Showing posts with label Jews have always been Zionist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jews have always been Zionist. Show all posts

Friday, January 06, 2023

Haaretz headlines over the past month keep trying to top themselves in derangement. Here's one from today:


Yes, Netanyahu is an anti-Zionist!

But wait: in 2018, Haaretz had other op-eds on Netanyahu:




These articles comes right up to the line of accusing Bibi of antisemitism because he criticizes George Soros. 

So this is great news:

Even Haaretz admits that anti-Zionists are antisemites!

But there's more, from today's Haaretz. If you want to be anti-Israel, you should abandon Judaism!


Judaism is Zionism and anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Haaretz said so, and no religious Zionist could have said it better.




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!

 

 

Friday, December 02, 2022








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!

 

 


Tuesday, November 29, 2022






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!

 

 


Friday, November 25, 2022

From Ian:

No Good Jew Goes Unpunished
REVIEW: ‘Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities’

Tamkin’s personal leanings often make her an unreliable narrator. She tries to sanitize the Second Intifada as "a Palestinian uprising that came from the failure of the peace process in the first decade of the 2000s and the violence that ensued," a sentence worthy of Orwell’s "Politics and the English Language." She describes Jewish Currents, which she admires, as "the magazine founded for the Jewish Left back in 1946," leaving out that it was Stalinist. She congratulates Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) for apologizing for an anti-Semitic remark, without mentioning that Omar quickly walked back the apology and reiterated her conspiracy theory.

Notably bad is Tamkin’s discussion of the neoconservatives. Hostile framings and poor paraphrases of Irving Kristol arguments are one thing. Another is that she doesn’t seem to know what she’s talking about. The first words she uses to describe neocon intellectuals are "free-market capitalists"; in fact, they were notable within the conservative movement for accepting limits on the free market and making peace with the New Deal, while critiquing excesses of the Great Society on empirical grounds. Next, she writes, "Neoconservatives actually started out as leftist radicals. They were disciples of Leon Trotsky." For most neocons, this is false. Norman Podhoretz, for instance, was never a Trotskyist. Some, like Kristol, had been Trots in college, but their Marxist credentials were far inferior to, say, those of many founding editors and writers of the conservative (no "neo") National Review.

The problem can be traced to the book’s citations. Tamkin’s pattern is to rely on a single secondary source for information, citing it several times consecutively to cover a topic, before moving on to another single source, also cited several times in a row, for a new topic. In her neocons chapter, she cites Benjamin Balint’s book on Commentary 16 times in a row. I’ve read the book and it is serviceable, but it is only one view on a topic on which countless words have been written. Commentary’s archives are also available online. To rely so thoroughly on single sources is indicative of laziness, frankly, and lack of knowledge.

Tamkin claims to argue that there’s no such thing as a good Jew or bad Jew. But her heart isn’t in it. At every opportunity, she valorizes her bad Jews, the ones who vilify Israel and the American Jewish community. They’re the heroes. Eli Valley, the Jewish cartoonist known for drawing Israelis and pro-Israel Americans as Nazis, she fawns over. Her comment that "multiple people, on learning that I was writing this book, told me that I had to speak to Valley. His work meant so much to them, they told me. It had helped them figure out their own relationship to Jewishness" is perhaps more revealing than she intended.

The flip side is that Tamkin clearly thinks her good Jews are bad. The major Jewish organizations are portrayed throughout as morally indefensible; even Jewish leadership in the civil-rights movement is unconvincingly labeled a "myth." Anticommunists and Israel supporters are cast as fear- and guilt-ridden tyrants, synogogue-goers as conformist and xenophobic. In her most disgusting passage, Tamkin blames the deadly 2018 shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue on Donald Trump and then immediately uses the tragedy to dump on Orthodox Jews—themselves the victims of most anti-Semitic violence—for several paragraphs.

At the end, Tamkin has one last somersault to perform: excusing left-wing anti-Semitism. "When I hear that the fixation should be on antisemitism on the left," she writes, "I recall that there was a reason that American Jewish professionals in the 1960s decided not to focus on the antisemitism within the Nation of Islam," namely, that it could detract from the broader progressive struggle. She then has a quote that the response to left-wing anti-Semitism should be "to show up more" to left-wing causes. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), it is made clear, is the ideal type. At last, and in so many words, we have Tamkin’s elusive definition of a good Jew: a leftist.

Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities by Emily Tamkin
Whoopi Goldberg, Here’s Why Hamas Is Recognized as a Terror Organization
Whoopi Goldberg, the famed American actress and co-host of the ABC daily talk show The View, has come under fire for seemingly questioning whether Hamas is a terror organization.

During a discussion on The View about Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s past statements on foreign affairs, co-host Sara Haines brought up Omar’s June 2021 comment that equated the United States and Israel with the Taliban and Hamas.

Remember when Whoopi Goldberg claimed the Holocaust wasn’t racism, it was white people fighting white people?

Well, she’s at it again… While Haines was expressing her indignation at Omar’s comment, she referred to Hamas and the Taliban as “organized terrorist communities,” to which Goldberg responded, “Depends on who you talk to.”

So, to help Whoopi Goldberg and her viewers understand who considers Hamas to be a terrorist organization and why they do so, the following is a brief guide to everything you need to know about the organization.

Hamas, also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, is currently recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, Canada, the Organization of American States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In addition, New Zealand and Paraguay have designated the military wing of Hamas as a terror organization.

The reason that so many states and supranational bodies designate Hamas as a terror organization is that, since its founding in 1987, Hamas has been responsible for some of the most heinous attacks on civilians in Israeli history.


Children chant massacre-Jews song at North London school
An Iranian propaganda video in which dozens of children sing a song that references an apocalyptic myth about massacring Jews was filmed at a school just 15 minutes’ walk from the New London synagogue in St John’s Wood, a JC investigation has revealed.

In the video, shot earlier this year in the playground of the Islamic Republic of Iran School (IRIS) near Queen’s Park station, the children sing about joining 313 mythical warriors in a conflict against the infidels, when (according to the present Iranian regime) Israel will be obliterated and Jews killed.

Some scenes were also shot at the nearby Islamic Centre of England (ICE), which is controlled by the Iranian regime and linked to the school. ICE is currently the subject of a statutory inquiry by the Charity Commission, as the JC disclosed last week.

The song, entitled Hello Commander, has been praised by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who claims its popularity proves his people’s “loyalty to the system”, Iranian pro-regime media has reported.

Its recording in St John’s Wood, in easy reach of several synagogues and Jewish centres, has raised serious concerns among community security officials.

In the London video, rows of boys in white shirts and pressed black trousers and girls in blue flares, white blouses and matching hijabs can be seen saluting and singing their allegiance to their “commander”, Ayatollah Khamenei.

The children, aged between eight and 15, sing: “Without you, this life has no meaning. This life comes alive when you are here for me.”

They then sing about fighting in history’s final battle for the mythical leader known as the Mahdi, last seen supposedly almost 1,200 years ago.

Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Columbia professor Joseph Massad is very upset that Jews are claiming the right to self-determination. If Jews indeed have the right to self-determination, then opposing that really is a form of antisemitism, and antisemites like Massad cannot admit to that.

His normal method is to claim that Jews aren't a people, and that most Jews do not originate in the Middle East. If they aren't a people, then they have no right to self-determination.

But Massad knows that everyone knows that is a lie besides dyed in the wool antisemites who call Jews "Khazars." 

So he has come up with a new argument: that the self-determination argument was never a Zionist tenet, rather it was a Palestinian Arab one.
Since the inception of their war against the Palestinian people, Zionist ideologues did not argue for Jewish self-determination but rather sought to delegitimise the indigenous Palestinians’ right to it. In the tradition of all colonial powers which denied that the colonised were a nation, the Zionists began by denying the nationness of the Palestinians. 

Actually, the Zionists didn't even address the "nationness" of the Palestinian Arabs, who themselves didn't assert such a status (except for a tiny number of intellectuals) until decades after Zionism was established.

At the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I, the Zionist Organisation (ZO) did not invoke any "Jewish" right to self-determination, even though self-determination was all the rage at the conference, with colonised peoples from around the world affirming this right to liberate themselves from the colonial yoke. 

The ZO instead argued that Palestine "is the historic home of the Jews…and through the ages they have never ceased to cherish the longing and the hope of a return". 

Massad takes this statement out of context. The ZO's proposals were not meant to be a definition of Zionism, rather recommendations to the allies with an eye to what was politically possible. Even so, they did use the language of rights in their suggested conference statement: "The High Contracting Parties recognize the historic title of the Jewish people to Palestine and the right of Jews to reconstitute in Palestine their National Home. "

Massad then makes an astoundingly incorrect assertion:

It is most important to note in this regard that, unlike the more recent and increased use by Zionists of the notion of Jewish self-determination, neither Herzl’s writings, the 1897 first Zionist Congress, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, nor the 1922 Palestine Mandate employed the language of "rights", let alone the right of self-determination.  

Herzl's definition was "Zionism has for its object the creation of a home, secured by public rights, for those Jews who either cannot or will not be assimilated in the country of their adoption."

The phrase "public rights" was coined by Italian jurist Pellegrino Rossi in the 1830s. It meant universal rights for people - what it now called human rights. Herzl's definition of Zionism was based on the idea that Jews have the same rights as any other people, which would by implication include self-determination, a phrase that didn't gain popularity until the 1910s

Massad cherry picks specific documents and statements and says that because they don't invoke "rights' or "self-determination,"then Zionists as a whole didn't use that language until recently.  That is laughable. 

book on Zionism and the Jewish question by famed juror Louis Brandeis in 1915 says, "Jews collectively should enjoy the same right and opportunity to live and develop as do other groups of people."

Similarly, Jessie Ethel Sampter  published "A Course in Zionism "in 1915, and wrote, "The Jew is always foremost in every modem movement towards justice. In the 18th century he fought for individual human rights, as his rights. In the 20th century he fights for the rights of the small nations to life and autonomy, also as his right. It is the democracy of nations, internationalism. "

Massad is even wrong in his assertion that self-determination is a new claim by Zionists.  "A Jewish State in Palestine" by David Werner Amram (1918) says that the Zionist movement was partially a result of the "consciousness of the right of self-expression and self-determination of the Jewish people." The phrase did not have to be said explicitly by the early Zionists; it was well understood as one of many national rights that Jews should have as a people.

Similarly, the preface to a book written by the Zionist Organization in London in 1918 says, "Only by their resettlement in their ancestral land of Palestine...will the Jews be able to exercise the right of self-determination."

Early Zionists always asserted their national rights as the Jewish nation as well as the right of self-determination. It is not a new phenomenon. Massad's pretense that this is a new definition of Zionism is yet another failed attempt to delegitimize Zionism - and to push his brand of modern antisemitism. 





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!

 

 

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

From Ian:

Bari Weiss: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Kanye, Kyrie, and Antisemitism
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired from the NBA in 1989, but he remains one of the greatest basketball players of all time. Many argue he is simply the greatest.

He is still—even with Michael Jordan and Steph Curry and Lebron and Shaq and Kobe—the NBA’s all-time leading scorer (38,387 points) and the league’s only six-time MVP. In March, the basketball news site HoopsHype included Abdul-Jabbar in its list of the top ten most influential players of all time. ESPN called him the greatest center in NBA history.

As Jews say every Passover: It would have been enough.

But there’s so much more that makes the 7-foot-2-inch Abdul-Jabbar a true giant. His religious conviction, his integrity, his wide-ranging intellectual proclivities, his outstanding performance in the 1981 movie Airplane!—and the unusual fact that this black, Muslim basketball star has been a consistent and outspoken voice against antisemitism.

For all those reasons, I wanted to speak with Abdul-Jabbar about the various firestorms of late: Kanye and his antisemitic rants; Kyrie Irving’s promotion of an antisemitic movie that denies the Holocaust; and the alarming rash of anti-Jewish hate crimes seemingly inspired by their worldview. A few weeks ago, a banner declaring “Kanye was right” hung over the 405 in Los Angeles as people gave Nazi salutes. On Halloween, the side of a townhouse in an Atlanta neighborhood was sprayed with graffiti: “Jews kill Blacks.” On the stop sign around the corner: “Jews enslave Black lives.” Last week, headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Chicago were vandalized with swastikas and the phrase “Kanye was rite.” And in Brooklyn, physical attacks against Orthodox Jews have become routine.

I asked Abdul-Jabbar about all of that and more in the Q and A below. And if you’re looking for more from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, check out his Substack, where he writes and talks about everything from basketball to pop culture to politics. — BW

BW: I want to focus on Farrakhan’s influence. He believes that Jews are parasitic, that Jews are behind a plot to exploit black Americans, and that blacks are the real Jews from the Bible. We’re hearing these ideas come out of the mouths of musicians like Kanye West (“Jewish people have owned the black voice”) and athletes like Kyrie Irving (“I cannot be antisemitic if I know where I come from”). For many Jews, hearing this kind of rhetoric is shocking, but many black Americans have noted that these views are more commonplace than we’d like to admit. So what I think a lot of people are afraid to ask is: How mainstream are these beliefs among black Americans? Are Kanye and Kyrie unique? Or has the influence of people like Farrakhan made this strain of antisemitism somehow more normal than many want to believe?

KAJ: Certain black leaders do exactly what certain white leaders do who want to gather followers, money, and power: They find a scapegoat they can blame. They can’t blame others who are marginalized because of the color of their skin, like Latinx or Asian-Americans, so they go for the default villain of fascists and racists: Jews.

What astounds me is not just the irrationality of it, but how self-destructive it is. Black people have to know that when they mouth antisemitism, they are using the exact same kind of reasoning that white supremacists use against blacks. They are enabling racism. Now they’ve aligned themselves with the very people who would choke out black people, drag them behind a truck, keep them from voting, and maintain systemic racism for another hundred years. They are literally making not only their lives worse, but their children’s lives. The fact that they can’t see that means the racists have won.
British Comedian David Baddiel Takes His ‘Jews Don’t Count’ Argument to TV
David Baddiel, a comedian-turned-activist against antisemitism who calls himself “one of the U.K.’s very few famous Jews,” was holding court in the basement of one of Britain’s best-known TV studios.

As a reporter headed hurriedly for the exit, Baddiel slouched into his chair, seemingly exhausted by the interview he had just completed about the forthcoming documentary based on his 2021 bestseller, “Jews Don’t Count.”

“I am speaking to many people like the last journalist who had not thought about any of this in their life,” he said.

The “this” Baddiel was referring to was to the idea, outlined in his book, that progressive anti-racists are guilty of hypocrisy towards Jews by not viewing them as worthy of similar protection or championing as other minorities because they are seen as white, privileged and wealthy.

When the book came out last year, it received rave reviews, and Baddiel has since become seen by some as a “voice for Britain’s Jews.” He often litigates the finer points of contemporary antisemitism as a guest on radio and television, and he has been quick to square off with trolls and critics on Twitter.

Now, with the premiere of an hour-long documentary also called “Jews Don’t Count” on Britain’s public Channel 4 network, Baddiel gets a primetime slot to make his case to a bigger audience. Featuring Baddiel’s interviews with Jewish stars of pop culture in both Britain and the United States — ranging from comedian Sarah Silverman to novelist Jonathan Safran Foer to actor Stephen Fry — the film argues that “in a culture where all forms of racism are being monitored, called out and held accountable, one form is apparently invisible.”
Can we fight antisemitism without losing our sense of humor?
If a comic with a huge following like Dave Chappelle goes over the line, he will immediately be put under a societal microscope that will analyze and respond from every possible angle, as I’m doing now.

If you run an organization that fights antisemitism, or simply cares for the welfare of the Jewish community, it’s almost certain that you will feel obligated to respond. Many of those responses follow the usual dance of “expose, condemn and ask for an apology.”

Chappelle himself poked fun at that dance at the start of his monologue: “Before I start tonight, I just wanted to read a brief statement that I prepared. I denounce antisemitism in all its forms and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community. And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time.”

Chappelle exposed the uneasy truth of celebrities getting caught saying something offensive and then releasing a statement that everyone knows was written by a PR handler. By revealing the goal of “buying yourself some time,” he captured the phoniness of the whole exercise.

That was cutting and funny. It’s when he played up antisemitic tropes around the “all powerful” Jew that he entered dicey territory.

“I’ve been to Hollywood,” he said. “And I don’t want y’all to get mad at me, I’m just telling you this is just what I saw. It’s a lot of Jews. Like a lot.”

Perhaps realizing he was on sensitive ground, he called the idea that Jews run show business a “delusion,” but then added: “It’s not a crazy thing to think. But it’s a crazy thing to say out loud in a climate like this.”

In other words, it’s not crazy to think that Jews run the show; just don’t say it out loud.

Whether he intended it or not, that “hush hush” vibe suggests mystery and conspiracy, precisely the ancient trope that fuels Jew-hatred and makes so many Jews nervous.

Which brings us back to the “Chappelle trap.” It’s one thing to fight antisemitism when it comes from places like a neo-Nazi march or a BDS group or even celebrity musicians or athletes. None of those people make a living by making us laugh.

Chappelle does.

Because Chappelle plays in the very Jewish playground of comedy, it makes it that much harder to calibrate our response. How do we fight a comic without losing our sense of humor, without losing what made America love us in the first place? At what point do we say, “We can’t take this joke because it goes too far?”

If the ritual of “expose, condemn and ask for an apology” is phony anyhow, is it worth losing our sense of humor? And does complaining so loudly, as much as it makes us feel good, make things better or worse?

In the classic Jewish tradition, I have more questions than answers.








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!

 

 

Friday, November 18, 2022


By Daled Amos


Last week, while reading online articles about the political situation in and surrounding Israel, I wasn't really expecting to come across articles discussing Chumash.

Then again, with a title like Abraham The Zionist, and this week being Parshas Chayyei Sarah, Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz's article in JNS should not have been a surprise. 

The Parsha begins, of course, with Avraham buying a burial plot for his wife Sarah in Hebron, and the Torah goes over the negotiations for the land in some detail. The commentators ask why so much attention is paid to the circumstances surrounding the sale and they offer various answers.

Rabbi Steinmetz refers to one commentator in particular:

As Ibn Ezra [23:19] notes, the purchase of a burial plot for her marks the beginning of the future Jewish state. [emphasis added]

In an article on the HaTanakh.com website, Rabbi David Silverberg makes a similar point and expands on it. He notes that

Ibn Ezra further comments that this incident is significant in that it marks the first stage in the fulfillment of God’s promise that Avraham and his offspring would possess Eretz Yisrael.

 This promise is made to Avraham earlier in Bereshit 17:8:

To you and your offspring I will give the land where you are now living as a foreigner. The whole land of Canaan shall be [your] eternal heritage, and I will be a G_d to [your descendants]. [translation: Aryeh Kaplan]

But Avraham is not the only one of the Avot (forefathers) who bought land in Eretz Yisrael. Just as Avraham bought land in Hebron, so too did Yaakov buy land -- just outside of Shechem [33:19]. 

In fact, Avraham and Yaakov were not the only two who bought land in Canaan -- just as Hebron and Shechem were not the only two areas where land was acquired on behalf of the Jewish people.

In her New Studies in Bereshit (p. 208), Nechama Leibowitz quotes from the Midrash in Bereshit 79:7


This is reminiscent of the first Rashi in Chumash, which explains that the Torah begins with the creation of the world in order to provide Jews with a counter-argument against those who would accuse them of "stealing" the Land of Israel.

Hebron.
Shechem.
Jerusalem.

All 3 cities established as Jewish cities, central to Jews.

In his Sefer, Eretz Yisrael in the Parashah: The Centrality of the Land of Israel in the Torah, Rabbi Moshe D. Lichtman points out another verse in the Chumash that highlights this Jewish connection to the land:


Land of the Hebrews

However we understand this phrase, this verse indicates that on some level, despite being a small group -- albeit 70 members -- living in Canaan, the family of Yaakov was recognized for its connection to a specific area in that part of the land of Canaan.

This points to the ancient history and connection of the Jewish people in the land that long precedes the appearance of the Arabs, who after all are indigenous to Arabia.

But there are Jewish groups today who recognize the Jewish connection to Eretz Yisrael, yet still maintain their distance while at the same time demanding the right to have a say in how the Jewish state conducts itself.

I mention this because of another article I came across this past week with an unexpected interpretation of the Chumash. While I enjoy Melanie Phillips's articles, I generally don't read her for her insights on the Torah. But she did have an interesting perspective on Jewish groups who criticized the recent Israel elections and took it upon themselves to advise Netanyahu on who should not be included in his cabinet.

In Dragons and Dragon-Slayers in Israel and America, Phillips writes:

Israel is indeed a state for the Jewish nation. However, membership in a nation confers obligations on its people to behave as a nation.

After all, the Torah itself tells us that when the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh said they wanted to settle east of the Jordan because the pastures there were more fertile, they were told they could do so only on condition that they first fought alongside the other tribes to conquer the land of Israel.

But American Jews such as those in Mercaz Olami [the Zionist umbrella arm of Conservative-Masorti Judaism] don’t feel bound by any such obligation. They not only choose not to live in Israel but also choose not to fight in its defense.

Instead, ensconced in a faraway land they prefer, they lob verbal missiles at the tribe from which they have separated themselves when it defends its Jewish identity in ways of which American Jews disapprove.

Today, the long and established Jewish connection to the land does not automatically guarantee an equally well-established sense of Jewish identity and pride in the Jewish people.





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!

 

 

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Jewish Voice for Peace is sponsoring  an event, "Kindle a Hanukkah Light for Palestinian Children's Books!"


One of the books being featured is Ida in the Middle, by Nora Lester Murad.


In this debut novel for Murad, Ida, a bashful Palestinian American teenager, is dreading the final class project: discussing her “passion” with the rest of the class. 

Her anxiety skyrockets when the school principal informs her that she will be representing her school in this eighth-grade capstone for the entire region.

She is terrified at the thought that someone in the audience will shout out “terrorist” as she ascends to the stage, just as someone had scribbled that insult on her school desk. Home alone one afternoon, as she worries yet again about that presentation, she reaches for her comfort food, green olives sent by her aunt all the way from Palestine. 

Olives, as every Palestinian knows, are not just a savoury snack; they encapsulate our culture in each dense nugget. When they are cured by a favourite aunt, they can have magic powers. As she eats the olives, Ida is transported to her parents’ village, Busala, just outside Jerusalem, where she immediately feels at home. 

In this alternate reality, her parents have never left Palestine, and she has grown up with feelings of belonging amid kids who look like her, speak Arabic, and can pronounce her name correctly: ‘Aida, with an ‘ayn.

But life in Busala is also unpredictable, scary, and dangerous because of Israel's occupation. Here, Murad skilfully weaves the narrative between Ida’s fantasy and the all-too-real events of life under occupation, as Ida has to brave Israeli military raids, curfews, and home demolitions. 

We get to read about the strong sense of community that sustains Palestinians as they navigate life in these extremely difficult circumstances. We witness the immense courage of Palestinian children - including Ida herself - as they dodge the occupation forces; and we hear discussions about survival and resistance, including the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. 

There are some exhilarating moments, such as when Ida carries a terrified three-year-old boy to safety, telling him his name, Faris, means “knight,” and that he is their leader, while he explains that her name means “Returning,” and he knows she will not leave him behind, as she scouts their whereabouts for a safe path home. 

And there are heartbreaking moments, as when Ida watches Israeli bulldozers demolish her friend Layla’s family home. This experience transforms Ida and, after having eaten more green olives, she is transported back to Boston, where she gives an impassioned presentation about the hardships that Palestinians endure under Israel’s settler colonialism. 

This is brainwashing youngsters to hate Israel with lies.

Yes, novels can lie - and they can lie far more effectively than most media. 

The town of Busala is fictional. The author wants her audience to believe that it is a typical town where Palestinians live.

The lies aren't in the plot, but in the milieu. Israelis storm Palestinian towns for no reason, they demolish houses for no reason, they attack innocent Palestinian children for no reason, a three year old is in danger of being killed by Israelis for no reason, and most importantly, this is presented as the life of an average Palestinian teen.

Those are all lies. Palestinians in Area A, where most of them live, have little to worry about (this year was a rare exception when towns like Nablus and Jenin were taken over by terror groups that had to be rooted out.) Their houses are never demolished by Israel, and Israel only demolishes houses that were either built illegally or that housed terrorists. The IDF doesn't want or try to kill children. The Palestinian teens in danger are the ones throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks at Israelis.

I'm certain that none of these facts are mentioned in the book.

This isn't an accurate depiction of a Palestinian teen's life; this is propaganda meant to create hate against the unnamed, inhuman Jews who invade and steal lands that they have - according to people like this author - no valid claim to.

The only reason this book was written was to incite hate against Israelis and, indirectly, proud Zionist Jews.

Books about Palestinians do not have to be that way. Another book featured in this webinar, Salim's Soccer Ball, looks to be a very nice children's book that (as far as I can tell) does not try to indoctrinate the young readers into hate. 

Propaganda disguised as young adult novels is insidious. And it needs to be called out.

UPDATE: I spoke too soon on Salim's Soccer Ball. Amazon reviews include:
“I also really love how the book focuses on Palestinian resistance.” 

“A very good book to teach kids about the conflict in Palestine.“

It also includes a "discussion guide." Now, what could be in there? Do books about Japanese children also require discussion guides? 

Yes, they weaponize children's books.

(h/t Irene) 



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!

 

 

Friday, November 04, 2022



At Berkeley Law School, faculty and staff members are encouraged to include their preferred pronouns in email signatures. Students can indicate their preferred pronouns on their law school applications, as well as on their name tags during student orientation.

Clearly, the right to identify oneself as one wishes is important at the law school, and anyone who chooses to ignore those wishes and tell students and staff that they refuse to address them as they self-identify would be marginalized as a bigot, and probably censured.

There is one exception, though.

This fall there has been a controversy at Berkeley Law when nine student organizations will not host events or invite speakers who have expressed views in support of Zionism. Many Jews protested, saying that this effectively discriminated against them as Zionism and Judaism are tightly bound.

The lawyer defending the student organizations, Liz Jackson of Palestine Legal, who is herself an alumnus of the school, defended the discriminatory bylaws in a most curious way:

“Some students say that their Jewish identity is so deeply identified with Zionism that this effectively discriminates against them," Jackson said. "But that’s their subjective view and choice about how they understand their own Jewish identity.”

According to Palestine Legal's lawyer, Jews do not have the right to say that their Judaism includes love of Israel. Self-identification is not a right for Jews, rather, Jewishness is defined by others and Jews must adhere to the definition that anti-Zionists impose on them.

This doesn't sound very progressive. But this is the argument of the Berkeley Law student organizations to defend their blocking any speaker for whom Israel is a central part of their Judaism, which includes the vast majority of Jews.

Jackson herself says she is Jewish. According to her own standards, I can declare that this is only her subjective view and that she is in reality not Jewish. How do you think that argument would go over at Berkeley? Yet that is exactly what she is saying about 95% of all Jews. 

Jackson's hypocrisy doesn't end there. 

Not only does she deny the right of Jews to define Judaism, she denies the right of Zionists to define Zionism!
In an Oct. 3 statement released by ASUC Senator Shay Cohen addressed to LSJP and student groups that adopted the bylaw, student groups alleged that the bylaw was “a deliberate attempt to exclude Jewish students from the community,” and likened anti-Zionism to antisemitism.

“When we say ‘Zionism,’ we mean the Jewish right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, which is Israel,” said Amir Grunhaus, campus senior and president of Tikvah, a Zionist student group that signed the statement. “This does not say anything about the self-determination of Palestinians.”

Jackson expressed disagreement with this definition of Zionism, alleging that it was “colonial ideology” and that it is “problematic” to believe that a religious group has a right to a state of their own as it “requires discrimination” against people outside of that group.
This is "1984"-level thought police stuff. This lawyer defines what her political opponents believe. 

Note also that Jackson here is defining Jews as a purely religious group, not as a people. According to her words, atheist Jews aren't Jews, either. 

Jewish and Zionist identity can only be defined by those who oppose Jewish and Zionist identity.

And this is still not the height of Liz Jackson's hypocrisy.

She wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times against the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act where she falsely claimed that the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, which is incorporated in the Act, makes criticism of Israel illegal on campus. She's lying - the IHRA definition explicitly says that criticism of Israel similar to criticism of any country is not antisemitic.

Jackson wrote:
The State Department standard is highly controversial because it conflates criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Jewish hatred, shutting down debate by suggesting that anyone who looks critically at Israeli policy is somehow beyond the pale. It has no place on college campuses in particular, where we need students to engage in a vigorous exchange of ideas.
Jackson claims she supports a vigorous exchange of ideas on campus. No Zionist I know of disagrees.  But at Berkeley, she has taken the exact opposite stand, and defends organizations making bylaws that ban not only speech that supports Zionism, but they ban Zionist speakers from speaking on any topic whatsoever!

To anti-Zionist hypocrites like Jackson and her organization Palestine Legal, these are the rules:

The right to self-identify is sacred - except for Jews. 
The right to define your own beliefs is sacred - except for Zionists.
The right to free speech is sacred - except for nearly all Jews. 
And calling out this obvious hypocrisy is anti-Palestinian racism. 

(h/t Andrew P)



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Monday, October 31, 2022









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Monday, October 24, 2022

Things I tweeted over the past couple of months that were not posted here (to my recollection.)


















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Friday, October 21, 2022


Inspired by this.






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