Heritage Theft: A Response to Dani Ishai Behan

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon, Jews Down Under and Vlaamse Vrienden van Israël.}

"We say to him [Netanyahu], when he claims that they [Jews] have a historical right dating back to 3000 years B.C.E.—we say that the nation of Palestine upon the land of Canaan had a 7,000-year history B.C.E. This is the truth, which must be understood, and we have to note it, in order to say: 'Netanyahu, you are incidental in history. We are the people of history. We are the owners of history.'" - Mahmoud Abbas, May 14, 2011.

Dani Ishai Behan has a blog post for the Times of Israel entitled, Jesus Was Not A Palestinian, Or Even An Arab in which he argues that Jesus was not a Palestinian... or even an Arab.

He is, of course, correct and the very fact that he feels it necessary to remind us is because many Palestinian-Arabs do make ridiculous claims such as that "Jesus was the first Palestinian shaheed" and do so as part of the larger project of heritage theft against the Jewish people.

They also do so out of a not unjustified assumption concerning the idiocy and ideological blinkertude of the humanitarian racist West that enjoys blaming Jewish people for the violence against us.

This is no small matter, but it is the kind of thing that travels beneath the awareness of typical mainstream reporters.

Those who are less familiar with the Long Arab / Muslim War against the Jews of the Middle East than is Behan might wonder why he feels it necessary to acknowledge the obvious? The reason that he does so is because the war against the Jews is as much a propaganda campaign - a campaign for delegitimization - as it is a campaign of violence, terrorism, and physical intimidation for the purpose of driving Jews back into diaspora and, thus, helplessness.

The Phases of the Long Arab / Muslim War against the Jews include:

Phase 1, 1920 - 1947: Riots and Massacres

Phase 2, November 1947 - April 1948: The Civil War in Palestine

Phase 3, 1948 - 1973: Conventional Warfare

Phase 4, 1964 - Present: The Terror War

Phase 5, 1975 - Present: The Delegitimization Effort

When Palestinian-Arabs claim the Jewish historical figure of Jesus as a "Muslim martyr" they are engaged in the process of heritage theft.

The purpose of this cultural thievery is to displace the indigenous Jewish population with Arab colonists, both physically and culturally and to do so as a matter of self-righteous "social justice."

This is the insidious irony of the entire project. They are seeking to turn Palestinian-Arabs into the New Jews while transforming the Jewish people into the New Nazis. But most importantly it is to sew confusion in the minds of interested and well-meaning outsiders.

Parisian intellectuals, for example, have about as much collective knowledge of the Long Arab / Muslim War against the Jews as I have about Parisian intellectuals. That is, although such people have no idea about the conflict they are constantly encouraged to view it as one between a racist, colonialist, imperialist, apartheid, Jewish, war-machine versus a small, bunny-like, native population that wants nothing more than to be left in peace to tend their sacred olive groves.

The enemies of the Jewish people, throughout the Middle East and Europe, therefore fabricated the propagandistic illusion that the Jews are interlopers on historically Jewish land while the Arab colonists are the persecuted indigenous population.

Heritage theft is part of this process.

Although transforming the historical figure of Jesus into a Palestinian-Arab is probably the most ridiculous and audacious of such examples, it is certainly not the only one.

After all, if the Arabs can abscond with Jesus they can certainly take Anne Frank which is why we sometimes see her in a keffiyeh within circles associated with antisemitic anti-Zionism.

Another obvious example, as Behan points out, is the obscuring of Jewish history on Jewish land through the widely accepted usage of "West Bank" for Judea and Samaria. The truth is that the tiny bit of land along the eastern Mediterranean was known as Judea and Samaria for millennia.

As Behan writes:

Judaea is the Roman/Latin cognate of Judah, which is itself the Anglicized version of the Hebrew name for the land: ‘Yehudah’. We are called Jews/Yehudim because we come from Judea/Judah. The languages spoken there – Hebrew and Aramaic – formed part of the basis for diaspora tongues such as Yiddish.

Yet another example - one that I find particularly toxic and obnoxious - is the effort to equate the "Nakba" with the Holocaust.

The effort is to always balance the historical claims of the Jewish side with the ahistorical claims of their Palestinian-Arab enemies.

As Bashir Bashir, professor of Political Science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and co-editor, along with Amos Goldberg of The Holocaust and the Nakba: Memory, National Identity and Jewish-Arab Partnership tells us concerning their edited volume:

Zionism tries to treat the Holocaust as both universal and particular: it is supposed to be significance to all of humanity, but it is also the patrimony of Zionism, which has the right to decide how it is invoked and understood. Putting the Holocaust and the Nakba together in a common frame disrupts this exceptionalism and is meant to provoke new thinking that exceeds the rigid, dichotomous, and oppositional boundaries of ethno-nationalism.

To be clear, neither Bashir, nor Goldberg, seek equivalence between the slaughter of the millions of Jews in Europe and the fact that some Arabs fled Israel, and some were driven from Israel, after launching a war against the Jews in November of 1947.

But, nonetheless, they are walking an exceedingly tight rope and it is not the least bit obvious that "putting the Holocaust and the Nakba together in a common frame" does anything other than draw an ethical equivalence, despite their suggestions otherwise.

What Dani Ishai Behan very well understands, but what most observers of the conflict do not, is that there is not the slightest ethical correspondence between the Nazi slaughter of the Jews in Europe and the efforts among Jewish Holocaust survivors to save themselves and their families from the Long Arab / Muslim War that well preceded the existence of Nazis and that continues to this day.

Following the death of Muhammad in the seventh-century, the Muslims of the Arabian Peninsula conquered the Byzantine Empire and almost went forward to conquer the entirety of Europe.

I am afraid that in doing so they do not also get to conquer either Jewish or Christian history.

Jesus was a Jew and everyone knows it.

When Palestinian-Arabs claim otherwise they make themselves look like fools.

Antisemitic anti-Zionism and the Racist Left

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon, Jews Down Under, The Jewish Press, Vlaamse Vrienden Van Israel and Listy z naszego sadu.}

The western-left is the most racist political movement in the West today outside of political Islam.

The categories of contemporary progressive-left racism include:

1) Anti-White Racism

2) Antisemitic Anti-Zionism

and

3) Humanitarian Racism

While left-leaning politicos in the United States are searching for Nazis and Klansmen and White Supremacists and White Nationalists and the "Alt-Right" - whatever that is, exactly - hiding beneath every bed, they remain childishly oblivious to the toxic and divisive racism that is eating its way through the core of their own political movement.

Up until about the election of Barack Obama - who I voted for in 2008 - the United States made highly significant strides in ethnic relations over many decades, which was a major factor in Obama's electoral success.

Since then, the United States is regressing on issues of race even as the inheritors of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. urinate on that legacy while calling it "social justice."

There has not been this much racial discord in the United States since 1968 and it is largely due to the fact that the progressive-left has beat it into the heads of poor "black" kids that they are oppressed and that poor "white" kids are the oppressors.

What kind of social results did they expect would emerge from incessant left-leaning racial hatred in the United States?

Anti-White Racism

Although nobody on the left ever wants to discuss it, the most prominent form of publically acceptable racism in the United States, today, is anti-white racism.

Hundreds of articles and other forms of media have been published in left-leaning venues decrying how horrible and racist and brutal - yet, somehow, fragile - "white" people are.

As an American Jew - and since the word "white" has become a racist perjorative - I am not even certain that I know what a "white" person is. I do know that I am constantly mistaken for one despite the fact that my ancestry, along with almost all non-converted Jews, goes to the Levant.

The fundamental point, of course, is that people do not get to pick-and-choose who it is acceptable to be racist towards. Either you oppose racism or you do not. If you claim that certain ethnicities, for historical and socio-economic reasons around power relations, are incapable of racism then - guess what? - you are being racist.

That is, you are holding some groups of people to different ethical standards based on their ethnic background.

Excuse me, but that is the very definition of racism.

Western-left identity politics is both racist and noxious because it indoctrinates young people into a political point of view which places individuals upon an ethnic and gendered Hierarchy of Victimhood wherein one's political significance, if not one's humanity, itself, depends upon where one falls within the hierarchy.

Contemporary left identity politics, therefore, in distinction from old-timey interest group politics, is the most prominent racist and illiberal political movement in the United States today.

It is what I call "identity politics overreach."

It is also one significant reason, among others, that Donald J. Trump happily sits in the Oval Office.

Antisemitic Anti-Zionism

This one, naturally, is my favorite.

One of the astonishing things about antisemitism is that, like an ideological virus, it has the ability to mutate according to the changing nature of its political environment. If in previous generations antisemitism was justified by notions such as the Jews killed Jesus or the Jews killed Mohammad or the Jews invented capitalism or the Jews invented socialism or the Jews represented an inferior and parasitic race, today we are to understand that the Jews are inhumane to the allegedly indigenous "Palestinian" population.

kIf you were to question your average U.S. Democrat they would likely agree that the historical persecution of the Jewish people was entirely unjustified. The western-left despises Nazism and racism and fascism, even as they unthinkingly embrace certain aspects of it. They would absolutely agree that the European persecution of the Jews was a great injustice in the past, even as they also embrace the western-left antisemitic anti-Zionism of the present.

Unfortunately, polling data also shows that a majority of self-identified "liberal Democrats" favor the Palestinians-Arabs over the Jews of Israel by a plurality of 40 percent over 33 percent.

In other words, in the imaginations of "liberal Democrats" - by which they actually mean "progressives" or, as some would say, the "regressive left" - every previous generation the Jews were innocent and did not deserve harassment or persecution... except for this one.

By some mysterious happenstance the Jewish people, today, both Israeli and diaspora, are, in fact, guilty. We were not in the past, but we are today.

Thus, who can really blame "Palestinians" if they perpetually seek to murder Jews in the very heartland of the tiny Jewish nation?

If the international community despises the Jewish State of Israel it is, therefore, because of the Jews, themselves, who generally insist upon supporting the allegedly racist, militaristic state of Israel. What this suggests, within the western-left mind, about the morality of diaspora Jewry which supports Israel is not very pretty.

Humanitarian Racism

In Manfred Gerstenfeld's introduction to Behind The Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel, and the Jews, which is a scholarly compilation of articles published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, Gerstenfeld writes:

Behind the Nordic countries’ righteous appearance and oft-proclaimed concern for human rights often lurk darker attitudes. This volume’s main purpose is to lift their humanitarian mask as far as Israel and Jews are concerned. This disguise hides many ugly characteristics, including the financing of demonizers of Israel, a false morality, invented moral superiority, and “humanitarian racism.”

The condescension and imperial superiority of contemporary leftists toward those of non-European descent, with the exception of Jews, is unfathomable. The progressive-left, as a group, treats all non-Europeans, other than Jews, like little children in need of a pat on the head and a chocolate chip cookie.

It is, at least in my estimation, the current iteration of nineteenth-century western imperial notions of "white man's burden" and it takes the form of holding non-Europeans to the ethical standards of inferiors.

In this way, European historical guilt around issues of race trump feminism, and even regular human decency, in how much of the guilt-riddent "white" middle-class judge people who in an earlier generation they would have called "our little brown brothers."

Until the western-left moves beyond anti-white racism, antisemitic anti-Zionism, and humanitarian racism, it will remain riddled with hypocrisy and acting in cross-purposes toward its own supposed values.

It is very sad that over fifty years after Martin Luther King, Jr's famous I Have A Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. that the western-left has flung King's admonitions into the gutter.

The most important thing that King stood for was this:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for anti-racism.

The contemporary left does not.

Nikki Haley

Michael Lumish

Remarks by US Ambassador Nikki Haley, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, before a UN Security Council briefing on the situation in the Middle East, December 18, 2017:

Thank you, Mr. President. In this meeting, I will not use Council’s time to address where a sovereign nation might decide to put its embassy, and why we have every right to do so. I will address a more appropriate and urgent concern.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the passage of Resolution 2334. On that day, in this Council, in December 2016, the United States elected to abstain, allowing the measure to pass. Now it’s one year and a new administration later. Given the chance to vote again on Resolution 2334, I can say with complete confidence that the United States would vote “no.” We would exercise our veto power. The reasons why are very relevant to the cause of peace in the Middle East.

On the surface, Resolution 2334 described Israeli settlements as impediments to peace. Reasonable people can disagree about that, and in fact, over the years the United States has expressed criticism of Israeli settlement policies many times.

But in truth, it was Resolution 2334 itself that was an impediment to peace. This Security Council put the negotiations between Israelis and the Palestinians further out of reach by injecting itself, yet again, in between the two parties to the conflict.

By misplacing the blame for the failure of peace efforts squarely on the Israeli settlements, the resolution gave a pass to Palestinian leaders who for many years rejected one peace proposal after another. It also gave them encouragement to avoid negotiations in the future. It refused to acknowledge the legacy of failed negotiations unrelated to settlements. And the Council passed judgment on issues that must be decided in direct negotiations between the parties.

If the United Nations’ history in the peace efforts proves anything, it is that talking in New York cannot take the place of face-to-face negotiations between the regional parties. It only sets back the cause of peace, not advance it.

As if to make this very point, Resolution 2334 demanded a halt to all Israeli settlement activity in East Jerusalem – even in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. This is something that no responsible person or country would ever expect Israel would do. And in this way, Resolution 2334 did what President Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem as the capital of Israel did not do: It prejudged issues that should be left in final status negotiations.

Given the chance today, the United States would veto Resolution 2334 for another reason. It gave new life to an ugly creation of the Human Rights Council: the database of companies operating in Jewish communities. This is an effort to create a blacklist, plain and simple. It is yet another obstacle to a negotiated peace. It is a stain on America’s conscience that we gave the so-called BDS movement momentum by allowing the passage of Resolution 2334.

To the United Nations’ shame, this has been a disproportionately hostile place for the Middle East’s most enduring democracy.

The United States refuses to accept the double standard that says we are not impartial when we stand by the will of the American people by moving our US embassy, but somehow the United Nations is a neutral party when it consistently singles out Israel for condemnation.

For decades, Israel has withstood wave after wave of bias in the UN and its agencies. The United States has often stood beside Israel. We did not on December 23, 2016. We will not make that mistake again.

This week marks the one year anniversary of a significant setback for Middle East peace. But the United States has an undiminished commitment to helping bring about final status negotiations that will lead to lasting peace.

Our hand remains extended to both parties. We call on all countries that share this commitment to learn the hard lessons of the past and work to bring Israel and the Palestinian people in good faith to the peace table.

Thank you, very much.

Bush, Sharon, Trump, Jerusalem - Update

Sar Shalom

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. This is unequivocally something to celebrate. However, a look back at history should guide what we do going forward. I refer to President George W. Bush's letter to Ariel Sharon around the time of the disengagement from Gaza. In that letter, which was endorsed by Congress, the United States committed that on the heels of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza that the U.S. would refrain from raising an issue about the settlements close to the Green Line. Like Trump's later recognition of Jerusalem, Bush's acquiescing to the near settlements was an unambiguous positive while it was in force.

One would expect that congressional endorsement would give the Sharon letter some degree of permanence, but that was not to be. As soon as Bush's presidency ended, his successor ignored it and went on a messianic crusade against the settlements, treating the Ramat Shlomo section of Jerusalem no differently than Elon Moreh on the outskirts of Nablus. The question now is, what can we do so that Trump's recognition will not meet the same fate as the Sharon letter? Does anyone not think that if Bernie Sanders were chas v'shalom to become president in 2021, barring changes from current circumstances, that he would rescind Trump's recognition of Jerusalem?

One change that would complicate any successor's attempt to rescind the Jerusalem recognition would be to create facts on the ground. That would mean getting the embassy moved during Trump's current term. Going from recognizing Jerusalem is Israel's capital while the embassy remains in Tel Aviv to reverting back to recognizing Tel Aviv as Israel's capital is a fairly simple move for a potential future president with an Obama-like or worse mindset. Changing the status of a functioning embassy in Jerusalem would be more complicated. Tillerson must not be allowed to drag his feet on this issue.

A further change that would complicate a move to rescind the Jerusalem recognition would be to change the narrative surrounding it from one of a sop to the Israeli and American Christian rights to one of a blow against injustice. Unfortunately, Trump's lack of credibility on any other issue would not facilitate this. Nonetheless, we must try to advance this alternative narrative in order to increase the likelihood that the Jerusalem recognition outlives Trump's administration.

One possible approach to do so would be put forward a more compelling explanation of what is needed in order to achieve peace. Previously, I have written what would be needed to demonstrate that the Palestinians are genuinely interested in peace. What is needed is for the Palestinians to declare three things:

• The Jews are a people
• The Jewish people are deeply connected to the Land of Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular
• The Pact of Umar has no place in the modern world (modified from the original list)

For the moral narcissist-peace processors, attacking that list of demands would require one of two things. Either they could contradict one or more of the items in the list or they could argue that even if they are true, the Palestinians' refusal to abide by them should be inconsequential compared to their eventual commitment to live in peace. As to the former, it is a straightforward declaration of being an anti-Semite. The latter requires more of a response.

Denial of any one of those three would mean Jewish sovereignty on so much as a postage stamp-sized plot of the hallowed Dar-al-Islam is an injustice. It is possible to recognize an inability to address that particular injustice. Abu Yehuda likened this to recognizing an alligator lying across the sidewalk, you can't ignore it, but you wouldn't recognize its right to be there and you would call the game commission to have it removed ASAP. Combine the saying "no justice, no peace" with denial of any of my three points meaning Israel's existence in any borders is an injustice and the result is that there can be no peace with both Israel existing and a Palestinian entity clinging to denial of any of those three.

Returning to the Jerusalem declaration, part of acknowledging the bond between the Jewish people and Jerusalem is accepting that Jerusalem is the Jews' capital. Opposing that recognition is ipso facto proof of denial of point 2 and thus an inability to have anything more than a truce with Israel to be used to build up their forces to finally impose their concept of "justice."

UPDATE: Abbas recently announced that in the wake of the Jerusalem announcement, he will no longer listen to any American peace plan. If the current narrative persists, this will provide Trump's successor the perfect excuse to revoke his recognition of Jerusalem. The task ahead is to attack that narrative and replace it with one in which Abbas' tantrum in response to the recognition of Jerusalem is proof-positive that he is unwilling to accept any peace in which Israel remains. I do not have answers as to what would change the narrative, but I can say that resting on our laurels that we have the power for now to preserve the Jerusalem recognition will not do so.

This Week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish

3 min Editorial: Morgan poll of Australians on Jerusalem

9 min Noor Dahri, Pakistani Muslim Zionist

38 min Discussion: interfaith scandal

52 min Daniel Mandel, Zionist Organisation of America ZOA [ LIVE Monday 18 th Dec USA }

1 hr 13 min Daniel Markind, lawyer and commentator

1 hr 34 min Isi Leibler in Jerusalem

The podcast can also be found on the J-Air website.

Or its Facebook page.

NOTHING LEFT can be heard live each Tuesday 9-11am on FM 87.8 in the Caulfield area, or via the J-Air website www.j-air.com.au

Contact Michael and Alan at Nothing Left:

michael@nothingleft.com.au

alan@nothingleft.com.au

Yours truly this week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish

This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman have an exclusive interview with incoming Israeli ambassador to Australia, Mark Sofer and then hear from yours truly in the San Francisco Bay area.

Burd and Freedman have an interview with the Elder of Ziyon and hear from Swedish film maker Bo Persson who made a film about antisemitism that the public Swedish TV channel refused to broadcast.

And Isi Leibler shares his thoughts on President Donald Trump's announcements of last week.

3 min Editorial:  Pres Trump’s Jerusalem statements

11 min Mark Sofer, new Israeli Ambassador to Australia

29 min Mike Lumish, San Francisco blogger

51 min Elder of Ziyon, blogger

1 hr 14 min Bo Persson, Swedish film maker

1 hr 32 min Isi Leibler in Jerusalem SPEAKS HIS MIND ON UN VOTING  & TRUMPS JERUSALEM STANCE

The podcast can also be found on the J-Air website.

Or its Facebook page.

NOTHING LEFT can be heard live each Tuesday 9-11am on FM 87.8 in the Caulfield area, or via the J-Air website www.j-air.com.au

Contact Michael and Alan at Nothing Left:

michael@nothingleft.com.au

alan@nothingleft.com.au

The Trump Nudge

Michael Lumish

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

Perhaps Donald Trump gave the Arab-Israel conflict the nudge that it needs.

It is fascinating to see the various objections that many pro-Israel Jews have for United States recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Some people oppose the move primarily out of disdain for Trump or because they consider Trump so toxic that he will inevitably poison what otherwise might be a good move. Many Israelis, needless to say, find the whole thing insulting. They know where their own capital is, for chrissake, and they don't need anyone else to affirm it. And everyone, of course, is concerned about violence and one Palestinian-Arab has been killed as I write during this first "Day of Rage."

One of my favorite arguments, however, represented only by a deranged minority, actually considers Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as antisemitic. Imagine that. The idea is that Trump only made this move as a cynical gesture to the Christian Evangelical base. American Evangelicals - or so goes the story - merely appreciate Israel as a vehicle for some crazed eschatological, End-of-Days scenario wherein Jesus will return and show Adolph Hitler and the Catholic Church just how best to deal with the Jews.

It is pure nonsense, of course, but interesting to ponder in a warped kind of way.

And, finally, there is the prominent idea among the politicians and intelligentsia - and the EU and the PA and the UN and the US Department of State and, say, Swedish people - that this will kill the "peace process." I do not know about you, but I increasingly have come to suspect that the purpose of the "peace process" is not so much about peace as it is about the "peace process."

We are coming on twenty-five years since Yitzhak Rabin foolishly shook the hand of that rotten old bastard, Yassir Arafat, and somehow it did not fall off.

In any case, the Arabs are going bonkers, as we are seeing in the streets of eastern Jerusalem and elsewhere, and people will be killed out of Koranically-based religious mania.

{And make no mistake, the entire conflict is grounded in Koranically-based religious mania. Does anyone believe for a single second that if somehow Israel was an Islamic country that the rest of the Islamic world would be so perpetually vexed at its existence? Of course, not.}

But, so long as the Arabs believe that they have a reasonable claim to the City of David they will never stop pushing and they will not stop sending their children into the streets with knives. So long as they believe that Jerusalem is up-for-grabs then they will consider the whole shebang up-for-grabs.

Two of the biggest mistakes that Israel made, historically, were giving up control of the Temple Mount to the Waqf and inviting Arafat back from Tunis for that insidious handshake. The stupidity on both counts was monumental.

Most Democrats and progressives now believe that the Arabs are fighting for "social justice."

They are not.

Jews lived as second and third-class non-citizens under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperial rule for thirteen centuries. It was never better than Jim Crow was at its worst, but lasted far longer. And when Jewish people finally gained their freedom, the Arab world waged bloody war against Israel, in various forms, from 1948 to the present.

The Arabs are not fighting for social justice. They are not fighting for a Palestinian-Arab state.

They are seeking to repair the historical continuance of theocratic-imperial domination over the despised Jewish minority, who many believe murdered their prophet.

This is about religious bigotry, not land.

This is about the crudest form of Koranically-based race hatred imaginable and it has been ongoing since the time of Muhammad.

Arab-Muslim kids in the Middle East far too often receive fear and loathing toward Jews with their mother's milk.

Anti-Defamation League statistics on antisemitism in the Middle East show that the most liberal countries are hateful toward Jews into the 70th percentile, while in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority that number rises into the 90th percentile.

And what this means - as the Palestinian-Arabs never cease to remind us - is that we are facing an implacable foe with the very worst intentions and with what they believe is a divine calling to wrench Jewish control from historically Jewish land... and to do so even within living memory of the Holocaust.

Now, that is quite some brew.

Given the ugly truth above, I increasingly lean in the direction of Daniel Pipes on this question.

I believe it is necessary for Israel to decisively defeat their Palestinian-Arab enemies. And what that means is making it very clear to them that continued efforts to ruin Jewish lives will be met with very sincere consequences.

As for just what those consequences should be, I can only leave to the Israelis.

In Response to Rioting Arabs in Israel

Gav Kostonov

{This is another guest post from a Facebook acquaintance who holds a strong and interesting perspective directly in the aftermath of the Trump acknowledgment of Jerusalem and at the very start of the so-called Jerusalem Intifada. This was merely a comment under another post which is why it has no actual introductory paragraph. Nonetheless, this man is on it. - ML}

Palestinians completely trashed ancient synagogues in Jericho and in Shechem and they regularly desecrate Jewish holy sites under their control. You know how many times Jews rioted about it or went on stabbing sprees over It?

That would be none.

You want me to break the difference between us and the Palestinians down for You? We hold ourselves and are held by the world to a standard of civility that actually exceeds that of a common baboon.

Now stop infantilizing them. They've had since 1937 to accept any one of half a dozen offers of statehood offered to them, offers not offered to any other people that actively sided with the Axis in WW2. It's about time the rest of the world joined us in telling them to get their act together.

There are dozens of stateless peoples that deserve solidarity but none of them have their own exclusive UN agency or non voting UN membership or an international day of solidarity like the Palestinians do. Do you know why? Tibetans and Catalonians never stooped to terrorism to get their message to the world stage. At this point Puerto Rico is more deserving of independence. At least they actually had independence at one time unlike these transplanted Arabians that reinvented themselves halfway through the 20th Century.

Day of Stupidity # 1

Michael Lumish

Trump's speech

Sar Shalom

Maps

Sar Shalom

One of the comments from my previous post on unilaterally drawing lines a map showing what I described. I managed to produce crude maps of the areas north and south of Route 55 with a rough line showing the division between what I would annex and where I would withdraw. I am not hard set on the exact location of those lines. However, one thing that is clear is that inside of those two perimeters, there are many places with Arabic names, and outside there are just a handful.

One of the justifications for calling for Israel to eventually withdraw from the settlements is that aside from the settlements west of the security barrier, the settlements are surrounded by Arabs. As these maps show, that is true inside the perimeters, but not for the Jordan Valley and not as clear for Route 5 corridor.

Trump Speech

Say what you will.

I know that I am going to. - ML

A parable

Sar Shalom

Imagine a couple that has a daughter. The husband does not wish to have the burden of raising this daughter weigh down on the rest of his life. He would never read to her at night. Whenever there is any event in his daughter's life, say a birthday party, school play, graduation or anything else, if his golf buddies want to go for an outing he joins them for their outing.

After a few years, the wife has enough of these antics and files for divorce. The husband is insulted by her objection to his lifestyle and decides to retaliate by getting their daughter taken away from her. As the case proceeds through court, what are the chances that the husband would tell the judge that his wife is arrogant in impinging on his lifestyle and thus their daughter should be removed from her.

The answer is close to zero. It might be an accurate description of his motives, but unless he is a total moron, he would realize that no judge sympathizes with that argument. Instead, he would wax poetic about how important his daughter is in his life. Possibly, he would get some of his golfing buddies to provide affidavits to the judge about her importance to him. All in order to provide a reason that the daughter to be awarded to him, and thus denied to his wife.

Such is the Palestinian attachment to Jerusalem.

On Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Sar Shalom

So it looks like President Trump will actually do something positive and recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Predictably, every Palestinian and Arab potentate is complaining that doing so will prejudice the peace negotiations and threatens Islam's holy sites. Also predictably, most of the West's chattering class is taking the Arabs' claimed reason for their objection at face value.

What we need to do is repeat more often the actual reason that the Arabs are so enraged by the impending recognition. It is the same reason why the Arabs responded to a group of Jews sitting down in front of the Western Wall on Tisha B'Av in 1929 with a pogrom in Hebron. In both cases, the "provocations" are attacks on one more manifestation of Islam's supremacy of Judaism. They have accepted the loss of many such manifestations. However, each time a new loss looms, they threaten to, or actually do, erupt in rage.

The pundits could invoke Occam's razor to say that the simplest explanation for why the Arabs claim their sentiment for Jerusalem is the reason for their rage is that their sentiment for Jerusalem is the reason for their rage. To demonstrate that the real reason for that claim is because western do-gooders would have more sympathy for that claim than for their real motivation of lording Islam's supremacy over Judaism, some history is needed. Islam's veneration of Jerusalem started in 682 when a rebellion cut off the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus from Mecca. In order to maintain the ability to fulfill the requirement of Haj while cut off from Mecca, Umayyads built the mosques in Jerusalem and invented the story of Muhammed's travel there to justifying substituting Jerusalem for Mecca as the destination for the Haj. Within a few decades, the Islamic world was reunified, allowing all Muslims to go to Mecca, and Jerusalem was ignored until the Crusades. During the Crusades, the reconquering Muslims revived the tale of Muhammed's travel in order to rile up their population to join the effort to retake Jerusalem. Once the Crusades were ended, the Muslims ignored Jerusalem again until the British took Palestine following World War I until Jordan's conquest of eastern Jerusalem during the Independence War. Following Jordan's conquest of eastern Jerusalem, Jerusalem was again ignored by the Islamic world until Israel conquered it from Jordan, at which point Jerusalem became of "supreme importance" to the Islamic world until today.

What this timeline shows is that when Islam's ability to lord its supremacy over Judaism and Christianity by excluding them from Jerusalem is not challenged, Jerusalem was ignored. However, when that ability is challenged, the Muslim world waxes poetic about how important Jerusalem is to their faith.

Guest Piece by Justin Amler

Justin Amler 

{Editor's note - this piece was written by Mr. Amler on Facebook and seems to me that he has a nice, concise grasp of the matter. In any case, as soon as I read this I said to myself, "I want it." He was kind enough to agree to its publication here. btw, I do not know if the link above will work on all browsers. It may be dependent on one's Facebook settings. - ML}

So it looks like the United States might finally recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital... something we Jews have known already for the last 3000 years. This is definitely welcome news, but it's more for world consumption than for the Jewish people themselves. At least President Trump had the courage to do it - more than any other previous US president. I just hope it's not contingent on Israel giving into some hidden demand somewhere...

But meanwhile the reaction to this news has been predictable.

The palestinians have threatened violence which hasn't happened since... oh... what... maybe 5 minutes ago? And it must surely be a nightmare being Abbas's secretary, because undoubtedly there'll be a 'Day Of Rage' scheduled. How does the secretary do it, because there are more 'Days of Rage' scheduled than days in a year!!

The Jordanians will huff and puff about international law and human rights (2 concepts completely foreign to them), even as their own fake country is built on the foundations of smoke and feathers. Maybe the louder they huff, it will stop people from asking on what legal basis do THEY even exist at all?

Turkey has threatened to break off diplomatic ties, still struggling with the fact that the Ottoman Empire is long gone and they don't get to threaten or dictate to Jews anymore. Perhaps they're suffering from Post-Colonial Stress Disorder...? They've got Hamas on speed-dial so maybe they can organise a dictatorship support group along with all the others countries and entities in the world having a heart attack about this.

The EU is having a fit - even as their countries become subject to more Islamic violence. While they are discussing more boycotts, maybe they can start off by boycotting all the security help they get from Israel??

Sadly, there will undoubtedly be violence, but it is not because of the rather obvious recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The violence would have come anyway and inevitably. It's because across the entire Arab world, there remains a single dot which isn't Arabic, but Jewish.

Small and proud and forever.

"Trump tells Abbas, Jordan king of ‘intention’ to move embassy to Jerusalem"

Michael Lumish

That is the headline for the Times of Israel written by AFP and Dov Lieber.

Well, my my my.

I am bit shocked, but happy.

I cannot know the extent to which this is shadow-boxing and bullshit, but presuming that it is true, it is a very big deal.

If Donald Trump got Mahmoud A. and Abdullah # II on the phone and said, "Sorry, fellahs, we're moving the embassy to Jerusalem" that is a very positive game-changer.

In fact, I would argue that so long as Jerusalem is up-for-grabs the conflict will continue and many more Jews and Arabs - not to mention Christians and others - will die in this Koranically-grounded conflict. The misery will go on and on. Israeli Jews will continue to come under rocket attack and twelve-year-old Palestinian-Arab know-nothings will ceaselessly throw rocks at automobiles on the highway or stab Jewish grandmothers in the throat.

This miserable thing will only be resolved at such a time when there is a clear-cut winner and a loser. So long as the "international community" - whatever that is, exactly - continues to insist upon a never-ending "peace process" then, by definition, there can never be peace.

The West, particularly the EU, gives no indication that it is interested in ending the Long Arab War against the Jews of the Middle East. On the contrary, what it seems to want is for the "peace process" to continue ad infinitum.

So long as the naive and passive-aggressive West continues to believe, against all evidence, that what the Palestinian-Arabs actually want is a state for themselves in peace next to Israel then there will never be resolution.

As this graphic from our friends at "Prager U" clearly states:

That is historically accurate, without any question.

If the Palestinian-Arabs wanted a state for themselves beside the Jewish one they could have had that long ago, but that was never the goal and it still is not.

Let us hope that Trump actually does move the embassy.

This Week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish

The participant that they have this week who most catches my interest is Judith Berman. I often read her material at the Gatestone Institute. She's tough as nails.


3 min Editorial: Milo Yiannopoulos event in Melbourne

9 min Sharren Haskel, MK in Australia

32 min Judith Bergman, commentator and blogger

51 min Julie Nathan, ECAJ on anti-Semitism in Australia

1 hr 5 min Matthew Hausman MD, trial attorney and writer on antisemitsm

1 hr 28 min Danny Lamm, ZFA on Australia voting at UN

The podcast can also be found on the J-Air website.

Or its Facebook page.

NOTHING LEFT can be heard live each Tuesday 9-11am on FM 87.8 in the Caulfield area, or via the J-Air website www.j-air.com.au

Contact Michael and Alan at Nothing Left:

michael@nothingleft.com.au

alan@nothingleft.com.au

Political Cowards

Michael Lumish

{Also published at Jews Down Under.}

Courage the Cowardly Dog

Part of the problem that we have is the generally pussitudinous nature of most well-meaning, western-leftists when it comes to their politics.

That is, people will often hold strong opinions on political questions but are highly reluctant to discuss those opinions among people prepared in disagreement.

Or, if they are willing to engage in argument that argument often devolves into self-righteous ad hominem denunciations or disgust for those with the temerity to disagree with socially-prevailing orthodoxies.

The litany of accusations resembles religious chantings, with the snapping of fingers and the nodding of heads, as we see on the campuses.

Racism! Homophobia! Sexism! Transphobia!

"You are a cis-gendered, heteronormative, white male, patriarchal asshole, who needs to shut the hell up!"

{You are the Devil and the Power of Christ compels you! The Blood of the Martyrs compels you!}

But it must be understood that people who think in religious terms about politics have rarely thought through their positions and thereby rely upon intimidation, both social and physical, to shut people up, in much the same way that the Church used to and the Mosque still does.

It has less to do with the actual situation of lives as lived then it has to do with patrolling the permissible boundaries of acceptable theo-political discourse.

Among the things that I find disturbing about this historical moment in the West is the declining willingness of our friends on the progressive-left to actually discuss their positions with those who do not already hold those positions.

In some measure, at least, all of these "snowflakes" and Social Justice Warriors are embracing the Anti-Free Speech Movement.

Instead of reasoned argument they rely upon snubbing, silencing, de-platforming, dehumanization, mockery, social isolation, street violence, and an imperious refusal to engage the insidious individuals who they deem beneath their political contempt.

In today's political climate to so much as wear a red baseball cap makes one a "fascist" among idiots without the cognitive wherewithal to fairly articulate their own beliefs while listening to the beliefs of others.

The truth, as I have been endeavoring to get across to people, is that such a cowardly political stance represents the failure of liberalism.

If you consider yourself a liberal, but you oppose freedom of speech, then you are not a liberal.

You may be a socialist or a communist or a fascist or an anarchist or nothing whatsoever, but you are not liberal. If you do not believe in freedom of speech then you do not believe in the freedom of the individual, but rather power and control over the individual... all for the greater good, naturally.

Freedom of speech - whether Antifa or Black Lives Matter like it or not - stands at the very foundation of Enlightenment liberalism, which is the source of democracy... which is a little gift from those insidious dead "white" guys.

One cannot stand for democracy or liberalism or social justice or, even, general human fairness if one falters on freedom of speech.

Without freedom of speech, there are none of those things.

This should be Basic Civics.

This should be taught in the seventh grade.

Yet many of the highly educated, well-meaning, sophisticated idiots out there in the universe have yet to figure that out.

Furthermore, of course, the entire university-based movement in opposition to freedom of speech - as we have seen all over the country throughout 2017 - goes against everything that the university system, free inquiry, the empirical method, and liberalism stand for.

Fascists oppose freedom of speech which is why the German National Socialists did so.

Communists oppose freedom of speech which is why the Soviet Union threw those with alternative political viewpoints into "mental institutions."

Antifa and progressive-left college students oppose freedom of speech which is why they keep shutting down the campuses when they bring in conservative speakers like Milo Yiannapolous or Ben Shapiro or any number of alternative thinkers who were hounded off campus this year.

When I was growing up it was always the political right that endeavored to stifle free-expression of ideas, but times have changed.

Now, sadly, it is the political left that thinks it can intimidate people into ideological conformity.

I think that they are mistaken.

A way forward

Sar Shalom

First, some conditions that need to be addressed however Israel progresses.

One, there are between 2 and 3 million Arabs living in the disputed territory east of the Armistice Line.

Two, permanently denying them a say in the state that rules them is unacceptable.

Three, forcing those Arabs to leave or conditioning their gain of political rights on their leaving is unacceptable.

Four, including those Arabs in the Israeli polity would be highly undesirable.

Five, Jordan's conquest of 5.6 million dunams in the Independence War does not create a right for a future Palestine to encompass 5.6 million dunams.

As to number four, I am aware that the Palestinian Arab population is inflated and that they may not be enough to threaten the Jewish majority of Israel if they were granted citizenship. However, that is not the only threat from including them in Israel's polity.

Consider coalition politics in Israel today. The Knesset consists of 5 major blocs: the right, the left, the center, the chareidim, and the Arabs. Due to the nature of the Arab parties that exist, a coalition requires a majority of 61 MKs that excludes the Arab parties. In the current Knesset, the Joint List holds 13 out of 120 seats, meaning that a coalition requires 61 out of 107. Thus a simple majority of the Knesset of 50 percent plus 1 is effectively a requirement for a 57 percent supermajority of Jewish-party seats. Adding 2 million Arabs to Israel's electorate could very easily swell the Arab bloc to 30 seats or more, meaning that a coalition would require 61 out of 90 or fewer seats or a two-thirds supermajority of Jewish-party seats.

Given the ability of reaching consensus demonstrated so far, that would render Israel ungovernable.

Unfortunately, there is never going to be an agreement that ends the Palestinian national movement's (PNM) claims with Israel still standing. This means that any path forward would have to consist of unilateral Israeli action.

One factor working in Israel's favor is that the bulk of the Arab population in the northern portion of the disputed territory resides either west of a line running from Route 458 southeast of Ramallah to Route 578 to the northern section of the security barrier or in the vicinity of Jericho. As such, a unilateral action could be to draw from southeast of Ramallah to the security barrier in the north roughly following Routes 458 and 578.

Where that line passes Shilo, a corridor would extend west to the security barrier along Routes 60 and 5, expanding to Route 55 west of Ariel. An additional line would be drawn along some route from the intersection of Route 5 and the security barrier to Ramallah. Inside of defined perimeters west of Routes 457/578 and either south of Route 5 or north of Route 55, Israel would evacuate the settlements and make the vacated territory Area B. Outside of those perimeters, excluding the Jericho area, and north of Maale Adumim would be annexed to Israel.

Subsequently, the PNM could be told that if they ever display actions suggesting that they would not exploit any transformation of their jurisdiction into a state in order to enhance their war-making capabilities against Israel, Israel will start the process of transitioning their jurisdiction into a state and discuss borders for the southern disputed territories. Until then, Israel will sit pat and operate in the expanded Area B as she has operated in Area B for the past two decades.

I realize that abandoning Beit El, Yizhar, and many northern settlements would be a steep price for not even a pretense of peace. However, it would also mean annexing Ariel, Shilo, Maale Adumim, and the northern Jordan Valley, an act for which Israel could not hope to gain diplomatic cover without paying a price.

One requirement to go ahead would be diplomatic cover from the U.S. to acquiesce, if not recognize, Israel's partial annexation in the north. In order to defend against a future president like Obama reneging on this acquiescence, it would be necessary for it to take the form of a treaty that would be legally enforceable against future presidents.

At a more grassroots level, withdrawing from the perimeters I described would provide a counteroffer to the notion that Jordan's conquest of 5.6 million dunams entitles the Palestinians to 5.6 million dunams. Many will complain about Israel grabbing land in giving the PNM less than that. However, unlike during Obama's reign, they would not be able to claim that Israel must withdraw from any additional territory in order to avoid becoming a binational state. Further, it would define the Palestinians' territory in a small number of contiguous areas which would remove almost any objection besides their supposed entitlement to 5.6 million dunams.

This Week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish

This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman have a pretty excellent line-up it looks to me.

Milo? I haven't listened, yet, but I am very much looking forward to it.

Barry Shaw and Dore Gold are very big names.

Juliet Moses, I do not know. But I am willing to learn.

You guys should tune in.



2 min Editorial: Gideon Levy (Haaretz) and the AJDS

11 min Juliet Moses, New Zealand politics

29 min Milo Yiannopoulos

51 min Barry Shaw, alternatives to 2-state solution

1 hr 18 min Dore Gold, JCPA on UN Resolution 181

1 hr 31 min Isi Leibler in Jerusalem

The podcast can also be found on the J-Air website.

Or its Facebook page.

NOTHING LEFT can be heard live each Tuesday 9-11am on FM 87.8 in the Caulfield area, or via the J-Air website www.j-air.com.au

Contact Michael and Alan at Nothing Left:

michael@nothingleft.com.au

alan@nothingleft.com.au

Hijab Barbie

Michael Lumish

There is a lot of recent hoopla concerning the Hijab Barbie.

I honestly do not know what to make of it beyond the fact that Mattel wants Muslim customers for their Barbie collection.

Many would argue - and I definitely agree - that the hijab is a symbol of women's submission to men, particularly within an Arab-Muslim context, and is, therefore, an anti-feminist, anti-liberal, anti-progressive, symbol of injustice.

Others would argue it is simply about accepting ethnic diversity.

Still, others would suggest that it is a matter of creeping jihadism. The argument here would be that the purpose of jihad, including the non-violent kind, is the advancement of Sharia Law and that the hijab is a symbol of precisely that.

This is something that should be taken into consideration.

But, the truth is, Barbie is Jewish!

{She is still allowed Muslim friends, tho.}

Peter Coyote lays it out.

A description of anti-Zionism

Sar Shalom

The current issue of Conversations by the Institute of Jewish Ideas and Ideals contains an article, "Broadening Our Vision: An Introduction to Seven Interesting Middle Eastern Rabbis," by Zvi Zohar about a handful of Sephardic/Mizrahi. (The article is currently not online, but I could provide a link when it is available.) One of the rabbis profiled is Yaakov Moshe Toledano, born in Tiberias of Moroccan ancestry. During his days, Zionism, and the Yishuv which was its prime manifestation, was a controversial notion among religious Jews. Rabbi Toledano responded to the religious opposition to Zionism in a responsum where he wrote:

...in the belief that as long as we are in this hard Exile we are forbidden to lift up our head. Rather, we are commanded to bow ourselves down before every tyrant and ruler, and to give our backs to the smiters and our cheeks to them that pluck off hair (Isaiah L:6); as if the blood of Israel had been forfeited, and as if He—blessed be He—had decreed that Jacob be given for a spoil and Israel to the robbers (Isaiah XLII:24).

Rabbi Toledano wrote in reference to religious opposition to forsaking the lands of our exile. However, removing the reference to exile would make it refer to a more general audience. It would not apply perfectly, as the progressive-left does not view Jews as obligated to bow themselves down "before every tyrant and ruler," as Europeans/Americans and East Asians do not merit such deference. However, the Arabs, as an oppressed people, do merit such deference in their minds. Thus Rabbi Toledano's words as applied to the progressive left would become:

The Jews are commanded to bow themselves down before every Arab, and to give their backs to any Arab who would flog them and their cheeks to any Arab who would pluck their hair; as if Israel had been forfeited, and as if it was decreed that Jacob be given for a spoil and Israel to Arab robbers.

There is a word for that sentiment. That word is Anti-semitism.

"Palestine" is a Wraith

Michael Lumish

"Palestine" and "Palestinian" are European settler colonial terms for the land of the Jewish people. I think we should cease to use those terms or, at least, put them in quotes.

Or perhaps go with Palestinian-Arab.

In truth, the greater Arab nation gave the world "Palestinians" - a word which used to mainly refer to Jews living under the British mandate - as a challenge to Jewish sovereignty on historically Jewish land.

The Jews are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel.

The Arabs are settlers and colonists on Jewish land.

I certainly do not mind that Arabs live there. Nor do I mind that Chinese people or Venezuelans or the Easter Islandish live there.

But none of those folk can claim sovereignty because none of them are indigenous.

Only the Jewish people have a claim to indigeneity to that land and we must insist on this basic concept.

Everything flows from that recognition.

From a purely objective historical standpoint, only the Jewish people can claim indigeneity to Israel.

I mean, if a lonely band of Jebusites comes wandering from somewhere out of the desert, then maybe a case can be made otherwise.

But the Arabs are not from Israel.

They are not from Judea.

They are from Arabia.

We need to bang this into people's skulls.

Nine Reasons Why Progressives Do Not Understand Their Pro-Israel Friends

Michael Lumish

{Also published at Jews Down Under.}

The western-left is befuddled and disgusted by pro-Israel diaspora Jewry despite the fact that pro-Israel diaspora Jewry supports the western-left.

These are nine of their fundamental misunderstandings:


Number One:  Anti-Zionism is not equivalent to criticism of Israel. 

Well-meaning western-leftists tend to confuse anti-Zionism with mere criticism of the Jewish homeland.

As I know that you guys know, they are not the same thing.

An anti-Zionist is someone who believes that Israel should never have been reconstituted as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

Given Jewish history, such a wish is genocidal.


Number Two: there is a difference between criticism and defamation.

There is nothing wrong with criticizing any country, but when people, for example, call Israel an "apartheid state" that is an example of defamation. And, yes, it is anti-Semitic because the suggestion of such a claim is that Israel, much like apartheid South Africa, must be dismantled.

Thus see reason number one why progressives do not understand their pro-Israel friends.


Number Three: Progressives have little sense of proportion when it comes to Israel. 

They will call-out the lone, sole Jewish state for its alleged persecution of the Palestinian-Arabs yet never breath a word about the far worse treatment that virtually all non-elite Arabs receive from their governments in Arab-Muslim countries.

And no Arabs are treated worse than Palestinian-Arabs who are essentially used as pawns in the Long Arab War against the Jews of the Middle East.

This is clearly a racist double-standard.

The people who most abuse Palestinian-Arabs are not Jews, but Arabs, themselves.


Number Four: Jews are the only people on the planet with a claim to indigeneity in the Land of Israel. 

There has been an ongoing Jewish presence on that land for a period of time that fades into prehistory.

The Arabs are from Arabia. They are not from Judea.

The Jews are, however, from Judea and Samaria.

The Jewish people are the only extant people in the world today with claims to indigeneity to the Land of Israel.

Jewish indigeneity is an underexplored aspect of Jewish history that - surprisingly enough - it takes a brilliant Métis, pro-Israel, football-playing Zionist to understand this better than do the Jewish people.

Jewish people, wherever we may live, are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel.

Why does it take Ryan Bellerose, an indigenous American, to point that out? 


Number Five: Dhimmis -  including Copts, Yazidis, Kurds, and Jews - are among the historically oppressed minorities in the Middle East

The theocratically-infused Arab and Muslim occupying powers outnumber the rest of us by a factor of 50 or 60 to 1 in that part of the world.

This is how Oxford historian Martin Gilbert describes the centuries of dhimmi status in In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2010) 32 - 33.

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.

Number Six: The Evil of "Whiteness"

Much of the Left sees Jews as "white" and "whiteness" as a form of oppressive consciousness that is embodied by people of European descent.

Oh, the shame of whiteness.

This is one of the essential racist aspects of the contemporary Left.

The truth is that genetic studies show that almost all Jews have a DNA root that goes to the Levant. Calling a Jew "white" because he or she may have some European blood would be like calling a black person "white" because a grandmother had relations with a white person.


Number Seven: Progressive-Left Racism

It must be understood that, outside of political Islam, the progressive-left is the most racist political movement in the West, today.

The Jewish people are being driven from Europe primarily due to the Islamist-Leftist alliance that we see playing out in European Union politics.

Hostility towards Jews is ratcheting-up throughout Europe and this hostility demonstrates the hypocrisy of western-left anti-racism.

It clearly demonstrates that the Left is highly particular about which types of racism that they approve of and which types they oppose. They do not oppose racism toward Jews as the Reem's case, among a variety of other cases - including that of Alameda, California high school student Natasha Waldorf -clearly shows.

Nor do western-progressives mind that Muslims are chasing Jews out of Europe and, further, they even tend to believe that Palestinian-Arabs have every right to kill Jews as a matter of "resistance" despite the fact that it has always been the Arabs who represent the hostile party... not the Jews.


Number Eight: the Jews have never prevented the Palestinian-Arabs from gaining a state of their own... even on our own land!

On the contrary, it was the Arabs who have turned down every single offer for statehood since the Peel Commission of 1937.

The progressive-left must stop blaming the Jewish people of the Middle East for Arab-Muslim intransigence in refusing to accept a state for themselves next to their Jewish neighbors.

This ongoing tendency from the EU and the UN and the US Department of State is indecent, unjust, and opposed to the facts of history.


Number Nine: The Day of the Dhimmi is Done.

The progressive-left loves dead Jews and despises Jews who stand up for the Movement for Jewish Liberation.

Well, ya know what?

Too bad.

Whatever anyone might think of the Jewish people we will stand up for ourselves whether anyone likes it or not.

Fundamental Principles

Michael Lumish

Milo Yiannapolous

Sometimes it is important to refer back to fundamental political assumptions.

I am promoting the Yiannapolous interview on Nothing Left radio because Yiannapolous is interesting. The reason that he is interesting is because he straddles a line on the progressive-left hierarchy of victimhood that drives people batty.

He is Gay and part-Jewish. This would make him a natural fit for the western-left.

However, he is also conservative and anti-feminist, which also makes him a natural fit for the western-right.

For many people, Yiannapolous is a confounding figure. He refuses to fit pre-existing categories. He is not a scholar, but he is an exceedingly intelligent and well-educated individual with guts who rides the political winds high.

I am happy to promote Milo because I am a classical liberal... although I believe in regulatory capitalism rather than laissez-faire.

I believe in individual autonomy, representative democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and so forth.

Basically, I believe in the Constitution of the United States of America and, thus, I believe in the tradition that follows from English Common Law and the political Enlightenment as it played out from Magna Carta to Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am increasingly opposed to the Left because I am liberal, anti-racist, pro-democracy, pro-freedom of speech, and, thus, pro-Israel.

{I respect the faith of our fathers, but I am not dogmatic about it.}

But what strikes at my heart is the hypocrisy of the western-left which self-righteously proclaims its anti-racism.

They are not lying so much to us as they are to themselves.

Thus I want Milo to have his day in the sun.

He is certainly a far more decent figure, from a moral perspective, than is the insidious regressive-left anti-Zionist and Jew Hater, Linda Sarsour.

On the CTRL-L and the Conjuration of Demonic Political Golems

Michael Lumish

{This is a retread from a piece that I wrote one year ago to the day. - ML}

Since the recent election of entertainer and businessman, Donald Trump, to the Presidency of the United States, the American CTRL-L has rampaged through the streets of America's largest cities.

The CTRL-L is a combination of various racist, non-democratic, violently-inclined leftist groups - including Black Lives Matter, the Occupy Movement, the ANSWER coalition, and BDS - that infect the True Believers within the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party, of course, is a party in disarray where members are at one another's throats because of their recent defeat at the hands of a world-famous gazillionaire "outsider" who refuses to speak in the tired politically-correct jargon of the school-marmish, safe-space-seeking, yet semi-fascistic, Obama coalition.

What the various anger-driven misfits of the CTRL-L have in common is a shared contempt for the USA as a liberal democracy, for Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people, and for the American people, in general, who still seem rather fond of the United States as a society grounded in liberal democracy and regulatory capitalism.

Since the CTRL-L has infected the Democrats it has - like everything it touches - turned that party into the realm of anti-American, anti-White, anti-Jewish "racists" who demand inclusivity with one another via the exclusivity of wrong-thinking Jews and right-thinking white people.

The CTRL-L is, needless to say, the ALT-R inside-out and backwards.

What they both have in common, however, is that neither is real as a distinct political movement... although one, it must be said, is considerably more materialized than the other.

As David Haggith put it in a piece entitled, Liberals Scared to Death by Their Own Caricature of Trumpettes:

Liberals are afraid of their own shadows right now. That’s because they’ve created anti-matter, Mr. Hyde caricatures of the Trumpettes — the average little guys who support Trump. These shadows that liberals have cast by their own self-deceit now surround them, and they believe the grotesquely exaggerated images they have created.

This false belief like any phobia is taking on its own life by creating mass hysteria in the streets of America. By that step, belief becomes reality. While the initial description that liberals painted of Trumpettes is false — they’re all misogynistic, homophobic racists — the hysteria is real, and that causes people to react with violence against whatever they fear. Those violent reactions become very real horrors that are not just painted in the imagination, and they divide the nation deeper, creating  fears that are now based on real horrible events that came about due to the original false beliefs. It’s like a panic attack that feeds on itself.

Just as there is no CTRL-L, so there is no ALT-R.

That racists, sexists, and homophobes live in the United States is unquestionably true.

That racists, sexists, and homophobes live in Paraguay, Papua New Guinea, and Pakistan is also true.

The so-called ALT-R appeared on the national stage directly before the election is obviously not a coincidence. It astonishes me, in fact, that the magickians who conjured up this monstrosity did not seem to think that we might notice. Prior to this most recent election virtually no one had ever even heard of any such creature as the ALT-R aside, perhaps, from a few pissed-off nincompoops banging their heads against their laptops.

Just as the CTRL-L is a recent conjuration of the imagination designed for political purposes, so is the ALT-R.

The progressive-left, the Democratic Party, and the Hillary Campaign, conjured up the virtually non-existent American fringe of White Supremacists, Klansmen, and other such cultural relics, in order to breathe life into them as a single menacing golem. They turned this fantastical zombie-like monstrosity onto the neck of Donald Trump but - as anyone familiar with the literature around golems will tell you - they have a tendency to turn on their creators.

For months, now, the ALT-R golem has stalked the countryside scaring the holy hell out of perfectly normal Americans. It is even responsible, in some measure, for the violence and broken glass in the streets of Chicago and Portland among those fighting the chimera-like demon.

In the end, however, the thing turned on its master and is now being chased through the streets by townsfolk with pitch-forks and torches and actual human beings are being seriously harmed, if not killed, as a result.

The irony, sadly, is that while both the ALT-R and the CTRL-L, as distinct political movements, are creatures of the imagination, the individual body parts have reality. However, the parts comprising the CTRL-L are considerably more real than the parts comprising the ALT-R.

For example, the ALT-R has the Klan and virtually everyone in the United States despises the Ku Klux Klan. We despise the Klan like we despise the Nazis. The Klan is so hated, in fact, that it doesn't even exist any more outside of the fringiest of the fringe-fringe.

The same cannot be said of the Black Lives Matter movement, with its Jewish problem and inspiration for highway overpass shootings of cops for political purposes.

Among extreme political groups, BLM is important enough to warrant the attention and appreciation of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

The Klan, however, has all the contemporary significance of a filthy white hood rotting beneath some porch in the Arkansas hills.

Milo Yiannopoulos on Nothing Left Live

Michael Lumish

{Also published by Jews Down Under.}

Michael Burd and Alan Freedman of Nothing Left on Australia's J-AIR radio conducted an interview with Milo Yiannopoulos to be aired on Tuesday, November 28, 9 to 11 AM, Melbourne time.

Yiannopoulos is one of the more notorious figures emerging out of the previous presidential election in the United States.

The guy is a British, Gay, conservative, secular Jew who will kick your rhetorical ass in a New York minute.

The reason that I like Milo is because he is brave.

The reason that many in the Jewish community despise Milo is because they think he is a degenerate.

So, good for Burd and Freedman for having the guts to bring him on.

The thing is, Nothing Left attracts top names from Dershowitz on down.

I am biased because I occasionally drop in to say hello, but the fact of the matter is that they also speak with Isi Liebler, Caroline Glick, Tuvia Tenenbom, Brigette Gabriel, Matthias Küntzel, Jonathan Tobin, Diane Bederman, Ted Belman, Gregg Roman, Dan Shapiro, Martin Sherman, and Avi Abelow.

And that is just since August of this year.

Anybody who knows anything about the Arab-Jewish conflict knows most of those names.

But Yiannopoulos is in a category unto himself.

Some refer to him as "alt-right," but, in truth, he is probably something closer to a "classical liberal"... perhaps bordering on economic libertarian.

He drives some people batty because they cannot stick him into pre-ordained slots within the identity politics Hierarchy of Victimhood.

He represents one example of how the term "alt-right" was (and is) used as a smear against people who having nothing whatsoever to do with "white nationalism" or "white supremacy" or the Klan or Nazis or anything even close to such nonsense.

The term "alt-right" is generally understood to mean "white nationalist."

It was coined by actual white-nationalist-nobody Richard Spencer who came to fame because the Clinton campaign needed a specimen who Hillary could smother in her "Basket of Deplorables."

Milo Yiannopoulos, however, is an openly Gay, half-Jewish Brit and a former editor for Breitbart - which is also an example of a venue that came into fame in the months leading to the astonishing triumph of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States. In truth, the best thing ever to happen to Breitbart and Bannon and the fellahs over there was the Hillary campaign.

Were it not for Hillary - or such is my claim - virtually no one would ever have heard of the "alt-right."

One thing that it is interesting to note is that Yiannopoulos and everyone's favorite antisemitic anti-Zionist, Linda Sarsour, came to widespread public notice during the same political moment.

They are both charismatic figures who carry their ends of the political zeitgeist.

The difference is that Linda is still enjoying her "fifteen minutes."

Milo got his cut short.