Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Elder of ZiyonThis article called "The Problem with Passover" is by another pseudo-intellectual academic fraud, this one named, Harriet Malinowitz a retired professor of English at Long Island University, part-time teacher at Ithaca College, faculty advisor to Students for Justice in Palestine and on the Academic Advisory Board of Jewish Voice for Peace.
Excerpts:
Over many years I taught a few bible excerpts from anthologies for literature survey courses, but it wasn’t until recently, in researching the history and symbology of Zionism, that I sat down and attentively studied the longer text. The context I found for the liberation of the ancient Hebrew people was, to say the least, disturbing. Aside from the traffic in women, the abuse of animals, the imperative to obedience, the copious administration of capital punishment, and the self-aggrandizement of an authoritarian in absolute command, there was the inescapable ultimate hook on which all the liberation depended: ethnic cleansing and genocide. Neither Yahweh nor his followers were troubled about the Chosen, upon release from bondage in Egypt, being gifted with “a land rich and broad, a land where milk and honey flow, the home of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites” (Exodus 3:7-9).Note that she only decided to read the Bible to research " the history and symbology of Zionism" - meaning, her reading was from the start meant to find ways to denigrate the children of Israel - i.e., the Jews.
When she says " the self-aggrandizement of an authoritarian in absolute command" she's not talking about Pharaoh - but God.
I began to search for commentary on the dark side of the saga. Edward Said, in a 1986 essay, may have been the first to note that Exodus could certainly be regarded as a “tragic” and dystopic rather than uplifting tale. He described “the injunction laid on the Jews by God to exterminate their opponents” as “an injunction that somewhat takes away the aura of progressive national liberation…. [I]t isn’t clear how the dehumanization of anyone standing in Moses’ way is any less appalling than the attitudes of the murderous Puritans or of the founders of apartheid.”Yes, the poor Amalekites and Egyptians who stood in Moses' way. So innocent!
The Native American scholar Robert Warrior (Osage) was once a student of Said’s and has written movingly about the elder’s influence on his own thinking. In an influential 1989 essay called “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians,” Warrior expanded on Said’s perception that the Exodus narrative left little to rejoice in if read “with Canaanite eyes.” ....Putting the Canaanites at the center of the story completely upends Exodus as a paradigmatic liberation narrative.Malinowitz is obviously subscribing to the "Palestinians are Canaanites" myth, whether literally or figuaratively, because the analogy between the Israelites destroying the Canaanites and the Jews supposedly expelling the Arabs is too irresistible.
Yet the idea of a Palestinian national liberation movement that has been based on terrorism since the 1920s does not unsettle the sensitive stomachs of these "progressives."
Fascinating how that happens.
