. As the Jerusalem Post reports:

Ohio State English professor Chadwick Allen, the president of the association and coordinator of American Indian Studies at Ohio State, wrote on the association’s website that the move followed a “member-generated” petition asking that the group “formally support the Boycott of Israeli Academic and Cultural Institutions that was initiated by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.”

Over the course of several months, Allen wrote, the NAISA council reached a consensus to support the boycott, and wrote their own declaration of support for the boycott. The document reads that the NAISA Council “protests the infringement of the academic freedom of Indigenous Palestinian academics and intellectuals in the Occupied Territories and Israel who are denied fundamental freedoms of movement, expression, and assembly, which we uphold.”

That another group of campus radicals with doctorates in subjects that are geared toward furthering left-wing theories would join the boycott of Israel is no surprise. That they don’t boycott China in sympathy with Tibet or any number of Arab and Muslim countries for their oppression of minorities is just the usual hypocrisy to be found on campus these days. But there are two points in their rant worth responding to.

One is the notion that Palestinians in the territories and Israel are denied “fundamental freedoms of movement, expression, and assembly.” This is simply false.

Israel? There are Norwegians who absolutely do get it

...Jews were indigenous to the region 1,000 years before the Islamic conquest, with an uninterrupted presence not just in Palestine, but all over the ‘Arab’ world. The issue turns on its head the common misconception that Israel is an outpost of western colonialism and imperialism. The 7th century Arab invasion turned native Jews and Christians into minorities in their own lands, converting them to Islam, appropriating their shrines and erasing their history.

Lyn Julius..
Times of Israel..
21 June '13..

To put it mildly – Norway is not known for its sympathy to Israel, or indeed Jews. Arguably, anti-Zionist waters run deep in its sleepy fjords. The celebrated lawyer and advocate Alan Dershowitz received an Arctic welcome and was prevented from lecturing at Norwegian universities. A recent cartoon in the mass circulation Dagbladet marks a slide into mindboggling anti-Semitism.

Thus it came as a pleasant surprise to read of the experiences of David M Weinberg, Director of Public Affairs at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. Weinberg spent a week with activists of Med Israel for Fred (MIFF), a dynamic Norwegian pro–Israel group. He writes:

Norwegian MIFF activists have learned that it is simply not enough to explain Israel’s security dilemmas or to revisit Israel’s diplomatic generosity toward the Palestinians. What’s needed is a much more basic restatement of Israel’s cause and purpose: Israel as a grand historic reunion of people and land, as a shelter for the Jewish People, and as a just and moral actor in the medieval and violent Arab Middle East.

One issue in particular delivers a ‘bombshell’ – or a ‘knockout punch’: Jewish refugees from Arab countries:

Particularly important in this regard is education of the non-Jewish public about the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Nobody knows about the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were expelled from Arab lands and absorbed by Israel, and when they learn of this it dramatically changes the discourse. As opposed to a conversation about Palestinian rights vs Israeli security, the conversation becomes a debate about a balance of rights: about Israeli/Jewish rights and Palestinian/Arab rights.

MIFF has some 7,000 members, mostly in western Norway’s Bible Belt. One of its leaders, Odd Myrland, told Weinberg:

This evens out the playing field, and forces people to think about justice for Israel. We’ve extensively tested this messaging over a long period of time and it is a bombshell. Jewish refugees from Arab lands is our successful knockout punch. We mustn’t ignore this important issue.

Some might object to the expression ‘knockout punch ‘: It trivializes an issue that goes to the heart of justice, human rights, and the Arab/Islamist conflict with Israel and the Jews. But if advocacy is a slanging match between rival narratives, the Jewish refugee issue is a surefire debate winner.

Inserting Jewish refugees into the discourse pays other dividends. Jews were indigenous to the region 1,000 years before the Islamic conquest, with an uninterrupted presence not just in Palestine, but all over the ‘Arab’ world. The issue turns on its head the common misconception that Israel is an outpost of western colonialism and imperialism. The 7th century Arab invasion turned native Jews and Christians into minorities in their own lands, converting them to Islam, appropriating their shrines and erasing their history.

As They Say, It's All About Location, Location, Location!

...The best outcome, then, is the very outcome that has actually ensued: That the Jews have set up their state in their ancestral homeland of the Land of Israel a.k.a. Palestine, the only place in the world they can fight for with self-confidence, for they are its one and only indigenous people.

Ziontruth..
Israel Thrives..
19 June '13..

We mustn’t be so hard on the anti-Zionists; a lot of them don’t really think the Jews deserve to be stateless forever, in fact they’re generous souls who think there’s no problem with the Jews having a state of their own, just not in Palestine. From the soft-spoken ones who argue the point in academic treatises to the trolls who dump on pro-Israel forums with stuff like “Next Year in Brooklyn!” (because everybody knows Solomon’s Temple was built in Brooklyn /sarc; but just make the slightest suggestion that the non-Jewish “Palestinian nation” is a recent invention and those same people flare in righteous anger), the anti-Zionists say the only problem with the Jewish state is the chosen location.

This brings me to a series of little thought-experiments, but before I begin, I wish to clear the difference between the anti-Zionist stance and the different “Bad Neighborhood” position voiced by various people such as the late Yoram Kaniuk and isolationists. As one American paleoconservative and a true isolationist (a lot of them only pretend to be isolationists, right before spewing the same anti-American and anti-Zionist points you’d get from the Far Left) put it to me on some forum, “I don’t care about the Middle East conflict either way, but you’ve got to realize you’ve built your state in a bad neighborhood.” That’s a position I can respect. My only disagreement is, as with the quote on the back cover of Kaniuk’s book, is that it’s out of date: True, Israel is in a bad neighborhood, but our neighbors are no longer confined to the Middle East, as the recent news about Boston, London and Stockholm make clear.

But let me get back to the anti-Zionists, the ones who do care about the Middle East conflict of all the many conflicts in the world for some reason, the ones who say the Jews had the right to set up a state of their own (how kind of them) but they should have set it in a place not already inhabited by “a people who had been on the place for generations.” That’s already one big assumption—to name just a few examples going against that narrative, the family of Arab Knesset member Azmi Bisharah settled in Palestine in the 19th century, and Arafat and Edward Said both came from Egypt—but you know what, I’ll go with it now. Let us embark on a counterfactual journey where we survey the relations of a Jewish state set up elsewhere in the world.

Where do we begin? The most famous proposal for a Jewish national polity outside of Palestine was, of course, Uganda. Actually, Herzl did not suggest setting up the permanent Jewish state there; he suggested it only as a temporary place of shelter while his quest for a charter from the Ottoman Sultan for Jewish inhabitation of Palestine was in the process, not knowing that the Ottoman Empire was not long for the world. But what if, by unforeseen circumstances, Uganda had become the Jewish state?

The ease with which demands are made of the Jewish state.

The Jewish nationalist who argues from the standpoint of the Jews being the indigenous Palestinians is a new creature even when he brings up one of the many other arguments for Zionism. He gives the message that concessions on Israel’s part are not something that can be taken for granted, and that the demands of the Israeli Jews reflect necessities and not mere conveniences.

Ziontruth..
Israel Thrives..
17 June '13..

With all the discussions of various peace plans for the Middle East, one important issue, one not having to do with the size that Israel should be, is usually overlooked: The ease with which demands, of any size, of any nature, are made of the Jewish state.

In complaining about those demands that give the impression as if Israel were a sprawling empire to rival the old Mongol one in breadth, while the Arabs act as if merely agreeing to sit opposite the Jews at the negotiations table were a concession beyond price for them, the reply given by the anti-Zionists is usually on these lines: “What do you expect? You’re the powerful, oppressing party, while the Palestinians [Arab colonists in Palestine. –Ziontruth] are the weak and oppressed. It is only just that the powerful oppressor must make concessions to the weak and oppressed.”

I could point out counterexamples. For all the decades when Lebanon, riven by sectarian strife, was brought down to the status of a Syrian fief in all but name, our justice-seeking supporters of the weak and oppressed had nary a peep against the powerful, oppressing Syrian state, not even a “Free Lebanon” sticker campaign; and that is just one among so many examples. However, my purpose here is not to regale the reader with more stories of the world’s hypocrisy, which, as far as I am concerned, is a given. My concern is with the way Israel attracts such easily made demands, and especially why Israel and Zionist Jews do not stand up to that ease of making demands as strongly as they should. I opine that the state of affairs is a consequence of the Western mode of thinking.

The Hypercritical West

Some may think that a criticism of the West will now follow. It will not. Democracy, science and technology born of the Western tradition are among the good things Israel has taken aboard from its inception, and not for a moment do I think the Jewish state should turn away from them. However, it must be acknowledged that good things taken with a system usually come with the bad things also, and this explains why Israel is beset with much of the same national-political irrationality that is found in the politics of other Western states.

The late and unlamented Arab writer Edward Said asserted throughout his entire book Orientalism—an intellectual holding cell carefully crafted to make any defense of the West synonymous with justification of colonialism—that the West never reflected on itself and never took care to study other cultures and value systems unless there were imperial gains to be had from it. This strikes me as a projection on Said’s part, since such a thesis fits the Arab/Islamic world far better, while the critics of Orientalism have pointed out a Western objective and self-critical tradition going all the way back to Herodotus. The European slave trade in Africans was as bad as the Arab, but the Western world also produced the Abolitionist movement and even fought a civil war in America to free the slaves, while the Arab world has yet to acknowledge their role in the slave trade, and outlawed slavery only recently (Saudi Arabia did so in 1961) under Western influence, with clandestine slavery still in existence to this day.

Need a Pushback Template for the BDSers?

Ziontruth..
Israel Thrives..
02 June '13..

Of late, celebrity-driven BDS by Hawking, Waters and Alice “Space Alien Conspiracy Theories R Us” Walker have been on the newswires, with the last of those personages writing an impassioned letter to pop star Alicia Keys against her decision to have a concert in Israel.

I couldn’t care less about the thoughts of pop luminaries regarding Israel, or even Hawking, which given their areas of expertise gives them no more authority on the subject than I have. I was interested, however, in the comparison of the open letter Walker wrote to Keys with those written by pro-Israel bloggers and columnists to BDSers such as Roger Waters. The anti-Israel letters talk about justice, morality and the struggle against “racism, colonialism and apartheid,” while the pro-Israel letters emphasize Israel’s liberties (women’s rights, same-sex rights and the like), vibrant economy and achievements in science and medicine.

It’s no secret I think the ideological argumentation leveled against Israel can be countered only with an equal and opposite reaction, and since I’m done preachin’ it with endless verbiage, let me lead by example by offering a template for an open letter that argues against BDS on ideological lines.

Dear (Name),

As an admirer of your (scientific achievements / music / et al.) I was disappointed to learn of your decision, probably unintentional, to join yourself with the unjust cause of imperialist aggression carried out against the indigenous Palestinian nation, the Jewish nation, on their one and only land in the world. I am quite certain there was no malicious intent behind your support of such a cause, but the acceptance of prevalent falsehoods has set many people to support an agenda that goes against everything they would normally stand for.

The Middle East, the Jews and the Ummah

Bataween..
Point of No Return..
24 April '13..

"A well-meant mistake of history."A few years back, thus was Israel described by a certain Mr Cohen, a journalist for the Washington Post. In response, Zaki Elia, who lives in London, wrote an email to him. It was 'a delivery failure' : Mr Cohen never got to read it. Lately, Zaki stumbled upon it while tidying his old mails and thought to share it. (with thanks: Michelle)

To Mr Cohen, from a Middle Easterner.

Your analysis of the state of affairs in the Middle East where the state of Israel has been labelled as a ”well meant mistake of history” because of the persecution of European Jewry is puzzling today taking into consideration that the great majority of the Jews living in Israel are from Sephardi and Mizrahi origin. You may not be familiar with the Mizrahi Jews as they have been conveniently and mistakenly classified as Sephardim, from Spain and not the Middle East. I am a Mizrahi Jew - meaning Easterner, the first generation outside the Middle east.

The Mizrahi Jews lived in Alexandria, Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad and beyond for two or three millennia before Mohammed had his revelations and proclaimed his subsequent Ummah. Today there are no Jews to speak of in the Muslim world: they all moved including the communities of North Africa. (About one million of them migrated - dare I say an unrecognised equivalent to the Palestinian tragedy?) Some moved to Europe and the New World, others to Israel following a similar pattern of persecution that the Ashkenazim went through, thankfully without the outrage of the Holocaust.

Describing Palestine as “a Turkish colony” is fundamentally inaccurate and reveals your misinformed judgement. The Turks were the custodians of the Caliphate, the near-holy regency from Mohammed. Palestine was a province of the Ummah, and not a colony. You might say this is semantic, but the difference between Empire and Ummah is the difference between the profane and the sacred. The Ummah is the utopian equivalent of the promised land: Mohammed and his “khalifas/regents” brought the Ummah about by subjugating, pacifying and Islamising by the sword in the name of Allah. A truly Holy Empire, where Christians and Jews were tolerated, patronised and periodically persecuted. As dhmmis, they will eventually see the inevitability of the Universal Mahommedan vision . Therefore it would have been more accurate and true to use the expression 'a Muslim province '(loosely defined by topography and taxability).

That said, the true tragedy of the Middle East is one of cartography. The reasons behind the crisp borders are Western reasons. Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Kuwait, Syria, Iraq are all historical mistakes. I find it mystifying that you should single out Israel, otherwise, how would you explain the dysfunctional societies of Iraq, Lebanon and others repressed and unexpressed, or the obliteration of Kurdistan? Or large swathes of Armenia? And what is the legitimacy of Pakistan and Bangladesh beyond Islam? Both these nations created refugee problems that dwarfed those of Palestine in human scale and magnitude, and yet we do not hear of them. The same parallel tragedy is playing havoc on the continent of Africa : borders were defined oblivious to the reality of the people living on that land. Let me assure you I am not an anti-colonialist in the Cold War mould. Borders are important, necessary concepts to manage an ever-shrinking world based on universal human rights as enshrined by the United Nations.