Question. Should the Jewish community provide a ‘safe space’ for anti-Zionists? Jonathan S. Tobin

A community that wishes to have a future must understand that Israel provides the bedrock upon which Jewish civilization will rest. Those who wish to destroy that foundation deserve no “safe space.”

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

A prominent Jewish writer used the bully pulpit of The New York Times op-ed section last week to call for the elimination of the Jewish state. At the same time, an assistant rabbi at one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious synagogues took to Twitter to vent his anger at those who say the Jews are “indigenous” to the land of Israel.

Both Peter Beinart and Rabbi Andrue Kahn received some furious feedback. The debates about Beinart’s conversion to anti-Zionism and Kahn’s absurd doctrinaire woke linguistics was not without value, as it brought out into the open just how prevalent the dangerous ideas they are promoting. It also shone a light on the way such radicalism is not only undermining traditional liberal Jewish support for Israel, but also working its way into the mainstream.

Beinart and those who rallied behind Rabbi Andy’s dubious cause believe that anyone who stands up for Zionism and Israel isn’t only wrong, but represents the past, while the anti-Zionists are the Jewish future. As a result, they believe that it is incumbent on the Jewish community not only to listen to the kids who they think are cheering Beinart and Kahn, but to provide them with a “safe space” where they can be protected from the scorn being meted out to anti-Zionists from those who write in defense of Israel, Zionism and Jewish rights.

Kahn’s belief that Jews couldn’t be called “indigenous” was so outrageous that his boss, Temple Emanu-El Senior Rabbi Bruce Davidson, felt constrained to write a letter to the Forward newspaper disassociating the synagogue from his position. Davidson rightly noted that such a stance lends weight to those who wish to deny Jewish rights and history. That, in turn, provoked a response from hundreds of prominent liberal Jews who signed a letter of support of Kahn.

The question is: Are they right to assert that the woke left is the future of American Jewry?

(Continue to Full Column)

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From the River, to the Sea: Palestinian Americans and Leftist Jews push vision of a Jew-free (and improbably progressive) "Palestine" - by Elder of Ziyon

It is had to imagine a less tolerant state than the one that Palestinians in the PA and Hamas controlled areas themselves want - these numbers are in Taliban territory. These so-called progressives do not lift a finger to help Palestinians change their xenophobic, antisemitic and intolerant attitudes. Instead, they are gaslighting uninformed liberals in the West into thinking a Palestinian state would be a beacon of light and equality.

Elder of Ziyon..
12 December '19..

Israel-haters pretending to be Palestinian activists in the US have started a new initiative to create a vision for a Jew-free Middle East while pretending to be progressive.

The "Justice for All" campaign, on a new website called "FreedomFuture.org," was set up by the BDSers from the Adalah Justice Project and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Together with many partners like Jewish Voice for Peace, the American Friends Service Committee, the Democratic Socialists of America they have a list of "demands" that use all he correct "progressive" buzzwords while building a case to ethnically cleanse Jews from the river to the sea, meaning an entire Middle East that is Judenfrei.

Demands include Palestinian self-determination (including in Israel), the "right of return" (where there is full freedom for Palestinians to live wherever they want but Jews have no such right,) "freedom for all Palestinians" which is just a veiled accusation that Israel discriminates against all non-Jews, and the "the right to resist our oppression" in which they never say that "resistance" is only peaceful - meaning it includes terrorism.

All of these codewords have been used for years to fool liberals into thinking that destroying the Jewish state is a valorous cause.

(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. 

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But Charlie, Why Shouldn't They Kidnap Jews?

...Now I have no ill-will toward Charlie and, in fact, remember him as a perfectly reasonable individual from my own time participating on that blog. But I do have a few criticism of Charlie's effort. First, while I understand, that he is seeking to wait until he gets more information, but if they were not kidnapped by terrorists, then who did it? Girl Scouts? The Rotary Club? B'nai Brith?

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
15 June '14..

Within recent decades Arab and old Soviet propaganda convinced the well-meaning (and not so well-meaning) in the progressive-left that Jews are "Occupying" the innocent "indigenous" population of "historical Palestine."

The progressives, in the years since the 1967 war allegedly turned Jewish Israelis into "Goliath," convinced the majority of diaspora Jews that Israel is somehow "illegally occupying" historically Jewish land.

Let me give you an example of the kind of thing that I am talking about.

Over on Daily Kos there is very little any longer in the way of pro-Jewish / pro-Israel participants, most of whom were driven out by the growing presence of a highly malicious contingent of anti-Semitic anti-Zionists of the type typically found within progressive-left venues.

However, one pro-Jewish / pro-Israel participant who still posts there goes by the moniker charliehall2

Charliehall2 has a brief "diary" up at Daily Kos from a few days ago alerting an almost entirely uncaring community about the fact that three Jewish teenagers, including one American, were kidnapped just outside of the old Jewish city of Hebron by Arabs.

Charlie writes this:

I have never written two diaries in one day. In fact it is rare for me to write two diaries in a month. But something happened in the Occupied Palestinian Territories within the past day that deserves note -- three young men, all Israeli with one also a US citizen, are missing and feared kidnapped, possibly by terrorists.

Now I have no ill-will toward Charlie and, in fact, remember him as a perfectly reasonable individual from my own time participating on that blog.

But I do have a few criticism of Charlie's effort. First, while I understand, that he is seeking to wait until he gets more information, but if they were not kidnapped by terrorists, then who did it? Girl Scouts? The Rotary Club? B'nai Brith?

It is obvious that, indeed, terrorists did the deed and if they were not terrorists before they did so they instantly became terrorists upon doing so.

Presenting the Choice - To Stand or to Kneel?

...To insist that the Jews owe so much to others and are themselves owed nothing is to ask of one’s tribe to be nothing more than a doormat. Such an analogy might describe much of Jewish history, yet now that, thanks to the achievements of the modern State of Israel, it may no longer be applicable, the American Jewish left is prescribing it. If rights are to clash in the Middle East, they declare, the Jews should sacrifice theirs. This, we are told, is “justice.”

Jonathan Neumann..
Commentary Magazine..
12 October '13..

Aryeh Cohen, a leading voice in the left-wing Jewish social justice movement, has pointed out a hypocrisy on the left which has baffled some Jewish conservatives for a while. He doesn’t stand with Women of the Wall–a liberal organization in Israel looking to establish egalitarian prayer rights at the Western Wall (Kotel)–because it is seeking to advance Jewish rights in an area not only “occupied,” but where an Arab neighborhood once stood. In other words: how can Jewish liberals promote Jewish egalitarianism in a place they don’t even believe Jews should be?

Beyond the particular question of egalitarianism, Cohen’s post in fact speaks to the wider issue of American Jewish liberal treatment of Israel. How are the competing claims of Jews and Arabs to be decided? “In some other world in which peace and justice reign, and nobody harbors any agendas aside from bettering the good of all,” Cohen writes, “everybody would be able to pray together, or as they wished, at the Western Wall or on the Temple Mount itself.” Unfortunately, as Cohen points out–and many conservatives would agree–this is not presently possible. The conclusion seems, then, that for now the will of one side must prevail over that of the other. The problem is that the American Jewish left believes the side that should prevail is that of the Arabs. If only one side of this conflict can pray on the Temple Mount, they say, it must be the Arabs. If only one side can have access to the Kotel, they say, it must be the Arabs. If only one side can have sovereignty in parts or all of the Land of Israel, they say, it must be the Arabs.

This sentiment crosses the border of self-effacement into the region of self-hatred. To insist that the Jews owe so much to others and are themselves owed nothing is to ask of one’s tribe to be nothing more than a doormat. Such an analogy might describe much of Jewish history, yet now that, thanks to the achievements of the modern State of Israel, it may no longer be applicable, the American Jewish left is prescribing it. If rights are to clash in the Middle East, they declare, the Jews should sacrifice theirs. This, we are told, is “justice.”

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.

Can Progressives Support Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide? Of Course, But...

The note I wish to leave Progressives in all this is that they are not so angelic as they imagine themselves to be. Whether they call for ethnic cleansing while deluding themselves they do not, or advocate a scenario so perilously open to the possibility of ending in genocide, the fact is the Progressives are reckless in their thinking, not giving enough care to the fate of either Jew or Arab in Palestine.

Ziontruth..
Israel Thrives..
30 May '13..

It is my intention in this article to expose the unflattering reality behind white angel wings that certain people imagine themselves sporting. Within the Progressive Left we find a shrinking proportion of Two-State Solution advocates who are either pro-Israel, with their hearts in the right place but unfortunately are lacking critical information, or anti-Zionists who are two-staters because they think the “damage” of setting up the state of Israel can only be contained, not reversed; and we find a growing contingent of people who call for the Binational (One-State) Solution, in the thinking that undoing Zionism is both desirable and possible. I contend that the former group are guilty of calling for ethnic cleansing, despite their denial of the term, and that the latter are unwitting accessories to genocide, by virtue of their incurable naïveté.

Calls for Ethnic Cleansing

A complicated matter needs complex explanations; I am perfectly willing to take the time for reading a subject where, to paraphrase Einstein, things cannot be made simpler than possible. Where, however, the matter is simple, it is just as bad to frame it in complex terms and elaborate wording. Ethnic cleansing is such a matter: Very simply put, anybody who argues that a particular piece of land should be emptied of members of a particular ethnos residing in it is an advocate of ethnic cleansing. It is really that simple and it will not do to complicate matters.

It is told of W. C. Fields (or George Bernard Shaw, alternatively) that he once asked a lady if she was willing to spend the night with him for a million pounds, and she said yes; then he asked her if she was willing to do the same for a few pennies, and she answered, indignantly, “What do you think I am—a prostitute?!” Whereupon he said, “Lady, we have already established that. We are now discussing prices.” With Progressives who call for ethnic cleansing, the same lack of awareness can be found: Having said that a two-state solution would by necessity involve the evacuation of all Jewish residents (“settlers,” in in the revisionist parlance of Arab imperialism) from Judea and Samaria, they are the first to flare in righteous anger when someone suggests that the same two-state solution would reciprocally involve the relocation of all Arabs in pre-1967 Israel to the newly-formed Arab state of Falasteen. “That’s ethnic cleansing!!!” they reply in fiery rage, with the assumption taken for granted that their call for the relocation of Jews is not ethnic cleansing at all.

Let us be clear about two separate facets of this issue: Ethnic cleansing itself and the question whether it is justified. When a supporter of the Two-State Solution, or on the other hand a Helen Thomas clone calling for Jews to go “back home” to the lands where six million were exterminated, says a part or all of Palestine should be emptied of Jews in order for peace to be possible, they are both calling for ethnic cleansing and offering a reason as to why it is justified. That they call for ethnic cleansing is not in dispute—it flows from the cold, hard, objective meaning of the term “ethnic cleansing.” Trying to counter the accusation with a statement like, “It is not ethnic cleansing to kick squatters, settlers, colonists out!”, they do nothing but double down on their calls for ethnic cleansing; the bit about “squatters, settlers, colonists” is not a refutation of the charge of ethnic cleansing, it is a justification of their call for it.

The burden of standing up to their hypocrisy is on the Progressive-Leftists, as it is one of their tenets that ethnic cleansing is never justified. In the years 1993–2005 there was a window of opportunity when the majority of the Israeli Jewish public believed in the viability of the Two-State Solution, including the prospect of ethnic cleansing Judea and Samaria and Gaza of all Jewish residents as part of bringing that solution about; this culminated in the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip in August 2005. In the course of the 2000s decade, the Arabs closed that window by making it clear to the Israeli Jewish public that they had no intention of settling for Judea and Samaria and Gaza, but wanted everything the Jews have, meaning pre-1967 Israel as well. The Israeli Jews have passed the test of flexibility with flying colors; it is therefore not they but the other side—Arab imperialists and their Progressive-Left supporters—who have some proving to do in that department.

It is already curious that the Progressive-Leftist advocates of the Two-State Solution take it for granted that ethnic cleansing of the Jews is a noble prerequisite to such a solution while the notion of a reciprocal population exchange involving the pre-1967 Israel Arabs is taboo. It is evident that there is a double standard here, and it looks probable that such a double standard has its source in the selfsame anti-Zionist narrative that posits the Jews as interlopers in Palestine. Whatever the case, and whatever the justifications they bring for their plans for all the Jews in certain parts of Palestine and the convoluted explanations as to why such justifications do not apply to Arabs in any part of Palestine, the cold, harsh truth remains that they call for ethnic cleansing. This would not be much of an issue if the Progressives did not claim ethnic cleansing to be a heinous crime, but they do, and since they do so, they must be held to their claim.

Progressive Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism - Forget the Apologetics

Matthew M. Hausman..
Israpundit..
01 May '13..

In 1975 the United Nations General Assembly passed its infamous resolution equating Zionism with racism. Although rescinded some years later, it established a plan for delegitimizing Israel by undermining Jewish national claims and rewriting history. That plan continues today, finding expression in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (“BDS”) movement, the left-wing obsession to brand Israel an apartheid state, and the revisionist Palestinian narrative. It is also enabled by a Jewish left that excuses progressive Israel bashers by falsely distinguishing anti-Zionism from Jew-hatred. But denying that Jews are entitled to sovereignty in their homeland requires the suppression of Jewish history and acceptance of an incompatible national myth that has no factual foundation. To deny Jews the basic right of self-determination is to denigrate their stature as an extant, ancient people; and treating them differently from all other nations on earth is indeed a form of antisemitism.

There seems to be no shortage of politicians, academics and celebrities who embrace anti-Zionism. One of the most visible lately is rock musician Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame, who publicly promotes the BDS movement and who recently spoke before the United Nations accusing Israel of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, though both claims are demonstrably false. Mr. Waters is typical of social and political progressives who blame Israel for destabilizing the Mideast and who find common cause with an Arab-Muslim world that has no regard for democratic ideals or human rights. Those who claim only to want justice for the Palestinians either don’t know that they are historical latecomers to Israel, or do know but are simply motivated by hatred for the Jewish State. To some ears, it sounds more rational to deny Israel’s legitimacy by adopting a competing national claim, even one that is predicated on doctrinal antisemitism and historical revisionism.

Whereas there is irrefutable archeological, ethnographic and literary proof that Jews have inhabited Israel since time immemorial, there is no similar evidence of an ancient, indigenous Palestinian people. To compensate for their lack of historicity, the Palestinians deprecate the Jewish connection to Israel with lies and distortions that are often repeated by their supporters on the left. They contend, for example, that the Jewish People originated in Europe and that the Temple never stood in Jerusalem. They claim that the Jews were complicit in the Crusades, although Jews suffered far worse than anyone else at the hands of the Crusaders. They argue that the archeological record, which is so rich in linguistic, cultural and architectural evidence of ancient Jewish life in Israel, is simply the product of Zionist propaganda. In so doing, they project their own lack of national bona fides onto the only people with a continuous link to the land. The audacity of such claims is truly Orwellian.

Marquadt-Bigman - The progressive quest for comparative consolations

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
30 January '12..



The folks who expected that the “Arab Spring” would lead to a Tweeples-government in Egypt are understandably disappointed by the landslide victory of the Muslim Brothers and the Salafists.

But progressives were quick to find a formula that offers comparative consolation: the basic recipe is to simply claim that Egypt’s Islamists are really no worse – and maybe even better!!! – than disagreeable political figures or forces in your own country.

Following this recipe, Lisa Goldman, writing for the Israeli left-wing blog +972, claims:

citizens of the democratic state of Israel […] freely elected, as the largest faction in its governing coalition after the Likud, the quasi-fascist Yisrael Beitenu party. […] In our Knesset, we also have Kahanists and a large contingent from Shas, which is quite similar to the [Salafist] Nour party.

Unsurprisingly, Goldman’s comment was promptly quoted by The Arabist, where Issandr El Amrani added that “Israelis might mind their own business about Egypt and other post-uprising countries” because “they won’t be doing much business with them at all for some time to come.” Since the post was entitled “Israel and the new Egypt”, I can’t resist the temptation to take Amrani’s comment as a validation of the point I made when I wrote some two months ago that it would be the “Same old story in the new Middle East” because “when it comes to anti-Western and ‘anti-Zionist’ sentiments, the new rulers of the Middle East will be at least as eager as their predecessors to put them to demagogic use.” And as Amrani’s comment illustrates, even supposed Arab liberals seem happy to hold on to the “anti-Zionism” that provided Arab dictators for decades with a useful tool to distract the masses.

But naturally, Goldman was very pleased to be quoted by The Arabist, and tweeted:

.arabist linked to my +972 piece, ‘Egypt’s election results are none of Israel’s business.’ I can die happy now. http://tinyurl.com/6u58lzs

Meyers - Straddling the Non-Existent Middle

D.G. Meyers..
Literarary Commentary..
14 January '12..

Over at Jewish Ideas Daily this morning, Erika Dreifus writes a cri de coeur of the young American Jewish writer who must somehow make peace with a literary left for whom Israel is far more disgusting and repressive than Burma or North Korea. “In defending Israel, you risk alienating friends, editors, and critics,” she writes. “As open-minded as these ‘liberal or leftist’ circles claim to be, they are as quick as their analogues at the other end of the spectrum to judge and scorn. There is no place for centrists.”

There is no place for centrists, because on the Israel question — the Jewish question of our day — there is no possible “maybe.” Should Israel exist? Should it grant a “right of return” to Palestinian Arabs? Should an armed Palestinian state dedicated to its destruction be founded on its borders? Not even a young American Jewish writer who is afraid of alienating friends, editors, and critics can answer “maybe” to these questions.

And that’s the problem. Too many young Zionists, with the best will of the world, want to stand on both sides of the question. God forbid they alienate their friends or professors or editors! They know — it is the ethos of the literary left — that anyone who speaks a good word for Israel must admit in the same breath, as Dreifus does, that “Israel isn’t perfect.” “I believe that with a little training and lot more study,” she says, “I could do a better job of making a case for Israel, even gaining the ability to acknowledge its flaws publicly.”

Strange, though, that champions of the Palestinian cause never get around to acknowledging its flaws publicly. The first lie of anti-Zionism is that you can criticize Israel without being anti-Zionist. Theoretically, perhaps, you can. But in practice, criticism of Israel never ends with the concession that the Jewish state “isn’t perfect.” It is instead the starting point, the opening salvo, of anti-Zionism.

Fresnozionism - Letter to a progressive friend

Fresnozionism.org..
11 January '12..

Dear _________,

I’m not sure exactly how to put this. I need to tell you that you have been taken in by an audacious and massive hoax. Please — don’t stop reading. It isn’t that you’re stupid or uncaring. Actually I think you fell for it to a great extent because of your intelligence, as well as your highly developed ability to empathize with the situations of people less fortunate than yourself — your essential humaneness.

You are a person who has always dedicated a great deal of energy to helping others, who gives to organized charities and to beggars on the street, who often supports policies that will be disadvantageous to you personally because you believe they will bring us closer to a just society. You have even placed yourself at some risk by participating in demonstrations in which someone (not you) might provoke the police to arrest participants, even handle them somewhat roughly.

I am not speaking with tongue in cheek. I admire you. The world would be a far uglier place without people with your kind of sensibility.

The hoax in question has been developed over the past 40 years or so and is calibrated to be effective on people like you. Its objective is to make you believe that in a particular context, black is white, evil is good, lies are truth and genocide is justice.

Of course you know what I’m talking about. “Here he comes again with his obsession about Jews and Israel,” you think. But today I am not going to try your patience with all of the usual arguments — the appeals to the real history of the Middle East, the discussion of who is and isn’t ‘indigenous’, the analyses of international law, the exposure of this or that anti-Israel lie, the revelations of the true intentions of some of the players, the predictions of the possible consequences of various courses of action. I do that in my blog every day, and there are many others who do it better.

Jonah and Kelly’s moral autism

Fresnozionism.org
20 June '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/06/jonah-and-kellys-moral-autism/



Dear Jonah and Kelly,

Your post, “Refocusing the conversation” aroused strong feelings in me.

What you said was outrageous, false in many respects, and even insulting. But there are extenuating circumstances:

- You suffer from the arrogance of youth

- You are angry at your treatment at the hands of the religious establishment in Israel

That’s about it. You are also ignorant of history and security matters, but take it from me, once you publish your thoughts, ignorance is no excuse.

You find the discussion about Jewish rabbinical and education students who are anti-Israel “shallow and paternalistic” because you feel that it finds fault in you, when you would prefer it to find fault in the state of Israel.

I wonder if, in your fault-finding, you’ve taken into account how Israeli Jews got to where they are today? I mean, things like the pogroms, the ‘riots’, the Holocaust, the farhud, the wars, the privation, the expulsions, the terrorism? Have you compared these things to the way you grew up in America?

Probably not, because you write,

The world changes, people’s perceptions change, reality changes and our generation has been raised to understand that we must work to build a better future for Israel and to appreciate but not dwell on its past.

In other words, the experience and perspective of the older generation of Jews — indeed, history — counts for nothing. ‘Don’t dwell on the past’, you say, but you mean ‘ignore it’. Talk about a ‘shallow’ discussion!

You say that “no human being should live subject to tyranny … every individual should be judged on her or his own merit and to seek out the personal interaction needed for true understanding.” Can I remind you that until the state of Israel was created, the majority of the world’s Jews lived under various tyrannies? Did the Czar, Hitler or the King of Iraq judge each individual according to merit? What would be the position of Jews in ‘Palestine’, if such a state were to replace Israel?

You say that “We are comfortable and confident Jews – and this reality is not a character flaw.” What a remarkably revealing comment! Clearly the character flaw is the self-absorption that makes you unable to conceive of other Jews who have not been able to be ‘comfortable and confident’ in the past, and are insecure that they may not be so again in the future.

You write,

We see injustices, religious and political, that need to end. This is true not only because we refuse to see all Palestinians as our enemies, but fundamentally because we refuse to blind ourselves to the fact that the reality that has been created is bad for the Jewish People as a whole.

Leaving aside the false and insulting statement that Zionists “see all Palestinians as our enemies,” what makes you so sure that the ‘reality’ that bothers you so much was created by Israeli Jews alone? Could the Nazi Mufti al-Husseini and his heirs, Yasser Arafat and even the ‘moderate’ Mahmoud Abbas, who have continuously incited murderous hatred of Jews for almost a hundred years, have anything to do with this ‘reality’? What about Hamas and it's antisemitic covenant?

Oh — I forgot. We mustn’t dwell on the past.

You write,

When we are confronted by the deep fear of the other and the ways in which that manifests itself into structural violence and racism, we are shocked and want to work to make it better. We, who were taught that the Israeli Army is the most moral army in the world, are thrown into disequilibrium when we see our own acting cruelly to innocent Palestinians at checkpoints. We stand witness in disbelief as the very land we were taught to love is overturned, as trees are uprooted and mountains are moved all to build a giant concrete wall in the name of security.

This is also remarkable. There is ‘great fear of the other’ — but it’s a justified fear. The ‘other’ blows us up every chance that he gets. And it’s not ‘racism’ — it has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with the response to a hundred years of murder as a political tool. Yes, most Israeli Jews are suspicious of Palestinian Arabs — they have good reason to be.

The IDF is “the most moral army in the world.” Name one that is more moral. No, it isn’t perfect. War is not the most morally simple business. Try being a soldier yourself (most Israelis have) and see how you do.

The ‘giant concrete wall’ which is in most places a wire fence, is not being built merely “in the name of” security. It is being built for security. It, and the checkpoints that you object to — as well as incursions of the IDF into Arab areas to arrest terrorists — are what put an end to the second Intifada, in which more than a thousand Israelis were murdered.

Sorry, I’m dwelling on the past again.

You say,

While we must always be engaged in making ourselves and our programs better, what we most need is a collective commitment to fixing the brokenness of our greatest project, The State of Israel, and with it the growing brokenness of the Jewish People.

Could you possibly be more arrogant! What you correctly call the greatest project of the contemporary Jewish people has thrived despite enormous odds, overcome huge challenges and done so at great human cost. It has been in peril of destruction since the beginning, and today possibly faces its greatest existential threat ever. And you have the chutzpah to call it “broken” because it doesn’t fit your wild academic fantasies of an ideal society!

I understand that you are upset and insulted by the attitude of the Israeli rabbinut toward liberal Judaism. You know what? I’ll give you this one. It’s unfortunate and should change. It’s an even bigger problem for thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union who can’t produce documentation for their Judaism. But compared to the security situation, this is a 1 on a scale of 10. Get over it. It’s not a reason to aid Israel’s real enemies.

Finally, you write,

As an educator and rabbinical student, we have been tasked with caring deeply for the intellectual and spiritual needs of our students and congregants. We are taught that we are responsible for their achievement and behavior. If a student is having difficulty, do we simply tell her that she is doing fine? If a congregant is in crisis and doing damage to himself, do we tell his family to cheer him on? The State of Israel deserves, at the very least, the level of respect and care we have for our own students and congregants. We have no choice but to view ourselves as responsible for Israel’s achievement and behavior.

Would you entirely ignore a student’s or congregant’s background and experiences? Would you judge his or her behavior according to a fantastic standard so high that only a tzadik could achieve it? Would you criticize him or her by repeating lies told by someone that you know hates him and wants to kill him?

The degree of smug self-righteous ignorance that you display might be relatively harmless if your career choices were different. It might irritate me to have one of you as a cab driver or barber if you insist on talking while you work. But the fact that you have chosen to be Jewish spiritual leaders and educators is shocking.

You are not qualified for those positions, because you lack an elementary understanding of the Jewish people and its history, and because you have an astonishing deficit of humility, a form of moral autism.

Unless you mature, and perhaps put your anger at the rabbinut in perspective, my recommendation is that you take different jobs, ones that do not require you to work with other humans, particularly Jewish ones.

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A Movement of Hate, Pt. III

Robert Harris
Frontpagemag.com
12 May '10

Israel has been subjected to forceful criticism for decades. When those criticisms are hysterical, irrational and/or do not address Israel’s concerns to the slightest extent, are we not obliged to query why these frequent criticisms seem so unbalanced. If any commentator treats a serious topic in an unbalanced fashion it is quite right to be concerned. Such a viewpoint could cause genuine harm if it gains currency. The questions, “Why is person or movement ‘X’ so extreme? why do they turn the facts upside down and ignore everything not in their favor?” are perfectly legitimate, especially if there was extensive hatred and oppression of the group historically that is now the subject of their ire.

The response is typically an approximation of “Oh, we are only concerned about Zionists not the Jews who we really like an awful lot, I like Dylan, Seinfeld etc.” This argument seems a little suspect since Israel is the only state in existence populated principally by Jews. The only state in existence where Jews can live without being subject to the censure of hostile non-Jews in host nations. Of course it is quite feasible that many Palestinian supporters aren’t anti-Semitic. The motivations of an individual can be difficult to establish: even if they make unjustifiable remarks, spread untruths and flatly refuse to accept opposing views no matter how well justified, they may not be driven by hatred even if that is likely to be the case. Ignorance, stubbornness and even stupidity can be alternatives. However, this is not simply an observation relating to individuals but rather a movement. If we were to accept the “concern of Zionism only” line we would have to ignore the dishonesty, usual methods of criticism and belligerent manner that defines the movement and which gives rise to concerns about anti-Semitism. If many pro-Palestinian groups are not anti-Semitic it is extremely unlikely they would then collectively resort to such forms of criticism and behaviour.

(Read full article)

To read part II click here

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The (not so) progressive anti-Zionist agenda

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
25 April '10

While Zionist groups are celebrating the 150th anniversary of Herzl's birthday, opponents of Zionism seem to feel rather upbeat. The sense that the anti-Zionists' dream of a world without a Jewish state will eventually come true was conveyed in a recent Foreign Policy article by Israeli writer Dmitry Reider, who confidently claimed that "an increasing number of Israeli voices are beginning to inquire whether the one-state idea is more than just a bogeyman." The mere fact that an influential mainstream magazine like Foreign Policy would publish such an article was noted with great satisfaction on several virulently anti-Zionist blogs.

Indeed, Herzl's 150th birthday seems to have inspired some of the major media outlets to mark the occasion by exploring "alternatives" for Zionism. The Guardian's "Comment is Free" website evoked the vision of "An Israel-Palestine like no other nation" in an article that supposedly reflected "progressive" Zionist efforts to come up with "a new model of statehood". Similarly, an article in the Christian Science Monitor proposed to subject Israel and the Palestinians to some "radical" political experiment with a "parallel states scenario" that would give the world a chance to explore ways to overcome "the territorially based, zero-sum notion of sovereignty that has grounded the nation-state for at least three centuries."

All of these articles justify the quest for "solutions" that would put an end to Israel as a Jewish state with the argument that the peace process has failed to achieve a two-state solution that would provide for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Implicit in this reasoning is the notion that the fact that Israel is one of the few successful states established in modern times is irrelevant. Instead, Israel is held responsible for creating a Palestinian state, and Israel's failure to do so is apparently thought to justify the notion that the Jewish state has forfeited its right to exist.

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