Thursday, March 23, 2023
- Thursday, March 23, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- humor, Preoccupied
The Palestinian History Museum in the de facto Palestinian capital has long faced an uphill campaign to collect and present artifacts consistent with the premise of Palestinian Arab indigeneity. Spokesmen for the institution have at various times accused Zionists of destroying or fabricating evidence, only to become stymied in the face of Arab pronouncements from previous ages that assume as a matter of fact, for example, that Jews were sovereign here long before Arabs imposing Islam arrived in the first half of the eighth century CE. A prominent instance of the phenomenon involves a guide to the Haram al-Sharif - the compound housing the Dome of Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque - by the Islamic Waqf itself - stating the established fact that the site held both ancient Jewish temples.
"The Islamic expansion into Palestine brought peace and prosperity," the staff and exhibit notes insist, with similar effusive treatment of Seljuk, Mameluk, Ottoman, and other brutal conquests by repressive rulers under the banner of Islam. "Byzantine corruption and repression caused untold suffering," on the other hand, depicts a population in torment under regimes that followed anything but Islam, with special venom reserved for Jews reasserting their claim to the land.
Museum officials changed the subject when visitors asked, in the context of their insistence that Palestinians have lived in the land since long before Judaism existed, about the pride with which so many Palestinians boast of their Arabian Bedouin heritage and ancestry, their nomadic ancestors having migrated into the land in the last several centuries. "You misunderstand," they argued, but preferred to point to shiny new artifacts rather than clarify the misunderstanding.
"Look, we just got this in," they rushed to interject. "It's a collection of arrowheads from the Seleucid campaign in the mid-second-century BCE."
"Whom were they fighting?" asked a visitor.
"Next exhibit!" the docent yelled. "We really have to get through, we're running out of time."
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
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Caroline Glick: America, Israel and the era of false messiahs
Obama hated Israel because, to him, the Jewish state is a microcosm of the America he believed was responsible for the wars of the region. He turned against America’s Sunni allies in the Persian Gulf and against Egypt because they viewed the United States as a positive rather than a negative force in the region.Mark Regev: Mahmoud Abbas: The rise and fall of the Palestinian leader
For failing to hate American power as he did, Obama determined that the Sunni regimes weren’t “authentic” and he worked to destabilize them by supporting the Iranian mullahs and their allies in the Muslim Brotherhood.
Since jihad was a reasoned response to American aggression, so the thinking went and still goes, by empowering jihadists at the expense of Israel and the Sunni regimes, America could convince them to leave America alone or provide it with moral exculpation.
America’s spurned Sunni allies responded to Washington’s betrayal by casting about for other options. First, they turned to Israel. Then they turned to Russia and China. China’s mediation of the Saudi-Iranian dispute is a testament to the Sunnis’ conviction that the United States can no longer be trusted.
The report this week that the UAE is considering downgrading its relations with Israel is a testament to the growing sense among the Arabs that Israel is going down with America.
The Biden administration’s open support for the revolt of Israel’s post-Zionist elites seems to support this assessment. Those elites have a long record of scuttling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to develop strategic independence and the means to physically destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Instead, they favor support for U.S.-led nuclear diplomacy and appeasement of the ayatollahs. If Israel will not serve as a counterweight to Iran, then it has no value to the threatened Sunnis.
Israel’s takeaway from a generation of failed U.S. messianism must be that the time has come to end Israel’s strategic dependence on Uncle Sam. A restored alliance can only be based on mutual respect and sovereign independence. The mutinous elites must be brought to heel.
America’s takeaway from its generational flight from reality must be to restore reality to its proper place as the basis for American foreign policy. This doesn’t mean that the mythmakers and dreamers should be sent off to pasture. But the image of America that will rebuild its power and vitality isn’t a crusading banner of universal freedom. It isn’t an LGBT flag with a Black Lives Matter fist in the middle.
A restored America will be one that presents an updated version of the icons of the past—Horatio Alger and the Lone Ranger. Theirs told the story of a free people who persevered and prospered because they were willing to pay the price for freedom. They stood up for themselves and succeeded through hard work, courage and grit.
That was the dream Americans had and the one they shared with the world. If it is restored, America may still return to greatness. If it remains elusive, the American dream for its people and the world will disappear.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will be celebrating his 88th birthday this year – although a certain amount of online confusion exists as to the precise date, either March 26 or November 15. There is however no dispute about the year (1935), city (Safed) and country (British Mandatory Palestine) of his birth.Amb Alan Baker: Legal Perspectives on Israel's Legal Rights to Rescind Parts of Its 2005 Disengagement Law
Despite his advanced age, Abbas continues to hold three crucial positions: He is president of the Palestinian Authority, chair of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and head of the Fatah political movement.
Abbas assumed these roles following the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004. Arafat had established Fatah in 1959, took control of the PLO in 1969, and became the PA’s founding president in 1994.
For more than a generation, Arafat’s defiant persona, with his trademark black and white checkered keffiyeh, habitual unshaven stubble, and ubiquitous green battle fatigues, was synonymous with the Palestinian cause.
Compared to Arafat’s larger-than-life presence, Abbas is a dry suit-and-tie technocrat. But upon inheriting the leadership, Abbas’ more restrained manner was widely perceived as an advantage, given what his predecessor’s maximalist revolutionary agenda did to hopes for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Mahmoud Abbas, the failed nation-builder
The initial enthusiasm for Abbas’ governance seemed to be vindicated in his January 2005 campaign slogan for the PA presidency: “One authority, one law, one gun.” For many, this indicated that instead of persevering with Arafat’s terrorist war against Israel, the new Palestinian chief would be focusing on positive nation-building.
Such a view was seemingly affirmed with Abbas’ June 2007 appointment of Nablus-born Salam Fayyad as PA prime minister. Fayyad holds a PhD in economics from the University of Texas and had previously been the International Monetary Fund’s representative to the Palestinian territories. He served as Ramallah’s finance minister under both Arafat and Abbas, and was respected as a reformer committed to strengthening the PA’s institutions and economy.
But Fayyad’s plans for modernization, while very popular with international donors, threatened the way Fatah does business and challenged its system of political and economic control. Tellingly, Abbas sided with his Fatah cronies and Fayyad was forced to resign the premiership in April 2013.
In a press briefing on March 21, 2023, State Department Principle Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel expressed U.S. concern at new Israeli legislation rescinding parts of a 2005 disengagement law. Similar concerns were voiced by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman to Israel's ambassador Michael Herzog.
The 2005 law, which implemented Israel's 2004 Disengagement plan, had called inter alia to remove four Israeli settlements – Homesh, Sa-Nur, Ganim, and Kadim – in the northern part of the West Bank area of Samaria, prohibiting further residence there by Israelis.
The new legislation rescinded this 2005 prohibition on residence in the four localities on the principal grounds that it had overlooked the basic property rights of the residents and, as such, was discriminatory, and that it had failed to result in any reduction in Palestinian hostility and terror.
The new legislation would enable the return of the residents to their homes and properties after the implementation of requisite legal and security arrangements and the resolution of land ownership claims by Palestinians. (The sites of Ganim and Kadim are reported to now be part of Jenin's municipal boundaries in Area A, effectively putting them off-limits to Israelis.)
U.S. spokespersons and former Ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer wrongly claim that the new legislation contradicts previous undertakings by the Israeli Government to the U.S. "to evacuate these settlements and outposts in the northern West Bank in order to stabilize the situation and reduce frictions."
In fact, the 2004 unilateral and independent Israeli plan to evacuate those villages, even after implementation, failed in its stated purpose to secure and encourage a reduction in Palestinian hostility and violence.
Israel's new legislation rescinding the provisions prohibiting residence in the four settlements is distinctly not intended to enable new settlement construction but merely to allow the return of those residents previously removed from their homes and the concomitant restoration of their rights.
The reciprocal U.S.-Israeli commitments of 2004, which served as the premise for the implementation of Israel's disengagement plan, contained an essential affirmation by President George W. Bush that "it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion."
- Thursday, March 23, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- Abraham Accords, conspiracy theories, Fath News, Muslim antisemitism, Sameh Bassiouni, UAE, Zionist project
Sameh Bassiouni, head of the Supreme Committee of the Nour Party, said that the world order is now promoting the model of the so-called “Abrahamic House.” It is not a call for peaceful coexistence, as the supporters claim, or the deceived repeat. It is a tactical phased step to domesticate future generations through multiple and disparate devotional rituals in one complex under the deception of the unified Abrahamic creed.In an article published by Al-Fath on its website, Bassiouni stressed that the deception of the Abrahamic religion is a prelude to dissolving the concept of Islamic faith and identity in Arab-Islamic countries, and then pushing for a federation of the alleged Abrahamic states in the region. This will dissolve the concepts of the unity and cohesion of the homeland.
Then the door opens wide to achieve the fixed strategic Zionist plans to implement the Talmudic dream of a Jewish state "from the Nile to the Euphrates" without objection from future generations in the Arab Islamic countries.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
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- Thursday, March 23, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- Albawaba, antisemitism, Arab media antisemitism, conspiracy theories, jew hatred, media silence, MSNBC, SyndiGate
- Thursday, March 23, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- 2001 Terror, 2002 Terror, 2004 Terror, 2005 Terror, 2010 Terror, 2011 Terror, 2014 Terror, hamas, Islamic values, Nizar Hamzeh, Operation Protective Edge, Ramadan, seeking martyrdom, useful idiots
For Islamic militants, Ramadan allows them not only to reaffirm their religious observance but to strengthen their political ideological convictions as well. "Ramadan is a month of commitment and renewal to their faith and also to their cause, whether by military or nonmilitary jihad," says Prof. Nizar Hamzeh, a specialist on political Islam at the American University of Beirut. "It is a month of martyrdom and commitment to one's Islamic ideology."Throughout Islamic history, Ramadan has been seen as a time of victory for Muslim armies - and a period when those who are martyred have a greater assurance of a place in paradise.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
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Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Democrats vs. the Jews
For those who want to look away: Imagine what our grandparents and great-grandparents—staunch Democrats from the moment they hit Ellis Island—would think about this. Imagine what John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr.—both ardent Zionists—would say.Jonathan Tobin: Democrats’ attitudes towards Israel reach a tipping point
As a lifelong independent, I don’t understand how any Jew can remain in the Democratic Party after this. I don’t buy the “we will work from within” excuse, because look how well that turned out.
To those of us who believe that this version of the Democratic Party needs to die—that it will never return to classical liberalism—this poll just confirms the obvious. But the fact is that if every Jew and those who claim to not be antisemitic left the party over this, the party would die. Three-quarters of American Jews—5.7 million—identify as Democrats.
We’re seeing the damage caused by a pro-terrorist Democratic Party on a near-hourly basis. From House Democrats voting to block funding of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system in 2021 to the multitude of missteps by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the continued funding of Islamist terrorism in Judea and Samaria, what more do the Democrats need to do to show where their loyalty lies?
Yes, disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced he is launching an organization called “Progressives for Israel.” But talk to anyone who lived through Cuomo’s vicious and self-serving COVID policies about whether he is capable of thinking, let alone doing anything moral. Even Democrats won’t listen to him.
In stark contrast, Republican views on Israel have remained the same. According to the new poll, 78% continue to back the Jewish state.
Until this version of the Democratic Party returns to sanity or dies, American Jews who care about the survival of our people have one task: To make sure pro-Israel Republicans are elected to the White House and Congress. Since polls show that Donald Trump could lose to any Democratic contender for the 2024 presidential race, while Gov. Ron DeSantis has a very good chance of winning—pulling in nearly all Independents and even some Democrats—this is a moment of reckoning for Jews in the GOP as well.
We have to make sure one thing happens: Democrats need to exit the White House and Congress and not come back until they’ve returned to classical liberalism and sanity. And the only way to do that is with a sane GOP.
What else needs to happen for everyone to understand how dangerous this moment is?
Meanwhile, at the same time that the GOP was embracing Israel, a shift began on the other side of the aisle.Jonathan Tobin: Joel Pollak & the Left's Willful Blindness to Antisemitism
Part of that was due to political changes in the Jewish state. The end of the domination of the Labor Party and the election of Menachem Begin as prime minister in 1977 made it a bit more difficult for American liberals to identify with Israel. The policies of Labor-led governments on security issues prior to the Oslo Accords in 1993 were not that different from those of the right. But the rise of Begin’s Likud Party, coupled with the camp of nationalist and religious parties, was hard to fathom for Americans who had come to define their Jewish identity solely through the prism of their political liberalism and social-justice issues.
More than that, it was during this period that the far left of the Democratic Party began to regard the Jewish state through the prism of anti-Zionist propaganda, which falsely depicted it as an expression of colonialism.
Still, the vast majority of Democrats rejected those ideas and the leadership of the party, which was reflected in the views of the geriatrics that have led its congressional caucuses up until this year, and many in the rank-and-file were still happy to identify as pro-Israel.
In 2001, Gallup reported that Democrats still backed Israel by a 51% to 16% margin. While that’s still true of some congressional Democrats, they are now out of touch with their party’s left-wing base.
It’s not as if strong sympathy for Israel across the board is gone. When Gallup asked respondents how they feel about Israel without adding in the contrast with the Palestinians, the numbers are more encouraging. The survey says 56% of Democrats have a favorable view of Israel, a number that has shown little change since 2001 when it stood at 60%. But it’s still much lower than independents, 67% of whom view Israel favorably (up from 59% in 2001)—let alone Republicans, 82% of whom view it favorably (up from 75% in 2001).
And only a minority of Americans think well of the Palestinian Authority—36% of Democrats, 28% of independents and only 9% of Republicans.
But the problem is that when you ask people how they feel about Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians, the intersectional mindset kicks in for those who are influenced by the left. That explains why, when given the choice, more Democrats now favor an entity that has repeatedly rejected peace than those who back Israel.
In this week’s episode of Top Story, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with Breitbart News senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak who discussed the famous insight of the publication’s founder Andrew Breitbart about “politics being downstream of culture.”
In this far-reaching interview, they discuss
- Why do liberal Jewish institutions only see antisemitism on one side.
- How the ADL has made common cause with hate groups and exaggerated antisemitism statistics to justify its existence
- Addressing accusations against Breitbart of antisemitism and being part of the alt-right.
- Pollak’s view on the current protests against legal reform in Israel
Ken Roth & Peter Beinart Gaslight Jewish Community With Antisemitism Tweets
Ken Roth’s Narrow View of Antisemitism
In his March 18 tweet, Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch, linked to a recent Pew survey that found “anti-Jewish harassment” had occurred in 94 countries in 2020, an increase from past years. Rather than simply highlighting this fact, Roth tweeted that this is “all the more reason for partisan defenders of the Israeli government to stop using false charges of antisemitism to try to silence legitimate criticism of Israeli repression.”
In doing so, Roth accused pro-Israel advocates of calling out antisemitism in bad faith and effectively minimizing the role of antisemitism in certain critiques of Israeli policy and anti-Israel activities."Anti-Jewish harassment occurred in 94 countries in 2020, up from earlier years"--all the more reason for partisan defenders of the Israeli government to stop using false charges of antisemitism to try to silence legitimate criticism of Israeli repression. https://t.co/jMmhZRDft2
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) March 18, 2023
As is evidenced by the vibrant political atmosphere in Israel itself, it is perfectly acceptable to criticize the Israeli government’s policies.
However, as noted in the internationally recognized IHRA working definition of antisemitism, anti-Israel activity and rhetoric can devolve into base antisemitism. This includes (but is not limited to) the claim that the Jewish state’s entire existence is based on a racist ideology, the use of antisemitic imagery to criticize Israeli policies/actions, and holding Jews around the world collectively responsible for Israel’s actions.
This last point is especially relevant as the rise in violence and tensions between Israel and the Palestinians has been shown to provide an impetus for antisemitic assaults and harassment worldwide.
Thus, it is clear that the recent rise in international antisemitism is directly related (in part) to an increase in anti-Israel rhetoric and activities that go beyond the pale of acceptable criticism and into the morass of antisemitic hate, a phenomenon that Roth purposefully ignores.
While it is disturbing that Ken Roth seeks to condemn a rise in antisemitism while simultaneously exonerating antisemitism masquerading as criticism of Israel/anti-Zionism, it is not at all surprising.
As noted by both NGO Monitor and UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer, Roth’s own criticism of the Jewish state has on occasion devolved into antisemitic rhetoric and imagery, as well as justifying antisemitism.
This includes blaming Israel for the rise in European antisemitism (as opposed to blaming the antisemites themselves), comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, and suggesting that Judaism is a ‘primitive’ religion.
- Wednesday, March 22, 2023
- Varda Meyers Epstein (Judean Rose)
- book review, global jihad, interview, Judean Rose, Opinion, Richard Landes, Shireen Abu Akleh, Varda
Can “The Whole World” Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad is a book that makes you shake your head a lot. You just can’t believe how stupid people are. The stupid things they say and do to make themselves feel better about themselves; the stupid things and the lies they say that allow them to hate Jews and look the other way at the jihadists who target the liars, their loved ones, and their way of life. It’s hard to watch—you want to look away from this slow, global, own-goal suicide. But the author, Professor Richard Landes, has made this work so compelling, you have no choice but to continue reading, even when, as a sane person, it leaves you, the reader, feeling rather queasy.
Richard Landes |
The book takes its title from the words of two men on the subject of blood libels, issued a century apart. There are the mocking words of writer Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginsburg), who in 1897, echoing the oft-expressed sentiment by European non-Jews when confronted with proof that, no. Jews don’t use the blood of Christian babies in the manufacture of matzah: “Is it possible the whole world is wrong and the Jews are right?”
Ahad Ha'am (Asher Ginsburg) |
In 2002, little more than 100 years later, UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan, referring to Israeli denials of a massacre in Jenin that
never occurred, said, “I don’t think the whole world, including the friends of the
Israeli people and government, can be wrong.”
In this way, antisemitism takes its path. Because there are
plenty of Jew-haters in the world. And the more there are, the more they give
themselves moral permission to hate. The media, of course, is there to help
things along with its own rendition of the modern blood libel. It’s called “lethal
journalism.” They use fake footage, knowing it’s fake. They lie, because the
lies are what their audiences want to hear. And they demonize Israel every
time, because again: it’s exactly what their audiences want to hear.
Landes takes you on a journey, beginning in 2000 with the Al
Durah hoax, moving on to 9-11, the phony Jenin “massacre,” and the Danish
cartoon scandal (Danoongate). At the end of each chapter, Landes summarizes the
stupid things that various figures have said in relation to these events. For
example, journalist Catherine Nay said of the faked viral photo of the dead boy
in his father’s arms, “This death erases, replaces the image of the boy in the
Warsaw Ghetto.”
Every bit as shockingly stupid are the words of George W.
Bush, spoken at the Islamic Center of Washington only days after 9-11, on
September 17, 2001, “Islam is peace.”
Regarding the fictional Jenin massacre, journalist Janine di
Giovanni wrote, “Rarely in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia,
Chechniya, Sierra Leone, Kossovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such
disrespect for human life," 'Inside the Camp of the Dead,' The Times, April 16, 2002.
And off Danoongate, the French Director of Intelligence speaking
in 2005, said, “These riots have nothing to do with Islam.”
Landes has been documenting this astounding stupidity and
world folly for more than a decade. The result is this 500-page compendium with
its prodigious, painstaking footnotes that leave the reader open-mouthed and
astonished. You wonder: “How on earth did we get here?”
But you already know. Landes has connected up all the dots:
the lies and lethal journalism, and the way the world gave jihad a pass, while
damning the Jews. The facts and the progression of this deadly state of affairs
have been amply covered by the author and you begin to understand the depth of
the threat to our world, today.
This a book you want on your shelf. It is not an easy read,
but a necessary one if you want to understand how we got here—and how we are to
dig our way out of this ugly, Jew-hating, jihadi, fake news mess. I put some
questions to author Richard Landes to learn more about his book and its
implications for the future:
Varda Epstein: Most
writers think about who they’re writing for and gear their writing to that
reader. “Can The ‘Whole World’ Be Wrong?” seems to be identifying who the
reader is not. The book begins with
a warning, but it’s more like a dare, or even a threat—like you’re trying to
scare the reader off: “If you feel up to the task . . . turn the page. If not,
just sit in your tub tweeting about white, racist privilege, while you bleed
out.”
Who do you envisage
as your reader? Who is it you’re trying to reach?
Richard Landes: My ideal reader is someone who really does
care about liberal and progressive values. I actually lay out my concerns in
the introductory chapter by contrasting zero-sum and positive-sum values, and
stating my unequivocal preference for the latter, while conceding that the
former has an inevitable presence in our lives and warning that those thinking
they can eliminate zero-sum are not only fooling themselves with messianic
dreams, but ultimately opposed to key life forces.
What I document in the book, however, is a massive shift in
what was considered “liberal” or “progressive” in the new century/millennium.
By 2003 it became a “litmus test of liberal credentials” to be pro-Palestinian
(Buruma in NYT), at a time when the Palestinians were engaged in a suicide-mass
murder war against Israeli civilians. By any standards of real liberal values
that was a travesty which continues to this day (think Gays and LGBTQ for
Palestine). So in a sense, the book is an attempt to go back to the moment this
travesty first “took” and rethink how it could have happened so quickly and
thoroughly. But since I firmly believe that the willingness to hear criticism
and take it seriously is one of the key components of the liberal sensibility,
I address this criticism to liberals sufficiently committed to their values to
take it seriously.
Varda Epstein: Do you
worry you’re preaching to the choir? Do you even aspire to reach the masses?
Richard Landes: Well that’s hard to say. Obviously a
500-page book with notes at the bottom of each page is not for “the masses.”
But, between masses and choir lies many a circle of readers. Obviously, the
“choir” of pro-Israel people are going to find it congenial. A number of people
have written me about devouring the book in one sitting and thanking me: “Someone
finally has the words for everything I’ve been struggling to say!” wrote one
person. And if it helps them make the point to others, that’s great. But my
real audience is what we might call the goats. As shepherds know, if you have
about one goat to every ten sheep, then when there’s a problem, the sheep look
to the goats. If they’re calm, the skittish sheep settle down. Similarly, I
don’t think I’m going to reach some gay guy so caught up in his peer group that
he repeats nonsense about being passionately for a political culture that hates
gays. But if I can reach the thoughtful ones, then maybe they can
explain it to him.
Varda Epstein: You
write, “In a sense, this book should not have had to be written and I should be
able to work on the origins of modern Western civilization in the demotic
millennialism of eleventh-century France to my heart’s content.” Why did the “Can
The ‘Whole World’ Be Wrong?” have to be written, and why by you, Richard
Landes? After all, as you suggest, lethal journalism, antisemitism, and global
jihad are not your chosen field.
Richard Landes: Well, actually, global jihad is my field since it’s an apocalyptic
millennial movement, and it came on my screen in the mid-90s through the (then)
graduate work of David
Cook (now at Rice U.). Actually, in the mid-1990s, in my work on the 11th
century, I began to work out a model of antisemitism that went in waves
starting with philo-semitism, leading to important socio-economic changes that
eventually produced an antisemitic reaction. Given that the period after the
Holocaust (i.e. my life) was the longest and most philo-semitic period in
recorded history (especially in the USA where I grew up), I speculated that the
advent of 2000 might mark the reappearance of antisemitism in the West. At the
time I thought it would come from the apocalyptic “right” – fundamentalist
Christian Zionists disappointed that the Rapture didn’t happen, and Jihadi
Muslims who were already openly and ferociously antisemitic. What I didn’t see
coming were two linked phenomena: 1) the attraction of the “Left” for the
Jihadi apocalyptic narrative that Israel and the US were “Satans”/Antichrists,
and 2) the utter failure of liberals, who had a huge presence in the public
sphere, to resist. As a result, what I thought would be a wave of Jew-hatred
that we could resist, has, over 20 years of astonishing and self-destructive
mishandling, become an existential threat not only to Israel (its purported
target) but to democracies around the world.
Why did I have to write it rather than someone else? I don’t
know. But someone else didn’t write it. It’s such a hard thing to grasp, a
history of your own time. Maybe working historians in the early 11th
century writing histories of the turn of that millennium made it a conceivable
project. Obviously I don’t write about everything (and neither did they). I
write in depth about what I think were errors of judgment on a civilizational
plane, which continue to be made by very smart people. We all love the story of
the emperor’s new clothes, but few of us want to entertain the notion that it’s
actually happening. Someone jokingly said that Amazon should bundle my book not
with another book, but with antidepressants. It’s dark stuff. Very depressing.
Without a deep sense of humor, I wouldn't have been able to keep my eye on this
ball over the course of decades.
Varda Epstein: How,
if at all, does your work as a medievalist inform your book, and in particular
your interest in eleventh-century France? Does your work on the al Durah story,
which you mention in your book, have anything to do with that? You cite many French
sources and drop French phrases in your book. I’m getting the idea that you’re
a Francophile—but not!
Richard Landes: As for the Middle Ages, there are three key
issues:
1)
Honor-shame societies: As a medievalist I
work on a society in which gaining/keeping honor and avoiding/revenging shame
were key components of public life, where it was legitimate, accepted, even
required that one shed blood for the sake of honor. Without understanding those
dynamics, you don’t understand Arab political culture. Now Edward Saïd made it
taboo to discuss these matters (the quintessence of “Orientalism”), and in
doing so blinded the West to the cultural dynamics of this region. In my book I
show how the Oslo Accords were based on thinking that Arafat and Arab political
culture were ready to give up the view that the very existence of Israel was so
shameful that it must be destroyed, and go for the positive-sum, win-win, of
“land for peace,” to the benefit of both the Israelis and the Palestinians. And
how ignoring those dynamics meant that right up to the last second, the peace
negotiators thought we were “sooo close.” And still do.
2)
Apocalyptic millenarian: the jihadis are
a classic expression of a distinctly (but not exclusively) medieval form of
eschatological thinking, namely they embrace an “active cataclysmic apocalyptic
scenario” – evil permeates the world and we are God’s agents in destroying it –
aiming at a hierarchical millennium – Islam will dominate the world, infidels
either accept dhimmitude (subjection), or convert, or die. It’s really hard for
moderns to take apocalyptic beliefs seriously because every time in the past
that people have been so moved, they’ve been wrong, sometimes disastrously so.
(This included modern historians of the Middle Ages.) As a result of this
cognitive lapse, and the pressures of political correctness in the 21st
century, to avoid anything too negative about Islam (don’t say “radical Islam”),
has produced a Western culture that cannot see its enemy (embodied in the
absurd formula “war on terrorism”).
3)
Public Secrets: for reasons that I’m not
sure about, both my academic career and my journalistic one have found and
investigated public secrets, that is, something everyone “in the know” knows
about, but when it comes to the public record, they deny any knowledge or
existence of the issue in question. In the Middle Ages it was about how
Charlemagne was crowned on the first day of the year 6000 from Creation – a
millennial date Christian chronographers had been tracking for over 6 centuries
– and yet no one who wrote about the coronation, or his imperial period,
mentioned it. In this book, the main public secret I deal with is that the
Palestinians fake news footage all the time, and that the press is so profoundly
intimidated by them, that they run Palestinian “lethal narratives” as news.
This unacknowledged, even denied phenomenon, has immense impact on the kind of
lethal journalism that we get constantly from our news media.
Varda Epstein: There’s
a lot about stupidity in your book—you call it when and where you see it, using
exactly that word “stupid” in its various forms. Why is it important to you to
use precisely this descriptor and how do you account for the sheer amount of it
that exists in the world?
Richard Landes: First because it’s a technical term in economic and game theory for someone who hurts someone else without gaining any advantage (Cipolla). Secondly because it’s so stunningly prominent in our times. I define “astoundingly stupid” as creating advantages for an avowed enemy. And as far as I can make out, that has been a consistent pattern among the Western opinion leaders – journalists, academics, public intellectuals, politicians, and policy makers – for the last two decades. As Elder of Ziyon put it, my book is a “modern take on the Emperor’s New Clothes.” Then, when I found the comment by Bonhoeffer (which I included in the epigrams)—who also lived at a time when his society was being seized by apocalyptic memes—about the impossibility of arguing with precisely this kind of self-destructive stupidity, I knew I was on the right track.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer |
Varda Epstein: How
did you decide on the structure of the book? How does the first part complement
the second? Why not have it in, say, two volumes? Oh, and you must tell us about
the haikus! That must have been fun.
Richard Landes: The
structure wrote itself. The first four chapters are my “history of my time,”
namely four incidents in the early aughts (‘00s) that chronicle key moments in
the assault of global jihad on western democracies, and the astoundingly stupid
way in which the West processed what was happening to them: the outbreak of the
intifada and the al Durah affair; 9-11; the “Jenin Massacre”; and the Danish
cartoon scandal.
Then, to explain how
this could happen, I went through the key players: 1) Shame-Honor driven Arab
culture; 2) Apocalyptic-Millennial driven Jihadi beliefs – what I call
Caliphators; 3) Liberal Cognitive Egocentrics: people who project their
positive-sum values onto cultures that don’t share it; 4) radical progressives
who, blinded by Saïd’s assault on Orientalism, end up allying with the most
imperialist movement in the world because it’s “anti-imperialist,” i.e.
anti-USA and Israel; 5) the lethal journalists who radically disorient their audiences
with their Palestinian-compliant “news” reports; and 6) the virtue-signaling Jews
who adopt their enemy’s narrative (something an apocalyptic Caliphator
predicted in 2001), thereby giving wings to the very kind of exterminationist
antisemitism that fueled the Nazi madness.
The last part
sketches developments over the next decade and a half (mid-aughts to now),
identifying some of the phenomena so striking in our current culture that I
think this turn-of-the-millennium seizure helped set in motion – woke,
cancel-culture politics, fake news, anti-racism discourse, and what I call
pre-emptive dhimmitude, namely the adoption by our information elites of a
posture of subjection to Muslim demands for respect which ends up attacking not
the invaders of democratic culture, but those (like me) who warn and mobilize
against those enemies.
As for the haikus,
I’ve been writing them ever since I ran across the form in my youth. The one
for al Durah (chapter one) was originally written for Y2K: “We need not have been/
Mouths open inhaling, when/ The sh*t hit the fan.” My favorite is the one for
the chapter on Jews against themselves: “Have ever before/ lambs denounced
lambs who refuse/ to lie with lions?”
Varda Epstein: I so appreciated all the detailed footnotes you included at the bottom of each page (I hate it when writers put them the end and I have to flip back and forth). But that would have been a daunting task! You must have been taking voluminous notes for years on end, as you read, watched, talked . . . does that about sum it up? How many years was this book in the making?
"A book that keeps writing itself," Tat Aluf Yossi Kuperwasser |
Richard Landes: Yes, it does sum it up nicely. Thanks to Evernote (I have over 35,000 notes clipped
there), I’ve been able to preserve access to articles that no longer can be
found online. I’m ashamed to say the book was over a decade in the making. The
working title – They’re so smart, cause we’re so Stupid – was inspired
by the Fort Hood Massacre (2009) in which a Palestinian-American major in the
army, after extensively displaying his jihadi sympathies, shot dozens of his
fellow-soldiers, and inspired Mark Steyn
to write an article entitled: “These days, it’s easier to be even more stupid
after the event.” It’s just hard to write a history book about your own time. As
Yossi
Kuperwasser put it, “It’s a book that keeps writing itself.” When Shireen
abu Akleh was killed, I knew I couldn't include this ongoing, slow-motion
train wreck.
As for the footnotes, I feel passionately about a) having
many, and b) at the bottom of the page. I took out all the URLs one can find
for oneself easily from the hard-copy book, but for those who want to get them,
I have them up at my personal webpage for the book: https://richard-landes.com/the-whole-world/.
Varda Epstein: There
are so many shocking parts in your book still rattling around in my head. For
instance, that remark from a peer, “Well, the Jews have been asking for it, and
now, thank God, we can say what we think at last.”
Richard Landes: For
me it will always be Charles Enderlin, when I pointed out how much faking was
going on at Netzarim Junction the day Muhammad al Durah was allegedly shot,
saying to me “Oh yes, they do that all the time.”
But the two worst
comments by far were a) when a colleague in the history department responded to
my bemoaning the suicide terror war of the Palestinians with the comment, “What
choice do they have?” and b) the journalist Catherine Nay saying that the image
of al Durah “erased, replaced” the picture of the boy in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Hard to get more empirically and morally disoriented, and yet people heard
these kinds of remarks and nodded knowingly.
What would you say
shocked you most about your findings? I’m guessing it’s the stupidity. . .
Richard Landes: That’s one way to put it. Cowardice is
another. The way I’d put it, in the
‘90s, I may have seen a wave of antisemitism coming in 2000, and even a wave of
Jihadi attacks on the West, but I never dreamed that Western democracies would
be so feckless in responding.
Varda Epstein: What
do you want the reader to take away from your book?
Richard Landes:
1) that when “the
whole world” agrees on something (whether it’s the emperor’s courtiers or the
academics and journalists and pundits who think they speak for “the whole world” and are sure they’re right) they can (and have, and are and will) be, sometimes, wrong.
2) that the meanings of “liberal” and “progressive”
have been terribly distorted, even
betrayed, in the 21st century.
3) that when the
legacy media reports Israel has done something terrible and Israeli sources
deny it (or even admit to it only partially) it’s possible that the legacy
media is wrong.
4) that we’ve gotten
into this mess because a lot of nice and well-intentioned people have allowed
themselves to be pushed around, silenced, and cowed by those filled with
passionate intensity, and we need to speak up.
5) that to continue
down this path spells disaster.
***
Landes, R. (2022). Can “The Whole World” Be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad (Antisemitism in America). Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2022.
- Wednesday, March 22, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- 1883, Jewish values, Mishna, Talmud, William Henry Lowe
- Wednesday, March 22, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- media bias, New York Times, PalArab lies, second intifada
At a workshop on the edge of the Aqsa Mosque compound, Muhammad Rowidy spends hours hunched over panes of stained glass, painstakingly carving through white plaster to reveal geometric designs. While he works, there is a thought he can’t shake.“You see this,” he said, pausing and leaning back, “this takes months to finish, and in one minute, in one kick, all this hard work goes.”
Mr. Rowidy, 41, said it was easy to tell which side had broken which windows. Those completely smashed were done by the Israeli police with batons, he said. A video posted on Facebook during the unrest shows one of the windows being broken, with what appears to be a baton, from the roof outside.In comparison, Palestinians who threw stones had knocked large holes in the windows, he said.
Incidents at the compound have often served as a spark in the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict.In 2000, a trip to the site by Ariel Sharon, who later became Israel’s prime minister, surrounded by hundreds of police officers, set off the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising. More recently, the security minister in Israel’s right-wing government, Itamar Ben-Gvir, angered Palestinians and regional Muslim states by visiting the compound.
The workers at the mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, need approval from the Israeli authorities for repairs or replacements, down to every broken window or smashed tile, according to the workers, administrators of the site, and Israeli rights groups.Jews believe that the compound is the location of two ancient temples and consider it the holiest site in Judaism. In recent years, Jewish worshipers have prayed inside the compound, a violation of an agreement that has been in place since 1967.
. With the overlapping holidays this year, there are concerns that increased visits and unauthorized prayers could provoke further clashes between the Israeli police and Palestinians, as has been the case in previous years.