As Sharia as Apple Pie

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon, Jews Down Under and The Jewish Press.}

Women's March poster (2017)

Future historians may find the recent "Women's March" interesting for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is that it nicely illustrates the tensions between the ideals of multiculturalism and universal human rights within contemporary western-left ideology.

Whatever else the march may have accomplished, however, it definitely propelled Linda Sarsour into the political night sky.

Sarsour is a Palestinian-American, pro-Sharia, Obama advisor, feminist, activist who also participated in the Standing Rock protests.

While she has a fascinating resume, the problem is that Sharia is a Muslim Supremacist judicial system and is, therefore, fundamentally incompatible with the Constitution of the United States.

It is out of this tension within the Left that the central ideals of multiculturalism (as represented by mass Muslim immigration into the West) and universal human rights (as represented by the right of women not to be stoned to death for the crime of being raped) are locked in a largely unspoken death-struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party and the progressive-movement.

The resolution of this contradiction between Islam and western political values will loom large in determining the lives of coming generations.

The Progressive-Left and the Multicultural Dilemma

It was out of the multicultural ideal that Angela Merkel and the European Union opened the doors of Western Europe to mass Muslim immigration in what is perhaps the most audacious social experiment in world history.

Much like the unwarranted optimism by westerners concerning the "Arab Spring" before it, many Europeans looked forward to the cultural enrichment of Europe by Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa. The horror of the Syrian civil war strained the heart-muscles of many westerners who wished to help a population devastated by widespread violence and civil strife. Meanwhile western politicians promoted the idea that Europe needed an influx of young workers for economic reasons, anyway.

In the progressive-left imagination, however, this multicultural ideal slips at the thought of Muslim rape gangs in Britain and the horrendous treatment of women under Sharia Law.

It staggers upon recognition that Islam, whatever else it may be, is a theological-political philosophy that, from the time of Muhammad until today, seeks to expand its territorial boundaries with no interest whatsoever in women's rights.

It should also be noted that beyond the liberal West (with the funny exception of Antarctica) there were no women's marches anywhere. There was a considerable dearth of women marching in Riyadh and Teheran and Mogadishu.

For some reason the women of the Middle East did not care to join their western counterparts in women's solidarity.

There were no pink "pussy hats" in the streets of Karbala or Kandahar or Ramallah.

Nonetheless, one can easily imagine how the authorities in those places would have reacted had there been... or is that a racist assumption?

Meanwhile, American Jewry is going through a dark night of the soul as it awakens to the fact that not only are progressives and Democrats increasingly hostile toward Israel, with only 33 percent of Democrats supportive of the Jewish state, but that they could not care less that young Islamists are driving Jews out of Europe.

Western Jews and the Multicultural Dilemma

If the Obama administration has taught Jews anything it is that the progressive-left and the Democratic Party have considerable empathy for Islamists. The source of that empathy is what philosopher Pascal Bruckner referred to as The Tyranny of Guilt. It is the growing sense - refined and promoted at the universities and within progressive-left circles - that Europeans owe a blood-debt to the rest of the world.

Related to this notion is the idea that the ongoing Arab-Muslim war against the Jews of the Middle East is a righteous struggle against western imperialism.

The slowly-dawning realization among progressive-left Jewry that their own political movement has turned against them is causing consternation and conflict within the community.

The Women's March froze out many progressive-left Jewish women because Linda Sarsour is a pro-Sharia anti-Zionist and the poster above reflects that. The chilling message is that Sharia, as represented by the hijab, is "as American as apple pie" and only feared by hard-right, racist, sexist "deplorables" of the sort despised by Hillary Clinton and that voted for Donald Trump. The flag as a hijab is meant to emphasize the compatibility of Sharia with American sensibilities, as the bright red lipstick suggests a nod toward western sexual-aesthetic mores.

While Sarsour claimed to stand for freedom at both Standing Rock and the post-inaugural streets of Washington D.C., and is unquestionably receiving more attention now than at any time in her White House-visiting past, she also argues that Sharia Law is a good thing that "We The People" should embrace.

Interest free loans and credit cards sounds terrific.

Who, outside of bankers, wouldn't want to see interest free loans and credit cards? Of course, she fails to reference the little Koranic details, such as the practice of public head-chopping, that remains so popular throughout much of the Islamic world.

The core of Sharia, beyond its generous money-lending practices and public brutality, is second and third-class non-citizenship for dhimmis within an Islamic theocracy. Of course, "protected" or dhimmi status is offered only to "people of the book" which includes Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians.

Everyone else caught within traditional Sharia-dominated societies received the choice of enslavement or death.

The highly-respected and recently deceased Professor Martin Gilbert reminds us that for Jews and Christians under Sharia in the Middle East:

There could be no building of new synagogues or churches.  Dhimmis could not ride horses, but only donkeys; they could not use saddles, but only ride sidesaddle.  Further, they could not employ a Muslim. Jews and Christians alike had to wear special hats, cloaks and shoes to mark them out from Muslims.  They were even obliged to carry signs on their clothing or to wear types and colors of clothing that would indicate they were not Muslims, while at the same time avoid clothing that had any association with Mohammed and Islam. Most notably, green clothing was forbidden...

Other aspects of dhimmi existence were that Jews - and also Christians - were not to be given Muslim names, were not to prevent anyone from converting to Islam, and were not to be allowed tombs that were higher than those of Muslims.  Men could enter public bathhouses only when they wore a special sign around their neck distinguishing them from Muslims, while women could not bathe with Muslim women and had to use separate bathhouses instead.  Sexual relations with a Muslim woman were forbidden, as was cursing the Prophet in public - an offense punishable by death.

Under dhimmi rules as they evolved, neither Jews nor Christians could carry guns, build new places of worship or repair old ones without permission,or build any place of worship that was higher than a mosque.  A non-Muslim could not inherit anything from a Muslim.  A non-Muslim man could not marry a Muslim woman, although a Muslim man could marry a Christian or a Jewish woman.

Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2010) 32 - 33.

Ideological Square Pegs

The western-left, including the Democratic party, desperately wants to see a harmonious integration of Muslims from the Middle East and Africa into North America, Europe, and Australia.

They do so out of a moral imperative grounded in multiculturalism and universal human rights.

Thus pro-Israel Jewish progressives throughout the western world look at one another with their palms in the air saying, "What the hell do we do now?"

And this, it must be understood, points directly to a central problem not only between the Jewish and the western-left, but between the western-left and its own ideals.

You cannot stand for social justice if you give a pass to slavery throughout much of the Muslim world. You do not stand for social justice if you allow, without complaint, the hundreds of millions of Arab and Muslim women treated as chattel according to Sharia Law or to the genocidal Jew hatred that infuses between 75 and 95 percent of the Arab-Muslim Middle East.

Yet, at the same time progressives look upon the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors as something akin to Nazis if we don't do backflips at the thought of a mass Arab-Muslim influx into the United States.

Left, right, or center, the western Jewish community does not care about the skin color of immigrants.

We do not care about what particular patch of Earth that they happen to come from.

What we do care about is the transmission of Koranically-based hatred for the infidel onto the lands of our families because we've been down this road before.

If this makes us racist then it is equivalent to Jewish "racism" toward Nazis during World War II.

The problem is not Arabs or Africans or any other ethnic group. The problem is not even most Muslims who want nothing more than to raise their families and earn a living in peace.

The problem is Islam in its political aspect and that is precisely what the Left cannot bring itself to face.

Jerusalem?

Michael Lumish

The Times of Israel staff tells us:

President Donald Trump said Thursday that it was “too early” to discuss moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a potentially politically fraught plan that has been welcomed by Israel’s government and sparked threats from the Palestinians and parts of the Arab world.

“I don’t want to talk about it yet. It’s too early,” Trump told Fox News...

This may be the first time in American history wherein to not oppose the President of the United States makes one something akin to a cultural rebel.

It's very odd, actually.

To march in the streets against Trump is to align oneself with the New York Times, the Washington Post, most of the mainstream television news programs, the Democratic Party, the European Union, and the Clintonesque / anti-Bernie global economic elite.

It is, on a certain level, to stand with Angela Merkel over the German people or to stand with political Islam over the rights of women, Gay people, Yazidis and Jews.

It is about as socially conformist as conformist gets.

Yet by simply giving the guy a chance to do right by the country we are made to feel like rebels among ideologically conformist sheeple trained to hate.

I have to say, however, that for me the question of the US embassy in Jerusalem is a litmus test.

If Trump comes through and moves the embassy in a timely manner - say within the next few months - then we will know that he honestly is a friend of Israel and, thus, a friend to the Jewish people.

If he strings us along, however, it means we've been had.

He's already despised by the great majority of American Jews because the intense campaign of hatred against the guy has done its job well.

Here is hoping that he doesn't lose the rest of us.

The Left is No Longer Liberal

Michael Lumish

My primary quibble with Dave Rubin is that as a "classical liberal" he fails to address the problems of economic injustice that reside within laissez-faire capitalism and, thus, within "classical liberalism" itself.

Aside from this Rubin is directly on the money.

Because there is nothing liberal about judging people according to the progressive-left Hierarchy of Victimhood - i.e., according to the color of their skin rather than the "content of their character" - identity politics is stripping liberalism out of the Left.

Question of the Whenever # 8: Are pro-Israel Jews practicing identity politics?

Michael Lumish

It's becoming more and more clear... to me, at least... that "identity politics" is in direct opposition to the ideals of Martin Luther King, Jr.

If King's advocacy meant anything it meant judging people according to their individual personhood, rather than as some cog or spigot within a socially othered group.

It was as a liberal that MLK believed that we should judge people as people, i.e., according to the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

Identity politics, as it is practiced today, is a different animal entirely. It does nothing but stick people into ethnic or gendered categories that they have no control over. It is for this reason that we are witnessing a backlash against it by all those heinous "regular white guys"... some of whom actually had the temerity to vote for Donald Trump.

So, my question is, are not pro-Israel Jews also practicing a form of identity politics?

Just how is it that our advocacy is not identity politics?

I honestly am not certain of the answer to this question.

The New Center versus Blood in the Streets

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon.}

"Traditional labels are becoming increasingly meaningless as people realize that the battle is no longer Democrat versus Republican, nor is it 'us' versus 'them.' The battle lines are now those who are truly for freedom versus those who would stifle it in the name of tolerance or in the name of security." - Dave Rubin

This is, without question, the single most interesting and horrendous political moment in my lifetime. It is fun. It is frightening. It is painful.

And it makes absolutely no sense.

For decades, since the rise of the New Left during the Vietnam War, the progressive-left has relentlessly banged the drums of race, gender, and class into the American political consciousness.

This is because the most important strides in American social well-being, from the abolition of slavery to the rise of feminism and the labor movement, resulted directly from competing political trends concerned with notions of the "common good" in conflict with notions of "individual liberty" as derived from European Enlightenment political principles going back to Magna Carta.

It is for this reason that they are embedded in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States as the imperative to "promote the general Welfare" while securing "the Blessings of Liberty." These twin western ideals, however, are in constant tension. The more government promotes the "general Welfare" the more it tends to infringe upon the rights of the individual, as we learned from the communist experiment in the twentieth-century. However, the more government emphasizes the freedom of the individual the more it tends to infringe upon the common good, as we learned from laissez-faire nineteenth-century industrial capitalism.

As I write this I am looking at a very old pamphlet that a dear friend gave me a number of years ago.

It is entitled, The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade, And of the Slavery of the Africans: Illustrated in a Sermon. It is an original edition of an address "Preached before the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom, and for the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden in Bondage."

It was delivered by Jonathan Edwards, Doctor of Divinity, in New Haven, Connecticut, on September 15, 1791 and published by Thomas and Samual Green in that year. Edwards was the son of the famous American theologian of the same name who published in 1741 "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", one of the very first great works of American letters.

I treasure this gift because it serves as a constant reminder of living history and the progress toward justice from Hebraic Scripture to the present.

Questions around justice for marginalized groups are at the very heart of the ongoing western conversation which is precisely why issues of race, gender, and class are stressed by the progressive-left. It is through addressing race, gender, and class that the intelligentsia hoped to moderate the social, political, and economic playing fields.

In recent decades, however, the drumbeat has grown steadily louder, wider in scope, and more unremitting throughout the Obama administration.

It was evident to me a number of years ago that left-leaning disgust with the United States increased in direct proportion to American gains in social justice. Also, for the first time ever, the United States has a First Family with Jewish people in it. Holy smoke! I never saw that before.

Yet a Jewish friend of mine calls President Trump, Reichsführer Trump.

This amazing anger, coming from not only the hard-left but also the center-left, has less to do with Trump, himself, then it has to do with the fact that neo-progressivism has turned issues of genuine social concern into ham-fisted clubs with which to beat back political infidels. Having come to its greatest power under the Obama administration, the Left used the political weaponry at hand - charges of racism, sexism, and homophobia - as a means to kick anyone who failed to meet politically-correct imperatives.

Some people suggested that the malice would soften in the weeks and months coming into the inauguration and then the media (and the people) would simply judge this presidency in the normal illiberal and highly partisan manner that we judge all US presidencies.

This has turned out not to be the case.

Instead the pitch of screaming anti-Trump hysteria actually increased, which is why we have close to forty congressional Democrats outspokenly refusing to attend the ceremonies today and a movement for impeachment already underway. All of this obviously reflects the roiling social-political divisions within the United States at this crux in history.

There has been nothing like this moment since 1968 and some people will pay with their lives... that is, when they aren't being tortured for being the wrong skin color while live-streamed onto youtube.

Following the Vietnam War neo-progressivism made remarkable advances in this country. Despite robust challenges by the New Right (under Reagan) and the Evangelicals in the 1980s, American women, Gay people, and ethnic minorities fought for, and earned, far greater political acceptance and opportunities today than at anytime in the past. Not only has the United States overcome de jure racism but it has institutionalized a series of measures, such as Affirmative Action, which are designed to push in the opposite direction... an advantage that my grandparents did not have when they were chased out of Medzhybizh, Ukraine, in the early 1920s and came to the United States.

Yet this is also the moment of the greatest social unrest in the last fifty years.

The first question, obviously, is why now?

The answer taken for granted out of the Left is that the Trump campaign gave the symbolic go-ahead to the white, sexist, nationalist "alt-right"... that virtually none of us even heard of until suddenly Pepe the Frog dropped in for a chat.

{Just look at that sly evil smile.}

Left-leaning fear is that whatever gains, if any, that "marginalized groups" made during the Obama years will be drowned in a wave of backward-looking conservatism and the kind of neo-racism represented by figures as unlikely as Milo Yiannopoulos and his Breitbart partner-in-crime, Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon.

The second question is, how do we want to approach our politics going forward?

Anyone reading this is engaged in social media.

Within social media there are new political seedlings poking up through the digital rubble.

Although I find him to my right on economic issues - because he classifies himself as a "classical liberal" - Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report is an exceedingly interesting guy who exemplifies what he calls "the new center." If so, it owes something to both Jon Stewart and the "New Atheism" of scholars and scientists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett, collectively known as the "Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse."

This "movement" - if it even warrants such a term at this point - is not centered on atheism, despite its atheistic influences.  Its primary values are rationality and liberalism in contrast to political emotionalism and authoritarianism, whether coming from the traditionalist right-wing or the politically-correct Left. For this reason it honors open discussion and freedom of speech over the kind of in-group / out-group political bullying that we have become so accustomed to and that Political Islam has taken to its ultimate expression.

Those of us who come out of the progressive-left and the Democratic Party, but who are no longer interested in either, might consider this emerging new American politics.

If you have read this far you should take six minutes and give this guy a listen.

Divestthis! has joined with the Elder of Ziyon

Michael Lumish

Divest This! is the premier blog analyzing the racist movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS).

I am very pleased to announce that Divest This! now has a column for the Elder of Ziyon. He writes:

After a brief hiatus to deal with some family matters, it’s time to return to the fight, both at Divest This! and now with a weekly column at the incomparable Elder of Ziyon site!

Having missed some comings and goings over the last couple of months, it’s time to take a look at what’s gone on that might impact the fight against BDS which – as all of you reading this should know by now – is simply a propaganda tactic in a multi-faceted global war against the Jewish state.

The Elder has brought together a group of columnists that now include Michael Lumish, Daphne Anson, Pre-Occupied Territory, Vic Rosenthal, Petra Marquardt-Bigman, Forest Rain, Judean Rose, and Divest This!

I am proud to be included in this group of scrappy writers and pro-Israel analysts who are not only putting forth original views on the never-ending war against the Jews of the Middle East, but are doing so in the most democratic form that we have, social media.

Jon, of Divest This!, is one of the great underappreciated scholars of this matter.

Sacred Cow Makes the Best Hamburger

Michael Lumish

Ami Horowitz, who I am only now becoming familiar with, has a brief bit that well describes one of my primary gripes with the progressive-left and the Democratic Party.

Hypocrisy.

An undertold story

Sar Shalom

The explanation for the Jewish connection to Eretz Yisrael is typically based on the accounts of the Bible. Often, this line of argument would end with the Bible, or to paraphrase Ruth Calderon, goes from Tnakh to Palmach. Unfortunately, arguing that the Bible and the Bible by itself justifies Israel's existence plays into the hands of those who purvey the narrative that a bunch of Poles opened the Bible sometime during the 19th century and concluded that what they read gave them the right to travel thousands of miles away and dispossess the native peoples of that land. Further, emphasizing legend, as opposed to history, enables Abbas to counter with his own legends, such as Palestinian descent from the Jebusites. After all, his legends can't be readily disproved if one doesn't look at the record in between the time of those legends and today.

It is the historical record in between the legendary accounts of the Bible the advent of modern Zionism, for which there is no parallel Palestinian claim that can be spun, that distinguishes our claim to the land from that of the Palestinians. It is the redaction of the Mishnah in the early 3rd century and the Palestinian Talmud in the early 5th century that demonstrated the continuing connection of the Jews to Eretz Yisrael after the Bar Kochba revolt. It is the generations of Masoretes and paytanim in Tiberias that demonstrates the post-Talmudic connection of the Jews to Eretz Yisrael. It is the settlements established throughout the centuries and supported by Jews in the diaspora that demonstrates the connection of the Jews to Eretz Yisrael after the Crusades.

All of these are mentioned every now and then. However, they are not mentioned nearly often enough. As a start, whenever the Biblical connection to the land is mentioned, mention some components of the post-biblical connection as well. Whenever Abbas mentions his supposed descent from the Jebusites or Canaanites, mention how we maintained our connection to the land between the 3rd and 15th centuries and ask how his people maintained any sort of connection during that time period.

Hatem Bazian Calls for the Elimination of Israel

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon and Jews Down Under.}

Hatem Bazian backed by supporters

Hatem Bazian, a Palestinian-Arab instructor of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is calling for the elimination of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

In a recent blog post entitled, Trump’s Appointment of David Friedman is the Official End of Oslo, Bazian argues that because President-Elect Donald Trump appointed David Friedman the incoming U.S. ambassador to Israel this means that the "peace process" is concluded and that, therefore, Israel has no right to exist as the Jewish state.

Let us see how he gets from point A to point B.

In his opening remarks Bazian claims:

Trump’s appointment of David M. Friedman as the new ambassador to Israel brings an end to 70 years of U.S. official policy on Palestine centered on U.N. resolutions 181, 242 and 338 with a two-state solution as the final outcome.

Other than as an implied fallacious "last straw" argument, just how he draws this conclusion from Trump's appointment of Friedman remains unexplained. While Bazian is correct that the two-state solution is a corpse, it was neither Trump, nor Friedman, who killed it. In truth it was still-born upon conception for the simple reason that the Palestinian-Arabs, as an irrational religious imperative, never had the slightest intention of accepting a state for themselves in peace next to Israel to begin with.

Upon arbitrarily deciding that Friedman's appointment means the end of the so-called "peace process," Bazian then insists that people everywhere should therefore "call for Israel’s annexation and demand one person, one vote rather than allow Apartheid to masquerade as democracy."

Just how Bazian came to believe that he is in any position to demand anything from anyone, much less his Jewish enemies, is hard to imagine. Nonetheless, by "annexation" he presumably means the potential Israeli annexation of Judea and Samaria. If so, Bazian is one of those academic anti-Zionists nurturing the hope that Israel can be defeated via demographics.

Many Israelis and diaspora Jews wish to see Israel annex the ancient heart of the Jewish homeland. Bazian wishes for this, as well, with the anticipation that the hostile Arab majority could then force its will upon the Jewish minority within the Middle East. Just as for thirteen hundred long years, from the rise of Muhammad to the demise of the Ottoman Empire, Muslims held non-Muslims as slaves and dhimmis, so Bazian hopes to see a return of Muslim domination to the Holy Land.

Although subjugating non-Muslims is integral to Islam, Bazian should however be careful what he wishes for.

If Israel annexes Judea and Samaria it will remain a majority Jewish democracy. This is true for a number of simple reasons. The first is that the Palestinian Authority habitually inflates the numbers of Arabs living in Areas A and B and it is, therefore, highly questionable whether Israel would become a majority Arab country in the future. Furthermore, despite popular opinion otherwise, the birthrate among Palestinian-Arabs is declining while the birthrate among Jews is increasing.

More importantly, of course, Israel is under no suicidal obligation to offer citizenship to enemies of the Jewish people or the Jewish state. If Israel does annex Judea and Samaria it will likely institute pathways to citizenship for those Arabs with no political-religious agenda that involves either the murder or subjugation of the Jewish people. This is to say that Jihadis, terrorists, and anti-Semitic anti-Zionists will probably not be eligible to participate in the political life of the country, if they are permitted to remain in the country at all.

In order to determine eligibility for citizenship, Israel could easily institute a two or three year national service requirement with political enfranchisement dependent upon the demonstrated good-will of the individual Arab. Those who demonstrate a true desire for good citizenship within the Jewish state will be allowed citizenship. Those who do not, will not.

However, let's give Bazian the benefit of the doubt and assume that what he really wants is what is good for everyone in that part of the world. In this case, Bazian is telling the Jewish people that despite Jewish history under the brutality of Islam they are under a moral obligation to hope that a Bazian-style single-state will emerge that will not trample their well-being and civil liberties.

Now, how is that for a roll of the dice?

Bazian would have the Jewish people dependent upon the goodwill of Palestinian-Arabs in an Arab-dominated state. Does he honestly expect that after centuries of dhimmitude and theocratically-based Arab aggression it makes sense for the Jewish people to gamble the very lives of their children on Arab-Muslim hospitality?

The notion is ridiculous on its face and the great majority of Jewish people will have none of it.

"raise our heads, and steel our resolve"

{This is a comment that I came across under an Algemeiner article that stands on its own and is well worth considering. - ML.}

.

YJ Draiman

I am somewhat surprised at all the commotion regarding the U.N resolution 2334 which condemns Jewish Communities and Settlements in the West Bank aka Judea and Samaria. It should be noted Israel regained land and rebuilt communities previously taken from it illegally via the Defensive War of 1967 when it had to defend itself from an unprovoked attack from Jordan. If the U.N voted a resolution declaring the Vatican as Muslim territory, is anyone going to abide by it?

According to my research, the U.N. Charter only provides for the recommendation(s) of a non-binding Resolution. In fact, the U.N. has absolutely no legal standing or power to enforce any Resolution(s). Furthermore, it cannot be ignored the U.N. has recommended hundreds of Resolutions against Israel with no legal, or factual standing to support said Resolutions. There is also the U.N. Article 51 which provides for defense against attack. The U.N, and the ICJ have no appeal process and that is against every Democratic law. Their opinions and resolutions are based on false information; there is no procedure to remedy the erroneous biased decisions.

Israel is on solid legal and historical ground as far as its' territorial boundaries west of the Jordan River. In fact, history proves Israel has both a legal and historical claim for a lot of land held by Jordan.

The World at large has for thousands of years wrongfully persecuted the Jews, confiscated and stole their assets including land. The world at large will try and push us around if we let them. It is time to put an end to such unjustified persecution. 

All the distortions of history up to and including modern day, by biased nations relying upon fictitious make-believe facts and wishful beliefs, must not be tolerated any more. While most of the biased world continues to unjustly assail Israel, the nation of Israel contributes to the world a substantial amount of advancement and technology in all fields, including medicine, energy, water desalination, IT, and much more.

Today the Jewish State of Israel has the man-power and the resources to defend itself against most world powers. Thus, it is time for us Jews to become unified and stand up for ourselves as was done during the days of Moses, King David and King Solomon.

We are supposed to be "a stubborn nation" (Am Kshey Oref). Let us utilize our "stubborn" resolve with a strong backbone steeled with our unwavering faith. If we stand our ground without capitulations, we might encounter some obstacles and suffer some set-backs. But in the long run we will be stronger and the world at large will respect us more.

We must overcome the "victim mentality" we have too easily accepted over thousands of years. It is time for all Jews worldwide to raise our heads, and steel our resolve as a proud nation with proud people.

Interesting Times

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon, Jews Down Under and The Jewish Press.}

The Jewish political community is divided and distressed.

As I write, Israel is reeling over the Azaria case, the United Nations is pushing all-in on Jew Hatred, Jihadism is on the rise in Europe, white nationalism and anti-white racism are both on the rise in the United States, Obama is hitting the road (or, at least, crossing the street), the Russians are unhappy and shaking their fists, and Donald Trump is eagerly chomping at the bit.

Anything can happen and nobody knows what will.

For example, will Trump move the US embassy to Jerusalem? 

I hope that he does. In fact, I will be damn pissed-off if he doesn't. But if he does so in a timely manner it will demonstrate a clear change in direction concerning US policy on the Long War. Oslo was a disaster and the two-state solution is dead dead dead. Perhaps Trump will recognize this and, if he does, it means pretty much everything is up for grabs. Will Israel seize the day and annex? And if so, annex what exactly? And how will "the world" respond?

Or will Israel, as is my bet, simply react to circumstances as they develop while wobbling back-and-forth on what to do with Judea and Samaria? No matter what it does, however, interested parties throughout the world are gearing up to give Israel a good ass-kicking if they can. Prior to the recent American election all the elements lined up with the EU, the UN, the Obama administration, the progressive-left - not to mention almost the entire Arab and Muslim worlds - in agreement that Jews have no rights to sovereignty on ancestral Jewish land.

While the ascendancy of Trump represents a giant question mark, Israel definitely dodged a bullet with Hillary. Unless, of course, you think that another four to eight years of degrading Israel in order to pressure it into complying with the demands of its enemies would have been a good thing. Now, at least, there is the possibility that the United States will go back to a more sensible foreign policy which honors allies while confronting enemies. We shall see.

But what happens if the Democrats install Keith Ellison as Chair of the Democratic National Committee?

We're waiting with bated breath on that one, aren't we? Speaking for myself, I am very much looking forward to the Democrats handing the DNC Chair to Keith Ellison. I hope that they do it because Ellison is a fair representation of the party as it stands now. He covers enough of the bases, from issues of diversity to those of progressive economics, to make most Democrats happy.

Of course, there is that niggling little problem with his anti-Semitic anti-Zionism which the rest of them studiously ignore - and make no mistake, all anti-Zionism is by definition anti-Semitic - but if you don't like it you can lump it. That's the attitude of the party, but I consider this a good thing because this way everyone knows where everyone stands.

It's Naked Lunch.

Everyone sees what's on the end of every fork.

And will Alan Dershowitz actually leave the Democratic Party???

Yes, the earth will tremble and Balrogs will arise from the Deep.

It's my bet that Dershowitz will leave the Democratic Party in his life no sooner than did Ed Koch in his.

Nonetheless, for the first time we are seeing significant numbers of Jewish Democrats acknowledging something that has been clear to many of us for a very long time. The Democratic Party is shaking off support for Israel because it tends to view Israel through an anti-imperialist lens and because Muslims are a more important constituency in the long run for the party. In terms both broad and crude, this is what it comes down to.

We can acknowledge this truth or pretend otherwise, but truth it remains.

Meanwhile the American Jewish community, if not the diaspora Jewish community, more generally, is cracking along various ideological fault-lines. Tensions are mounting between "progressive" and Democratic Party Jews versus conservative and Republican Party Jews over U.S.-Israeli policy. Fault lines are continuing to crack between Israeli Jews and American Jews over the same question. And even within Democratic Party ranks, Jews are squabbling among themselves over the direction of the party and whether or not to split from the Democrats, as I did maybe 5 years ago.

This is not new, it is just getting more and more vital and intense.

Political sands have been shifting for many years but this moment is a true transitional moment. For Jewish people the election of Trump, whatever else it may mean, staggered the Oslo-Clinton-Obama anti-Israel status quo. Thus I find myself among those who sense opportunity in the moment.

While diaspora Jews are in no position to tell our brothers and sisters in Israel what to do, there is no reason why we should shy away from making suggestions. My suggestion, modest or not, is that Israel take the opportunity to declare its final borders. What those borders will be should entirely be up to Israel. A few years ago I would have suggested that they be determined through negotiations with Palestinian-Arab representatives. However, since at this point it could not be more clear that there is no Arab intention of creating a Palestinian-Arab state in peace next to Israel they forfeit any consideration.

The so-called "Palestinians" are all-or-nothing kind of folk for whom compromise is a kick in the head.  And you know what they say about all-or-nothing kind of people, don't you?

If they can't get it all...

A development in Islam we should support

Sar Shalom

The other day, I was listening on the Brian Lehrer Show in New York to United Arab Emirates' ambassador to Russia talk about his book about how someone can be both a good Muslim and a good citizen of the world. From his talk, I came away with the impression that most Muslims have the approach that being a good Muslim means saying "the umma, right or wrong." Of course, once someone takes that attitude, there is no way to support Israel over the Palestinians, because even if the Palestinians are wrong, as part of the umma, it is one's duty to support them. Without getting into any specific manifestations, Ambassador Ghobash rejects this tenet. In so doing, he makes it possible to reach an accommodation with Muslims in that he expands the grounds on which one can be a good Muslim and accept the presence of Israel.

Brandeis explains Obama's approach to Israel

Sar Shalom

Louis Brandeis that is.

Courtesy of an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times about the filibuster, I learned of Justice Brandeis' line from a dissent, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Therein is the crux of Obama's approach to Israel.

Many Israel-supporters ascribe Obama's actions to an animus against Israel. Such an assessment has two problems. One, there are facts that contradict it. Two, the is an alternative theory that explains why he has taken the actions he has. While not flattering of Obama, it does not describe any degree of malice on Obama's part.

A place to start would be how Obama's worldview was formed. When Obama got his start as a community organizer in Chicago, he had two main types of sources of information on the Mideast conflict: the Palestinianist spokesmen, such as Rashid Khalidi and Edward Said, and the liberal Jews of Chicago, such as Abner Mikva and Sam Minow. From the first group, Obama absorbed a sense of Palestinian grievance. The second group provided reason not to take it at face-value, nor did it provide any defense of Israel's presence in Jordan's 1949-conquest. However, because the second group did defend Israel where Jordan failed to conquer in 1949, Obama thought he had heard "both sides" of the conflict and thus knew everything that he truly needed to know, and thus he felt entitled to say "na na na na, I don't hear you" to anyone trying to point out anything that was not within the parameters of The Truth that his Palestinianist and liberal Chicago Jewish mentors taught him.

However, there are consequential gaps in Obama's knowledge of the Middle East. For instance, his mentors did not teach him about the history of the Pact of Umar. Nor has he ever pondered the possibility that his Palestinianist mentors, rather describing what we westerners consider a legitimate grievance, were merely dressing up their grievance that outside of the Temple Mount, the Pact of Umar is no longer in effect. Thus Obama combines an exceptional level of zeal provided by his Palestinianist mentors with an equally exceptional lack of understanding. As Brandeis wrote, it is the greatest threat to liberty, and thus we get UNSC 2334.

Question of the Whenever # 7: Ya Can't Swing a Dead Cat without Hitting a Racist (Updated)

Michael Lumish

Racism. Racism. Racism.

How is it that the less racist western countries become the more their citizenry accuse one another of racism?

It's very strange, really, and I don't understand it.

It's as if people have no historical sense whatsoever.

It was only fucking yesterday when Jim Crow laws reigned in the United States. My old man got fired from a job as a kid after the boss learned that he took one of the High Holy Days off.

I was born under the Sign of Kennedy and in my lifetime I have seen remarkable progress on issues of racial bigotry within the United States.

But, again, what's weird... at least to me... is that as the Civil Rights Movement matured and was accepted by almost everyone in the United States, and certainly virtually everyone in political power today, the high-pitched screeches of RACISM just rang throughout the land.

It came to a shrill crescendo in the weeks leading into the election of the Abominably Orange Cheetoh.

So, yes, how is it that the less racist western countries become the more their citizenry accuse one another of racism?

Hmmmm???

UPDATE:

Oh, and by the way, if any of you idiots out there want to talk to me about American Nazis or the fucking Klan or the "Alt-Right"... whatever you think that is... just please shut the hell up until you can produce a video that comes anything close to the kind of violent anti-white racism that we see below.

And don't try to pawn this off on Trump.

Trump didn't do this.

It was all you hideous morons out there screaming from the hillsides about RACISM! RACISM! RACISM!

Well, there's racism in this country, alright.

Just ask the poor bastard in the video below.