Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Andrew Pessin

Showing posts with label Andrew Pessin. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 01, 2023

11/01 Links Pt2: Pessin: When the anti-racists are racists; Amnesty International’s Propaganda on Gaza; Frantz Fanon, Oracle of Decolonization

From Ian:

Andrew Pessin: When the anti-racists are racists

What exactly do you think could possibly justify such barbaric cruelty? To babies, children, disabled people, grandmothers?

When the Nazis showed up at Polish towns and forced all the Jews to strip and walk miles into the woods and dig their own graves and then shot them, mothers holding their babies, would you stop and say, “Wait a minute, I need to hear the Nazis’ perspective on this before I reach a judgment?”

Who watches little girls raped and then dismembered alive (yes) and says, “Well, I need to learn more before making a judgment”?

Who watches a mother and a father and their three small children tied up together and then burned alive (yes) and says, “Well I need to hear the other side before I make up my mind”?

When nine black people were gunned down in South Carolina in 2015, did anyone say, “Wait until we get the gunman’s point of view”? Or in regard to the 2019 mosque shootings in New Zealand in which 51 Muslims died?

Is there any other identity group whose massive slaughter is met with the search for justification, with the “need to learn more”?

Closer to home, when talking about your activism for important causes, you also said, “The George Floyd affair was about the daily police brutality black Americans have faced for centuries and the continued oppression of folks of African descent across the diaspora.”

Imagine someone responded to you and said, “Well, you know, that situation is actually extremely complicated. After all, black people do commit a lot of crime and have a lot of police interactions. And anyway, let’s hear from David Duke and the Proud Boys before we reach any conclusions.”

Do I need to go on to imagine how you would feel, and how pretty much everyone we know in academia would erupt against such a response, which would instantly be branded racist?

1,400 mostly unarmed Jews—babies, children, teenagers, pregnant women, grandmothers—were just slaughtered in the most sadistic manner possible by the members of an openly genocidal group. Their founding charter literally endorses the murder of all Jews on earth. They literally posted footage of the atrocities so everyone could celebrate it. And you need to “learn more”?

But you didn’t stop there.

Given the “complexity” of the conflict, you then endorsed the (otherwise surely laudatory) view that we needn’t play the “Oppression Olympics,” that “we must oppose all oppression, have empathy for every suffering person, etc.”

Of course. But when certain people responded to the Black Lives Matter campaign so dear to you by pointing out that, in fact, “all lives matter” and “unarmed white people are also shot by police,” well we know how that was received, not least as evidence of their racism. Yet when 1,400 Jews were slaughtered in the most cold-blooded manner possible, you responded, “Well, all lives matter.”

You literally just “all lives mattered” every Jewish person on earth.

WSJ Editorial The Global War on the Jews

Jews are under attack not only in Israel and not only by Hamas. The weeks since the barbaric Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of Israel have witnessed physical assaults on Jews the world over, including in the U.S. and Europe.

The Islamist group and its Western enablers are pursuing or justifying a genocidal war against Jews, not merely a territorial dispute with Israel.

This weekend hundreds of rioters in Dagestan, Russia, stormed an airport in search of Jewish travelers. Germany has witnessed a spate of anti-Semitic incidents. Two Jewish schools in London closed for a period over safety concerns. A crowd in Sydney, Australia, chanted "gas the Jews" after the Hamas attack.

Americans like to believe such things couldn't happen in the U.S. They have. The Anti-Defamation League reported a 388% increase in anti-Semitic incidents from Oct. 7-23 compared with the same period a year ago. The ADL tally counts 109 anti-Israel rallies that featured support for Hamas or violence against Jews in Israel.

The West spent the decades after the civilizational catastrophe of the Holocaust vowing never again to allow itself to slide into such barbarism. What we see now in the attacks on Jews is how that slide began.

Before there was a Chancellor Hitler in 1933, there were roving bands of Brownshirts inflicting political and anti-Semitic violence on the streets of Germany. They too often went unchecked by police, prosecutors and politicians who didn't understand the menace.

A Western society that can't or won't muster the will to defend its Jewish neighbors and fellow citizens won't be able to defend itself.

Are We Tipping into a New World War?

A “world spinning out of control.” Those were the words Wall Street Journal Global View columnist Walter Russell Mead used to describe the latest geopolitical developments when Bari interviewed him on the latest episode of Honestly this week. And it’s not hard to see why.

In the past 48 hours alone:
Houthi fighters fired at Israel from Yemen.
An Israeli air strike hit Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, killing a senior Hamas commander as well as Palestinian civilians.
FBI Director Christopher A. Wray warned senators that the Israel-Hamas war has increased the chances of a terrorist attack against Americans in the United States to “a whole other level.”
Israel vanished overnight from maps on the Chinese search engine Baidu.
Egyptian prime minister Mostafa Madbouly said Egypt was “prepared to sacrifice millions of lives to ensure that no one encroaches upon our territory,” dismissing requests for the settlement of Palestinian refugees in Egypt.

On the podcast, Walter explains why the “pre-war era” we’ve been in for a while is “moving quickly and at an unpredictable pace” toward “something big and something bad.”

Let Walter give you the lay of the land. I can’t promise that it will be reassuring. But it will be clarifying.

Biden’s choices point to a continuation of a long list of Middle East foreign policy errors (Daled Amos)

Rabbi Twerski: The Man with the Face of an Angel Who Worked at St. Francis with the Nuns (Judean Rose)

(Also, this 2018 post from Judean Rose had a large audience this year.)

How Israel-haters became influential (Vic Rosenthal)

Report on Jerusalem correctly! (RealJerusalemStreets)

Elad Barzilai survived the Arab lynch mob (Forest Rain)

Suicide Bomber Hoping Work-From-Home Rules End Soon (PreOccupied Territory)

And some other guest posts that did well:

Linda Sarsour Indoctrinates Small Children to Hate Israel (@Kweansmom)

Israel: where the game never ends (Ellen E. Horowitz)

Academia for Hamas (Dr. Andrew Pessin)

BDS is a threat to the entire free world (Richard Landes)

Professor resigns from U of MN Center for Jewish Studies over its anti-Zionism and silence on antisemitism

Oren Gross is a professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School since 2002. He is an expert on international law and has published extensively.

On Tuesday, he resigned from that university's Center for Jewish Studies over its atmosphere of pervasive anti-Zionism and its indifference to the new wave of antisemitism.

"I see no place for me to remain affiliated with CJS which has turned into an echo chamber of silence and in which those, such as myself, who are unapologetic Zionists feel increasingly isolated," Dr. Gross wrote in his resignation letter.

Gross was unsparing in his critique of his progressive colleagues refusing to support Israel when it was being bombarded by thousands of rockets, or, worse, siding with Hamas. "Most of you stayed silent when Israel was attacked (again!). Some of you thought it opportune to shine your golden entry ticket to progressive circles by actually condemning the Jewish state," he charged.

Worse, he accuses his colleagues at CJS of silence in the face of new attacks against Jews worldwide. "Most of you stayed silent even when anti-Semitism and physical violence against Jews in the United States increased, this time not by individuals wearing red MAGA hats but rather the colors of the Palestinian flag," Gross continued.

Exposing how unwilling the CJS is in allowing any opinions to be stated that reject the prevailing anti-Israel orthodoxy, Gross writes, "If anything, CJS has turned into a space that rejects, institutionally, any principled position-taking in support of Israel. It is 'safe' as long as one shies away from engaging with vicious, hurtful attacks especially from within the University. "

"It is thus, with a heavy heart, that I inform you all of the decision to resign my affiliation with CJS effective immediately."

This is not only a problem at the University of Minnesota. As Professor Andrew Pessin recently wrote here, over 200 Jewish Studies academics signed a letter condemning Israel for defending itself in May.

However, Gross says that he will still be involved in Jewish studies - just not at CJS. "I shall thus seek to establish new and vigorous fora for the pursuit of Jewish and Israel studies at the University of Minnesota as well as outside its academic walls," his letter concludes.

Perhaps he is already working on establishing a inter-university Jewish Studies forum that will allow true freedom of expression, something that is increasingly rare in academia.

(h/t MtTB)

06/03 Links Pt2: From Disillusioned Muslim to Christian Arab Zionist; Why Western Media is Biased Against Israel; The video BDS doesn't want you to see

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The opportunity to develop a United Democratic Nations

Before Covid-19 struck, Boris Johnson had decided to invite the Chinese tech giant Huawei to provide parts of Britain’s 5G communications network. Now, with China condemned for causing the pandemic through its reckless behaviour and then behaving like a gangster state in resorting to lies, threats and manipulation, the government is proposing an alliance of ten democratic nations to develop alternatives to Chinese technology.

This “D10” would be composed of the G7 nations — the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan — plus Australia, South Korea and India. It’s an idea that is not only excellent in itself but encapsulates an insight with far-reaching potential to restructure global institutions.

What’s actually outdated is the idea that peace and justice can only be advanced by the world acting as one big united family. This belief in the brotherhood of man lay behind the foundation of the United Nations in 1945. Yet the UN has not only failed to live up to its ideals of confronting aggression, preserving peace and defending human rights, but has in fact helped thwart them.

Given that most countries are tyrannies, kleptocracies or rogue states, a global body which brings them all together will inevitably be dominated by their unsavoury characteristics.

What’s needed instead is a United Democratic Nations. This is an idea that has often been floated wistfully by critics of the UN but dismissed as quixotic. The D10 proposal, however, could be the launchpad for just such a body. Going beyond the issue of Huawei and 5G technology, democracies should band together to defend freedom and justice by standing up to the depredations of regimes that seek to extinguish them.

The UN might have been created as a result of the shattering impact of the Second World War. It was founded, however, on a starry-eyed denial of the fact that if a lion lies down with a lamb, the lion doesn’t turn vegan but the lamb gets eaten.

From Disillusioned Muslim to Christian Arab Zionist

I am a Jordanian Arab from a Muslim family. I was born in 1989. In 2010, I decided to leave Islam after becoming fed up with all the jihadist violence and intolerance and persecution of non-Muslims. What made my decision final was the realization that this violence and hatred was justified by verses of the Koran and Hadith.

From 2010-2012, I was an atheist, though I continued to seek the truth regarding God and religion, even visiting Buddhist temples in Amman.

I was a university student at the time, and announced my newfound atheism through social media, which immediately turned many friends and colleagues against me. They felt I was backwards in my thinking, and I came to feel the same about them.

As you are no doubt aware, atheism is detested in the Arab and Islamic world. I faced a lot of hurtful opposition from those around me, but I kept my head down and focused on completing my university studies. It wasn’t easy. There were those who tried to have me kicked out because of my stance against Islam, but they failed.

In 2012, I decided to visit a church and learn more about Christianity. I was curious about Jesus. After four months of investigating, I joined an international church under the auspices of an American priest. On the very first day, I was asked to pray for salvation, after which one of the Christian brothers gave me weekly Bible lessons. Shortly after, I was baptized in the Jordan River.

Jordan is seen by many as a moderate Arab Muslim country. But even here, it is illegal to leave Islam. The civil courts are still governed by Sharia law, and to have someone complain against you for rejecting Islam can result in criminal punishment.

This didn’t deter me, and in 2012, I made an online video telling people in Arabic about how I’d become a Christian. Several days later, I was attacked by three radical Muslims. I also received threats from a radical Salafi movement under the leadership of Jarrah Rahahleh, an international terrorist, who used to send jihadists to Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and was arrested many times by Jordanian authorities. Further threats came from others.

Jewish Vengeance

Thus it was that the group that would come to be known as the “Nakam,” Hebrew for “Avengers,” was born. In the spring of 1945, a Passover gathering of survivors in Bucharest was addressed by Abba Kovner, the young leader of the Jewish uprising in the Vilna ghetto. Kovner was born in 1918 in Sebastopol, Russia, and spent his high school years in Vilna, where he joined Ha-Shomer Hatzair youth movement. When the Germans invaded and occupied Lithuania, they rounded up the Jews and put them in a ghetto. Kovner pleaded with Vilna’s Jews to join the partisans in a popular uprising, but they refused. After briefly fighting the Germans, Kovner and other partisans fled to the forest. While there, they destroyed 180 miles of train tracks, five bridges, 40 enemy train cars and killed 212 German soldiers. He returned to Vilna with the Red Army on July 7, 1944, capturing the city from the Germans on July 13, 1944. After the war, he and 50 other partisans attempted to poison thousands of Nazi and SS prisoners in a Nuremberg POW camp. It is unknown how many Germans were killed. In 1961 he testified at the trial of Adolf Eichmann. In 1970, he won the “Israel Prize” in literature for his poetry.

At that gathering, Kovner spoke passionately and invoked Psalm 94, in which God promises that he shall deal with the enemies of the people of Israel. “He will turn upon them their own violence and with their own wickedness destroy them.” This, Kovner suggested, was the fate that should be meted out to the Germans. And if the courts of international justice would not do it, then the Jews should do it themselves.

Calmly, the group set about implementing the death sentences they themselves had passed. First, they would identify a Nazi who had melted back into civilian life. They would then stage an arrest and spirit the German away. Some of these ex-SS men were strangled, others hanged. The deaths of those who were hanged could be passed off as suicides. Hangings might take place in a garage, with the subject forced to stand on a car roof while his neck was placed in the noose attached to an overhead beam. An Avenger would drive the car away and the man would be strangled. These efforts endured into the 1950s. The executioners kept their mouths shut and took their secrets to their graves.

The Nakam went to Spain, Latin America, Canada, and other places where Nazi murderers found refuge. In one such operation, the Nakam tracked down Alexander Laak, responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Jews at the Estonian concentration camp of Jagala. One evening they waited for Laak’s wife to leave for the movies, went to his home, and confronted him with his crimes and their intended punishment. They gave him a choice: They would kill him, or he could do it himself. He hung himself.

Benjamin Levi, one of the avengers, recalled that period in his life saying, “I saw a lot of things. I saw very noble people become animals. And very plain people become noble.” He had joined the partisans during the war and helped to liberate Vilna. He and his comrades rounded up Lithuanians who had collaborated with the Germans and shot them on the spot. “We didn’t keep prisoners,” he said. “There was no discussion. It was a normal thing.” All enemies were immediately shot. “The moment I start to think about this more and more memories come,” he said to a later interviewer. “We don’t talk about this anymore. But it’s alive inside.”

After the founding of the State of Israel, the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, undertook the task of tracking down former Nazis and killing them, and in some cases, putting them on trial. But that’s another story.