I have a thing about Germans. I
cannot stand to see or hear them. It isn’t intellectual, not something thought
out, but a gut reaction: it literally turns my stomach to be in proximity to
them, to Germans, even through the media of film.
Do you want to call my kneejerk
response to Germans simple bigotry? An inability to forgive? It’s not. Truly.
The way I feel about Germansis just
the well-honed instinct of a Jewish person, a response to the way Germans systematically
packed my people into cattle cars, shipped them off to death camps, and gassed
and burned them in the millions.
No. You’re right. They weren’t
the ones who did all that. Because the people who did that are mostly dead. So
it wasn’t them but their parents and their grandparents. But the thing is,
their parents and their grandparents are their people. And that is what their people did.
In fact I’m not thinking about
any of this when it happens, when I have contact with Germans. It’s like a
flash, a moment of impact or a collision, something primal. It’s my stomach
turning when a German tourist on a Jerusalem bus turns to me with a smile,
holding out his bag of cookies. “Take one,” he says, smiling, even laughing.
My head flies ‘round, as I turn
my face to the side so I will no longer see him. I am being obvious and it’s
not nice of me. But I can’t help it. Still, I cannot just ignore him. So I turn
my face forward once again and shake my head no, never looking up. Not once.
Because I literally can’t bear it. Can’t bear to look at him.
It’s physical, this reaction,
and you can call it animal instinct, or self-preservation, I really don’t care.
I’m not thinking about any of that when I’m around Germans: the people of the
people who did what their people did, which is murder Jews in the millions.
My guts twist because I am a
Jew. It’s something that happened to me. I’m a product of centuries of cell
division of a single people descended from four
mothers.
I am a Jew.
So when a friend sends me a video
of a “Stairway to Heaven” flashmob from the Kirschgarten, in Mainz, Germany, I
try, I really do. But I last only 40 seconds. Then it happens. My gut turns and
I have to shut it down. I just can’t.
I want to be nice. My friend
was just being nice. So I take several deep breaths, trying to decide what to
say, what to do. Finally, I thank him. I tell him I just can’t stand to see or
hear Germans, but let him know I tried to watch it and that I do appreciate
that he wanted to share something beautiful with me.
I want to be honest. The instinct,
what happens when I see or hear Germans, wasn’t always there. It is a learned
instinct. When I was a young girl in elementary school, I befriended a German
girl, whose parents were doing graduate studies in Pittsburgh. The girl was new
in my class and I wanted to be nice to a stranger. I didn’t know I shouldn’t be
friends with her, and Antje was really, really nice.
One day she invited me to come
home with her after school. I called my mother, who said it was fine. As it got
closer to the time for me to go home for supper, Antje’s parents begged me to
stay for dinner, and said that afterward, they were going to a movie. I
remember it was “Yellow Submarine” that was playing, and they said I could go
with them. It seemed there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do for me, they were
being so nice. I called home and asked if I could stay a bit longer, for dinner
and so forth, maybe for a movie.
My dad got wind of the phone
call, having just come home from work. He asked my mother what was going on,
asked her some questions, then took the phone and said, “You can’t stay. I am
coming to pick you up. Be ready.”
“But Daddy,” I began to beg.
“No,” he said. Just the one
word. But there was a kind of finality to it. I wanted to demand a reason, but knew
it wasn’t going to work on him. I wasn’t going to wheedle this out of him or change
his mind and I knew it. I said goodbye to Antje and her family and I never went
back there ever again.
I wasn’t allowed to.
My dad explained it to me in
the car. “They are Germans being nice to a Jewish girl. They think it can make
up for what they did to us in the war.”
My dad mentioned a few of these
things. Bars of soap. Babies. He didn’t have to say much.
I still liked Antje after that,
but I never really spent time with her again. It was impossible. She was a
German. I was a Jew. The war. The soap. The babies.
Now when I think about her
parents trying so hard to get me to stay over that evening, I feel sick inside.
The way they tried to woo a little Jewish girl. “Hey! We’re not so bad. See? We’re
just people, like you.”
But you see, they’re not.
They know it. I know it. Why
try to pretend?
Some of us, of course, get the
message better than others. My eldest sibling, for instance, never got the
message, never developed the instinct. Perhaps there was a blip in the gene
pool. She bought a used Volkswagen bug during college and my dad didn’t speak
to her until she had it towed away, a few years later.
We didn’t buy German things. And
good God! Especially not a Volkswagen. But the truth is, it wasn’t specific to
Germany. We didn’t buy things from Spain because of the Spanish Inquisition.
And when my father discovered that a particular American discount chain store
was owned by an antisemite, we were told never to frequent that establishment,
ever again. My mom knew he meant business, and we never did.
For the record, I do not hate
Germans. It’s just that more than anything else, I love and am proud of being a
Jew. And this is what my body does to protect my Jewish soul. It has a violent
reaction when I come in contact with Germans.
It’s not malicious, and in
fact, like with the nice tourist offering me cookies, sometimes I feel bad
about it. But it is what it is.
I feel no need to apologize.
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Joseph Massad is professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University.
Even though he has written articles that are so antisemitic as to be indistinguishable from neo-Nazi literature, and even though he is a homophobe who accuses gay activists of colonialism and imperialism, he still gets respect. Which makes one wonder if it is possible for an Arab academic to ever say anything to outrageous for the Left to cheer him.
He just wrote an article for Middle East Eye where he uses his normal antisemitic rhetoric, claiming that Israel's Law of Return is illegal and that Palestinian "right of return" is international law.
The irony is not one that Israel does not recognise the right of refugees to return to their homeland; rather, Israel recognises only the right of Jews - whom it claims, based on its religious and colonial myths, were refugees from Palestine who had lived in exile for 2,000 years - to “return”, while it denies that right to Palestinians, whom it recognises as having been displaced from Palestine.
Of course, no one claims that Jews returning to Israel is based on international law. It is based on Israel's right to create its own immigration policy, as every other country has.
As usual, Massad's "proofs" for Palestinian "right of return" are a mixture of groundless assertion and links to documents that say no such thing. He cites the case of Bosnia, when that return was part of the Dayton Agreement and not based on international law. He cites without a shred of proof that descendants of refugees are considered eligible for return (he links to Somalian law saying some descendants of Somali refugees are eligible for citizenship - this has zero to do with international law.)
After all the smoke and mirrors, though, Massad gets to the real reason he wants to fool readers into believing that millions of Palestinians have the "right to return" to a country most have never seen:
The Palestinian struggle today, therefore, must not waiver on the implementation of the Palestinian right of return, as this right is the legal key to undoing the Zionist conquest of Palestine in its entirety.
Massad freely admits that his desire for "return" is not for human rights, or to help Palestinians escape statelessness, or any real legal reason. He sees it as a pseudo-legal way to destroy Israel.
Which is exactly the reasons given by Arab leaders for decades for not allowing Palestinians to become citizens in their countries - because it is better that they remain stateless and miserable but potential cannon fodder to one day, maybe, destroy Israel. The more miserable they are, the better.
Massad is not interested in justice or mercy. He just wants to see the Jewish state destroyed, and keeping Palestinians in misery is the way he wants to see it done.
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The White House approached several Arab states to encourage them to reach non-belligerence agreements with Israel, according to Israeli, Arab and U.S. sources.
Why it matters: One of the Trump administration’s main goals in the Middle East has been to promote the normalization of ties between Israel and the Gulf states. Non-belligerence agreements are an interim step between the secret relations Israel has with those countries now and full diplomatic relations.
The Israeli, Arab and U.S. sources tell me President Trump’s deputy national security adviser, Victoria Coates, met last week with the ambassadors of the UAE, Bahrain, Oman and Morocco in Washington. All four countries have secret contacts and cooperation with Israel but no diplomatic relations.
- Coates raised the initiative for non-belligerence agreements, told them the Trump administration supports such a move and asked what their positions were.
- The Arab ambassadors said they would report back to their capitals and return soon with an answer.
That White House request builds off of an initiative led by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, Israeli officials say.
- Katz raised the idea in a September meeting at the UN with Omani Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi and Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash.
The US State Department concurred with Rabbi Cooper: “The fundamental business model and fiscal practices that have marked UNRWA for years – tied to UNRWA’s endlessly and exponentially expanding the community of beneficiaries – are simply unsustainable and the organization has been in crisis mode for many years. The United States will not commit further funding to this irredeemably flawed operation. We are very mindful of, and deeply concerned with, the impact upon innocent Palestinians, especially school children, resulting from the failure of UNRWA and key members of the regional and international donor community to reset the way UNRWA does business.”
Former Israeli Communications Minister Ayoob Kara added: “If UNRWA’s money went to building homes for the refugees, all of the cities in Gaza and the West Bank would look different. They would have nice Palestinian cities, just as Israel which absorbed all of the Jewish refugees from the Arab world managed to build nice cities. But instead, all of their money goes to supporting terror indoctrination. Because of that, I am very happy that there is increased international support for stopping this, which is necessary for the free world.”
In conclusion, Yaakov Hagoel, Head of the Department for Countering Anti-Semitism of the World Zionist Organization, liked the idea of calling upon the donor nations to make their continued contributions to UNRWA dependent upon reforms that will lead to an end of the anti-Semitic war indoctrination that is presently occurring in their schools: "UNRWA is one-sided against Israel. Everyone who harms the Jewish people and the State of Israel and does anti-Semitism, we must do everything against this."
We will check into the option of applying pressure onto the donor countries.” The time has come for UNRWA donor nations to wake up and smell the coffee, and recognize that there is a true problem that must be dealt with. The time has come for UNRWA to be comprehensively reformed and to stop indoctrinating Palestinian children to support terrorism.
On Tuesday, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda closed the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla case for a third time. In her past two decisions to close the case, she merely said that 10 dead activists who clashed with the IDF was not a high enough volume of casualties to warrant her office's attention, which deals mostly with genocide or mass killings.
This time Bensouda said that one reason that she would not open a criminal probe was that the case had been probed by the IDF legal division. Her explanation noted that if a country's legal division's probe were viewed as a sham, that they would not have provided any protection from the ICC, meaning that the IDF probe here was not a sham.
Along the same lines, Bensouda pointed out that Spain, England, Sweden and Germany had all dismissed any war crimes allegations against the IDF for the incident, with some recognizing Israel's justice system as legitimate and as having properly probed the issue.
One of the more fascinating parts of the Antisemitism Barometer recently released by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (UK) was that it previously only asked people whether they agreed with stereotypical statements against Jews, but this time also asked questions as to whether they agreed with lies about Israel.
When analyzing the answers to the to sets of questions, there was a significant correlation between the two, even though the people mostly on the Left who have anti-Zionist positions insist that they do not harbor any bit of antisemitism.
There was a large overlap between people who agreed with at least one antisemitic statement and those who agreed with at least one ant-Zionist statement.
The more interesting statistic is that "54% of those respondents who held one or more anti-Zionist antisemitic views also held one or more Judeophobic antisemitic views, and 63% of those respondents who held one or more Judeophobic antisemitic views also held one or more anti-Zionist antisemitic views. "
The 63% doesn't surprise me - most antisemites are also anti-Israel, despite the attempts by some on the Left to say the opposite. But the 54% of those who claim they are simply "anti-Israel" who also hold traditional antisemitic opinions should (but won't) be a clear indication that the problem on the Left is not simply "anti-Zionism" but also the old fashioned Nazi-style Jew-hatred.
As the report says, "Although some people insist that attitudes toward the Jewish state have no connection to attitudes to Jews, our survey results suggest that if an individual holds at least one antiZionist antisemitic view, it is more likely than not that he or she will hold at least one Judeophobic antisemitic view as well."
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Ma'an reports that Fatah spokesman Osama al-Qawasmi received a delegation of thirty members of lawmakers from California today, telling them how awful Israel is.
Last month Qawasmi hosted a similar delegation of lawmakers from Wisconsin, both Democrats and Republicans.
A quick look at Qawasmi's statements over the years reveals him to be an unrepentant antisemite.
2018: "Israel wants to divide the Arab states and it does not exempt anyone. It rules over the American decision-making and over the American Congress. It is the one that is pushing and planning the need to invade all of the Arab and Islamic states for the American administration."
"There is no regime in history - believe me, not Hitler, not the Nazis, not fascism - that has implemented what Israel is implementing against the Palestinians. "
2017: "The second protocol of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion says: Extremist [Islamic] religious streams must be created, as a complete contrast to the ruling regime [in Arab countries], regardless of which regime it is - be it national, Arab, secular, communist, or Marxist - so that the priorities of these regimes will change in a manner that fits the Zionists.
He also quoted the antisemitic "Protocols" in 2015 as if they are real.
This is pure antisemitism by any definition. Yet US state delegations apparently don't even bother to research who they will be speaking to.
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The headlines say "Jeremy Corbyn apologises for antisemitism in Labour party" - but his words say no such thing.
Corbyn: May I make it clear, I am
Host: Just say sorry!
Corbyn: Wait a minute,
Host: No, just say sorry!
Corbyn: Let me say can I say something? well our party...
Host: I want you to say 'sorry'
Corbyn, frustrated: Our party and me, yeah,do not accept anti-semitism in any form
Host: So are you sorry?
Corbyn: Obviously I’m very sorry for everything that’s happened but I want to make this clear I am dealing with it. I have dealt with it. Other parties are also affected by anti-Semitism, Candidates have been withdrawn by the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives and by us because we do not accept it in any form whatsoever.
And I think the chief rabbis comments really ought to be taken for what they are. He hasn't contacted me about it I'm very happy to meet him very happy to talk to him very happy to talk to any representatives of any part of the Jewish community within our society because I recognize that anti-semitism is a poison and it's very dangerous. When it's allowed to run on you know what happens you know the history of Europe in the 20th century. But any other form of racism is equally unacceptable Islamophobia or anything else.
An apology would say what he is sorry for, not saying "sorry for everything that's happened." But then he negates even that fake apology by falsely claiming that he has dealt with it - and then tryng to deflect to "everyone else is antisemitic too."
Corbyn then says he is against Nazi-style antisemitism. Wow, how brave. And then he waters even that down by saying that it is just like other forms of bigotry, like Islamophobia - which even further negates whatever that "sorry" was.
In short - he never admitted Labour has an antisemitism problem. He never said he was sorry for his part in it. He only said the word "sorry" after being brow-beaten by the host several times, as reluctantly as possible. Corbyn then negated it by saying that Labour wasn't any worse than any other party in that respect. And he then further watered down the apology by comparing antisemitism to other forms of racism that Labour actually does spend time talking about, when in reality antisemitism is much different from other bigotries. In fact, the way the Left fights other bigotries fosters antisemitism by positioning everyone as either a victim or an oppressor: Jews - by being supposedly powerful - are always looked upon as the oppressors, never the victims, in a simplistic Leftist world where you can only be one or the other.
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Some readers have been asking me to comment on the latest London Bridge terrorism incident. And if I have some reluctance it is only because although ennui comes from writing the same article over and over again, that’s nothing like the feeling you get from writing the same article so often that you don’t even need to change the name of the location of the attack each time now.
London Bridge 2 has been pored over enough in recent days. The heroism of certain members of the public has rightly been noted. Politicians of all the main parties have tried to pin the blame for the attacker’s early release on their political opponents. And everything goes on as usual.
But there are a couple of remaining things still worth noting about all this. The first is that if two innocent people hadn’t been killed and others wounded there would be something un-satirisable about Friday’s incident. A convicted terrorist is allowed out of prison after learning how to game the system, serves only half his sentence and then, at a prisoner rehabilitation session, goes full-crazy again and kills two of the young people involved in the rehabilitation business. The fact that the workshop Usman Khan was attending had one of those soppy modern Britain titles – ‘Learning Together’ – just completes the picture.
The problem remains that while we are happy to get caught up on discussions about prisoner release protocols and the like, we avoid the wider, and more sceptical, conversation we should have had by now. Conversations like the one we ought to have had about the whole de-radicalisation business, or industry.
Here in October, I mentioned in passing the whole phoney academic ‘discipline’ of ‘de-radicalisation’. I wonder whether now mightn’t be a good time to reassess some of our reliance on the claims and expertise of that industry?
We have come to see jihadists as passive individuals with little or no moral agency. This is why the discussion seems focused not on their ability to change, but on whether or not the resources are available to provide the correct intervention and monitoring.
Whether or not Islamists can ever be redeemed is a complex question. But Khan had certainly not ‘deradicalised’. Nor had he rehabilitated. It is wrong that Khan and people like him are entitled to be released without any consideration of the risk that they still pose to the public.
We have to recognise that someone who plots to blow up pubs in the name of a foreign fighting force is no longer, in any meaningful sense, a citizen. Of course, we should still show humanity towards those accused of any crime. They are entitled to a fair trial on the evidence, which Khan avoided by pleading guilty. But when people are convicted, or when they plead guilty to being committed jihadists, then normal rules cannot continue to apply.
Our belief in people’s capacity for rehabilitation should not extend to letting murderous jihadists back on to our streets. James Ford appears to have made a decision to change his life. It is important that society helps him to do that. But Khan and his terrorist friends are not criminals – they are traitors. They demand to be treated differently.
This brings me back to London Bridge. To jihadists, all the world either once belonged to Islamic jihad or is now again about to belong to Islamic jihad and sharia law. This is true for most countries in Western Europe where Islamists have created no-go zones, and engaged in gang-related crimes and in the mass rapes of infidel women. Some predict that by 2050, Europe will become, as Bat Ye’or once predicted, “Eurabia.”
All dreamy-eyed western do-gooders should pay close attention.
But here’s one of many problems: Our Jewish and Christian values dictate humanitarian concern for those in trouble and in need and for “victims” of alleged Western success. Both Christians and Jews strongly believe in helping, saving, and subsidizing immigrants, those in war zones, and/or mired down in poverty, illiteracy, and disease. We don’t want to become like our enemies i.e. intolerant, cynical, selfish, and more than “half in love with easeful death;” nor do we want to live in militarily patrolled sovereign entities, constantly on the lookout for and at the mercy of lone or collective jihad attacks—just as Israel has to do.
Western progressives still hope that we will not find ourselves surrounded by jihadists, both within and externally, although that is the position in which the West increasingly finds itself.
While a welcome break in this pattern seems to be happening, (some Arab states may make temporary alliances with the Jewish state), Israel has nevertheless been surrounded by jihadists on every border. Danger lies within as well. Contrary to all the Big Lies, the battle of Israel/Palestine has little to do with a land or refugee dispute and everything to do with the historical and indoctrinated Islamist hatred of and religious mandate to murder infidels.
This overwhelmingly clear fact is so overwhelming that most people refuse to consider it.
Having regard to Article 34-1 of the Constitution,
Having regard to Article 136 of the Standing Orders of the National Assembly,
Considering the European Parliament resolution of 1st June 2017 on the fight against antisemitism,
Having regard to the declaration of the Council of the European Union of 6 December 2018 on the fight against antisemitism and the establishment of a common approach to security in order to better protect Jewish communities and institutions in Europe;
Believes that the operational definition used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance makes it possible to identify as precisely as possible what contemporary anti-Semitism is;
Considering that it would constitute an effective instrument for combating antisemitism in its modern and renewed form, encompassing manifestations of hatred of the State of Israel justified solely by the perception of Israel as a Jewish community;
Approves the operational definition of anti-Semitism used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance as a useful guidance tool for education and training and to support judicial and law enforcement authorities in the fight against terrorism. their efforts to detect and prosecute antisemitic attacks more efficiently and effectively;
Invites the Government, in its pedagogical work, to disseminate it to educational, law enforcement and judicial services.
The explanatory statement is pretty good as well:
Ladies and gentlemen,
For several years, France, all of Europe, but also almost all Western democracies, are facing a resurgence of anti-Semitism probably unprecedented since the Second World War.
Antisemitic acts increased by 74% in 2018 in France. Again, for several years, anti-Semitism has been killing in France.
The hatred of Jews still tends today to perpetuate itself in its most terrible manifestations: murders, profanations of graves, sequestrations of fellow Jews on the sole ground that, because they are Jews, they "would have money".
It is also the aggressions of the everyday that multiply. Today in France, wearing a Kippa is tantamount to exposing oneself to insults or even physical aggression, which develops in our countrymen of Jewish confession a feeling of insecurity and ill-being in our Republic.
Anti-Semitism of the 21st century has changed. If the old French anti-Semitism has survived, new forms have developed.
Antisemitism is a negation of the Republic, a serious threat to national cohesion. He must be fought in his roots.
But anti-Zionist acts can sometimes obscure antisemitic realities.Criticizing Israel's very existence as a community of Jewish citizens is tantamount to expressing hatred of the Jewish community as a whole, as well as collectively holding Jews accountable for Israeli political actions is a manifestation of anti-Semitism. Increasingly anti-Zionism is "one of the contemporary forms of anti-Semitism," to use the words of the President of the Republic. To point to such drifts does not prevent any free criticism of the policies and positions taken by Israeli governments.
These new expressions of anti-Semitism, perverse because they are hidden, insidious because they are dishonest and hypocritical, have given rise to an important work by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Its thirty-one Member States, including France, adopted an operational definition of anti-Semitism on 26 May 2016:
"Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews that can be manifested by hatred against them. The rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism target Jewish and non-Jewish individuals and / or their property, community institutions and places of worship."
While this definition qualifies anti-Zionist attacks motivated by Jewish hatred as antisemitic, it does not recognize criticism of Israel's policies as anti-Semitic.
"It is a matter of clarifying and strengthening the practices of our police forces, of our magistrates, of our teachers, to enable them to better fight against those who hide behind the rejection of Israel the very negation of the existence of Israel ", as the President of the Republic has pointed out.
Faced with the return of the anti-Semitic scourge, the national representation must take a strong action and put words on what is the new anti-Semitism, in line with the European Parliament in 2017 and the Council of the European Union in 2018 , who recognized the accuracy and efficiency of the operational definition of the Alliance. This is the meaning of this motion for a resolution.
(h/t Gerald Steinberg)
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Q: You quote a writer describing the attendees at Third Zionist Congress, including “a bearded Persian” and “an Egyptian in a fez.” Did Herzl recognize a need for Zionism among Jews in Arab lands?
Hertzl was the quintessential European. He possessed a rare political genius. He looked at Zionism and the Jewish Question through the prism of Europe -- but he understood that for Zionism to really succeed, it had to capture the imagination of the Jewish world. It had to capture the imagination of the world leaders who could fulfill the mission of Zionism. It would have to be an international movement. He wanted to bring together as many Jewish communities as possible -- even though the majority of his efforts were centered on Europe. The early Zionist Congresses set the tone for the Zionism movement that was universal. It brought together American Jewry and European Jewry and the Jews of the Middle East. and it united them in a common purpose and a common mission.
Q: Usually, we think of Herzl as the father of modern Zionism and of the Jewish state. You describe 3 men as being leading inspirations of the Zionist movement: Leon Pinsker, Theodore Herzl and Chaim Weizmann with each making a different and unique contribution to the development of Zionism. What did each contribute?
There have been many great leaders, thinkers and theorists throughout Jewish history that have sought to unify the Jewish people, but I focused on Pinsker, Herzl and Weizmann, who were very different figures and each in their own way, represent different strands of the Zionist movement.
Leon Pinsker. Public Domain
Pinsker wrote a landmark seminal text, Auto-Emancipation. What was significant about Pinsker is that he came to the question as an Assimilationist. He believed fervently that by becoming fully immersed in the cultural social scientific and political life of Russia, the Jews of Europe could be saved. He believed that the sort of transformations that were happening across Europe that were granting emancipation and civil rights to Jews would eventually come to Russia. But he was rudely shaken out of his belief by the brutality of the pogroms. These did not come about as a result of peasant rage. They were deliberately and strategically incited by the very people Pinsker believed would bring the reform – the leaders, the clerics, the newspaper editors and the lawyers. His book Auto-Emancipation had a scintillating effect on Jewish thought throughout the European continent. But also, he stands for that kind of transformation from assimilation to nationalism.
Herzl's visit to then-Palestine. At dawn on deck as the ship reach
the shores of Jaffa. Public Domain
Herzl was very much his successor in that regard. I spend a lot of time discussing the Dreyfus Affair. It illustrates how extraordinary and unlikely the story of Zionism is. You have the Dreyfus Affair and the story of injustice and you have 34-year-old Herzl there as the Paris correspondent for a Viennese daily newspaper, by chance observing this himself. Herzl was also an Assimilationist, to the extent that he played with the idea of converting to Christianity. He argued that Jews should disappear into the crowd. But then he sees the Dreyfus affair. He sees the public degradation and humiliation of a man who exemplified the qualities of assimilation. He was a soldier, he was civically minded and patriotic. He had given everything to the public and it culminates in his being wrongly convicted, thrown into an island prison. The mob of Frenchmen chanted “Death to Dreyfus” and “Death to Jews” outside the courtroom.
Herzl also brings something else to the story of Zionism – the idealism and the philosophy of Zionism. Pinsker had done that as well, but Herzl then converted it into extraordinary political and diplomatic outcomes in a very short period of time before his premature death. Herzl is intriguing because he shows the need to not only have great views and ideas, but also to be practical and efficient. He had a frenzied appetite for hard work. He had that Romanticism but he could also roll up his sleeves and work tirelessly.
Chaim Weizmann. Public Domain
Then you have Weizmann, who is a different type of Jew altogether. He is sort of part Pinsker and part Herzl. He comes from Russia. He moves across the continent almost the same way that Zionism moved from Russia -- westward. He had been educated in Switzerland and Germany. He ends up in Great Britain where he becomes a lecturer in Organic Chemistry in Manchester. And again, in an extraordinary turn of events, Great Britain finds itself in a position where it is in desperate need of the chemical compound acetone, which when combined with gunpowder reduces the smoke generated by heavy guns in its naval battles with Germany in WWI. You wonder what that has to do with Zionism and the trajectory of the Jewish People. Weizmann is the one who discovered this formula, and through that work, he becomes associated with people like Churchill, Balfour and Lloyd George – the people who had it within their power to grant Jews their National Home. Lloyd George would later write in his memoirs that his conversations with Weizmann at this time were the origins of the Balfour Declaration.
These are 3 major figures who were possessed with a rare political genius, who have an extraordinary capacity for hard work and were able more than anyone else to transform this sort of shapeless journey to go home which the Jews had carried with them for 2,000 years and turn it into a precise political program that could be implemented.
Q: Chaim Weizmann found apparent Zionist-friendly Arab allies in Hussein ibn Ali and his son Amir Faisal -- both of whom apparently accepted the idea of a Jewish state. How did we get from them to someone like the Grand Mufti who allied himself with Hitler and tried to destroy Jews and the Jewish state?
In the context of the post-WWI peacemaking, the Paris peace conference, the treaty of Versailles, the redrawing of the Middle East after the defeat of the Ottoman empire, there were a lot of negotiations between the great powers and the people who had claims to that land. So you had Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points, one of which demanded the decolonization and the autonomous development of the liberated colonies of the Ottoman empire – which was basically the Arab world, including Palestine. And then you had the native peoples of that land making claims to that land. And you have the Balfour Declaration, the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, dealmaking and promises (sometimes contradictory), happening.
In that context, Palestine was viewed as a small prize, a sparsely populated backwater, hardly the most sought after part of the Middle East. They were always willing to sacrifice Palestine in pursuit of far greater and grander post-WWI demands. That is why people made agreements with Weizmann and make statements that Jews were native sons of the land and that they should be welcomed back with open arms, that their return will have wonderful economic benefits for the Arab people living there. That is out of a view that can be seen as moderate and tolerant and willing to accept the Jewish claim to Palestine – so that their territorial claims to land elsewhere in the Middle East would be met more rapidly and more easily.
Then from the 1920’s onward, you have the tactical fulfillment of Zionism taking place. You have Jewish migration and Jewish settlement of the land, the establishment of Jewish industry, and enterprises and trade unions and newspapers and universities and wineries and all this – changing the political and economic environment in the land. Some of the Arabs living there felt dislocated and disenfranchised and what was agreed to by the Great Powers and the Arab and Jewish leaders post-WWI did not help. These are people living on the land and see their future slipping away.
Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, who would become the grand mufti of Jerusalem, was remarkably skillful – not at soothing people’s concerns and placating them and negotiating and bringing people together, and alleviating violence – he was extremely skilled at raising the temperature, and inciting people to acts of violence to his own political ends. He is the founding father of Political Islam, turning political grievances into a way to rally the whole Arab world to his cause. He is the quintessential example of the unflinching, unerring Arab leader who never negotiates, never takes a backward step, and is absolutely dogged in their anti-Zionism.
He led his people to disaster.
In 1937, the Peel Commission considered how to deal with the issue of Palestine and the competing claims to the land. The Jews were offered a state on merely 4% of the full Mandate Palestine territory and they were willing to accept that. But al-Hussein rejected it out of hand. The Transjordanian leader at the time was the only Arab leader who had the sense to say ‘you have to accept this, otherwise Palestine will pass into Jewish hands whole. But al-Hussein could not take that into his anti-Zionism and his antisemitism – he could not fathom any sort of accommodation with the Jews.
So to explain that shift -- in the beginning, it was driven by Arab self-interest. They were happy to get their 7 states. And the Jews get Palestine.
Emir Faisal wrote a hand-written amendment that his support of the Balfour Declaration for a Jewish state in Palestine is contingent on the Arabs getting their claIms met. But al-Hussein was so set in his anti-Zionism that he could never take that approach.
Q: People are generally aware of President Truman’s support for the establishment of Israel, but US support for a Jewish state goes back to Woodrow Wilson. What role did Wilson play?
Jewish leaders at the time were desperate for Wilson to make some sort of public statement to endorse the Balfour Declaration in 1918 just as the Paris Peace Conference was about to begin and a new path was dawning in the Middle East. He had Jewish acquaintances like Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter and as a result of his own religious Christian background, he had a romantic view of the People of the Book returning to the land from whence they came.
But at the same time, there were forces pushing against that. There were Christian anti-semites urging him not to recognize Jewish national rights. The State Department was hostile to the idea of a Jewish state because of their desire to develop closer economic ties with the Arabs. So just as in the UK, Wilson also found himself torn between his own ideals and the forces trying to compel him against Zionism.
Then there were Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points, laying out the conditions for US engagement in WWI. They did not speak about the Jewish people, but they spoke about the autonomous development of the liberated lands of the Ottoman Empire. And that governing principle allowed the Jews to state their claim to what had become Palestine. There was the idea of the development of the native people of the Middle East – and the Jews were certainly one of those native people. And by extension, they had rights that should be recognized and were recognized.
And Wilson actually did make a statement in 1918, a very tepid statement that endorsed the Balfour Declaration, that he was happy that the work of the Balfour Declaration was being implemented, delighted to see the foundation be set for Hebrew University. That was a very important signal to the Jewish World about which side of the issue Woodrow Wilson stood. It was highly significant.
Then at the Paris Peace Conference, the US representatives were very clear in there support for the Balfour Declaration and for the establishment for the Jewish National claim to Palestine.
Wilson played an important role in developing an international consensus about Zionism right around that time.
7. The history of Modern Zionism offers a counterpoint to the perceived passivity of Jews during the Holocaust. How do we explain that in contrast to the heroism of Trumpador and the Jews of the Mule Corp who impressed British officers with their heroism in WWI?
There was a view, both inside and outside the Jewish world that the Jews were led like lambs to the slaughter. In some regards, there were episodes where one could say that the Jews did not cover themselves with glory, that they could have resisted more actively and aggressively. The natural capacity of Jews to resist Nazism, to save themselves, to fight back, was mostly non-existent. And I talk about Raul Hilberg the great Holocaust historian, who spoke about a formulaic response to danger that the Jews had honed over 2,000 years of exile.
Basically, their response was to alleviate their pain, to try to lobby governments, to write op-eds and to try to convince the public that the antisemites were wrong. Once the tide had turned against them, the Jews became wholly passive and submitted completely. But at the same time, we have to realize that the Jews had no real ability to defend themselves against a military power of overwhelming strength with the mission of destroying every last Jewish life, aided by collaborationist governments and police forces and populations in almost every place they entered. Jews were unarmed.
But after the Holocaust, you have the Jews in Palestine seeing what happened to their brethren in Europe and saying this is what can happen to Jews who are weak and vulnerable and unarmed – and we must never allow that to happen to us.
This leads to a sort of rehabilitation of the Jew.
There were events before which had a similar impact. The Holocaust, being on a larger scale, had a bigger impact. The Kishinev pogrom, almost a miniature version of the Holocaust, incited by clerics and policemen and government officials in a terrible massacre of Jews – was followed by stories coming out of rapes and murders, making the Jews feel a sense of vulnerability but also a sense of solidarity with their own people. This invigorated the Jewish people and was turned into a major humanitarian concern. Yet also a sense of shame that this is what Jews had been reduced to.
This created in Zionism a redemptive quality: saving the Jews not only physically, but also spiritually and culturally. If you look at Zionism today, it is about a sense of Jewish pride – not a grotesque chauvinistic pride but rather a simple pride about belonging to a very special remarkable people, of who we Jews really are, and being willing to stand up for that and assert your rights and not fall prostrate in front of your tormentors.
Q: When it comes to the influence of external forces on Zionism and Aliyah, people think of the Holocaust. But you note that the early writings about Zionism as a political movement largely originated in the Russian Empire. Why would Russia have this influence?
By the late 19th century because of progressive migrations as a result of expulsions from Spain and Great Britain, and pogroms in Germany – Jews were moving further and further east. You had shifting borders in that part of the world so that you had more Jews living within the Russian empire than anywhere else. Along with that, you had unsparing brutality generation to generation such as the Chelminsky pogroms.
People look at Israel being a reaction to the Holocaust, but there is a long history and a long continuum that made the Holocaust not only possible, but also inevitable. When people ask how the Holocaust could have happened, the seeds of it can be found in Russia hundreds of years earlier.
Because of the emphasis on the Holocaust we see the view, especially by anti-Zionist activists, the claim that Israel is a burden on the Arabs to atone for European guilt. To assuage the guilt of 6 million killed, a Jewish state is planted in the middle of the Arab world. As if Jews are European interlopers with no claim to the land.
We have Rashida Tlaib with the claim that it warms her heart how the Palestinian Arabs warmly welcomed the Jews of Europe as refugees from the Holocaust. This is a double falsehood because it also claims they welcomed Jews when in fact there were boycotts, violence and strikes at every turn.
The right to a national home in Israel is not only a legal right, but it has also been established in the decades before the Holocaust and it is an existential necessity for the Jewish people.
When we look today at the persecuted and abandoned people of the world, Kurds, Syrians and Uighurs – it shows us what it means to be stateless and manipulated by the self-interest of others.
People like Sarsour are anti-Zionists and in my view antisemites who claim that Zionism is creepy and racist dedicated to negative purposes. But there are a lot of people who see through this and see Zionism as an inspiration.
I’ve seen in my own work, from the Assyrian community in Australia, the Muslims in China, Kurdish leaders. They look at the story of the Jews who have survived through 2,000 years inquisition, pogroms and forced conversions, yet retaining their culture and sense of peoplehood and formed a national movement that is compelling and coherent and actually achieved the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral land.
A lot of these abandoned, persecuted, stateless people are trying to take inspiration from that and are trying to model their own national movements from it.
Q: Before Great Britain became a bitter opponent to Jewish immigration into then-Palestine and successfully cut down the size of the state, there was a time that Great Britain had a romanticized view of Zionism and wanted to help the establishment of a Jewish state. What was that based on?
It came from a number of sources. It came from the Christian beliefs of people like Balfour, Lloyd George and Churchill, that the Jews should have the right to return home. When you compare them to the Christian Zionists of today, you see that it is such a beautiful concept for them. This is not the concept of End of Days or The Second Coming, requiring that Jews be in the land. This is a more benign and beautiful idea, that the Jews are the People of the Book who gave the world Ethical Monotheism. Who gave the Christians their foundation of texts and beliefs. They believed that the Jews who had been harried and persecuted throughout the world should have a national home.
Yes, there are also the realpolitik considerations.
In the early 1900s, there was a concern about a large Jewish refugee problem. This was a unique solution to that.
Another consideration that cannot be discounted is the work of Chaim Weizmann. He was able to captivate and engage everyone. He was a dynamic, magnetic personality. As mentioned earlier, Lloyd George in his memoirs credits his discussions with Weizmann as leading to the Balfour Declaration. The truth of that is open to speculation, but it is clear that Weizmann rendered an extraordinary service to the British and they were grateful.
So it was a combination of the practical and the idealistic.
But what you then have over the next 3 decades, is the change in government, waning idealism and of course much more urgent critical considerations. There is the growing Arab violence in the Middle East and the threats from Arab leaders.
When Trump made the recommendation for the recognition of Jerusalem, we heard about the threat of the burning of the streets of the Middle East, which did not transpire. But those threats were there then – and they are there now.
And the other great factor that changed the calculations and caused the British to overcome their idealism was WWII. During the leadup to WWII, the Balfour Declaration (which came in 1917, at the end of WWI) had come to be seen as a distant relic of the past and irrelevant when the major new threat was Nazism. The concern for the British, and Chamberlain expressed it, was that if we have to offend one side – let it be the Jews. He said that because he wanted the Arabs to be potential allies in the coming European war, which would metastasize the Middle East as WWI had.
This was politics because the Balfour Declaration had been enshrined into international law. Great Britain had a legal duty to bring about a National Home for the Jews, as contained in the covenant of the League of Nations and the San Remo Conference. The Balfour Declaration was not empty words – it was a binding legal promise that had been made.
These were jettisoned because there were more pressing political and economic considerations entering into their calculations.
Oil was also a consideration. Chamberlain made comments about that as well, that the center of gravity of oil production had now shifted to the Middle East. These were very real considerations by Great Britain and the US. The State Department was cognizant of the fact the Middle East was becoming crucial in international affairs. You had the Suez Canal, which was an important gateway. The romanticism and idealism became a secondary consideration.
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The chief prosecutor of International Criminal Court on Monday refused for the third time to open an investigation into the 2010 Gaza flotilla incident, saying any crimes allegedly committed during the raid were not severe enough to merit such a probe.
Fatou Bensouda reiterated her position that there is no reason to launch an investigation into the matter “because there is no potential case arising from this situation that is sufficiently grave, to reconsider a case that she had repeatedly sought to close due to lack of gravity,” her office stated.
On May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos killed 10 Turkish citizens aboard the Mavi Marmara, one of several vessels that was aiming to break the Gaza blockade. Israel said its soldiers were violently attacked by activists armed with clubs and metal bars when they boarded the vessel.
Israel has imposed a blockade on Gaza since 2007, when the Hamas terror group ousted the Palestinian Authority from the Strip, in a bid to prevent Hamas and other terrorists from importing arms and weapons into the enclave.
Israel did not immediately comment on the prosecutor’s decision, though officials in Jerusalem have long argued that the court was wasting its limited resources on a frivolous suit in a manner that reflected poorly on other outstanding cases.
The Lawfare Project, a New York-based pro-Israel group that had been involved in efforts to convince Bensouda to close the case, on Monday welcomed her decision.
“We’re extremely pleased the Prosecutor agreed with our analysis and reaffirmed her decision,” said Brooke Goldstein, the organization’s executive director. “It’s refreshing to see an international institution doing the right thing and standing up for law and justice rather than bowing to anti-Israel political pressure.”
The Hague’s six-year engagement with the Gaza flotilla incident started in May 2013, when the Comoros, a small Muslim-majority nation in the Indian ocean, asked the ICC’s prosecutor to investigate the Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara three years earlier, during which troops clashed with pro-Palestinian activists.
Ten Turks (including one Turkish-american) were killed and a number of Israeli soldiers were injured.
In the UNHRC urgent debate, I said: “Flotilla supporters chanted 'Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad will return.' One declared the aim of the flotilla was 'achieving martyrdom'. Are these humanitarians?”
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, will announce later today (Tuesday) his intention to file a resolution recognizing Jewish refugees from Arab countries, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
Danon will announce the resolution during a General Assembly discussion to mark 72 years since the November 29 partition plan.
During the event on Tuesday, the Palestinian representative to the UN is said to introduce a series of pro-Palestinian resolutions, including a resolution supporting the Palestinians' right of return. A similar session with similar resolutions will be taking place every year.
According to the Israeli Mission to the UN, the new resolution, asking the United Nations to recognize the 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran, is aimed to undermine the proposed Palestinian resolutions.
The Israeli Mission will also host an event to formally launch the new initiative in New York on Wednesday, featuring US Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism Elan Carr.
Britain had a moral & legal obligation to establish a safe haven & home for the Jews in their ancestral land per the Treaty of Sèvres, League of Nations Mandate & San Remo Conference. Why did they block Jewish immigration instead? Watch this historic newsreel📽️& find out. Hint:🛢️ pic.twitter.com/szMTDxNybj
Former Jordanian Information Minister Samih al-Maaytah stormed off the set of Al Arabiya after he saw an Israeli analyst was slated to be on the air at the same time to talk about Jordanian-Israeli relations.
Maaytah said that he refused to appear on air with an Israeli guest.
The Israeli ad to be interviewed first and only after his segment was over would Maaytah go on the air.
When he entered the studio at about 10:30 am, he was surprised that thethe Israeli guest was there. When he was asked his first question he said that he does not participate in interviews with an Israeli party, he is a Jordanian citizen who has a political position similar to the political position of the entire Jordanian people. He pulled out the microphone, removed the headset, put it on the table and left the studio.
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The President of the Republic of Italy, HE Mr. Sergio Mattarella, bestowed the honor of the "Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia " (Commander in the Order of the Star of Italy) upon HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, for his valuable contributions and the effort of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Global in strengthening the Italian, Jordanian and Arab relations.
Established in 1914, the Ordine Della Stella D'italia is one of Italy’s highest honors presented to global dignitaries who contribute in strengthening and promoting relations between Italy and other countries.
The Order was presented in a special ceremony attended by HE Mr. Fabio Cassese, the Italian Ambassador to Jordan, representing the Italian President and a host of Ambassadors to Jordan.
The Italian Ambassador read the official citation stating that Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh is "a close friend to Italy," and "a friend of all the international community."
It turns out that the honoree is an antisemite.
From MEMRI, translating a 2012 Al Ghad interview with Abu-Ghazaleh:
Abu Ghazaleh cites numerous examples of persecution of Jews, including their expulsion from various countries between the 14th and 18th centuries, and examples of leaders and public figures who spoke out against them: "Henry Ford saw the Jews as an international problem, and wasted much money on media and other means to wage a campaign against them. He also presented his ideas in a book called The International Jew: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, The World's Foremost Problem [sic]. American president Franklin Roosevelt saw the Jews as an American problem, and claimed that the day would come when the Americans would regret that there were Jews in their midst...
He concludes: "The Jews became known for manufacturing lies and carrying out crimes and terror. [They] created a negative model for establishing a state when the occupation authorities began bringing the 'Haganah' gang into Palestine, and later enlisted all the armed Jewish movements, after calling on all the Jewish residents of all the countries in the world to immigrate to Palestine and establish a state [there]..."[3]
(h/t WC)
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Wednesday, December 04, 2019
