Only the Palestinians Can End the Occupation

Karam

The progressive-left, because it claims to stand for social justice, urges Israel to end the occupation of the "Palestinian territories." On political blogs and journals throughout the progressive-left, analysts and activists demand and demand and demand. Actually, not only do they make that demand, they also demonize and defame and dehumanize the Jewish state, which must inevitably result in violence toward the Jewish people, as they insist on Israeli compliance.

There is only one problem, however. Israel can't do it. The truth of the matter, and it is a truth that you will not read in progressive-left venues, is that only the Palestinians can end the occupation.

I want to make this point very, very clear because (one) no one else seems to be making it and (two) the truth of it is obvious. So, let's repeat the point for the sake of clarity.

Only the Palestinians can end the occupation. Israel is incapable of doing so.

The reason for this is because what we call "the occupation" is nothing more than Jewish attempts to defend themselves in the ongoing Long Arab War Against the Jews in the Middle East. From the time that Mohammed's forces poured out of the Saudi peninsula until the British booted the Ottomans out of Palestine, the Jews were an oppressed minority living as second and third class citizens (dhimmis) on their own land. Once the Jews were freed from 13 centuries of dhimmitude the Arabs launched the Long War which began around the early 1920s, when the Mufti whipped the masses into a genocidal anti-Semitic frenzy resulting in bloody riots, and which continues until this day.

At the front lines of this war are the Palestinians. The Palestinians represent the core of the Arab assault on the Jews since the time that we were freed until the present. What we call "the occupation"... which is to say the check-points and the security fence and the blockade of Gaza, and so forth... are nothing more than Israeli-Jewish measures to defend their own people from the far larger hostile Arab forces that surrounds them. And that is precisely why Israel is incapable of ending the so-called occupation. If they dismantle the check-points, it means more Arabs will kill more Jews. If they end the blockade of weaponry into Gaza, it means more Arabs will kill more Jews. If they take down the security fence, it also means more Arabs will kill more Jews. And that is precisely why Israel refuses to take such measures. Progressive-left idealists can spit hatred at the Jewish state until Kingdom Come, but there is not so much hatred in the world that can force the Jewish people to allow one another to be murdered.

Therefore, it is only the Palestinians who can end the occupation.

And, in truth, doing so would be very simple if they could simply bring themselves to do it. All that Palestinian leadership needs to do is sincerely declare the end of hostilities, declare a desire for normalization, trade, and peace, and cease inciting hatred toward Jews among their own people. If they did this and if the Palestinians put away their Kassams and Qatyushas then the occupation would end. Israel doesn't put up check-points because Jews are mean, they do it to protect themselves. Israel doesn't blockade Gaza because Jews are mean, but because Hamas is a genocidal organization that threatens southern Israel with rocket attack on more or less a daily basis. Israel didn't build a security fence which inconveniences some Palestinians because they are mean, either, but because they must prevent terrorists from coming into Israel for the purpose of blowing themselves up.

I understand, of course, that the great majority of progressives could hardly care less about Jewish security, and that they do not mind the rise of the Nazi-influenced Radical Jihad, but us Jews do not have that luxury. We are not going to commit suicide because progressives self-righteously insist that it is our only moral option.

The people suffering most from "the occupation" are, however, the Palestinians. That much is certain. I therefore recommend that the Palestinians end the occupation immediately. If they would do so they would gain their freedom, they would gain their state, they would gain their dignity, and they would gain potential prosperity for themselves and their children and grandchildren.

I say, end the occupation now.

Antisemitism: The world changes, the world remains the same.

By oldschooltwentysix

At Daily Kos, there is a diary that speaks to the latest occurrences of Jew hatred in Brooklyn, USA.  Details can be found in this news report.  It gave opportunity to write a comment, which became this post. 

The world changes, the world remains the same.

There are around 13 MILLION Jews in the world today, out of a world population of about 7 BILLION people.

Historically, the two major purveyors of hate for Jews are Christians and Muslims, perhaps 3.5 BILLION people.  Thankfully, only a relative smattering hold the Christian variant of genocidal views epitomized by Hitler, mostly neo-Nazis, but not all. Significant numbers of Muslims, however, even some of their leaders, supplement their own hatred for Jews and say they want to finish the genocide that the Christians (Hitler) started.

Sometimes I wonder about a fringe extreme on the Left, too, that conjoins with the other Jew haters while self-proclaiming to be "anti-racist" and "humanitarian." The first Durban NGO Conference in 2001 illustrates:

On the grounds of the U.N. conference itself, the Arab Lawyers Union distributed pamphlets filled with grotesque caricatures of hook-nosed Jews depicted as Nazis, spearing Palestinian children, dripping blood from their fangs, with missiles bulging from their eyes or with pots of money nearby. Attempts to have the group's U.N. accreditation revoked were refused.

Under the tent where the final NGO declaration was approved over the weekend -- a document that indicts Israel as a "racist, apartheid state" guilty of genocide and ethnic cleansing -- fliers were found with a photo of Hitler and the following question: "What if Hitler had won? There would be no Israel, and no Palestinian bloodshed."

In a Palestinian-led march with thousands of participants, a placard was held aloft that read "Hitler Should Have Finished the Job." Nearby, someone was selling the most notorious of anti-Jewish tracts, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

It was a racist anti-racist gathering if there ever was one, perhaps even surpassing the infamous "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination" resolution at the UN Security Council in 1975.

Tom Lantos was a liberal Congressman from California who served as an American delegate at Durban. He was the ranking Democratic Party member on the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives and a founder of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. In a chilling, must read article, The Durban Debacle, he said:

For me, having experienced the horrors of the Holocaust first hand, this was the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I have seen since the Nazi period.

Yes, I am generalizing. The truth is that it matters not the source. The point is that Jews everywhere live with being singled among humans for extinction, solely because they are Jewish. One who receives a threat to kill is a victim. Yet Jews are denied the status of victim despite the threat.

This applies by extension to Israel, the collective Jew among nation states. Overtly and uniquely threatened with extinction, yet denied victim status an international arena. Despite that the UN Charter expressly states:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force

Of course, antisemitism cannot be eradicated. A survey of the American people released on November 3 by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that that 15 percent of Americans – nearly 35 million adults – hold deeply anti-Semitic views. It is no better most places elsewhere, and likely much worse in many.

It is up to the state to respect this right and protect against violations, by itself and private parties. This is why they undertake obligations to implement domestic legislation through treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).  Even then, from their conduct, too many states could care less. Many of these states use a different interpretation of rights than we in the West. At least in America tends to take the matter of antisemitism seriously. I hope it remains so. It's not all bad here as some like to say.

I mean, when 5,000 people rally at Cairo’s most prominent mosque, the Al-Azhar mosque, chanting over and over passages from the Koran vowing that “one day we shall kill all the Jews,” how can that not put the matter into perspective?  This happened just days ago.

As with defining other victims of discrimination based on minority and/or religious status, the interpretation of antisemitism should be expansive, not narrow.  This is particularly so because there are new forms of antisemitism that may otherwise appear neutral on their face. Why is this so hard to understand, especially for so many that require political correctness in almost all other cases? There is that pesky double standard again!

If one fairly considers the demographics and what has happened to Jews at the hands of the majority - institutional persecution, pogroms, massacres, and genocide - then sees how disparate forces share common ground to stand in solidarity, using the Jew as a foil to incite hatred for an ideological agenda, it shows how we are drifting closer to Orwell's nightmare, as others sleep through helplessly without a peep.

(Cross-posted at oldschooltwentysix)

Why Is There No Peace?

Karam



"May He annihilate this filthy people who have neither religion nor conscience. I condemn whoever believes in normalizing relations with them, whoever supports sitting down with them, and whoever believes that they are human beings. They are not human beings. They are not people."

The progressive-left, as a whole, blames Jews for the virulent and widespread Arab hatred towards us. In fact, not only do they blame us for Arab hatred toward us, but if we even deign to mention the fact of widespread Arab genocidal anti-Semitism then we become the racists.

{How's that for a sick and evil game?}

Genocidal Arab anti-Semitism was not caused by the "occupation." Quite the contrary, the "occupation" (that is, the check-points and road blocks, and so forth) are due to the fact of genocidal Arab anti-Semitism, not the other way around.

We know this because the Arabs were beating up on the Jews for centuries before the state of Israel came into existence. The Mufti was planning a "final solution" if the Germans took Palestine. It goes back to the Koran and to the heavy Nazi influence in much of the Arab Middle East.

Until, or unless, the Arabs stop teaching their children to hate Jews the Palestinians will continue to live under the consequences of their hatred toward us. The sadly ironic thing is that the Palestinians suffer from their hatred toward us far, far more than do we.

And that, my friends, is not our fault.

Freudian Slip?

Doodad

Arabs or Palestinians? Seems like even Assafiban can't make up his mind. His new Israel demonizing diary is entitled:

"Law Enforcement" Destroys Prayer House, Homes, School - Just Because They're for Arabs"

So which is it? Arabs or Palestinians? Because ideologically it DOES make a difference, doesn't it? IMO it does since the whole conflict began as Arabs against Jews; not as Jews against Palestinians. Of course, we aren't supposed to talk about that, are we?

(Note: I am not addressing the usual "hate Israel daily," content of the diary, only the Freudian slip.)

The Moral Bankruptcy of the Progressive-Left

Karam

The progressive movement's main claim to political legitimacy is a moral claim. The movement claims to stand for social justice and equality of rights throughout the world. Any legitimacy the left has as a political movement is grounded in the notion of universal human rights. But if the left has quietly abandoned that ideal then it loses both moral and political legitimacy. After all, if the left does not stand for universal human rights, then just what in this world does it stand for?

The sad truth is that the left has abandoned its core reason to be. By holding different people, and different countries, to different moral standards it has effectively abandoned the ideal of universal human rights. You cannot claim to stand for social justice if you only care about the human rights of some people, but not others. If you constantly speak out against alleged Israeli human rights abuses but remain silent about the truly horrific situations in Darfur or Congo... circumstances that make the Arab-Israel conflict look like a picnic on a summer Sunday afternoon... then you cannot claim to stand for universal human rights and, therefore, any claims you may have for moral or political leadership are unfounded.

This is the situation that we find ourselves in, currently, and it probably represents at least part of the reason why Jews are abandoning both the Democratic Party and the progressive movement. Most diaspora Jewish supporters of Israel are people who at one time, if not currently, considered themselves on the progressive-left. Certainly, I did. As someone who grew up in the political aftermath of the counterculture and the New Left, I was impressed with the ideals of those movements. I was impressed with the counterculture for its apparent spontaneity, its anti-authoritarian values, and its sense of community, if not communalism. I was impressed with the New Left for standing against jingoism, for its anti-war agenda, and for its championing of the human rights of women and Gay people and other minorities.

Today, looking back on the movement that was for decades my political home, what I see are the ruins of what was and the rank hypocrisy of what is. The left has essentially broken itself on Israel's back and they don't even know it, yet. The reason for this is that if, as a movement, the progressive-left intends to constantly fire-off Katyushas of Hatred and Qassams of Malice toward Tel Aviv, while snuggying up to Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran, then they lose all moral legitimacy. This is particularly true given the fact that the left could hardly care less about the 5.5 million dead in the Congo, about Tibetans living under Chinese occupation, about rape as a tactic of war in Darfur, about the hanging of Gay people from cranes in Tehran, or about an Arab and Muslim world rife with anti-Semitism, homophobia, and gender apartheid.

In this way the left, which claims to be both moral and anti-racist proves itself to be, in fact, neither.

On the progressive-left, Israel is the Jew among nations. Just as prior to establishment of the state of Israel, Europeans tended to ascribe a host of negative characteristics to the Jewish people, so today they ascribe those same specific characteristics to the Jewish state and they do so... gallingly enough, hypocritically enough... under the banner of "universal human rights." For 2,000 years we lived in diaspora, that is, we lived or died according to the pleasure of non-Jews. For 1,300 years we lived as second and third-class citizens under the imperialist boot of Muslim rule, i.e., as dhimmis. And today, directly after the historical moment in which we re-took our freedom, progressives tell us that the institution within which we manifest that freedom, the state of Israel, is a racist, colonialist, imperialist, apartheid country which, if it should not be dismantled as the national homeland for the Jewish people, must jump through whatever hoops they lay down. If Israel fails to jump through each and every one of those hoops then clearly they do not want peace and thus deserve whatever they get.

Well, some of us have definitely had enough of this nonsense.

The Palestinians refuse to negotiate a peaceful conclusion of hostilities and the progressive-left blames Israel. The Gazans shot thousands of rockets into southern Israel for years, but the progressives only spoke up when Israel sought to defend its civilian citizenry from those rockets. Does the progressive movement have anything to say about the Fogels? No, it doesn't. Does the progressive movement have anything to say about Hamas's genocidal charter or the larger Radical Jihadi movement out of which Hamas sprang?

No. It doesn't.

In fact, as Egypt transitions from a military dictatorship to an Islamist dictatorship this result will be, in part, through the efforts of the current president of the United States. But, then, the left has always had a weakness for the very worst actors in world history. Just as leftists often supported the Soviet Union for decades, despite the tens of millions of innocent dead due to that regime, so it now (usually tacitly, but sometimes directly) supports the Radical Jihad.

For me, personally, the real wake-up call came during the Mavi Marmara incident in May of last year. There were two groups of people aboard that vessel. There were the violent Jihadis seeking martyrdom... which progressives referred to as "peace activists." And the second group? Well, they definitely weren't Tea Party people. They were, in fact, progressive-left activists from around the world. Progressive-left activists literally, physically, morally, and financially supporting Jihadis in an effort to kill Jews, while telling the world that their mission was humanitarian.

The irony and cruel hypocrisy could not be more rich.

So, just why would you expect Jewish people to remain a part of such a political movement? The progressive-left may have been our home for a very long time, but clearly their values have shifted away from anything that could possibly be acceptable to the great majority of western Jews. Most of those Jews don't really get it, yet, but people are awakening. There are reasons why more and more of us are leaving the Democratic party and the progressive movement.

Because the progressive-left accepts, if not encourages, generalized malice toward the Jewish state it thereby shows the rest of us the door.

I say we walk through it.

Rooting For Hamas

by DOODAD

Israel demonizer extraordinaire Christy1947 has ANOTHER anti-Israel diary up; her THIRD since this Friday. Par for the course. What makes this one unusually disgusting is how it brings out the Hamas cheerleaders. The diary is about Israel's responses to the Terrorist Hamas-Fatah unity negotiations. She and others are upset because Israel is not laying down and taking it as Abbas and his gang try to join up and make cosy with the genocidal Hamas. Ah, the progressive dream; if only Israel would just SUBMIT and die, all would be well with the world.

Hamas cheerleader number one, Heathlander says:

"the unity government deal would move Hamas further away from being a terrorist organisation, and hence make it more difficult for Israel to justify its rejectionism."

So, come on Israel just give Jew hating murderous terrorists a chance!

Another Hamas cheerleader and Israel hater Brecht says:

"Historically, my sense is that it's much more common for more extreme parties, who are brought into more centrist alliances, and have to assume the responsibilities of government, to move towards the center themselves, than to radicalize their allies. Of course, Bibi's doing plenty with his government to radicalize any Palestinian regardless."

Yeah, cause Bibi causes Hamas' charter and Jew hate. Who do these haters think they are fooling? And why does the left always end up on the side of hateful, authoritarian mass murderers? What is the appeal for the left?

And oh, there is a lot of other garbage in the diary, like all her diaries, but it was the Hamas love that really got me. They WERE democratically elected dontcha know? Yeah, that's in there too.

Cairo rally: One day we'll kill all Jews

Doodad

Dkos posters and other usual suspects everywhere are STILL touting the Arab Spring as a springboard to Arab democracy. Most sane people don't believe it because of stuff like this.


"Arab hate: Muslim Brotherhood rally in Cairo's most prominent mosque Friday turned into a venomous anti-Israel protest, with attendants vowing to "one day kill all Jews." Some 5,000 people joined the rally, called to promote the "battle against Jerusalem's Judaization." The event coincided with the anniversary of the United Nation's partition plan in 1947, which called for the establishment of a Jewish state......'Treacherous Jews'Speakers at the event delivered impassioned, hateful speeches against Israel, slamming the "Zionist occupiers" and the "treacherous Jews."....'We have different mentality' Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen, as well as Palestinian guest speakers, made explicit calls for Jihad and for liberating the whole of Palestine. Time and again, a Koran quote vowing that "one day we shall kill all the Jews" was uttered at the site. "

The organizers of this rally are the Muslim Brotherhood who conventional wisdom says will win the election and who Obama and Hilary et al are currently courting and welcoming aboard. Obama, Hilary, Democrats! Pay attention to what these murderous types are saying and stop being on their side before they start the killing. What in the world are you thinking?

PA and Hamas: "No more differences between us now"

By oldschooltwentysix

According to Maan News Agency:

President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khalid Mashaal on Thursday said they had resolved all their differences, after a meeting in Cairo to implement a unity agreement.

"We want to assure our people and the Arab and Islamic world that we have turned a major new and real page in partnership on everything do to with the Palestinian nation," Mashaal said.

"There are no more differences between us now," added Abbas, who heads the Fatah movement.

The president said the talks had been comprehensive, covering "all details about reconciliation," according to the Palestinian Authority news agency Wafa.

Hamas, as is known, seeks resistance against Israel and removal from all the lands, and even genocide of the Jewish people. They make that clear. For example, a year ago, Hamas Leader Mahmoud Al-Zahhar told Jews "there is no place for you among us, and you have no future among the nations of the world. You are headed to annihilation." 

Just a few months prior:

"We have liberated Gaza, but have we recognized Israel? Have we given up our lands occupied in 1948? We demand the liberation of the West Bank, and the establishment of a state in the West Bank and Gaza, with Jerusalem as its capital – but without recognizing [Israel]. This is the key – without recognizing the Israeli enemy on a single inch of land. ... Our plan for this stage is to liberate any inch of Palestinian land, and to establish a state on it. Our ultimate plan is [to have] Palestine in its entirety. I say this loud and clear so that nobody will accuse me of employing political tactics. We will not recognize the Israeli enemy." (Source: Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahhar, Future News TV, June 15, 2010, Source: MEMRI.org)

There are enough other examples of this to fill a book. Not to mention that according to the USA, Canada, and the European Union, Hamas is designated a terrorist organization.

So I ask those who crusade against Israel: Is Hamas a terrorist organization? Would Hamas, if the opportunity presented, refrain from acting on its expressed intentions? Since there are "no more differences" according to Abbas, does this mean the PA and Hamas have the same objectives? Just what was/is the PA's ultimate goal and has Abbas been up front about it?

Finally, why are so some willing to believe what appears to fly in the face of reality?

UPDATE:

Then again, the anti-Israel crusaders may have respite. According to the New York Times:

It remained unclear even after the meeting on Thursday whether the two sides were indeed committed to a further narrowing of their differences, and whether they would take any tangible steps toward power sharing soon or at all.

The differences are significant because the two sides do not like or trust each other. Far from it. A Hamas representative said they agreed to some confidence-building measures, like stopping politically motivated arrests.  Yet, Elder of Ziyon reports that:

within an hour of the meeting, Palestine Press Agency reports, Hamas police arrested three student leaders associated with Fatah. They also raided and took over the pharmacists' syndicate, which was pro-Fatah.

Despite this confusion, some will invariably criticize Israel for not making peace, but how does one make peace with partners that seem incapable of having peace among themselves?

(Cross-posted at oldschooltwentysix) 

Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone

Karam



Why do I get a strong sense of disconnect between the style and subject of this blog versus the goofy graphic above?

In any case, Laurie and I are having friends over tomorrow and I am going to roast the bird. I suggested that maybe we should cut the thing up before roasting, which is what I do with chickens, but Laurie is having none of it.

A buddy of mine said something like, "Well, y'know, she wants a picture of her with a whole bird, setting it down for a Thanksgiving meal."

Fair enough!

So, I want each and every one of you guys to have an absolutely terrific Thanksgiving and not to concern yourselves with I-P until Friday... if not Monday.

Those of you who care about the Jewish people and the Jewish state, give yourself leave to not give things a moment's thought. Enjoy your friends and family and all that food (and wine.)

Those of you who despise Israel and would, via your hatred, harm the Jewish people, you should take a break, as well!

:O)

If you'll take my humble advice you will see that a day without anti-Zionism can be a very beautiful thing. You should give it a shot.

How Many Arabs Think Like Angry Arab?

Doodad

I have mentioned the Israel hater Angry Arab before; he who appears on the blog rolls of at least Meteor Blades and the Israel hater soysauce. Here is his latest screed against Israelis who supported the female Egyptian blogger who posted nude on her site to make a point.


"Sunday, November 20, 2011Israeli solidarity with the Egyptian (nude) BloggerI don't want to send that message directly to them so I will send it here. I read that a few Israeli women stripped nude in solidarity with the Egyptian blogger who stripped nude. Why do Israelis intrude into our lives? Why do you get into areas in which you are clearly uninvited and in which you are clearly unwelcome? You are such a bothersome presence. Arabs have made it very clear that they (unlike the tyrants that you like) don't like you and don't want you in their midst. It is none of your business what Arabs do and don't do. Spare us your act of solidarity when you are racists who everyday in your live you take advantage of the racist system that Zionist set up for you. We don't need your silly and fake solidarity. You are not invited to our lives and our activities. You are such an unwanted presence. Take your solidarity and go away. And stop intruding on every aspect of our lives. After we liberate Palestine, and when you are forced to live in a system based on equality (after we subject you to the same military rule that you imposed on the Arabs inside Israel), you may engage in solidarity but even then it won't be wanted. You really are without dignity when you know full well that Arabs don't want to do anything with you, and you keep acting like you are invited to our parties, uprisings, lives and events."

I wonder how many of his brethren feel this way? What does this say about a chance for any peace? This guy is a very popular blogger.

Kossack quotes Iran TV- gets 103 recs

Doodad

Bush, Blair Found Guilty of War Crimes!

Another reason I despise dKos - the use of Iran's propaganda organ for talking points. Forget whether Blair and Bush deserve such a label. Forget the fact that the finding was from a symbolic trial by Malaysians. Kossacks quoting Iranian propaganda is just wrong. The swamp just gets worse every freaking day. One adult Kossack reminds us:


"No. This was done by an NGO. (17+ / 0-)And the trial was presided by US law prof Francis Boyle, who has informed us that Obama is "bought and paid for by the Jews" and that Israel should be renamed "Jewistan."by johnny wurster on Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 04:43:35 AM PST[ Parent ]"

Jewistan? Wonderful, Kossacks, just wonderful. All 103 of you so far (and rising no doubt.)

The Twelfth Taboo I-P Topic Among Progressives

Karam

I've added another taboo topic among racist western progressives around the Arab-Jewish conflict in the Middle East: demographics.

One cannot talk about the demographics of the land of Israel as it was under the Ottomans. The reason that you cannot talk about that is because it may call into question just how many Arabs were living there prior to the Mandate and this will tend to undercut Arab claims to the region, particularly given the fact that the Jews were a majority in Jerusalem.

The fact of the matter is that a large percentage of the local Arabs came from neighboring countries and regions. Some percentage, probably a small percentage, had been living there for a long time, centuries even, but the fact is that many, many "Palestinians" are people whose ancestors were from Egypt or what is now Jordan or Syria or Iraq and elsewhere.

This fact is entirely taboo among racist progressives who hold that the "Palestinians" were there as a discreet people since before the birth of the Sun.

"Don't Trust Barack Obama"

Karam

Shoula Romano Horing has a Jerusalem Post article with the above title that I think is worth sharing.

While publicly reassuring Jewish supporters of his commitment to Israel’s security and repeatedly pointing to the close cooperation with the Israelis, privately Obama has been undermining Israel by agreeing with European leaders that Israel’s prime minister is to be blamed for the lack of progress toward peace in the Middle East (while giving the Palestinian leader a pass.)

There is something remarkably delusional about these people who blame Netanyahu for the fact that the Palestinians refuse to negotiate a conclusion to hostilities. I think that it is an example of the sort-of western liberal pro-Arab racism that is so typical around this issue. The Arabs, in general, and the Palestinians, in particular, are treated as little children who have no responsibility for anything whatsoever. This means that they must blame the Israelis and therefore must blame Netanyahu.

I think it's sick, given these facts:

Netanyahu agreed to commit for the first time his Likud party to accepting a Palestinian state. He froze West Bank settlement growth as well as any buildup in east Jerusalem, Israel’s eternal capital, something no other Israeli leader has ever agreed to do, including dovish prime ministers such as Rabin and Peres. Netanyahu removed dozens of roadblocks, agreed to dismantle illegal outposts, and eventually accepted Obama’s territorial formula for a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders with land swaps.

Moreover, while Netanyahu accepted the Mideast Quartet’s call, which included France and the US, to return back to negotiations with the PA without preconditions, Palestinian leader Abbas said no.

Western progressives, like Barack Obama, are toying with Jewish lives. It's a sick game in which the Jews of the Middle East are told that they must do this or that for peace and then when they do this or that they are informed that it's not enough or that they did not do it right or that they need to do it again and so on and so forth.

Netanyahu agreed to negotiations without preconditions, yet western progressives blame him for Palestinian intransigence. It is both fundamentally unjust and it rewards that Palestinian intransigence which prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state in peace next to the Jewish one.

Only fools will ignore the alarming signs of Obama’s animosity, and Jews are not fools. Each Jewish voter must decide if he or she can trust Obama with Israel’s survival for four more years.

Given Obama's incompetence and hostility, Jewish people should very definitely not vote for the guy next year.

He is no friend to the Jewish state and, thus, no friend to the Jewish people.

He squandered any possibility of a peace agreement between Israel and the local Arabs by demanding "total settlement freeze" as a precondition for talks. Such a move on Obama's part was not only counterproductive, but entirely racist. Understand this. It is racist to tell Jews where they may or may not be allowed to live on historically Jewish land and that includes, I'm sorry, Judea.

One thing that Barack Obama and Mahmoud Abbas have in common is that neither one wants Jews living in the area that may become, at some point in the future, a Palestinian state.

It is, in fact, stone cold racism.

It would be the equivalent of telling Abbas that Israel cannot negotiate a peace so long as Arabs live in Israel. How could that not be racism?

It is racism.

The Latest FBI Hate Crimes Statistics

Karam



As you can see, Islamophobia is just a huge problem in the United States.

:O)

Noting the rate of anti-Semitic attacks, many of our "progressive" friends would undoubtedly tell us how this is all Israel's fault.

By the way, I pointed out similar numbers last year to the Nice Lady at Firefly Dreaming who was wholly dismissive of the figures, preferring to believe, against all evidence, that the real problem is American hatred toward Muslims. Thus I should not have been terribly surprised when she started participating on an anti-Semitic website that literally features a corrupted Star of David on its front page, while promoting the genocidal apartheid slander against the Jewish state.

And, yet, somehow, people took objection to my objection. That's the way that it works on the progressive-left. They do not mind expressions of anti-Jewish bigotry. What they mind is when Jews stand up for themselves. That is what cannot be allowed.

I saw it time and time again.

A Campaign of Hatred and a Whitewashing of History

Karam

The progressive-left's campaign of hatred against the Jewish state is perhaps unprecedented in American political history. There is no other country on the planet, outside of those that we have actually been at war with, that has so much constant vitriol spit at it by "liberals." There is no other country in the world in which seemingly reasonable "progressives" discuss whether or not the country should be dissolved and the Jewish people robbed of autonomy. It is for this reason, among others, that Jewish liberal support for the progressive movement and the Democratic Party is seriously eroding.

The campaign of hatred against Israel, however, is accompanied by an equally egregious whitewashing of Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian history which, if exposed, tends to undermine the fake "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood. We've recently come up with 11 topics around the Arab war against the Jews that are taboo among progressives... as you can see just to the right... but they were not properly organized.

The organization that I propose breaks these taboo, but historically critical, topics into three categories. These are:

A) Theocratic elements of Arab culture that harms Jews, women, Gay people, and children.

B) The recent construction of Palestinian identity and what it owes to both the Soviet Union and the Nazis.

C) The tactics used by Arabs, and their progressive-left allies, against the Jewish state and against the Jewish people.

Organizing What Must Not Be Discussed:

A) Theocratic Elements of Arab Culture that Harms Jews, Women, Gay People, and Children

1) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.

2) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.

3) Religiously-based human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East.

B) The Construction of Palestinian Identity

4) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how it is that we have an Arab people with a Latinate, non-Arabic name that refers to Greeks.

5) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.

C) Tactics

6) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.

7) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.

8) "Pallywood."

9) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.

10) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of "resistance."

11) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one, while blaming that intransigence on the state of Israel.

D) Demography

12) The demographic configuration of Palestine under the Ottomans.

These topics are taboo within the progressive-left because to discuss them undermines the "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood and, thus, the project to delegitimize Israel. It is for this reason, for example, that any discussion of "Pallywood" in places like Daily Kos gets met with the howls of "racism!" despite the fact that it is a wholly verified phenomenon.

My intention going forward is to highlight each of these verboten topics into discreet discussions so that we might begin to see how they fit together and how they relate to the Long Arab War against the Jews.

Last Week Ireland - This Week Sweden

Doodad

You may remember last week's atrocious move by Dublin City Council allowing hate mongers to compare Israel to Nazis. Optimistically, there is always a tendency to write these things off as outliers. But then, like clockwork, along comes another one.


"Sweden has funded the publication of an anti-Israel booklet titled "Colonialism and Apartheid – the Israeli occupation in Palestine," Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sunday.According to the report, the Swedish government transferred NIS 390,000 (roughly $104,600), under the guise of humanitarian aid, to a Swedish-Palestinian solidarity group for the creation of the ornate 40-page booklet.The brochure's authors accuse Israel of racist legislation, ethnic cleansing, racial segregation, establishing an Apartheid regime in the territories, and bombing Palestinian civilian homes. Furthermore, the brochure calls for a boycott of the Jewish state."

Europe......hating Jews again still.

Panel Announcement: Has the Obama Administration been good for Israel?

Karam



Program at Congregation Netivot Shalom, Berkeley, California, Sunday Dec 4 at 7:30 PM. Admission is free.

More than at anytime in recent years, some in the Jewish community are asking the question about how much support Israel has in the White House, and whether President Obama has helped or harmed Israel's security. Whether you love, loathe or are ambivalent about the President's approach, please join us for a vibrant and open panel discussion (including written and open mic audience Q&A) with 3 Bay Area activists who write and/or speak extensively about the Middle East. Participants are Mike Harris (grassroots activist with StandWithUs/SF Voice for Israel), Jon Segall (liberal pro-Israel blogger, founder of Team Shalom at DailyKos) and Michael Lumish (PhD in history, longtime pro-Israel blogger, and liberal critic of the left). The program will be moderated by Rachel Eryn Kalish.

This panel should prove very interesting. Jon Segall is a very knowledgeable man on the topic of I-P and is considerably to my left on the issue. I would put him somewhere in the realm of J Street and Meretz.

Mike Harris is a well established pro-Israel activist with Stand With Us. I would probably characterize his politics on the I-P front as center / center-right.

I am somewhere near where Mike is on the topic, although I do tend to be a bit more strident on the issue... I suppose.

Rachel Eryn Kalish, our moderator, is an expert on community relations and dialogue. She's just the person to maintain a degree of focus and harmony on a highly contentious question.

I think that this will be fun and, for me, the point is to promote pro-Israel dialogue across the political spectrum. In fact, part of the reason that I started this panel was because I wanted a smart left-leaning pro-Israel person to talk, in public, with a smart right-leaning pro-Israel person, in a genuine setting, not on-line.

That was the point of the first one, but let's see where this goes.

Open Thread

Pththththththt!

Another Racist Progressive Delegitmizes Israel on Daily Kos

Karam

how could it be otherwise? (0+ / 0-)

If I told you my ancestors lived on your property 2,000 years ago and we were now "home," I doubt you would move out , even if I assured you that my god had told me it belonged to me. And of course, the murder and theft required to achieve a Jewish majority has never ceased and continues today. I notice this has never bothered you or raised a cheep from the defenders of the holy state. That the vast majority of the world recognizes this should surprise no one.

by Anorish on Sat Nov 19, 2011 at 04:57:08 PM PST

Let's take this bit by bit.

If I told you my ancestors lived on your property 2,000 years ago and we were now "home," I doubt you would move out...

So, in his first sentence he seeks to decouple the Jews from the land of Israel (not to mention decouple Jews from Jewish history) by failing to acknowledge that Jews have lived on that land continuously for around 3,500 years.

He furthermore insinuates that as Europeans were chasing Jews out of Europe that Jews were chasing Arabs out of Palestine. This is false.

And of course, the murder and theft required to achieve a Jewish majority has never ceased and continues today.

This is a lie straight out of the "Palestinian narrative," straight out of Arab propaganda. Murder and theft? Really? The Arabs have been fighting a terror war against the Jews of the Middle East since the 1920s, before there even was a Jewish state and in November of 1947, directly after the passing of UN 181 and shortly after the Holocaust, the Palestinian-Arabs launched a genocidal civil war against the Jews which, thankfully, they lost, but this cannot fairly be represented as Jewish "murder and theft."

This is pure malice and lies and is no way reflective of the historical record. It is however reflective of the blood-libel which posits Jews as brutal murderers. The charge of theft, needless to say, reinforces the old anti-Semitic canard of the grasping and greedy Jew.

I notice this has never bothered you or raised a cheep from the defenders of the holy state.

Notice the mocking reference to "the holy state."

These are your progressive friends.

These are the people who claim that unless we support them then we are "Israel firsters" or that we have dual loyalty and are, thus, not real Americans.

This is your movement and it has, as a whole, betrayed the Jewish people.

Time to get the hell out of the progressive-left.

Time to give the Democratic Party a serious break, as well.

Open your eyes and recognize that today's progressive movement, and today's Democratic Party, are simply no longer friends to the Jewish people because they have made a home of themselves to anti-Semitic anti-Zionists.

Oh, and Anorish is a racist. Anyone who would seek to deny Jewish heritage on Jewish land is racist against Jews. Why are there so many anti-Jewish racists on the left, anyway? The Republicans have done a good job of marginalizing their anti-Semites, but the Democrats are cultivating theirs on the level of the activist base and the netroots / grassroots.

Acknowledge the obvious.

What You Can't Discuss (Updated)

Karam

Among progressive-left racists there are any number of topics around the long Arab war against the Jews that are entirely verboten. Here is a short list of things that one is not allowed to discuss on places like Daily Kos.

1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.

2) The recent construction of "Palestinian" identity, its connection to Soviet Communism, and how it is that this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.

3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based genocidal racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.

4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.

5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.

6) Pallywood.

7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.

8) The perpetual refusal of the local Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.

Since these are things which are verboten on the racist progressive-left, I think that these are things very much in need of discussion.

I imagine that you guys could add to this list if you wanted to, so if anyone has any ideas on additions, please let me know.

Update:

In the comments, my partners Doodad and oldschooltwentysix have come up with an additional three topics, around the subject of I-P, that tend to be verboten in progressive-left circles.

These are:

9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of resistance.

10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hate.

Doodad put it somewhat differently, but I think the above represents fair characterization.

11) Human rights violations against women and children in the Muslim Middle East. (oldschooltwentysix)

The reason that these topics are verboten in progressive-left venues is because any discussion of them undermines the "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood which they are using like a club against the Jewish state in order to delegitimize it in preparation for its eventual dissolution.

And that's precisely why we need to discuss it.

A Violent Kossack Justifies Suicide Bombing

Karam

Yes. Because she realizes that (0+ / 0-)

the violence of the occupation is what caused this tactic. Unless you somehow want to argue that without Israeli oppression Palestinians would've been using the tactic of suicide bombing for no reason?

by Fire bad tree pretty on Thu Nov 17, 2011 at 03:12:47 PM PST

This insidious "fire bad" person is suggesting that violence against Jews in the form of suicide bombing is the fault of those Jews. Since Israel is mean to the local Arabs by putting up check-points and the security fence in order to get them to stop trying to kill us, we apparently deserve whatever we get.

This is what "fire bad" means by the "occupation." Efforts by Jews to prevent Arabs from killing them become, in the mind of this Kossack, a good reason to kill Jews via suicide bombing.

Of course, what she doesn't tell you is that Arabs have been in the Jew Killing Business long, long before there ever was any such thing as the Jewish state. How would she, I wonder, justify the Hebron Massacre of 1929 wherein local Arabs slaughtered 67 Jews.

Describing the savagery, Edwin Black, in The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust (page 205) writes:

House to house, they went, bursting into every room looking for hiding Jews. Religious books and scrolls were burned or torn to shreds. The defenseless Jews were variously beheaded, castrated, their breasts and fingers sliced off, and in some cases, their eyes plucked from their sockets.

Such a gentle people.

There was no "occupation" then.

There was no Jewish state to so vex the local Arabs.

There were Jews praying in the city of Hebron, the city where Abraham is buried.

The "fire bad" person goes on to wonder:

Why do you think Palestinian violence (0+ / 0-)
occurs?

Ummm, hello, I believe that I can answer that question. The Kossacks won't. Not even the liberal Jewish ones will answer that question because to do so accurately makes one a "racist."

The reason for so much Arab violence against Jews over such a long period of time, millenia, is due to Koranic-based Jew hatred wherein the Jewish people are dehumanized as apes and pigs and set-up as the very enemy of G-d, himself.

This is why Hamas is the only elected body on the face of the planet that has genocide at the heart of its foundational document.

The notion that the horrendous Jews would actually gain self-determination and self-defense on land that was once conquered by Arabs is humiliating to those Arabs who are trained from infancy to despise the Jewish people, which is why there is an "occupation" in the first place.

"Progressives," even those who favor Israel, will never tell you the truth because the truth is not Politically Correct. Multicultural Political Correctness rules the progressive mind. Multicultural Political Correctness is more important than truth. Multicultural Political Correctness is more important than universal human rights and Multicultural Political Correctness is more important than the lives of Jews, women, and Gay people in the Middle East.

If you're a progressive, that is.

Another Piece of The Puzzle.

(by Doodad)

Constantly we wonder why so many hate Israel, the only Democracy in a sea of enemies. Here, an American living in Norway gives us some insight.


"'The quintessential expression of Norwegian anti-Semitism during my time in Norway was an op-ed written by Jostein Gaarder, author of the international bestseller Sophie's World. It appeared on August 11, 2006, in Aftenposten, Norway's newspaper of record. I will quote from it just to give you a flavor of the kind of thing that is considered respectable discourse in Norway. "The state of Israel in its current form is history," wrote Gaarder. "We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people....To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity....We acknowledge...Europe's deep responsibility for the fate of Jews....But the state of Israel...has massacred its own legitimacy....The State of Israel has seen its Soweto.... " Gaarder went on to describe little Jewish girls writing hateful words on bombs to be dropped on civilian populations in Lebanon and Palestine – as if it were Israel that teaches its children to hate and kill. He wrote: "We do not recognize a state founded on anti-humanistic principles and the ruins of an archaic national religion and warrior religion." You might have thought he was talking about Saudi Arabia or Iran, but no; he was talking about Israel. After reading Gaarder's op-ed, one of the leading members of Norway's tiny Jewish community, a writer named Mona Levin, said she had not read anything so disturbing since Mein Kampf. Many ordinary Norwegians agreed. Yet members of the cultural elite lined up to support Gaarder. As far as they were concerned he had struck a blow for truth and virtue."

This is a powerful article and I suggest you read it all for another piece of the puzzle. These morons think they are better, more moral somehow than a people still facing Genocide at the hands of their neighbors. You can imagine what I think of them.

Oh and this is interesting and relevant too, IMO.

"I should add that part of the motivation for all this anti-Semitism is, I think, guilt. The very existence of Jews and of Israel today remind Norwegians of what their countrymen did and didn't do during the war. Norwegians cannot forgive the Jews for having been murdered as part of a horrendous program in which many of their own parents or grandparents played a role. I think it salves the conscience of many Norwegians about their parents' and grandparents' wartime moral choices to be able to tell themselves that, "well, that was long ago, and today Norway is a virtuous bringer of peace, and Israel is a bloodthirsty warmonger."

Say Hello to Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein

Karam

Rabbi Eckstein is the president and founder of The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ). The IFCJ is neither Republican nor Democratic, neither conservative nor liberal. Instead of ideology, the organization stresses fundamental human decency and campaigns to, among other things, help out the poor, the elderly, and the needy in Israel. It also works to build bridges between the Jewish communities and the Christian communities in the United States and elsewhere:

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews was founded in 1983 by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein to promote understanding between Jews and Christians and build broad support for Israel and other shared concerns. Our ministry's vision is that Jews and Christians will reverse their 2,000-year history of discord and replace it with a relationship marked by dialogue, respect and cooperation.

That sounds good to me.

One of the things that we need to do is strengthen our friendship with Evangelical Christians who tend to be largely supportive of the Jewish people and the Jewish state. Most malicious "progressives" will tell you that the only reason that Evangelicals are supportive of Israel is out of some crazed End Of Days eschatology wherein, with the second coming of Jesus, he will then go about showing both Hitler and the Catholic Church how the Jews should have been dealt with.

This is largely nonsense. Most Evangelicals are supportive of Israel not out of theocratic malice toward Jews, but out of an understanding that their own faith is grounded in Judaism and the land of Israel.

That's why they support Israel. To think otherwise is to project one's own malice onto others.

The Fellowship's success has far exceeded expectations. Over the years, we have been leaders in Jewish-Christian relations, building bridges of goodwill that have led to greater understanding and cooperation between members of these two great faiths. We have helped hundreds of thousands of Jews escape poverty and anti-Semitism and return to their biblical homeland, funded humanitarian assistance that has touched the lives of millions of Jews in Israel and around the world, provided life-giving aid to Israel’s victims of war and terror, and much more.

One of the themes of this blog is encouraging Jewish people to understand who our friends are and who they are not. Those who defame the Jewish state are not a friend to the Jewish people even if they claim that their derogation of Israel, and various Jewish organizations, are really for our own best benefit. How stupefied must one be to honestly believe that those who denigrate and deride are actually friends and those who help and support are not?

Evangelical Christianity has emerged as the best friend that Israel has in the world outside of diaspora Jewry. In return we do nothing but spit hatred at those people. I find it disgraceful. We need not agree with everything that they stand for in order to acknowledge their friendship toward us. We can even work to reform their movement a little by encouraging a more liberal attitude toward Gay people, and so forth.

Let us stop hating our friends and befriending our enemies.

I would encourage any of you guys to look into and support this organization.

Here's the Rabbi:



Sure, the video is a little hokey, but if you don't see the fundamental human decency of what this man has to say then the problem is most certainly not with him.

Blatant Palestinian Racism

By Karam

On left political blogs, such as Daily Kos, Israel is constantly accused of racism. The truth of the matter, of course, is that the Palestinians (and the Arab world, more generally) are far and away more racist than are the Israelis.

Check this one out:



"The light rain cleanses the steps of the foreigners (Jews) so that the feet (of Muslims) in prayer will not step on impurity."

Tell me, does it get any more racist than that?

Progressives point the finger at us, while entirely ignoring the violent and genocidal racism that surrounds the Jews of the Middle East.

It is long past time to acknowledge that the progressive-left, and thus in some measure the Democratic Party, is simply no friend to the Jewish people.

Acknowledge the obvious.

Thoughts on the Palestinian "Freedom Riders"

By oldschooltwentysix

Yesterday, with the media in full attendance mode (about 100), six Palestinians boarded an Israeli bus in the West Bank to demonstrate the notion that Israel engages in racial discrimination, apartheid laws and segregation against Palestinians. It was a ridiculous publicity stunt premised on a false analogies. At least it was more a more peaceful form of protest than rock throwing.

Restrictions on the freedom of movement of Palestinians in the West Bank undoubtedly exists, and includes access to Israeli settlements and within the Green Line, including Jerusalem. Such restrictions are based on security concerns. If they have a permit, nothing stops Palestinians from riding Israeli buses within the West Bank and continuing into Jerusalem or the settlements.  In fact, many do so every day, like those legally employed on construction projects within the settlements.

According to Honest Reporting, which looks at the media's role in the battle for public opinion, the more significant issue should have been why there is denial of entry into Jerusalem and Israel proper. The idea that racism rather than security governs Israeli policy is misplaced. We are reminded:

Many Israelis remember a time in the early 1990s and before, when both sides moved relatively freely between Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was only with the outbreak of the Palestinian terror campaign, including the use of suicide bombers, that restrictions on Palestinian movement reached their current level. The media should ask themselves how much culpability Palestinians have for creating this situation where the real victims were Israelis murdered by Palestinian terrorists.

And this is like the Freedom Riders in America?

Of course, I believe this is wholly different. In America, blacks sought to establish, based on their American citizenship, constitutional rights to equal protection and substantive due process of law, pursuant to Supreme Court decisions determining that restrictions on intestate travel, solely according to race, were unlawful discrimination and prohibited.

In the Palestinian context, as I see it, this is not a matter of civil rights.  Or human rights for that matter. Some Palestinian movement is restricted by military decree based on a legitimate, compelling state interest. Palestinians are not nationals of Israel and therefore have no claim to enforce rights of citizenship or residency against the state. Israel does not owe these individuals any right to movement and there is simply no breach of international norms.

The right to movement is set forth in Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:

(1) Everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence.

(2) Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own.

(3) The above-mentioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those provided by law, are necessary to protect national security, public order (ordre public), public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others, and are consistent with the other rights recognized in the present Covenant.

(4) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.

The restrictions on movement in this case, whether or not one sympathizes, are prompted primarily by security concerns and, even if there was a right, well within the concept of a "margin of appreciation," defined under Paragraph 3 above, that allows maneuver to national authorities in fulfilling their human rights obligations. 

So where is the violation of human rights?

The publicity grab by the Palestinian "Freedom Riders" trivializes legitimate fights by people against governments to ensure protection of lawful entitlements from their state. To present the matter as racism and invoke the memory of Martin Luther King is false and deceptive, and an insult to the memory of the US civil rights movement and the true Freedom Riders, whose story can be seen in this May, 2011 documentary on the "American Experience."

Palestinians will be fortunate if this mainly passes unnoticed. I believe most fair minded people will see the disconnect and the episode will be detrimental to their ultimate cause, which is itself uncertain to many observers.

UPDATE:  While some Palestinians engage in peaceful protest, others remain busy shooting rockets and damaging an Israeli kindergarten.

(Cross-posted at oldschooltwentysix)

A few words from oldschooltwentysix

By oldschooltwentysix

I have been invited to post at Israel Thrives, and decided to make use of the opportunity.

In doing so, however, I wish to make clear that my expressions are my own and should be always be seen in that light.

For example, I am not a former Democrat, but one who believes that most Democrats are not supportive of the tactics used by anti-Israeli crusaders.  That said, I appreciate the general argument that the Democratic Party is too tolerant of antisemitic forces within its ranks, and remain watchful.

I believe in substance over personalities and demonization of ideas, not people.

I believe it is not Islamophobic to expose violations of human rights, aggression and pronouncements of inferiority by regimes and leaders directed toward women, children and non-believers of Islam.

I believe my principles and values are liberal because they prioritize individual human dignity and potential, based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, compared to the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam that prioritizes an ideology of religion.  As such, I believe in free expression for people and oppose blasphemy laws and the notion of defamation of religion. 

I believe too many anti-Israel crusaders promote illiberalism and effectively support some of the worst human rights abusers on the planet, with whom they share common ground.

I believe too many of the "intelligentsia" and self-anointed moralists throughout Europe and increasingly in America, particularly in the universities and media, are indiscriminate and disproportionate in scrutiny, engage in double standards, and practice humanitarian racism of lower expectations.

Of course, there is much more.  This is merely a synopsis for today, to give an idea of where I come from and am going, and to distinguish myself.

One place where I wholeheartedly agree:  The day of the dhimmi is over!

(Cross-posted at oldschooltwentysix)

Arab Spring = Global Caliphate

Told you so.

(posted by Doodad)

"Tunisia’s secularists said their fears about an Islamist takeover were being realized on Tuesday after a senior official in the moderate Islamist party which won last month’s election invoked the revival of a caliphate, or Islamic state. Footage posted on the Internet showed Hamadi Jbeli, the secretary-general of the Ennahda party, telling supporters that “We are in the sixth caliphate, God willing.”

Heh. Take that progressive/leftist rainbow eaters. So much for your la-la land pie in the sky. Oh, and there is more. Being progressive/leftists you are going to LOVE this part.


"In a popular meeting in Sousse on November 12, celebrating his party’s relative victory in the Constitutional Assembly elections, Hamadi Jebali of Enahdha party, very probably tunisian next prime minister in Tunisia, has announced that he and his party will be “the 6 th islamic Rightly Guided Caliphs”, promising also that this tunisian Caliphate will, enlighten the worrld, as did the Jasmine revolution! … He also promised that Jerusalem will be freed from jewish occupation. The liberation process will start from the tunisian Caliphate! pointing to a palestenian guest woman present in the meeting: “our sister’s presence is a sign from God. There are divine signals in this very moment. The liberation of jerusalem starts here. From tunisia will start the 6th Righteous Caliphate”

Yep, they are going to FREE JERUSALEM! You can start giving out the sweets now. At least that part works out for you.

BTW, your favorite democratically elected terrorist party was invited too:

"Tunisian Islamist party Ennahda invited Houda Naïm, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council based in Gaza, to speak at a rally in Sousse, a coastal Tunisian city, this past Sunday. The event marked the first time in known memory a member of Hamas has addressed the Tunisian public."

First time ever! Great.

Announcement: Welcome Oldschooltwentysix

{Posted by Karmafish}

I am very pleased to announce that oldschooltwentysix has joined our little team of front pagers here at Israel Thrives.

School has consistently produced thoughtful and well-written material that is not afraid to ask the kinds of tough questions that most progressives haven't the stomach to even ask, much less answer.

Cheers to oldschool!

And thanks for joining the team.

Oh, and by the way, please check out school's personal blog for some interesting reading on the I-P question.

Apartheid, My Tushky

{Posted by Karmafish}

Volleyboy1 Smeared on Daily Kos

{Posted by Karmafish}

Progressives, with the obvious exception of progressive Zionists, just love to defame and demonize Israel. Those of us who care about that country and who follow I-P discourse on the progressive-left know that progressive venues spit hatred at Israel constantly.

Part of the tactic used in defaming Israel is in defaming Jewish supporters of Israel by dragging our characters through the mud and smearing us with the most insidious charges imaginable.

Today, I see, that the heathlander has smeared and defamed Volleyboy1.

In a "diary" by The Troubadour, a wolf in sheep's clothing if every there was one, Volleyboy stood up for Israel by carefully explaining just how it is that Israel cannot in any way be reasonably compared to the Jim Crow South.

So, how does the heathlander respond?

He tells Volleyboy that he favors apartheid and the brutalization of Palestinians!

The thrust of your comment is that unlike black people in the US, Palestinians deserve to be brutalised... I won't bother to respond to this - although if apartheid is a justified and necessary response by Israel...

The problem is that Volleyboy never said, nor in any way implied, that Israel was, or should be, an apartheid state. Nor did Volleyboy ever say, or in any way imply, that he favors the brutalization of anyone.

But, needless to say, this is how these vicious anti-Semitic anti-Zionists like the heathlander operate. First they defame Israel then they defame Jewish defenders of Israel if, like Volleyboy, we dare to speak up.

This is what we must put up with if we wish to participate on the progressive-left.

Thank G-d I no longer have any such desire, but I do feel bad for Jewish liberals who must put up with this sort of defamation on a regular basis. It's a rather high price to pay in order to participate in progressive venues.

I, for one, do not think that it is worth it... not by a long shot.

And Now Ireland

{Posted by Doodad}

'Ireland most hostile country in Europe'

Foreign Ministry accuses Irish government of inciting against Israel. Dublin City Council sponsors display presenting IDF soldiers as 'Nazi troops' abusing Palestinians Hatred of Israel reaches new levels in Ireland: An outrageous anti-Israel display was held over the weekend on Dublin's main pedestrian street, presenting IDF soldiers as Nazi troops. As part of the display, sponsored by the Dublin City Council, a group of pro-Palestinian activists set up a model of the separation fence and an IDF roadblock.....

"The Irish government is feeding its people with anti-Israel hatred," an Israeli official argued. "What we are seeing here is clear anti-Semitism."

Europe is once again becoming a cesspool of antisemitism. Or maybe staying is a better word.

You know I watched a PBS program last night called ‘Elusive Justice: The Search for Nazi War Criminals.’ Maybe if some of these idiots were forced to watch REAL Nazi horrors we wouldn't see these horrid comparisons again. On second thought, it probably wouldn't faze them in the least.

Palestinians Indoctrinate Their Children with Genocidal Hatred of Jews

{Posted by Karmafish}



The progressive-left is a diseased political movement.

If I point to the above video as evidence of Palestinian indoctrination of children with genocidal Jew hatred... which is precisely what we see above... then I am the racist.

In other words, on the progressive-left it is just fine to spread hatred toward Jews but if any Jew points out that this is happening that Jew is a "racist."

And you expect Jews to support the progressive movement?

Ho. Ho. Ho.

{And Merry Christmas.}

Occupy Oaklanders Against The Jews

In the progressive-left war against the Jews, via their hostility toward the Jewish state, a favorite tactic is analogizing the state of Israel to either Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, or the Jim Crow South. Perhaps what is most insidious about this tactic is that they teach it to Jewish kids who are then forced to choose between the Jewish people and our enemies, who they are told are our victims when the reverse is the actual historical case. If these kids dare to stand up for their own people they are then called "racist" by insidious progressives who are, themselves, the very epitome of racist.

Above is a photo of some of these anti-Israel Occupiers who want to suggest that Israel is something akin to the Jim Crow South. Decade upon decade, century upon century, the Jewish people get told how vile we are and how we deserve whatever punishment, or violence (resistance) that they encourage toward us.

Progressives like those in the photo above encourage Arab violence against Jews in the Middle East, and elsewhere, because they validate false Arab / Palestinian grievances against us. The truth of the matter, of course, is that just as Israel is nothing like Nazi Germany, and just as Israel is nothing like Apartheid South Africa, so Israel is nothing whatsoever like the Jim Crow South. That's what "From Birmingham to Jerusalem, Separate is Not Equal" means. It means that just as the Jim Crow South needed to be undone and just as Apartheid South Africa needed to be undone and just as Nazi Germany needed to be undone, so the Jewish state of Israel must be dismantled... by any means necessary, including violence.

This is, in fact, second cousin to the blood libel. If the blood libel means that Jews, either for religious reasons or out of gratuitous malice, enjoy slaughtering innocent non-Jewish children, this is the equally false and egregious accusation that the Jewish state is maliciously oppressing its non-Jewish population.

It is a lie.

In the Jim Crow South black people were prevented from voting in various ways, such as poll taxes and literacy tests. In Israel, Muslim and Christian citizens have the full franchise and there are Arab members of the Knesset and have been pretty much from the beginning of that besieged country.

In the Jim Crow South black people could not eat in the same restaurants as white people, nor could they be treated at the same hospitals or attend the same schools, despite the fact that they were not rocketing American cities or strapping suicide belts onto their children for the purpose of murdering white people.

Virulent forms of religious and gender apartheid are widespread throughout the Middle East, just not in Israel. For example, Jews are not allowed to even live (period) in either Saudi Arabia or Jordan. For centuries the Arab world treated the Jews as second and third class citizens and actually launched a war against us in the 1920s which continues to this day.

We are 13 million people facing 1.5 billion people whose holy book tells them that we are the enemy of G-d.

In the Middle East, we are 5.5 million facing 300 to 400 million who mainly do not want us there and whose religious leaders perpetually incite genocidal violence toward us.

Yet western progressives think that we are the oppressors for allegedly treating the local Palestinian-Arabs poorly. They rioted against us in the 1920s and 1930s because the Palestinian's Nazi leader, the Mufti, promoted genocidal race hatred toward Jews.

In November of 1947, the local Arabs launched a civil war against the Jews directly after the adoption of UN 181, the partition plan.

In 1948, 1967, and 1973 many of the Arab states launched wars in order to wipe us out of the Middle East entirely.

And today we have both progressives and Democrats, who vilify the Jews of the Middle East in just the way that we see in the photo above, and yet so many liberal Jews continue to support a movement and political party that hardly cares if we live or die.

Any sentient Jewish human being should recognize that it is long, long past time for Jews to abandon that movement and that party because not only do they not serve our best interests, but actively, passionately, and continually incite against us, thereby confirming the false Palestinian narrative of never-ending righteous victimhood.

The Palestinians blame us for their failures and the progressive-left agrees with them, encourages them, and more often than not, sides with them.

I think it is a disgrace that so many Jews continue to support a politics that may prove yet to be wholly disastrous to the Jewish people.

But we shall see.

The Nazi Roots of the Radical Jihad

Say "hello" to Matthias Küntzel. Küntzel is, perhaps, the world's foremost expert on the connections to, and influence of, the Nazi regime to the rise of the Radical Jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Of all the various taboos within progressive-left discourse (and there are many, many things that one is not allowed to discuss among progressives) a big one is not just the history of Islamism (or the Radical Jihad, as I call it) but even the movement, itself, is to be entirely ignored. As I like to say, your average progressive wouldn't acknowledge the Radical Jihad if he was on his hands and knees, blindfolded in some basement in Karachi.

Below is a relatively brief excerpt from a longer piece entitled Hitler's Legacy: Islamic antisemitism and the impact of the Muslim Brotherhood.

If you want to understand the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a genocidal Jew-hating organization, this is a good place to start.

Oh, and by the way, this is the organization currently coming into power in Egypt that the Obama administration would have you believe is both secular and moderate.

Such a claim is entirely false. It is a lie:

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"Despite common misconceptions, Islamism was born not during the 1960s but during the 1930s. Its rise was inspired not by the failure of Nasserism but by the rise of Fascism and of Nazism.

It was the Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 in Egypt, that established Islamism as a mass movement. The significance of the Brotherhood to Islamism is comparable to that of the Bolshevik party to communism: It was and remains to this day the ideological reference point and organizational core for all later Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda and Hamas or the group around Sidique Khan.

It is true that British colonial policy produced Islamism, insofar as Islamism viewed itself as a resistance movement against “cultural modernity.” Their “liberation struggle”, however, had more in common with the “liberation struggle” of the Nazis than with any kind of progressive movement.

Thus, the Brotherhood advocated the replacement of Parliamentarianism by an “organic” state order based on the Caliphate. It demanded the abolition of interest and profit in favour of a forcibly imposed community of interests between capital and labour.

At the forefront of the Brotherhood’s efforts lay the struggle against all the sensual and “materialistic” temptations of the capitalist and communist world. At the tender age of 13, the pubescent al-Banna had founded a “Society for the Prevention of the Forbidden”[8] and this is in essence what the Brothers were and are – a community of male zealots, whose primary concern is to prevent all the sensual and sexual sins forbidden according to their interpretation of the Koran. Their signature was most clearly apparent when they periodically reduced their local night clubs, brothels and cinemas – constantly identified with Jewish influence – to ashes.

Gripped by this phobia, the Society of Muslim Brothers, from the day of its foundation, provided a haven for any man dedicated to the restoration of male supremacy. At the very time when the liberation of women from the inferiority decreed by Islam was gradually getting under way the Muslim Brotherhood set itself up as the rallying point for the restoration of patriarchal domination.

It was on the one hand a conservative religious movement: For al-Banna, only a return to orthodox Islam could pave the way for an end to the intolerable conditions and humiliations of Muslims and newly establish the righteous Islamic order.[9] It was at the same time a revolutionary political movement and as such in many respects a trailblazer. The Brotherhood was the first Islamic organization to put down roots in the cities and to organize a mass movement able in 1948 to muster one million people in Egypt alone. It was a populist and activist, not an elitist movement and it was the first movement that systematically set about building a kind of “Islamist international.”

The Islamists’ answer to everything was the call for a new order based on sharia. But the Brotherhood’s jihad was not directed primarily against the British. Rather, it focused almost exclusively on Zionism and the Jews. Membership in the Brotherhood shot up from 800 to 200,000 between 1936 and 1938.[10] In those two years the Brotherhood conducted only one major campaign in Egypt, a campaign directed against Zionism and the Jews."

French Consul Injured After IAF Strike on Gaza

Foreign Ministry in Paris says its envoy to the Strip, his wife and 13-year-old daughter were hit by shrapnel in strike two days ago; French gov't spokesman: "France recalls utmost necessity to avoid civilian harm."


France's consul to the Gaza Strip, his wife and 13-year-old daughter were injured during an Israeli air strike on Sunday night, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said on Tuesday.

Valero told reporters the three were were hit by shrapnel at their Gaza residence , which is located 200 meters from the site of the IAF missile attack.

France has a consul to Hamas?

Really?

I wonder if they have a consul to al Qaeda?

Do they have some sort of consul to the Muslim Brotherhood?

Probably.

Fizziks Banned From Daily Kos (Updated):

The administrators over at Daily Kos have knocked off another pro-Israel user.

Fizziks is now banned.

They may not have much appreciated that fizziks participates here on occasion.

Update:

It could be, although I cannot know, that fizziks got yanked because of his suggestion that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic.

The truth, of course, is that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic.

I, myself, am not a "Zionist" because that movement fulfilled itself in 1948. It's been over for a long time, now.

The term "Zionism" is still in usage for two reasons.

Much like older African-American organizations, like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which retains the word "colored," so older pro-Israel organizations maintain the term "Zionist."

I am pro-Jewish and pro-Israel, but the word "Zionism" had very little to do with my upbringing or our family conversation. Your mileage may vary, but that's how it was in my community and within my family. We were just American Jews who cared about Israel in much the same way that we imagined our Irish and Italian neighbors cared about Ireland and Italy.

The other reason why the term "Zionist" continues in popular usage among anti-Semitic anti-Zionists and Israel Haters is because they've tagged it with negative connotations. They now use it as a club against Jews who care about the Jewish state. After decades of Arab and Left propaganda "Zionist" now just sounds bad to the vast majority of Arabs and most progressives, as well.

In the United States, this propaganda war against the Jewish people took place... much of it, perhaps most of it... within the Democratic Party in recent decades.

I am sorry, folks, but you cannot easily separate the Progressive movement from the Democratic Party. Nor can you easily separate the anti-Zionist movement from the larger Progressive movement which provides it political shelter in the United States and Europe.

These are political issues that this generation of liberal Jews are only now realizing and discussing.

And I do not think that things look good for the Democratic Party in terms of the traditional Jewish constituency.

Heck, we are not beholden to them.

They have every right to sell us down the river and we have every right to respond as we will... including telling Democrats to fuck off.

It's time to stand up.

Vicious Anti-Semitic Thugs Occupy Oakland

Within the Jewish community here in the San Francisco Bay Area no one has more progressive credentials than does Tikkun magazine editor, Rabbi Michael Lerner.

Tikkun has recently published a number of open letters regarding the nature of the Occupy movement, at least as it is here in Oakland. In one letter, by a person who describes himself as "a student member of your Tikkun community," we read this:

To my horror, however, I observed and heard things that left me in a state of great concern. The 99% need healing, they need repair, they need transformation. The camp was ripe with hostility towards police. My conversations with the occupiers revealed little or any willingness to forgive and seek atonement from the police. Even more horribly, the occupiers seemed content to forget or even ignore the basic lessons our great non-violent leaders left for us. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said the most dangerous thing about violence is its futility. This great leader recognized that fighting violence with violent resistance leads to a continuing cycle of inter-generational trauma and hatred.

Yet many of the occupiers seemed ready for a violent fight-some welcomed it- and many more were unready to forgive.

Ahh, nothing like cracking some skulls in order to feel truly revolutionary.

The highlight of the day was a speech and a reading from the Egyptian movement that was followed by a “Solidarity March.” The reading was disturbing to hear because its focus was on the justification for violent resistance. Although the need for violent aggression may be debatable in Egypt, it is not here in America. The activists of our past changed this county by being willing to die, not by being willing to kill. What shocked me more was that no one (including myself) booed or hissed. We sat there and many applauded. Worse followed.

A leader of a Palestinian youth group read his own speech. ”Down with Israel,” he said near the end of a speech that focused on past wrongs. There was resounding applause. Then one of the leader’s crew standing next to me said “fucking Jews,” and in the face of this I could stand it no longer.

Wow, a twofer!

We get both violence and anti-Semitism!

The Occupiers rock!

Surely all this justification for violence is just among the rabble, not among the community leaders, right?

Ahh, not so much, really.

Lerner responded to the students concerns in a letter of his own wherein he mainly praises the Occupy movement, but also tells us how some of the leadership, religious leadership no less, refused to stand up for non-violence.

But non-violence has not been the stance of the inner core at Occupy Oakland. I was deeply disturbed, and have withdrawn from active involvement with, a group of clergy who were meeting to discuss how they could assist in Occupy Oakland. At the third meeting I attended I proposed that we urge Occupy Oakland to officially endorse non-violence, train monitors to non-violently restrain violence-oriented demonstrators, and appeal to the majority of demonstrators to support these monitors to restrain the violence-oriented ones. To my shock, the clergy voted that down.

Pro-Occupy clergy voted down a resolution calling for non-violence.

Can you imagine?

Over at Commentary, Seth Mandel puts it like this:

That is, the “adult supervision” refused to advise the occupiers that they eschew violence, and when one of the protesters suggested nonviolence, he was roundly booed and mocked. The idea that the occupiers should be nonviolent was insulting to the movement’s core. Nonviolence and Jews are resented with shocking force by the occupiers, and their predilection for destruction was too much even for some of their advocates and allies, like Michael Lerner.

These people in the streets are thugs and little else.