Why calling Zionism colonialist is false - and antisemitic

There have been many articles about the student-designed course at UC Berkeley called “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Inquiry.”

But as far as I can tell, no one has addressed the main question: can Israel be considered colonialist?

It can't.

Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition, and expansion of colonies in one territory, imposed by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole, or parent state, claims sovereignty over the colony, and the social structure, government, and economy of the colony are changed by colonizers from the metropole. Colonialism is a set of unequal relationships between the metropole and the colony, and between the colonists and the indigenous, or native, population .

Zionism is not tied to a metropole/parent state. It is entirely based on the fact that Jews are returning to their homeland from which they never severed their emotional, religious or even physical ties. Zionism is anti-colonialist in that it fights against outsiders who invaded and colonized it over the centuries during the Diaspora.  It is not a colonial movement, it is a national liberation movement.

This should be obvious. All one needs to do is spend a few minutes researching the definition of Zionism and the writings of early Zionists to know that Zionism is about self-determination, not imperialistic extensions of European hegemony over parts of the Middle East. On the contrary, the Zionists consciously rejected their European past - they revived Hebrew as their language. Zionists didn't call any new villages "New Vilna."

Jews in Europe were treated as "the other." There is little nostalgia for the shtetl from the people who actually lived there.

Israel, on the other hand, was always considered home for Jews. Way before Zionism, Jews have made the trip to the Land. The yearning for Zion and Jerusalem has been a fixed part of Judaism and has been part of the daily prayers ever since the destruction of the second Temple. Zionism is

So why do some scholars insist that Zionism is colonialist?

The only way that it makes sense is if they deny that there is a Jewish people.

If the Jewish people exist, then it is obvious that they have the right to self-determination and national liberation in the land that they have considered their own for 3000 years.

But if Judaism is a mere religion, then Jews have no national rights and their desire to return to their homeland is twisted into "colonialism" - even without the metropole.

Arab nationalists originally agreed that there was a Jewish people but denied that their ties to the Holy Land was anything beyond religion. Here is how influential Arab nationalist George Antonious described it in the 1930s:

This was summarized and extended in Article 20 of the 1968 PLO Charter to denial of a Jewish people altogether:

Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

Ironically, even the Quran refers to the Children of Israel as a nation (in many translations) in 2:47:

O Children of Israel! Remember My favor which I bestowed upon you, and that I favored you over all nations.

This explains why the Khazar theory is so popular among Palestinian Arabs. It only gained widespread currency after the PLO Charter was written but it becomes a perfect way for Muslims to reconcile their denial of Jewish nationality with the obvious assignment of such nationhood to Jews in the Quran.

This denial of Jewish peoplehood is an inherent part of the argument that Zionism is colonialism. And such denial is, in fact, antisemitic. It is an attempt to rip away a huge amount of Jewish identity from without and to minimize what it means to be a Jew.

The Berkeley course takes away all of Jewish history and only looks at "Palestine" through the lens of invented colonialism - meaning it denies up front that there are any Jewish ties to the land. So like all attempts to label Zionism as colonialism, it is inherently antisemitic.

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International law prohibits banning Jewish worship on the Temple Mount

TOI reports:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday restated a pledge to retain intact the custom of not permitting non-Muslim prayer on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, which has been at the center of a recent spike in unrest.

“Israel reaffirms its commitment to upholding unchanged the status quo of the Temple Mount, in word and in practice,” he said in a statement.

The compound, which houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, was the site of two ancient Jewish temples and is sacred to both Jews and Muslims. It was captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War.

“Israel will continue to enforce its longstanding policy: Muslims pray on the Temple Mount; non-Muslims visit the Temple Mount,” he said, following up on comments earlier by US Secretary of State John Kerry after meetings in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Kerry said Israel had agreed on steps to calm tensions over the flashpoint site, including 24-hour security cameras, an idea not specified in Netanyahu’s statement.

The prime minister did confirm, however, that there would be “increased coordination between the Israeli authorities and the Jordanian Waqf, including to ensure that visitors and worshipers demonstrate restraint and respect for the sanctity of the area, and all this in accordance with the respective responsibilities of the Israelis authorities and the Jordanian Waqf.”

Tensions over Al-Aqsa have sparked a recent wave of violence that has seen knife and gun terror attacks by Palestinians against Israelis along with daily clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces.

Israel has repeatedly denied persistent Palestinian allegations to the effect that it seeks to change the arrangements at the site in order to allow Jews to pray there.

Bibi's' declaration to stop Jews from praying on the Temple Mount may be against international law.

It is time to expand a previous article of mine where I describe how international law supports Jewish worship on the Temple Mount - a point that you will never hear from "human rights" NGOs.

As far as I can tell, not only do Jews have the right to visit and to pray on the Temple Mount, but if they wanted to build a synagogue there I cannot find anything in international law that wouldn't support them wholeheartedly. 

The overriding consideration in international law is the right to be treated equally, and barring Jews from the Temple Mount is about as discriminatory as possible.

Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.

In addition, Article 20 seems to prohibit the insults and incitement that Muslims engage in towards Jews on the Temple Mount:

1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.

2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

Moreover, the UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief is filled with articles that would prohibit banning Jews from the Temple Mount:

No one shall be subject to discrimination by any State, institution, group of persons, or person on grounds of religion or other beliefs.

For the purposes of the present Declaration, the expression "intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief" means any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on religion or belief and having as its purpose or as its effect nullification or impairment of the recognition, enjoyment or exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms on an equal basis.

Discrimination between human beings on grounds of religion or belief constitutes an affront to human dignity and a disavowal of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and shall be condemned as a violation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and enunciated in detail in the International Covenants on Human Rights, and as an obstacle to friendly and peaceful relations between nations.

All States shall take effective measures to prevent and eliminate discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief in the recognition, exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms in all fields of civil, economic, political, social and cultural life.

All States shall make all efforts to enact or rescind legislation where necessary to prohibit any such discrimination, and to take all appropriate measures to combat intolerance on the grounds of religion or other beliefs in this matter.

From these articles it appears that Israel is obligated to allow Jews to visit and pray there, and to protect them from those who want to take away their rights.

Here is where the codification of bloacking Jewish religious rights on the Temple Mount runs afoul of this Declaration:

All States shall take effective measures to prevent and eliminate discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief in the recognition, exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms in all fields of civil, economic, political, social and cultural life.

All States shall make all efforts to enact or rescind legislation where necessary to prohibit any such discrimination, and to take all appropriate measures to combat intolerance on the grounds of religion or other beliefs in this matter.

Blocking Jews from worshiping in their holiest place while allowing Muslims to do so is discrimination by any definition.

It is true that this same declaration says:

Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.

But this clause is referring to cases where the practitioners of the religion are the ones who are a danger to others, not when the others are so intolerant that they threaten violence. To invoke this paragraph to deny Jews' rights to the Temple Mount (which I suspect human rights organizations would do if pressed) would make the rest of that declaration a mockery. It would give veto power by any religious group  over the rights of any other religious group by simply threatening violence. 

Perhaps one can try to argue that limiting non-Muslim worship on the Temple Mount is similar to not allowing non-Christian worship in Christian holy places or prohibiting non-Jewish worship in synagogues. But that argument does not apply where the site itself has inherent sanctity for the group that wishes to worship.

In this case, one could argue that it is even worse, because the entire reason that Muslims consider this a holy spot is a derivative of the Jewish temples that were there first. But no one is seriously demanding that Muslims be banned from their mosques on the Temple Mount, just that Jews be given equal rights.

You remember equal rights, don't you? This isn't only a legal issue, but a moral one as well. Denying the rights of one party because of the threats of violence of another party is not something to celebrate. It is capitulation to blackmail.

In summary, not only is it outrageous to deny Jewish worship on the Temple Mount for Jews who wish to pray there, it is against the principles of international law, basic freedom of worship and equal rights that would be defended in every other circumstance and for every other religion. 

Maintaining the "status quo" when the status quo is discriminatory is not a virtue. It is a travesty, and it gives justification and incentive for violence against those who fight for their religious rights. Those who are demanding equal rights are invariably described as extremists or worse. 

Of course, we will never hear Human Rights Watch or Amnesty or the UN dare to defend the Jewish right to worship on the Temple Mount. Because Jews who want to do so are not considered to be worthy of protection by international law. 

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When you hate Israel, it can do nothing right

When you hate Israel,  it can do nothing right
Evil Hasbara claim	Israel Derangement Response
Israel is tolerant towards gays	Israel has some homophobes, and therefore really hates gays (Richard Silverstein) Israel is only pretending to be tolerant; it is engaging in “pinkwashing” to distract the world from its crimes (Sarah Schulman)
Israel has repeatedly offered peace and been rebuffed	Those “peace plans” were completely unacceptable to Palestinian society and therefore Israel didn’t offer enough (+972) Palestinians accepted the idea of two states in 1988 and therefore cannot be expected to ever compromise on anything ever again (Robert Malley)
How could supposedly racist Jews consistently vote for non-Jews in TV reality polls?	They are still racist, they are simply practicing “tokenism” (Max Blumenthal)
Israel sends aid to help victims of natural disasters	Israel really wants to learn how to kill more effectively (Rania Khalek) Israel wants to steal the organs of the victims (Jenny Tonge) Israel is trying to distract the world from its crimes by pretending to do good (Ali Abuminah)
Hamas and Hezbollah are terror groups that Israel must defend itself from	Hamas and Hezbollah are “social movements that  are progressive” (Judith Butler)
Arab men beat their wives and engage in “honor killings”	It is Israeli policies that cause Arab men to beat and kill their wives (The Lancet and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay)
The IDF has fewer reports of rape compared to other countries’ armies	They don’t rape because they consider Arab women too inhuman to even consider raping (Tal Nitzan) IDF rabbis say rape is perfectly OK according to Yossi Gurwitz Tasteless T-shirts prove Israel has a “rape culture” (David Sheen)

In short: If Israel does something bad, it is proof that Israel is evil. If Israel does something admirable, it is proof that Israel is evil. If Arabs do something bad, it is because Israel is evil.

Life is so simple for the simple-minded.

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How the Arabs added specifically anti-Israel language to the Rome Statute of the ICC

The list of war crimes enumerated in Rome Statute of the ICC includes a section that is directly aimed at Israel, and no one else.

From The International Criminal Court: the making of the Rome Statute : issues, negotiations and results by Roy S. K. Lee

Article 8(2)(b)(viii), on deportation and transfer of population, also generated extensive discussions. The provision now reads:

The transfer. directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory.

The grave breach of “unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful continement" is already reflected in Article 8(l)(a)(vii). The violation in Article 8(2)(b)(vii) is based on the broader provision in Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, now recognized as a grave breach in Article 85(4)(a) of Additional Protocol 1. The scope of these prohibitions is broader, as they govern not only the transfer of population of the occupied territory to other parts of that occupied territory or to places outside the occupied territory. but also the transfer by the occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into occupied territory. The latter aspect was politically controversial during the negotiations. Israel was not a party to the Additional Protocol l, largely because of this provision, and emphatically disagreed that this aspect was part of customary international law. It stood, however, rather isolated in this position and was supported, to a certain extent, only by the United States.

During the December 1997 session, this provision generated heated debates, as a result of which four options were submitted for discussion at the Rome Conference.‘°' At Rome, it soon became clear that a large majority of delegations preferred a provision based on the wording of the Additional Protocol. However. the Arab delegations wanted to adapt this language. in order to make clear that an occupying power is not only responsible for this act if it deliberately organizes the transfer of its own population into occupied territory, but also if it does not take effective steps to prevent the population itself from organizing such a transfer. After some negotiations, the words “directly or indirectly" were added to this provision.

In other words,the drafting committee caved to Arab demands to expand the scope of existing international law specifically against a single state - a state that most of them were technically at war with..

Just for context, here are other crimes that the Rome Statute considers exactly as heinous as the crime of allowing one's citizens to voluntarily move to disputed territory:

* Intentionally attacking innocent civilians
* Intentionally attacking official people involved in humanitarian or peacekeeping missions
* Killing people who have surrendered
* Intentionally attacking churches, hospitals or museums for no military reason
* Subjecting the enemy to medical experiments or mutilation
* "Committing rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy..."
* Intentionally starving civilians

Israel commented at the time:

Israel has reluctantly cast a negative vote. It fails to comprehend why it has been considered necessary to insert into the list of the most heinous and grievous war crimes the action of transferring population into occupied territory. The exigencies of lack of time and intense political and public pressure have obliged the Conference to by-pass very basic sovereign prerogatives to which we are entitled in drafting international conventions, in favour of finishing the work and achieving a Statute on a come-what-may basis. We continue to hope that the Court will indeed serve the lofty objectives for the attainment of which it is being established.

The deck is stacked against Israel at the ICC because its foundational document was partially the result of political, specifically anti-Israel move by her enemies.

A court whose rules are created not for the purposes of justice but for the purpose of revenge against a single state is flawed from the start.

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NYT chooses a Gaza child to symbolize all child deaths in war this year (update)

Here is a scan of a page from the New York Times Magazine this past weekend, using a Gaza child named Tala Akram al-Atawi ,who was killed over the summer, to symbolize all children killed in war:

From looking at this page, one would get the impression that except for South Sudan, more children were killed in Gaza than in any other conflict this year, and that over 20% of all child deaths - the very large-font  2,500 - were caused by Israel.

When you look a little closer, you see that the Times didn't bother to even estimate the number of children killed in Syria or Pakistan. Which is very interesting, given that this article was published soon after 132 children were brutally murdered in a Pakistan school in a single day. They weren't killed accidentally, not as part of a larger operation: they were targeted for death.

But none of those children merit having the New York Times write about the anguish of their families or their doctors.

The Syria Observatory for Human Rights counted 251 children killed in Syria - in October alone. Another 152 in November. From April through July, over 1000 children were killed. It seems a reasonable estimate of over 2500 children killed in Syria this year alone, making the "2500" graphic a joke. It is well over double that number just including Pakistan and Syria, and publishing even a low estimate would have made the story much more effective - if the goal of the story was to show how widespread children's deaths were.

UPDATE: The SOHR says that 3501 children were killed in Syria alone in 2014. (h/t Conormel)

While the 538 killed in Gaza is probably accurate and may even be high (there were some 17 year olds killed who were voluntary militants,) , the other numbers are ridiculously low. In South Sudan, between 50,000 and 100,000 people were killed this year - so chances are very good that far, far more than 600 children were killed. it is not out of the realm of possibility that closer to 6000 were killed.

In Iraq, some 16,000 civilians were killed this year. Historically, children have been about 9% of the civilian casualties. So it is reasonable to estimate that closer to 1500 children were killed this year in Iraq, instead of "416."

The NYTimes could have provided estimates, or even a low estimate, if the goal was to highlight how horrible the problem of children in war zones is.

It gets worse. Because the NYT only chose certain conflicts to bother to mention. The UN lists over 20 nations that have seen children killed or recruited as soldiers over the past couple of years - as opposed to the NYT's 8 nations.

So why would the New York Times put up this gigantic graphic of the number "2,500" when the actual number of children killed this year from war is probably closer to (and possibly much higher than) 10,000?

Here's a guess.

Anne Barnard had a great, tear-jerker of a story about a Gaza girl. She didn't want to highlight it in the end of year issue without any context because CAMERA would start a letter writing campaign about their anti-Israel bias. So the Times decided to do a half-assed job of pretending that Tala al-Atawi is somehow representative of the children who have been beheaded in Iraq and Syria, raped, and slaughtered in so many other countries.

No one, outside of Hamas and its supporters, is happy that Tala Akram al-Atawi was killed, She was not a target and Israelis don't celebrate her death.. If you are going to write a story about the horrors of war for children, in a world where children are being recruited as soldiers and targeted by crazed Islamists, she is a very poor example.

But if the real goal is to demonize Israel - and to make a half hearted attempt to hide that demonization from behind a flurry of artificially low casualty numbers from other conflicts - then the New York Times succeeded quite well.

(h/t DM and EBoZ)

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The entire bogus history of Palestinian Arab nationalism exposed by a stamp

This is a stamp from  British Mandate Palestine. It says "Palestine" in Hebrew, Arabic and English, but in Hebrew it adds the initials א.י.(E.Y.), for Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, which is what Jews have always called the area.

In 1925, Arab leaders in Palestine were very upset over those two letters, so they went to court.

From the Palestine Bulletin, October 13, 1925:

As already reported, the Chief Justice, Sir Thomas Haycraft, and Mr. Justice Corrie, heard on Saturday last the complaint preferred by Mr. Jamal Husseini against the Palestine Government. The plaintiff demanded that the Court should oblige the Government to remove on "stamps" and other official documents the Hebrew letters "E-I" (being the initials for the Hebrew word, "Eretz-Israel," leaving only the word "Palestine" in Hebrew.

Counsel for the plaintiff based his prosecution on Article 22 of the British Mandate for Palestine that states that anything inscribed in one of the official languages must be transcribed into the other two languages. The initials "E-I" (Eretz Israel) were inscribed in Hebrew only, in contravention to the provisions of the Mandate. The Chief Justice asked Counsel whether he would agree that the initials "E-I" be also inscribed in Arabic and English. Counsel replied in the negative. Their Honours then pointed out that the initials "E-I" was the translation of Palestine. Counsel contended that "E-I" was not the right translation of "Palestine" their meaning being "The Land of the Jews." He said that "Palestina" was already inscribed, and that the affixing of the initials "E-I" was tautological. He was of opinion that their addition constituted a political point to prove that the land was that of the Jews. The Philistines and the Jews were two separate nations, existing at separate times, and the meaning of one did not apply to the other. He requested the Court therefore that: it should order the deletion of the initials "E-I" from stamps and other official documents in Palestine - or alternatively, to order the inscription of the words "Suria El Jenobia" (Southern Syria), Palestine's Arabic cognomen.

That last sentence says volumes.

Jamal Husseini, who was one of the architects of the 1929 massacres of Jews and remained a major Arab leader in Palestine through the 1940s, felt that in order to keep things equal, Arabs should be able to officially use their own name for Palestine just as the Jews were using Eretz Yisrael.

And what name is that? Southern Syria!

This is already several years after Arab leadership officially abandoned their desire to integrate Palestine into Syria, but it shows that Arab masses clearly still considered Palestine to be a mere district of a larger Arab nation, not a nation of its own.

Notice also that Husseini regarded the Arabs of Palestine at the time to have been descended from the Philistines, not the Canaanites, as today's Arab leaders pretend.

Also, Jamal Husseini admitted that the Jewish people are a nation - something strenuously denied by Palestinian Arab leaders today.

Today, Palestinian Arabs point to the stamp their leaders denounced as evidence that they were once an Arab political entity - and they erase the Hebrew altogether in school textbooks. They use the stamp as a tool to try to eliminate Jewish nationalism.

This little episode shows that Palestinian nationalism is a fiction. It only exists as a means to destroy Jewish nationalism, and if it wasn't for Zionism there would never have been any desire on the part of Arabs to have an independent Palestinian state.

It shows that Palestinian Arabs have changed their supposed history as a people in reaction to whatever the contemporary political climate allows.

There is one more lesson from this episode as well.

The Palestine Bulletin article was reproduced in the Macquarie University law school archives. But their version engaged in a little political correctness replacing the word "Philistines" with "Palestinians" and "Palestina" with "Palestine." Because it is not fashionable for modern Westerners to acknowledge that there were no "Palestinian" nation, ever. The idea that a law school would silently change the text of a 1925 newspaper article in order to align it with today's zeitgeist is but a tiny indication of how history itself has been distorted by today's universities for political purposes.

You can learn a lot from a stamp, if you are willing to keep your mind open.

(h/t Joe)

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Fighting the honor/shame culture to save the world

During Yom Kippur I used the machzor (holiday prayer book) written by Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of Great Britain.

It is a very good machzor. Sacks uses it as an opportunity to highlight the contributions of Judaism to the world at large as a supremely moral religion.

One of the points he makes is that Judaism was the first guilt culture, as opposed to the shame culture of the rest of the world. He continues to make the case for the guilt culture today, as he writes here:

Judaism gets it right and the zeitgeist gets it spectacularly, dangerously wrong. Consider: guilt enters the world hand in hand with the spirit of forgiveness. God forgives: that is the message emblazoned all over Yom Kippur. God doesn’t expect us to get it right all the time. The greatest of the great, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, David, had their faults and failings, defeats and doubts. There is only one person in the Hebrew Bible who is said to have committed no sin: Job. And look what happened to him. So, because God forgives, we can be honest with Him and therefore with ourselves. Unlike a shame culture, a guilt culture separates agent from act, the person from the deed. What I did may be wrong, but I am still intact, still loved by God, still His child. In a guilt culture, acknowledging our mistakes is doable, and that makes all the difference.

Today’s secular environment is a shame culture. It involves trial by the media, or public opinion, or the courts, or economic necessity, all of which are unforgiving. When shame is involved, it’s us, not just our actions, that are found wanting. That’s why in a shame culture you don’t hear people saying, “I was wrong. It was my fault. I’m sorry. Forgive me.” Instead, people try to brazen it out. The only way to survive in a shame culture is to be shameless. Some people manage this quite well, but deep down we know that there’s something rotten in a system where no one is willing to accept responsibility.

Ultimately, guilt cultures produce strong individuals precisely because they force us to accept responsibility. When things go wrong we don’t waste time blaming others. We don’t luxuriate in the most addictive, destructive drug known to humankind, namely victimhood. We say, honestly and seriously, “I’m sorry. Forgive me. Now let me do what I can to put it right.” That way we and the people we offend can move on. Through our mistakes we discover the strength to heal, learn and grow. Shame cultures produce people who conform. Guilt cultures produces people with the courage to be free.

As we've noted many times before, the Arab world is suffused with the shame culture. And shame cultures value appearance over reality: they cannot separate the sin from the sinner, so instead of admitting mistakes all effort must be made to hide them.

We saw a perfect example of this yesterday. A senior researcher at B'Tselem, Atef Abu Roub, called the Holocaust a lie - on camera - but he insisted for over a month that he did no such thing. B'Tselem defended him for as long as it could until they could no longer deny the facts from the extended video that was released. (Even after the extended video was released, B'Tselem denied it for four more days, before grudgingly admitting it only in Hebrew.)

B'Tselem acted as part of the modern Western shame culture. Abu Roub acted as part of the long-standing Arab shame culture. The modern shame culture, when confronted with facts, reluctantly admits the truth; the Arab shame culture refuses to admit the truth no matter what, since admitting you are wrong is a fatal blow to one's honor.

The entire existence of "honor killings" is a reflection of a shame culture gone amok.

The guilt culture is morally superior to the shame culture. Guilt cultures allow individuals, and ultimately societies, to grow and improve, while shame cultures will remain stagnant and backwards.
If you wrong someone in a guilt culture, you can seek forgiveness and restore the relationship. If you wrong someone in a shame culture then the only solution is to suffer revenge, or to offer appeasement and abasement - there is no growth, no lessons learned. It is a culture based on appearance and not reality, and this is a paradigm that cannot be sustained.

Nominally, Western culture is mostly a guilt culture, although of course shame exists - one need only to look at how most famous actors, sports figures and politicians attempt to weasel out of accusations of misconduct. But even today's celebrities are slowly realizing that public reaction to them telling the truth and seeking forgiveness is much more positive than the reaction when they deny and try to cover it up. Those who continue to be brazen in the face of the facts look like fools and those who admit mistakes can move on - sometimes, even more successfully.

The shame culture has a major weakness: it itself can be shamed. When people from a shame culture are confronted with their shortcomings in a public way, and their lies cannot hold up in the glare of the spotlight, they are forced to change - to salvage what little honor they can, and to try to regain it. Within the shame culture the lies can be tolerated and expected, but from without they cannot and should not be.

This is how to defeat the honor-shame culture in the Arab world. And it is the exact opposite of what Western media and politicians and most "human rights" groups do. They are afraid to shame Arabs out of fear of causing a violent, shame-based reaction. The natural Arab reaction to being shamed is to threaten in response, to maintain their own honor. Those threats are almost always empty but they scare Westerners into adhering to the Arab rules of avoiding shame and shaming.

Yet there have been cases where shame has made an impact on the Arab psyche.

Immediately after 9/11, the Arab world was overwhelmingly supportive of terrorism. Al Jazeera openly praised Osama Bin Laden. But since then, polls have shown a steady decrease of support for suicide bombings and other terror acts throughout the Arab world. Part of the reason is, of course, that they have been the primary victims of terror since 9/11, but I think part of it is because of the Western disgust at terrorism and those who openly support it. People want to feel that their own culture is better than others', and it is hard to defend a culture that supports terror openly.

The culture changed, to a small extent. But it did change.

Another, almost comical example happened in 2008, when Hamas was publicly shamed by Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, in an interview, criticized Hamas for targeting children with its rockets. In response, Hamas denied aiming at civilians - and its press releases from then on pretended to be targeting soldiers with every rocket in Operation Cast Lead!

To be sure, Hamas' actual behavior didn't change, but it was forced to change its public position because of the shame of being berated by another terror group on grounds of morality. It is a small step, but when terrorists are forced to change their publicly stated positions there will be a trickle effect to the masses. Their people learn, over time, that lies are not acceptable.

Another example: Egyptian society now takes harassment against women seriously, something roundly ignored only a few years ago. The reason is because the story was highlighted in the West, especially when female Western reporters were assaulted. They were shamed into confronting it rather than pretending it doesn't exist, the first reaction by someone who is shamed.

The Western world needs to do a full-court press against the more repugnant aspects of the honor-shame culture - because it can be shamed into reforming. When the shame of being publicly exposed as immoral overwhelms the benefits of lying to hide your immorality, then a society can be shamed into abandoning the culture of shame altogether. But the pressure to do so from the West must be relentless, and each lie must be exposed and ridiculed, rather than accepted. The Arab shame society does not want to be publicly exposed as less moral than the hated West.

Imagine how different things could be if Palestinian Arab officials were forced to explain their obvious lies. Imagine if Hamas would be forced to justify every single rocket the way Israel is expected to account for every airstrike. Imagine if the world would automatically discount every statement made by Arab politicians who were already proven to have lied repeatedly and unabashedly.

Imagine if the Western world treated liars in a shame culture the same way it treats their own liars. They would have no choice but to admit to their lies - or look like fools, to even greater shame. The Arab world can be dragged, kicking and screaming, into a world where people take responsibility for their own actions when the alternative is feeling even more shameful.

A major reason that the West lets these lies slide is because the shame culture is being coddled, not confronted.

The shame culture can be shamed into behaving more morally - and it is the most effective, and least-used, weapon we have.

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Belgium's poet laureate publishes another antisemitic poem

Earlier this year I reported on (and gave samples) of the antisemitic poetry of Belgium's Poet Laureate  whose pen-name is Charles Ducal.  His poetry includes equating Israeli Jews to Nazis, invoking the idea of "chosen people"  as meaning that Jews think of themselves as better than everyone else, and frequent references to the ashes of the crematoria against the lives of Palestinian Arabs today.

Joods Actueel reports that Ducal has just written another similar poem for what is happening in Gaza, and is being criticized by another popular Belgian poet:

Benno Barnard picks up on the derogatory way his colleague Charles Ducal writes about Jews. Below is a poem of Ducal's that appeared in in the newspaper De Morgen and on the website of the communist Labour Party. According to Barnard, the content is not only "offensive and hurtful" but involves "aestheticized hatred".

"This poem hurts me deeply, and I'm not even a Jew, let alone an Orthodox one. It is unacceptable that a Poet Laureate, who basically is the poet of all Belgians, in such a fashion antagonizes thousands of compatriots, not only on an extremist left-wing website but also in a national newspaper which is read by more than one Antwerp Jew," writes Barnard.

"Ducal may not understand well how deeply insulting this poem is for every ordinary Belgian Jew , even a Jew who is possibly an opponent of Netanyahu. He probably doesn't understand how humiliating it is to hear Jews as thinking they are "better", which is not the meaning of that infamous word "chosen" (forgive me, Charles, but I know a little Hebrew, and "chosen" means "designated as volunteers", which equates approximately to 'chosen to be damned.')

"Why doesn't Ducal write a poem against young Muslims in our streets, who wave ISIS flags in a frenzy against Israel?

"I quote the Dutch writer Leon de Winter: "Since 1950, eleven million Muslims were killed, excluding "ordinary" murders. Slightly more than 0.3 percent of them died in the conflict with Israel, or 1 in 315 Muslim fatalities. . 90 percent of the total number of fatalities died in conflicts with other Muslims (...)

"'Every death is one too many - especially when it comes to children,' we hear enlightened and educated Westerners saying.

But there are many Muslims (especially in the Arab world) who think differently. In their tribal honor-shame culture the extermination of the enemy and his family is an accepted principle. The young fighters of ISIS proudly show the severed heads of their victims.

Here is the poem, translated by a couple of email correspondents:

You're now better. It's written
in The Book. It can be seen in your eye
when you see them approaching: in fanatical clothes,
dusty, their IDs ready in their hand

You look at them as a creator of water
in a world of sand. They live [here] by chance
without promise, can be swept away
like withered leaves. This is your land.

You have learned to keep the fear of persecution
alive without fear, arrogant as the man who chose his enemy for himself.
You knock him down. You are threatened, the outstanding debt gives every bulldozer,

every tank the right to safety
without borders. Your eyes saw the Temple
destroyed, the paving stones bleed under the hooves

of the Crusaders. You're two thousand years old
was there in Treblinka, Schirmeck and Dachau

Though you have stolen their water, shot their children, trapped
them behind barbed wire, you are simply God's people, chosen exactly on
[this ground/these grounds]. Those who still hear the old village screaming
under your woods, your roads, your cities , get ashes in their mouth.

In short: You Jews have become your oppressors because you think you are hot stuff. We liked you better when you were being slaughtered.  Boo, Jew.

Not only is it offensive - it is unoriginal, as these motifs have already been covered by Ducal in his earlier antisemitic poetry.

Ducal was offended when I called him an antisemite in January. So I will couch my criticism of him as a poem, since who can be offended by a poem?

Charles Ducal

Hidden behind his pseudonym

as if he is ashamed

of his sickness

yet he conceals it

with sanctimony

a facade of piety

that none other can approach

his target is chosen

his pen at the ready

to mask his own depravity

the choice

reveals the ugliness hidden

within his heart

within his "art"

(h/t Rudi, including updates on translations)

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Review of Hamas violations of international law (updated)

1. Hamas‘ rocket attacks directed at Israel‘s civilian population centers deliberately violates the basic principles of distinction. (Additional Protocol I, arts. 48, 51(2), 52(1).) Any doubt about this is resolved by the fact that Hamas itself has boasted of its intention to hit population centres. It is well accepted in customary international law that ―[i]ntentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking part in hostilities constitutes a war crime. (Rome Statute, art. 8(2)(b)(i))

2. Staging of Attacks From Residential Areas and Protected Sites: The Law of Armed Conflict not only prohibits targeting an enemy‘s civilians; it also requires parties to an armed conflict to distinguish their combatant forces from their own civilians, and not to base operations in or near civilian structures, especially protected sites such as schools, medical facilities and places of worship. As the customary law principle is reflected in Article 51(7) of Additional Protocol I: '―The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or shield, favour or impede military operations."

3. Use of Civilian Homes and Public Institutions as Bases of Operation - see (2) for citations.

4. Misuse of Medical Facilities and Ambulances - Any time Hamas uses an ambulance to transport its fighters it is violating the Law of Armed Conflict: Under Article 23(f) of the 1907 Regulations annexed to the Hague Convention IV Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, which reflects customary international law, it is ―especially forbidden…[t]o make improper use of a flag of truce, … as well as the distinctive badges of the Geneva Convention.. Article 44 of the First Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field (1949) also provides that: ―… the emblem of the Red Cross on a white ground …may not be employed, either in time of peace or in time of war, except to indicate or to protect the medical units and establishments…‖

5. Booby-trapping of Civilian Areas - see (2) for citations.

6. Blending in with Civilians and Use of Human Shields - As the ICRC rule states, "It can be concluded that the use of human shields requires an intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives."

7. Exploitation of Children - Hamas has paramilitary summer camps for kids. There are reports, from this war and previous ones, of children fighting and being used for tunnel digging. violates the Law of Armed Conflict, including prohibitions against allowing children to take part in hostilities. As customary international law is reflected in this regard in Additional Protocol I, the parties to a conflict must take "all feasible measures" to ensure that children "do not take a direct part in hostilities and, in particular, they shall refrain from recruiting them into their armed forces." (Additional Protocol I, art. 77(2))

8. Interference with Humanitarian Relief Efforts - While Israel kept its end of humanitarian truces. Hamas used them to shoot rockets into Israel, including the Kerem Shalom crossing where humanitarian goods are brought into Gaza. All of these actions violate the Law of Armed Conflict, which requires parties to allow the entry of humanitarian supplies and to guarantee their safety. Article 59 of the Fourth Geneva Convention requires parties in an armed conflict to "permit the free passage of [humanitarian] consignments and shall guarantee their protection." Article 60 of the same Convention protects the shipments from being diverted from their intended purpose, something Hamas has certainly done in the past and is reported to have done in this conflict as well.

9. Hostage-taking - The Fourth Geneva Conventions, article 34, says flatly "The taking of hostages is prohibited." This is not an "arrest" as Israel-haters claim, and this is not a prisoner of war situation as Hamas has made clear - the purpose of Hamas' hostage-taking falls under the definition on the International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages: "Any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person (hereinafter referred to as the "hostage") in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage commits the offence of taking of hostages ("hostage-taking") within the meaning of this Convention."

10. Using the uniform of the enemy  - Additional Protocol I prohibits the use of enemy flags, military emblems, insignia or uniforms “while engaging in attacks or in order to shield, favour, protect or impede military operations”.[3] Under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “making improper use … of the flag or of the military insignia and uniform of the enemy” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts when it results in death or serious personal injury.[4] According to some, this is considered perfidy, a war crime. (h/t Joshua)

11. Violence aimed at spreading terror among the civilian population - Rule 2 of ICRC's Customary IHL is "Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited." It quotes Article 51(2) of Additional Protocol I prohibits “acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population”. Hamas rockets are aimed not only at killing civilians, but at spreading terror among Israelis.

12. Targeting civilian objects, such as airports or nuclear power plants - Rule 7 of the Customary IHL says "Attacks must not be directed against civilian objects," quoting Articles 48 and 52(2) of Additional Protocol I.

13. Indiscriminate attacks - Besides targeting civilians and civilian objects, Rule 11 of the ICRC CIHL states flatly that "Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited." By definition, every Qassam rocket attack and most of the other rocket and mortar attacks are by their very nature indiscriminate.

See also Rule 71, "The use of weapons which are by nature indiscriminate is prohibited."

14. Proportionality in attack - ICRC's Rule 14 states "Launching an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, is prohibited." Rocket attacks against civilians have zero military advantage, so by definition they are disproportionate to their military advantage.

See also Rule 18: "Each party to the conflict must do everything feasible to assess whether the attack may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated."

15. Advance Warning - Rule 20 of the ICRC CIHL states "Each party to the conflict must give effective advance warning of attacks which may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit." Given that Hamas has used the media and SMS calls to threaten Israelis, it is clear that they have the ability to warn before every rocket attack. Their failure to do so is a violation of IHL.

16. Protecting civilians - Rule 22 of the ICRC Customary IHL states "The parties to the conflict must take all feasible precautions to protect the civilian population and civilian objects under their control against the effects of attacks." Hamas not only has failed to protect civilians in Gaza by building bomb shelters, they have deliberately put civilians in harm's way.

17. Attacking medical units - Rule 28 states "Medical units exclusively assigned to medical purposes must be respected and protected in all circumstances." Hamas has shot mortars at the Israeli field hospital, set up for Gazans, near the Erez crossing.

18. Protection of Journalists - Hamas has threatened journalists, implicitly and explicitly, accusing some of being spies and sometimes not allowing them to leave Gaza, making them effectively hostages. Rule 34 states "Civilian journalists engaged in professional missions in areas of armed conflict must be respected and protected as long as they are not taking a direct part in hostilities."

19. Mistreating the dead. Rule 113 says "Each party to the conflict must take all possible measures to prevent the dead from being despoiled. Mutilation of dead bodies is prohibited." Hamas has shown off an alleged chip cut out from the (presumably) dead body of Oron Shaul.

There are also numerous conventions that Hamas violates, but I am not sure if they reach the level of international law since they are not signatories. Customary IHL, however, applies to all. .

There are also at least three violations of international law in the way Gilad Shalit was treated, but I am limiting this only to the current war.

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Muslims terrorize Jewish children on Temple Mount (video)

From Yisrael Medad's JPost blog:

Some two dozen or so Jewish children ascended with their fathers to the Temple Mount.

Children, not even teenagers.

Haredim.

They were surrounded by adult Muslim men and women who chanted, screamed, yelled, pushed, threatened and otherwise acted with verbal and even some physical violence. And surely psychological violence.

There is a simple reason why the Muslims became so unhinged.

Because proud Jewish children threaten them more than the police or the IDF.

Muslims know that this is a long-term conflict. They see the IDF the way they think about Crusaders - outsiders who came for a while but who were eventually and inevitably going to be pushed out. All that is needed is patience.

But religious Jewish children show clearly that there is a people whose claim to the Land is older and far more authentic than theirs.

Secular Israeli Jews they can handle. They think that human rights groups and Western governments and terrorism can wear them down and force many of them to make concessions, and then more concessions, until the Muslims win. They look at Gaza and Lebanon and see nothing but Jewish weakness.

But children who are identifiable as Jews are a force that they cannot counter. The children represent a world where Jews are tenacious and dedicated, filled with love for the land and the inner strength to hold onto it. These children and their descendants are not about to give up their holy sites for mere promises and more lies.

The children represent the future, and Muslims don't like what they see there.

Just watch the video and decide - who respects their holy sites and who desecrates them?

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"Zionists trying to hide Canaanite-Palestinian civilization"

You know how Israel is always accused of using archaeology to hide any traces of Muslim presence in the land (a charge that a simple visit to the Israel Museum would dispel)?

Well, that's passe. Now Israel is being accused of hiding the flourishing Canaanite-Palestinian civilization.

A Jordanian columnist says "The Zionist movement is trying hard to obliterate any trace of the existence of the Canaanite civilization in Palestine."

Given that the Torah says that the Canaanites existed, this is an interesting accusation. But, you see, it isn't the Canaanites they are hiding so much as the purported Palestinian ties to Canaan. You see, from this article we learn that the formidable giants that the twelve Israelite scouts encountered (Numbers 13:28) were, in fact, Palestinian!

You learn something new every day.

It is good to know that Palestinian Arabs are in fact descended from Canaanite non-Arabs.

Except for those named Erekat/Uraiqat/Areikat.

And the famous Husseini family of Jerusalem, who came in the 12th century. (The Shawishes come from the Husseinis.)

And the equally famous Nashashibis of Jerusalem, who are of Kurdish/Turkoman or Arabian peninsula origin.

And the Abu Ghoshes, who came around the time of the Crusades, possibly from Europe.

And the Barghoutis, who came from the Bani Zeid clan who arrived after the Crusades as well.

And the Al Khalil family, from Mecca.

And the Khazens, who are from Lebanon.

And the Nusseibehs, the oldest Arab family in Jerusalem, who arrived in the 7th century.

And the Qudwa and Arafat families, who came from Aleppo, Syria to Gaza in the late 17th century.

And the Ridwans, who came from the Ottoman empire to become leaders in Gaza.

And the Salibas, from Greece via Lebanon.

And the Touqans, from either northern Arabia or northern Syria.

And the Hammoudas from Transjordan.

And the Zeitawis  who came from Mecca to Morocco to Gaza. They are related to the Zaghabs.

And the Ghassans, who came from Arabia to Lebanon.

And the Tamimis, who come from the Tamim tribe of Arabia.

And the Tarabins, who claim to originally come from the Bakom Valley east of Mecca.

And the Jabaris, who descend from an inhabitant of the Jabar castle on the Euphrates.

And the Matar family from Kuwait.

And the prominent Jerusalem family Nammari, who came to Palestine from Spain during the expulsion.

And the Adwans, who came from the Hijaz.

And the Dajanis, originally from Arabia but whose first resident came to Palestine from Spain and Morocco.

And even the Nabulsi family, who are named after the town of Nablus, but Nablus only got that Arabicized name in the 7th century.

The Murads came from Albania, and settled in Palestine in the 1500s.

The Al Hafi clan descended from Bishar al-Hafi who lived in Baghdad.

The Chehaybers are of Turkish-Arab descent.

Christian families from Bait Sahour named Abu Aita, Khoury, Yacoub, Ibrahim, Sous, Abdil-Masih Al-Hayik, Rishmawi and Hannouneh whose ancestors came from Turkey in the 17th century.

The Marashda, Khair, Bannoura, Awwad and Badra families who came from the Rashda area of Egypt in the 18th century.

The Kukali family which came from Syria around the same time.

The Tawil, Sa'ad, Gharub and Masa'ad families, descended from the Marashda family mentioned about.



And the Hejazis from Arabia, Mughrabis from Morocco, Masris from Egypt, Houranis from Syria, Turkis and Dogmushes from Turkey, Yamanis from Yemen, Jaziris from Algeria, Hindis from India, Kurdis from Kurdistan, Halabis from Aleppo, Trabelsis (Tripoli), Sudanis (Sudan), Faranjis (French), and Shamis (Syria).

But besides  every famous Palestinian Arab clan, sure, everyone else must  be Canaanites.

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Belgium's new poet laureate not happy I called him an antisemite. Too bad.

Last week, I reported that the new designated poet laureate of Belgium, whose pen name is Charles Ducal, is an antisemite, and I posted a couple of his poems to prove it. I introduced it with a story from the Antisemitism blog which saw the story in the Philosemitisme blog.

He wrote an email to the Philosemitisme blog, the Anti-Semitism blog and me but for some reason he didn't bother to find out our email addresses; he sent them to an independent investigative reporter who wanted to find out their reactions on the articles and their contents and he forwarded it to me.

Here is the (auto-)translation of his (lawyer's?) vaguely threatening email:

We demand the immediate cessation of the following accusations of anti-Semitism in relation to Charles Ducal and require immediate rectification of the coverage of Charles Ducal in:
- http://antisemitism-europe.blogspot.be/2014/01/belgium-new-national-poet-is-rabid.html
- http://elderofziyon.blogspot.be/2014/01/new-poet-laureate-of-belgium-is.html .

Please find your claims about his alleged anti-Semitism below refuted by Charles Ducal (pseudonym of French Dumortier ) :

There is an article on the blog of "Elders of Zion" accusing me of anti-Semitism. It is further alleged that my moral outrage it exclusively on the Jews and for example I have never written anything about the atrocities of the Belgians in the Congo.

As you, consciously or unconsciously, create confusion between the concept of "criticism of Israeli policy (anti- Zionism)" and " hatred of Jews ( anti-Semitism )" , for clarity , the following :

* I, like any reasonable person , make a distinction between Jew , Israeli and Zionist. I first of all have respect for the Jewish religion and great respect for what Jewish people in all times have performed in the fields of science, art and philosophy around the world. Since I come from a Flemish family who risked their lives to hide Jewish children from the Nazis, I have a deep sense of compassion for the Jews during the Holocaust. The Poetry Gazette No. 6 of 2012 has two poems of mine , entitled " Somewhere in Poland ," which unequivocally express this compassion. These poems will also be found in my collection to appear in March. Second, I cherish no hostile feelings towards the people of Israel and have never so much as a word has given rise to suspicion in that direction . Third, I'm an opponent of the Zionist policy of the Israeli government towards the Palestinian population , as described in dozens of well-documented books , such as " A cry for justice ' Dries van Agt , former Prime Minister of the Netherlands and former ambassador to the European Union, Japan and the U.S.. On this basis, one may call me " anti- Zionist" . I do not deny this point for those who strongly disagree with me, but the label "anti-Semite " is an expression of bad faith, defamation and slander .

• The poetry cycle "After Auschwitz " was written based on "The ethnic cleansing of Palestine" , a book written by an Israeli historian Ilan Pappe based on Israeli military archives. It is your right to disagree, as it is also my right in that study contributes to see in the uncovering of the historical reality .

• In 2010, appeared in Knack a series by my hand on the occasion of 50 years of Congolese independence, a series of the colonization and plundering of the Congo and the state of war today. These poems are included in my new collection to appear in March . I furthermore have poems written in response to the Iraq war and injustice in the world (poverty , war , etc. ) in general , as can be verified in my anthology published in 2012 . The argument that I let my moral outrage only for 'hatred of the Jews ' is this adequately refuted, I suppose.

• Finally, I would like to ask you whether you fully realize the severity of your accusation directed at me and the moral damage caused by the dissemination through social media. To turn the tragedy of the Jews under the Nazis into an instrument of cheap invective is hopefully for you due to a flurry of levity and not the result of a vulgar opportunism , which every righteous man ( Jew and non - Jew ) would be ashamed of.

I do not speak Flemish, so I will take him at his word that he has written against colonization of the Congo. This was in the part that I quoted from the Philosemitisme blog.

However, I stand behind the parts that I wrote.

Ducal says that he took his information about Israel from Ilan Pappe, the notoriously fraudulent "historian," Be that as it may, that does not excuse the form and words of his poems, which are by any sane definition antisemitic.

It is Ducal, not me, who takes the Holocaust and cheapens it in his attempt to tarnish today's Jews of Israel.

The poems I quoted were not obviously equating today's Israeli Jews with Nazis (except for the first "After Auschwitz" poem which is a Biblical quote, implying that Israel's justification for ethnic cleansing is Biblical, and the title is meant to be an ironic counterpoint to the Holocaust.)

Here are two of the other "After Auschwitz" poems:

AFTER AUSCHWITZ 1
When I heard that the house I called mine
was stolen, I asked the authorities who
the owner was. They said: “Your head is full of ash,
you’re still weak, you know nothing of the fight.”

When I heard that the owner was alive
and carried the key in his pocket, I sent
the locksmith away. He went to the authorities.
Then the locks were changed.

On memorial days, called to remembrance
my fellow downtrodden roamed in my head.
Beneath the ash, the issue smoldered, unsaid.
But the owner never came. It slowly went dead.


AFTER AUSCHWITZ 2

Even Auschwitz was nothing special, of course.
Many survivors came to this place,
a little despised but usable, and
received a monument to retrieve

from history the transportation to the camps
and to form the grindstone of a nation.
It was the horror of all ages, of course,
but as such became exclusive, ownership

of pain transformed into ownership of land.
Who lived in this street, in this house?
Who drew water from this well?
Who sold his goods at this market?

Who, about Auschwitz, could have any doubt?

To compare Jews in Israel to Nazis is antisemitic, period.

To misrepresent the idea of "Chosen People" as if Jews torment others using that as an excuse, is antisemitic.

To misrepresent Jewish scriptures as if it is used as justification for a fictional ethnic cleansing today is antisemitic.

This is exactly what Ducal does, in the most disgusting and sickening way.

Ducal is worse than Ilan Pappe. Pappe only lies; Ducal turns slander against Jews into art.

I am quite sensitive to the differences between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. This poetry isn't a dispassionate criticism of Israel - it is criticism of Israel whose entire power rests on attacking Jews, attacking Jewish symbols and making obscene comparisons to Jewish suffering.  Ducal is claiming that Jews are using both the Holocaust and the Torah to justify the crimes that he reads in Pappe's novels and he sneeringly mentions "chosenness" and "Auschwitz" and Jewish suffering throughout the ages in order to evoke the exact same trite and perverted moral equation that other Jew-haters use: "Jews are doing to Arabs what Nazis did to Jews."

That is antisemitism.

I think that it is reasonable to call someone who writes such nauseating anti-Jewish propaganda an antisemite, despite his statements of sympathy for dead and suffering Jews of the Holocaust. It is easy to feel sorry for the dead and the survivors - Ducal seems to want credit for that. He claims that his writing of a poem (that I have not read) sympathetic to  Holocaust victims should inoculate him from accusations of antisemitism. What he doesn't get - or he is purposefully ignoring - is that his poems that equate the Holocaust with the events of 1948 means he doesn't know the first thing about the Holocaust and he is equally ignorant about the "Nakba."

Denying the Jewish people the right of self determination is also antisemitic. And so is misrepresenting Israel's history by claiming that Jews used the Holocaust to become "exclusive owners" of Israel. The number of lies and misrepresentations in these poems is huge, and all of them - by sheer coincidence, I suppose - make Jews look like hypocrites and monsters. Imagine that.

These poems of his should be exposed. If he is fine with what they say, well, all I'm doing is giving people the opportunity to read them for themselves and make their own decisions.

I believe that the antisemitism is clear and I have no problem saying so.

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New poet laureate of Belgium is an antisemite (update)

From Philosémitisme Blog, translated by Antisemitism in Europe:

Charles Ducal is Belgium's new 'national poet'. In this position, he will be expected to write poems which concern Belgium. Which might be new to him. Ducal has not written one poem on the atrocities committed by Belgians in their former colonies. However, he had time to dwell on the crimes of the Jews.*

Together with Lucas Catherine, Ducal co-authored "Gaza - The History of the Palestinian tragedy". The book includes his poetry titled "After Auschwitz", a group of poems with names like "Tel Aviv 1948–2008", "Nakba" and "A Poet in Sderot". Lest you think he might actually be sympathizing with the Jews who are constantly being bombed by their Gazan neighbors, rest assured: the song has a little note that Sderot was "formerly Najd", and is all about how 'we' kicked out the rightful owners.

The poems do not mention Jews, Israel, Nazis or Holocaust, and yet they're full of accusations against the Jewish people.

His poems are reprehensible, and (like the antisemitic play Seven Jewish Children) they are written from a grotesque caricature of a "Jewish" point of view - how a twisted Jew-hater imagines that Jews think. So while the themes are the same lies that we are used to hearing from antisemites (Jews are bloodthirsty killers who use the Holocaust as an excuse to act as monsters, Jews are quite happy making Arabs suffer, Jews use the Torah to justify massacres and ethnic cleansing) - the faux first person perspective makes the poems that much more powerful, and that much more disgusting.

Here are some of them.

AFTER AUSCHWITZ
for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand;
and thou shalt drive them out before thee.
(Exodus 23:31)

THE WALL

One does not scrawl fate in the wind.
We seek sanctuary behind
the wall, full of words on our side,
stamped with the holy number, this

stubborn plurality of a faith, in search of a voice
that can unite us in a common song,
a hymn and history to which we belong,
from the ashes of a tongue we rejoice.

The other side of the wall is ours too,
though scarred by signs of enmity.
We simply wipe it clean, unread.
Those who find a hole are blown back

into the void.

LET US TALK
First, we will bury you in the sand,
with your head free to speak
about mutual understanding, about peace;

first, we will make your field our own,
station soldiers between mine and thine,
direct the camera from our side;

first, we will count our dead
from the past two thousand years
and justify the beating,

and wipe the spit from our hands
and declare – it's clear as day;
you want no peace in this land.

Most readers of poetry don't have the same filters they might have when reading or watching the news. Poems need to be interpreted and understood, and that extra effort makes it easier for the reader to trust that the poet - whom he learns to respect during the interpretation process - is being truthful.

Very few casual poetry readers would be able to distance themselves from these works enough to realize how bigoted it is for a man to put himself in the minds of people he hates and relay their supposedly disgusting thoughts. Ducal is an antisemite, and these works prove that beyond a doubt. Saying that Jews are religious fundamentalists who enjoy acting like Nazis is no less offensive and no less a lie when it is written as poetry.

 Like fiction and film, poetry can be a powerful tool for brainwashing, and that is Ducal's goal in these examples. Belgium should withdraw this honor; Ducal should be shamed, not feted.


UPDATE:

Ducal, or his lawyer, wrote me a letter. A followup post on January 27. Link when it is available.

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