Sultan Knish: The Kushnerites and the Whiny Left

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
10 May '11

McCarthyism is is one of the favorite words in the dictionary of the left. "McCarthyites" are awful people who get "brilliant and talented artists" who happen to sympathize with mass murderers fired from lucrative positions. The 'victims' of McCarthyism sympathized with Communist regimes where dissenting artists were tortured, imprisoned and executed. The victims of these victims went to the gulags. And the 'victims' lost out on a few movie deals.

Long after McCarthy's death, the left is still battling McCarthyism everywhere it finds it. Whenever an 'artiste' is called to account for supporting mass murderers, there the left rises in outrage against the latest manifestation of the scourge of decency. The insulting and outrageous idea that the cultural elite should be held accountable in some public way for the human consequences of their radical causes. To hold a leftist morally accountable for Stalin, Mao or Castro is McCarthyism. And the left's swarm against any such effort is Kushnerism.

Tony Kushner is the latest victim of McCarthyism, suffering the awful indignity of being briefly denied an honorary CUNY degree, after being caught supporting a terrorist regime whose victims, men, women and children lie in the hospitals and the cold dead ground. A moral reckoning that would seem petty to men, women and children murdered by the terrorist regime he supports..A brief delay for the reward of a lifetime of writing plays in which actors shriek at each other about Capitalism, AIDS and McCarthyism in between chardonnay breaks.

Poor Tony, with all his Tony awards, his Pulitzer, and his marriage to an Entertainment Weekly editor, forced to wait a few extra days to add a sixteenth honorary degree to his shelf. He may be the man that Steven Spielberg chose to rewrite the Munich Massacre into a morality play about the futility of fighting terrorism, he may be dubbed a "brilliant and talented artist" and the moral voice of Fire Island, but he almost lost out on an honorary degree from an institution known in New York to be just like home, because when you go there, they have to take you in

(Read full "The Kushnerites and the Whiny Left")

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Tony Judt and Israel

Benjamin Kerstein
newledger.com
30 August '10

When a man dies, especially when he dies of something uniquely horrifying and grotesque, people always tend to remember them well, if for no other reason than pity for their suffering. This seems to have been the case with historian and essayist Tony Judt, who died this month from the degenerative disease known as ALS. The sight of Judt reduced, and reduced very quickly, from an intellectual in late middle age to a wheelchair-bound invalid incapable of breathing on his own would give even the most cold-hearted some pause when penning his obituary. In those last months it was, no doubt, a terrible life and, in the end, a terrible death.

If we can, however, separate a man’s work from his life – and I think we must – then his work can and must also be separated from his death. I am mostly ignorant of Judt’s most famous work, which dealt with the post-war history of Europe, though I have it on good authority that it is decidedly brilliant. I have no doubt that this is probably so. But the truth is that during the final years of his life Judt was most famous, most celebrated, and most quoted because of his outspoken belief that the state of Israel should not exist.

Some may regard such a characterization of his stance as unfair, but it is worth pointing out what lies beneath the euphemism known as the “binational state.” Judt’s stance was not a crude one, of course; it was eminently intellectual and erudite in nature. But nonetheless, Israel’s end is more or less what it amounted to, and the persistent refusal of both him and his defenders to acknowledge this was and is to their discredit.

(Read full article)

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Is Britain Anti-Semitic?

Soeren Kern
Hudson New York
19 August '10

Britain's political class is debating its attitudes towards Jews and the Jewish state.

Consider British Prime Minister David Cameron, who recently jumped on the anti-Israel bandwagon by declaring that Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a "prison camp." Or consider Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who has a long history of bashing the Jewish state. Or consider many British opinion shapers, whether on the political left of right, in government, the media or academia, who have for years exhibited an unhealthy obsession with Israel.

Or consider Queen Elizabeth. Although she has been on the British throne for almost 60 years, during which she has made over 250 official overseas visits to 129 different countries, she has never made an official visit to Israel. (Nor, for that matter, has a single member of the British royal family.)

The row started after Israeli President Shimon Peres told Tablet Magazine, a Jewish online publication, that Britain has a Jewish problem. In an interview with Israeli historian Benny Morris, Peres said there that has always been something "deeply pro-Arab" and "anti-Israel" in the British establishment. Asked whether this was due to anti-Semitism, Peres replied, "Yes, there is also anti-Semitism. There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary." He added: "There are several million Muslim voters [in Britain], and for many members of parliament, that is the difference between getting elected and not getting elected."

In the face of a media storm, Peres later clarified his remarks, saying that his comments were taken out of context, and that he "never accused the British people of anti-Semitism." Nevertheless, his comments hit a raw nerve and unleashed an angry wave of denials from all sides of Britain's political spectrum.

(Read full article)

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UN Moves Forward to Implement Goldstone Report

New UN committee members and UN staffer have anti-Israel connections.


Anne Bayefsky
The Weekly Standard
14 July '10

Among the multitude of attacks on Israel that the United Nations has sponsored over the decades, last year’s Goldstone report on the 2009 Gaza war stands out for its dangerous distortions of fact and law. Now the UN Human Rights Council has sponsored a second-team of investigators to press forward with the report’s implementation. Just as with round one, the United Nations has guaranteed the result of round two by selecting individuals whose independence is compromised from the start.

This second rendition of Goldstone was crafted by a March 2010 resolution of the Human Rights Council. That resolution first declares that Israel – and only Israel – committed “unlawful acts” in the Gaza war. And then it establishes a committee of experts to monitor and assess all judicial and other proceedings taken by Israel to respond to the General Assembly’s endorsement of the Goldstone report and its long list of supposed Israeli crimes.

The mandate also asks the new committee to assess the proceedings of the enigmatic “Palestinian side.” In the many resolutions on the Gaza war from the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council no mention is ever made of “Hamas,” which keeps with the UN fiction that the war entailed wanton Israeli aggression in a vacuum. Instead of eight years of rocket attacks on Israel’s civilian population and an elected government that openly advocates genocide, the resolution creating the Goldstone inquiry describes the problem with the Palestinian side as “crude rockets…result[ing] in the loss of four civilian lives and some injuries.”

The fact that the mandate of the Goldstone inquiry was tainted from the outset, and that its successor is cut from the same cloth, did not deter three more lawyers from taking this latest UN job. They are German Christian Tomuschat (chair), Malaysian Param Cumaraswamy, and American Mary Davis. As it turns out, the takers and their UN associates have more in common than first meets the eye.

(Read full article)

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Will American Jews Accept the Obama Administration’s “Charm” Offensive?

Ron Radosh
pajamasmedia.com
04 May '10

I suspect there may be something wrong with many of the leading lights of the American Jewish community, who are succumbing to the phony charm offensive of the Obama administration. Maybe it’s a case of denial. As a two-week-old report by Laura Rozen of Politico put so well, “The White House is engaged in an aggressive effort to reassure Jewish leaders that the tense relationship between the Obama administration and the Israeli government that has played out in public in the past few months does not signify any fundamental change in U.S. policy.” The problem is precisely that they are just reassurances which do not in any way indicate a fundamental shift in Obama’s new anti-Israeli policy.

One White House spokesman told Rozen that the administration has always “been consistent in our rhetoric.” Rhetoric is one thing; reality, however, is another. Sending administration spokesmen to say kind words is so transparent a PR maneuver that it is rather amazing that anyone thinks it will work. But the reasons for it are quite clear. As a congressional staffer put it, they are all concerned “that the White House is losing the Jewish community,” and that concern might well translate into Republican votes in the near future. The effect of the ads I discussed earlier by Elie Wiesel, Ronald Lauder and David A. Harris could simply not be ignored.

Yet liberal Jewish groups, grasping at straws in the hope that Obama will stand with Israel and the special relationship between the U.S. and the Jewish state, have quickly sought to reassure their members that all is well, despite evidence to the contrary. All it took for Hadassah to inform its members that all is well were some carefully chosen words from David Axelrod. On April 29th, a backgrounder alert sent to its members informed them that “the Obama administration has responded to concerns from the Jewish community with a letter to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and speeches by prominent administration officials to Jewish organizations, affirming the administration’s support for Israel and the need for peace.”

Last Friday, I attended the evening plenary session at the American Jewish Committee national conference in Washington, D.C., where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received a standing ovation and a very warm reception. Her speech was a perfect example of reassuring spin meant to wow the crowd. “We know,” Clinton told the audience, “that Israel faces unique challenges. A nation forced to defend itself at every turn, living under existential threat for decades. We Americans may never fully understand the implications of this history on the daily lives of Israelis – the worry that a mother feels watching a child board a school bus or a child watching a parent go off to work. But we know deep in our souls that we have an unshakable bond and we will always stand not just with the Government of Israel but with the people of Israel.”

Instead of addressing the specifics and the reasons Lauder, Ed Koch and others have pointed to, Secretary Clinton merely asserted “that there has been some of what he called ‘noise and distortion’ about this Administration’s approach in the Middle East. Over the past month, we have attempted to remove any ambiguity. The President and this Administration have repeatedly reaffirmed our commitment to Israel’s security in word and in deed.” On Iran, for example, she said, “We are now working with our partners at the United Nations to craft tough new sanctions. The United States is committed to pursuing this diplomatic path. But we will not compromise our commitment to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.”

(Read full article)

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J Street Can No Longer Claim to be Pro-Israel

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
21 April '10

J Street has gone over to the dark side. It claims to be "a pro-Israel, pro peace lobby." It has now become neither. Its Executive Director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, has joined the off key chorus of those who falsely claim that Israel, by refusing to make peace with the Palestinians, is placing the lives of American soldiers at risk.

This claim was first attributed to Vice President Joe Biden and to General David Petraeus. It was quickly denied by them but continued to have a life of its own in the anti-Israel media. It was picked up by Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer, Pat Buchanan and others on the hard right and hard left who share a common disdain for the Jewish state. It is the most dangerous argument ever put forward by Israel bashers. It is also totally false.

It is dangerous for two reasons. First, it seeks to reduce support for Israel among Americans who, quite understandably and correctly, care deeply about American soldiers being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel has always understood this and that's why it is one of the few American allies who has never asked the United States to put its troops in harm's way in defense of Israeli citizens. If Americans were to believe the falsehood that Israel were to blame for American deaths caused by Islamic extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for the Jewish state would suffer considerably.

It is also dangerous because its implication is that Israel must cease to exist: the basic complaint that Muslim extremists have against Israel is not what the Jewish state does, but what it is: a secular, non-Muslim, democracy that promotes equal rights for women, gays, Christians and others. Regardless of what Israel does or doesn't do, its very existence will be anathema to Muslim extremists. So if Israel's actions were in fact a cause of American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan--which they are not--then the only logical solution would be Israel's disappearance. This might be acceptable to the Walts, Mearsheimers and Buchanans of the world, but it is surely not acceptable to Israel or anyone who claims to be pro-Israel.

(Read full article)

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Why Would Indians Need Israeli Pilots?

Anna Mahjar-Barducci
Hudson New York
12 February '10

Sixty-five years after the end of World War II in which the Nazis took the lives of six million Jews, the Jews around the world are still as much in danger as they were in the 1930’s, if not more so.

In Europe anti-Semitism comes out mostly disguised as anti-Zionism. Almost all of the European Left is anti-Israeli, especially in Spain, where the anti-Israel policy of the socialist government of PM Zapatero and FM Moratinos is now notorious. It took more than a year, for instance, to close the channel connection to the Hispasat satellite of the Hizbullah TV, al-Menar, which was thereby able to continue broadcasting more than a year of hate and Islamist propaganda into Latin America. In a country with the most anti-Catholic government in its history, but with a multicultural obsession for Islam, Al-Manar TV was part of “freedom of press.”

During years in Pakistan, it was surprising to note how many metropolitan legends circulated within the country having, at their center, a Jewish plot. When Pakistan exploded its first nuclear device, for example, people said they had been compelled to do so to deter India, which was about to bomb them, and that shortly before the blast, Indian bombers, with Israeli pilots [sic], were already warming up the engines on some runaway. The logical question is: Why in Heaven would the Indians need Israeli pilots?

(Read full article)
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A Strategy for reversing the tide of anti-Israeli bigotry

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
07 February '10

Today’s Jerusalem Post runs a commentary by Professor Gil Troy which should be read by anyone who is fed up with the kind of reactive, take-action-only-after-the-roof-has-fallen-in approach that has been a characteristic of pro-Israeli advocacy for far too long.

Troy pegs his piece off this year’s forthcoming “Israeli Apartheid Week” from March 1 to March 14, (yes, that’s right, their intellectual capacities do not even extend to knowing how many days there are in a week!). Events will be held in cities across the world and Troy sensibly suggests that action should be taken to ensure that the organisers and participants do not have things all their own way.

He offers for consideration a three-pronged strategy which he characterises as the “Three P’s”:

First, “Push-back”:

“We will rarely sway with mere facts someone who has swallowed the apartheid libel and drunk the anti-Israel Kool-Aid. Our target is wavering Jewish students and the vast uninformed and uninterested middle. We should play off the radical demonizers, making them look extreme and foolish as we demonstrate our informed commitment, our enlightened passion, the rightness and righteousness of our cause.”

Second, “Position Israel better”:

“The truth is our friend. Israel has compromised - and seen withdrawals from territory and other concessions “rewarded” with violence. Until critics deal with that, they are simply Israel-bashing with no real commitment to peace.”

(Read full article)
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C-SPAN's Washington Journal Caller Problem

Myron Kaplan/Eric Rozenman
CAMERA Media Analysis
03 February '10

C-SPAN hosts are typically overly respectful and too patient as a handful of frequent callers spew invective and falsehoods against Jews and Israel. No other ethnic or religious group or nation is repeatedly vilified on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal 3-hour daily broadcasts. This vilification is enabled if not positively encouraged by C-SPAN‘s receptivity especially the feckless performance of the hosts. Many C-SPAN viewers, perhaps not knowing the facts and not hearing them from network hosts or, often, from guests, are at risk of being influenced by those callers seemingly driven by an obsessive pathological desire to falsely blame major world problems on the Jews and Israel.

This group of egregious frequent callers features a particular pair, a man and woman, plus their sound-alikes, working basically from the same script. For example, on two consecutive days in January, the Washington Journal host for both days, Paul Orgel, listened politely, first on January 1 at 9:51 AM to "Janet from Birmingham, Alabama" and then on January 2 at 7:50 AM to "Carol from Scotsville, Arizona." Janet’s call took place during a segment whose topic was "Social Networking & Political Participation" (no guest was on hand) while the topic for Carol’s call was "Rise of Al-Qaeda in Yemen." The latter time, the guest was Christopher Boucek of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The following video clip (3.5 minutes) contains the Janet/Carol calls:

(Click here for full transcript plus video)
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Learning From The Turkish Wringer

Batya Medad
Shilo Musings
14 January '10

Turkey has now crowned its growing list of antisemitic, anti-Israel acts by upgrading diplomatic threats in response to a silly faux pax by Danny Ayalon, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister.

There's something to learn from this.

No, it's not to treat Turkey (and other countries) more diplomatically. It's how we should be responding to diplomatic insults, antisemitic and anti-Israel acts and statements by other nations.

First of all, Israel must recognize that most, if not all, of our "close friendships" with other nations are very one-sided. We consider them great friends and they just like our tourist and import money. If our business is good for their economy their palms are open, but their hearts are closed. The Israeli mentality just doesn't get it. This is a very dangerous syndrome. It just causes more abuse, diplomatic slights and worse.

(Read full post)

Blair, Israel, and the Global Struggle

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
10 January '10

In a weekend interview with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Haaretz asked why British public opinion is “the most anti-Israel” in Europe. “Look, there’s criticism everywhere,” Blair responded. “But that’s partly because people don’t understand how difficult this situation is when you come under attack, your civilians come under attack, and you’re a democratic government and you’re expected to respond.”

Even by itself, that’s a remarkable statement: the problem, according to Blair, is not Israel’s actions; it’s that other Western countries, not facing the same daily assaults, refuse to recognize that if they did, they might respond similarly.

Even more remarkable, however, is the next sentence: “I mean, we face this [situation] continually. We face it now, actually, in places like Afghanistan.”

In short, Westerners should understand Israel because they’re in the same boat: their own armies are causing civilian casualties “in places like Afghanistan” for the exact same reasons.

So why do many Westerners either refuse to see the parallels or regard their own armies’ behavior with similar incomprehension and outrage? In Blair’s view, the heart of the problem is that too many Westerners fail to understand that they face a determined enemy waging a long-term global struggle, not a series of discrete, unrelated local conflicts.

“People sometimes say to me, no, it’s not really Iraq, it’s Afghanistan,” he said. “Someone else will say, no it’s Pakistan, and someone else will say it’s Iraq, and someone else will say it’s Yemen. But actually it’s all of these because in different ways, they represent different challenges that are unified by one single movement with a single ideology. And this is going to be resolved, in my view, over a long period of time. But what is important is that wherever it is fighting us, we’re prepared to fight back … unfortunately, we can’t say: ‘Look, let’s concentrate it here, but not here, and here, and here,’ because that’s not the way this thing’s working. …

(Read full post)
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The Lunatic Left

Pilar Rahola
PilarRahola.com
October '08

"Dear friends, of AIPAC, I finish.
I am not Jewish. Ideologically I lean to the left and I am a journalist. Why have I not adopted an anti-Israel stance like the majority of my European colleagues?...."

AIPAC Policy Conference, 2008.
Washington.

Good Morning.
I´m Honoured to be here today.
The title of my speech is: The Lunatic Left

“Kill that infidel pig!” On September 19, 2006 that simple order, issued by an Imam, changed the life of the French high school teacher Robert Redeker. Internet multiplied the threat in dozens of Islamic websites, posting his home address, telephone numbers and data concerning his children. Since that day his entire family has lived under police protection, and he has been forced to abandon his job, home and way of life. His crime? Having written an article in the French newspaper Le Figaro under the title, “What should the free world do while facing Islamist intimidation?” In it, Redeker defended democratic freedom and warned of the danger of radical Islam. Ironically, by defending the freedom of our society, he lost his own. In his recent book Il faut tenter de vivre (Dare to Live), he recounts the story of his life in hiding. A life condemned to an inner exile in his own country. For exemple, he could´nt announce the sudden death of his father for fear of being discovered. Although his a member of the editorial board of the leftist elite magazine, Les Temps Modernes, founded by J. P. Sartre, he has been deserted by the leaders of the French left, who have lambasted him for his criticism of Islam.

Thus, like Salman Rushdie, Talisma Nasreen and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Robert Redeker has discovered that one part of the European left is betraying freedom. He speaks of the menace of Islamic fascism, which threatens, terrorizes, enslaves and kills. And his leftist companions accuse him of being Islamophobic and racist. He denounces the world’s passiveness in the face of the slavery of women, clitoral ablation, the use of children as bombs and terrorist fanaticism. And his left-wing comrades accuse him of being disrespectful of other cultures. Like myself and many others, Robert Redeker defends an Islam free of fanatics, dictators, terrorists and totalitarians. And our leftist comrades leave us alone to make that defense. He assumes, then, the moral responsibility of defending the Human Rights Charter against the encroachment of radical Islamism, which is the new totalitarian ideology the world is confronting. And our leftist comrades betray that very moral commitment. That is, we are in a moment of history which demands a firm defense of freedom. The left should lead that defense. Unfortunately, the left is not up to the moral commitment, which this historical moment requires.

(Read full speech)
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Feeding the Crocodiles

Jonathan Spyer
GLORIA Center
12 March 05

(While written almost five years ago, I think this has stood the test of time. Europe is now being served.)

The internal peace of the democracies of western Europe is no longer assured. It is threatened by the growing presence, and growing confidence, of the organizations, activists and spokesmen of radical Islam. This is a phenomenon rarely remarked upon in Israel. It may yet have serious and damaging effects on European views of the Middle East conflict.

Observe: In July 2004, Ken Livingstone, mayor of London and a Labor Party member, hosted Imam Yusuf Qaradawi on a visit to the city. Qaradawi, an Egyptian with a Muslim Brotherhood background, is a resident of Qatar and a founder member of the Al-Jazeera TV channel. He is also the director of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, based in Dublin. Qaradawi is a keen supporter of suicide bombings in Israel, which he describes as 'martyrdom operations.' He has spoken of the inherent 'iniquity of the Jews as a community.' These views (in addition to suspected terrorist connections and his support, variously, for the execution by stoning of homosexuals and adulterous women) led to Qaradawi's being banned from entering the United States.

They did not prevent, however, the princely welcome afforded the controversial cleric by the elected mayor of London, who addressed a packed public meeting together with Qaradawi, praised the 'unacceptable truths' he has raised, and denounced the 'Islamophobic outcry' against him.

The public action of Mayor Livingstone, is, according to Jewish community activists in the UK, only the tip of the iceberg. They point to the presence of Muslim Brotherhood extremists such as Azzam Tamimi among the leadership of the Stop the War Coalition, which was raised to protest the war in Iraq (and organized a demonstration of over a million people in central London in April 2003).

Hebron-born Tamimi, in an interview in November on BBC's 'Hard Talk,' expressed his willingness to undertake a suicide bombing in Israel. The coalition has now morphed into a left-wing political party, improbably uniting Muslim Brothers and British leftists under one political roof.

In the very different context of France, as official recognition of communal differences increases, once again the representation of Muslim communities is falling into the hands of the extremists. Thus, the French Council of the Muslim Faith, created in December 2002 as a representative body of the Muslim community in France, is headed by a moderate, Dalil Boubakeur. The real power in the organization, however, is the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF), a Muslim Brotherhood-associated group.

The role of Tariq Ramadan, with his condemnations of Jewish 'communalism,' close relationships with key mainstream bodies (including the editorial staff of Le Monde Diplomatique) and quoting of Voltaire is of similar importance. Ramadan, surely a world master in the art of ambiguity, deems the killing of Israeli children in suicide bombings to be 'contextually explicable.' (He has similarly refused to condemn the stoning of female adulterers.)

Why does any of this matter? The shared goal of Qaradawi, Tamimi, Ramadan, the UOIF and other Islamist organizations in Europe is to effect a shift in the terms of the European debate. They seek to establish a foothold in the mainstream political discussion in Europe for elements of militant Islamist ideology. These elements include the delegitimization of Jewish communal activity, the normalizing of support for violence against Israelis and Jews, and of calls for the destruction of Israel. This is a long-term project, which through the slow build-up and nurturing of political power and influence is intended to eventually bring forth the fruit of profound shifts in policy.

(Read full article)
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How the Left turned on Israel

Colin Shindler
The Jewish Chronicle
23 December 09

Since the beginning of the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000, an important feature in the debate on the Israel-Palestine imbroglio has been a questioning of the legitimacy of Israel as a nation-state by sections of the political Left and the liberal and cultural intelligentsia in Britain.

Such opinion has moved from passionately supporting the right of the Jews to self-determination in 1948 (by figures such as Aneurin Bevan, Bertrand Russell and Tony Benn) to questioning that right over 60 years later.

Today, Israel is often seen as troublesome on a good day and illegitimate on a bad one. Like many Israelis, many wish to roll the borders back to the 1967 boundaries, but there is also a growing number who wish to return to 1948.

This disillusionment with Israel began before the conquests of the Six-Day War and the settlement drive on the West Bank.

Whereas the Old Left had fought Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the East End with the Jews, and lived through the Holocaust and the rise of Israel, the New Left came of age during the era of decolonisation in the 1960s. While Jews disproportionately participated in those anti-colonial struggles, the Shoah and the rise of Israel was not simply another historical event. Even for those born long after the war, it was understood that all Jews are survivors. This level of consciousness separates a majority of the Jewish Left from the broader British Left.

In 2009, a state with a Jewish majority in the Middle East does not sit easily with Marxist doctrine, post-colonial theory and Islamist belief. It is this inability to define Zionism and to classify the Jews which has brought together liberals, social democrats, Trotskyists, Stalinists and the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood front organisations.

(Read full article)

This article was based on Colin Shindler’s inaugural lecture at SOAS as the UK’s first Professor of Israeli Studies. His ‘The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right’ has just been published in paperback by IB Tauris
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Letter to Jimmy Carter Urges Action After Apology

Andrea Levin
CAMERA
24 December 09

CAMERA has sent a letter to Jimmy Carter after the former president, addressing the Jewish community in an open letter, offered an apology for anything he may have done to stigmatize Israel. After expressing wishes for peace, Carter noted that "we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel," and offered an "Al Het" — a plea for forgiveness which is part of the Jewish prayer on Yom Kippur — "for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so." (See more from JTA here and here.)

CAMERA's letter, which is published in its entirety below, urges the Carter join his words with concrete actions, specifically, the correction of false and exaggerated charges he made in a November Op-Ed in the International Herald Tribune.

The Dec. 23 letter follows:

(Read full post)

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Some people might have to believe Jimmy Carter, but you don't

Shmuel Rosner
Rosner's Domain
24 December 09

A couple of quick notes on Carter's apology to Jews (on which I also wrote a more lengthy Hebrew piece for this coming weekend):

1. Jewish organizations have to congratulate him and pretend to believe him. Jewish writers don't.

2. Jewish politicians and Israeli politicians have to act as if he means what he says. Jews with no political aspirations don't.

3. For him to deny that it's all about the grandson's race - namely, to deny the obvious reason for his mea-culpa - is just Carter being Carter.

4. And don't start with the maybe-he's-sincere unless you can reasonably explain why now, what happened so suddenly, so out of the blue, that had precipitated this apology. Carter might be annoying, but he isn't stupid, and is often cynically calculated. Think about possible motives. If you can't find one, it might be a sign that Carter is playing the most banal of political games.

4. Just a couple days ago, Carter wrote an article for the British Guardian. The situation in Gaza is intolerable, he explains, "Without ascribing blame to any of the disputing parties".

5. My guess: grandson or no grandson, it will not take long before Carter goes back to his old habits and says something soooo outrageous that no apology will be able to fix.

(Read full post)

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David Solway’s Hear, O Israel!: A Feast for the Conservative Mind

Barbara Kay
pajamasmedia.com
19 December 09

The new book by PJM's Solway asks why Jews are so prone to turn on themselves and make common cause with their enemies.

Hear, O Israel!
By David Solway
Canadian Values Press (Mantua Books)
181 pages; $25

On September 10, 2001, Canadian David Solway was merely an acclaimed poet, educator, and literary critic, warming himself (and his unexamined 1960s-era left-wing views) on a tranquil Greek island.

On September 11, 2001, he became a prophet. Watching the collapse of the twin towers on a television in his local café, Solway experienced a worldview-shattering epiphany that drew him into a singular fellowship of Western liberal intellectuals — Christopher Hitchens, Alain Finkelkraut, Michael Novak, and Nick Cohen, among them — who had been shocked by 9/11 into a fearful awareness of Islamist triumphalism’s threat to the West. As if making up for lost time, these ideological converts have brought a special urgency to their newly embraced roles as political Cassandras, perhaps none more apocalyptically than Solway.

Since then, Solway has put his formidable intellect to the service of myth-busting. In 2007, he published The Big Lie: On Terror, Anti-Semitism, and Identity, an indictment of the left’s collusion with Islamo-fascism in demonizing America and delegitimizing Israel.

In a way, Hear, O Israel!, partially adapted from published articles, is a recapitulation and updating of perils that have proliferated since the publication of The Big Lie. But this time Solway dwells at greater length and depth on what the Talmud calls sin’at achim, or brotherly hatred, a dynamic throughout Jewish civilization, currently embodied in the intensifying standoff between fellow-traveling anti-Zionists and Israel’s defenders.

Hear, O Israel!’s chapter titles give a good sense of what preoccupies him: “We Are All Israeli,” “The Darkness of Anti-Semitism,” “A House Divided,” and “The Question” (in a nutshell: why are Jews — not all, but a disconcerting number — so prone to turn on themselves and make common cause with those who would delight in their extermination?).

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Beyond mere hatred

Itamar Marcus/Barbara Crook (PMW)
Opinion/JPost
15 December 09

Palestinian anti-Semitism has long been recognized as a vehicle of hatred. From academics teaching that Judaism permits murder and rape of non-Jews, to religious leaders teaching that Islam demands the extermination of Jews, Palestinian anti-Semitism is a compelling force driving hatred and terror.

The Palestinian Authority depicts Jews as the archetypal force of evil throughout history. Jews are said to be responsible for all the world's problems: wars, financial crises, even the spreading of AIDS. Jews are a danger to humanity.

Whereas this paradigm has been used before, the Palestinians take it a step further, turning demonization of Jews into the basis for Palestinian denial of Israel's right to exist and a central component of Palestinian national identity.

Because of Jews' evil nature, according to this Palestinian principle, nations of the world have been involved in continuous defensive actions to protect themselves. The anti-Semitic oppression, persecution and expulsions suffered by Jews throughout history are presented as the legitimate self-defense responses of nations.

Ibrahim Mudayris, a PA religious official, delineated this ideology: "The Jews are a virus similar to AIDS, from which the entire world is suffering. This has been proven in history... Ask Britain!... Ask France!... Ask Portugal... Ask czarist Russia - who invited the Jews and they plotted to murder the czar!... Don't ask Germany what it did to the Jews, since the Jews are the ones who provoked Nazism to fight the entire world" (PA TV, May 13, 2005).

The apex of this Palestinian ideology, and possibly its purpose, is to use this demonization of Jews as the basis for denying Israel legitimacy and to present Palestinians as the ultimate victims. According to this Palestinian model, the Jews, who are said to have no history in the land, would never have considered coming to "Palestine": Europeans created Zionism as the final act in the long series of self-defense measures, to rid themselves of the "burden" of the Jews.

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Judicial jihad: Engaging a new battlefront

Shimon Samuels
Columns/JPost
14 December 09

On December 6, 2001, three months after the Durban hatefest, I attended the last meeting of its NGO Forum International Steering Committee in Geneva.

Though I had been successively elected and expelled, I now became privy to an eight-point plan attacking Israel as the last bastion of apartheid. It included educational, economic, cultural, diplomatic and legal campaigns to demonize, boycott, embargo and isolate the Jewish state.

Legal measures began with sporadic and - so far unsuccessful - attempts to arrest IDF reserve officers in countries of universal jurisprudence.

In 2005, I was charged with criminal defamation by a Franco-Palestinian charity, designated by the US as a terrorist organization. My sentence was one symbolic euro, which was politically too expensive. I won on appeal, and was taken to the French Supreme Court, where, this July, I was finally acquitted.

This long, agonizing and costly experience was emblematic of an epidemic of such suits designed to intimidate and silence pro-Jewish/Zionist activity. The charges against me were replicated against seven other targets - journalists, authors and a Christian Website. Parallel were the suits and countersuits relating to Muhammad al-Dura - the Palestinian child presented by French television as an IDF victim, in terms redolent of ritual murder.

Some denote such cases as "lawfare." Perhaps more appropriate would be "juridical jihad," due to the clearly Islamist context of the most litigious plaintiffs.

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Whither American Jewry and Berkeley’s Hillel?

The campus Jewish organization makes common cause with Israel's enemies while rejecting Jewish values.

Abraham H. Miller
PajamasMedia.com
07 December 09

When the Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick engaged the topic of “divergence” — the parting of ways between Israelis and the American Jewish left — she culled appropriate examples from Berkeley’s Hillel, a liberal Jewish campus organization. Even in Berkeley, Hillel’s antics are more than a source of embarrassment to the activist, pro-Zionist component of the Jewish community.

However, Hillel’s repeated bad behaviors of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist activities are absent opposition from Jewish community leaders. Their tactic is to deny every episode that reaches the public agenda, while giving a wink and a nod to what happens on campus. Caroline Glick is sure to be bombarded with denials, either from here or from the national organization. She should be comforted as to the accuracy of her renditions in direct portion to the intensity of these denials.

The current mantra concerning Hillel from those doing damage control is that Hillel has now changed. But the reality is that Glick’s description of a Hillel that is both anti-Jewish and anti-Israel is as true today as it ever was.

Yes, Hillel did finally celebrate Passover, after two years absence. And much is made of this as a harbinger of change. We are showcasing to the world that an organization committed to the preservation of Jewish values is actually celebrating Passover.

But what we would prefer not to publicize is that Hillel’s students were involved in this years’ Zionist-bashing, Israel Apartheid Week, sponsored by the virulent, anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine. Hillel’s Valentine’s Day invitation took an insensitive and provocative swipe at orthodox Jews, calling them “scary,” perhaps suggesting that they were somehow the equivalent of Islamist suicide bombers.

All of this came in the absence of a learning curve from past bad behavior that included celebrating Cinco de Mayo with a barbeque party on Yom Hazikoron, the day of remembrance for fallen Israeli soldiers, and holding a dance party on Yom Hashoah, the solemn day of mourning for the Holocaust.

While Hillel students have been cautioned by Hillel leadership not to demonstrate on behalf of Israel and have been told that the Israeli flag is an offensive, militaristic symbol, there has been no such cautions when it comes to Hillel-sponsoredKesher Enoshi working with Students for Justice in Palestine and bringing in Israeli John Kerrys to discuss war crimes in Gaza in an event known as “Breaking the Silence.”

Even the name itself is a misnomer. Israeli soldiers are free to speak their minds and to put up what they want on the Internet. There is no silence to break. There is no incarceration that awaits them for taking their ideas to the public. And among all soldiers, there is always the fringe of the fringe, the John Kerrys of the world, whose ego can only be sated by turning the deviant to the commonplace.

What of programs that will extol the behavior of the Israeli military as a professional and moral army, as former British Army Colonel Richard Kemp described them? Such programs are as likely to be held at Hillel as a program on the value of covert operations is likely to be held on the Berkeley campus.

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Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science and a former head of the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

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