In the 1960s, Martin Luther King's brand of nonviolence and support for Israel was the mainstream black opinion, while a fringe radical black movement (called Black Power) started that supported violence and, not coincidentally, saw more affinity to Arab terrorists than Israel.
It is unfortunate that the radical black vision where the only "intersectionality" is to those who want to murder Israelis has become the mainstream.
Here is an article I posted a number of years ago by Bayard Rustin, a major black civil rights leader in the '60s and '70s (who also happened to be openly gay,) that shows that he felt that there excellent reasons for blacks to support Israel - and his reasons sound "intersectional."
__________________________
I had a number of tweets related to Martin Luther King that I posted over the past couple of days that did fairly well.
Martin Luther King, 10 days before he was killed: "Peace for Israel means security,
and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist,
its territorial integrity. I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one
of the great outposts of democracy in the world...
MLK continued: "...and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land almost can be transformed
into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means
security and that security must be a reality."
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Nearly six years ago I gave a lecture at Yeshiva University on how to answer anti-Israel arguments. Since the lecture was over an hour and twenty minutes, I decided to break it up into 20 sections, one each to answer one popular anti-Israel argument.
Here is part 17.
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Sadly, the response so far from International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has been weak. On Monday, AFP quoted the IPC as saying that it was “disappointed” with Malaysia’s decision to bar Israeli swimmers from entering the country and that it hoped to find a solution to the matter.
“While we continue dialogue with the Local Organizing Committee and the National Paralympic Committee, the IPC Governing Board will be discussing this matter at its meeting in London next week,” the IPC said in a statement. “World Championships should be open to all eligible nations and athletes. We will explore all options open to us to try and ensure the full participation of all eligible athletes.”
We do not understand what the IPC needs to wait a week to “discuss” and have a “dialogue” about. When facing an act of antisemitism and discrimination, the solution is a simple one and should be implemented as soon as possible: the IPC should rescind its decision to hold the tournament in Malaysia, choose another venue, and then – in response to the Malaysian decision against Israeli athletes – impose punitive sanctions on Malaysia, including the banning and even expulsion of the country from future tournaments.
Such a decision will send a clear message to other countries that might, on the one hand, want to host sporting events, but on the other hand not allow Israelis inside their borders. This is the policy for multinational organizations like the World Trade Organization, which a few years ago, for example, held its annual gathering in Indonesia, which – to host the event – had no choice but to allow Israeli government officials to attend.
As its mission statement reads, the IPC was established 30 years ago to allow disabled athletes to “achieve sporting excellence and inspire and excite the world.” What Malaysia is doing is the exact opposite of inspiring or exciting the world. Letting it get away with blatant antisemitism undermines the IPC and the purpose for which it was established. Take action now, IPC, before it is too late.
Fatah official: "Normalization with the Zionist entity is the greatest danger to our Arab nation"
The Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate called on all media outlets "to settle accounts with anyone who has participated in a visit to and any activity of normalization with the occupying entity"
Fatah official repeated PA libel that Israel was established to steal the resources of the Arab region: "The Palestinian people, through its struggle, has always constituted an impregnable wall against the colonialist Zionist project that wants to take over the resources of the Arab peoples, and against the spread of Zionism towards the Arab region"
Op-ed in official PA daily: "Western colonialism in general, and British colonialism in particular - in cooperation with the Zionist movement, and later with its physical base, the colonialist State of Israel - attempted... to erase the Palestinian identity, history, and existence, and to establish the rogue state [Israel]. This was in order to serve the goals of the capitalist West at the expense of the Jews, who were misled in the name of religion"
The disconnect between the events in the hall and the outside world – in terms of the member states’ bilateral relations with Israel; the Palestinian public’s rejection of Abbas; and Abbas’s role as terror sponsor and financier – points to a basic truth about the Palestinians and the nature of international relations.
International support for the Palestinians grows with the level of abstraction. The more concrete one’s relations are with the Palestinian Authority – whether as Palestinians who live under its jackboot, or Israelis who are the target of its aggression – the less legitimate Abbas is, and the smaller the octogenarian with no legitimate claim to power appears.
The more symbolic one’s relations with the Palestinians, the more fervent support for “Palestine” becomes. The G-77 isn’t elevating the “State of Palestine” because it cares about the Palestinians. The G-77 is elevating the “State of Palestine” because it doesn’t care about the Palestinians.
Although India, for example, rarely votes against the “State of Palestine” at the UN, its bilateral ties with Israel have expanded exponentially in recent years.
Netanyahu has worked assiduously to leverage the ties he has developed with states like Kenya, Rwanda, Brazil, and India into diminished support for the Palestinians at the UN. His efforts have brought about only a marginal change in behavior.
By and large, the Palestinians can continue to expect support from the vast majority of UN member states for any initiative they launch against Israel. Indeed, long after Abbas, his successors and their PLO are ousted from power, they will remain in senior leadership positions at the UN.
But as the recent massive growth of Israel’s bilateral ties to the nations of the world makes clear, there is often little connection between support for “Palestine” at the UN and animosity for Israel.
The Moroccan Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (MACBI), a boycott movement, has called for the boycott of French singer Enrico Macias’s concert in Casablanca scheduled for next month.
In a statement on January 13, the MACBI described Macias’s presence on stage at Megarama on February 14 a “shame and an insult to the Casablanca public.”
The French singer of Algerian Jewish descent who “likes to present himself as an artist for peace” is “in fact a strong defender” of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and especially the Israeli defense army, Tsahal, reads the statement.
MACBI stated that Macias is giving his blood, sweat and tears to the association Migdal, which supports the the Israel border police, Magav.
Magav, according to boycott movement, is “known for its war crimes against the civilian population.”
The MACAB’s statement, which the Moroccan-Jewish human rights activist Sion Assidon published on his Facebook page, cited some of Macias pro-Israeli statement he gave in French more than 10 years ago.
“From the beginning of my life, I have always devoted my body and soul to the State of Israel but primarily to Tsahal, but now to Magav … I do not do this neither for my advertisement, nor for my career, nor anything at all … I always gave for the State of Israel, for Tsahal, Magav, and for Migdal. Believe me, that’s the miracle of Israel.”
Macias really is a Zionist. Here he is accepting an award from Migdal.
And here is his rendition of Hatikva:
Moroccan anti-Zionists are taking an old poster of Macias fundraising for Magen David Adom and pretending that this Casablanca concert is meant to raise money for Israel.
Macias has tried many times to return and perform in Algeria, which he left in 1961, but the Algerian government has consistently denied him.
Notice that this article is not saying that MACBI is trying to stop the concert, but only to get people not to attend. Which is in itself an indication that the Morocco boycott movement is more noise than anything else.
Macias has given concerts in Egypt without any issues, including at least one that was televised.
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Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad addressed the Oxford Union on friday, and he said his normal nonsense about why he doesn't want Israelis to enter his country.
What struck me was two of his statements that generated applause from the audience.
The first (1:12) was when he said, "Well it is not fair to call me anti-semitic. They should call other people anti-semitic. I'm not anti-semitic - the Arabs are all Semitic people."
Yes, that stupid argument actually elicited applause.
At 1:56, Mohamad justifies insulting Jews as a freedom of speech issue:
We talk about freedom of speech and yet you cannot say anything against Israel, against the Jews. Why is that? So if we....can say that we are something that will be regarded as anti-semitic by the Jews that is their right to hold such opinion of me. This my right to tell them also that they have been doing a lot of wrong things.
The liberal, enlightened students at Oxford applauded the idea of negatively stereotyping entire groups of people.
Well, not really - they only applauded the idea of negatively stereotyping Jews.
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Oh? Is there silence about Palestinians? Among the tens of thousands of articles, hundreds of hours of TV time, thousands of books and scores of UN resolutions, has the world been silenced?
[I]f we are to honor King’s message and not merely the man, we must condemn Israel’s actions: unrelenting violations of international law, continued occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, home demolitions and land confiscations. We must cry out at the treatment of Palestinians at checkpoints, the routine searches of their homes and restrictions on their movements, and the severely limited access to decent housing, schools, food, hospitals and water that many of them face.
Alexander knows nothing about Israel and next to nothing about Palestinians. I have debunked these ridiculous claims over the years.
The fact is that Palestinians could have had a state five times over - and refused. That is not Israel's fault.
The fact is that Palestinians, after promising to avoid terror in 1993, have never stopped their terror campaigns against Jews in Israel. That is not Israel's fault.
The fact is that Israel has a legal right to the territories that is at least as compelling as that of a people who literally didn't exist as a people seventy years ago.
The fact is that Arabs in the West Bank have more freedom and better living conditions, better education, better health care than most of their brethren in neighboring Egypt and Jordan.
The fact is that most of the issues with Gaza are directly because of decisions made by Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
If there is any silence around the Palestinians, it is around these facts which Michelle Alexander and The New York Times will rarely mention. That is the conspiracy of silence.
Her pretense that she is being brave by mentioning this is absurd. Bravery would be for her to say something honest about Israel that contradicts these tired lies and anti-Israel propaganda that she swallows whole.
But Ms. Alexander insists that Martin Luther King would agree with her:
Ultimately, King canceled a pilgrimage to Israel in 1967 after Israel captured the West Bank. During a phone call about the visit with his advisers, he said, “I just think that if I go, the Arab world, and of course Africa and Asia for that matter, would interpret this as endorsing everything that Israel has done, and I do have questions of doubt.”
Here is the entire quote:
I’d run into the situation where I’m damned if I say this and I’m damned if I say that no matter what I’d say, and I’ve already faced enough criticism including pro-Arab. I just think that if I go, the Arab world, and of course Africa and Asia for that matter, would interpret this as endorsing everything that Israel has done, and I do have questions of doubt... Most of it [the pilgrimage] would be Jerusalem and they [the Israelis] have annexed Jerusalem, and any way you say it they don’t plan to give it up... I frankly have to admit that my instincts - and when I follow my instincts so to speak I’m usually right - I just think that this would be a great mistake. I don’t think I could come out unscathed.
King was talking primarily about his reputation. He wanted to maintain support from the Arab and African worlds, and his main reason to cancel the visit was because of how it would hurt his standing, not any moral stance.
Yes, he had doubts about Israel capturing territory, and he did say that he felt that Israel should return territory for peace. And - it did exactly that, with Egypt. It also gave Palestinians land where they can live autonomously, and the result was not peace, but more terror.
Sorry if those actual, provable facts are too inconvenient to mention.
Alexander quotes a rabidly anti-Israel historian as "proof" that King would have been anti-Israel today. But if you look at the last words he publicly spoke on Israel, at the Rabbinical Assembly on March 25, 1968 a week before he was assassinated and nearly a year after the "occupation," this is what he said:
On the Middle East crisis, we have had various responses. The response of some of the so-called young militants again does not represent the position of the vast majority of Negroes. There are some who are color-consumed and they see a kind of mystique in being colored, and anything non-colored is condemned. We do not follow that course in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and certainly most of the organizations in the civil rights movement do not follow that course.
I think it is necessary to say that what is basic and what is needed in the Middle East is peace. Peace for Israel is one thing. Peace for the Arab side of that world is another thing. Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land almost can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.
On the other hand, we must see what peace for the Arabs means in a real sense of security on another level. Peace for the Arabs means the kind of economic security that they so desperately need. These nations, as you know, are part of that third world of hunger, of disease, of illiteracy. I think that as long as these conditions exist there will be tensions, there will be the endless quest to find scapegoats. So there is a need for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, where we lift those who are at the bottom of the economic ladder and bring them into the mainstream of economic security.
His plan for the Arabs sounds a lot like - Benjamin Netanyahu's.
But that little fact is what is being silenced, as black people today are being told that being anti-Israel is a necessary position in their own civil rights movements.
This is nonsense, and anyone reading King knows it is nonsense.
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The Palestinian uproar over the scene of a religious Jewish policeman can, in short, best be described as a display of anti-Semitism. Otherwise, how do the Palestinians explain their non-objection to a non-religious Jewish policeman patrolling the holy site? Why is it all right for a policeman without a skullcap to enter the Dome of the Rock, but not all right for one wearing a skullcap to visit the site?
The Palestinians who protested against the policeman wearing the skullcap were following the words of their president, Abbas, when he stated that the Palestinians won't allow Jews with their filthy feet to defile the Al-Aqsa Mosque." In this instance, though, the Palestinians were disturbed not by the policeman's "filthy feet", but by the fact that he was a religious Jew. Perhaps Abbas should modify his statement from 2015 so that it would include, in addition to "Jews with their filthy feet," also: "Religious Jews wearing a skullcap."
Abbas and the Palestinian leadership are clearly trying to drag Israel into a religious conflict with all Muslims, not only Palestinians. The Temple Mount has become their favorite platform for disseminating blood libels and fabrications against Israel and Jews. If anyone is defiling the sanctity of the holy site, it is Abbas and his representatives in the West Bank. Abbas's ruling Fatah faction played a major role in the protests that erupted over the latest incident at the Dome of the Rock (involving the policeman with the skullcap. The police later detained Awad Salaymeh, a senior Fatah official in east Jerusalem, for his role in the incident involving the policeman. He and other Fatah activists were at the scene as part of their leadership's ongoing effort to instigate tensions between Jews and Muslims at the Temple Mount.
Other forms of Palestinian incitement against Israel and Jews at the Temple Mount include weekly sermons delivered by leading Islamic figures. Almost every Friday, another senior Islamic cleric uses the podium to deliver inflammatory sermons against Israel and Jews. One of these clerics is Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, the former Palestinian mufti of Jerusalem, who last week told his followers that Jerusalem will never be a Jewish city. Sabri and other senior clerics have also used the podium to warn Palestinians against selling their properties to Jews.
This Palestinian incitement and cynical exploitation of a holy site to spread lies and blood libels and stereotype Jews is barely noticed by the mainstream media in the West. Were Israel to stop a Palestinian from entering a holy site because of his clothing, the foreign reporters based in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv would have rushed to the scene to interview the man and tell the world that Israel is violating freedom of worship. This is yet another example of how the media gives the Palestinians a pass and allows them to continue their vicious incitement against Israel. The next time a Palestinian grabs a knife and goes out to stab a Jew, foreign journalists might consider the last time they failed to report on the Palestinian leaders, especially their incitement.
In October 2016, UNESCO’s executive board ratified a resolution that attempted to erase 3,000 years of Jewish religious history in Jerusalem.
The resolution was drafted by Jordan and submitted by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and Sudan — with the enthusiastic support of the Palestinian Authority, a full member of UNESCO since 2011.
The central aim of the resolution was to formalize criticism of Israel’s conduct in Jerusalem. It referred to Israel as the “occupying power” and blamed the Jewish state for the spike in violence in the region.
Condemnation of alleged Israeli aggression has long been a standard talking point in the United Nations; that alone did not set off any alarms. What disturbed Israelis about the UNESCO resolution was that it made Jerusalem’s Holy Basin an exclusively Islamic prerogative. By only referring to the Temple Mount by its Arabic name “Al-Haram al-Sharif,” the resolution’s language severed ties between Judaism and the Temple Mount. The Western Wall was reduced to Al-Buraq Plaza — the place where Muhammad tethered his horse.
In the resolution, the Arabic name was only twice followed by the Western Wall’s Hebrew name; but when that happened, it was placed in quotation marks — a grammatical detail that Israelis took as direct belittling of Judaism’s linkage to the site.
The resolution made no mention of the Jewish temples that stood at the site for a thousand years, or the next 2,000 years of continuous Jewish attachment to Jerusalem. Only once did the drafters soften their bias by making a generalized reference to the importance of the Old City and its walls to “the three monotheistic religions.”
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg told NBC News he thinks society must take the possibility of genocide more seriously now that it has in the past generation. In an interview marking the 25th anniversary of “Schindler’s List,” Spielberg referred to the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue and warned that “hate leading to genocide is as possible today as it was during the Holocaust.”
He was behind the curve. The era of “never again” is ending in Western Europe, fading in North America and never penetrated the Middle East. Relentless demonization of the Jewish state renormalizes demonization of Jewish people.
Examples of post-Nazi genocide and attempted genocide abound, including Muslim Indonesia’s seizure of largely Christian East Timor, the auto-genocide perpetrated by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, suppression of southern Sudan’s Christian and animist Darfur region by the government of the Muslim north, the murder of much of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority by the Hutu majority and today’s oppression by Myanmar’s Buddhist majority of its Rohingya Muslim minority.
Two post-Holocaust mass murders of Jews already have been attempted.
In 1948, five invading Arab countries committed to the destruction of the fledgling Jewish state. The United States no sooner became the first nation to recognize Israel than it slapped an arms embargo on the region. Though intended to diminish general tensions, in practice the move undercut Israel, since the other side continued to receive British arms and advice.
In 1967, Israel preempted a potentially overwhelming attack by Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian forces mobilized on its border. Afterward, the philosopher Eric Hoffer noted that “had [Egyptian President Gamal Abdel] Nasser triumphed … he would have wiped Israel off the map and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.”
* Hitler was a descendant of the Rothschilds.
* He made up propaganda about murdering Jews in order to help create a Jewish state.
* His girlfriends were all Jewish.
* Rudolf Hess was Jewish.
* Hitler escaped Germany and ended up in Argentina where he died in 1971.
* "Soviet Bolshevik Zionists" were responsible for saying that he died in the bunker in Germany.
I didn't quite understand the NASA part. Apparently Jews were involved in bringing German rocket engineers to the US to help create NASA.
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On Tuesday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that freshman Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, will sit on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Some details about Omar: She supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) campaign aimed at destroying Israel. In 2012, she tweeted, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” This week, she went on CNN and defended her tweet. On Omar’s first day in office, she met with anti-Semitic Women’s March leader (and Farrakhan fan) Linda Sarsour.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee oversees House bills and investigations pertaining to U.S. foreign policy, and it has the power to cut American arms and technology shipments to allies. So, while the Democrats are distancing themselves from anti-Semitic activists who organize a march every now and then, they’re raising up anti-Semites to positions of power in the federal government.
Omar isn’t the only one. Rashida Tlaib, the freshman Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, posed for a picture with a Hezbollah supporter named Abbas Hamideh at her swearing-in ceremony in Detroit. She then dined with the man—who has railed against “criminal Zionists” and tweeted things like “Long live [Hezbollah leader] Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah!” Tlaib herself has a history of tweeting out support for anti-Israel terrorists. And recently, when a group of senators opposed a bill protecting localities that boycott Israel, Tlaib said that they “forgot what country they represent.”
There is no cosmetic fix for the anti-Semitism that’s infusing the activist left and creeping into the Democratic Party. It runs to the ideological core of intersectionality—the left’s latest religion. By the lights of intersectionality, Jews are too powerful and too white to be the targets of bigotry. So an anti-Semite is perfectly suitable as an ally against some other form of prejudice—against, say, blacks or women. And when anti-Semitism appears on the left, progressives are ready to explain it away with an assortment of convenient nuances and contextual considerations: It’s not anti-Semitism, it’s anti-Zionism; consider the good work the person has done fighting for other groups; we don’t have to embrace everything someone says to appreciate the good in them, etc.
These new congressional Democrats were celebrated far and wide when they were elected. They’re young, outspoken, and many are female. But that just makes them extraordinarily effective ambassadors for a poisonous ideology.
I have been marching for women’s rights for a long, long time — with my feet, my voice, and my pen. I am still doing so.
Currently, the most high-profile activity of the so-called “women’s movement” in the United States is one that saddens and outrages me. The Women’s March (and more specifically, the Women’s March leadership) in the US appears to have nothing to do with women or feminism. I never did care for the pussy hats, but I still supported the grassroots marchers, many of whom were serious and long-time feminists in their communities. The leadership, on the other hand, oddly seemed to have no track record in terms of fighting for women’s rights.
I am in mourning for a vibrant and radical feminist movement. This is not it. Rather, it is a shell game, a performance, a con job.
The Women’s March leadership consists of women completely new to the movement, who are branded in the same way that actresses or reality show celebrities are. They are savvy about procuring corporate funding, and even savvier about getting Hollywood stars — eager to virtue signal — involved. They stage events, not revolutions.
In recent years, progressive Jewish Zionists in the U.S. have been effectively removed - either through deliberately exclusionary language, verbal violence or physical unrest - from progressive activism. Now, the progressive camp has aimed increasingly forceful attacks against American Jews who identify as non-Zionist and even as anti-Zionist. The target now seems to be Jews as a people - with no reference to an individual's specific positions on questions of Jewish nationalism or Israel.
In particular, Ashkenazi Jewish activists have been categorized as "white Jews," attacked by Women's March co-chair Tamika Mallory for "uphold[ing] white supremacy," and accused of playing an ahistorically dominant role in the slave trade and mass incarceration in the U.S. Further, anti-Semitism is no longer allowed to remain a distinct form of discrimination, but rather a lesser branch on the tree of general bigotries.
Jews are seen as too institutionally integrated, too successful a minority (itself a favorite anti-Semitic trope), or, in other words, too white (and therefore too much the beneficiaries of "white privilege") for anti-Semitism to be taken seriously. Yet, how inclusive and welcoming coalitions are towards Jews have always been the canary in the mine of liberal democracies.
What a performance! Women's March co-leader Tamika Mallory makes an idiot of herself on Firing Line.
Transcript:
Tamika Mallory: The Palestinians are native to the land, you know, they were there for a very long time and so they are native to the land.
Margaret Hoover, PBS: Do you believe that the Jewish people are native as well?
TM: I mean, I know, I understand the history, you knowm that there are people who have their ideologies around why the Jewish people feel this should be their land. I'm not Jewish so for me to speak to that is not fair.
MH: If you are willing to say that the Palestinian are native but not the Jews are native. I mean, you are not Palestinian either.
TM: Because I'm speaking of the people who we know are being brutally oppressed in this moment. That's just the reality.
MH: Is it your view that Israel has a right to exist as a nation?
TM: I've said many times that I feel everyone has a right to exist. I just don't feel that anyone has a right to exist at the disposal of another group.
MH: In your view, does that include Israelis in Israel?
TM: I believe that all people have the right to exist. And that Palestinians are also suffering with a great crisis. And that there are other Jewish scholars who will sit here and say the same.
I’m done talking about this, you can move on.
MH: I just don't think it takes scholarly knowledge to be able to say that Israel has a right to exist.
So she's not sure if Jews have any claim to the land, but she KNOWS Palestinians are native to the land - because they are "brutally oppressed."
There's intersectional logic for you!
She contradicts herself when she says "everyone has a right to exist" (not nations, of course) but not anyone, if their existence is at the "disposal" [sic] of another group. Yet the entire Palestinian narrative is based on negation of the Jewish state! Otherwise they would have faded into the rest of the Arab world by now, and no one would be talking about a Palestinian state - or Palestinian people.
When she realizes that she is sounding like an idiot who denies Israel's right to exist and therefore she is about to even further alienate millions of Jewish women from her movement, she shuts down that line of questioning.
Because she simply cannot defend herself and still remain friends with Louis Farrakhan.
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Benny Morris is the Israeli historian whose scholarly work changed the way the Israel Palestine conflict is viewed. He coined the term ‘new historians’ which has come to include Avi Shalim, Ilan Pappe and Tom Segev. These historians challenged some myths about the creation of the state of Israel.
In more recent years Morris appears to have come to regret some of the assertions he has made, or perhaps more accurately, the way in which his research has been used.
Some extracts from his latest interview in Ha’aretz: “The first intifada was violent but not lethal. It was a popular revolt. People threw stones and a few people were killed. But all told, about 1,000 Palestinians were killed and Jews were not killed, because the Palestinians barely used firearms. They said they didn’t want to live under a military government and Israeli oppression. I refused to take part in that oppression when my battalion was posted to the casbah in Nablus. I was jailed for a few weeks. That’s a light punishment. In other armies refusing an order can land you in prison for years.”
“In the second intifada I was against refusing an order, because it wasn’t just a rebellion against the Israeli occupation but also an attempt to bring Israel to a state of collapse. Many of the terrorist attacks took place on our side of the border and included mass killings. There was terrorist warfare against Israel. To refuse to serve in that situation is not right. At the same time, I am one of those who don’t want to man checkpoints or burst into homes in the middle of the night and turn the closets inside out in a search for weapons. That is very unpleasant work and morally problematic. But the Arab desire to destroy Israel is also morally problematic.”
“The change I underwent is related to one issue: the Palestinians’ readiness to accept the two-state solution and forgo part of the Land of Israel.”
“Anyone who says that Barak and Bill Clinton made the Palestinians an offer they could not agree to is lying. Dennis Ross, the principal negotiator, has already shown in his book that that claim is bullshit. The lack of territorial continuity would only have been between Gaza and the West Bank. They were offered a contiguous territorial bloc of 95 percent of the West Bank, and they rejected it. But the story here is not one plan or another, but the fact that they want 100 percent of the territory of Mandatory Palestine. They were merely playing a game when they said they were ready for a compromise.
PA TV attacked the opening of an Israeli supermarket in Atarot in Northern Jerusalem. The supermarket chain is known as a place where Palestinians and Israelis work together. The TV story included this picture which showed skulls in a shopping cart and text stated that shopping there, which is "economic normalization," "is treason"
An important part of the people-to-people peacebuilding between Israelis and Palestinians that Israel encourages are the joint economic projects that bring financial gain to both. One Israeli prominent in advancing such peacebuilding is businessman Rami Levy who has built a number of supermarkets in which Palestinians and Israelis work side by side. The chain not only successfully employs both Palestinians and Israelis but in the aisles of the supermarkets Israelis and Palestinians are shopping together as well.
But the Palestinian Authority doesn't share Rami Levy's or Israel's interest in peacebuilding. In fact, it opposes it and works against it. When a new Rami Levy complex opened recently in the Atarot industrial area in Northern Jerusalem, official PA TV broadcast this cartoon of a woman with a shopping cart filled with various items. In the reflection in the mirror, her cart is full of skulls, the symbol of death. The text asserts that Palestinians shopping there would be committing "treason" and called for "boycotting" the supermarket:
Text upper left: "Do not be the occupation's partner in the Judaization of the city."
Text upper right: "Economic normalization is treason."
Text bottom right: "Calls from the national and Islamic forces to boycott this [Rami Levy] complex as it finances the occupation and strives to Judaize the city [Jerusalem]."
[Official PA TV, Affairs from the Capital, Jan. 13, 2019]
Two and a half weeks after a front-page Sunday investigative project in which ten New York Times journalists accused Israel of “possibly a war crime,” the Times is backing away from it by endorsing the Algemeiner’s criticism of the article.
The Times investigative project jumped to three full inside broadsheet pages of the December 30, 2018 New York Times.
One of my many criticisms of the piece for the Algemeiner was this: “The Times, for example, describes Israel as ‘the far stronger party’ relative to the Palestinians. But there are somewhere between 1.5 billion and 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, and around 14 million Jews. There are about 50 Muslim-majority countries, and one small Jewish state. The Muslims also have a lot of the oil. It may be convenient for the Times to stir sympathy for the Palestinians by depicting them as the underdogs, but it’s not as clear-cut a factual matter as the Times describes it.”
I wrote that for the Algemeiner on December 30, the same day the Times article appeared.
Now, on January 17, the Times has waddled in, belatedly, with its own story acknowledging precisely this point. Times “contributing opinion writer” Matti Friedman writes for the Times op-ed page:
Publishing one front-page news article pushing the “far stronger party” story line and then a weeks-later corrective op-ed acknowledging “that’s not the way Israelis see it” and that in fact was a “misunderstanding” and an “illusion” may be a smart short-term business strategy for the Times. It gets the Israel-haters to click on the story accusing “far stronger” Israel of “possibly a war crime,” and it gets the Israel-lovers to click on the story about how the first story was wrong.
From a longer-term perspective, though, this approach has its risks. The New York Times, after all, is a newspaper trying to brand itself as being for “Truth.” “The truth requires taking a stand. The Truth is more important now than ever,” claims a Times brand campaign ad that the newspaper is selling for $50 as an unframed poster at its own gift shop. On this one, though, the Times isn’t so much “taking a stand,” as trying to be on both sides of the issue.
"The road, which runs north-south, is actually two parallel roads separated by an 8-meter concrete wall topped with metal fencing. The western half is designed for Palestinians, though it can be used by anyone, and it bypasses Jerusalem; the eastern half is for Israelis, and anyone else with a legal permit to enter Jerusalem."
In other words, the western road can be used by anyone (Israelis and Palestinians) who doesn't want to go into Israel and the eastern road by anyone (Israelis and Palestinians) who wants to go into Israel and has a permit to do so.
That's NOT apartheid.
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Elder of Ziyon
