For the 21st anniversary of Israel's Independence in 1969, the Arab Information Center put an ad in the Miami Herald that tried to link Israel with the US use of napalm in Vietnam, asking "what has Israel offered - Shalom or Napalm?"
Israel never used napalm against civilians, but the propaganda outlet wanted people to believe that it did.
Around the same time (maybe as early as 1968), Palestinian terror group Fatah issued a poster and stamp series with the same theme, "Shalom and Napalm," featuring a child victim of napalm that they implied was a Palestinian. (Both Fatah and the PFLP at the time issued stamps as fundraisers that often had antisemitic themes [h/t iTi].)
These were disgusting blood libels, made worse by juxtaposing "Shalom" with war crimes.
So naturally it was picked up by the far-Left in Germany.
Historian Jeffrey Herf notes that on November 9, 1969, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a bomb was found in the Jewish Community Center in Berlin. At the same time, monuments commemorating the Holocaust were defaced with graffiti saying “Shalom”, “Napalm” and “El Fateh."
Four days later, an article was published by a radical socialist group called the Black Rats in a leftist magazine in West Berlin, Agit 883, taking credit for the planned attack, and saying that the focus of the Left will move from Vietnam to the Middle East and vilifying "fascist" Israel, saying Germans should stop feeling guilty about the Holocaust because the Jews were the new Nazis.
The name of the article? Again, “Shalom and Napalm.”
Their leading figure, Dieter Kunzelmann, was antisemitic. His antisemitism was not complicated. He simply didn’t like Jews. As Albert Fichter, who planted the bomb in the Jewish Community Centre, later recalled:
““Kunzelmann and Georg von Rauch [another Tupamaro] swore more and more about ‘shitty Jews’. Kunzelmann always spoke about ‘Jewish pigs’ and wound up people against them. At that time he was like a classic antisemite. Georg spoke the same way.”
Similarly, German Leftists are assumed to be behind the 1970 arson attack on a Munich Jewish community center that killed seven Holocaust survivors. And it was German Leftists, not Palestinians, who separated Orthodox Jews along with the Israelis on the 1976 Air France flight that was hijacked to Entebbe.
At the time, the accusation that Israel was using napalm against children was only an implication. Fatah and the German leftists knew enough not to directly make the slander that Israel napalmed Palestinians. It was pure propaganda meant to make people believe the lie, without saying it directly.
But there is an even more disgusting postscript to this blood libel, ten years later.
Way before "Jewish Voice for Peace" started hijacking Jewish rituals for antisemitic purposes, in 1978, the PLO issued its own "Haggadah" where they changed Jewish Passover songs to directly make the accusation of Jews killing Palestinian children with napalm while "repeating shalom:"
The Jew-hatred from both the Leftists and the Palestinians is undeniable in these examples. When they deny being antisemitic today, it is important to understand the history: they haven't changed their positions one bit - they are just obfuscating their antisemitism enough to convince self-described "anti-racists" who want to believe them.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Zionism is based mostly on forgery and reversal of facts..and distortion of the Torah and Talmud, and the writings of extremist thinkers. Zionists like Jabotinsky.
The first of these myths and distortions is their claim that they are “God’s Chosen People”! It is a statement that many of the Zionists believed, and considered it sacred.. while all the facts and data undermine this statement and belie this claim.
Was the Lord Jesus, peace be upon him, not sent to guide the Jews after they went astray?? So they plotted against him.. Did they not deviate from the religion of Moses, peace be upon him, and worship the calf?? Then God became angry with them, and they wandered in the Sinai desert for 40 years.. they refused to enter Palestine.. because there were a mighty people in it.. “Go, you and your Lord, and fight. I am sitting here.” So humiliation and misery struck them until the day they are resurrected!!
They rejected the invitation of the Messiah.. and did not obey Moses.. and conspired against Muhammad on all of them.
The Jews created myths and legends and believed in them and excelled in forgery and fabrication. The study curricula in their schools and universities are based on forgery, reversal of facts, brainwashing of students and spreading hatred.
Didn’t their chief rabbi compare the Palestinian Arabs to insects?. He asked the army to crush them with his feet, because they are just “goyim” who do not deserve to live because they are below the level of human beings!!
The Jews followed the following methods to achieve their Zionist goals:
- Control of the media.
- Issuing "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" which are considered the most dangerous documents in the modern era, which called for the demolition of morals, the destruction of religions, the control of sex, the role of prostitution and its dissemination among young people and dirty literature to destroy families, and work to destroy the internationalist thought of non-Jews.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
The New Antisemitism is becoming violent
The decline in the favorability of mainstream American views toward Israel has coincided with a rise in antisemitic violence, particularly in large metropolises, promoted by Islamo-Leftist groups. In New York City, more than half of hate crimes in 2019 targeted Jews. During the last major conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in May 2021, terror groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad launched more than 4,000 rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians. At the same time, we witnessed stunning and unprecedented scenes in New York, Los Angeles, and other American cities of Jews being assaulted by mobs of anti-Israel activists. This surge of anti-Jewish hate also included harassment, vandalism and online abuse.
With many Jews in America now fearing walking the streets in their kippot or wearing other items that identify them as Jewish or Zionist, or even speaking Hebrew in public, we are sliding in the direction of our European Jewish brethren—in fear and under siege, requiring more and more layers of security.
Meanwhile, many American Jews serve willingly as useful idiots for groups that despise us, divided our community, and weaken our resolve, under the pretext of legitimate critique of the Israeli government policies.
The end of the story for American Jewry?
While we undoubtedly face grave challenges as American Jews, we must not give up. Until now, due to lack of information and fear of rejection and persecution, many American Jews have been complicit as anti-Zionism morphs into the new antisemitism. Now is the time to stand up, fight back with all our remaining might and hold antisemites accountable.
We must form alliances with groups that share the same Judeo-Christian values of freedom and democracy, inspire today’s Jewish youth to be proud of their people and the Jewish homeland, and bring Israel back to the center of our Jewish life in the diaspora.
We must embrace Zionism as an integral part of our Jewish identity. We must engage in renewed efforts to strengthen the homeland of the Jewish people, ask Israel to empower and defend Jewish communities worldwide, and take stock of the strength our community possesses.
We must collectively demand a rejection of all forms of antisemitism, including and especially anti-Zionism.
When I learned that Alice Walker and I would both be speaking at the same literary festival, I seized the chance to expose her views.
Fully a third of the Freedom Riders who risked life and limb to desegregate interstate bus travel in the early 1960s were Jews. So were many of the young men and women who took part in the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign to register black voters in Mississippi. The town of Philadelphia will always be remembered as the place where Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, two such Jewish activists from New York, and James Chaney, their black colleague from nearby Meridian, were murdered by white supremacists. President Barack Obama posthumously awarded them the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. An individual about whom I knew nothing until visiting the museum is Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, a civil-rights activist who earned the distinction of being the first white clergyman to have his home and congregation bombed by white supremacists in 1967.
The history and contemporary state of black-Jewish relations has been weighing on me since August, when I visited Jackson as a guest of the Mississippi Book Festival. I was there to present my book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, as part of a panel entitled “(Re)shaping Public Discourse,” alongside professors Eddie Glaude and Imani Perry, both of Princeton University, and the authors of books about James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, respectively. Also invited to address the festival, immediately after our panel, was Alice Walker, one of America’s leading African-American writers, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple—and a well-known antisemite.
Walker evinces her antisemitism primarily not through her own words, but in her enthusiastic promotion of David Icke, the ex-footballer and prominent proponent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion who simultaneously denies the Holocaust while claiming that the Jews perpetrated it against themselves. In 2013, Walker told the BBC’s Desert Island Discs that if she could keep only one book it would be his Human Race Get Off Your Knees, which purports to reveal the “sinister network of families and non-human entities that covertly control us from cradle to grave.” Asked by the New York Times what books were on her nightstand in 2018, she included in her response Icke’s And the Truth Shall Set You Free. In an exhaustive inventory of Walker’s antisemitism published in Tablet magazine, Yair Rosenberg observed that this tract alone contains the word “Jewish” 241 times and “Rothschild” 374 times. “These references are not compliments,” Rosenberg wrote.
The UK is facing economic meltdown. The world may be heading for nuclear Armageddon. Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, have been preoccupied with salvaging his reputation over the antisemitism crisis that dogged his leadership for more than four years.
Did Corbyn or his office interfere politically in antisemitism disciplinary cases when he was Labour leader — or did they not?
Disciplinary cases were meant to be determined by officials at Labour Party HQ independently of the Leader or his political advisers.
In April 2020 Corbyn supporters found vindication in a leaked internal report by Corbyn staffers which, perhaps unsurprisingly, concluded allegations of interference were “entirely untrue.”
Six months later, the statutory investigation into Labour by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) concluded there had been interference: “We found evidence of political interference in the handling of antisemitism complaints throughout the period of the investigation”, thereby unlawfully discriminating against Jewish members. The EHRC blamed a “lack of leadership” within Labour “which is hard to reconcile with its stated commitment to a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism.”
Then, last summer, Corbyn’s supporters were buoyed up by a report by the barrister Martin Forde KC which accused the mainstream media of being “entirely misleading” in how we reported allegations of interference.
So where, in this attritional battle for the truth, does the truth actually lie?
I must declare an interest because I presented the programme most often mentioned in the Forde Report: BBC Panorama’s “Is Labour antisemitic? ”transmitted in July 2019
A fortnight ago, the “Investigation Unit” of the Qatari-based Al Jazeera TV network piled in. Its central allegation against the BBC came from Corbyn’s Director of Strategic Communications, James Schneider.
He claimed to have “exposed” how Panorama had misleadingly presented evidence to suggest there was “unwarranted meddling” by Corbyn or his office “in antisemitism cases.”
A Palestinian gunman suspected of killing an Israeli soldier in East Jerusalem earlier this month was shot dead on Wednesday evening, after opening fire at security guards near the entrance to the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim.
Police officials confirmed that Udai Tamimi, who they say killed Sgt. Noa Lazar, 18, and seriously injured a civilian guard on October 8 at a checkpoint near the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem, was killed while carrying out another attack.
A security guard, 24, was taken by the Magen David Adom ambulance service to the Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, with an injury in his hand. He was listed in light condition, the hospital said.
Security camera footage of Wednesday’s attack showed a lengthy exchange of gunfire between Tamimi and the security guards.
Tamimi, 22, fled the scene of the attack earlier this month. He was thought by police to have been hiding in the Shuafat refugee camp since then.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid hailed the killing of Tamimi, and sent well wishes to the guard wounded in Wednesday’s attack, in a statement published by his office.
Ninety-one people were killed in the King David Hotel bombing of
July 22, 1946. Fifteen of them were Jews. One of those Jews was my 28-year-old cousin,
Yehuda Yanovsky. He’d gone to the hotel that day to invite his former
co-workers to his engagement party, to be held that evening.
Yehuda had clerked for the British, a fact that made him a
reviled figure in the eyes of much of the family. They saw him
as a traitor compared to say, his Aunt Leah who went to America and on
her return, smuggled in guns for the Etzel, under her clothes. Yehuda
didn’t care. He’d hitched his star to the Brits to the point that after some years
at his desk job at the King David, Yehuda had volunteered for the RAF. Now home
from the war, he was all set to marry his sweetheart.
It was not to be.
Yehuda Yanovsky 1918-1946.
That, however, was not the fault of the Etzel (Irgun Tzvai
Leumi). Headed by Menachem Begin, the paramilitary organization founded by Zeev
Jabotinsky had done everything in its power to minimize casualties. Warning
calls were made to the Palestine Post
(today the Jerusalem Post), the
French Consulate, and the hotel desk, 22 minutes before the bombing. The
Palestine Post subsequently reported the warning to the police. The French
Consulate, located next door to the hotel, heeded the warning and as directed,
opened the windows to prevent them from shattering in the blast. The Etzel
itself herded the hotel staff into the kitchen and shooed them out the door,
ten minutes before the bombing occurred. But whoever was manning the hotel
switchboard that day, chose to ignore the warning and as a result, 91 people
died that day, including my cousin Yehuda.
Casualty list from the Palestine Post, July 24, 1946.
From that day forward, Menachem Begin would forever be
branded “that terrorist” by those on the Israeli left. The Likud Party, too,
the party founded by Begin and headed today by Benjamin Netanyahu, was (and in
some quarters still is) thought of as a party of terrorists. Outside of Israel,
the anti-Israel crowd loves to point to the King David Hotel bombing as the
perfect example of Jewish terror,
which they say, is no different than Arab
terror, except the diabolical Jews get a pass in the eyes of the world.
Wanted by the British. Menachem Begin at upper left.
You might be tempted to point to the sheer number of Arab
terror attacks (and attendant casualties) as the thing that distinguishes them
from this single episode of a Jewish hotel bombing. But that is not what makes
them different. For while the antisemites like to pretend that the King David
Hotel bombing is no different than, for example, the Arab bus bombings of the 1st
Intifada, or the Sbarro Pizzeria Massacre, they aren’t fooling anyone. Go
ahead, recite the death count of the King David Hotel bombing all you want, but
no Arab terrorist ever gave a Jew advanced warning prior to an attack. No one
told Malki Roth to leave her pizza and run. Unlike Menachem Begin’s Etzel, which
gave multiple warnings to multiple parties and evacuated the hotel’s personnel
to safety.
Menachem Begin was no terrorist. The British were the
terrorists. They turned their backs in Hebron and Safed as Arab terrorists
murdered innocent men, women, and children, including my husband's cousin Jacob
Wexler. They imprisoned Jews and hung them when they tried to defend themselves
against Arab terror.
If only the world
would mind its own business and leave the Jews alone.
But they won’t and they didn’t. And so the Etzel decided to
make a show of might and force. And a show—albeit with a landmark building destroyed—it
would have been, had the call to the hotel not been ignored. In his book, “The
Revolt: Story of the Irgun,” Begin quotes a British official who refused to
evacuate the building: “We don’t take orders from the Jews.”
But this is the attitude the Jews had long encountered under the British the British. As far back as 1929, Rabbi Yaakov Slonim of Hebron was attacked in the street, by Arabs with knives and stones, as Jews watched on from their windows, helpless.
A Jewish woman who was at the rabbi’s house, dared to go out
to the British Chief of Police (who participated in egging on the mob), and
begged him to save the rabbi. His answer was: “This is no matter for a dumb,
Jewish woman. Go home and stay there. Usually, it is the Jews who are to blame
in these cases.”
Though these remarks were said in English, the mob heard and
was encouraged by them.
The rabbi’s daughter Rivka Slonim, having survived the pogrom, relates what
happened next:
Soon after my father and I shut ourselves up in our home,
our neighbor Abu-Shaker appeared on his white horse.
He tied up his horse and sat down on our doorstep. From what
he told us – that the British police were aiding the rioters, standing aside
when the mob stormed Jewish houses and slaughtered their inhabitants – we knew
our final hour had come.
After the massacre, the British made a show of conducting an
investigation:
The investigative committee sent out by the British Colonial
Office accepted testimony from Arabs only, as well as the infamous police chief
Cafferata and Governor Abdullah Kardos.
Jews were not permitted to present their version to the
committee, with the exception of Rabbi Yaakov Slonim, the father of the murdered
E. D. Slonim.
Rabbi Slonim related the events of the two days in Hebron,
of the murder of at least 67 Jews, the destruction of approximately 80 Torah
scrolls, and the responsibility of the authorities, particularly Cafferata and
Kardos who failed to prevent the pogrom. The committee disallowed Rabbi
Slonim’s testimony.
On October 15, 1929, the trials of the murderers began.
Sheik Marka, leader of the mob in Hebron, received a two-year prison term which
was changed to house arrest, and everything “fizzled away."
Two of the four who murdered Rabbi Meir Shmuel Castel were
acquitted due to “lack of evidence.” The two others were sentenced to death.
The trials were a show for the gallery. Almost all the murderers went free and
kept what they had plundered and stolen. This drove the Jewish community into a
deep depression. The clear, positive attitude the British had towards the
killers was visible. For most of the trials, a date for proceedings wasn’t even
set. . .
. . . The British reaction to the pogrom was to expel about
1,000 Jews out of Hebron.
This is what happened in Hebron with the British in charge.
Under their watch, the “City of Forefathers” became a Jew-free zone in 1929. Only
in 1967 were the Jews able to return.
British complicity in the 1929 riots in Hebron and in Safed,
too, was illustrative of British feeling toward the Jewish population of Mandate
Palestine. The Brits were indulgent with the Arabs, but scorned, sneered at,
and persecuted the Jews. What happened in Hebron was one very large piece of
evidence—evidence of British hatred for the Jews they ruled. For in essence, the British assisted the
Arabs in emptying out the Jews from an entire Jewish city—the city that until
today houses the remains of the Jewish forefathers.
Why should anyone with even a smattering of understanding of
what it was like for Jews living under these people in their own land, imagine that
they would just shut up and take it—just lie down and die because to the
British, like so many other antisemites, the Jews are only so much vermin?
Grave of Yehuda Yanovsky, Mount of Olives Cemetery, Jerusalem
For some Jews—proud Jews like Menachem Begin—that was
impossible. No Jew should be treated like that, have to live like that, on
Jewish soil. The balance of power was out of whack. So the Etzel bombed a
building. But they first told the people to leave: the occupants of the hotel and the people next
door at the French Consulate. The Etzel gave advance notice of the bombing to the English-language paper of record and
personally evacuated the hotel workers.
No one was supposed to be hurt. But the Brits didn’t think
the Jews had it in them. So they failed to leave the building and save
themselves. They also failed to share that information with others in the
building who were loyal to them, such as my cousin Yehuda, who clearly made the
wrong choice.
This is not terror. This is stupid people who hate and underestimate the Jews
so much they won’t leave a building about to be bombed, even with advanced
warning.
When someone calls to alert you on the phone, telling you exactly what is
going to happen when, and leaving you plenty of time to leave--that’s not terror. It’s the world once more refusing to mind its own
business and leave the Jews alone. Especially within the borders of Eretz Israel.
An Arab terrorist isn’t in the business of making a show. Rather than minimizing casualties, he aims to maximize them. And of course, the Arab terrorist’s biggest advantage is the element
of surprise.
Arab terrorists come through windows and kill little girls like
Hallel Yaffa Ariel. They explode pizzerias and kill little girls like Malki
Roth. They burst into homes and decapitate babies like 3-month-old Hadas Fogel.
They point their rifles at babies in their strollers taking sun in the park,
like 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass. They ram into babies in their strollers at
bus stops and kill them, like 3-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun.
And they never warn a soul. Because the entire purpose of
terror is to terrorize. Which is what Yehuda Yanovsky would be the first to
tell you, were he alive today. My cousin was not a victim of “Jewish terror”
but of British scorn for the Jewish people.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
An illegal Israeli settler performs ‘epic prostration’ in front of Bab Al-Silsila, one of the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem. pic.twitter.com/MwJlxxMUzC
In a flagrant violation of Al-Aqsa sanctity, 5094 illegal Israeli settlers raided the courtyards of #Al_Aqsa Mosque compound during what’s so-called “Hebrew Throne Day”. pic.twitter.com/yVH01Nkz3b
In a sacrilege attempt, an illegal Israeli #settler,backed by the occupation forces, entered the blessed #Al_Aqsa Mosque in 'immodest' clothing during settlers’ incursion today morning. pic.twitter.com/Ranfl9IrpB
I a new flagrant violation of Al-Aqsa Mosque, two illegal Israeli settlers defiled the mosque with immodest clothing, today morning. pic.twitter.com/kdtkRln51R
Palestinian Arabs - and Western anti-Zionists - are constantly fed this antisemitic incitement and propaganda. Sometimes even English-speaking, non-Arab Israel haters will use the terminology used here of "colonial settlers storming Al Aqsa" in their own tweets showing how the propaganda works.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Huh? The status of west Jerusalem needs to be resolved in negotiations?
If west Jerusalem is not sovereign Israel, does this mean that Canberra believes that the city should, as stipulated by the 1947 partition plan, eventually be a corpus separatum under a permanent international regime? Western Jerusalem, as Australia and the rest of the world fully know, will always remain a part of Israel, and no serious peace proposal has ever suggested otherwise.
The move was hailed by the Palestinian Authority. Of course it was, since it reinforces the rejectionist tendency amid the Palestinians and strengthens their destructive illusion that if they just wait long enough, and pressure hard enough, they will have their demands met with no concessions needed on their part.
What exactly has the PA done of late to merit such an Australian prize? Should the PA be rewarded for having its prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh fan the flames of violence by going to Jenin – as he did on Sunday – to praise Palestinian “martyrs”?
Then there was the way the decision was taken. On Monday, The Guardian newspaper reported that Canberra’s recognition of west Jerusalem was deleted from the Australian foreign ministry’s website. The foreign ministry issued a flat denial that there was a change of policy, yet a few hours later reversed itself and announced exactly that change of policy.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid was spot on when he said, “In light of the way in which this decision was made in Australia, as a hasty response to an incorrect report in the media, we can only hope that the Australian government manages other matters more seriously and professionally.”
For Israel, there are a couple of important takeaways from the whole episode
First, Jerusalem should prepare for the possibility that Australia might recognize a Palestinian state. If this sounds far-fetched, consider the following: Three years ago, the Australian Labour Party called for a walk back of Morrison’s Jerusalem decision as well as for the next Labour government to recognize “Palestine” as a state. If the party followed through on one of those pledges, why think they may not do the same on the other?
Secondly, Canberra’s flip-flop should lead to a greater appreciation in Jerusalem of US president Joe Biden’s decision to not act like the Australians and reverse his predecessor’s decision to move the embassy, even though Biden himself was opposed to the Jerusalem embassy move. Biden did something that Albanese in Australia was unable to do: Stand up to a minority voice in his party pushing an anti-Israel agenda that can only weaken ties with Israel.
The Australian prime minister said on Wednesday that his government’s reversal of its recognition of western Jerusalem as the capital of Israel could have been handled better, but defended the move, saying it had returned Australia to the international mainstream.
“Some things can always be done better,” said Anthony Albanese after Canberra’s announcement of the decision drew criticism and led to a fallout with Jerusalem.
However, he went on to state that the Labor Party, which he leads, opposed the 2018 decision by then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison to recognize western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in the first place. He accused the previous government of hypocrisy, noting that even after the recognition, Morrison’s administration failed to move the Australian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Australia’s policy towards Palestinian hopes for a capital in Jerusalem appeared to remain intact on Wednesday, a day after it reversed its recognition of western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
“In December 2018, Australia acknowledged the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a future state with its capital in East Jerusalem,” the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) website read after it announced that it was reversing its December 2018 policy change pertaining to Israel.
DFAT also deleted calls for democracy and good governance by the Palestinian Authority from its website, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
What happened with Australia and Jerusalem?
Earlier this week, Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong denied that the excision of Australia’s recognition of western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital from the DFAT website indicated a policy change, only to say the opposite the following day without warning.
“Jerusalem is a final status issue that should be resolved as part of any peace negotiations…This reverses the [former prime minister Scott] Morrison Government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” Wong stated.
This month, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about The Triumph of the Ukrainian Idea, by which he means the often disparaged idea of nationalism. According to Brooks, nationalism is actually a good idea after all. After all, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky is a nationalist, and that means
He is fighting not just for democracy but also for Ukraine — Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian land, the Ukrainian people and tongue. The symbol of this war is the Ukrainian flag, a nationalist symbol...Countries are held together by shared loves for a particular way of life, a particular culture, a particular land. These loves have to be stirred in the heart before they can be analyzed by the brain.
Nationalism provides people with a sense of meaning.
When he equates Ukrainian nationalism with the Ukrainian culture, land, people and language, Brooks could just as easily have been describing Zionism, Jewish nationalism, as an example.
After all, Zionism is what led to the re-establishment of the state of Israel. Zionism brought the Hebrew language back to life as a contemporary language that expresses the feelings and literature of the Jewish people. Zionism made Jewish history and culture alive once again, giving new vitality to the Jewish people.
But Brooks makes no reference to Jews, Israel or Zionism in this column on the positive value of nationalism.
Pity.
Instead, Brooks makes a distinction between what he sees as 2 different kinds of nationalism, the bad kind and the good kind. The bad kind of nationalism is the one that is "backward-looking, xenophobic and authoritarian." That is the "illiberal" kind of nationalism, the nationalism of Vladimir Putin -- and Donald Trump.
But the other kind, the good kind, of nationalism is the one that is "forward-looking, inclusive and builds a society around the rule of law, not the personal power of the maximum leader." This is the "liberal" nationalism that Brooks says is epitomized by Volodymyr Zelensky.
What Brooks does tell us is that for a liberal democracy to survive today, it will need that extra component of good nationalism
Ukraine’s tenacity shows how powerful liberal nationalism can be in the face of an authoritarian threat. It shows how liberal nationalism can mobilize a society and inspire it to fantastic achievements. It shows what a renewed American liberal nationalism could do, if only the center and left could get over their squeamishness about patriotic ardor and would embrace and reinvent our national tradition.
But what he writes falls short of where the US seems to actually stand right now.
o Instead, of a threat from outside, the view of liberals today is that we are facing a threat from within.
o What the left feels about patriotism and nationalism isn't "squeamishness" -- it's hatred.
o And "reinventing our national tradition" actually is exactly what they are already trying to do -- via Critical Race Theory.
And CRT is not conducive to the "shared loves for a particular way of life, a particular culture, a particular land" that Brooks extols in nationalism.
The closest he comes to dealing with the threat of divisiveness is when he refers to the political scientist Yascha Mounk, who
celebrates the growing diversity enjoyed by many Western nations. But he argues they also need the centripetal force of “cultural patriotism,” to balance the centrifugal forces that this diversity ignites.
That is an idea that parallels one by Chloe Valdary in a 2018 article which -- in contrast to Brooks -- unabashedly holds Zionism as a nationalism worthy of emulation.
the difference between a nationalism based upon concepts that transcend race and a nationalism rooted in it. The former is far more flexible in being able to envision a society in which universalist aspirations of minority civil rights are honored even within a particularist framework. Indeed, one could argue that that particularist framework is what gives rise to the universalist aspiration in the first place. As Rav Soloveitchik once stated, “out of the particular lies the universal.”
Instead of a balance, there is more of a creative tension between these 2 forces of minorities vs nationalism.
Valdary is discussing the issues arising out of the Israeli Nation-State Law, which the Knesset passed at the time, defining Israel as “the nation-state of the Jewish people.”
First of all, she notes that Zionism transcends race:
Zionism aimed to liberate all Jews and Jews come in all colors. Thus the nation-state bill which the author derides as ethnocentric proclaims the country of Israel to be Jewish—and this includes white Jews, brown Jews, black Jews, Jews from Yemen, from Poland, from Russia, from Ethiopia and from all over the world. What binds the community transcends skin color.
That does not address the civil rights of the Arab minority. But, as Valdary points out, this does:
Thus, in the same year Israel declared itself to be Jewish, it also unveiled a plan to pump billions into neglected Arab areas of East Jerusalem. Called the Leading Change program, its purpose is to “reduce the huge social gaps between the Palestinian neighborhoods and the overwhelmingly Jewish west part of the city.” An estimated NIS 2 billion is slated to be invested in “education, infrastructure and helping Palestinian women enter the workforce.”
The same government of Israel that declared that the state was Jewish passed Resolution 922 in 2015, a groundbreaking plan to earmark “20 percent of each ministry’s budget” for the Arab, Druze, and Circassian communities “with the express purpose of maximizing the economic potential of these populations.” It’s worth quoting a summary of this program in full so that readers understand its full impact:
In all, 2.4 billion shekels ($680 million) were allocated to the Arab population in this way in 2016, including increased funding for the 10 Arab business advancement centers, including Fadi Swidan’s in Nazareth, among many others known by the Hebrew acronym Maof, which also means ‘takeoff.’ Among 922’s incentives is a government pledge to fund thirty months of salaries for new Arab employees if the company hires five or more workers from this population. Over five years, there will be new direct government investment of an estimated 90 million shekels (about $25.6 million) in small and medium-sized Arab businesses.
And there have been positive results, both in terms of the bill and a discernible trend over time. In 2019, an article in Haaretz noted improvements over the previous years:
o According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, over the past 7 years, the number of Arab students enrolled in universities and colleges in Israel has risen by 80%. o Over 5 years, the number of Arabs studying computer sciences, and the number pursuing master’s degrees (in all fields) have both jumped 50% o Over that same period, the number of Arab students studying for a Ph.D. has soared 60%. o During the last decade, the number of Arabs working in high-tech has increased 18-fold -- and 25% of them are women. o By 2020, it is estimated that Arabs will make up 10 percent of the country’s high-tech work force o The proportion of Arab doctors in Israel has climbed from 10% in 2008 to 15% in 2018 21% of all male doctors are Arab, according to the Health Ministry.
All of this leaves a long way to go, especially in light of the outbreaks of Arab violence that have broken out.
Yet Brooks wants to showcase Ukrainian nationalism, with its long history of antisemitism -- an issue that he completely ignores. There have been events in Ukrainian history
from the violence directed at Jews during Ukrainian uprisings against Polish rule in the 17th and 18th centuries, to the pogroms of the 1800s and 1900s in cities such as Odessa, Kirovograd, and Kiev. More recently, during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine during World War II, the dreaded Ukrainian Auxiliary Police — trained by the Nazis at the SS camp of Trawniki — played an active role in the extermination of 900,000 Ukrainian Jews.
While today the president of Ukraine is Jewish, it is early yet to see how Jews really fit in when all Ukrainians are under attack from Russia.
Besides, when Brooks writes that nationalism (combined with liberalism) is
an idea that inspires people across the West to stand behind Ukraine and back it to the hilt
-- this may have nothing to do with the idea of nationalism at all. It may be nothing more than the general impulse to back the underdog, an impulse that tends to last only so long as the underdog remains under attack by a superior force.
Once it does gain the ability and power to defend itself, and is no longer under attack, the underdog tends not to be quite so popular.
Just ask any Israeli.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
There have been numerous articles in mainstream media lately about the viral success of an 2008 video of a Jewish boys' choir on TikTok.
The Miami Boys Choir rendition of "Yerushalayim" has been obsessed over by TikTok users and viewed millions of times. And the adoration is not ironic - the viewers latch onto the performance by the boys as heartfelt.
The song "Yerushalayim" itself is, of course, about Jerusalem. It is a quote from Psalms:
Yerushalayim (Jerusalem)
Harim Saviv La (Mountains surround it)
V’Hashem Saviv L’amo(And God surrounds His people)
Ma’ata v’ad olam (From this time until eternity) (Psalms 125:2).
So it was inevitable that the usual haters would find out that this was a song about the ancient attachment to Jerusalem - and have second thoughts about how much they love the song.
Sure enough, Emmie, the music magazine of the University of Wisconsin, tweeted how upset they were when they realized what the lyrics were about (which are all over TikTok).
This is clearly antisemitic, not "anti-Zionist." If you are upset over Jews singing about Jerusalem - and quoting the Hebrew scriptures, no less - then you are against Judaism itself, not "Zionists." The fact that the University of Wisconsin does not condemn this obvious hate is troubling.
But notice what they say: they are upset that the boys singing "Yerushalayim" are singing about Israel.
Which means that even the antisemites understand, deep down, that Jerusalem is part of Israel.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
The Jordanian crossings officials informed the Palestinian General Administration of Borders and Crossings that as of Tuesday of this week, Palestinians cannot bring any olive oil through the Allenby Bridge crossing to Jordan, even small quantities.
Jordan and the Palestinian Authority regularly come out with statements about how Jordan supports the Palestinian cause, but when you look a little beyond the sound bites, Jordan acts like every other country - it puts its own interests first. But you will not find "pro-Palestinian" activists attack Jordan for acting in its own self-interests.
Even when they happen to be humiliating for Palestinians.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
The Labor Party-led Australian government on Tuesday officially revoked the country’s recognition of western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, confirming a Guardian report the previous day revealing that Canberra had walked back the language adopted by former Liberal Party prime minister Scott Morrison.
The Australian Cabinet instead agreed that Jerusalem’s eventual status must be resolved via peace negotiations with the Palestinians that lead to a two-state solution.
“We will not support an approach that undermines this prospect,” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong was quoted by the Associated Press as saying on Tuesday.
The Labor Party, with Anthony Albanese as prime minister and Wong as the top diplomat, rose to power in May 2022.
According to Monday’s Guardian report, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade recently dropped the following two lines of text from its website: “Consistent with this longstanding policy, in December 2018, Australia recognized West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, being the seat of the Knesset and many of the institutions of the Israeli government.
“Australia looks forward to moving its embassy to West Jerusalem when practical, in support of, and after the final status determination of, a two-state solution.”
The lines were deleted after the Guardian Australia asked the current government questions about the matter.
In response, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid denounced Canberra’s move, saying in a statement that, “Jerusalem is the eternal undivided capital of Israel and nothing will change that.
“In light of the way in which this decision was made in Australia, as a hasty response to an incorrect report in the media, we can only hope that the Australian government manages other matters more seriously and professionally,” Lapid added.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry announced that it would summon Australia’s ambassador over the issue.
Even the United States failed until recently to recognize that Jerusalem was part of Israel. US citizens who wanted to register the birth of their children in that city could not have Israel as the country of birth on their passports.
Barack Obama, when he was president, might have flown to Jerusalem to eulogize veteran Israeli leader Shimon Peres. But the text of the speech he delivered at Mt. Herzl Military Cemetery in the western part of the city, did include Israel as the location in which the address was delivered.
Former US president Donald Trump’s decision in 2017 to declare that Jerusalem was Israel’s capital and to relocate the American embassy there from Tel Aviv in 2018 was seen as a significant step in support of Israel’s hold on its capital city.
Only three other countries have followed the US example; Guatemala, Honduras and Kosovo. Liberia, Togo and Malawi are expected to open embassies in Jerusalem.
Australia’s decision in 2018 to declare that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel helped shore up that move, even if the embassy remained in Tel Aviv. To shore up that declaration it opened a trade office in the city. Some eight other countries have done so as well, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Serbia.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid as well as his predecessors Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett, all campaigned to change Jerusalem’s status in the international arena, with what appeared to be initial successes.
Last year, for example, support for the Jerusalem resolution at the UN dropped; it passed with only 129 votes.
Australia drops recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital
Michael Danby, Former Chairman and Member of the Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee of Australian Parliament, says the hasty decision by the Australian cabinet to revoke its recognition of west Jerusalem as Israel's capital was driven by local political considerations.
Israel slams Australia on 'hasty' Jerusalem reversal
Israel is slamming Australia the administration reversed its recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel - a decision made by former prime minister Scott Morrison.
It is through Zionism, moreover, that the Jewish people can revitalize aspects of Jewish tradition in our ancestral homeland, endowing them with new meaning and allowing Jews to live in a Jewish space, in Jewish time, in Hebrew. Zionism is an indispensable mix of old and new, and it is through Zionism’s link between land, people and state that we can connect to our deepest roots and tap into ancient reservoirs of meaning, fulfilling a millennia-old dream.
Zionism, to borrow a famous phrase, does not mean the “end of history” for the Jewish people. Zionism has not solved the great dilemmas of Jewish history. It has not stopped the historical pendulum swinging between the demand for normality and the pursuit of individuality, the demand to blend into the family of nations and the pursuit of a unique Jewish destiny.
Instead, Zionism created a platform for Jews to explore their identity as an independent political community. It created a “safe space,” if you will, where the Jewish people could continue arguing and debating about their big questions, safe from the fears that had always haunted them: fears of antisemitic persecution on the one hand, and fears of the erasure of their distinctive culture on the other.
No less importantly: Zionism is not just the mission of Jews living in our ancestral homeland. It is a collective endeavor for Diaspora Jews, too. It is a project that unites us, a shared commitment to making our world a better place. For Diaspora Jews, Israel is a home away from home, a place where they can contribute to and draw from vibrant culture, and where their outside perspectives can enrich our sense of global yet grounded peoplehood.
Only together can we address our shared challenges. Only together can we work for the sake of the future, in the name of the past. We must reclaim Zionism, therefore, as a positive affirmation of our collective resolve; as a source of pride in what we can achieve when we work together, in body and spirit.
This holiday, as we read this Magazine in our sukkot, let us remember that the Wandering Jew now has a permanent home, and let us reclaim our sense of purpose about the good that we can do with this home.
Judaism without Zionism – not sustainable
There is a movement today by some liberal Jews to try to build Jewish identity that is totally disconnected from Israel.
Embarrassed by continual criticism of Israel as the “colonialist,” “white supremacy project,” they prefer to distance themselves from it. We have reached American Jewish tradition, they would say, we don’t need nationalist Israel to define our identity. After all, they say, in thousands of years of Jewish history, Israel as a state was not a part of Jewish identity most of the time. Of course, it’s ridiculous to try to ignore the differences in Jewish identity before and after the creation of the State of Israel.
Their efforts remind me of the activity of the so-called Yevsektsiya – Jewish department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. They wanted Jews to join the “progressive” cause of communism, and remain Jewish. That’s why they were against religion and led the process of closing synagogues.
They were against Hebrew and prohibited Zionist literature. At the same time, they encouraged Yiddish and were responsible for opening chairs for the study of Yiddish in universities and the creation of various cultural institutions in Yiddish. But soon it became clear that assimilation was accelerating, and there were fewer and fewer people interested in these institutions.
When the central components of Jewish identity were taken away, few were really interested in remaining Jewish.
For much of our history, the return of the Jewish people to its biblical homeland must have seemed to our ancestors as a cruel and unattainable illusion. But even then, Jewish liturgical prayer was replete with verses beseeching the Almighty for a return to Zion and Jerusalem. Judaism and Zionism always have been inextricably intertwined throughout the ages.
The beginnings of the State of Israel presented a more nuanced, even confusing, interplay between Zionism and the Jewish faith. The challenges of building a Jewish nation were so daunting that complete subordination of the needs of the individual to those of the state was required. The outgrowth of that collective commitment led to a socialist enterprise that did little to prioritize religious observance. But even under those difficult circumstances, the Bible was studied. Even an atheist knew he was fighting for the “Promised Land.” Whether or not he observed the commandments, Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, never had a Bible far from reach.
Today, much of the Zionist dream has been realized. Israel is a first-world nation, more than just surviving in a difficult neighborhood. The Jewish holy sites that it controls are accessible to all, Jewish or gentile, who come to worship in peace. Now more than ever, Zionism has merged into Judaism itself. If one is a Jew who believes in God’s biblical covenants to our forefathers and foremothers, Zionism is an integral part of the package of one’s faith.
Israel is the only nation where Judaism can be fully actualized. It is the only place where Jews can pray using the same liturgy in the same location and in the same language that was used 2,000 years ago. While there may have been dark days in our past where Jews gave up on the Zionist dream, thankfully they are long gone.
To be a Jew is to be a Zionist – the two have always been inseparable, now more than ever.
RATHER THAN shaking my commitment to “Zionism,” the confab reinforced it. The meaning of the word had changed over the years, from a simple belief in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in our ancient homeland to something much richer and more nuanced. Zionism was about Jewish strength and Jewish compassion, our ability to defend ourselves while selflessly assisting others.
Zionism was about balancing modernity with tradition, East and West, and diversity with national identity. Zionism was the testing ground for Jewish values, a barometer without which the integrity of those values cannot truly be gauged.
Zionism by any other name would still mean all of this, I argued at the confab, and Zionism by any other name would still be condemned by those who hate Israel. Rather than substituting another word for it, we should rally around Zionism and exalt it.
As patriots during the American Revolution transformed “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” a song devised by the British to mock them, into an anthem, so, too, must we embrace Zionism in the face of its detractors. While we must recognize the fact that Zionism has given rise to complex moral dilemmas, we must also relish the privilege of grappling with those dilemmas within the context of an independent Jewish state. “Zionist,” our motto should be, “and proud of it.”
I recalled that confab eight years later, last summer after another violent exchange with Gaza. Together with my grandchildren, I visited a water park in Holon. Thousands of children of different races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds splashed together in the fountains. This, too, is Zionism, I thought, the movement that created this haven only a day’s drive from Damascus, Baghdad and Beirut. This is Zionism, an idea well worth preserving and fighting for.
This video of a Jewish child, no more than 6, flagging down a bus in Beit Shemesh and getting on by himself is starting to go viral:
Imagine a place where children could, without fear, go out by themselves and take the bus around town.
It sounds utopian, doesn't it?
And parents outside Israel would naturally flinch at seeing a video like this. So many dangers to worry about - kidnapping, abuse, or worse.
But this is how the world should be.
The reason Israelis can act this way in Jewish neighborhoods is because everyone is family. People aren't competing with each other - they are all on the same team, the same tribe, and they look out for each other. They have each others' backs.
And this is what the anti-Israel activists want to destroy.
They don't give a damn about Palestinian rights - their silence about Palestinians languishing in Lebanon and Syria makes that clear.
The modern antisemites want to take away the Jewish right to live in safety and security. Their enemy is this little kid, his tzitzit openly visible, able to freely travel around his hometown on the local bus without his parents worrying that he'll make it home safely.
Much of Israel, today, is the utopia that everyone else wants for themselves. And for some of them, their jealousy at Jews successfully building such a utopia is what animates them to want to tear it down.
Don't believe the lies that they care about justice or international law or, ludicrously, Palestinian "self defense." What they want is for Jews to return to being a frightened minority who are not safe, not secure, and not free.
They hate this child because he goes against everything they want to believe about Jews.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
The official Palestinian Authority news agency Wafa, which reflects the official Palestinian Authority positions, reported about Jews worshipping at the Kotel, the Western Wall on Saturday.
Not on the Temple Mount - but the Western Wall that Jews visit and pray at every single day.
The article says:
Hundreds of settlers performed today, Saturday, racist Talmudic rituals, at Al-Buraq Wall (the western wall of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque) .
Our correspondent reported that hundreds of settlers stormed the western area of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and performed Talmudic rituals, on the sixth day of the Hebrew "Sukkot", under the strict protection of the Israeli occupation forces, which launched a reconnaissance plane in the sky of the city .
There is no difference between the Shabbat prayers yesterday at the Kotel from the prayers at every traditional synagogue on Earth.
The official position of the Palestinian Authority is that every Jew who visits the Kotel is a "settler."
The official position of the Palestinian Authority is that every Jew who visits the Kotel is has no right to be there and is "storming" a Muslim site.
The official position of the Palestinian Authority is that the term "Talmudic," which is the source for virtually every detailed Jewish law from kosher to Chanukah, is an epithet.
The official position of the Palestinian Authority is that everyday Jewish prayer said daily, worldwide, is considered "racist Talmudic rituals."
Wafa has previously used the phrase "racist Talmudic rituals" to describe Jewish prayer, but up until now it was always in the context of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. This is the first time, as far as I can tell, that they are mimicking the same antisemitic language attacking Jewish worship on the Temple Mount to apply to the Kotel as well.
By extending its bigoted language to apply to mainstream Jewish worship at the Western Wall, the PA is saying that all Jewish worship is racist and therefore immoral.
This is officially sanctioned antisemitism, and officially sanctioned antisemitic incitement, by the Palestinian Authority.
It is undeniable - and indefensible.
Which means that it will be almost certainly be roundly ignored.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Elder of Ziyon
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