Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
The BDSers achieved a measure of success, in Europe especially. Performing artists would often cancel concerts in Israel under BDS pressure — and sometimes lead the charge, as in the case of the likes of Tilda Swinton, Roger Waters and Coldplay’s Chris Martin. European theaters would refuse to host Jewish (not even Israeli) film festivals, even as BDSers preposterously insisted that their movement isn’t anti-Semitic. Western universities or individual departments would mount academic boycotts of Israel. Then, last year, in perhaps the most alarming move, the European Court of Justice ruled that EU states must label West Bank products as “made in settlements.”Sudan revokes citizenship of Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, dealing blow to terror groups
Was Israel’s economy ever in serious peril? Probably not. Europe remains the Jewish state’s biggest trade partner, though boycotts and labeling could bite if widened to include firms that operate in Israel or Palestinian territories. The real danger, however, was moral-cum-political. If BDS succeeded, it would make permanent Israel’s status as an abnormal country, rather than a normal fixture of the Mideast map. That would demoralize the Israeli people and compound the hostility they already face in global forums like the United Nations.
Well, so much for all that. Today, a little more than a year since the EU labeling decision, you can find Israeli products — prominently displayed, sometimes with Israeli flags to promote them — on the shelves of grocery stores in the United Arab Emirates.
How far can BDS go in a world where once-sworn enemies of the Jewish state enjoy Israeli citrus products and myriad cultural exchanges? Who exactly do Western champions of the Arabs represent, when the Arabs themselves want to live peacefully alongside Israel and accept the Jewish state’s fundamental legitimacy? Isn’t it more than a bit condescending for, say, Roger Waters — place of birth: Great Bookham, Surrey, England — to tell Arabs whom they can do business with?
To be clear, I’m not suggesting BDS will disappear tomorrow. The wider Arab world is making peace with Israel, but Palestinian leaders aren’t about to give up what is admittedly a very nice grift: billions of dollars in international aid in exchange for refusing to accept reality. BDS helps lend a veneer of global credibility to their rejectionism. And fanatic college professors and students can always use “anti-Zionism” to mask old-fashioned hatred, singling out one state and one state only — the one that happens to be Jewish — for opprobrium.
But the fact remains that the Abraham Accords have revealed a silly side to the BDS movement: For God’s sake, when Sudan, once one of the world’s most virulently anti-Israel states, has made its peace with Jerusalem, BDS looks like a boutique cause for gentry leftists, the kind who put their pronouns in their Twitter bios. The real world — and the Middle East — have just moved on.
In a blow to the Islamic movement in Gaza and other terror organizations, Sudan is revoking the citizenship of former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal along with 3,000 other citizenships that were granted to foreigners, according to several reports in Arab media.Gulf normalization isn’t about fearing Iran, it’s about embracing Israel
The Sudanese government made this change as part of its being removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, in a clear indication that it will fight terrorism rather than support it. The news was widely reported in Sudan and other Arabic media.
Earlier, Meshaal had expressed his dissatisfaction with the normalization of relations between Sudan and Israel.
After the demise of the previous Sudanese regime, which was supportive of Islamist and terrorist movements including Hamas, the new government has been attempting to change Sudan’s image as a shelter and conduit for terrorists. The revoking of citizenship from foreigners with links to Islamic and terrorist movements is a step in that direction.
Sudan is also now requiring a visa for Syrians before entering the country in order to prevent the flow of terrorists into Sudan.
In recent decades, Sudan was designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States for hosting Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other wanted terrorists. Hamas used the country as a funnel for smuggling Iranian weapons to Palestinians in Gaza between 2009-2012.
Sudan was removed from the list of state sponsors of terror after the new regime has made efforts in combating terrorism in cooperation with the American administration under the supervision of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“You think you have chutzpah? We have chutzpah.”
It was an unexpected line from a senior Emirati official, delivered recently in an off-the-record video conference call between current and former Israeli and Emirati officials.
The conversation had turned to business ties, innovation and the cultural differences between the two countries. The official wanted to explain something important about the new Israeli-Arab normalization agreements that Abu Dhabi had helped start: not only why they are happening, but why they seem so inexplicably warm and genuine.
The United Arab Emirates is most visible in this regard, but it isn’t the only one. Bahrain, too, is investing in a warm peace. And Sudan, while agonizing over the step itself — a breach of decades of ideological commitments vis-à-vis the Palestinians — has shown signs of wanting the normalization to reap more benefits than mere diplomatic contact or its removal from the US terror sponsors list.
There is no shortage of benefits that have accrued to the countries that normalized relations with Israel in the waning days of the Trump administration. The Emiratis asked for F-35s, the Moroccans recognition of their claim over Western Sahara, the Sudanese an end to their 27-year stay on the terror list and protection from lawsuits linked to the previous regime.
Wednesday, December 16, 2020Elder of Ziyon
analysis, Daled AmosBy Daled Amos
The announcement earlier this month that Israel and Morocco have agreed to establish full diplomatic relations and normalize ties was not a complete surprise. After all, it is no secret that the two countries have had friendly relations with each other for decades.
From the outset of Moroccan independence in 1956 and through subsequent decades, Israel and Morocco identified a number of vital interests common to both sides: their perception of a common threat posed by radical pan-Arabism, epitomized by Gamal 'Abd al-Nasir [Nasser] in Egypt, the Ba'th in Syria and Iraq, and the FLN in Algeria. (p. 36-7)
The Israeli Export Institute estimated in October 1994 that Israel's export potential to Morocco during the coming three years amounted to $220 million dollars annually, in areas such as agricultural products, irrigation equipment, the building trades, hi-tech electronics, processed foods, and professional services for infrastructure development. In addition, the potential for Morocco serving as a centre for the re-export of Israeli goods to other North African countries was estimated in the tens of millions of dollars. Estimates of the value of Israeli goods reaching to Morocco via third parties and subsidiary companies ranged from $30-100 million annually. (p.45)
a. the historical affinity between Arabs and Jews as 'sons of Abraham' and 'grandsons of Ishmael and Isaac,' an affinity which could form the basis for the tapping of both sides' capabilities in order to modernize and develop the Middle East;One could easily imagine the UAE making these statements -- including its continued commitment to the Palestinian Arabs, but these statements about peace that seem novel even now were being made over 40 years ago.
b. Israel's capabiility for contributing to the modernization and development of the Arab world;
c. the dangers to the Arab world inherent in prolonged conflict;
d. the need for coexistence and integration, which required Israel's withdrawal to the June 1967 boundaries, creation of a Palestinian state, and full peace, recognition and integration between Israel and the Arab states; and
e. the need for dialogue to solve all problems, including dialogue between the PLO and Israel. (p. 41)
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| King Hassan II in 1983. Public domain |
Wednesday, December 16, 2020Elder of Ziyon
The historical roots of terrorism, genocide, extortion, greed, lies and Zionist crimes go back to the teachings established by the writers of the Talmudic Torah and to the founders of the Zionists who added European racism to Judaism, in particular German racism, so they replaced the Aryan in the theory of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche with the Jew, "The Chosen People of God," for whom the world was created and for whom the world was created.The Zionist entity proceeds from the teachings of Judaism, Zionism and Jewish settler colonialism to justify the practice of genocide, terrorism, racism and Jewish purity as a political doctrine and an official policy in dealing with the Arabs of Muslims and Christians and with Muslims and the rest of the non-Jews (goyim) in the world Thus, they raised the genocide to the level of religious sanctity.
Wednesday, December 16, 2020Elder of Ziyon
Television icon and comedian Jay Leno talked about his avid support for Israel and the Jewish people during the StandWithUs “Festival of Lights” virtual gala on Sunday night.“My dad said you always want to be proud of who you are, and that’s why I like Jews. They’re proud of who they are,” the former host of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” told Jewish comedian Elon Gold in a pre-recorded message that aired during the live Hanukkah event.“Here they are, this little country surrounded by people who literally hate them, and the fact that [these] people are proud of who they are and they stick together—that’s what I like. I like seeing people who are proud of who they are because if you don’t have pride in yourself, you’re not gonna get anywhere,” he added. “So, for me, I like that sort of Jewish pride.”
That is the key difference between Zionists and anti-Zionists.
Leno doesn't even distinguish between Israel and the Jewish people because he knows that they are interchangeable. Of course Jews are proud of Israel, of course Israelis are proud to be part of the Jewish people and the center of Jewish life. It goes without saying. Every accomplishment done by Israel - whether in medicine, literature, science, high-tech, diplomacy or business - causes Jews to kvell.
All Jews, that is, except for the noisy fringe who hate Israel so much that they do not feel that pride - instead, they feel shame. That shame is not based on anything Israel does, but on how much they hate their own people. Waze or Intel microprocessors or Sodastream causes them to recoil rather than smile. And then they feel they must justify their hate by finding imagined crimes that literally every Israeli Jewish-owned company supposedly does.
It is this minority that doesn't have any real Jewish pride. But their Jewishness is still central to them because their Jewishness is what makes their hate newsworthy. So they have to create a parallel faux Judaism to create a tiny, anti-Israel community they can pretend is Jewish.
So they create new holidays with the same names as the old ones but that have nothing to do with Judaism and everything to do with showing their hate for most Jews and Israel. They make up a mitzvah they call "tikkun olam" that happens to coincide with whatever cause they support. They try to create an entire brand new ecosystem to replace the one that their grandparents belonged to, the one that most Jews still belong to, consciously or not.
These fakers don't feel pride for Israel or real Judaism. They only feel scorn and shame and embarrassment when they think about the successful, liberal, diverse, modern Jewish state that literally rose from the ashes.
Normal Jews are as proud of Israel as they are proud of Einstein or Sandy Koufax or Jonas Salk. This is obvious even to a non-Jew like Jay Leno.
The Jews who feel they must exert so much effort into not only hating Israel but in trying to convince everyone else to hate Israel don't have pride in being part of the Jewish people. They deliberately separate themselves from the community.
Which means that they, like the wicked son, are not part of the community at all.
Benjamin Strasser, a German politician of the Free Democratic Party, also expressed his concern and told JNS, “false school materials can cement hatred and prejudice for decades. Neither German tax revenues nor our contributions to the Palestinian Authority may be used to promote antisemitism and hatred against Israel.”Howard Jacobson: A Jew Is a Jew Is a Jew
Steve McCabe MP, chair of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), blamed the British government for spending taxpayers’ money “on a review which appears deeply flawed and which we may never have the chance to see.”
He accused the government of “hiding behind the EU to escape accountability for its own inaction,” and demanded that the United Kingdom “immediately suspend all PA aid related to the delivery of the PA curriculum until wholesale and urgent revisions are guaranteed.”
LFI vice chair and Member of Parliament John Spellar sent a letter to the government on this same issue, asking for an explanation.
In an emailed statement to JNS, a spokesperson for the Delegation of the European Union to Israel defended the flawed GEI study as “being carried out according to best international standards with native Arab speaking experts being part of the research team.”
The statement said that the EU’s Final Report “will be finalized by the end of the year. … Given that the final report has not even been published yet, any criticisms at the stage are clearly premature in our view, in particular as they have been based on alleged leaks regarding a preliminary report which had no other value than to inform the scoping of the study. … We should clarify that the EU does not fund and will not fund Palestinian textbooks.”
Reflecting on the proximity between the deaths of two towering figures in, respectively, literature and the arts, Howard Jacobson sees a certain symmetry between the philo-Semitic Gentile and the uncomfortable Jew:
Quite what Miller supposed he achieved by refusing his Jewishness in “the face of other Jews,” or in what spirit he affirmed it only to those who hated it, is hard to fathom. But in both instances he stripped Jewishness of its amity, making it a thing of hostility and even confrontation. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to say he was a nonpracticing Jew?
Well, not if you were Alec Berman, the hero of Betty Miller’s novel Farewell Leicester Square, whose Jewishness lay like a curse on him and those who loved him. A thing “he never forgets for one moment ... it’s always there, at the back of his mind, whatever he does and wherever he is. It haunts him …” Betty Miller was Jonathan Miller’s mother. Farewell Leicester Square was written, remarkably, when she was only 22 and described the agitations of a young Jewish filmmaker in 1930s London. The London Jonathan Miller had to make his way in, 20 years later, was less hostile to Jews and so less likely to induce such paranoia as Betty Miller described. But it’s a reasonable assumption that her son read his mother’s novel at an impressionable age. He grew up in an upper-tier intellectual milieu, bristling with discomfort in the matter of being alien. Not for him, one might imagine him deciding, the enervating Jewish self-consciousness of Alec Berman.
Nothing unusual or reprehensible in that. You have to get yourself up off the canvas. But Miller continued uncomfortable and sneering. Israel displeased him in the usual, unthinking ways. To the question where else Jews could look to for refuge come the next catastrophe, he posited a sort of Darwinism of destruction: The time might have come, he said, for Judaism to die out.
Clive James sometimes gave the impression that he’d have liked to be a Jew. That’s a luxury, of course, that only a non-Jew can afford. And, unlike Miller, he was a schmoozer. I knew him well enough to benefit from his schmoozing but not so well as to get beyond it. His curiosity, though, was always genuine, as was his disappointment when he learnt I hadn’t made myself a Talmudic scholar, hadn’t learnt Yiddish, and couldn’t read more than a few words of Hebrew. He learnt Russian in order the better to read Tolstoy and would certainly not have written a novel about Jews without mastering both their ancient and their modern languages. I don’t think it was his intention to make me feel I’d failed his expectations, but I did. He was a staunch supporter of Israel and saw through the fashionable denunciations of Zionism made by people “dedicated to knowing as little as possible about the history of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.” If there was one thing that tried his magnanimity it was partisanship built on ignorance. His own knowledge was formidable and principled, as witness Cultural Amnesia, his extraordinary 800-page tribute to 20th-century art and thought—not a feat anyone could have pulled off had they not liked keeping company with the imaginations of Jews. Maybe Jonathan Miller possessed as wide a store of knowledge but, if he did, he didn’t employ it to such generous purpose.
Tuesday, December 15, 2020Elder of Ziyon
Tuesday, December 15, 2020Elder of Ziyon
In the coming days, this region looks forward to another important event: the Gulf Cooperation Council Summit, a GCC leaders summit that annually sheds light on the most important issues of the hour.Israel’s President Praises Bahrain’s King Hamad for Making Peace With Israel
The summit will wrap up December’s main achievement, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Manama Dialogue that concluded on December 6, with the Abraham Accords getting the lion’s share of attention and participants being loud and clear about where they stand regarding threats from Iran, its nuclear program, the significance of unified international efforts to fight extremism, and how the Abraham Accords have changed the face of the Middle East.
Statements from politicians, officials, and security specialists all had one issue of common concern: Without international coordination and cooperation, the world will only be allowing extremist regimes to continue being destructive members in the international community.
If we actively investigate the most important statements made, we will clearly see that Israel has become a stronger team player in Middle East politics following the historic agreements signed with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and now Morocco. Perhaps Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi’s statement regarding the negotiations with Palestinian leaders was a pivotal point in this event that needs to be further analyzed. Ashkenazi’s statement was both clear and came forward as very genuine as he emphasized: “We were born in the region. We know the challenges and it’s a question of leadership.”
Ashkenazi also was more open about directly pointing fingers at Turkey’s aggressiveness in the Eastern Mediterranean, hoping that Erdoğan’s foreign policies toward countries in the Middle East will change as he hosts Hamas’ headquarters, providing them state assistance that has over the years enabled Hamas members to move around more easily with passports provided by Turkey. This was an important clarification of where Israel stands when it comes to its relations with Turkey and its strong stance toward unacceptable Turkish foreign policies.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Monday praised Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa for his “brave and historic decision to establish a warm peace with Israel.”Trump deserves the Nobel prize for his work to forge peace in the Middle East
In a phone conversation with Al Khalifa ahead of Bahrain’s National Day, which falls on Dec. 16, Rivlin said the recent signing of the Abraham Accords was “already a model for other countries in our region,” according to a statement from his office.
“We have chosen to invest from the very beginning in cooperation in the fields of economy, innovation and health,” he said. “I am full of hope that the Palestinians will also take steps to build mutual trust, cooperation and peace.”
Earlier on Monday, Rivlin welcomed a delegation of opinion leaders and activists from Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, greeting them both in Arabic and in Hebrew.
“Peace is made between peoples and nations,” he told the delegation, led by Amit Deri of the Sharaka Project. “Your visit here is another step in the path of building warm relations between our countries.”
The Sharaka (Arabic for “cooperation”) Project “aims to lead social initiatives that bring Israel’s voice to strengthen familiarity with the State of Israel in the Arab world, and create cooperation between young people in Israel and Arab states.”
One member of the delegation, Majid Al Sarrah from the University of Dubai, said “to visit Israel for the first time as part of a delegation is a historic moment. Israel is a prime example of tolerance in the region. This is a new era of peace and stability between peoples.”
By rights, US President Donald Trump’s groundbreaking peace initiative in Israeli-Arab relations should make him a shoe-in for the Nobel Peace Prize. There is, after all, a long list of previous recipients of the award whose recognition stems from their own contribution to improving relations between Arabs and Jews. Former US President Jimmy Carter won the award for his role in the 1970s Camp David negotiations that resulted in the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. More recently we have seen Yasser Arafat, the reformed Palestinian terrorist, and former Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, appointed Laureates for their contribution to the 1993 Oslo Accords, even though Mr Arafat’s subsequent refusal to sign up to Bill Clinton’s Camp David agreement in 2000 consigned the region to another two decades of conflict.
And, so pronounced is the liberal bias that informs the committee’s outlook, that former President Barack Obama received the award in 2009 simply for being elected to office.
Thus, if there were any degree of consistency in the Nobel committee’s deliberations, Mr Trump – who has done more than any other president in recent history to further the cause of peace in the Middle East – would be a worthy contender for the prize.
Last week Morocco became the latest Middle Eastern country to sign up to the Abraham Accords, the Trump administration’s peace initiative that has made a significant contribution to breaking the stalemate in Israeli-Arab relations.
The bold initiative, the result of years of painstaking diplomacy by Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, has already resulted in a major thawing in relations between Israel and the Gulf states, with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates agreeing to establish diplomatic ties, and several other Gulf governments – including Saudi Arabia – said to be giving serious consideration to following suit.
Tuesday, December 15, 2020Elder of ZiyonThe circle that was closed yesterday began last year, when Regavim’s field activities sparked a unique rescue mission: Volunteers for the “Preserving the Eternal” project discovered that the Palestinian Authority had issued permits for agricultural work resulting in the desecration of the ancient burial grounds at the Hasmonean Fortress of Jericho. They found the catacombs plundered, the sarcophagi stolen, and human remains that had been at rest there for over 2,000 years scattered around the site - which was being plowed and steam-rolled.
Regavim alerted the Civil Administration, and a rescue mission to collect the desecrated remains and reinter them at the Jewish cemetery in Kfar Adumim was set in motion.
Yesterday (Monday), in a moving and powerful stone-setting ceremony, the operation came full circle: At the special section of the Kfar Adumim Cemetery set aside for the Kohanim of Jericho by the Binyamin Regional Council, Regavim and ‘Preserving the Eternal’ marked the final resting place of the Hasmonean royal family, and reaffirmed the unbreakable bond between the Jewish People, the Land of Israel, and Jewish history and heritage – the very things for which the Maccabees, members of the Hasmonean royal family buried in the Jericho Fortress, fought over 2 millennia ago.
Tuesday, December 15, 2020Elder of Ziyongisha
Tuesday, December 15, 2020Elder of Ziyon
In a cabinet meeting, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, approved the formation of the National Human Rights Authority that aims to establish the country’s status in persevering human rights on regional and global spheres.The meeting, which took place in Abu Dhabi’s Qasr Al Watan, involved the adoption of ministerial resolutions and new structures for federal institutions and government councils.As part of the new independent human rights authority, the UAE seeks to develop networks with individuals and institutions around the world with aims to achieve goals in empowering vulnerable segments of the society. The authority will be granted financial and administrative independence to carry out its tasks.Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said, "Women, children, labourers, the elderly, people of determination and the vulnerable have rights that must be safeguarded. The authority will advance our country’s efforts in protecting human rights."Highlighting the country’s active role in safeguarding human rights, the authority will follow the Paris Principles for the National Human Rights Institutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.
Bhutan’s parliament adopted the Penal Code (Amendment) Bill of 2019 on Thursday, decriminalizing homosexual conduct between two consenting adults. The legislation was tabled before both houses, being the National Assembly and the National Council, in a joint sitting of the bicameral legislature this year.
A little less than 50 years ago, my mother, Natalia Stieglitz, walked down a flight of stairs in search of secret knowledge.Europe can’t fight anti-Semitism while ignoring threats to Israel
A few months earlier, on December 15th, 1970, a Soviet court convened in Leningrad to try a group of young Jews (and some allies) who planned (and failed) to hijack a small airplane and fly across the border. After years of learning Judaism and Hebrew in secret, after applying repeatedly for emigration visas to Israel and receiving one ‘refusal’ after another, the members of this group had decided to take matters into their own hands. They did not expect to succeed, not really (the letter they left behind was titled “Our Will”). But they had hoped to make a statement.
And they did.
Suddenly, people around the world were asking themselves why a group of promising, normative, young people would try to do something so very outlandish. Were the USSR’s assurances that they allowed Jews to emigrate actually true? Worse, from the Soviets’ perspective: people across the USSR itself were wondering the same thing.
The Six-Day War in 1967 awakened many Soviet Jews to their Jewish identity and filled them with longing to learn about the Jewish state. But most of them didn’t know what to do with what the authorities were bound to see as seditious feelings, nor that there was a movement of people like them that could support them and lend them strength. The Leningrad Trials changed all that: in their efforts to unearth and condemn the so-called-crimes of the would-be hijackers, the authorities publicized the existence of the Jewish underground that had long worked in Leningrad, Riga and Kishinev. Young Jews around the USSR had found out that hundreds of Jews just like themselves had spent years learning Hebrew, reclaiming their tradition, and seeking ways to move to Israel. Defying the USSR was no longer just a dream.
In the course of the trial, Sylva Zalmanson, the only woman to be tried, gave voice to this defiance. Her speech, copied and passed from hand to hand in secret, inspired people wherever it arrived. It did no less when it reached my mother all the way in Moscow, filling her with admiration and with awe.
But my mother could not understand the last sentence in the speech. It was written in a foreign alphabet, which at first she thought might be Sanskrit. After learning that it was actually Hebrew, and making discreet inquiries among her friends, she was on her way to meet a stranger who could decipher those mysterious words.
Dear European Union, we have to talk about a major foreign policy blind spot: your relations with Israel.Misguided American Jews hiding in plain sight
Countless times, I have heard European leaders, on commemorative anniversaries and at memorial sites, express their anguish over the Holocaust, the extermination of 6 million European Jews and the fertile European soil that nurtured anti-Semitism over centuries. I have heard them vow repeatedly, “never again.”
I don’t for a moment minimize these statements and gestures. To the contrary, they are extremely important, all the more so as anti-Semitism is again on the rise in Europe and knowledge of the Holocaust declines.
But — and it’s a big but — too many European leaders are not connecting this painful past to present policies.
I was particularly struck by this when I was invited, in 2013, to be one of six keynote speakers at a ceremony at Mauthausen, the infamous Nazi concentration camp in Austria, where my cousin, Mila Racine, was killed in the last weeks of the war.
The four speakers who preceded me — the presidents of Austria, Hungary and Poland, and the speaker of the Russian parliament — all invoked painful images of the war and the massive loss of Jewish life. They made moving statements affirming their commitment to remembrance and their opposition to any resurgence of hatred against Jews.
Yet not one mentioned the word “Israel.” Not one connected the tragedy of the Holocaust to the absence of an Israel that, had it existed, might have rescued and offered safety to countless European Jews trapped on the Continent.
And not one noted that nearly half of the world’s Jews today live in Israel, which faces both military threats to its existence and endless challenges to its legitimacy.
How can any leader speak about the lessons of the Holocaust and the menace of modern-day anti-Semitism without reference to the ongoing threats against Israel and the Jewish right to self-determination?
What happened that day at Mauthausen was not unusual. Indeed, it was all too routine.
American Progressive Jews remind me of black people who were thrilled if they could pass for white. I understand that desire. Black people were not welcome in the white world. To get ahead, to get anywhere, it was easier if one could “pass.”
It appears to me that too many Jews in America, today, feel the need to “pass,” to hide in plain sight, in order to be accepted in the Progressive New World. Perhaps because they are too comfortable in America, in Galut (exile), and do not want to move to Israel to be safe, so they cozy up to Jew haters, to blend in.
There was another time when Jews hid in plain sight. They too were comfortable, well-off, educated, sophisticated: Progressive. They were not at all like the other Jews; you know, the one’s from the shtetl. Interesting bit of history. In the end Hitler did not care because all over the world, from time immemorial, a Jew is a Jew is a Jew. This same attitude of us and them is happening in America. Liberal, Progressive Reform Jews hardly reacted when New York Governor Cuomo scapegoated Orthodox Jews, those Jews, for spreading Covid, although he said nothing about BLM protests or Shia Muslim gatherings for Ashura.
What is it, dear misguided, Progressive Jews, that frightens you about being Jewish in America that you align yourselves with the “other” Progressive groups who attack Jews and Israel? I watch as you bend the knee to the antisemitic gods of diversity, Black Lives Matter, and critical race theory.
It never goes well for Am Yisrael when Jews, trying to “pass” stand with those who attack us.
What we are witnessing now is far from the first time that Jews in America tried to diminish the assault on Am Yisrael-the Jewish people, in order to feel comfortable in America. -In 1918, liberated Jews in America said there was no need for the Balfour Declaration, calling for the formation of a Jewish state in Israel. Why bother.
On July 4, 1918, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the national organization of Reform rabbis shared a resolution arguing against the Declaration’s premise that the Jews were a people without a country, when in fact they were “and of right ought to be at home in all lands.”
And then came the Nazis. What a way to learn a lesson. -During WWII when FDR was asked, well begged, to take in the Jews from the St. Louis, fleeing the gas chambers, this at-the-time beloved Democrat President said, no.
It was Reform Rabbi Steven Wise, the founder of the Jewish Institute of Religion to train rabbis in Reform Judaism which later merged into the Hebrew Union College, who during WWII decided to pass on pushing FDR to take in Jews. In 2008 David Ellenson was one in a list of prominent American Jewish leaders who censured the Jewish leadership of the 1940s. He wrote:
“In the 1930s, it was Wise who led the rallies against Hitler, so why did he fail so horribly in the 1940s? Part of the explanation lies in Wise’s “absolute and complete love” for president Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as his antipathy toward the Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and toward the Bergson Group, whose leaders were followers of Jabotinsky, something that “helped blind him” to the need for more activism.
Monday, December 14, 2020Elder of Ziyon
Monday, December 14, 2020Elder of Ziyonarchaeology
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
