"You Stole Their Land"

"It is Palestinian land and Zionists are squatting on it."

We will never get through to most western liberals with our arguments because not only are hard-line anti-Zionists immune to reason, we're not even making the right arguments for the center.

We all understand that there is a radical vocal element, primarily on the left in the west, that is entirely irrational on this topic and who will despise Israel no matter what it does or fails to do.  Those people cannot be reached.  It does not matter how many times Israelis zoom into Haiti to save lives, people like, say, "Lefty Coaster" on Daily Kos will always-and-forever despise the Jewish people and, thus, despise the Jewish State of Israel.

I am less worried about people like him, I think, than in the political ideological middle.  It is the well-meaning center that concerns me.  Your average American liberal Democrat.  This is a demographic that is highly significant in the American context and anti-Semitic anti-Zionists have been gnawing on them for many years, now.

For the moment, liberal Democrats are maybe 50 / 50 in favorability on Israel and those numbers are probably eroding.

If there is a segment of American society that can be reached via reason, however, this is the segment.  Liberal Democrats in the United States traditionally prided themselves on their capacity for reason, even in politics, so let's give it a whirl.

In a recent video of Caroline Glick discussing her book The Israeli Solution she made the following argument, among others, and it is an argument that goes right to the core of Jewish relations with the liberal west.

What she said was this and I paraphrase:

We look at liberal Democrats (or western progressives, more generally) and we think, "Gee, there is no more liberal and progressive country in that entire part of the world than Israel."  And then we wonder how it is, therefore, that Israel does not have much support among western progressives?  On the contrary, western progressives are far more suspicious of Israel than are their conservative counterparts.

How can this be?  Progressives are pro-feminism and Israel has the best feminist record, by a long shot, than any country in the entire region, if not the world!

It does not matter, you stole their land.

Yes and let's talk about Nobel Prize winners in science and medicine, shall we?  Did you know that Israel has done more, in a shorter period of time, to advance scientific and medical knowledge than any other country in human history?

It does not matter, you stole their land.

And ethics in war?  Anti-Semites spread the blood libel by suggesting that the IDF specifically targets civilians, particularly children - as Lefty Coaster does in the link above - but the fact of the matter is that the Israeli military forces do more to avoid civilian casualties than any army in the history of warfare.

It does not matter, you stole their land.

Alright.  Alright.  Let's talk about who is inclusive and liberal and who is exclusive and authoritarian.  The Palestinian-Arabs want absolutely nothing to do with Jews.  Period.  The Arab-Muslim State of Palestine needs to be entirely Judenrein.  The very idea of Jews living in Judea is an abomination.  Meanwhile, in Israel about 20 percent of the population is Arab and Muslim.  They have greater civil liberties than do Arabs and Muslims anywhere else within the entire Middle East and elect their people to the Knesset.

It does not matter, you stole their land.

You get the idea and Glick is absolutely correct.

If even we agree with the reality of a concept known as "The Occupation of Palestine" then we have no case.  Period.  End of story.

If Israel is occupying "Palestinian" land then we should just pack it up and go home, because there is no argument to be made.  If the truth is - as the Palestinian-Arabs claim and as their western-left supporters agree - that white European Jews marched onto Jewish land and snatched that land from the indigenous Arab population then history should bare this out.

Thankfully, history tells us a very different story.

The eastern coast of the Mediterranean has no more indigenous people than the Jewish people.  We were there thousands of years prior to the Arab conquests.  We were there, in no particular order, before the Romans or the Persians or the Babylonians or the Brits.  There are no other people on this planet, from an historical perspective, who can lay greater claim to the Land of Israel than the people of Israel, the Jewish people.

Is there really any argument to be made that this is untrue?

Can, for example, San Francisco State University professor Rabab Abdulhadi - who is building an academic career based on spreading hatred toward Jews among liberals and progressives - honestly argue that Jews have less claim to Judea than do Arabs?  Arabs conquered and now control 99.9 percent of the entire Middle East and it is somehow unjust that the native Jewish population hold onto any portion of our historic homeland?

It is entirely absurd, but this is the poison that they are selling.

The best and most straightforward manner of dealing with this nonsense is to remind western liberals that Israel is Jewish land.  Just as France is French and England is English and Portugal is Portuguese and China is Chinese, so Israel is Jewish.  The very word "Israel" means the Jewish people.

Now, unlike France, Engand, Portugal, or China, we are willing to share that land, but no one can tell us that it is not Jewish land.

And that, my friends, needs to be our clear and obvious red-line and we need to bang it into their skulls.

And Jerusalem will remain united under Israeli rule.

Am Yisrael Chai!

Suicide Crash Dummies for Allah

Michael L.


Look, none of this is new.

Arabs have been running down Jews for fourteen centuries throughout the Middle East like it's Death Race 2000.

Pelting Jews with rocks became something of a national sport that long preceded either the suicide bomber or the airline hijacker, but all of this joyous violence against the non-Muslim minority populations in the Middle East derive from the same place.

It all comes out of centuries of Koranically-based Arab-Muslim disdain for all non-Muslims, particularly Jews who are viewed as the eternal enemy of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be unto him)... if I value my head.

I have to say, it is not very creative - nor, from a PR perspective, does it hold the dark, soulful romanticism of Palestinian-teenage-suicide-bomber-angst which the hard-left was so enamored of during the Second Terror War against the Jews in the early 00s - but this colorful and deadly new violent Arab anti-Jewish thing in Israel is getting good play.

It seems, in fact, to be turning into the next popular Jew Killing Fad.

It will never be Rebel Without a Cause, for chrissake, but they could turn the movie version into something like a Palestinian-Arab American Graffiti.  Instead of the banter of American teenagers wheeling around town picking up girls in Los Angeles in 1962, it could be the banter of Arab teenagers wheeling around town smashing into Jewish children along Jerusalem's light rail system in 2014.

So long as the Metropolitan Opera is getting into the act with the Death of Klinghoffer, why should not other artists cash in?

Pallywood would love it.

Palestinian-Arab Jihadis are, after all, connoisseurs of murder and death and they love selling the glamour of it to young western secular blonde college students in keffiyahs willing to give up their lives in the service of Arab hatred toward Jews.

They constantly tell us that they love death like we love pizza (or sabich) and they never cease proving that assertion to be true.

I have full confidence that our friends in places like Daily Kos or the Huffington Post or the Guardian - not to mention the EU, the UN, and the Obama White House - will get the warm-fuzzies when they see these images.

They can know that when they side with Palestinian-Arabs against the Palestinian-Jews that that is what they are siding with; that those are the images that the Palestinian Authority is putting out to their people, including their children, so that those children can grow up murderously hostile to your own children who they will accuse of any and all atrocities before they try to run them down, blow them up, or chop their heads off.

Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority - the people that Barack Obama assures us are the moderates - are now literally encouraging Arab and Muslim suicide-crash-dummies to run down Jews in the streets of Jerusalem.  They killed a Jewish-American baby at one of the light rail stations in Jerusalem just the other day and the murderer was hailed as a heroic martyr, a shaheed in the service of Allah... which, needless to say, bothers the US Department of State not in the least.

Writing in the algemeiner, Dave Bender tells us:

Official Palestinian Authority (PA) social media sites and press are awash with photos and images encouraging drivers to use their cars as terror weapons against Israelis, similar to ramming attacks carried out Wednesday, as well as two weeks ago, in Jerusalem, according to an Israeli media watchdog group.

Four people have died – one an infant – and some 30 civilians and soldiers have been wounded in attacks by Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad-affiliated terrorists, who mowed down pedestrians along the tracks and platforms of Jerusalem’s light rail system.

Here is another of those images:


These are our alleged "peace partners" who are quite literally encouraging their people to murder Jews by running them down with their automobiles in order to - ahem - save the al-Aqsa mosque from the desecration that is the mere Jewish presence on the Temple Mount.

And these are the people that we fork over hard-earned US tax dollars to.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) tells us:

“Fatah-The Main Page” labeled the cartoon “the run over organization” (a play on words on the Arabic word for “run over” – da’es – and the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State terror organization – Da’esh).

The cartoon urges people to “Hit the gas at 199 [km/h] for Al-Aqsa.” The crossed-over traffic sign says “Al-Aqsa,” hinting that Jews are not allowed to enter the Temple Mount. [Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page," Nov. 6, 2014]”

“Another post instructs: ‘Run over, friend, run over the foreign settler!’ [Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page," Nov. 6, 2014]”

In another recent piece by Bender we read:

Abbas, in a condolence letter to the family of a Hamas terrorist who shot and severely wounded an Israeli-American last Wednesday, called the return fire by police which killed Muataz Hijazi a “sickening crime,” and “assassination which was perpetrated by the murderous, terrorist gangs of the despicable Israeli occupying army…”

I say that the time for negotiations is done.

The Left and Israel: A Conversation with Jon Haber

Michael L.

Jon Haber, of the Divestthis! blog, and I are beginning a discussion of the western left and its relationship to the Jewish state of Israel that I very much hope that you guys will join in... either here or there or even at the Elder of Ziyon if Ian and the gang decide to promote this conversation.

Or even at Jews Down Under if Shirlee and those folk decide to do so.

You should also know that Jon is part of a panel discussion next week on the subject of Defamation of Israel on College Campuses sponsored by CAMERA in Newton, Mass.  Other speakers include Richard Cravatts, President of Scholars for Middle East Peace and Gilad Skolnick, CAMERA’s Director of Campus Programming.  I am very much hoping that an audio file will be created and uploaded so that others can chew on it.

The question that I have proposed, in terms of our current conversation, is this:

Has the western left, in its general approach to the Arab-Israel conflict in comparison to other conflicts around the world, remained true to its fundamental values of ‘social justice’ and ‘universal human rights’?

Jon's response is here and I recommend that you guys give it a read.

What he essentially argues is that there is no clear "yes" or "no" answer to the question because the western left is, itself, an exceedingly large and diverse international category and represents a neutral terrain upon which Jews and anti-Zionists (and others concerned with the Middle East) conflict.

He writes:

Now if the western left was an undivided entity that embraced this position, then the answer to your question would be a simple “No” (and we could draw this debate to a close in one exchange). But given that what we are calling the western left includes everyone from the Democratic Party in the US (which still supports Israel 2:1 over her enemies) to the Communist parties of Europe, I think we are seeing a battle for the heart of leftism (if not broader liberalism) in which a group of single-issue partisans (Israel haters) are trying to convince anyone with left-of-center leanings that they must embrace an anti-Israel position or live in betrayal of progressive values.

...the left is neither friend nor foe, but the ground on which an important battle over Israel (and the entire Middle East) is being fought.

I agree with what Jon writes above, but I have two questions:

1)  In what direction are things trending?

and

2)  If the left represents a battleground, just who is engaged in the fight?

The Trend

The trends seem fairly obvious, although we would need to confirm through comparing polling data over time.

Nonetheless, the progressive-left and the Democratic Party in the United States are considerably more open to anti-Semitic anti-Zionists than are their conservative or Republican counterparts.

All the polling clearly shows that conservatives and Republicans are far-and-away more supportive of the Jewish State of Israel than are progressives and Democrats and have been for many years.  That is a simple statement of fact.

If we agree that anti-Zionism - and its little ideological homunculus, the BDS movement - are illiberal movements embedded within the western-left and if the western-left, as a whole, is more open to their influence, this clearly suggests that the western left is reclining in an illiberal direction in direct violation of their own stated principles of social justice and universal human rights.

As I am certain that most would agree, they cannot single out the Jews for admonition, while virtually ignoring horrendous atrocities ongoing throughout the world, and still be taken seriously as fair interlocutors or analysts.

The Players

Most progressives are not anti-Semitic.

Unless we wish to allow our most paranoid fantasies to run away with us, this should certainly be acknowledged.

However, the progressive-left as a whole, as an international movement, has opened its venues to anti-Semitic anti-Zionists who spread hatred not only to Israel, but inevitably toward Jews.  I have no doubt that most think that the Palestinian cause is essentially just and that Israel is the aggressor.  That is, I have no doubt that in their own minds they believe themselves to be entirely righteous and just in their stance on this issue.

Thus most of the left just sits back and watch as a core member of its constituency - the Jewish people - get kicked around in left-leaning venues for daring to stand up for Jewish self-determination and self-defense.  Most left-leaning political people are not engaged in any fight around anti-Zionism or the country of Israel, but they did put milk and cookies on the table in front of the anti-Zionist chair and pulled that chair out in a most courteous manner.

The battle, therefore, with the left as a backdrop, is a political fight between supporters of Israel (mainly Jews) and hard-left anti-Semitic anti-Zionists who claim to stand for social justice, even as they promote violence toward Jewish students on campuses throughout Europe, Australia, and North America.

Just think of the waste of Jewish progressive resources, intelligence, and man-power.  Instead of fighting for economic fair play or a cleaner environment or the rights of other minorities, Jews who care about their besieged brothers and sisters in Israel have to fight it out within our own ideological arenas as the great majority on the left sit back and eat popcorn.

I paint this picture - and mix those metaphors - because the progressive-left Jewish dilemma is starting to come to a head.

It is as if the western-left is forcing its Jewish constituency to choose between our own families and communities or our traditional left political alliances.

For me this choice could not be easier.

Why I protested Klinghoffer

Sar Shalom

Like many supporters of Israel, I joined in the protests against the Met Opera's production of The Death of Klinghoffer, both at the Met's season opener and at the premier of Klinghoffer. Having participated in the protests, I would like to suggest what it is about Klinghoffer that merits protests and hopefully help sharpen the arguments against it. A frequent complaint against the opera is that it is propaganda and not art. I find this argument non-sensical in that art can also be propaganda. For instance, Lysistrata was a work of propaganda against the Peloponesian War, does that mean that it's not a work of art. The Figaro trilogy (the three works The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro, and The Guilty Mother) was a work of propaganda against the French aristocracy of the late-18th century, does that mean that the three plays and derived operas are not works of art. Klinghoffer is propaganda, but that is not what I see as a reason to protest.

Another common complaint about Klinghoffer is the judeophobic lines placed in the Palestinian characters' mouths, such as "Wherever you Jews go, you bring misery with you." This too is not automatically grounds for protest. The reality is that that is the way partisans of the Palestinian national movement speak. For the opera to say that they speak in such manner should not be confused for the opera saying that the way they speak is the way things are. As a comparison, the character Borat says many things that are equally vile about Jews. However, Borat is not a target for protests the way Klinghoffer because Borat clearly does not endorse its title-character's screeds.

So what is a reason to protest? For one, there's the portrayal of the Jewish chorus. While I did not have that on my mind as I went to the protest, that is only because I was unaware at the time of the opera's portrayal of the Jewish chorus. While having the Palestinians say that the Jews peddle misery is not the opera saying that the Jews peddle misery, having the Jewish chorus focus on the most vain things in life is the opera saying that the Jews only focus on the most vain things in life.

Further, while the Palestinian characters' expression of their judeophobia is not an issue, what the opera says about those character is an issue. The reality about the Palestinians' complaints that they are not terrorists, does any group see itself as a group of terrorists, and that the Jews bring the Palestinians' reaction upon themselves is that they are expressions of moral sophistry. Unfortunately, the public does not need works like Klinghoffer to be exposed to the Palestinians' moral sophistry. What is needed is for the public to be made aware of what is in the moral sophistry and to learn why it is moral sophistry. However, Klinghoffer passes off the Palestinians' moral sophistry as though it were genuine morality. Here the contrast with Borat is instructive. Borat's obsessive judeophobia is indelibly combined with beliefs in fanciful ideas, such as the notion that Jews can morph into insects, so that one can draw and association between judeophobic beliefs and disconnect from reality. However, the Very Serious defenders of Klinghoffer don't hesitate to point out how the Palestinian characters' complaints about the Jews show the need to look for the humanity even in such terrorists. In other words, those complaints are to be taken at face value.

With that said, what would it take for a work like Klinghoffer to earn my support rather than my opposition? This is an important question not to find reasons to justify works like Klinghoffer, but in order to highlight the principles that Klinghoffer violated and thus drawn our ire. A start would be to change the portrayal of the Jewish chorus. If the Palestinian are portrayed as having serious grievances, so should the Jews. Second, the terrorists' moral sophistry must be exposed as moral sophistry. When the terrorists claim not to be terrorists, the same aria should should describe actions that they claim are not terrorism, but which any audience member would recognize as terrorism if they do not believe that directing violence automatically makes it not terrorism. This could be augmented by having the terrorists engage in the Palestinian pastime of simultaneously questioning whether the Holocaust happened and lauding Hitler for having perpetrated it. A further enhancement would be for Klinghoffer's exchange with his assassins to evoke the cabaletta from "Rachel! Quand du Seigneur," with the terrorists shouting "Au bûcher le juif, le juif quils pèrissent." While this would not be necessary, for anyone who knows opera, it would demonstrate what really lies behind the Palestinians' motives.

A final message would be about the Metropolitan Opera in general. For opera fans, The Metropolitan Opera is one of the institutions that makes living in New York worthwhile. Gelb's poor judgement aside, The Met also participated in the revival of Jacques Fromenthal Halevy's La Juive. Just try not to throw out the baby with the bath water.

Republicans and the Palestinians

Sar Shalom

While there will be much discussion about the effects that the Republican takeover of the Senate will have on Palestinian negotiations with Israel, such as on this blog, a separate issue is how the Republicans are like the Palestinians. No, I am not suggesting that their policy platforms are similar. However, there mannerisms have a bit of overlap.

Both the Republicans and the Palestinians depend on people accepting their memes without question simply because every Very Serious Person talks as though they are obviously true. In the case of the Palestinians, the memes include the claims that Israel's settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention and that Jordan's conquest of 1949 conferred an inalienable right upon them. In the case of the Republicans, the memes include the notion that out-of-control spending is what is holding back the economy and that both parties are equally intransigent about their bases' shibboleths.

Further, both the Palestinians and the Republicans profit by sitting pat and waiting for outsiders to punish their opposition for the "joint" failure to reach an agreement. In the case of the Palestinians, we see this in the Palestinians refusing to offer acceptable terms for Israel to allow a Palestinian state with the result of Sweden, joined by the British parliament, reacting to Israel's failure to reach an accord for a Palestinian state by recognizing a Palestinian state. In the case of the Republicans, the Republican Party adopted a strategy of withholding all support from whatever Obama proposed for the sole purpose of not allowing the label "bipartisan" to associated with the initiative and was rewarded by the voters' for the Democrats' failure to any agreements with them.

Now, is there any chance that we can convince the liberals who invariably take up the cause of the Palestinians, "You know, everything you say about the Republicans applies to the Palestinians as well," as well conservative minded voters, "You know, everything you say about the Palestinians applies to the Republicans as well?"