1911 Encyclopedia Britannica explains how Zionism "is the lineal heir" to the age-old Jewish attachment to Israel

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. 

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Because Tunisia complained, US State Department modifies post which implied Black Africans are indigenous

Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave out the first annual Secretary’s Global Anti-Racism Champions Awards.  

One of the awardees is Saadia Mosbah of Tunisia:

Saadia Mosbah is a Tunisian activist who has dedicated her life to fighting racial discrimination and prejudice, as well as defending the rights of Black Tunisians.  In 2013, after several unsuccessful attempts to launch an association that fights racial discrimination during President Ben Ali’s rule, she finally established Mnemty, “My Dream,” an association that endeavors to raise awareness about the value of diversity and importance of equality, to denounce racism in public spaces, ensure legal protection for all, elevate the profile of the Black population in the cultural sphere, and promote socio-economic development in predominantly black communities.  Saadia’s activism, alongside that of several human rights activists, contributed to the adoption of the law in Tunisia criminalizing racial discrimination on October 9, 2018.   For Mosbah, the law is an achievement, but incomplete, as it lacks a universal declaration that denounces all forms of discrimination irrespective of religion, language, or skin color.  

In their Arabic social media posts, the US Embassy in Tunis described the award this way:

Congratulations Saadia Mesbah for winning the Secretary of State's 2023 International Anti-Racism Champions Award.  The Tunisian activist has dedicated her life to fighting racial discrimination and intolerance and defending the rights of black Tunisians. This award is in recognition of her exceptional courage, leadership and commitment to advancing the human rights of members of marginalized racial, ethnic and indigenous communities. Let's continue to fight against systemic racism, and promote positive change in both the United States and the world.

Tunisian racists freaked out at the term "indigenous communities" - because that implies that Black people whose cause Mesbah champions are indigenous to the region.

Last month, Al Jazeera reported:

Tunis, Tunisia – In February, Tunisian President Kais Saied warned his country of a plan to change Tunisia’s “demographic make-up”, to turn it into “just another African country that doesn’t belong to the Arab and Islamic nations any more”.

As part of this plan, “hordes of irregular migrants from sub-Saharan Africa” had travelled to Tunisia, bringing “all the violence, crime, and unacceptable practices that entails”.

The dubious warning, which has been widely criticised and dubbed racist by human rights groups as well as by regional and international bodies, gave official approval to a mentality that has been spreading through the North African country over recent years.

It led to round-ups of Black sub-Saharan Africans, their eviction from rented properties, and African countries mobilising to repatriate their citizens.

And now, with reports of mobs forcing their way into the homes of Black migrants and refugees, attacking occupants with fists, clubs and machetes, Tunisia’s own native black population, long used to the bigotry that exists in many parts of their own society, are braced for the assault.

The US Embassy use of the word "indigenous communities" fueled the racist fears that there was some sort of plot to flood Tunisia with Black Africans and to declare them to be indigenous to the area. 

So the US Embassy caved and removed the phrase. It re-posted the item, now saying "This award recognizes her exceptional courage, leadership, and commitment to advancing human rights for marginalized communities worldwide. "

Yet this is the exact time to call out Tunisia's racism and recognize Mesbah's work to eliminate it, not to  water it down.

Even more bizarrely, the US Embassy in Tunisia page has apparently removed the entire paragraph describing her getting the award - the headline of the page includes her name along with the photo shown above, but it only lists the other awardees with the reasons for their awards, and not Mesbah. Her paragraph must have been part of that page originally, since it was copied and pasted from the State Department page.

The US Embassy in Tunisia removed the description of the Tunisian awardee! 

Does the State Department consider Black Africans to be indigenous to the region? Or are the seventh century Arab invaders the only "indigenous" people of Tunisia?

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Honest T-shirts for Israel haters

If Israel-haters were honest, their slogans might look something like these:

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Friday memes and cartoons

The second and third ones really, really upset the Israel haters on Twitter. 

The fourth was one of the most popular memes I ever posted on Instagram.

By the way, this is Byzantine-era. Jews continued to build towns after 70 CE. There are lots of Talmudic-era  synagogues discovered  in the Galilee, Judea and Samaria. 

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Newest EoZ memes and comics

These have been a hit on Twitter - and they are upsetting all the right people.

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The eternal Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel can be proven by a single word

Anti-Zionists like to claim that Jews have no right to Israel because they were absent from the land for so long, and therefore the rights have been extinguished over time.

The proof they are wrong, of course, is that Jews have always maintained our emotional attachment to the Land of Israel. Our absence from the land was forced upon us and not a choice. The most famous example is the phrase at the end of the Passover seder and at the end of Yom Kippur services, "Next Year in Jerusalem!"  

And, of course, every day, Jews in their prayers ask God to restore us to the Land and rebuild the Temple. 

However, that argument has a flaw. Those examples may prove only that Jews want the Messiah to arrive and then return to the land of our forefathers. But what abut the ongoing attachment to the land in the two thousand years of  diaspora? How can the ties that each Jew has in each generation, not a theoretical future, be proven?

This attachment can be proven by a single Hebrew word, and that word is אַרְצֵֽנו.

"Artzeinu" means "our land. " It is used about a half dozen times in the Hebrew scriptures, but the use of the word multiplied after our exile began. 

Almost invariably, the term "our land" in Jewish literature refers to the Land of Israel - and no other. 

The Sefaria database of Jewish texts finds אַרְצֵֽנו is used scores of times in the Talmud, 145 times in the Medrash, dozens of times in Jewish liturgy and hundreds of times in Jewish legal texts. And the passage of time does not lessen the use of the word - on the contrary, it can be found in texts written in the 19th and 20th centuries as well, by scholars who were not Zionist at the time. 

From Psalms: "The LORD also bestows His bounty; our land yields its produce."

To the Mishna: "One who sees a place from which idolatry was eradicated recites: Blessed…Who eradicated idolatry from our land."

To the Talmud:"Rav Ḥisda said to Rav Yitzḥak: This balsam oil, what blessing does one recite over it? Rav Yitzḥak said to him, this is what Rav Yehuda said: One recites: Who creates the oil of our land, as balsam only grew in Eretz Yisrael, in the Jordan valley."

To the Grace After Meals: "May the All-merciful break the yoke from off our neck, and lead us upright to our land."

To Maimonides: "It is forbidden to sell [non-Jews] homes and fields in Eretz Yisrael....It is permitted to sell them houses and fields in the Diaspora, because it is not our land."

To the Chofetz Chaim (early 20th century) saying that the sin of loshon hora, speaking negatively about others, is "so severe as to have caused us to be exiled from our land!"

And on and on, through commentaries, works of philosophy, and responsa literature. 

There is no need to qualify the term to say "our land of Israel" or to give it any other name. The phrase "our land" needs no explanation to the Jewish people that read these texts. Everyone knows what "artzeinu" refers to. No one would think for a second that "our land" refers to Babylonia or Egypt or Poland or Lithuania or anywhere else the authors and writers lived.

No matter how far we moved away, how much we were dispersed, how bleak the future looked, Jews always knew that there was a land - and only one land - that is ours.

And this one word, used in so many ways by Jews throughout history but always with the same meaning, proves it. 

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It appears that the Palestinian prime minister's family originated in Egypt - like many other Palestinians

I looked up the history of the Shtayyeh family.

There wasn't as much online as there is from other famous Palestinian families who proudly trace their histories to companions of Mohammed in Arabia.

But about ten years ago, one member of the family seemed to go through social media to see all the the Shtayyehs he could find, and he made a slide show showing dozens of them and a very short bio on each.

While a few live now in Nablus, where Mohammed Shtayyeh was born, the home town of most of them is Damietta, Egypt.

And the Egyptian origin of the family seems likely. A monograph by the JCPA reminds us that Hamas leader Fathi Hammad once said:

Who are the Palestinians? We have many families called al-Masri, whose roots are Egyptian! They may be from Alexandria, from Cairo, from Damietta, from the north, from Aswan, from Upper Egypt. We are Egyptians; we are Arabs. We are Muslims. We are part of you [in mainland Egypt]. Egyptians! Personally, half my family is Egyptian – and the other half are Saudis.

The paper goes on to say that it is well known that Egyptians settled in major cities in Palestine in the 19th century, including Nablus. One of their footnotes says that an Israeli researcher checked the Nablus phone book in 1980 and found 70 entries for the name "al-Masri," "The Egyptian," alone. 

This Arabic article on Arab family name origins freely admits that a great number of Palestinian families immigrated from elsewhere. The head of the Palestinian History and Documentation Center, Khaled Al-Khalidi, notes that original Palestinian family names came from well known Gulf Arab tribes, like Al-Ayyubi, Al-Ansari, Al-Hashemi, and Al-Qurashi. Later families took on named from where they came from, so that's why so many Palestinian families are named after Syrian, Arabian or Egyptian areas (al-Hijazi, al-Halabi [Aleppo], and al-Dimashqi [Damascus], al-Suisi, al-Gharbawi, al-Sharqawi, and al-Araishi.) 

This Palestinian expert freely admits that "the Palestinian people are part of the Arabian Peninsula, and at that time there was free movement, and there were no borders between Arab areas."

To the West, Palestinians claim to be indigenous to the area. In Arabic, they know the truth that many if not most originated elsewhere - and they are proud of it. 

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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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