When peace activists essentially hijacked the nation’s day of mourning - by Jonathan S. Tobin

We should mourn all victims of senseless violence, be they Jews, Arabs or any other people. But we should be wary of efforts to establish a false analogy between those who died to save Jewish lives and those whose purpose was to spill Jewish blood.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
28 April '20..

Outside of Israel, it was the alternative ceremony that got the most coverage. The official commemoration of Yom Hazikaron—the country’s Memorial Day that occurs the day before celebrating the Jewish state’s Independence Day—began with a one-minute siren that sounded throughout the country and continued at the Western Wall, where President Reuven Rivlin and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi led a small ceremony that, due to the coronavirus pandemic, had no audience.

Most Israelis, all too many of whom have lost a loved one or friend who was killed during the country’s wars or as a result of terrorism, will deal with the pain of this day of remembrance each in their own way though they will not be able to go to cemeteries, which are closed this year because of the ongoing lockdown.

But outside of Israel, most of the attention was neither on official efforts to remember the fallen nor the private grief of the families. Instead, much of the press was reporting about the efforts of peace activists to essentially hijack the nation’s day of mourning and turn it into a day devoted to promoting coexistence and mutual recognition of the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians.

This “Joint Memorial Day” event, which was started in 2006 by Israeli parents of fallen soldiers, is organized by two groups with both Israeli and Palestinian members: Combatants for Peace and Parents Circle Families Forum. But this year, it received an outpouring of support from American Jewish groups, including the Reform movement’s Union of Reform Judaism, J Street, the New Israel Fund, Peace Now, as well as the openly anti-Zionist IfNotNow and Churches for Middle East Peace, an interfaith Christian group that is also deeply hostile to the Jewish state.

(Continue to Full Column)

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.   

Some Thoughts Concerning Moral Relativism and Ethical Inversion in Gaza - by Shimona Tzukernik

...In the words of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee: “Not one of the Palestinians would have died if Hamas didn’t insist on firing rockets into Israel and then using civilians as human shields. … I’m not saying this because I’m a Jew. … I’m not a Jew. I believe there’s a difference however between good and evil. And I would never tell good to restrain itself. Nor would I ever treat evil as if it were the same as good.”

Shimona Tzukernik..
Algemeiner.com..
19 June '17..

I remember the day that I made a decision to invest my energies in spiritual rather than political activism. I was on an anti-apartheid march at the University of Witwatersrand, and as we emerged from the campus into Braamfontein, I noticed that some demonstrators had joined with a broad banner at the head of the procession. Painted in quick, broad strokes, it screamed “Zionism = Apartheid.”

Since that moment, the thrust of my life has been to seek change through spiritual rather than political activism.

I think that all anti-Zionism has a spiritual root of antisemitism. But the moral relativism and ethical inversion that is rampant in the global perception about Israel is so widespread, so deep and so intense, that it strikes me as having extra-ordinary spiritual implications.

Someone I very much respect once videographed the Dalai Lama, and asked him for a message to the Israeli and Palestinian people. The summarized, distilled version of the Dalai Lama’s message was this: “Regardless of your past history, the current reality is that you have to live side by side.”

At first glance, these words seemed innocuous. But when I thought about them more, I realized that the Dalai Lama was taking no position on who was right, and who was wrong; he acknowledged the historical narratives of both people, and pointed no fingers at who was primarily to blame for the conflict.

I disagree. I believe that the need to acknowledge everyone’s narrative as equally valid has stuck us in the muck of moral relativity, and worse — ethical inversion.

(Continue to Full Post)

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. 

.

Spending 45 minutes on settlements, and 45 seconds on terrorism - by Stephen Flatow

...To portray Israeli kindergarten construction as the equivalent of Palestinians blowing up buses, stabbing women and children, or lynching Israelis who accidentally drive into their neighborhood is nothing less than outrageous.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
28 December '16..

Like many others, I sat at my computer with baited breath Wednesday waiting for Secretary of State John Kerry to explain the background to the U.S. abstention on last week’s United Nations Security Council vote. And explain he did. But there were so many things wrong with what I will call Kerry’s farewell anti-Israel speech:

Spending 45 minutes on settlements, and 45 seconds on terrorism.

Claiming the Palestinians “live under Israeli military occupation” when 98 percent of them live under the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Condemning Israeli construction even within Jerusalem.

But if I had to choose the one aspect that bothered me the most, the part that made me want to shout at the computer screen, it would be the false moral equivalence.

(Continue to Full Article)

Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

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. 

.