The issue of Sheikh Jarrah concerns the case in the Israeli courts involving
documented Jewish property rights dating back to Jewish land purchases made in
1875. Following Jordan's participation in the 1948 war, it claimed Yehudah and
Shomron (the "West Bank") as its own, expelling the Jewish residents and
seizing their property. During the Six Day War in 1967, Israel recaptured that
territory. In the cases where Jordan officially transferred title of the
formerly Jewish-owned property to Palestinian Arabs, Israel allowed the Arab
owner to remain -- despite the fact that the Arab ownership was based on
the forcible taking of land in a war of aggression followed by the ethnic
cleansing of Jews. In other cases, where there was a dispute over the title of ownership but
Jordan never gave legal title to the Arabs, the Israeli courts followed the
unbroken rights of Jewish plaintiffs and returned their property to them.
To Diehl's claim that "Israel had decided to seize 360 acres of traditional
village land"
Bar-Ilan responds that no confiscations were made in Artas -- "The only
exception: two hills, more than 30km from Artas, from which shots were fired
which killed travelers on the highway"
There is more, but the similarity between then and now is clear. History is
deliberately avoided and established law is ignored. Instead, a land dispute
is framed as a state plot to confiscate Arab land and the Arab onus to provide
legal proof of ownership is ignored in favor of a one-sided journalistic
attack on Israel.
Some things never change.
Despite a rash of recent anti-Jewish hate crimes, including shootings at
temples in Pittsburgh in 2018 and near San Diego, Calif., in April,
the curriculum omits “any meaningful discussion” of anti-Semitism, the
letter said. It omits Jewish contributions to American culture, even as it includes such contributions from Americans of African, Native,
Arab, and Latin descent, it said.
“We cannot support a curriculum that erases the American Jewish experience,
fails to discuss antisemitism,
reinforces negative stereotypes about Jews, singles out Israel for
criticism, and would institutionalize the teaching of antisemitic
stereotypes in our public schools,” the caucus’ letter said.
...The Jewish Caucus, and Jewish organizations, also took issue with the
way the curriculum depicts Israel and the Palestinian-led “boycott,
divestment, and sanctions” movement that’s designed to pressure the
country to change its approach to Palestinians.
Likening BDS to movements such as BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, the
curriculum says it is a “global social movement that currently aims to
establish freedom for Palestinians living under apartheid conditions.”
“The glossary ...
parrots more BDS talking points while offering no critical perspectives
about this campaign of hate, which seeks to end Israel’s existence,” Batsheva Kasdan of Los Angeles said in remarks submitted through the
state’s public-comment portal. [emphasis added]
These days, curriculums seem to be pretty popular.
The New York Times has its widely criticized 1619 Project Curriculum,
redefining that year -- when the first African slaves were brought here
-- as the founding of America and claiming that the real reason the
American Revolution was fought was to preserve slavery.
There is also Critical Race Theory.
According to psychologist Pamela Paresky, writing about
Critical Race Theory and the ‘Hyper-White’ Jew:
At a time when the moral imperative is to “be less white,” there is no
identity more pernicious than that of a once powerless minority group
that, rather than joining the struggle to dismantle whiteness, opted into
it.
In the critical social justice paradigm, that is how Jews are viewed.
Jews, who have never been seen as white by those for whom being white is a
moral good, are now seen as white by those for whom whiteness is an
unmitigated evil. This reflects the nature of antisemitism: No matter the
grievance or the identity of the aggrieved, Jews are held responsible.
Critical race theory does not merely make it easy to demonize Jews
using the language of social justice; it makes it difficult not to. [emphasis added]
But making curriculums, including by the media, is nothing new.
According to an article Bar-Ilan wrote September 20, 1991, entitled Useful Idiots
(p.226-229):
What makes the media particularly effective is that they do not restrict
their Israel-bashing to news channels.
Newsweek, for example, which has portrayed Israelis as drug-addicted
wife-beaters who spend American aid money ($1,000 a year for every
Israeli!) on Jacuzzis, also provides a social studies program for American schools. With
characteristic even-handedness, its The Middle East: Tug of War,
used in schools throughout the U.S., flatly states,
"Yasser Arafat has made tremendous concessions in hopes of bringing
Israel to the negotiating table."
In the June issue of the excellent American Jewish bimonthly Moment,
Charles Jacobs exposes the extent of blatant anti-Israel and antisemitic
propaganda in American teaching materials, some of which are produced by
the media. The Public Broadcasting Service (producers of the McNeil-Lehrer
Show seen on Israel's Channel 2) distributes a teachers' guide for a study
unit titled Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land.
Among its many gems there is the contention, a favorite of Israeli
leftists, that Arabs and Jews are equally guilty of terrorism. Arab operations against civilians, the only kind that truly meet the
definition of terrorism, cost the lives of thousands of Jews and Arabs in
the riots of 1920, 1929, 1936-1939, and thousands more in PLO operations
and the current intifada. It is never mentioned.
But far more dangerous than these gross historical distortions is the
assertion in the PBS guide that
"In Jewish eyes, the Arab is dirty, lazy, thieving, incompetent and
uppity." In short, Jews are racists.
As Jacobs puts it, "it is not difficult to see how a black child in an
American classroom would react to these hateful words -- dirty, lazy
thieving, incompetent and uppity --words often unfairly aimed at blacks.
How could any minority student not be enraged at such hateful people?"
To make sure that the racism charge and the analogy to American racism
sink in, the guide includes a study question:
"What are some of the patterns of discrimination between Jews and Arabs
that exist between groups in other countries, including blacks and
whites in the U.S.?"
[emphasis added]
The groundwork for associating anti-black racism with Israel was already
laid 30 years ago.
The attempt to associate BLM with BDS is not new.
It is merely gaining steam.
IfNotNow
Jewish anti-Israel groups drawing attention to themselves by exploiting
their 'Jewish identity' is nothing new, though publicly making havdalah in
the middle of a Saturday afternoon may be a uniquely IfNotNow stunt.
But Michael Lerner is way ahead of them.
By about 50 years.
And some of his early slanders against the Jewish community itself make
IfNotNow look tame by comparison.
From Michael Lerner's Masquerade, June 28, 1991 (p. 180-183)
...it is doubtful a bona fide politician would last long in the Jewish
world after writing,
"The Jewish community is racist, internally corrupt, and an apologist
for the worst aspects of American capitalism and imperialism."
Or "Black antisemitism is...a tremendous disgrace to Jews; for this is not
an antisemitism rooted in...hatred of the Christ-killers but rather one
rooted in
the concrete fact of oppression by Jews of blacks in the ghetto...an
earned antisemitism" Or,
"The synagogue as currently established will have to be smashed." [emphasis added]
These are not quotes by Farrakhan -- these are Michael Lerner's own
words from back in 1969. When Edward Alexander quoted Lerner in an article
in 1989, Lerner first threatened to sue, but in the end claimed to have been
influenced by the model of the prophet Isaiah in criticizing Jews.
In response to Alexander’s article, Lerner said that he was sorry he had
made those statements, but they were part of his “adolescent rebellion,”
although he was 27 at the time.
By 1988, Lerner had turned his attention to Israel:
...he organized advertisements in American newspapers calling on Israel to
'end the occupation.' He also likes to tell plain Jews how to pray. Tikkun
publishes its own Haggada, in which a prayer has been added before the
Kiddush: "This year the Jewish people itself has become the symbol of
oppression," it asserts. And in another addition to the Pessah service it
says "The Land of Israel, which gives bread to two peoples, must be
divided in two."
In an interview in The Washington Post Lerner stated that on Yom Kippur
the Jews had "a great deal to repent for in light of the action of the
State of Israel." [emphasis added]
(How prescient of Lerner to see the benefit of blaming Jews for the actions
of Israel, showing the way for the antisemites of today, who use the
occasion of Israeli self-defense as an excuse to attack Jews.)
...In a May 23, 1991, article in The Los Angeles Times he wrote, "Israeli
activists privately tell me that should Israeli intransigence block the
progress of the impending peace conference,
American peace activists should do everything in our power to convince
Secretary of State Baker to pull out all the stops and pressure
Israel.
...Rabbi Bernard Mandelbaum, president emeritus of the Jewish Theological
Seminary, where Lerner studied in the 1960s, brands Lerner's writing "vicious, antisemitic and anti-Israel. He has come as close to anyone in the Jewish community to comparing
Israel's treatment of Arabs to the Nazi treatment of Jews.
Tikkun produces a steady stream of ant-Israel bias and poison."
[emphasis added]
IfNotNow, and other, similar, anti-Israel groups who claim to identify as
Jews, today follow in the footsteps of Lerner.
Thirty years of anti-Israel bias.
You can't blame it all on Netanyahu.
He was prime minister for only 15 of those 30 years.
And now Bibi is no longer in charge.
Will that make any difference?
As Mark Goldfeder, director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center points
out, the parade for flag day -- described by the media as "ultranationalist,"
"far-right," "inflammatory," "contentious," and "provocative" --was authorized
by a new government (minus Netanyahu) consisting of not only Jews from
Ethiopia, Morocco and Russia, but also Druze and Muslims.
Nothing is going to change.
Friday, June 25, 2021
