Showing posts with label Zionism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zionism. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 28, 2024



Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Contrary to popular antisemitic belief, Jews are not “white Europeans” who so rudely colonized land where “Palestinian” Arabs had lived for thousands of years. First of all, Jews are neither European nor white. Secondly, one cannot colonize one’s own land. Thirdly, “Palestinian” Arabs did not live in pre-state Israel for thousands of years.

It’s all a big, fat lie.

Middle Eastern Political and Religious History Analyst Joseph E. Katz, citing a 1937 Palestine Royal Commission Report out of London, writes:

“The Jewish presence in ‘the Holy Land’ -- at times tenuous -- persisted throughout its bloody history. In fact, the Jewish claim -- whether Arab-born or European-born Jew -- to the land now called Palestine does not depend on a two-thousand-year-old promise. Buried beneath the propaganda -- which has it that Jews ‘returned’ to the Holy Land after two thousand years of separation, where they found crowds of ‘indigenous Palestinian Arabs’ -- is the bald fact that the Jews are indigenous people on that land who never left, but who have continuously stayed on their ‘Holy Land.’ Not only were there the little-known Oriental Jewish communities in adjacent Arab lands, but there had been an unceasing strain of ‘Oriental’ or ‘Palestinian’ Jews in ‘Palestine’ for millennia.”

Katz goes on to cite Reverend James Parkes, an authority on relations between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East. In 1949, Parkes assessed what he called the Jews’ “real title deeds” censuring the Zionist movement for its failure to stress that the Land of Israel has NEVER been without Jews.

It was, perhaps, inevitable that Zionists should look back to the heroic period of the Maccabees and Bar-Cochba, but their real title deeds were written by the less dramatic but equally heroic endurance of those who had maintained the Jewish presence in The Land all through the centuries, and in spite of every discouragement. This page of Jewish history found no place in the constant flood of Zionist propaganda.... The omission allowed the anti-Zionists, whether Jewish, Arab, or European, to paint an entirely false picture of the wickedness of Jewry trying to re-establish a two thousand-year-old claim to the country, indifferent to everything that had happened in the intervening period. It allowed a picture of The Land as a territory which had once been "Jewish," but which for many centuries had been "Arab." In point of fact any picture of a total change of population is false....

It seems possible, even probable, that the failure of Zionist Movement to depict the Jewish presence in the Land in its proper context, is what led to the myth à la mode that Jews are “white” Europeans who up and stole “Palestine” from poor peaceful Arabs who’d lived there for “centuries.” The fact is that there has been a continual Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. There was never a time when there were no Jews living in the Land of Israel, and in fact there is robust evidence that there were significant numbers of Jews living in the Land, throughout time.

Katz tells us that despite physical violence against Jews in the Holy Land by post-Roman Christians, there were over forty Jewish communities that could be traced to the 6th century, comprising "twelve towns on the coast, in the Negev, and east of the Jordan, and thirty-one villages in Galilee and in the Jordan Valley.”

In 438 CE, says Katz, Galilean Jews declared an end to the exile when Empress Eudocia allowed Jews to once again pray on the Temple Mount. Archaeological findings, Katz tells us, bear testimony that in 614 CE, the Jews fought alongside invading Persians to overwhelm the Byzantine garrison in Jerusalem. Yet when the Arabs seized Jerusalem two decades later, they found a city with a strong Jewish identity. The prevailing culture of Jerusalem was Jewish. Despite all the foreigners who had come and gone, raping and pillaging Jewish land, the Holy City remained Jewish in everybody’s minds. Because it was, is, and always will be.

Katz goes on to describe the tragedy that was life for the Jews under Arab Muslim invaders and occupiers. Spoiler Alert: it wasn’t good for the Jews. And still, the Jews, as stiff-necked as their reputation, clung on to the Holy Land, however they could. Sometimes they couldn’t, against their will. So they wandered the earth, and some of them settled in Europe, praying to return.

Other Jews however, never left but stayed in the Land of Israel. They stayed and stayed. It was hard. But they stayed in the Land, their indigenous territory. Only here could they fulfil the commandments.

And here is where people get stuck. They don’t understand or don’t want to understand that Jews and the Land of Israel are indivisible. The Jews have to be in Israel. This is commanded of them by God.

We pray “Shema Yisrael!” Listen Israel! The Jews are called “Israel.” The Land of Israel literally means "Land of the Jews."

Even in faraway non-Jewish lands, the Jewish people are synonymous with the Land. They read the same prayers with variations related specifically to living outside the Land, outside the place where Land and Jews are one. And still, these exiled Jews are tied to the Land in ways that can never be undone. All Jews are. We all have that holy connection.

When a European minyan, a quorum of ten, prays for rain, they are praying for rain in Israel. When a Jew in Cleveland eats bread, he says an after-blessing, thanking God for giving him the Land of Israel, and praying for the Temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem, speedily in our time.

The enemy in Gaza and under the PA has none of this weighty history, and no valid claim to any land at all. They are but an odd admixture of people who call themselves “Palestinian” while claiming Jewish land—it’s right out of the Roman playbook. But there are censuses. And people with brains can think for themselves. The enemy is a liar and a thief, or rather a wannabe thief, because the land will never be theirs. 

The Land will always be Jewish land, and there’s nothing they can do about it. Even after October 7, even now, there is nothing that can ever change this singular fact: The Land of Israel belongs to the Jews, forever.



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, November 02, 2023



Israel-haters/antisemites often use an exceptionally effective method to win in the court of public opinion, known a "framing." When one sets the ground rules of what is and is not up for debate, they can create a playing field where the Zionist or Jewish side cannot win. Forcing Jews to argue within those parameters gives them a huge handicap.

One classic example is to pretend that the history of Israel starts with modern Zionism. If you exclude any talk about the history of the Jews in the Land of Israel before the 19th century, they look just like the foreign colonialists that the haters claim we are. 

With Operation Iron Swords, the framing has been elaborate and very effective.

The false framework goes like this:

* Telling civilians to move, whether within or without their territory,  is a war crime.
* Neighboring countries have no obligation to accept refugees.
* Killing lots of civilians is a war crime by definition. 
* Limiting humanitarian aid to a war zone is a war crime.

All discussions of the war on TV is bound by this framework. These four "rules" are not always explicit, which makes it harder to go against them. Who wants to see dead civilians? 

The framing statements are incorrect.  But the framework is carefully created to ensure that Israel cannot achieve its military objective of destroying Hamas.

* In fact, in a war zone, the attacker is obligated to tell civilians to move out of the war zone - which Israel has done and Hamas has tried to stop. 

* While I don't think that Egypt is legally obligated to open its border, it never had a problem with taking in hundreds of thousands of other refugees from elsewhere. It certainly has a moral obligation to do so.

* Targeting civilians is a war crime. Knowing that civilians will die during an attack on a legitimate military target is acceptable as long as the casualties are not excessive, and international law has a much more liberal view of what is excessive than what Israel does.

* Israel has every right to inspect and limit aid to ensure that Hamas does not get it. 

But the first four rules are accepted as the framework on CNN and Al Jazeera. Most news shows don't bother explaining the truth about international law because nuance is not TV-friendly. 

Spokespeople on TV must break the framework by saying that they do not accept these parameters and creating their own, accurate framework:

* Hamas started this war with an unprecedented, horrific attack on Israel.
* Hamss has made it clear that they will never change or reform. This is who they are.
* The only moral choice is to utterly destroy them.
* Hamas has turned the entire Gaza Strip into a huge human shield for its army and vast subterranean military complex.  
* Israel scrupulously follows international law even under these difficult constraints.
* Therefore, while Israel tries to minimize casualties, every civilian death is purely Hamas' fault.

How many TV shows or newspaper articles have you read that accepts these accurate statements as their framework? 

It's going to be a long war, and Israel needs to reframe the discussion. 



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, September 19, 2023




During the weeks before Yom Kippur, Jews throughout the world add special supplications to prayers called Selichot. The theme of Selichot is repentance and praying for forgiveness. But even within that theme, you cannot separate Judaism from the longing for Zion that comes in all prayers.

Here are some of the selections from today's Selichot (Nusach Ashkenaz):

The Lord is great and highly extolled in the city of our God, the mountain of His Sanctuary. Beautiful in its panoramic vista, the joy of all the earth is Mount Zion, on the northern edge [of Jerusalem] the city of the great King. Do good as You see fit, to Zion, may You rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Turn away Your anger and Your rage from Your city, Jerusalem, Your holy mountain. To recount in Zion, the Name, Lord, and His praise in Jerusalem. And may the Lord be pleased with the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem as in the days of old and in earlier years. The builder of Jerusalem is the Lord, the banished ones of Israel, He will gather. For the Lord will not cast off His people, and His inheritance, He will not abandon.
Then comes an entire piyyut (poem) with 23 stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, all discussing the Jewish longing for Jerusalem and its rebuilding. 
[Inhabitants] of Jerusalem, praise the Lord. O God, exalted with myriads of [angelic] hosts, seeking its welfare from the beginning to the end [of the year] providing it with benevolent rain. Your beautiful daughters [without sin] are like the corner of a king’s palace which are adorned with decorations. Open your mouths and sing together ruins of Jerusalem [when you are rebuilt].
One stanza even refers to the Stone that is the rock of the Dome of the Rock.
Let Jerusalem be called the throne of God in the coming times. The precious stone (the Temple’s foundation) will be recognized by throngs for its grace when all Israel comes to be seen when they beseech the Lord of Hosts [for His kindness] in Jerusalem.

I would bet that this poem alone mentions Jerusalem more times than all of published Arabic poetry between the 10th and 19th centuries combined.

And then in every day of Selichot we say:
Remember Your congregation which You have acquired of old, You have redeemed the tribe of Your inheritance, this mountain of Zion where You have dwelled. Remember, oh Lord, the affection of Jerusalem, the love of Zion, forget not until eternity. Remember, oh Lord,, to the sons of Edom, the day of Jerusalem, [it was they] who said, “Raze it, raze it to its very foundations.” You will arise and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to be gracious to her, for the appointed time has come.
One can understand that the Kinot - the poems said on Tisha B'Av - would be filled with references to Jerusalem and Zion. But Jewish prayers and poems, piyyutim and pesukim quoted, are intertwined with Jerusalem and Zion and the longing for the Land of Israel. While we do pray for personal things, Jewish prayers also ask for national redemption. Even the short prayer for rain is asking for rain in Israel, not the Diaspora. 

Judaism without Israel is simply not Judaism. "Anti-Zionist Judaism" is an oxymoron. 




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, August 17, 2023

From Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 edition:



ZIONISM. One of the most interesting results of the anti. Semitic agitation  has been a strong revival of the national spirit among the Jews in a political form. To this movement the name Zionism has been given. In the same way that anti-Semitism differs from the Jew-hatred of the early and middle ages, Zionism differs from previous manifestation of the Jewish national spirit.  It was originally advocated as an expedient without Messianic impulses, and its methods and proposals have remained almost harshly modern.  Nonetheless it is the lineal heir of the attachment to Zion which led the Babylonian exiles under Zerubbabel to rebuild the Temple, arid which flamed up in the heroic struggle of the Maccabees against Antiochus Epiphanes. Without this national spirit it could, indeed, never have assumed its present formidable proportions. The idea that it is a set-back of Jewish history. in the sense that it is an unnatural galvanization of hopes long since abandoned for a spiritual and cosmopolitan conception of the mission of Israel, is a controversial fiction. The consciousness of a spiritual mission exists side by side with the national idea. The great bulk of the Jewish people have throughout their history remained faithful to the dream of a restoration of their national home in Judea. Its manifestations have suffered temporary modifications under the influence of changing political conditions, and the intensity with which it has been held by individual Jews has varied according to their social circumstances, but in the main the idea has been passionately clung to. 
It is not a bad article, but as with many such articles in the early 20th century, the author simply thought it was impossible, and he gave many reasons to be confident in his analysis:


Remember, today's experts are no more competent in predicting the future (and in fact probably far less competent) than the author of this article. He thought he could see the trajectory of history clearly and Israel had no part in it. 

That doesn't take away from his analysis of how Zionism is simply a new manifestation of and ancient desire of Jews. 





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, March 28, 2023

I have been quite disturbed by the partisanship and division happening in Israel, and while I have some opinions, I have been mostly reluctant to discuss them because I try to be more about what every Zionist can agree upon, not division.

So I enjoyed this 1974 poster from the Joint Israel Appeal. 


(I had tweeted it and Ian put it in the earlier linkdump.)

Apparently I'm not the only one who likes it. It was the cover of a 2013 book.

Here's another on the same theme from 1975.






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!

 

 

Wednesday, March 15, 2023




IfNotNow tweeted on Sunday, "BREAKING: 13 Jewish IfNotNow activists were just attacked by security at the Israel Bonds Conference as they prayed Maariv to protest the visit by genocidal Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who called for a Palestinian town to be wiped out."

The video doesn't show them praying Ma'ariv. It shows them singing one of their favorite songs, "Lo Yisa Goy."


They love the song because the translated lyrics mean, "Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war. "

The verse is from Isaiah 2:4, where the prophecy describes Messianic times. 

But what does it say before this part?
In the days to come, The Mount of the LORD’s House shall stand firm above the mountains and tower above the hills; and all the nations shall gaze on it with joy..And the many peoples shall go and say, "Come, Let us go up to the Mount of the LORD, to the House of the God of Jacob; that He may instruct us in His ways, and that we may walk in His paths. For the Torah shall come forth from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem."
Before there can be the peace described in the song, the world must recognize that the Lord of Israel is the true God and the Temple will have to be rebuilt - on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. 

Zion.

I don't think that IfNotNow's Palestinian friends want them to sing that message. 







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!

 

 

Monday, December 19, 2022

From the 1902 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica:


Less than a decade after the term was coined, the writer - Lucien Wolf - recognized clearly that modern Zionism was a direct "lineal heir" to the longtime Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel since the Jewish nation's first exile.

Today's scholars find such an idea anathema, because it would mean that the Jews have a historic tie to the land, and too many modern academics want to separate Zionism from Judaism. But at the time, it was obvious to all, Jew and non-Jew. 

Wolf was an anti-Zionist himself. He lobbied against the Balfour Declaration and co-founded the anti-Zionist League of British Jews.  His political opinion caused his blind spot, both in this article and his article on antisemitism in the encyclopedia, where he fervently believed that Jew-hatred was a thing of the past and the world was more enlightened - dooming Zionism to failure.


His predictions were fatally wrong. 

Yet even as the antisemitism that he confidently believed had been receding was proven to be not only resilient but far deadlier than anyone could imagine, he didn't have the honesty to admit his mistakes. 

If there were fewer Jewish anti-Zionists in England in the 1920s and 1930s, it is possible that many more Jews could have been saved from the gas chambers. 






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!

 

 

Wednesday, December 14, 2022

From Ian:

No, Zionism isn’t out of date
Ha’aretz columnist Anshel Pfeffer does not believe in Zionism. He doesn’t oppose it, he just thinks talking about it is a category mistake:

You cannot be either a Zionist or an anti-Zionist, he says, just as you cannot be a veteran of Iwo Jima unless you were born at least 90 years ago and fought in that battle. Zionism isn’t an ideology. It’s a program, or an ideological plan, to establish a state for Jews in the biblical homeland. And that program was fulfilled on May 14, 1948, when David Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence at the old Tel Aviv Museum. That’s it. Done.

"…believing that on the whole, founding the State of Israel was the right thing to do, doesn’t make you a Zionist any more than thinking that Oliver Cromwell was right to overthrow King Charles, makes you a Roundhead. It simply doesn’t matter what you think about long-ago events you didn’t take part in. Israel is a reality and it’s not going anywhere."

He’s wrong. There absolutely is such a thing as Zionist ideology, a set of basic principles that Zionists believe. And here they are:
-There is an am Yehudi, a Jewish people. You might think this is obvious, but Mahmoud Abbas denies it, and so do the “[insert nationality here] of the Mosaic persuasion” crowd, which includes the American Reform Movement.

-The survival of the Jewish people requires the Jewish state, a state that is more than just a state with a Jewish majority. The precise meaning of “more” differs according to the faction of the Zionist movement to which one belongs, but the Nation-State Law that was passed by the Knesset in 2018 is an example of a secular attempt to explicate that.

-Only in the Jewish state can a person fully realize his Jewish identity. You can still be a Zionist if you don’t believe that all Jews ought to live in the Jewish state, but Zionism includes the idea that diaspora life is sub-optimal even when it is not actively dangerous.

-One needn’t be a Jew to be a Zionist. Agree with the principles above and you are a Zionist, regardless of your own religion or ethnicity.

Pfeffer points out that there were religious and secular, socialist and revisionist Zionisms. This was true before 1948, and it’s still true today. But all of them affirm the principles above. The existence of factions doesn’t negate the truth behind an ideology. After all, these are Jews we are talking about!
Tom Stoppard and the Failure of ‘Diasporism’
As much as the contributions of Diaspora Jews should inspire pride and celebration, it has become clear that there has emerged no serious alternative other than Israel for those who would sustainably perpetuate specifically Jewish achievement and inquiry. Those of us in the Diaspora will not all move there—although Stoppard is here to remind us that Jews will always require a refuge from the forces of hatred that now seek Israel’s destruction. But we are called upon to support the Zionist project not only as a form of self-defense but also to continue providing the wider world with the fruits of Jewish labors. Leopoldstadt’s invocation of a potential Jewish state at the play’s beginning, and Israel’s existence at its end as the tiny remnant of the Merz and Jacobowicz families gathers in the once-grand apartment of assimilation in 1955, mark it as one of the most profoundly Zionist documents of our time.

It is a reflection of the durability and power of anti-Semitism that, even if the playwright had uncovered the facts of his own Jewish past in 1955 the way his young British character does, rather than in the 1980s, he would have risked a great deal by writing Leopoldstadt as a young man in the wake of his career-making success with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 1966. He likely would have become known as a Jewish, rather than a British, playwright—a dramatist making a special pleading due to the tragedy visited upon his own family. No, it was his established reputation as the greatest living English dramatist that has enabled this unlikely production—among other things, Leopoldstadt has a cast of 38, the largest any play on Broadway has seen in generations. Therein lies yet another lesson about the limits of Diasporism.
The Hanukkah Queen Who Saved the Jews
A generation after the Hanukkah miracle, in the midst of great turmoil, Salome Alexandra defended Judaism and restored Jewish practice.

The story of Hanukkah is one of the best-known in Jewish history: how a small group of faithful Jews, led by the Maccabees, revolted against their Hellenist Greek rulers during the years 167-160 BCE, and restored the Temple in Jerusalem to Jewish worship once again.

Their unlikely military victory and the miracle of a single jug of oil burning in the Temple’s golden Menorah for eight days are celebrated during the holiday of Hanukkah. Less known is what came next.

The “Maccabee” brothers (named after one brother, Judas Maccabeus) established the Hasmonean royal dynasty that ruled the Jewish kingdom of Judea for over 200 years. Far from presiding over a peaceful nation, the Hasmonean rulers were mercurial, autocratic, and ruled a land continually on the brink of civil war. It fell to Queen Salome Alexandra - also known as Shlomit Alexandra and as Shlomzion - to stand up to some of the most terrifying dictators imaginable, champion traditional Judaism, and restore peace to Judea.

A key fact that’s often ignored in telling the Hanukkah story is that many Jews at the time embraced a Hellenist lifestyle, worshiping Greek deities and embracing Greek values. Within a generation of the Hanukkah miracle, the Jewish community was again riven into factions, most notably the Sadducees, who rejected the Talmud and many Jewish elements of a traditional Jewish lifestyle and who dominated the ruling classes, and the Pharisees who clung to Jewish traditions and lifestyles.

Queen Salome and her Wicked Husband
Queen Salome was born into a prominent scholarly family and married into royalty. She possessed incredible courage and calmness. Salome’s brother was Shimon ben Shetach, one of Judea’s most renowned rabbis and a champion of the Pharisee cause. When it became too dangerous for her brother to remain in Judea because of Sadducee persecution, Queen Salome hid him, as well as other rabbinic allies of traditional Judaism.

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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Wednesday, October 19, 2022


By Daled Amos


This month, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about The Triumph of the Ukrainian Idea, by which he means the often disparaged idea of nationalism. According to Brooks, nationalism is actually a good idea after all. After all, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky is a nationalist, and that means

He is fighting not just for democracy but also for Ukraine — Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian land, the Ukrainian people and tongue. The symbol of this war is the Ukrainian flag, a nationalist symbol...Countries are held together by shared loves for a particular way of life, a particular culture, a particular land. These loves have to be stirred in the heart before they can be analyzed by the brain.

Nationalism provides people with a sense of meaning.

When he equates Ukrainian nationalism with the Ukrainian culture, land, people and language, Brooks could just as easily have been describing Zionism, Jewish nationalism, as an example. 

After all, Zionism is what led to the re-establishment of the state of Israel. Zionism brought the Hebrew language back to life as a contemporary language that expresses the feelings and literature of the Jewish people. Zionism made Jewish history and culture alive once again, giving new vitality to the Jewish people. 

But Brooks makes no reference to Jews, Israel or Zionism in this column on the positive value of nationalism.

Pity.

Instead, Brooks makes a distinction between what he sees as 2 different kinds of nationalism, the bad kind and the good kind. The bad kind of nationalism is the one that is "backward-looking, xenophobic and authoritarian." That is the "illiberal" kind of nationalism, the nationalism of Vladimir Putin -- and Donald Trump.

But the other kind, the good kind, of nationalism is the one that is "forward-looking, inclusive and builds a society around the rule of law, not the personal power of the maximum leader." This is the "liberal" nationalism that Brooks says is epitomized by Volodymyr Zelensky.

What Brooks does tell us is that for a liberal democracy to survive today, it will need that extra component of good nationalism

Ukraine’s tenacity shows how powerful liberal nationalism can be in the face of an authoritarian threat. It shows how liberal nationalism can mobilize a society and inspire it to fantastic achievements. It shows what a renewed American liberal nationalism could do, if only the center and left could get over their squeamishness about patriotic ardor and would embrace and reinvent our national tradition.

But what he writes falls short of where the US seems to actually stand right now.

Instead, of a threat from outside, the view of liberals today is that we are facing a threat from within
What the left feels about patriotism and nationalism isn't "squeamishness" -- it's hatred.
And "reinventing our national tradition" actually is exactly what they are already trying to do -- via Critical Race Theory.

And CRT is not conducive to the "shared loves for a particular way of life, a particular culture, a particular land" that Brooks extols in nationalism.

The closest he comes to dealing with the threat of divisiveness is when he refers to the political scientist Yascha Mounk, who

celebrates the growing diversity enjoyed by many Western nations. But he argues they also need the centripetal force of “cultural patriotism,” to balance the centrifugal forces that this diversity ignites.

That is an idea that parallels one by Chloe Valdary in a 2018 article which -- in contrast to Brooks -- unabashedly holds Zionism as a nationalism worthy of emulation.

In Why Zionism Is Not Like Pan-Africanism and White Nationalism, Valdary also distinguishes between "good" and "bad" nationalism, contrasting

the difference between a nationalism based upon concepts that transcend race and a nationalism rooted in it. The former is far more flexible in being able to envision a society in which universalist aspirations of minority civil rights are honored even within a particularist framework. Indeed, one could argue that that particularist framework is what gives rise to the universalist aspiration in the first place. As Rav Soloveitchik once stated, “out of the particular lies the universal.”

Instead of a balance, there is more of a creative tension between these 2 forces of minorities vs nationalism.

Valdary is discussing the issues arising out of the Israeli Nation-State Law, which the Knesset passed at the time, defining Israel as “the nation-state of the Jewish people.”

First of all, she notes that Zionism transcends race:

Zionism aimed to liberate all Jews and Jews come in all colors. Thus the nation-state bill which the author derides as ethnocentric proclaims the country of Israel to be Jewish—and this includes white Jews, brown Jews, black Jews, Jews from Yemen, from Poland, from Russia, from Ethiopia and from all over the world. What binds the community transcends skin color.

That does not address the civil rights of the Arab minority.
But, as Valdary points out, this does:

Thus, in the same year Israel declared itself to be Jewish, it also unveiled a plan to pump billions into neglected Arab areas of East Jerusalem. Called the Leading Change program, its purpose is to “reduce the huge social gaps between the Palestinian neighborhoods and the overwhelmingly Jewish west part of the city.” An estimated NIS 2 billion is slated to be invested in “education, infrastructure and helping Palestinian women enter the workforce.”

The same government of Israel that declared that the state was Jewish passed Resolution 922 in 2015, a groundbreaking plan to earmark “20 percent of each ministry’s budget” for the Arab, Druze, and Circassian communities “with the express purpose of maximizing the economic potential of these populations.” It’s worth quoting a summary of this program in full so that readers understand its full impact:

In all, 2.4 billion shekels ($680 million) were allocated to the Arab population in this way in 2016, including increased funding for the 10 Arab business advancement centers, including Fadi Swidan’s in Nazareth, among many others known by the Hebrew acronym Maof, which also means ‘takeoff.’ Among 922’s incentives is a government pledge to fund thirty months of salaries for new Arab employees if the company hires five or more workers from this population. Over five years, there will be new direct government investment of an estimated 90 million shekels (about $25.6 million) in small and medium-sized Arab businesses.

And there have been positive results, both in terms of the bill and a discernible trend over time. In 2019, an article in Haaretz noted improvements over the previous years:
o  According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, over the past 7 years, the number of Arab students enrolled in universities and colleges in Israel has risen by 80%.
Over 5 years, the number of Arabs studying computer sciences, and the number pursuing master’s degrees (in all fields) have both jumped 50%
Over that same period, the number of Arab students studying for a Ph.D. has soared 60%.
During the last decade, the number of Arabs working in high-tech has increased 18-fold -- and 25% of them are women.
By 2020, it is estimated that Arabs will make up 10 percent of the country’s high-tech work force
The proportion of Arab doctors in Israel has climbed from 10% in 2008 to 15% in 2018
21% of all male doctors are Arab, according to the Health Ministry. 

All of this leaves a long way to go, especially in light of the outbreaks of Arab violence that have broken out.

Yet Brooks wants to showcase Ukrainian nationalism, with its long history of antisemitism -- an issue that he completely ignores. There have been events in Ukrainian history

from the violence directed at Jews during Ukrainian uprisings against Polish rule in the 17th and 18th centuries, to the pogroms of the 1800s and 1900s in cities such as Odessa, Kirovograd, and Kiev. More recently, during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine during World War II, the dreaded Ukrainian Auxiliary Police — trained by the Nazis at the SS camp of Trawniki — played an active role in the extermination of 900,000 Ukrainian Jews.
While today the president of Ukraine is Jewish, it is early yet to see how Jews really fit in when all Ukrainians are under attack from Russia.

Besides, when Brooks writes that nationalism (combined with liberalism) is

an idea that inspires people across the West to stand behind Ukraine and back it to the hilt

-- this may have nothing to do with the idea of nationalism at all. It may be nothing more than the general impulse to back the underdog, an impulse that tends to last only so long as the underdog remains under attack by a superior force. 

Once it does gain the ability and power to defend itself, and is no longer under attack, the underdog tends not to be quite so popular.

Just ask any Israeli. 





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!

 

 

Sunday, September 04, 2022



Way before Princess Leia, other royals adopted the famous hairdo


In response to yet another idiot claiming the British Mandate coin proves "Palestine"








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Sunday, August 21, 2022

This was predictable.

Columnist Hamada al-Farana at Jordanian news site Ad Dustor writes:
The Palestinian Arab people were the most affected peoples in the whole world from the results of the Nazi fascist European massacres against the Jews for several fundamental reasons:

Get out the popcorn. 


First, because we, as Arabs, Muslims and Christians, our culture does not allow us to accept collective punishments against humans, and to treat them with contempt, hatred, or hostility, on the basis of religion, nationalism, sect, or their positions and convictions.

That's great! That means that they do not hate Jewish Zionists because of their nationalism, positions or convictions!

Ummm... 


Secondly, because Jews and Judaism are part of our Arab people and nation. Judaism is one of the monotheistic religions that complements Christianity and Islam, even if the diligence and diversity differ among them. The difference between Jews and Judaism on one side and the Zionist movement on the other, is the difference between Islam and Muslims from the two organizations Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Well, only a slight contradiction between two adjoining paragraphs. 

Thirdly, the Palestinians paid a heavy price because of the Holocaust, as Zionism and the colonial countries of Europe exploited the Nazi massacres against the Jews, and worked to displace and resettle them in Palestine, and to establish a Jewish state for them on the land of the Palestinian people...

Fourth, and this is the most important, that the Palestinians paid the price of the European massacres of the Jews, so Palestine was colonized, half of its people were expelled outside their homeland, and they were subjected to displacement and exile, and massacres were committed against them. 

Yup. The biggest victims of the Holocaust wasn't six million Jews, but the Palestinians whose leader supported the Nazis. 


For these reasons, we sympathize with the tragedy of the Jews in Europe, and we reject, as Arabs, Muslims and Christians with the Palestinians, those Nazi fascist crimes against the Jews, just as we reject and condemn, at the same time, with the same force, the massacres of the Israeli colony and its daily crimes against the Palestinian people, including killing, destruction, persecution, besieging and starvation.

I like the "starvation" part. I haven't found any examples but it can't hurt to throw that in. 

 And just as the civilized international community did by chasing down the chased down the Nazis and prosecuted them for what they did against the Jews, the leaders of the international community and human rights institutions, and those with living consciences should try Israeli criminals in accordance with fair values ​​and human rights, and not to evade just and equitable punishment.

What the Palestinian President said, what he expressed, and what he meant, is the core of the bitter truth that needs to be addressed by the European and German people.
So we have Holocaust minimization, Holocaust distortion and Holocaust inversion, as mainstream Arab political opinion.

Hamada al-Farana is a former minister of Jordanian parliament and has been a member of the Palestinian National Council since 1984.



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Tuesday, July 26, 2022




I came across an online copy of Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Essential Reference Guide, a 2014 volume that attempts to distill the conflict to less than 400 pages, including source materials. 

Written and edited by southeast Asia-based academic Priscilla Roberts, it attempts to be even-handed and there is little that is offensive or too inaccurate (it certainly has mistakes.) 

But when I searched the book for "antisemitism," it mentions only the European version. It says nothing about Arab antisemitism. It doesn't have a separate entry on the Mufti of Jerusalem and his virulent hate nor anything about his Nazi collaboration. It mentions the Hebron pogrom of 1929 only as an aside in the article on United Kingdom Middle East policy: "Sporadic armed conflict between the two communities simmered until, in August 1929, 67 Jews were murdered by rioters in Hebron. This shocking event eroded what little confidence Jewish leaders had in a binational compromise future for the region and led to the rapid expansion of the paramilitary Jewish self-defense force known as the Haganah."

Throughout the book, Arab antipathy towards Jews is framed as a logical response to Zionism and the history of Islamic and Arab antisemitism is simply not there.

This is what we see in the media as well as academia. Jew-hatred is fundamentally irrational and no one wants to accuse Arabs or Muslims of being irrational, because that sounds Orientalist. Ignoring the very real history of antipathy towards Jews in the Arab world is not doing anyone any favors, though - if one ignores a fundamental reason for the conflict, one cannot possibly pretend to explain it.

Since the beginning of Islam, Jews were regarded as dhimmis in Muslim-majority (mostly Arab) lands. They were second class citizens with limited rights. They were tolerated, mostly, as long as they kept in their place. When they were perceived as having crossed some imaginary line, they were subjected to pogroms no less violent than those in eastern Europe. And the very existence of a Jewish state in the midst of Arab lands is hated not because of pro-Palestinian sentiment: it is from the shame that the weak, hated, dhimmi Jews defeated the combined Arab armies.

To ignore that history in describing the Arab Israeli conflict is to effectively censor an important narrative. Even worse, it ignores the antisemitism that is still seen in Arab media, today. 

Roberts worked with a larger team on the four volume 2008 "The Encyclopedia of The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History" which is also online. In that work, Arab antisemitism is not ignored, but it is minimized.
Its entry on antisemitism concentrates on how historic European antisemitism has animated modern Zionism, while Arab and Muslim antisemitism is mentioned only as a logical result of Jewish ambition. Even the Mufti's antisemitism, which is well documented from his own writings and radio broadcasts, is  downplayed as a response to Jewish power or realpolitik:
 The figure of Haj Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem, serves as an excellent indication of growing anti-Jewish sentiment during this period. A significant leader of the Palestinian Arabs, al-Husseini moved incrementally toward anti-Semitism as he opposed Jewish ambitions in the region. While he had economic dealings with the Jewish population, he also inspired and organized the growth of Arab paramilitary groups intent on thwarting the growth of Jewish power. When disputes over access to the holy places in Jerusalem led to open conflict in 1929, he proved unable to control his followers and ultimately gave assent to their actions. 

...The grand mufti of Jerusalem gained notoriety for his active courting of the Axis powers. However, his motivations also involved significant anti-British sentiment, for he viewed the Germans as the likely victors in the war and sought to gain influence with them.   

This is ahistorical but it reflects the general attitude of scholars towards Arab antisemitism: when it is mentioned at all, it is regarded as an unfortunate consequence of Jewish greed and power or an unintended result of other historical events. It is never considered on its own, and it is not mentioned as a continuation of centuries of Muslim attitudes towards Jews, as well as the influence of virulent Christian Arab antisemitism on Arab nationalism in the early 20th century which converted the Arab attitude towards Jews into full blown hate. 

The bias is clear when we see the full-page entry on "Anti-Arab Attitudes and Discrimination:" 
 Anti-Arab attitudes, especially toward Muslim Arabs, as well as formal and informal policies and codes of conduct that unfairly target Arabs and are sometimes known as anti-Arabism have been especially virulent in Israel since 1948
From reading this encyclopedia, one would believe that the only irrational hate in the conflict is that of Jews towards Arabs!

There is a major gap in scholarship towards the Middle East, and there are no signs that anyone is interested in filling it.





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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