Sar Shalom
With measles being in the news, I'll offer a few words on the disease. In order to avoid measles, the key is not to avoid any form of the pathogen. If the disease abounds, then doing so is fruitless battle. What is needed instead is to be exposed to a version of the pathogen, typically dead though attenuated for other diseases, that is unable to cause the disease. Doing so trains the immune system to recognize the pathogen so that if it does encounter a version capable of causing disease in the future, it would be ready to neutralize before it can do so.
A similar approach can be take to the Cult of Occupation. For the most part, the Israel portion of Jewish education tends to focus on the Jews' travails in Europe in the 19th century and the efforts of the pioneers to build the state from desert and swamps while ignoring the suffering of the Palestinians affected by Israel's presence. Two such Jews raised with such education are New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg and Simone Zimmerman of IfNotNow and now at B'Tselem. According to one of the essays in Anti-Zionism on Campus, Zimmerman became an ardent Palestinianist when she went to college at UC Berkeley and first learned about the plight of the Palestinians. Similarly, Goldberg has written about how she first learned about the Palestinian's suffering after she had finished her Jewish education, leading to her becoming part of the cesspool of describing the Palestinians as innocent, defenseless victims of the so-called regional bully.
As with diseases like measles, preventing exposure to the Palestinians' suffering is a fools errand. However, it is possible to expose those receiving a Jewish education to a version of Palestinian that would not induce them Cultists of Occupation and prepare them with responses for when those who are more interested in waging information war against Israel than in presenting the truth present their version of that suffering. For instance, the Palestinianists are great at presenting sob stories about the indignities of crossing the security barrier, but they never present any information about why the security barrier, and the checkpoint to cross it, is present. We have to present that information as Matti Friedman has done. The Palestinianists will eventually foist on our youth how Israel has destroyed homes and schools in Gaza. We need to beat them in presenting that information to our youth and provide the context of how Hamas launches rockets from schools and crowded urban squares giving Israel a choice between allowing those rockets to be launched at Israel's cities or taking out those rockets and destroying the homes and schools next to them. The Palestinianists will get the message out about all the things the Palestinians lack. We need to beat them at teaching our youth about that situation, and provide the context of what Israel has tried to do to alleviate that situation without cooperation from the PA that is more interested in perpetuating a grievance than addressing any grievance without building capacity to eliminate Israel and how both the PA and Hamas divert the lion's share of any development aid to the effort for eliminating Israel. Including such material in our Jewish education would mean that when our youth hear the sob stories from the Palestinianists, nothing would be new and they will know how to respond.
The Day of the Dhimmi is Done - Michael Lumish, PhD, proprietor. (mike.lumish@gmail.com)
If you want to inoculate people against the
ReplyDeletecult of occupation, then these should be helpful:
===================================
Ancient Roman historians
identified JEWS as the inhabitants
of Land of Israel, and located the
Jewish Temple in Jerusalem:
http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2016/05/guest-post-cornelius-tacticus.html
https://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2017/02/guest-post-josephus-vs-muslim-liars.html
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2018/02/1818-more-jews-in-jerusalem-than-any.html
===================================
Who are the Palestinians?
www.algemeiner.com/2019/02/14/the-invention-of-palestinians/
https://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2018/06/who-are-palestinians.html
===================================
Winston Churchill said this in 1937 CE:
“[Winston] Churchill did not accept that the
Jews were a foreign race [to the Holy Land].
He said it was the Arabs who had
been the outsiders, the conquerors.”
SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
(chapter 10, page 115) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007 CE
CHRONOLOGY:
Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.
HISTORY NOTE:
According to the Wikipedia internet encyclopedia,
these lands were conquered by the Rashidun Caliphs,
from year 632 to year 661 of the Common Era
(from west to East): Libya, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon,
Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Eastern Turkey, and Iran.
Therefore, Winston Churchill was correct when
he said that the Muslims were the outsiders
and conquerors, with respect to the land of Israel.
===================================
Harvard Law Professor Alan M. Dershowitz said:
“Palestinians have learned the political
value of invoking human rights rhetoric.
Indeed, Former U.S. State Department
official Alan Keyes has argued that
by changing the terms of the Mideast
debate from a political issue between
Israel and the Arab states into a
human rights complaint by occupied
Palestinians, the PLO has won an
undeserved political and diplomatic
advantage.
Palestinian political organizations
now present themselves as human rights
organizations, and the media fall for it.”
SOURCE: Chutzpah by Alan M. Dershowitz
(chapter 7, page 230) published in year 1991
by Little Brown & Co ISBN: 9780316181372 ISBN: 0316181374
Inoculation means exposure to the subject matter of the sob stories that the Palestinianists spin. It is worthwhile to tell the story you tell above, but it is not a reason why someone who is inclined to believe that the sob stories must be addressed that BDS is not a proper method to do so.
DeleteWhat's needed is a case for why recognition of the humanity of the Palestinians does not require wholesale adoption of the Palestinianist agenda.
If you want to inoculate people against the
ReplyDeletecult of occupation, then these should be helpful:
===================================
Harvard Law Professor Alan M. Dershowitz said:
The Jews had earned their right to a homeland.
They had settled and worked mostly barren areas
of the British mandate of Palestine, which they
had bought – with the help of contributions from
our blue-and-white Jewish National Fund boxes –
largely from absentee landlords.
They built hospitals, schools, and kibbutzim,
and established the infrastructure of a state.
They quite literally turned swampland
into orchards and made the desert bloom.
More important, because of the actions of the
entire world towards Jews – their second-class
status and their barriers to their immigration
– it had become clear that the Jews needed a state.
They were prepared to compromise their biblical
and historic claims to accept a fraction of
Palestine as theirs. But after the United Nations’
1947 decision to dissolve the British mandate
and partition Palestine into two states,
one for Jews and one for Arabs, the Arabs
refused to agree to Jewish sovereignty
over an inch of Palestine, even over
land on which no Arab lived.
Only three years after the close of
the Holocaust, Arab leaders, many of
whom supported Hitler’s genocide,
were calling for a war of extermination
against the Jews – a “momentous massacre
which will be spoken of like the
Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who had
spent the war years in Berlin with Hitler,
expressed “greatest joy and deepest
gratification” for the Nazi accomplishments
and declared a “holy war” whose goal
was to “Murder the Jews! Murder them all!”
SOURCE: Chutzpah by Alan M. Dershowitz
(chapter 7, page 213) published in year 1991
by Little Brown & Co ISBN: 9780316181372 ISBN: 0316181374
===================================
Mr. Patrick Condell said:
“It is often said, because it is true,
that if the Arabs laid down their weapons,
there would be peace; [but] if the Jews
laid down their weapons, they would be
massacred, because the Arabs
(that’s the Muslims Arabs for all you
hair-splitters out there) don’t want peace,
they want the Jews DEAD.”
SOURCE: Useful Idiots for Palestine
a YouTube video by Mr. Pat Condell, 2011 November 4
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeGYAfh9A1k
complete transcript of this YouTube video:
http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2016/09/useful-idiots-for-palestine.html
MICROBIOGRAPHY:
Mr. Pat Condell is an atheist, who
was born in Ireland around 1950 CE,
and raised in England as a Roman Catholic,
and educated in Church of England schools.
He has no Jewish ancestors and no religious
beliefs that might cause him to favor Jews.
"I heard all the usual Berkeley bullshit for years ad nauseam, probably more of it and for longer than Ms. Zimmerman. I had no special Jewish education at all. I didn't turn out like Ms. Zimmerman."
ReplyDeleteThe virus of the Cult of Occupation is not as infectious as the measles virus. That doesn't mean that it should be ignored.
"'Palestinian suffering' is a con job. It's propaganda. Why not call it that?"
The economic condition of the Palestinians is reason to call it suffering. It's not as bad as other places in the world, but that is not reason to call it a con job. What is a con job is blaming Israel entirely for that suffering, such as how the Christian population of Bethlehem declined after Israel withdrew. What is wrong with telling the story about how Israel is not responsible for every misery befalling the Palestinians, and how the specific actions Israel does that actually do contribute have clear justifications if you just look at the facts?
"The 'Palestinian' cause is run by people who use a photo of dead jewish holocaust victims and recaption them as "palestinian victims of 'zionists'."
Yes, the lies do need to be exposed. Should be added to Israel education so that any educated Jew would know that the Palestinianists routinely lie and thus they should be cynical of their sob stories. However, there still is a need to teach how to respond to the sob stories that actually do pass through any fact-check.
Wrong metaphor. You can't inoculate against what is essentially a cancer.
ReplyDeleteSar,
ReplyDeleteYou quoted me, but stopped short of the point I was making, which, btw, wasn't to refute you, but just to add some thoughts I was having. There should be an inoculation against Simone Zimmermanitus. :0)
The word "suffering" is at this point inextricably linked to "palestinians" by design, so yes, it is a con job. Campus SJW's have their veins popping out of their heads over the fact of the incredibly heinous sufferings of 'Palestine' at the hands of the Jews. One would think, and many do, that this is an unbearable suffering on par with no other. When one says "suffering" and the immediate response is "palestinians", when many other people actually suffer much, much, worse conditions with no one who will ever stand in front of you demanding immediate change with said veins popping from their heads screaming "Isra-hell". But the "suffering", to the extent that any exists, is stage managed, and easily remedied. So, yes, IMV it is a con job.
"However, there still is a need to teach how to respond to the sob stories that actually do pass through any fact-check."
For sure.
Thanks for the clarification. Would you happen to know her Jewish name?
ReplyDeleteAs to it being a con job, the notion that Palestinian exceeds anyone else's suffering is certainly a con job, as is the notion that Israel deserves the blame. However, emphasizing the first could elicit charges of whataboutism, which is why I focus on how to buttress the second.
I think the problem is somewhat more complicated. When decisions are made based on emotion rather than reason, it is difficult to argue facts. The problem is that it takes a bit of time to explain the decision making process. Kahneman won a Nobel Prize researching the process, many people trying to convince others rely on emotion because it is much easier. Say David versus Goliath evokes an emotional reaction, explaining the nature of tribalism, both good and bad, is rational but takes time. In the absence of an ability to teach people how to think rationally, the answer is to reframe the issue. The issue is not David versus Goliath, nor is it even a question of democracy, rather the issue is democracy versus oligarchy. The Palestinians, indeed every Arab country, is ruled by oligarchs. That should be the issue as oligarchy has such negative connotations.
ReplyDeleteIt's a lot easier to seize people emotionally when they don't know the facts. That's why it's so dangerous when the first time young Jews hear about the Palestinians' situation they do so from the Palestinianist propagandists. If we raise them to know about their situation along with the countervailing facts, the facts would have a chance to seep in without competition from emotions. Then, when they do hear the sob stories from the Palestinianist propagandists, they will hear nothing new and know the other side, thus they would be unaffected.
DeleteAs an aside, Netanyahu's latest screed about Arabs not being equal citizens is so noxious that the ADL is condemning those statements. If he would say that Tibi is not representing Israeli Arabs, but Palestinian Arabs, perhaps he could make some kind of point. However, to suggest that all Israelis are not equal and that non-Jews should never have a place in the Cabinet is offensive.
ReplyDeleteNetanyahu shot back on his own Instagram account: “Dear Rotem, an important correction: Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the nation-state law we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people — and not anyone else." Doesn't seem vague to me. But Netanyahu is appealing to emotion, rather than saying that Israel is the refugee State for Jews, because there is nowhere else, he appeals to the worst sort of tribalism, us versus them.
ReplyDelete"he appeals to the worst sort of tribalism, us versus them."
DeleteIsn't he a bit like what's to the left of you and me?
That's what you have to do for the left to like you. Success stories sind verboten.
ReplyDeleteIf the 'palestinians' came to an end of conflict resolution with Israel the left would disown them.
So now Omar says Trump's not a human, and Tlaib goes after the Democrats who were offended by the blatant antisemitism as being Islamaphobic. Do these guys ever give it a rest? It's so typical. The bigot claims the victim. Will the Democrats have the courage to put an end to the bigotry? Or has a turning point been reached? Rather than harp on climate change "delayers," this has much more urgency. Democrats need to get their priorities straight and come to grips that many among them have sinister intentions.
ReplyDeleteIt's worse than you think oldschool:
ReplyDelete"“‘We always said ‘the Muslims are coming’… I think we’re here!” Tlaib said as the crowd cheered.
“We’re not only everywhere in all kinds of different governments but, mashallah, we’re in the United States Congress,” she said."
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/03/radical-dem-rep-rashida-tlaib-declares-victory-over-us-government-the-muslims-are-here-video/
The takeover has begun.
America and the West's solution to 9/11, and avoiding a future one, was to make Muslims a special class of oppressed victim group and fast track into affirmative action.
DeleteOmar's district is regarded as the #1 recruitment area for terrorists according to the FBI.
And yet, over the past several days or weeks I have seen on FB Jews in the dock for Omar and the whole rest of the program. A guy I have known for years was actually saying that Trump is the last gasp for "white people" and thank G_d for that and the whole litany of destroy America talking points. A hopelessly racist oppressor state, but keep those borders open because awesome brown people are dying to come here for some reason. I like immigrants, and I like all kinds of people, but this stuff is sick, it is dark ages, it is some kind of religious fundamentalism.
Anyway, I made a few factual comments, and you guys know what happened. I don't even have to tell you.
Delete