Showing posts with label Jewish nationalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jewish nationalism. Show all posts

Sunday, April 02, 2023

From Jewish Voice for Peace's Facebook page:

Nationalism is chametz, during Passover and always! 
Freedom only for some is never enough. This Passover, at a time when violence against Palestinians by the Israeli state, military and settlers continues to escalate, we gather to demand and dream liberation for everyone.
For anti-Zionist Jews, this holiday can be a challenging time. For some, it can feel impossible to separate our holiday traditions from Zionist propaganda advocating ethnic cleansing and land theft. Many of us feel reluctant to even celebrate the holiday as Zionist terror escalates in Palestine. And many of us may be facing yet another holiday where our beliefs and politics are not welcome.  
This year, bring your whole anti-Zionist self to our virtual seder! Our beloved community is coming together to set the Pesach table for you. Our seder will feature joy and rage and hope from our Havurah, BIJOCSM and student networks, our campaigns, our rabbis, and from JVP members from near and far—all gathered for collective liberation for us all. 


They never seem to have a problem with Palestinian nationalism. I wonder why.

Their latest "Haggadah" is just as twisted in its interpretations of what Passover is about. I looked at a previous version in 2012, which was 28 pages long and included an essay on "pinkwashing." 

Apparently that was way too much for the current TikTok generation that JVP wants to attract, so this new one is a mere 14 pages long, deleting nearly all of Maggid, Hallel and Nirtzah. it doesn't even describe the overstuffed seder plate of the previous editions that included an olive (for Palestinians)  and an orange (for feminists and LGBTQ+.). 

This one still includes the third cup of wine celebrating BDS, though.





Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, January 30, 2023

Former HRW head Ken Roth and other haters of Israel like to claim that antisemitic attacks by Muslims to Jews are often a response to Israel's actions, and therefore Israeli actions is partially responsible for those antisemitic attacks.

There is a tiny grain of truth there, but the modern antisemites are looking at the issue from the wrong angle.

We need to have a short overview of Islamic attitudes towards Jews.

Many apologists claim that Jews thrived under Muslim rule, and insist that Jews had a "golden age" in Spain under Islam. They purposefully airbrush two major but critical features of Jewish life in Muslim countries.

The first thing they ignore is that, while Jews under Islam did not suffer nearly as much as they did under Christendom, there were still some periods of serious persecution. Jewish Virtual Library summarizes some of the worst cases:
On December 30, 1066, Joseph HaNagid, the Jewish vizier of Granada, Spain, was crucified by an Arab mob that proceeded to raze the Jewish quarter of the city and slaughter its 5,000 inhabitants. The riot was incited by Muslim preachers who had angrily objected to what they saw as inordinate Jewish political power.

Similarly, in 1465, Arab mobs in Fez slaughtered thousands of Jews, leaving only 11 alive, after a Jewish deputy vizier treated a Muslim woman in an offensive manner. The killings
touched off a wave of similar massacres throughout Morocco.

Other mass murders of Jews in Arab lands occurred in Morocco in the 8th century, where whole communities were wiped out by Muslim ruler Idris I; North Africa in the 12th century, where the Almohads either forcibly converted or decimated several communities; Libya in 1785, where Ali Burzi Pasha murdered hundreds of Jews; Algiers, where Jews were massacred in 1805, 1815 and 1830 and Marrakesh, Morocco, where more than 300 hundred Jews were murdered between 1864 and 1880.

Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted in Egypt and Syria (1014, 1293-4, 1301-2), Iraq (854-859, 1344) and Yemen (1676). Despite the Koran's prohibition, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in Yemen (1165 and 1678), Morocco (1275, 1465 and 1790-92) and Baghdad (1333 and 1344).

Even so, these persecutions and pogroms did not approach the horror of those under Christian rule, for two reasons: Islam did not have the same antipathy towards Judaism as a religion as Christianity did, and Muslim leaders would allow Jews who were forced to convert to convert back in later generations. At the same time, most Jewish rabbinical leaders in Muslim lands said that conversion to Islam was not considered idol worship and did not require martyrdom; Jews could accept the Muslim declaration of faith without violating Torah law and remain secret Jews much easier than the crypto-Jews of Spain and Portugal.  

The second thing that the apologists ignore is the pervasive issue of dhimmitude. Jews were legally defined as second class citizens, and usually had to submit to humiliating rules and the jizya tax, in exchange for state protection. By any yardstick, this was official persecution of a minority - apartheid, if you will - limiting how Jews could act, dress, pray, work, travel and interact with Muslims. 

 Given that Jews didn't have any better options, they generally accepted this tradeoff, because most Christian countries were worse. Muslims were of course quite comfortable with this class system with Muslims on top, dhimmis in the middle and infidels on the bottom, not to be tolerated at all. 

For the better part of a millenium this was the situation of Jews in the Muslim world - second class citizenship that was accepted, punctuated with occasional cases of major persecutions. 

This was the status quo. 

And Zionism has upset that status quo.

Zionism is the philosophy that Jews deserve to be treated exactly like other peoples. It is compatible with modernity - and utterly incompatible with the Muslim view of Jews since the 8th century. 

Today's Muslims don't attack Jews because Jews are mistreating Muslims and Arabs. They know that Muslims are treated far worse in other Muslim countries. They attack Jews because they cannot stomach a world where Jews assert their rights, and they want to put the Jews back in their proper place. They do not want Jews to challenge their worldview. They want to turn back the clock to the good old days where they could strike Jews for riding a donkey. 

That's why they claim to want a binational state - but only one where they are the majority. It would be a step towards re-asserting their control over Jews and placing Jews back to dhimmitude. Anything less is an insult to their pride and honor. 

How better to assert your superiority than to attack Jewish institutions and Jewish people? How better to revert to a situation of Jews fearing to upset their Muslim overlords than to instill fear through terror today?

So in a narrow sense, Israeli actions do prompt Muslim antisemitic attacks - because Israeli actions are showing the world that Jews will not be pushed around anymore, no longer depending on gentiles for their safety. Jews are ready to pro-actively stop terror attacks on their own terms, not weakly surrender to the whims of the current ruler. 

So, yes, some attacks by Muslims against Jews are indeed a reaction to Israel's actions - but they are not tit for tat, nor a cycle of violence. They are an attempt to take Jews back down a few notches to what Muslims consider their proper place. 

This is only part of the story. Antisemitism goes much deeper that that. It is a remarkably adaptive hate, and this is only one component of the Palestinian version. Palestinian Christians maintain the supersessionist ideas of the Church; Palestinian socialists frame the conflict as a class issue where Jews are the oppressive class, Islamists like Hamas believe that killing Jews is a necessary step to salvation in end times. Amazingly, all these conflicting philosophies of antisemitism co-exist beautifully because antisemitism itself is, I believe, an independent mindset that can find an infinite set of excuses to justify hate, and it is the only belief system that Palestinians have in common with each other. (And this is also why today's "progressives," who should oppose dhimmitude and support Zionism as a Jewish minority rights movement, instead find other excuses to oppose Jewish assertions of self-determination.)

But within the historical Muslim frame of reference, modern antisemitism is a desire to put the Jews back in their place. And every time Israel asserts Jewish rights, mainstream Muslims get angry enough at this humiliation to want to kill Jews and terrorize them to submit, as they did in what they consider the good old days.

Obviously, a crazed psychological linkage between Jews acting assertively in their defense and Muslima attacking Jews is not the Jews' fault. Only bigots think Muslims cannot control their emotions, that they cannot accept a multicultural world where all peoples have rights, and that they are not responsible for their actions. And only antisemites would blame Jews for antisemitic attacks.

But the linkage is there. 

And if we are going to fight a war against all the kinds of antisemitism that are out there, we need to understand the different and often contradictory motivations that make hating Jews so appealing to so many. 

(Some information from Professor Mark R. Cohen)



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Thursday, April 14, 2022

Yesterday, Noura Erakat gave a lecture at the Illinois Global Institute of the University of Illinois  Urbana-Champaign, titled, "Unfinished Business: Zionism as Racism and Racial Discrimination."


I tweeted how absurd it is that a literal hate speech that characterizes Jewish nationalism - and ONLY Jewish nationalism - as racism should be co-sponsored by an organization that supposedly cares about inclusion. I also created this meme to educate the Diversity office.


Others complained as well.

Finally, after the lecture, the University sent out a mass mailing to all students:

Dear Students Faculty and Staff:

The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity Equity & Inclusion was incorrectly identified as a co-sponsor for a campus lecture titled “Unfinished Business Zionism as Racism and Racial Discrimination." As worded, this title does not invite participation and engagement with all members of our Community and does not represent the values of our university.

Academic freedom and freedom of expression are bedrock principles of this institution and are necessary for the exploration of controversial, divisive or uncomfortable issues — even those that are in opposition to this university's clearly stated positions and values.

Any future lectures in this series will make clear that these are not sponsored by our office nor do the viewpoints expressed represent the university.

I am sorry for any additional discomfort or distress some may have felt when it appeared that it was sponsored of endorsed by the office that is charged with helping us turn the aspiration of belonging and inclusion into a universal practice.

Sincerely

Sean C Garrick
Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
There is a bit of tone-deafness here from an office of diversity, equity and inclusion. And the description of the lecture still includes the claim that they are a co-sponsor as of this writing. 

It is also an attempt at gaslighting. When they say, "Any future lectures in this series will make clear that these are not sponsored by our office nor do the viewpoints expressed represent the university," they know very well that this was the last lecture in the series! It is an empty gesture.

Still, a mailing to all students to distance the university from the hate espoused by Noura Erakat is welcome, and hopefully other universities will be a little more sensitive to the fact that these lectures are not "pro-Palestinian" but hate speech meant to destroy the world's only Jewish state, and offensive to any proud Jew.

(h/t Judith)



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

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