Showing posts with label op-ed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label op-ed. Show all posts

Monday, September 04, 2023

The New York Times has an op-ed by Ilan Stavans about the resilience of Yiddish, supposedly by an expert in the field. It includes some antisemitic tropes, oversimplifications, self-contradictions, outright falsehoods and ultimately reflects anti-Zionist politics more than it represents the state of Yiddish today.

For a language without a physical address that has come frighteningly close to extinction, Yiddish’s will to live seems inexhaustible. The lesson is simple and straightforward: Survival is an act of stubbornness.

Yiddish has been experiencing something of a revival. Online courses mean that anyone from Buenos Aires to Melbourne might learn to speak it. There are new translations of long-forgotten works and literary classics. A Broadway staging of “Fiddler on the Roof” was performed in Yiddish. And streaming platforms like Netflix have released series, including “Shtisel,” “Unorthodox” and “Rough Diamonds,” fully or partially in Yiddish.

Before World War II, approximately 13 million Jews, both secular and religious, spoke Yiddish. Today it is estimated that there are about a quarter of a million speakers in the United States, about the same number in Israel and roughly another 100,000 in the rest of the world. Nowadays the vast majority of those who speak the language are ultra-Orthodox. They aren’t multilingual, as secular Yiddish speakers always were.
Here is the problem with this article in a nutshell: it is written from the perspective of the relatively tiny number of secular Yiddish speakers today, and it all but ignores the real use of the language among religious Jews, which is the core of how the language is used - and more importantly, how it is evolving.

The Yiddish of the secular Jew today is an adaptation of the Yiddish of the heyday of socialist secular Yiddish newspapers in America in the early 20th century. But the vast majority of Yiddish speakers today use it in their everyday speech and as such the language continues to evolve as needed to accommodate modern life. The religious Jews speaking Yiddish are the ones who are not only keeping it alive but they are the ones who are the ones who change it. As a result, Yiddish speakers who learn the language in university courses in the US have a difficult time understanding the many dialects of Yiddish spoken in Boro Park, Mea Shearim or Bnei Brak, which includes healthy amounts of modern English or Hebrew just as local Yiddish dialects have always assimilated elements of the majority population's language. 

To the secular Jew studying Yiddish, the language is a romantic throwback to the good old days of unionization of sweatshops in the Lower East Side. To the actual speakers of the language today, it is what is used in everyday life. That is where the dynamism of the language comes from - but the current class of secular Yiddishists tend to be anti-religious, and it shows.

Here are two religious Yiddish magazines published today. This is where the "interesant" things are happening to the language, not in academia or with today's secular Yiddish speakers. 


The writer dismisses the "ultra-Orthodox" (itself a demeaning term) as not being multilingual as the secular Yiddish speakers were. Where does he get that from? How many American haredi or chassidic Jews do not speak English? How many Israeli chassidim cannot speak Hebrew? They might not be as fluent in their national languages as they are in Yiddish, but the vast majority can speak and understand more than one language; they couldn't survive in society otherwise. This is just one example of how Stavans subtly disparages the people who are the ones that really keep the language alive - not as a museum piece but as a living language.

It’s worth noting that Yiddish has been maligned by gentiles and Jews alike. Antisemites considered it the parlance of vermin, while the rabbinical elite deemed it unworthy of serious Talmudic discussion. 
Really? The "rabbinical elite" were anti-Yiddish? What planet does he live on?  Yiddish was the lingua franca of all the major European yeshivas, even after they were transplanted to America or Israel after the Holocaust. The roshei Yeshiva (yeshiva heads) from Europe gave their lessons in Yiddish as long as their students understood it, well into the 1960s and 1970s. Today's American "yeshivish" language includes biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and plenty of Yiddish along with English. And some of the "yeshivish" Yiddish has become part of modern Israeli Hebrew - such as "shkoyach" meaning "good job, itself a Yiddishization of a Hebrew term. 

But the article really descends into modern antisemitism/anti-Zionism here:
Another enemy of Yiddish was Zionism. In the late 19th century, as the hope for a Jewish state found its ground, it was portrayed as jargon spoken by the diaspora — the language of homelessness, without a true national voice. To combat this deficit, Hebrew needed to be revived. Soon the myth sprung of the Hebrew pioneer, in sharp contrast with the large-nosed, hunchbacked Jew that Zionists themselves vilified.
Hebrew, which officially became the national language of the state of Israel in 1948, is spoken by about nine million people around the world. For some, the language symbolizes far-right Israeli militarism.
So according to Stavans, Zionists are antisemites who regard diaspora Jews the same way that neo-Nazis do, while modern Hebrew is the language of oppression. 

This is a sick slander.

In fact, the people who initially embraced Hebrew as a modern language outside the religious context, and who rejected Yiddish, were the exact type of people that have embraced Yiddish today: the anti-religious, supposedly enlightened Jews. 

Before Eliezer Ben Yehuda revived Hebrew as a modern language in Israel, there were lots of Hebrew language secular newspapers in eastern Europe. They were created by the Maskilim, the self-described "enlightened" ones, who considered Yiddish vulgar and common and tried to make Hebrew a secular language. Here's a list from the National Library of Israel of the Hebrew periodicals in their collection that existed before 1885, nearly all of them from Eastern Europe and nearly all of them secular:


And the first cover of one famous Haskalah newspaper from 1860, trying to attract the Yiddish speaking public to Hebrew:


These secular European Jews abandoned Hebrew for Yiddish at the same time that Zionists embraced and modernized Hebrew, around the 1890s. As described by the American Israelite in a requiem for Hebrew secular literature in 1906:


And while the current secular Yiddishists are often anti-Israel, the Israeli government is doing more to preserve Yiddish than they are, having created a National Authority on Yiddish Culture in 1996.

Another point about at least some of the secular Jews in Israel at the turn of the 20th century. Many of them opposed the idea of Hebrew being the official language of a Jewish state, and instead lobbied for the official language to be - German
In contrast, Yiddish represents exile — a longing for home. 

This is the problem of the modern, anti-Zionist Yiddishists in a nutshell. Stavans cannot even understand how this sentence is self-contradictory. Exile is by definition being away from home.  To people like Stavans, Yiddish is Jewishness - but it is as transient as symbol of Jewishness as cuisine or dance. Yiddish is something that should be studied and remembered. but it is a tiny slice of the richness of Judaism throughout the millennia and throughout the world. 

In Israel, the choice to standardize Hebrew as the language of the state was partially prompted, and later vindicated, by the Mizrahi Jews in the land who did not know Yiddish and who eventually became the majority. The only thing that Jews throughout the world have in common is Hebrew, not Yiddish. 

The history of Yiddish among secular Jews is much more complex and ambivalent than is described here. This article promotes a myth of secular Jews having always used Yiddish as their preferred language when in fact they used it for political purposes - as they continue to do today. It is the despised religious Jews who keep the language relevant, alive and vibrant today, while the author of this article keeps Yiddish in a romanticized amber of a century ago. 





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, July 24, 2023

Palestinian news site Amad as well as other sites have an opinion piece by Jordanian Ibrahim Abu Atila that asks Arabs to stop being coy and admit that their enemy is Jews, not "Zionists."

Those of us who speak simply and who do not know theorizing and embellishment of speech and those who are not affected by what the media promotes say that those who are hostile to us are the Jews.. while those who assume in themselves culture and openness to the world say that those who are hostile to us are the Zionists... Both of these statements are true...
He then goes on to say that while Israel was founded by secular Zionists, now it is run by "Talmudists." And now the judicial reform debate in Israel is between the seculars and the "Talmudists."
And now, as we are on the verge of approving those laws that diminish the role of the judiciary and increase the control of religious Jews over the occupation entity, a major conflict has begun between the two currents.

Although the existence of the two currents depends on the Talmudic approach, and that both of them are considered a real enemy for us, our enemy is the Zionist in both its religious and secular forms. It is necessary and necessary for us to return to the conviction of the simple and elderly among us that the Jews are our enemies, no matter how hidden they are and whatever clothes they wear. 

Then, somehow, he says that both sides are really Talmudists anyway.  

Finally, he expresses his fervent wish for a civil war that will wipe out Israel and allow the Palestinians to take over.
We hope that the conflict will intensify and escalate openly so that we will reach advanced steps in it, leading them to a civil war that will help us get rid of both streams and liberate the entire Palestinian land from them....
This has been a popular theme, as the Palestinian and other Arab media have been closely following every Israeli news story that predicts doomsday is imminent. They just have to wait, they believe, and then allow the Jews to destroy themselves.

According to Jewish tradition, the major reason the Temples were destroyed was "sinat chinam," baseless hatred between Jews.  It is saddening that we are seeing such baseless hatred today in Israel, and the judicial reform debate has been allowed by both sides to degenerate into an emotional fight between conservative and liberal, between religious and non-religious, and it is used as an excuse to widen fissures that have nothing or little to do with actual judicial reform. 

Take away the rhetoric and absurd name calling, and thoughtful people on both sides have a lot they can agree on. But those voices are being drowned out.  

I have my own opinions on the debate, but at this time judicial reform is not the debate anymore. Right now the enemies of Israel are the people who are eagerly widening the split between the two sides, and this is happening on both sides of the debate.

The way I see it, the two sides at this time are not the pro- and anti-judicial reform sides. The two sides are those who want to widen the split in Israeli society and those who want to narrow it: those who want to fuel sinat chinam and those who want to stop it. 

The Israelis fueling the baseless hatred on either side of the debate are the allies of the Arab antisemites like Abu Atila who are cheering them on.





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, July 11, 2023

How many ways can one minimize and then legitimize terror attacks against Jews?

Tareq Baconi, former senior analyst for Israel/Palestine at the International Crisis Group and the author of “Hamas Contained” who is now president of the board of al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, displays a lot of them in New York Times guest essay.

Purportedly an analysis of Jenin, he breaks new ground in first obfuscating, and ultimately justifying, Palestinian attacks on civilians.

At a Fourth of July event in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Israeli Army had attacked “the most legitimate target on the planet — people who would annihilate our country.” He was referring to months of armed resistance against Israeli settlers by young men in the Jenin refugee camp.
To Baconi, people like brothers Hallel and Yagel Yaniv, shot to death by a Hamas resident of Jenin while doing the crime of driving, are mere "settlers," and their murder was "resistance." 

He conveniently doesn't mention that the terror wave that gripped Israel even within the invisible line that somehow differentiates between human beings and "settlers" also came from Jenin. Three civilians in Tel Aviv were murdered in April 2022 by a terrorist from Jenin - either they don't exist or are also "settlers." The terrorist who killed five Israelis in Bnei Brak shortly beforehand was from the Jenin area, and the murders were celebrated in Jenin. The murderers of four Israelis on Yom Haatzmaut 2022 in Elad were also from the Jenin area. 

They don't count. Or, as we will see, perhaps they are "settlers" as well.
More than 20 years ago, another right-wing prime minister, Ariel Sharon, led an extensive military campaign against the same refugee camp. It was two years into the second Palestinian uprising. Palestinian suicide bombers, some of whom hailed from Jenin, had rocked Israeli streets. In response, the Israeli Army invaded the West Bank and ravaged the Jenin refugee camp, then, as now, a center of Palestinian resistance.   
Scores of Palestinians who detonated bomb belts in the midst of crowds of Jews didn't kill anyone, you see. They merely "rocked Israeli streets." It was practically a music festival! But Israel's response "ravaged" a camp that was merely a "center of Palestinian resistance" - not a terrorist hotbed.

With the absence of any hope for statehood, and with no viable political leadership to lead the struggle, some take matters into their own hands through armed and unarmed forms of resistance,
Amazingly, in this entire essay, Palestinians simply never kill anyone. They just engage in "armed and unarmed forms of resistance." Murdering Jews with axes and bombs are simply a form of protest, and a quite understandable one.
Like Jenin, the Gaza Strip also has a history of resistance against Israeli occupation.  
Shooting tens of thousands of rockets towards Israeli civilian targets, killing many, is  again merely "resistance against Israeli occupation." To Baconi, and the New York Times editors who approved this essay, there is no distinction between the two sides of the Green Line - all of Israel is "occupied." 

Beneath this evolving context is a singular constant: Israel’s ability to sustain its settlement of Palestinian territory without accountability, while equating Palestinian resistance to terrorism. That this framing has long been accepted among the major Western powers is particularly galling for Palestinians in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where resistance to illegal occupation is hailed as heroic and supported by Western weapons and military training.  
Here the sheer immorality of Baconi and the New York Times comes into sharper focus. Not only do they dehumanize all Israelis as mere "settlers," which is sickening enough - they show no differentiation between attacking an army and targeting civilians. That principle of distinction is the entire basis of the Fourth Geneva Convention, but to apologists for murder like Baconi, Palestinians butchering rabbis while praying are equivalent to Ukrainians defending themselves from Russian soldiers and mercenaries. 
Residents of the Jenin camp, some of whom had fled from their homes in what is now Israel in 1948, are refugees once again. And some of the toddlers who were in the camp in 2002 are now the young men of the Palestinian resistance. As the history of other struggles against apartheid and colonial violence have taught us, today’s children will no doubt take up arms to resist such domination in the future, until these structures of control are dismantled.

This essay is the intellectual equivalent to handing out sweets after a terror attack.

Baconi is not only justifying but actively cheering terrorism against Jews. He portrays the most despicable and disgusting murderers as heroic "resistance"  - and he is doing it under the pretense of caring about human rights.

Any real human rights activist should be horrified at this paean to murdering civilians. But instead of condemning the twisted, immoral essay of Baconi, the "human rights" community is tweeting 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!

 

 

Monday, March 13, 2023



I had missed this last month, but MEMRI and the Meir Amit Center both reported that the ISIS newspaper Al Naba had an op-ed whose title was literally "Kill the Jews."

I found the original, and it is just as hateful as you would imagine.

God Almighty has shown the characteristics of the unbelieving Jews in many verses of His wise book, and described them in detail and accurately, and there is no doubt that the wisdom of this accurate divine description is to take the lesson and the admonition, and caution and preparation, so that the Muslim distances himself from following the path of the Jews and following their ways or loyalty to them, and warns of their deception , and necessarily; Get ready to war and fight them.

... 

Accordingly, we repeat the call and remind the youth of Palestine that their war with the Jews, in this blessed Qur’anic context, be a religious war far from the pre-Islamic national flags that contradict the Qur’an and Sunnah, and we stress the feasibility of targeting Jewish temples and synagogues and intending them for bloody attacks, as it is more effective  against the Jews. ...We advise them to equip themselves after believing in explosive belts, as their absence has been long and their exclusion from that arena; 

We also urge Muslims everywhere to fight the Jews and target them inside the Jewish neighborhoods and synagogues scattered in Europe and other countries, so kill the Jews by every means and oppress them, and be the beginning of the war that burns the infidel Jews after the tyrants of the entire world gathered to stop it, and they will not succeed, God willing. Exalted be He, and if tomorrow we will see it soon.

Even though mainstream Arab opinion is against ISIS, I don't see any Arabic op-eds that are upset over this article. 

 



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, March 05, 2023

Aziz Mohammed Balousha writes in an Amad.ps op-ed:
For those who wreak havoc on the earth in the Holy City, and in its Al-Aqsa Mosque, from desecration and almost daily raids, and to Judaize the landmarks of the Holy City and the first two qiblahs, and in historical Palestine, by killing, demolishing, and terrorizing children, women, and the elderly...

Those who make lies and lie to God, violated the covenants, and on top of that, they tried to kill the Chosen Prophet - may God’s prayers and peace be upon him and his family and companions - several times, but God - blessed and exalted - saved him and preserved him.

They have nothing in their dictionary except crime and bloodshed. They are the ones who killed the Prophet of God, Zacharias,....And they killed Ezekiel, peace be upon him, and the Jews tried to kill Jesus Christ , peace be upon him, but God lifted him up and saved him from their plot, and many, many others, so only the Jews were killed by the prophets of God, and whenever they made a covenant, a group of them rejected it, and it is their nature to break the covenants, betrayal, and distort the words, Their hearts are hard as stones and devoid of mercy, and they are creative in igniting strife and wars.

The Jews, gentlemen!!!! 
They aren't even trying to hide their Jew-hatred. 

But Allah forbid you call Palestinians antisemitic - that is just a means to demonize them, you see.




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, February 14, 2023



An op-ed in Al Quds, a UK-based news site for Palestinians, says, "The uprising this time must start from a clear political vision of how to coexist in peace and avoid internal strife, as the region is full of boiling factors, and there is enough misery and suffering because of  them. With all that is happening, there is nothing left for the Arabs, except for a little face, which may be shed cheaply in front of the world's ridicule and the laughter of time. 

'What is left of face can be preserved by a third intifada, led by youth in the spring of life, and boys whose buds have not yet blossomed, chanting the words of Ghassan Kanafani: “Beware of natural death, and do not die except between showers of bullets.' "

To this Arab writer, seeing children attacking Israelis, and dying, is a point of pride. He wants Palestinian children to die, as long as it makes Palestinians feel honorable. And honor comes from attacking Jews.

This is mainstream thinking among Palestinians and many other Arabs - this writer is from Egypt.

One cannot emphasize enough how sick the culture of Palestinianism is.






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, February 02, 2023

An op-ed at the Harvard Crimson attempts to turn the Ken Roth episode into an excuse to block Israelis from teaching there.

Because of academic freedom, of course.

Josh Wilcox, organizer for Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, writes:

It seems a couple points were absent from Dean Elmendorf’s announcement. At no point did he address the elephant in the room: what scholars like Cornel R. West ’74 have alleged as Harvard’s complicity in silencing voices that call for Palestinian freedom.

Similarly, HKS’s track record of offering positions should make us skeptical of the sincerity of its mission statement.

HKS has proudly lended [sic] its name to Amos Yadlin, a former general in the Israeli Air Force who participated in the brutal war on Lebanon in 1982. ...
Yadlin is only one of several questionable characters. As Harvard students, we cannot continue to let our University welcome agents of colonial violence while denying those who reject U.S.-backed Israeli apartheid.
Who, exactly, has Harvard denied a position to because of their pro-Israel positions? The article mentions this as a fact three times - and the links show us that there is exactly one episode that they can point to.

And that episode is a lie.

In 2021, Cornel West went on a campaign much like Ken Roth's in 2023. He went on multiple  interviews claiming claimed that Harvard denied him tenure, and that the only reason he could think of was his anti-Israel position. 

He had no proof.

But he lied about the entire episode. His position was not a tenure track position to begin with
During his normal 5-year review, the faculty committee offered him a raise and a 10 year contract, which for a 67-year old man is as good as tenure. But he refused, insisting that they change his position itself into a tenured position - something that this review board couldn't do. As the Boston Globe reported, "The faculty committee was only in charge of reviewing his reappointment and does not have authority to conduct a review for tenure, [Harvard's] spokesman said."

Now, it is obvious why he wasn't granted tenure - he did not have a tenure-eligible job and one cannot make that change at the drop of a hat. West asked for the job to be changed, which is quite a different matter than being denied tenure!
West was the proto-Roth - making baseless accusations about a Zionist cabal at Harvard, blaming powerful Jews (see update to my post linked above)  that were mindlessly repeated by people who share his antisemitism.

But now, Harvard's Israel haters are pretending that the Cornel West case proves that Harvard has a history of mistreating anti-Israel academics. And their proposed solution?

Deny any Israelis becoming Harvard fellows!

The people falsely claiming that Harvard denies academic freedom are the first ones to publicly call for Harvard to deny academic freedom.

Why would we expect anything else?



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, January 17, 2023




In 2021, Ken Roth - then head of Human Rights Watch - posted a tweet that was widely derided as justifying antisemitism, as it blamed antisemitism on Israeli government actions:

Antisemitism is always wrong, and it long preceded the creation of Israel, but the surge in UK antisemitic incidents during the recent Gaza conflict gives the lie to those who pretend that the Israeli government's conduct doesn't affect antisemitism.
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 18, 2021
Antisemitism is always wrong - but it is the Jews' fault for defending themselves and trying to stop thousands of rockets from being shot to kill other Jews.

This may be the only tweet Roth ever deleted, even though he never apologized, but only claimed that it was misinterpreted.

Well, he's done it again - blaming antisemitism not on antisemites, but on Jews.

The ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt wrote a good article in the Jerusalem Post that pointed out, as I did, that The Nation trafficked in antisemitic conspiracy theory territory by reporting - without any proof - that the reason Roth was rejected from a fellowship at Harvard was because of pressure by rich Jewish donors. 

Roth doesn't address that antisemitic conspiracy theory, which he has been himself pushing non-stop since he started his campaign of revenge at Harvard.

What he does highlight is a purposeful distortion of Greenblatt's words:

[Peter Beinart], and others, have ignored the long history of many of these groups, including Human Rights Watch, for their disproportionate and almost obsessive focus on Israel. Tellingly, neither Massing nor Beinart bothers to address the upsurge of antisemitism that ADL and others, including longtime HRW supporters, have shown that accompanies these kinds of reports.

They also ignored the weaponization of these reports, which effectively delegitimize Israel’s existence, deeming it a pariah state to be placed in the company of the worst regimes in history. 
Greenblatt notes that antisemites will use HRW and others' obsessive (and provably false) anti-Israel reports as excuses for their hate.

Roth, instead, says that this proves that antisemitism is partially the Jews' fault:
When antisemitism surges around a peak of Israeli government abuses, Israeli partisans howl if anyone points it out, but when rights groups report on Israeli repression, there is an "upsurge of antisemitism that...accompanies these...reports,” says @ADL
Roth gets is exactly wrong - and he knows it. And this tweet proves his antisemitism.

First, one cannot ignore that Roth uses the word "howl" here - essentially calling Zionists animals. Roth has never tweeted that insulting word about any other group in his 95,000 tweets.

Secondly, Greenblatt pointed out how biased reports that attack Israel's very legitimacy contribute to attacks on Jews worldwide. He is saying that Roth's own antisemitism helps incite antisemitic attacks. Roth distorts it to implying that the attacks are a (rational) response to "Israeli repression." 

This is a classic case of blaming the victim - Jews - for antisemitism. It also mirrors Hamas and Islamic Jihad justifying terror attacks as "natural responses to Zionist aggression."

Thirdly, no Zionists "howl" when people point out that antisemitic attacks use Israel as an excuse. That is in fact proof that modern anti-Zionism is indeed a newer flavor of antisemitism. everyone knows that Israel is used as an excuse for attacking Jews. The complaints are when people like Roth blame Jewish actions for antisemitism, as he is doing here. 

This tweet is Roth doubling down on his disgraceful earlier tweet, and attacking those who were offended by it.

Is there any other victim of bigotry that Roth has ever blamed for not only their own persecution - but for calling out those who justify and "contextualize" it?

This tweet in itself proves what Roth has been denying for the past two weeks. He doesn't engage in "criticism of Israel" - he is obsessively biased against Israel in ways that go way beyond criticism of every other nation. 

And his obsession with demonizing and delegitimizing Israel and her supporters, of defending the indefensible, and of blaming antisemitism itself on Jews is unquestionably antisemitic. 






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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Friday, January 06, 2023

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


Yes, Netanyahu is an anti-Zionist!

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




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

So this is great news:

Even Haaretz admits that anti-Zionists are antisemites!

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


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




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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Thursday, December 08, 2022

A small item on page 4 of the Los Angeles Times, November 25, 1942:


This came in response to a report out of the Netherlands that the Nazis were extorting huge sums for exit permits.


There is, unfortunately, a large body of literature on ransoming captives under Jewish law. A summary from Din Online:

The Rambam (Matmos Aniim 8:10, based on the Gemara in Bava Basra 8b) states in the context of charity donations: “There is no greater mitzvah (i.e. use of charity funds) than redeeming captives.” Based on its special importance, redemption of captives is the first priority for allocating charity funds. Echoing the Rambam, the Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh De’ah 252:1) likewise states: “No mitzvah is as great as redeeming captives.”

The Gemara (Bava Basra 8b) highlights the plight of the captive in the hands of his captors. The latter can torture him, pass him through great suffering, and even kill him. He is entirely at their mercy. The Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh De’ah 252:3) thus writes that one who can redeem a captive yet fails to do so is considered to be murdering at each moment.

Nevertheless, the Mishnah (Gittin 45a) teaches that captives should not be redeemed for any price: “Captives are not redeemed for more than their value.”

The reason for this is discussed by the Gemara, which mentions two possible reasons, without deciding which of them is the true reason. One reason is that it is too weighty a burden on the community. According to this reason, Rashi writes that a private individual is permitted to redeem his own family or loved ones, even for great sums of money.

Another suggested reason is that payment of large ransoms encourages captors to continue in their evil ways, taking further captives to make money. Based on this rationale, a private individual may not pay exorbitant sums for the release of his family, since this encourages kidnappings and places the community at risk.
It seems to me that both those reasons for not paying ransom would not apply in this case. The first reason, as stated, would not apply to the family of the relative being held hostage. The second reason, that it encourages the captors to take more prisoners, doesn't seem to apply because all the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were already effectively captive and already in great danger.

Indeed, there have been halachic rulings that if the captive's life is in danger without  being ransomed, there is no price too high to pay.

The State Department's reason - that paying ransom will add money to the enemies' coffers - is not at all a consideration in Jewish law. 

Yet as far as I can tell, this was not even a subject of debate in 1942. The fate of the Jews was well known at this point in time, and there was plenty of pretend outrage in the West, but it didn't extend to actually trying to save their lives.

Jews who wanted to save their friends and family were to be considered criminals.

For context, here is the entire Los Angeles Times page 4 where these two articles were. The main two articles on the page were about the Nazis wiping out the Jews of Europe by the millions:



At the very same time the readers were being given the details of the horrors of the Holocaust, they were also informed that saving some of those Jewish lives is a crime.

Here is an editorial from a British newspaper, the Dumfries and Galloway Standard and Advertiser (December 12, 1942), that goes on at length and detail about how terrible the Nazi persecution of Jews is and how there is no longer doubt about the Final Solution:



Yet when it comes to whether something can be done to save these unfortunate Jews, suddenly the tone changes:


"The humanitarian feelings of humanity must not be traded on for the purpose of financing the Nazis."

Sure, Jewish lives matter - but not to the point of actually paying money to save them. Better to write op-eds about how terrible it is that we have no choice but to let them all die, as long as we know the Nazis will eventually be "brought to justice."







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

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Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Last week, junior  at Northwestern University Lily Cohen wrote an op-ed for the campus newspaper the Daily Northwestern about her pride at being Jewish in the face of antisemitism. It took up a full page in the print edition, with the headline "I am more proud of my Jewish identity than anyone can ever hate me for it."

She described how the slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is a hateful attack on Jews that hurts her personally:
“From the River to the Sea” is a slogan used by Hamas — a terrorist organization — as a rallying cry to destroy the entire State of Israel and all of its Jewish inhabitants. The phrase originated more than 30 years ago, evolving from language in the 1988 Hamas charter that promoted the destruction of Jews, echoing Adolf Hitler’s messaging on the merits of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This is where I draw the line.

When that slogan is plastered around the walls of buildings where I study, when it’s hung across The Arch that I walk under every day, when it’s painted over The Rock that I helped paint only five hours earlier — in support of voting for gun safety and reproductive rights — I take offense. I feel hurt. I get angry.

Spewing hate will never end in peace, and tearing down other causes is not a constructive way to promote your own.

When similar situations have taken place on campus in the past, I’ve remained silent, writing down how offended, hurt and angry I am, leaving it in the safety of my Google Drive. But, nothing ever changes, so I’m done staying silent. I’m done being blamed for the actions of the Israeli government. I’m done being told I’m undeserving of a safe, secure Jewish homeland.

I will still go on Birthright. I will still attend Hillel services. I will still don my Hebrew necklace. I will not relinquish my pride in my Jewish identity just because someone doesn’t like all that my identity entails.  

In response, antisemitic students decided to directly attack her pain.

They took 42 print copies of her print column and used them as a background to a large poster saying the very words that she said hurt her.



The amount of time and effort it took to make this sign and aim it directly at Lily Cohen shows, with no doubt, that this was an act intended to hurt her and to tell the campus that Cohen's feelings and opinions are to be utterly disregarded and ridiculed.

This is not microaggression. This is aggression against a specific student.

Let's see if Northwestern takes this at all seriously.

(h/t Andrew P)


 



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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Tuesday, November 01, 2022

Historian Matthew Dallek writes in a New York Times op-ed:

The assault on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, last week shocked even those who have become inured to rising violence in the United States. The erosion of norms restraining extreme behavior that began well before the election of Donald Trump in 2016 appears to have accelerated. Society looks as if it is coming apart at the seams.

...Under Mr. Trump’s leadership, groups on the right have felt increasingly comfortable incubating, encouraging and carrying out violence.

The consistency of the rhetoric (“enemy of the people”; “Our house is on fire”; “You’re not going to have a country anymore”; “the greatest theft in the history of America”; “Where’s Nancy?”) has ingrained dehumanization of Republican opponents in parts of the political culture; conservatives have often painted their critics as enemies who must be annihilated before they destroy you. As the Department of Homeland Security has reported, domestic violent extremism — such as the white supremacist Charlottesville riots and the Jan. 6 insurrection — is one of the most pressing internal threats facing the United States.
I don't disagree with any of this except for the term "conservatives" instead of "the far-right" in the paragraph above  - there is little conservative about those who support political violence.

Dallek makes a half-hearted attempt at even-handedness:
Some on the left, too, have increasingly abandoned norms of civility and respect for rules and institutions. The gunman who in 2017 targeted Republican members of Congress and shot five people playing baseball — the Republican House whip, Steve Scalise, was seriously wounded — drew inspiration from his hatred of Republicans and Donald Trump. In June, a California man was arrested outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home and charged with attempted murder after posting on the social platform Discord that he was going to “stop Roe v. Wade from being overturned.”
But then Dallek draws a distinction that isn't really there, as the rest of the article ignores far-Left incitement:
While Democratic leaders for the most part are quick to condemn violence, Republican leaders increasingly minimize its severity or turn a blind eye.   

But Democrats are no less guilty at minimizing the violence on their side. 

One obvious example: Hundreds of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 were violent, but the political Left emphasized that 93% of the protests were peaceful - as if the hundreds of violent protests shouldn't be reported. 

Has anyone reported on the percentage of rallies on the Right that are violent compared to non-violent? I'm sure the percentage that are non-violent is far higher than 93%. 

Both sides are guilty of emphasizing the excesses of the other side and downplaying those on their own, not just the Right. And the Left's blind side is not only for anti-racist protests but also for anti-Israel rhetoric that can easily escalate into violence.

Most of the anti-Israel protests in the US are sponsored by far-Left groups like Samidoun and Within Our Lifetime. They feature chants that call for violence against Zionist Jews, sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly. After all, the chants of "Globalize the Intifada" are a call for violence against Jews worldwide. "From the river to the sea" is a call to ethnically cleanse Jews from the Middle East. "By any means necessary" is explicit support for terror attacks against Jews.  Yet this incitement is  minimized by the larger Left.

Some of these protests have indeed escalated into violence, as we saw last year in New York and Los Angeles. The vicious beating of a Jew in New York was blandly reported as "clashes between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protesters." Only this past week, a yeshiva boy in New York was attacked by someone who demanded he say  "Free Palestine", mirroring a similar attack in May.  The line between Leftist rhetoric and violence against Jews has already been crossed multiple times - but it is downplayed, over and over. 

Overseas, the same socialist sponsors chant pro-violence messages that are even more explicit, and they can be seen as a preview of what we will be seeing soon in the US. This past weekend in Brussels, a rally organized by Samidoun included these chants:

Stand firm until it ends, by throwing a stone or shooting bullets. My people have a war and have no fear, either with a stone or with a Kalashnikov. And fire your rockets, O Motherland...O Motherland, we are coming to you. O my love, O Grand Rocket, hand over this land to me. In war and sword, we will return.

 The rally featured people dressed up as masked Palestinian terrorists and holding signs supporting specific terrorists.

 


This is not just inciting to violence - it is romanticizing it. And the ideological basis for murdering Jews comes from the socialist PFLP, whose philosophy of violence against Zionist Jews was written in the 1960s are remains unchanged today. The PFLP is a terror group that has been behind countless attacks on civilians worldwide. 

How many people on the political Left call out the PFLP and Samidoun and Within Our Lifetime when they call for violence? On the contrary, the Left supports the PFLP as a social justice political party that has founded human rights groups.

Incitement to violence is wrong no matter who does it. It will not stop until those on the same political side are brave enough to call it out, even if it means there will be dissent within the party. 





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, August 30, 2022

Sawaleif is a Jordanian news site. It isn't hugely popular but it has over 30,000 Facebook followers and covers mainstream news, if a bit tabloid-like. 

And, like many Jordanian news sites, it expresses antisemitism frequently and shamelessly.

But this op-ed by Bassam Al Yassin, published Monday, hits Der Stürmer levels.

Jordanians hate Jews the most

The Jew is the epitome of evil and deceit, a professor of greed and deceit, a genius who plots against creation, a superman who spies wherever he is. The Jew is selfish, self-centered, and believes that God created no one but Him, and that the goyim – other peoples, were created to serve Him. That is why the Jew lives behind a false mask of oppression and the Holocaust. 

The Jews lived as parasites on peoples, under the guise of persecution, then infiltrated into Palestine, with the Balfour Declaration, which gave what Balfour did not have to those who did not deserve it. It was a humanitarian catastrophe that has not stopped since. Palestine is Arab, and excavations have proven that Jews do not have a history there, and with conclusive evidence, their claims were refuted and they were disappointed, as they did not find a piece of pottery that proves that they had a state or a temple. 
And still the "progressives" who pretend they hate antisemitism pointedly don't say a word. When pushed into a corner, they say that there must be a good reason for Arab Jew-hate: Israel.






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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