Give "Peace" A Chance

Doodad (h/t to Israel Matzav)

In a lecture at the University of Oslo, and in interviews in the Norwegian press and with Haaretz, Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung made anti-Semitic remarks, including the outrageous claim that the Mossad was behind Anders Breivik's murderous Norwegian rampage last summer, and praise for the anti-Semitic primer, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Galtung is known as the 'father of peace studies.' Among other statements, Galtung claimed that a possible connection exists between the terrorist responsible for the massacre of children in Norway last summer, and the Mossad. “The Jews control U.S. media, and divert for the sake of Israel,” wrote Galtung in an article published in Norway. Link He pointed out that one of the factors behind the anti-Semitic sentiment that led to Auschwitz was the fact that Jews held influential positions in German society. Galtung also recommended reading “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” – one of the most popular anti-Semitic texts in the world. Professor Galtung, 82-years-old, is one of the founders of the discipline called “Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution,” as well as a founder of the international Peace Research Institute in Oslo. He is considered well-respected sociological researcher, has been awarded many prizes, and is the author of over a thousand articles and over a hundred books. Some of his work has also been translated into Hebrew.....(read the whole disgusting thing.)

Once again some celebrated icon turns out to be  teh crazy when it comes to Jews. I suspect (and always have) that there are a LOT more like him out there.

MORE 


AND MORE

Why Do They Capitalize the "East" in East Jerusalem?

Mike L.

(Cross-Posted at Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers and Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill.)

One of the things that I am most interested in within "I-P" discourse is how prevalent language influences our ways of thinking on the subject. For example, I gave up on the usage of "West Bank" when I learned that the term was invented by the Jordanians in the middle of the last century.

Those of us who care about the Jewish people, and therefore care about the Jewish state, need to be much more cognizant of how the language that we use predetermines conclusions. If speaking of the "Occupation" with a capital "O" condemns the Jews of the Middle East before the conversation even gets started, and if so much of the language that we use was created by those who hate the Jewish presence in the Middle East, then why should we use that language?

There is no such place as East Jerusalem. There is the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, like every other city on the planet, has an eastern part and a western part and a northern part and a southern part. But the eastern part of the city, which is to say, the Old City and adjacent neighborhoods, is not a separate and distinct entity. That being the case, why is it that I constantly see the term "East Jerusalem" in the western press?

I would suggest that it is due to the common notion that "East Jerusalem" is "Arab East Jerusalem" and, therefore, the Jews have no real claim on the foundational city of the Jewish people where we have had a presence for over 3,500 years. Just as calling Judea and Samaria "the West Bank" tends to erase the fact that it is historically Jewish land dating back millenia before Arabs turned up as conquerors, so referring to the Old City and adjacent neighborhoods as "East Jerusalem" tends to suggest that it is separate from the rest of the city, which it is not.

This being the case, I would very much recommend deleting that usage. If you care about the well-being of the Jewish people you should not use terminology that automatically puts us back on our heals. If you understand that we have been subject to 14 centuries of ongoing Arab-Muslim persecution in that part of the world, and that they portray our self-defense to that persecution as their oppression, then we must not use the language of our enemies to describe our own circumstance.

Doing so not only misrepresents Jewish history in the Middle East, but promotes Jewish persecution there.

Benzion Netanyahu Laid to Rest in Jerusalem

Mike L.

Hundreds of people attended the funeral of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's father, Benzion Netanyahu, in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul cemetery Monday afternoon.

Prof. Netanyahu, who died earlier in the day at the age of 102, was a renowned historian, specializing in the golden age of Jewish history in Spain, and a professor emeritus at Cornell University.

I find this very, very sad.

Certainly Benzion Netanyahu lived a long and full life, passing at the age of 102, but it's obvious to me that he will go unmourned by most American Jews... and many "progressives" will cheer.

Progressive-Left anti-Jewish Racism

Mike L.

I am sometimes accused of using anecdotal evidence to make my case that there is an element on the Left that is virulently anti-Jewish and anti-Israel.

Guilty as charged!

The thing of it is, tho, that there is nothing wrong with anecdotal evidence, as evidence. As example piles upon example it should become clear that there is a pattern and a problem.

Here are a few more examples from the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) nonsense:



"Zionists" control Wall Street, eh? Well, that's pretty much classic Jew hatred, right there.



Nazi Bankers? Gee, who in this world could that be referring to?



This is fairly explicit. It's Yom Kippur and banks should atone.

In any case, there is plenty more anti-Jewish racism coming from the Left and while progressives are quick to point out perceived racism from the Right, they almost always downplay or excuse the racism and the anti-Semitism that has emerged from within their own ranks.

Until the progressive-left deals with its own racism they have no standing to condemn it elsewhere.

At the very last anti-war rally that I attended in San Francisco I saw Stars of David entwined with swastikas.

And that, my friends, was the last progressive action that I have attended.

The progressive movement, and the grassroots / netroots of the Democratic party, has made a home of itself for virulent anti-Jewish racists and, yet, many, many Jews will continue to support them. They will vote for Barack Obama despite the fact that Obama has snuggied up with the Muslim Brotherhood and they will support the progressive movement despite the fact that the movement is friendly with anti-Semitic anti-Zionists and complacent about the rise of radical Islam throughout the Middle East.

In this way the progressive-left cedes the liberal position to the conservative-right.

Although I do not come out of the conservative political movement, I am more than happy to acknowledge that they oppose genocidal Islamism, while the progressive-left is accepting of it.

And then they wonder why the Left is dead in Israel.

The Ugliest Slur in Egyptian Politics --- "J'accuse!"

"I accuse you of being a Jew!"


geoffff

Memri has released a video of the campaign manager of a disqualified candidate for the Egyptian presidency showing how easy it is to make the vilest allegation possible about someone's background and how impossible it is to prove otherwise. His candidate, Islamist, Abu Ismail, was disqualified because his late mother allegedly held dual American-Egyptian citizenship. It seems this prohibits him from running for president.

It could have been much worse as the campaign manager repeatedly demonstrates.

They were ready for him the second time. They threw him off air.

The incidents occured on Al-Mehwar TV on April 17, and Sada Al-Balad TV on April 18.

On Sada Al-Balad TV, he again accused a moderator of being Jewish. The moderator responded that the photo was not her, but her co-host. She then made it very clear that the “Jew” smear would not stand, saying, “I do not allow you to accuse me of being Jewish.”

He was then ordered to leave the studio. Slander charges may follow even though it is clear he did not mean such a horrible thing to be taken literally.

There is after all a limit.

The Israeli Left is Dead (Or, at least, Dying)

Mike L.

(Cross-Posted at Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill)

I wrote a piece some time ago in which I put forth the proposition that the western Left killed the Israeli Left. Of course, the reasons for the demise of the Israeli Left are not singular, but it makes considerable sense that Israelis know who their friends are and who their friends are not. So long as the western progressive movement accepts anti-Semitic anti-Zionists as part of their larger coalition and so long as they tell the Jewish people, who remain under siege in the Middle East, that their persecution is their own fault, and that their efforts to end that persecution represent the "oppression" of their persecutors, then it makes sense that Israelis would abandon the progressive-left.

Which they have.

Over at the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick is discussing:

Israel’s return to its Zionist roots is the greatest cultural event of the past decade. It is also an event that occurred under the radar screen of the rest of the world. No one outside the country seems to have noticed at all.

The outside world’s failure to take note of Israel’s cultural shift owes to its failure to recognize the significance of the failure of the peace process with the Palestinians on the one hand and the failure of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza on the other hand.

Caroline is claiming that Israelis have come to their senses and have thrown the progressive-left, along with their anti-Zionist buddies, into the dust-bin of history. This seems to be the case.

Caroline ticks off some of the reasons why the Left has died in Israel.

The failure of Oslo and the realization that they have no partner with which to come to a negotiated conclusion of hostilities. The Durban Conference of 2001, in which the UN gave full-throated expression to anti-Jewish racism. The aftermath of the Gaza withdrawal, a moment that traumatized Israeli society and that saw thousands of Palestinian rockets. The refusal of much of the international community, particularly on the Left, to even acknowledge that Israel had ended the occupation there. And, of course, the infamous Goldstone Report which progressives used as a cudgel to beat up on their favorite whipping boy.

She concludes:

From Obama to J Street to the EU, international actors interested in forcing Israel to make more concessions to the Palestinians cannot understand why their attempts continue to fail. How is it possible that despite their best efforts, Netanyahu remains in power and the Left can’t get any traction with the public? For the answer, they need to look no farther than Mosh Ben-Ari, his dreadlocks, and his rendition of Psalm 121. Israel’s adolescent rebellion is over.

One of the more egregious aspects of the western progressive-left, particularly the diaspora Jewish Left, is in their self-righteous and arrogant insistence that they know what is best for the Israelis and that they must save Israel from itself.

The fact of the matter, of course, is that they do not know what is best for Israel and the Israeli public knows that they do not.

And for that I am particularly grateful.

President Obama Speaks on Preventing Mass Atrocities

geoffff

I keep my own counsel about who should be the American president in an election year. This is because I am a foreigner and out of respect for the American people. But like foreigners everywhere I am watching closely

This speech by President Obama at the US Memorial Holocaust Museum is getting the attention of Australian Jewry today.

A moving introduction by Elie Wiesel.

Every unspeakable horror in history was unthinkable before it happened.

Crossposted Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill

There is Something Deeply Wrong with the Obama Administration

Mike L.

Two recent events illustrate that there is something deeply wrong with the Obama administration in terms of its relationship with the state of Israel, if not with Jewish people, more generally.

I am thinking specifically of Hillary Clinton's recent remarks in Tunisia and the fact that Obama has appointed Samantha Power as chair of the newly created Atrocities Prevention Board.

Let's start with Power because her example is the more straight-forward. In the quote below, we have her on video quite literally calling for a U.S. invasion of Israel:

What we need is an actual willingness to put something on the line in service of helping the situation. And putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import. It may more crucially mean sacrificing, or investing I think, more than sacrificing, literally billions of dollars not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine. In investing billions of dollars, it would probably take also to support what I think will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Sebrenica kind or Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence, because it seems to me…you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line and, unfortunately imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful, I mean it’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But…it’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to people who are fundamentally, politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people.

How in this world can Jewish supporters of Barack Obama reconcile that support with the fact that he is promoting the career, within his administration, of a woman that is literally calling for an American war against the Jews of the Middle East?

How ideologically blinkered must pro-Obama Jews be that they will simply ignore this act of betrayal by this administration? Jews who are not devoted to Obama, and even those who (wrongheadedly) are, should be screaming from the hillsides about this appointment.

Now, with Hillary in Tunisia we have something more ambiguous, but still clear enough that it tells us something about the mind-set of this administration when it comes to Israel and to its American Jewish constituency. Early last month Hillary fielded a question from a Tunisian gentleman who asked this:

After the electoral campaign start[ed] in the United States…we noticed here in Tunisia that most of the candidates from the both sides run towards the Zionist lobbies to get their support in the States. And afterwards, once they are elected, they come to show their support for countries like Tunisia and Egypt for a common Tunisian or a common Arab citizen. How would you reassure and gain his trust again once given the fact that you are supporting his enemy as well at the same time?

Hillary responded, in part, with this:

Well, first, let me say you will learn as your democracy develops that a lot of things are said in political campaigns that should not bear a lot of attention. There are comments made that certainly don’t reflect the United States, don’t reflect our foreign policy, don’t reflect who we are as a people.

The implication of Hillary's words seem to be that Obama lies during elections and is really not pro-Israel, so don't worry.  It's hard to know her exact meaning, but that seems to be the implications of her words.

Taken together, along with all the other tensions that Obama has had with Israel, and his demand that Jews not be allowed to build housing for themselves in Judea and Samaria, and the public fights with Netanyahu, and his support for the genocidal Muslim Brotherhood... among other things... it should be pretty obvious that this administration, however they may portray themselves in cooing speeches to American Jews, are not really friendly toward the Jewish state, nor the Jewish people.

It seems to me clear that pro-Obama American Jews are deeply in denial.

Let us hope that more and more of them will snap out of it before November.

Welcome Back Jew Haters

Doodad

Giulio Meotti is reporting that the antisemitic Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), may be allowed back into the fold of the Catholic Church. Here are some of their words and beliefs:

On the same day in 2009 that the Pope’s decree was signed lifting his excommunication, Bishop Williamson was shown on Swedish state television saying historical evidence “is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed” during World War II....Their US branch website demonizes “the international Jewry”, “the world wide Jewish empire”, “the Jews as the biggest capitalists”, the Jews as “the founders of Communism”, the Jews as “the enemy of man”. There is also “A defence of Inquisition”. The South African website claims that “Jews are fulfilling their substitute-Messianic drive towards world dominion”. The Irish branch calls the Jews “guilty of Deicide” and posits that they “must be baptized”. The German site is also very clear: “The Jews of now are for sure guilty of the murder of God, as long as they don’t recognize Christ as God and are baptized to atone for the sins of their forefathers”. The Belgian’s Society website defines the Jewish Messiah as “the anti-Christ of the Apocalypse”. The Italian Society’s bulletin, La Tradizione Cattolica, calls Judaism “a false cult” and spreads hallucinatory material on “the Jew Karl Marx” and “the Jews sleeping in the shadow of death”.

Wow! Let's hope the Pope isn't that insane to welcome these jerks back. I can see no good that can come of it.

64 Years and Fireworks at Mount Herzl

64 years of national renewal after 2,000 years of diaspora and persecution.

It is, in fact, remarkable.

Further, all of our old friends are gone.

The Sumerians are gone.

The Canaanites are gone.

The Akkadians are gone.

The Babylonians are gone.

The Assyrians are gone.

The Hittites are gone.

The Romans are gone.

And so are the Philistines.

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.
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How the hell did we survive?

Obama Administration Undermines Peace, Singles Out Jews

Mike L.

The Obama administration continues to undermine the peace process, continues to justify Arab and Palestinian anti-Jewish racism, and continues to tell Jewish people just where we may be allowed to live on our ancestral land.

Much to the consternation of the Obama administration, Israel has decided to recognize the three "outposts" of Rehalim, Bruchin and Sansana. Of course, Jews living and thus building on land where Jews originally came from is entirely anathema to the Obama administration. There are no other people on the entire planet wherein the Obama administration believes it has a right to tell them where they may be allowed to live.

Chinese people living and building in Japan? No problem. Protestants living and building in Catholic countries? No problem. Rosicrucians living and building in Piscataway, New Jersey? No problem. Jews living and building in Judea? Now, that cannot be allowed.

Only the Jews and only the Jewish state.

The United States on Tuesday also expressed "concerned" over the move and was seeking clarifications from Israel, according to a State Department statement.

"We are obviously concerned by the reports that we have seen. We have raised this with the Israeli government," US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters. "We don't think this is helpful to the [peace] process, and we don't accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity."

What is harmful to the so-called "peace process" is not Jewish people building housing for themselves, but an administration which provides all the excuse that Abbas needs not to negotiate. Every time an Obama administration official complains about Jewish building within "settlements" they make it virtually impossible for Palestinian dictator, Mahmoud Abbas, to sit down at the negotiating table.

It harms the potential for peace (if there is any potential for peace) and it justifies Arab and Palestinian anti-Jewish racism.

The Obama administration has clearly learned nothing and continues to make the very same mistakes that they have made from the beginning. Over and over and over again they continue to make the same mistakes thereby undermining any possibility for peace, while blaming the results of their own mistakes on Israel.

Of course, it is Israel, and not the United States, that must ultimately pay the price for Obama's failures in the "I-P" front and, yet, Israel gets the blame for the predictable results of Obama's own behavior.

The Obama administration has proven itself to be neither just, nor effective, in its engagement of the Arab-Israel conflict. Given this fact, G-d only knows what havoc Barack Obama will create in the region once he gets his second term... that is, if we are so foolish as to allow him a second term.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Old Jerusalem

geoffff

Shirlee emails a just published eye witness account by British clergyman, Hugh Jones, of the battle for the Old City of Jerusalem after the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, the fall of the ancient Jewish Quarter to the British sponsored and officered Arab Legion and the ethnic cleansing of the remaining Jews from their City.

Caught between Jewish and Arab forces fighting in Jerusalem’s Old City was Hugh Jones. Refusing to flee to safety, Jones instead recorded a journal, never before published, that offers a unique personal glimpse of the drama and tragedy of Israel’s birth

Sixty-four years ago, in the days and weeks around the declaration of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, Jews and Arabs were battling for control of Jerusalem. The Jewish areas of the city were cut off by Arab ambushes along the road up from the coast. The bitterest fighting raged in the Old City, where Arab and Jewish soldiers battled house to house inside the walls as Jewish forces tried repeatedly — and failed — to break in from outside.

Also in the Old City in the midst of the fighting was a British missionary, Rev. Hugh Jones of Christ Church. Warned by British authorities to “urgently consider the desirability of leaving Jerusalem,” Jones stayed nonetheless and, holed up in the church’s compound near Jaffa Gate with 50 others, observed the violence raging outside, and sometimes inside, the compound’s walls. He wrote a remarkable journal that has, like Jones himself, been forgotten. It was rediscovered two years ago in the archive at Christ Church, and appears here as a unique take on the dramatic and horrific days around Israel’s birth.

Jones’s journal includes descriptions of violence, asides about regular life — notably the reverend’s seemingly unshakable commitment to tennis, which not even a war could dampen — and expressions of the faith that sustained him through the harrowing events that saw the loss of the Old City by Jewish forces and the creation of the state of Israel.

The Journal is compelling reading. See it here

Update

Yom HaAtzmaut , Israel Independence Day, this year falls on 26 April 2012 ( Iyah 4 in the Hebrew Calendar). Iyah 4 commences at sundown of the previous day, this year 25 April 2012.

Very shortly it will be sundown 25 April 2012 in this part of Australia

Hat tip Shirlee

Does “Progressive Zionism” Stand for Anything?

Mike L.

(Cross-posted at Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill)

If so, it's hard to see just what.

Prior to Obama's ruination of whatever potential there may have been in the peace process, there was still a possibility that the Left's incessant demands for additional Israeli concessions might have been justified. While there was still a chance at a negotiated end of hostilities it made sense to compromise and to seek compromises. But those days are dead and Barack Obama helped kill them.

This being the case, the Progressive movement has nothing to say, or should have nothing to say, about the Arab-Israel conflict and the very last thing they should be doing is pressuring Israel to do anything. The likes of Peter Beinart and Thomas Friedman and J-Street (and anyone who suggests that the “Palestinian narrative” needs to be taught to little Jewish kids in Israel) have been discredited. Progressive-left American Jews, who seem to think that the real problem is not so much Hamas but Likud, are in no position to lecture Israelis about their own security needs.

Beyond propelling Palestinian-Arab propaganda and discouraging discussion on some very important issues to the Jewish community, and often in the nastiest manner possible, the progressive movement has nothing to say on the Arab-Israel conflict. They haven't had a fresh idea since the beginning of Oslo, but Oslo is long over.

Propelling Palestinian-Arab Propaganda:

“Progressive Zionists” propel Arab propaganda. They do not mean to do so, but do so nonetheless. They do so by discussing the issue within the frames set for them by the anti-Israel propagandists, themselves. There are all sorts of ways that this is done and we've only really begun to discuss some of them here at Israel Thrives. Language is hugely important. Progressive-left Jews who frame the discussion in such a manner that Israel is already guilty before the conversation even begins are framing the matter in ways designed by their enemies. Talk of “Occupation” with a capital “O,” for example, buries Israel before the conversation even gets started. But that is only one example that illustrates progressive-left framing that serves the purpose of anti-Israel propaganda. There are plenty more and we will be discussing them going forward.

That much I assure you.

Alan Dershowitz, who I very much respect, likes to tell audiences that he has opposed Israeli-Jewish building in the territories since 1973. If I had an opinion in 1973, I probably would have agreed with him, but this is no longer 1973. Before the Palestinians finally, really let us know that there would be no negotiated settlement anytime in the near future, with a little help in that direction from Barack Obama, giving in to their racist demands might have made sense if it were to actually result in peace. It didn't. That being the case there is no reason why Jewish progressives should continue to insist on the ethnic cleansing of their fellow Jews from Judea or to continue sucking up to non-Jewish political powers by telling other Jews where they may, or may not, be allowed to live.

Discouraging Necessary Discussion:

But perhaps the worst disservice that progressive-left Jews do to their fellow Jews is in the stifling of discussion and debate. Because progressive Jews have absorbed much of the Palestinian narrative they find all sorts of topics verboten. Anyone who transgresses the line gets lambasted, defamed, and ridiculed. I have a whole long list of things that one is not allowed to discuss on the progressive-left,including among most progressive-left Jews, unless one wants to have one's character dragged through the mud.

They won't discuss the centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism. They won't discuss the recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks. They won't discuss Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict. They won't discuss the Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history. They won't discuss "Pallywood." They won't discuss the historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement. They won't discuss the perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one. They won't discuss the Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred. And they won't discuss human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East. And they would much rather discuss the virtually non-existent white supremacist threat over the real threat of the rise of radical Islam throughout the Muslim world under the false banner of "Arab Spring."

And, thus, “progressive Zionists” say virtually nothing and stand for virtually nothing.

No wonder the Israelis have moved on.

Why Are These Facts Not Well-Known?

Daniel Bielak

- The British Mandate of Palestine included what is now Jordan.

- There were more Jewish refugees from Muslim states than there were Arab refugees from Israel.

- All of those refugees -- Jewish and Arab -- were caused by a self-declared intendedly genocidal "Jihad" attack on Israel by Muslim Arab states in 1948.

- Jordan occupied Yehouda and Shomron from 1949 to 1967, and Jordan renamed Yehouda and Shomron to the name "The West Bank" -- referring to "the west bank" of the Jordan river.

- Egypt occupied what is now called "The Gaza Strip" from 1949 until 1967.

- Between the years 1949 and 1967, the leaders of Muslim Arab states, and the leaders of what, in the 1960's, came to be called the 'Palestinian movement,' had no intention of establishing any 'Palestinian' Arab state in "The West Bank" and in what is now called "The Gaza Strip."


- The Jewish refugees from Muslim states in the Middle East found refuge in Israel and in other countries. The Jewish refugees from Muslim states in the Middle East who found refuge in Israel became citizens of Israel, and the still living members of, and the descendants of, those Jewish refugees from Muslim states are citizens of Israel and constitute approximately fifty percent of the Jewish population of Israel, and refer to themselves as Mizrahi, which means "Eastern" in Hebrew.

- There have been tens of millions of refugees since the end of World War II, almost all of whom have been relocated to, and absorbed into, the countries to which they fled or were expelled -- such as several million ethnically German people who lived in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia (Sudeten Germans) who, immediately after World War II, were expelled from the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, and who, subsequently, were relocated to, and absorbed into, Germany.


- British officials created the Arab state of Transjordan in The British Mandate of Palestine between 1922 and 1924.

- In 1946, Britain granted autonomy to Transjordan, and Transjordan was renamed Jordan.

-Jewish leaders in the British Mandate of Palestine accepted the 1947 partition plan and every other earlier similar proposition for the creation of one Arab state in, and one Jewish state in, the part of the British Mandate of Palestine which did not become Jordan. The Arab leaders in the Middle East refused the 1947 partition plan and every other earlier similar proposition for the creation of one Arab state in, and one Jewish state in, the part of the British Mandate of Palestine which did not become Jordan.


- The still living members of, and the descendants of, the Arab people who did not flee from Israel are citizens of Israel, and constitute approximately twenty percent of the population.

- All citizens of Israel have equal civil rights by the law in Israel, and are granted equal protection under the law in Israel.

- Anyone who is deemed to be Jewish -- by ethnicity, or by religion -- by the government of Israel can be automatically granted citizenship of Israel. This automatic granting of citizenship to people who are Jewish is similar to the automatic granting of citizenship, by other democratic countries, such as Japan, and some European countries, to people whose ethnicities, or whose parents' nationalities, are those of the nationalities of those democratic countries.

- Anyone, whether or not they are Jewish, can apply for, and be granted, citizenship of Israel, in the same way that anyone can apply for, and be granted, citizenship of other democratic countries.

- Israel is the nation of the Jewish people. Just like Ireland is the nation of the Irish people. And just like Japan is the nation of the Japanese people. And just like Italy is the nation of the Italian people. And just like Thailand is the nation of the Thai people. Israel is, therein, the Jewish state. Just like Ireland is the Irish state. And just like Japan is the Japanese state. And just like Italy is the Italian state. And just like Thailand is the Thai state.

- The land area of Israel is approximately two percent of the total land area of the Middle East.

- There are over twenty Arab states in the world. There are fifty-six Muslim states in the world. There are several officially Christian states in the world. There are many national states in the world: Thailand, Japan, over 20 Arab states, several European states, etc.

- There is only one Jewish state in the world: Israel.


- The founder of the 'Palestinian movement', Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a member of the Arab aristocratic Husseini family, and organized Arab anti-Jewish massacres in the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to the late 1930's, and was appointed, by British officials, to the position of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921.

- Haj Amin al-Husseini joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, and was an early leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

- Haj Amin al-Husseini was one of the most prominent, and one of the most influential, Muslim leaders in the Muslim world during the 1930's and 1940's.

- Haj Amin al-Husseini resided in Germany from 1941 to 1945, and was an adjoined official of the Nazi regime of Germany, and, with his colleague Adolf Eichmann, was a co-architect of the Nazi 'Final Solution' -- the mass-murder of approximately six million Jewish people in Europe by the Nazi regime of Germany.

- Haj Amin al-Husseini, as the head of the Arab Higher Committee, was the coordinator of the 1948 Muslim Arab attack on Israel by the armies of several Arab states.

- Haj Amin al-Husseini was the mentor of, and an uncle of, Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat (Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini), and provided Nazi training, from German former Nazi officials, to Yasser Arafat and other Muslim Arab "Arab Nationalist" (Muslim Arab officially Nazi-affiliated) militia terrorist commandos.

- In 1958, Yasser Arafat and Khalil al-Wazir ("Abu Jihad") and other Muslim Arab "Arab Nationalists" (Muslim Arab Nazis), including Mahmoud Abbas, founded Fatah, under the guidance of Haj Amin al-Husseini.

- In 1964, in Egypt, the "Arab Nationalist" then-President of then-Soviet-supported Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and members of the Soviet KGB, founded the PLO (the Palestinian Liberation Organization).

- During the 1960's, Yasser Arafat was trained in the Balashikha KGB special-ops school in Russia, and was groomed to become the head of the PLO, and, between the years 1969 and 1970, Yasser Arafat, as the head of Fatah, took the position of head of the PLO.

Why are these essential basic facts of the situation not well known?

Because of phenomena described in the following articles:

Why and How the West is, with Lies, Vilifying Israel, by Daniel Bielak.

Jewish Stockholm Syndrome, by Daniel Bielak.

"A Near Perfect Media Crime", by Geoffff, a terrific Australian blogger.

The Lobby, by Daniel Bielak.

Islamic totalitarian imperialism, genocide, gendercide and the Left

geoffff


An old friend emails : I will be interested when your political blog has focus on gender politics. Now that would be interesting reading!

The term "gender politics" could straddle a wide range of human inter-relations but I know what she means and she is quite right. An enormously important issue needs focus from blogs like this. Two issues really. The treatment of women, (and gays of course -- but that is another subject), across much of the increasingly extremist Muslim world but especially in those lands where one or another strand of Islamic totalitarian imperialism has got a stranglehold. And the rust-flaky tin ear that the West , especially the left and most especially the feminist left, has for the horrible plight of Muslim women.

Indeed the hypocrisy can reach a level where the word is not enough to describe the bizarre double think contempt for reason and common morality that the left routinely finds itself spouting. A new word is needed. In a moment some examples but first we must steel ourselves to look at this and to admit what we see before us without the cant.

Be warned. This video is unpleasant.

This is a shorter YouTube version of the same interview:

All this does is put a human face to what everybody already knows. Rape is a political weapon routinely deployed against women who dare to assert independence in Iran and other Muslim totalitarian states. Rape victims can be executed for adultery. A virgin who finds herself convicted of a capital crime will be raped before she is hanged, beheaded or stoned to death. Polygamy is routine. Girls marry who they are told to marry often while still children. Women in the streets are harassed and humiliated by thugs who deem their dress indecent for the pettiest reasons and who may have the power of the state to carry out random "chastity inspections". Women taking an active role in the world can be impossible. Birth rates are the highest in the world condemning women to a grueling empty life of painful drudgery and poverty that men believe is their lot. Illiteracy rates for women are far higher than the already high rates for men. Getting an education is often discouraged and can be fatal.

Honour killings are rife for women or young girls who do anything from being seen in company with a man without a chaperone to refusing an arranged marriage.It is estimated that 2/3 of killings in the Palestinian territories are this type of murder.

To say that women are second class citizens is to inflate the concept of citizenship. Women are not citizens of any class in these lands. From the cradle to the grave they are chattels.

Now one would think that this appalling state of affairs would attract some interest in the luvvie left/liberal classes in the West. A passing nod at least while spewing on you know who for instance. Not a bit of it of course. On the contrary those on the left, including what London based Australian blogger Daphne Anson succinctly describes as women of a certain age, are among the most vocal supporters of these nasty ugly man riddled misanthropic cultures and regimes.

So at this point I will hand over to Daphne to describe this phenonomen more fully

Female Israel-Bashers Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Hypocrisy (video)

Once upon a time, at a Zionist conference in Melbourne, Australia attended by a lot of university students, I heard a young man (bless him!) during the break remark to one of the madrichim present that hasbara should make much more of the fact that women's status in Israel compares so favourably to that of women in nearby countries.

To my disgust, the slightly older man merely shrugged and walked away. But there's no doubt the student was right.

I've been spring-cleaning, and in my desk drawer I found a cutting from the London Daily Telegraph that someone had sent me, dated 9 September 2002. The small News-in-Brief item bears the eye-catching heading "Man Beheads His Daughter".

The report reads:

'An Iranian cut off his seven-year-ol daughter's head after suspecting she had been raped by her uncle, the Jomhuri-ye Eslami newspaper said yesterday, But a post-mortem examination showed she was a virgin.

"The motive behind the killing was to defend my honour, fame, and dignity," the father said.' Reuters, Teheran.

I can sense the leftwing feminist yawns right now, as the wimmin for Palestine concentrate their ire and fire on the one nation in the Middle East that protects women's rights.

In a region of the globe and among cultures that so often treat girls and women as trash, Israel, as Bibi Netanyahu so eloquently pointed out last year (see my sidebar) "Israel is different".

The following video encapsulates that difference in a nutshell. It shows the types of horror that too often confronts the female sex elsewhere in the Middle East, reminds us of the vile treatment that certain of Israel's Muslim enemies advocate for Jewish women, and demonstrates how rights for Israeli women, irrespective of background, are enshrined in Israeli law.

Here is Daphne in another post on "the willingness of the western women, in particular, to act as presenters on [Press TV] that is funded by a regime which stones women to death and colludes in the gang-rape of virgin female prisoners prior to execution is especially repulsive and odious...

So, therefore, is the willingness of anti-Israel female activists such as Baroness (Jenny) Tonge to give interviews to Press TV.

And so, of course, is the willingness of so many common-or-garden female Israel-bashers to act as apologists for the Iranian regime.

Launched in 2007, Press TV, broadcasting 24/7, claimed a regular viewing figure of almost 10 million British homes.

Among those regular viewers, evidently, is the all-female coven that constitutes my local Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch. A trio of these middle-aged/elderly women (whose antics range from harassing shoppers outside supermarkets stocking Israeli produce to initiating an online petition asking David Cameron to apologise for the Balfour Declaration) ..."

When it comes to Israel and the sheer blooded minded extremist Muslim racism of which it is the principal target, the feminist left, just like much of the rest of the Western left, are not even conflicted. It's to hell with the women. They don't even rate a thought.

[hat tip Lesley]

Book Note - Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Delegitimization

Mike L.

I have not read this one, yet, and a Tip 'O the Kippa to Oldschool, but I do want to draw attention to Colin Shindler's, Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Delegitimization.

School claims that the book "parallels some of what seems to be the tensions between Jews and the left wing we experience today."

In a review over at Harry's Place, Alan A writes:

Before I go further, I should say that Shindler’s book is superb: a well-written and meticulously researched history of the horrors and ironies of the last 100 years. He shows how screaming stereotypes and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories developed by Marxists — not by fascists or Islamists or Catholic and Orthodox nationalists, but by the Left — have survived while all around has changed.

Given the cramped nature of British debate, I doubt if it will be widely reviewed. The right-wing press won’t like it because it is not a conventional denunciation of the Left. Shindler is a properly impartial historian, but when his beliefs show through he reveals himself to be a social democrat rather than an Israel-firster or man of the Right. The left-wing press won’t like it for the same reason Caliban did not like the sight of his face in the mirror.

A major part of what we do here on Israel Thrives is analyze and discuss the rise of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism on the progressive-left. Because progressives, as well as "progressive Zionists," generally refuse to address the issue, we will do it for them.

Many thanks to School for the notice on this one.

The Fatwa That Fatwasn't

Doodad

Iran apologists often try to assure the world that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons because the Ayatollah Ali Khameni issued a fatwa against nukes. The only problem is no such fatwa exists.

An important element in the renewal of nuclear negotiations with Iran in the talks in Istanbul April 13-14, 2012 was an alleged fatwa attributed to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to which the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons. Indeed, U.S. leaders – among them Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and even U.S. President Barack Obama – along with 5+1 representatives to the talks,[1] the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors, and even highly respected research institutes considered the fatwa as an actual fact, and examined its significance and implications for the nuclear negotiations with Iran that were renewed in Istanbul.

However, an investigation by MEMRI reveals that no such fatwa ever existed or was ever published, and that media reports about it are nothing more than a propaganda ruse on the part of the Iranian regime apparatuses – in an attempt to deceive top U.S. administration officials and the others mentioned above.....

 Who can you believe?

Palestinians Teach Children to Slaughter Jews

Mike L.

This is a few years old, but it still represents the kind of thing that must stop if ever there is to be peace.

So long as the Palestinians continue to teach their children genocidal Jew hatred then it is they who will suffer far, far more than we will.

.
.
.

Nassur: "There won't be any Jews or Zionists, if Allah wills. They'll be erased."

Saraa: "Chased away."

Nassur: "And just like we will visit the Qaaba [in Mecca]... everyone will visit Jerusalem."

(A seven-year-old boy on the phone tells how his father, a member of Hamas's Izzadin Kassam Brigades, "died as a shahid (martyr).")

Nassur to boy: "What do you want to do to the Jews who shot your father?"

Boy: "I want to kill them."

Saraa: "We don't want to do anything to them, just expel them from our land."

Nassur: "We want to slaughter (nidbah-hom) them, so they will be expelled from our land, right?"

Saraa: "Yes. That's right. We will expel them from our land using all means."

Nassur: "And if they don't want [to go] peacefully, by words or talking, we'll have to [do it] by slaughter (shaht)."

(Al-Aksa (Hamas) TV, September 22, 2009)

In Praise of Jewish Settlers

Mike L.

(Cross-Posted at Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill.)

As the progressive-left has emerged as the foremost racist political movement in the West today, Jews who live in Judea and Samaria have been targeted as one of the groups that it is OK, sometimes even mandatory, to spit hatred at.

This is bad enough when it comes from progressive racists in general, but far worse when it comes from progressive-left Jews. Progressives tell the world, following Mahmoud Abbas and Barack Obama, that the reason there is no peace in the region is because some Jews actually live, and build housing for themselves, in Judea.

The crime of Jews building housing for themselves on ancient Jewish land is said to prevent peace in the Middle East and endanger American troops there.

I would like to suggest that those who think along such lines are, in fact, the very people who are preventing a negotiated conclusion of hostilities. The problem is with them, not with the settlers. When the President of the United States complains about Jews living and building in certain sections of Jerusalem, or in Judea and Samaria, he creates the conditions under which anti-Jewish racism becomes justified and peace becomes impossible. Anti-Jewish racism is promoted because the implication is that Mahmoud Abbas is correct to seek a Judenrein "Palestinian" state on Jewish land. If even progressive-left Jews believe that Jews must live here, but not over there, they justify Arab-Muslim race-hate toward us. The reason that peace becomes impossible under these circumstances is because Mahmoud Abbas cannot afford to be seen as softer on Israel than the American president, thus Abbas refuses to negotiate so long as Jews build housing for themselves on land that Jordan dubbed "the West Bank."

There is a very long history of non-Jews demanding that Jews be allowed only to live in certain places. Both the history of dhimmitude, and the history of European ghetto life, is replete with non-Jewish leaders insisting that Jews may live in certain areas and may not live in other areas. When Barack Obama makes the same demand it resonates in an extremely negative manner with those of us who have an inkling of this history and who understand that it is both racist and counterproductive. Just because Jews build housing for themselves in Judea, this does not mean that Abbas and Netanyahu cannot sit across from one another and draw a line on a map.

The settlers, as a group, have done nothing wrong. Some of these people are deeply religious Jews who wish to live where our forefathers walked. There is nothing the least little bit wrong with that. Others are merely Jews who wish to find relatively inexpensive housing and there is nothing wrong with that either. The problem is not with them, but with Arab-Muslim racism against them. It is Arab-Muslim racism towards Jews which insists that Jews should not be allowed to live on that land or that any future state of Palestine must be a Jew-free enclave.

Every once in a while we will read, usually in the left press, that the settlers in Judea and Samaria are behaving badly, even in a criminal manner. There are reports of conflicts with the local Arabs or what is referred to as "price tag" retaliations. I would submit that there is not a population of any size in the world that is free of criminal behavior and that this is true of the Jewish settlers no more than it is true for anyone else. Suggesting that Jews should not be allowed to live in Judea because of criminal behavior would be like suggesting that Italian-Americans should not be allowed to live in New Jersey and for the same reason.

Of course, Barack Obama would never suggest that Italians should be allowed to live here, but not there, in the United States. Any such absurd assertion would be met with slack-jawed incredulity and immediately recognized as the racism that it is. That the president of the United States can make that suggestion about Jews in the Middle East suggests something rather ugly about his relationship to the Jewish people in general. That many progressive Jews would agree with him, while spitting hatred at their brothers and sisters on the west bank of the Jordan river, says far more about them than it does about the settlers.

We need to start thinking about the conflict in fresh ways and that means letting go of the presumptions of Oslo. During the peace process the assumption was that Jewish compromise would be met with Palestinian-Arab compromise toward a final negotiated conclusion of hostilities. Since the Obama administration has rammed the final nails of the peace process into its coffin, we must shed those old assumptions. The fact of the matter is that the Palestinian-Arabs have refused offer after offer after offer for a state of their own in peace next to the Jewish one.

This is a fact that we must incorporate into our understanding of the situation.

The problem is not with Jews living on land where Jews originally came from, but with an Arab-Muslim racism toward us that is so intense that they are willing to use the Palestinian-Arabs as a bludgeon against us. The local Arabs do themselves, and their children, no favors when they embrace genocidal radical Islam in the form of Hamas.

Of course, given the fact that Barack Obama has compared the rise of the Jihad in the Middle East to both the American Revolution and to the Civil Rights Movements of the 1950s and 1960s, it becomes difficult to know just who is more delusional, them or him?

In the mean time, Jewish people will continue to live on, and build on, Jewish land, as well they should. If the Palestinian-Arabs ever decide that they want a country for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one they can have that. All they need to do is agree to it.

Until they are ready to give up their war against us, they will continue to damn their own children to live with the humiliation of check points and the various restrictions placed upon them. Israel is going to do what it needs to do to prevent terrorism against their own people. If the local Arabs do not like it, then they can finally (at long last) accept a state for themselves in peace.

If they are not willing to do that then they have no one to blame but themselves.

Media Matters Shows Its Anti-Israel Creds Again

Doodad

Progressive and Democratic staple Media Matters has been taking it on the chin for awhile now what with the exposure of some of its major players' anti-Israeli stances. Breitbart informs us of some more jerks writing there.

As we revealed yesterday, MJ Rosenberg wasn’t the only anti-Israel extremist working at Media Matters for America: Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert once downplayed genocidal anti-Semitism, routinely suggests that media coverage is too pro-Israel thanks to the intimidation by nefarious forces (hint hint), and defended terrorist professor Sami Al-Arian. Today, we examine Oliver Willis, a research fellow at Media Matters. Just like MJ and Eric, Willis is an anti-Israel extremist with a soft spot for anti-Semitism. Willis once referred to Paul Wolfowitz as “filthy” and Joe Lieberman as “fascistic.” He accused Israel of “Playing Games With American Lives” for building settlements, and wrote that he “can’t wait for the day when we can tell both sides [of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict] to go to hell.” He has stated that “The Democratic Party will be at its best” only once pro-Israel AIPAC-associated liberals like Josh Block are “marginalized.” He has defended via retweet MJ Rosenberg’s use of the white supremacist term “Israel firsters.” He accuses conservatives of attacking “everyone who doesnt march in lockstep with Israel.” And while anti-Israel fanatic Glenn Greenwald accuses me of watering down the term anti-Semitism by pointing out Media Matters’ relentless pattern of providing cover to anti-Semites, he has nothing to say about Willis, who likened one mosque being burned in Tennessee to full-blown Nazi treatment of Jews. Willis isn’t literate on the Israel-Palestinian issue (as with most other issues); his anti-Israel feeling seems to come from groupthink more than from the informed anti-Israel radicalism of MJ Rosenberg or Boehlert. And yet Willis is one of Media Matters’ key in-house policers of right-wing anti-Semitism. Ah, the irony.

Progressives hating Israel! Say it ain't so oh defenders of Progressivism. Guys like these make your apologetics ring hollow especially from their ranks of importance within the Progressive movement.

Challenging anti-Zionist Jews -- What do they want?

geoffff

I am a very occasional lurker at the blog of British author, novelist, broadcaster and cultural commentator Norman Lebrecht, Slipped Disc. For me the most interesting way of seeing things is from the inside; in this case classical music and related cultures from the standpoint of the artists themselves. However that is not the reason I first went to this site.

That was because I was looking for a place to comment on a strangely spine tingling and bizarre incident at the Royal Albert Hall last September when "pro-Palestinian" agitators, mainly it seems musicians and other artists, including inevitably a number of Jews, disrupted a performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at the BBC Proms forcing a break in the broadcast. I had already had plenty to say on the subject elsewhere but Mr Lebrecht kindly provided the perfect place and all the space I needed. Really.

This may well have been the first time ever that musicians sought to tear down a performance by other musicians in front of their audience for any reason, let alone because of their nationality or citizenship. I do believe these creeps set a precedent.

The political class to which these people belong has been neatly nailed by Dr Mike Lumish here and at Israel Thrives. These are Jews who "represent the height of Jewish dhimmitude. They believe as fervently as any "Palestinian" that Israel is a racist, imperialist, colonialist, apartheid, racist state that must make way for yet another Arab state in the region. This is a form of dhimmitude so complete that the "Palestinian narrative" of perfect victimhood has taken over their thinking on the subject completely. They know with a clarity that Yassir Arafat would have admired that the Jews are guilty and that Israel was born in sin. The "New Historians," such as Ian Pappe and an earlier version of Benny Morris, did much to advance this toxic and false notion among Jewish people throughout the world."

Not just Jewish people of course. The anti-Zionist left always, repeat always, has had a few Jews upfront for cover for their antisemitic campaigns. They have always done this. Sometimes their tame Jews lead the charge. For some reason difficult to fathom the left thinks this is a winning hand.This is important for them; and not just the left. But it is the left that incessantly protests that because they have on board some Jews they could not possibly be antisemitic.

As usual they protest too much. They do this without the slightest hint of irony. They have no concept they are proving the point against them.

Each time I hear the "Jew defence" I think well ... duh ...

Jews are often fractious and outspoken. It's part of the culture. They challenge one another and they challenge others and by doing that they mean no disrespect. It is not a random spray of destiny that Israel has over fifty political parties but at the end of the day is always able to form a government. It is difficult to imagine how Israel could be any other way. At the beginning of the twentieth century a large majority of the world's Jews lived in countries where their basic human rights, especially expression, were suppressed or denied. Now the vast majority live in liberal democracies. This is why you will find all sorts of Jews saying all sorts of things.

This is because they are allowed.

Nobody would think that a virulently anti-American US citizen had something worthwhile to hear solely by virtue of his nationality. A rabid hater of Catholicism deserves no more attention just because she is a lapsed Catholic. Yet with the Jews there is a different dynamic at work. Mike linked a diagnosis from this writer. Oslo syndrome. Says it all.

Norman Lebrecht has savaged the decision by the Israeli interior minister to bar former Nazi, Gunter Grass, from entering Israel; a matter also discussed on this blog and at Israel Thrives. Fine. I can respect the opinion, also shared by Alan Dershowitz, although I'm not sure how the Israelis are expected to feel about being lectured from abroad on matters pertaining to the state's sovereignty and security while at war. But what caught my eye was a near perfect example of a thoroughly Dhimminised Jew who commented on the thread of the article.

Here is his world view, informed by the Grass affair, and here is the man, Dr. Martin Gak is a Philosophy PhD from The New School for Social Research currently leading the Centro de Estudios Filosoficos y Fenomenologicos Acanzados, Buenos Aires.

Surely we can't get better than this. An academic, in the southern hemisphere, as far away from those whose lives are in the balance as you can get without leaving the planet, who has swallowed so completely the Palestinian and left narrative that it is simply beyond him to understand that to oppose Zionism, 64 years after the Jewish state was founded, can only mean to oppose Jews and to support the hysterical brutal war against them waged by Arab Muslims who are explicit in their desire to see the destruction of Israel and the Jews. They say so again and again. Why don't they listen?

It's the dishonesty of these people that disgusts me most. Universities everywhere, including Australia, have "anti-Zionists" on staff with tenure and these often include Jews. If you will the destruction of Israel, why not say so? Why mumble your words? If you think that advocating the stripping of free people of all their civil and political rights, for no other reason than they are Jews, or perhaps more to the point, not Muslims, then please explain how this is not the vilest form of antisemitism? Please tell us how the dismantling of a hugely successful and productive liberal democracy in the face of Islamic totalitarian imperialism will benefit humankind.

They must know that Israelis, like free people everywhere, will fight to the death before they see their precious state destroyed and replaced by an abomination like the regimes that oppress the people of Iran, Syria, Gaza and a dozen other places. So would Australians. So would many others I suggest. How can anti-Zionists, including Jews, honestly deny that they are pro-war?

Posted at Slipped Disc and The Radical Secularist.

Cross posted at Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill

Another Example of the Theft of Jewish History

Mike L.

The Arab world has been addressing the Holocaust issue with reservations. The Arabs who recognize the Shoah as well as those who deny it argue that Israel utilizes the Holocaust in order to promote its policies and deny what they refer to as the "Palestinian holocaust." For example, Sheikh Ra'ad Salah claimed many times that he recognizes the Shoah of European Jews, but also what he referred to as the "holocaust of the six million Palestinian refugees."

Really?

"The holocaust of the six million Palestinian refugees"?

There was no "holocaust of the six million Palestinian refugees."

They just make stuff up without any shame, whatsoever. In fact, the notion doesn't even make any sense. If they are refugees and if they are still alive then they cannot very well have been the object of a genocide, now can they?

There was a genocide of the Jews. There was a genocide of the Armenians. There is currently genocide happening in Congo and Darfur.

But there never was a genocide of Palestinian-Arabs and if anyone says that Israel is committing any such act then they are spreading the blood libel.

In any event, it's just another example of how some in the Arab world just love to appropriate Jewish history. Of course, the Jewish dhimmis on places like Daily Kos would never address this issue because then they might get disciplined by their fellow progressives. The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history is a strictly verboten topic on the Left.

Jewish dhimmis are subject to a very narrow range of allowable discourse on the Arab-Israel topic. It is part of the function of places like Daily Kos to patrol the boundaries of discussion and to keep people in line through bullying and shaming. The dhimmis, however, are so ideologically blinkered that they actually bully and shame one another to keep themselves in line.

Independent thought is strictly forbidden.

Occupy Tampa posts anti-Semitic cartoon on Holocaust Day

Doodad

The movement's Facebook page gets flooded with comments by outraged users over an image of a Jewish man driving a car with a symbol of the UN as the wheel and Obama's face as the stick shift.

THIS is the freaking Jew hating left for you. Jerks.

Left-Wing Jewish Dhimmitude

Mike L.

One of the problems that we have as a community is in the prevalence of left-wing Jewish dhimmitude among so-called "progressive Zionists." This is essentially the same as what we often call "Jewish Stockholm Syndrome" or what Kenneth Levin dubbed "The Oslo Syndrome" in his book by that name.

The main symptom of left-wing Jewish dhimmitude, and it is a left-wing phenomenon, by the way, is in the incorporation, in greater or lesser degrees, of the "Palestinian narrative" into one's own way of viewing the long Arab-Muslim war against the Jews in the Middle East. The more the "Palestinian narrative" informs one's thinking, the more of a Jewish dhimmi one is.

I would argue that pretty much all of us have this ideological infection to one degree or another. At its most benign it reveals itself in the use of terminology that inherently favors one's enemies. For example, instead of calling Judea and Samaria "Judea and Samaria," Jewish dhimmis will tend to use the term "West Bank." "West Bank" however is the term that Jordan adopted in the middle of the twentieth century to remove any Jewish association with that land. Thus every time that we use the term "West Bank" we are adopting language specifically designed to wash away Jewish history on Jewish land. We thereby reinforce the position of the enemies of the Jewish people. This is so not because we need to keep that land, but because it tends to erase Jewish history on that land.

But this is Jewish dhimmitude at its most benign. Almost all "liberal" Jews, including me, have tended to use the term "West Bank" when refering to that area. It's only fairly recently that I, myself, began to refer to "Judea and Samaria" or, say, "the western bank of the Jordan river."

Another less benign use of language which betrays a measure of Jewish dhimmitude, however, is in the use of the word "Occupation" with a capital "O." It is as if we are to believe that measures that Jews in the Middle East use to protect themselves from hostile Arabs, such as check points, represent the Mother of All Occupations, the Uber-Occupation, the Occupation from which all other occupations derive. When one uses the term "Occupation" one is signalling an embrace of the "Palestinian narrative." Jewish guilt, and Palestinian innocence, is inherent in the term.

Even so, progressive-left Jews who tend to identify with the "Palestinians" are largely well-meaning. They want what most of us want, an end to the conflict in a two-state solution. This level of Jewish dhimmitude is generally not malicious, although it sometimes is. What mainly it is, however, is counterproductive. The reason that it is counterproductive is because one cannot win an argument with one's ideological opponent if one insists upon discussing the issue using one's opponents language. Left-wing Jewish dhimmis of this medium sort are constantly doing battle with anti-Zionists and Israel Haters within frames developed by the anti-Zionists and Israel Haters, themselves. By doing so they earn the contempt of both the non-Jewish Left and the entire Right, including the Jewish Right. The non-Jewish Left holds them in contempt for seeming to justify the "Occupation," while the conservative-right holds them in contempt for seeming to justify Arab malice toward Jews and the Jewish state.

The worst Jewish dhimmis, however, are Jewish anti-Zionists and Israel Haters. Someone like, say, Norman Finkelstein is a Jewish Dhimmi Par Excellence. People like him or Chomsky or the Jews in groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (an anti-Zionist organization) represent the height of Jewish dhimmitude. They believe as fervently as any "Palestinian" that Israel is a racist, imperialist, colonialist, apartheid, racist state that must make way for yet another Arab state in the region. This is a form of dhimmitude so complete that the "Palestinian narrative" of perfect victimhood has taken over their thinking on the subject completely. They know with a clarity that Yassir Arafat would have admired that the Jews are guilty and that Israel was born in sin. The "New Historians," such as Ian Pappe and an earlier version of Benny Morris, did much to advance this toxic and false notion among Jewish people throughout the world.

What I would suggest, now that Oslo is most definitely done with, is that we root the "Palestinian narrative" out of our thinking as much as possible in order to take a fresh look at the conflict. This is certainly easier said then done and represents a process that must take place over time, perhaps even over years of the life of the individual. This is not to suggest that every detail of the "Palestinian narrative" is false. It is merely to suggest that every detail of the narrative should be held up to scrutiny to make certain that we Jews remain fair to ourselves.

For example, Mahmoud Abbas has claimed that any future state of Palestine must be Judenrein and Barack Obama has validated this racist notion by formally complaining to PM Netanyahu about Jews building for themselves in parts of Jerusalem where he does not want them to live. If, as a Jew, you believe along with Mahmoud Abbas and Barack Obama that Jews should be allowed to live over here, but not over there, then you have definitely fallen into dhimmitude. You are siding with non-Jews over Jews on the question of where Jews should be allowed to live. It's pretty revolting and is entirely unfair to a whole segment of the Jewish population, the so-called "settlers," that Jewish dhimmis perpetually demonize and spit hatred towards.

And that is really at the heart of the matter. We cannot expect others to be fair to us if we cannot even bring ourselves to be fair to one another. The Jews of the Middle East have come through 1,300 years of second and third class citizenship under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperialism, followed by the Long Arab War which continues to this day. A good place to start in rooting out the "Palestinian narrative" is in recognizing the larger history as a context for understanding the struggle. This is why someone like Dan Bielak continually emphasizes the need to tell the factual truth about the history of the struggle. I tend to disagree with Dan that an assessment of historical facts is a relatively simple matter. The reason for this is because there is an inherent subjectivity in the writing of history. Nonetheless, Dan is absolutely correct that history is in our favor, which is plenty good enough reason to emphasize it.

In any case, now that the Arabs have definitively killed and buried the peace process, it is time to start thinking in fresh terms.

The longer we wait to do so, the longer the status quo will continue.

I recommend against.

Progressives Post Anti-Semitic Cartoon Online

Mike L.

Facebook page affiliated with Occupy Wall Street movement posts caricature featuring classic anti-Semitic portrayal of Jewish stereotype.

The day is going to come when Jewish progressives wake up and realize that they are supporting a political movement that acts directly against the general well-being of the Jewish people.

A person can only keep his head buried in the sand for so long before he starts to gag.

Culture Wars

Geoffff

Just happened to tune into MAX while looking for something else and caught part of the Ultimate MAX 80's Rock Countdown.


At number 6 was this video from British punk group The Clash in 1982. Rock the Casbah.

1982. Thirty years ago. Do you think anyone would risk producing something like this now? Perhaps they got away with it because no one listened to the lyrics? I doubt it; but I'll reproduce them here anyway. People weren't so scared of Islamic extremism as they are now. In fact it hardly occurred to us back then that we had to take the intimidation seriously. Now we know that otherwise they will kill somebody.

Now the king told the boogie men
You have to let that raga drop
The oil down the desert way
Has been shakin to the top
The sheik he drove his cadillac
He went a cruisnin down the ville
The muezzin was a standing
On the radiator grille

Chorus
The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah

By order of the prophet
We ban that boogie sound
Degenerate the faithful
With that crazy casbah sound
But the bedouin they brought out
The electric camel drum
The local guitar picker
Got his guitar picking thumb
As soon as the shareef
Had cleared the square
They began to wail

Chorus

Now over at the temple
Oh! they really pack em in
The in crowd say its cool
To dig this chanting thing
But as the wind changed direction
The temple band took five
The crowd caught a wiff
Of that crazy casbah jive

Chorus

The king called up his jet fighters
He said you better earn your pay
Drop your bombs between the minarets
Down the casbah way

As soon as the shareef was
Chauffeured outta there
The jet pilots tuned to
The cockpit radio blare

As soon as the shareef was
Outta their hair
The jet pilots wailed

Chorus

He thinks its not kosher
Fundamentally he cant take it.
You know he really hates it.


I prefer the IDF version:

Read It And Weep

Doodad

There is a new study out concerning bigotry in Europe entitled “Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination.” Some of its findings are extremely distressing.

Nearly three quarters of Polish citizens believe that the Jews seek to exploit the Holocaust. About 70 percent of Hungarians think Jews have too much influence in their country. And close to 40 percent of people in numerous European countries believe that Israel is waging “a war of extermination” against the Palestinians....More than 30 percent of Poles strongly agree and 42 somewhat agree with the statement that “Jews try to take advantage of having been victims during the Nazi era,” the survey showed. In Hungary, 39% of responders agreed strongly and 29% somewhat agreed with that assertion....In Poland, the number of respondents who agree with the claim of an Israeli “war of extermination” is even higher, at 63%. Nearly half of the German respondents — 48% — agreed with the statement. The number was 49% in Portugal, 42% in Britain, 41% in Hungary, 39% in Holland and 38% in Italy....

Asked if Jews have too much influence in their country, about 70% of Hungarians, 50% of Poles and 20% of Germans agreed. In the Netherlands – whose current foreign minister, Uri Rosenthal, is Jewish – 3.4% strongly agreed and 18 percent somewhat agreed.

Thirty percent of German and 22% of British respondents agreed with the statement that “Jews in general do not care about anything or anyone but their own kind.” In Portugal, that number is even higher, at about 55%, according to the report.

That these attitudes exist in countries  where some of the worst Holocaust activities happened is bizarre. Proof, IMO, that the old attitudes prevail and little has been learned by many in Europe. What a sad state of affairs and just one more proof that a Jewish State (Israel) is necessary.

 The authors note that "the data ... shows antisemitism often appearing in the guise of criticism of Israel" and that

"Antisemitic criticism of Israel comes close to majority support in all European countries.

In that context we also need to discuss whether secondary antisemitism – refusal to acknowledge the crimes of the Holocaust – has taken the place of traditional antisemitism."

Moses Was a Muslim

Mike L.

{Cross-Posted at Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill)

Interview with Dr. Omar Ja'ara, lecturer at Al-Najah University in Nablus, and specialist in Israeli affairs on PA TV:

We must make clear to the world that David in the Hebrew Bible is not connected to David in the Quran, Solomon in the Hebrew Bible is not connected to Solomon in the Quran, and neither is Saul or Joshua son of Nun [of the Bible]. We have a great leader, Saul, [in the Quran] who defeated the nation of giants and killed Goliath. This is a great Muslim victory. The Muslims of the Children of Israel went out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses, and unfortunately, many researchers deny the Exodus of those oppressed people who were liberated by a great leader, like Moses the Muslim, the believing leader, the great Muslim, who was succeeded by Saul, the leader of these Muslims in liberating Palestine. This was the first Palestinian liberation through armed struggle to liberate Palestine from the nation of giants led by Goliath. This is our logic and this is our culture. - Palestinian TV (Fatah), Feb. 15, 2012

The Jewish people have long experience with replacement theology. For centuries Christians told one another that the Jewish covenant with G-d was no longer in effect due to our rejection of the divinity of Christ and that, therefore, Christianity represented the new "Israel."

Thankfully, this trend in Christian theology has long ago faded out. Islam, on the other hand, is involved in a theft of Jewish history and Jewish traditions and Jewish identity the likes of which Christians never even began to approach.

In the clip above we have a Palestinian-Arab academic, Dr. Omar Ja'ara, claiming that Moses was a Muslim. It's pure theft of Jewish religious tradition, but this is just one example of an ongoing effort to steal Jewish identity in order to remove any connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

Similar claims are that the Tomb of the Patriarchs is a mosque, a bit of nonsense that UNESCO has agreed with. That Jesus was the "first Palestinian shaheed." That the Palestinians have 4,000... 5,000... 9,000 years of history on Jewish land. That the "Nakba" is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust.

Even the name "Palestinian" is the name that Jews under the British mandate referred to themselves by. It was appropriated by the local Arabs only years after the Jews no longer so identified, because they had become Israelis.

If stealing Jewish identity is a "Palestinian" tactic to replace the Jewish connection to the land of Israel, another tactic is simply denying Jewish history, altogether. Thus, for example, Arafat tells Bill Clinton that Solomon's Temple was not in Jerusalem, what Dore Gold has dubbed "Temple Denial."

These efforts are just the kind of thing that fly entirely under the radar of even people with an interest in the ongoing Arab-Muslim war against the Jews. I think that it is important that we remain aware of Muslim efforts to replace Jews, or to steal our history or identity, and highlight it whenever possible in order to limit its influence.



And, no, sorry, Anne Frank was not a "Palestinian," either.