Tel Aviv, May 15 - Tragedy struck the Middle East today when a careless reporter omitted the geopolitical context of an annual entertainment event, resulting in the violent killings of 300 in the ensuing riots.
A British Broadcasting Corporation article on Wednesday covering the Eurovision song contest taking place in Israel's commercial and cultural hub on the Mediterranean, Tel Aviv, neglected to include a sentence, paragraph, or digression to invoke Palestinian grievances against the Jewish State. The omission sparked violent protests and an earthquake, and scientists fear a plague may also result.
Palestinians recalled the scene with horror. "It was the Nakba all over again," recounted an eyewitness in the Gaza Strip. "I feel thrice dispossessed: of my land, of my heritage, and of the international attention I've been getting for whining about not getting everything I demand and killing all the Jews between the River and the Sea."
BBC representatives apologized for the oversight and vowed an investigation as well as procedures to ensure no such omission occurs again. "We have deviated from our core journalistic mission if we do not cast every event in light of Palestinian suffering," lamented Senior Editor Edward Norwich. "This holds true for articles about cuisine, theater, international trade, technology, and economics, so it goes without question that this article should have at the very least included mention of protests, BDS, of restrictions on Palestinian movement, something, anything to prevent the reader from getting the wrong idea that the Palestinian issue must dominate human consciousness. We failed here, and we must address that."
Eurovision's official position eschews politics. Under Eurovision rules, Israel is hosting the event after its contestant Netta Barzilai won last year's competition. Despite calls by several entertainment figures to boycott this year's Eurovision because of its location, it has already generated unprecedented participation, leaving the political context on the margins. Reporters must therefore go out of their way to include political angles in their stories, which has not proved challenging to date, but has become awkward as audience sensibilities clash with those of the news media establishment.
"We're trying to inform people of the right way to think and feel," explained Norwich's colleague John Glubb. "But that's becoming more and more difficult. I mean, it's always been difficult, with Jewish control of the media, which of course does not include the BBC, except that I guess it would have to, considering our reach and our importance in shaping narratives. Anyway, what was I saying again? It's a tragedy, is all, and we can't let this happen again."
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The IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) currently facilitates the entry of thousands of truckloads of goods to enter the Gaza Strip every day, even as a military blockade remains in place to block dual-use materials and sophisticated weaponry from the Gaza Strip. In other words, Israel has two policies. One is to isolate Hamas, and the other is to allow services to be rendered to the Gazan people.
Israel, for the sake of calm, has even engaged with the Turks and the Qataris, despite both countries’ avowed anti-Zionism and support for Hamas. It has permitted them to provide funds and other assistance to the coastal enclave. Gaza’s suffering continues, however, because Hamas continues to divert funds for commando tunnels, rockets, and other tools of war. And under Hamas rule, there is not much political space to challenge these policies. Anti-Israel sentiment is the only permissible form of protest. This has only served to further radicalize a population that has for years been fed a steady diet of hate.
The Israelis since 2007, along with the Egyptians since 2013, have endeavored to reshape the political landscape in Gaza. This is the first and best choice from Israel’s perspective. But so far, they have failed. The viable alternatives to Hamas are the sclerotic Palestinian Authority, radical Salafi groups, and Iran-backed PIJ. There could be others, such as the supporters of Mohammed Dahlan, the former Gaza strongman who went into exile in the UAE after the Hamas military takeover in 2007. But we know little about Dahlan’s ability to organize politically, or whether Gaza would reject his transplanted leadership after so many years away, like an artificial heart.
The obvious alternative to all of this is re-occupation. This would be deeply unpopular in Israel. It’s unthinkable to many. Of course, the Israelis controlled Gaza from 1967 until 2005. The Israelis never coordinated their departure with Palestinian counterparts, and it looked as if they were pulling out under fire from Hamas rockets and other attacks. This perception contributed in part to the Hamas electoral victory in 2006. That election led to the political standoff that gave way to the civil war in which Hamas overtook the Gaza Strip in 2007.
Fourteen years after the Gaza withdrawal, the rockets are still falling. Twelve years after Hamas took power, the group remains entrenched. Eight years after the deployment of Iron Dome, the Israelis are arguably safer, but they are back where they’ve always been: on the Gaza border, mulling their next move.
TWO MILLION DOLLARS TO MURDER MY DAD. I made this video to ask the Palestinian leadership a simple question: Why are you paying millions of dollars to the terrorist who murdered my dad? Can’t you find a better use for that money? Share to help keep my father's memory alive. pic.twitter.com/QYEC0U4KKh
According to the intelligence that prompted this latest buildup of U.S. forces in the region, the only party that wants a conflict is the Iranian regime. Tehran’s objective “is to prod the United States into a miscalculation or overreaction,” the Times reported. American officials are reportedly aware that Iran’s objective is to force the U.S. to execute a limited strike on Iranian targets while avoiding an all-out ground campaign the regime would not survive, thereby whipping up anti-American sentiment and increases internal political cohesion now strained by economic hardship.
You don’t have to take the White House’s word for it. On Monday, the White House got the casus belli it is supposedly spoiling for. According to the U.S. assessment, Iran or its proxy forces were responsible for an assault on two Saudi oil tankers, a United Arab Emirates tanker, and a Norwegian-flagged vessel anchored in UAE waters. A team of Iranian-linked saboteurs allegedly used explosives to blow large holes in the hulls of these ships below the waterline, taking them out of commission and causing global oil prices to spike by 2 percent. The threat to international commerce and global maritime navigation posed by this attack is more than enough to justify a retaliatory response, but the Trump administration’s reaction has been restrained.
Those who accuse the Trump administration of engineering a military confrontation with Iran are asking you to ignore your own eyes and ears in service to their conspiracy theory. No president would disregard an imminent threat to U.S. interests and personnel. The attack on four ships in the UAE suggests that threat is real and urgent. It more than justifies the White House’s efforts to deter further provocations of the sort the West would have no choice but to respond to with proportionate force.
If there is to be war, it would mean the end of the administration’s efforts to undermine the Iranian regime from within—a prospect administration officials are telling anyone willing to listen that they want to avoid. It must be a source of frustration that so few of their critics seem to care. They much prefer a simpler narrative in which the tyrannical and terroristic Iranian regime is the victim—all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
By all measurements, the situation of the Palestinians in the West Bank, and definitely in Israel, is much better than in any Arab country.
The essential fact is that there are Arab Knesset members. The Israeli Knesset is the only parliament in the world where there is a conspicuous and proud representation of Palestinian parliamentarians. They do not have such representation in Jordan or even in Ramallah or Gaza. Only beneath a picture of Theodore Herzl and the Israeli flag in the Israeli parliament can Palestinian parliamentarians speak and act freely – some Israelis complain too freely – and even in defiance.
Secondly, Israel is the only country in the Middle East that absorbed refugees fully. It is not well known, but there are Palestinian refugees from the villages that were abandoned during the war, who were absorbed into other towns and villages in Israel. Israel has given them full citizenship, and they are citizens with equal rights who can vote for the Knesset. Jordan also granted Palestinians citizenship, but not complete. There is no statistical data on this, but most Jordanian citizens of Palestinian origin are not allowed to vote for the Jordanian parliament, which is far from representative of the true numbers of Palestinians among the population.
Finally, in these times, a real Nakba is taking place, but not in Israel.
Tlaib statement contains two themes: First, the Palestinians are the true victims of the Holocaust because it forced the Jewish survivors on them causing loss of land, property and lives; and Two, Palestinians helped create a safe haven for the Jews at much personal and national sacrifice.
Prof. Jacobson points out that Tlaib's first claim is an inversion because it neglects the fact that 6 million Jews were murdered, with Jewish communities throughout Europe being wiped out, yet Tlaib claims it is the Palestinians, who supported the Nazis, who are supposed to be the victims.
Tlaib's second claim is straight out false, trying to erase the history of the Arabs of the British Mandate who boycotted, slaughtered and discriminated against the Jews, doing everything in their power to prevent Jews from finding a safe haven.
But Tlaib is not the first US politician to distort the history of the Holocaust and its connection with the re-establishment of Israel.
And how one sees Israel is affected by how one understands her history.
Jeff Goldberg: Do you think that justice is still on Israel’s side?
Obama: I think that the idea of a secure Jewish state is a fundamentally just idea, and a necessary idea, given not only world history but the active existence of anti-Semitism, the potential vulnerability that the Jewish people could still experience. I know that that there are those who would argue that in some ways America has become a safe refuge for the Jewish people, but if you’ve gone through the Holocaust, then that does not offer the same sense of confidence and security as the idea that the Jewish people can take care of themselves no matter what happens. That makes it a fundamentally just idea. [emphasis added]
Obama. Official White House Photo
by Pete Souza. Public Domain
With these words, Obama reduced over three thousand years of Jewish history, and indigenous Jewish ties to the land, to an issue of refuge from antisemitism after the Holocaust.
But what happens if you ignore those ties and that history and instead see Israel as nothing more than a piece of land intended to serve as a safe refuge?
Land can then be cavalierly, arbitrarily and ultimately surgically removed and taken away -- with assurances and guarantees for the safety and security of Israel.
America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. [emphasis added]
Obama reiterates to the Arab world that the Holocaust is the justification for Israel's existence.
Not Jewish history
Not Jewish indigenous ties
Not Jewish culture, literature and language
However, it seems somebody finally clued Obama in, to the fact that Jews living in Israel is not a modern phenomenon that started after the Holocaust.
In his remarks to the UN General Assembly on September 23, 2010, Obama said:
Israel is a sovereign state, and the historic homeland of the Jewish people. It should be clear to all that efforts to chip away at Israel’s legitimacy will only be met by the unshakeable opposition of the United States. And efforts to threaten or kill Israelis will do nothing to help the Palestinian people. The slaughter of innocent Israelis is not resistance -- it’s injustice. And make no mistake: The courage of a man like President Abbas, who stands up for his people in front of the world under very difficult circumstances, is far greater than those who fire rockets at innocent women and children.[emphasis added]
Aside from his warning about delegitimizing Israel, Obama's remarks are a vast improvement on his previous remarks about the history of Jews and Israel.
Not that this new formulation signaled any change in actual US policy. The key to peace continued to be framed as a question of land. Throughout his 2 terms in office, Obama continued to pressure Israel to make unilateral concessions. He and Kerry pushed the idea of a 2 state solution based on the green line with minimal land exchanges. At the end of his term, he left Israel with a goodbye present in the form of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, on which the US abstained, that Israeli settlements were a "flagrant violation" of international law that had "no legal validity".
I was brought up at school being told, um, that Israel was founded on a piece of empty space, and that they managed to make the desert bloom, and they built things when there was nothing there before. Anybody that studies the history of the region would know, at the end of the Second World War – 1945 to 1948 period – Palestine had media, had industry, had education, had universities, had a relatively high standard of living for the whole region, and was a coherent society and a coherent state. It was a denigration of that which enabled Western opinion to be, um, put together in support of Israel. [emphasis added]
Jeremy Corbyn. YouTube screengrab
Elder of Ziyon points out the enormity of Corbyn's distorted claim:
Palestine on the eve of Israel's independence was effectively a state, all right - a Jewish state. It was Jewish money, Jewish creativity, Jewish brains and Jewish sweat that built nearly all the institutions of Palestine that Corbyn is praising here.
Putting aside the ancient history of Israel, which Corbyn does not even refer to, he believes that the modern history of Israel begins after World War II, making the infrastructure and everything that went into developing the land into the product and work of the Arabs.
It is not clear that Corbyn is even aware of an issue of refuge from the Holocaust. Corbyn ignores everything Jewish about the land and describes the Jews as not only foreigners, but as interlopers who did nothing to develop the land.
This twisted view informs everything he says about Israel and intends to do if and when he has the chance.
Joe Biden
It may not be clear if Biden, who now leads in polls in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, sees Israel the same way as Obama and Corbyn, but as a Senator, Biden did make the mistake of forgetting that Israel has the self-reliance and pride that comes with a 3,000-year old connection to the land. We will likely be reminded over the next year and a half about this story of the confrontation between Biden and Menachem Begin:
When hearing the name Biden, we always think of the famous exchange between Biden and Prime Minister Begin. As Moshe Zak recounted in a March 13, 1992, piece in the Jerusalem Post:
In a conversation with Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, after a sharp confrontation in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the subject of the settlements, Begin defined himself as "a proud Jew who does not tremble with fear" when speaking with foreign statesmen.
During that committee hearing, at the height of the Lebanon War, Sen. John Biden (Delaware) had attacked Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria and threatened that if Israel did not immediately cease this activity, the US would have to cut economic aid to Israel.
When the senator raised his voice and banged twice on the table with his fist, Begin commented to him: "This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don't threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the US lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats. Take note: we do not want a single soldier of yours to die for us."
After the meeting, Sen. Moynihan approached Begin and praised him for his cutting reply. To which Begin answered with thanks, defining his stand against threats.
Joe Biden. Public Domain
It should be noted that My Right Word has the source for this, with a link to the official record of Israel's Foreign Ministry and quotes from two articles in The New York Times that confirm what happened.
Albert Einstein
Describing Israel as a refuge does not, in and of itself, denigrate the country or its ties between the Jewish State and the Jewish People.
In 1955, Albert Einstein was scheduled to make a televised address on behalf of Israel on Yom Ha'atzmaut. Unfortunately, he died 8 days before he was able to make that address. However, a rough draft of the speech exists.
In it, he starts off:
This is the seventh anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel.
The establishment of this State was internationally approved and recognised largely for the purpose of rescuing the remnant of the Jewish people from unspeakable horrors of persecution and oppression.” [emphasis added]
Einstein too, as a survivor of WWII, saw the re-establishment of the state of Israel as a bulwark against antisemitism and the Jew-hatred he had seen -- though he also recognized that "another purpose was to provide conditions in which the spiritual and cultural life of a Hebrew society could find free expression."
His overriding concern for the safety of Jews led him to consider it "a bitter paradox to find that a State which was destined to be a shelter for a martyred people is itself threatened by grave dangers to its own security."
But there is more to Einstein's connection to Israel and Zionism than the issue of security.
Albert Einstein with Zionist leaders Ben-Zion Mossinson, Chaim Weizmann, and Menachem Ussishkin, arriving in New York in 1921. (Library of Congress, Bain Collection)
Einstein was opposed to the creation of a Jewish state.
First of all, he feared that a breakout of war between the Jews in then-Palestine and the Arabs would lead to a second holocaust.
More than that, Einstein was opposed to the idea of a Jewish state in and of itself because of what a state embodied.
Kirsch writes that on the one hand, Einstein wrote in 1927 that
the importance of all this Zionist work lies in precisely the effect that it will have on those Jews who will not themselves live in Palestine...the Jews will acquire that happiness in feeling themselves at ease, that sense of being self-sufficient, which a common ideal cannot fail to evoke...I believe that the existence of a Jewish cultural center will strengthen the moral and political position of the Jews all over the world, by virtue of the very fact that there will be in existence a kind of embodiment of the interests of the whole Jewish people.
Einstein focused on the purely secular ideal of self-sufficiency and peace of mind. He saw the benefit of "a Jewish cultural center," but as a boost for the position of Jews in the world.
He saw the benefit to Jews but not to the Jewish People as a Nation -- he supported the goal of boosting individual Jewish identity as opposed to creating a Jewish state.
Kirsch suggests that Einstein's view came from a German-Jewish intellectual commitment to the idea of universalism as a response to antisemitism. Einstein knew little of Judaism, but saw in it an expression of "liberal Jewish values."
He quotes from a piece Einstein published in Collier's in 1938 where he wrote:
The bond that has united the Jews for thousands of years and that unites them today is, above all, the democratic ideal of social justice, coupled with the ideal of mutual aid and tolerance among all men.
Einstein's view of Jews and cultural Zionism led him to make in 1938, just 10 days before Kristallnacht the unknowingly ironic statement that:
We are a minority everywhere and have no violent means of defense at our disposal to protect our community against our numerous enemies and opponents—fortunately. [emphasis added]
He saw politics and nationalism as the problem and not as a solution, and on that basis was opposed to the idea of a Jewish State.
Thus in 1946, in testimony before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, Einstein suggested that the cause of tension was not any actual antagonism between Jews and Arabs, but rather should be blamed instead on British policy -- and if the British would abandon the Mandate, the problem would resolve itself.
Similarly, regarding Jews in European DP camps who were denied access to then-Palestine because of British policy, Einstein was asked: “What would you do if the Arabs refused to consent to bringing these refugees to Palestine?” He actually responded: "That would never be the case if there were no politics."
Einstein saw politics, nationalism -- and the power that comes with it -- as the problem. And the Holocaust did nothing to change his opinion. It reinforced it.
Kirsch concludes about Einstein that "his reservations about Israel were voiced from the standpoint of his unquestionable commitment to Zionism."
Einstein's opposition to a Jewish State does not change that.
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But that key component, the recognition of the indigenous connection of Jews with Israel -- a connection whose recognition just 100 years ago made the Balfour Declaration and subsequent events possible -- that recognition is fading and can no longer be taken for granted.
The fact that members of Congress like Tlaib and Omar can get away with anti-Jewish and anti-Israel statements with impunity is a sign of the dangerous times we now live in when bipartisan support for Israel is becoming a thing of the past right before our eyes.
It is a dangerous time for both Jews and for Israel, regardless of the pro-Israel policies of the current president.
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In light of the revisionist history going around from Rashida Tlaib and others, including Professor Rashid Khalidi who said that Arabs were largely against the Nazis, I looked up some contemporaneous articles about Nazis in Palestine.
July 1935:
February 1937:
May 1937:
December 1937:
1943:
1948:
Any questions?
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Most of the Arabs who fled their homes in 1948 left out of fear of war, before they saw a single Zionist soldier. Even the New Wave historians agree that the waves of Arab flight until June 1948 were prompted by fear of war and that there were no expulsions at that point.
The interesting thing is that the first wave of those leaving, in December 1947 and January 1948, were the wealthy; many of the leaders left by June. The entire social structure of Arabs in Palestine collapsed, and as the Arab people saw their leaders abandon them, they left as well.
According to Efraim Karsh in April 1948 "some 100,000 Palestinians, mostly from the main urban centres of Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem and from villages in the coastal plain, had gone. Within a month those numbers had nearly doubled; and by early June, ... some 390,000 Palestinians had left."30,000 Arabs, mostly intellectuals and members of the social elite, had fled Palestine in the months following the approval of the partition plan, undermining the social infrastructure of Palestine. A 10 May 1948 Time magazine article states: "Said one British official in Jerusalem last week: 'The whole effendi class has gone. It is remarkable how many of the younger ones are suddenly deciding that this might be a good time to resume their studies at Oxford....'"
Although the question seems rhetorical, it should be asked: Why did the Arab social structure disappear in anticipation of fighting, and the Jewish one stayed intact? Jews were certainly fearful, and the ones captured by Arabs were shown no mercy, as Joseph Schechtman wrote:
Arab warfare against the Jews in Palestine ... had always been marked by indiscriminate killing, mutilating, raping, looting and pillaging. This 1947–48 attack on the Jewish community was more savage than ever. Until the Arab armies invaded Israel on the very day of its birth, May 15, 1948, no quarter whatsoever had ever been given to a Jew who fell into Arab hands. Wounded and dead alike were mutilated. Every member of the Jewish community was regarded as an enemy to be mercilessly destroyed.
Yet the Jews stayed and the Arab leaders fled. Why?
The obvious reason is that the Jews had no place to go. Israel was their home and its neighbors would murder them. They had no choice.
Arabs had a choice. Many of the Arab families had not been in Palestine for more than a century, and practically all the Muslim Arabs could trace their family history showing their travels throughout the Middle East from their origins in Arabia or Yemen or Egypt. The idea of separate Arab nations was still new - the Ottoman Empire controlled the entire Middle East until the end of World War I, only three decades earlier - and Arabs considered the entire region to be their home, not "Palestine." Palestine was just another Arab region to them and their ties were not that strong.
On the other hand, they made an assumption that they can migrate to other Arab countries without a problem. Who could have anticipated that they would not be able to integrate into the lands of their fellow Arabs? The idea that they would be stateless for decades to come was simply inconceivable.
Jews had no options. Jews had to fight for their land, or die trying. Even though most of the Jews were recent immigrants, their psychological ties to Eretz Yisrael were far stronger than those of the Arabs of Palestine whose leaders fled at the first sign of trouble.
In a sense, 1948 was a test to see which population wanted the land the most.
There is a reason that most of the Arab fighters were not from Palestine. The idea of a huge victory, the romantic notion of defeating and massacring the Jews, was strong in the Muslim world and attracted adventurers and jihadists. But the actual Arab residents of the land just wanted to live their lives as Arabs - not as Palestinians, which none of them identified as, but as Arabs - anywhere. The ones who fought the Jews defended their own villages and towns, but had no interest in defending a "Palestine" that they never identified with.
Some Arab nations were incensed that the men of Palestine fled to them and the refugees had to be forced to go back to fight.
In the end, the Arab ties to their supposed homeland was far weaker than that of the "colonial" Jews. The victors were the ones who wanted the land more.
People who love the land don't run away at the first opportunity. People who love the land stay and fight for it.
This is why the Jews stayed and the Arabs fled. It is why the Jews deserve their own nation in their historic homeland far more than the Arabs deserve yet another nation in one tiny corner of the huge Arab world.
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The Zionist movement long predated Hitler, even if Palestinian leadership had aligned itself with the Nazis during the war. By the time the Holocaust was over, Jews had already gained enough power to defend themselves, and Arabs had already been launching pogroms, terrorism, and political attacks for decades.
Although some Arabs initially welcomed Jewish migration in the 1900s, they would become victim to Palestinian leadership—a number of Arab mayors, landowners, and others were assassinated for conspiring with Jews, just as they are today.
After the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a British government document that endorsed “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” and pledged to “use its best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” there was immediate and violent anti-Semitic reaction.
This, despite the fact that Jewish migration had been exceptionally beneficial for the Arabs living in the area. Rarely mentioned in the Israeli-Palestinian debate, in fact, is that significant Arab migration into a largely empty land was spurred by Jewish economic development. Jews were not displacing Arabs, they were attracting them.
Not that it mattered. As the Peel Commission Report, a British paper recommending partition in 1936, noted, “the Arabs have benefited by the development of the country owing to Jewish immigration, this has had no conciliatory effect. On the contrary… with almost mathematical precision the betterment of the economic situation in Palestine meant the deterioration of the political situation.”
Even Palestinian “moderates” like Musa Alami told Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion “he would prefer the land to remain poor and desolate even for another hundred years” if the alternative was collaboration with Jews. Neither Alami nor Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Palestinian cause, nor the father of modern terrorism, Yasser Arafat, nor his protégé, Mahmoud Abbas, ever shared in their deprivations of their people. It was the opposite, in fact. Palestinian leaders have always enriched themselves on this conflict.
When Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib stated that she often gets “a calming feeling” when she thinks about the Holocaust, she made it perfectly clear that she is calmed not by the deaths of six million Jews but by the thought that her Palestinian ancestors “lost their land, . . . their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways [sic], . . . to create a safe haven for Jews.” Liel Leibovitz, rather than attempting to unpack the perverse logic of Tlaib’s words, simply notes some relevant historical examples. Among them is the case of the Polish-born Atara Abramson, who—after surviving Auschwitz, where the rest of her family was killed—came to the Land of Israel and settled in the Kfar Etzion kibbutz in 1946:
On May 12, 1948, two days before Israel’s declaration of independence, an Arab army consisting of Jordanian legionnaires and local Palestinian gunmen attacked Kfar Etzion with armored vehicles and heavy artillery. The Jewish defenders, armed with just a handful of rifles and mortars, did their best to fight back, but by the following day were no longer able to persist. Their leader, Avraham Fishgrund, who escaped Bratislava just a few years before Hitler’s armies marched in, stepped into the open, waving the white flag of surrender. He was shot on the spot by an armed Palestinian.
The rest of the people in Kfar Etzion, numbering 133 men and women, had no choice but to reiterate their surrender and hope for the best. Again, they stepped into the open waving a white flag and declaring their surrender. Again, they were met with gunfire. They rushed to take shelter in the basement of a nearby monastery; gathering outside, local Palestinians tossed grenades into the building and shot at anyone trying to escape. Like most of Kfar Etzion’s residents, Atara Abramson did not survive. She was twenty-one when she died, one of eighteen women who had survived the Holocaust only to be slaughtered by Palestinians that day. . . .
There were 433 more Holocaust survivors killed by Palestinians and Jordanians violently opposing the creation of a “safe haven” for Jews in the what had historically and spiritually been their homeland. To attempt and rewrite their well-documented experiences is . . . an unforgivable and deeply anti-Semitic act.
More than a radical case of historical revisionism, Tlaib's comments are part of something more sinister: an effort to separate the Jewish people from the land of Israel, in an effort to destroy Israel as the Jewish state. Tlaib grounds Israel's legitimacy, and the moral and historical reasons for its existence, in the horrors of the Holocaust. Forget about the more than 3,000 years of continuous Jewish presence in the land of Israel, and of the deeply entrenched legal, historical, and religious ties that Jews have there; certainly forget about the Jewish people yearning to return to the land throughout 2,000 years in exile, not to mention the modern Zionist movement, which began in the mid-19th century; also forget about Britain's commitments to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, including the Balfour Declaration, which, far from being a unilateral move, received the contemporary equivalent of the international community's endorsement; and, of course, forget the U.N.'s recommendation to create a Jewish state in Palestine. The Jewish people only have Israel because of the Holocaust, and the sympathy it created for them among Europeans. So the imperialist powers worked with the Jews to kick the Palestinians off of their land. At least that is the Palestinian narrative, which Tlaib seems to endorse. And still, the congresswoman has the audacity to think the Jews of Israel should be kissing the feet of the Palestinians for being so noble, so generous to sacrifice their collective wellbeing to help a people whose population has still not recovered from the six million it lost during the Holocaust.
Ignoring, hoping ultimately to erase, the Jewish people's ties to Israel is part of a campaign to destroy Israel as the Jewish state through demonization and delegitimization. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which Tlaib supports, is the leading effort of this vile campaign. That a member of Congress supports this agenda is deeply disturbing. More disturbing, however, is that her deceitful, anti-intellectual approach to issues concerning Israel is a tenet of the progressive movement, which has institutionalized the modern form of anti-Semitism in an effort to undermine Israel to the point that it submits to the mob and ceases to exist as the world has come to know it, leaving millions of Jews vulnerable to the whims of those who are at best indifferent to their fate, and at worst eager to solve the world's "Jewish problem."
Now, it is possible that Tlaib is just unaware of all of this history and does not have malicious intent. If that is the case, then I hope she reads this piece and reconsiders her position with an open mind. That being said, I am not holding my breath.
Haaretz surveyed some historians to see if any of them agree with Rashida Tlaib's assertion that Palestinians provided Jews with "safe refuge" from the Holocaust.
Not surprisingly, most of them say that the idea has no basis in reality, but the comments from notoriously anti-Israel professor Rashid Khalidi are interesting:
Prof. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, charged that many of Tlaib’s detractors were also historically off base.
Tlaib, he said, “is facing an ‘idiot wind’ that makes the Arabs into accomplices of the Nazis, when hundreds of thousands of Arab troops fought with the Allies in World War II, while Jews who escaped the Holocaust were sheltered in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, as well as Palestine."
This is the first I have heard of European Jews being sheltered in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.
I've been looking for examples of this online and coming up empty. I do have a counter-example I recently discussed of a ship of Jews who attempted suicide after Egypt rejected them, and they were treated in Egyptian hospitals until they were presumably well enough to be sent to their doom.
I cannot even find an anecdote of Jews who somehow managed to sneak into Egypt, Syria or Lebanon, which is not proof it didn't happen...but if it did, it doesn't sound like it was anything close to these Arab countries sheltering European Jews.
Khalidi is not usually stupid enough to make things up from scratch. Maybe he is referring to an extraordinarily low number of Jews who somehow managed to sneak into those countries due to family connections or luck.
I would love to know what he is talking about. If true, then the world should know about it. If false, then it is more evidence that a Columbia University professor is willing to put his reputation on the line to lie to defend a false narrative.
(h/t David G)
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- In 2000, she justified the murder of Jewish civilians in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza, saying, "In a sense, the army of occupation and the settlers have become legitimate and select targets of Palestinian resistance."
-The PLO has rejected any talks with the US and even rejects accepting money. Why should the US not treat PLO members the same way?
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The capital invites the public, as well as visitors, to celebrate Eurovision during a four day public broadcasting celebration in the First Station.
Jerusalem residents, as well as visitors to the Israeli capital, are invited to attend a four day public celebration of Eurovision music to be held at the First Station starting from Tuesday evening and ending with the announcement of the 2019 winners on Saturday night.
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion said in a press release that “the Eurovision is one of the largest and most important musical events in Europe” and called the public to use this opportunity to visit “the most beautiful city in the world, Jerusalem.”
Starting on Tuesday at six p.m. D.J Yaeli will play a live set composed of Eurovision songs as the opening of the event will be screened on a wide screen. The events will continue on Wednesday when a special radio booth will be built in which comedian Michal Shem Tov and broadcaster Noam Fathi, among others, will cover the triumphs and losses of the competition.
1978 Eurovision winner Izhar Cohen will perform at an evening party which is meant to go on until the small hours of the night including old Eurovision hits.
Pop superstar Madonna struck a defiant chord Tuesday, declaring that boycott calls will not stop her from make a guest appearance during the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv over the weekend.
“I’ll never stop playing music to suit someone’s political agenda nor will I stop speaking out against violations of human rights wherever in the world they may be,” Madonna said in a statement to Reuters.
Israel earned the right to host the Eurovision after local singer Netta Barzilai won the contest last year. Pro-Palestinian supporters of boycotting Israel have called for competitors and fans to shun the competition and Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip have threatened to disrupt the event with rocket attacks on the country.
“My heart breaks every time I hear about the innocent lives that are lost in this region and the violence that is so often perpetuated to suit the political goals of people who benefit from this ancient conflict,” Madonna said. “I hope and pray that we will soon break free from this terrible cycle of destruction and create a new path towards peace.”
Last September, some 140 artists, including former Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, called for a boycott of the song contest. In April, Waters made a personal appeal to Madonna to not perform at Eurovision, saying it “normalizes the occupation, the apartheid, the ethnic cleansing, the incarceration of children, the slaughter of unarmed protesters.”
According to Reuters, Madonna supports several Palestinian projects through her Ray of Light foundation, which encourages social justice and women’s rights around the world.
Madonna, 60, is due to land in Israel on Wednesday morning, accompanied by an entourage of 135 people, ahead of her planned performance during the Eurovision finals on Saturday night.
Bird, a US transportation startup that provides commuters with e-scooters, is stepping up its game in Tel Aviv amid the start of the Eurovision song festival.
Tel Aviv is hosting the Eurovision Song Contest from Tuesday to Saturday, after Israeli singer Netta Barzilai won last year’s contest in Portugal. The competition consists of semifinal rounds on Tuesday and Thursday, followed by the finals on Saturday evening.
Bird said Tuesday its scooters will be available in Tel Aviv, for the first time in any city in which it operates, for 24-hour operations, to help tourists and locals get to Eurovision events at all times. Until now the scooter service was available only until 11 p.m.
The firm, which started providing its services in Tel Aviv last year and now says it has hundreds of scooters deployed there as well as in the adjacent cities of Givatayim and Ramat Gan, is also introducing a new feature in its app that will allow users to reserve scooters 30 minutes in advance of picking them up. That way a user won’t turn up to the pickup point and find the scooter taken by someone else, as sometimes happens.
Israel is one of the most misunderstood,
misrepresented and maligned countries on earth. The question is, why?
Jew hate? Or because our “hasbara” is
terrible? In pro-Israel circles either (or both) of these are go-to
explanations however neither are enough to explain the dissonance between
Israeli reality and the concepts different people have about Israel – from rabid
haters to faithful fans and the ambivalent in between – very few people have a
good grasp of what Israel is or what Israel means.
After reading Clotaire Rapaille’s book
“The Culture Code,” I think the extreme difficulty in realistically grasping
the concept of Israel comes from not understanding our culture code.
Cultural anthropologist and marketing
expert Clotaire Rapaille explains that every culture has underlying, unspoken
“codes” which form unified cultural understandings or attitudes to important
life issues. These are what define the unique identity of different cultures. In
the book Rapaille decodes two dozen of our most fundamental archetypes—ranging
from sex to money to health to America itself.
His understanding of culture codes is a
product of extensive market research which he applied to improve profitability in
America and in foreign markets for companies such as GE, AT&T, Boeing,
Honda, Kellogg, and L’Oréal.
Rapaille discovered that in standard
focus groups, which might last an hour, he would hear what the participants
declared they wanted. Through special techniques and longer durations he would
begin to uncover the patterns of meaning behind the different declarations
made.
For example, the discovery that in
America “food” is a code for “fuel for the body” whereas in France “food” means
“life” it becomes easy to understand why in America there is less emphasis on
the quality of the food or why it is America that brought the world fast food
restaurants. In America food is something you do “on the go” whereas in French
culture food is an experience to linger over and savor.
In the book, Rapaille explains the
challenge of selling coffee in Japan. How do you create an environment where
coffee is the staple hot drink in a country where tea is deeply rooted in the
cultural traditions? Trying to aggressively compete against tea would not have
been successful because of what tea means in that culture. Instead of fighting
the culture, it was wiser to introduce a positive association with the product
by targeting kids with coffee flavored treats.
Understanding the culture codes enables
effective persuasion because it is resonates on an unspoken level, speaking
directly to the deep seated concepts that form our cultural norms and motivate
our decision making.
As a marketer I found these revelations
fascinating but what captured my mind was the idea that culture codes include
what countries mean to us.
Rapaille declares that the culture code
for America is: DREAM. This makes sense considering that America is known as
“the land of golden opportunities,” a place where you can arrive with $20 in
your pocket and become a multi-millionaire, a place where anyone can become
whatever they envision.
If the code for America is “dream,” what
is the culture code for Israel? Could it be that Israel is so misunderstood
because the codes other people have for Israel do not match the code Israelis
have for our country?
When you ask different people: “What is
Israel? What does Israel mean?” the answers vary enormously. On the positive
side there is: Holy Land. Land of prophecy. Innovation, Start-up Nation.
Resilience. Change. Safe-haven.
On the negative side there is: Oppressor.
Bully. Aggressive. No heart.
Both the positive and negative
definitions are laden with emotion. Neither truly recognize the humanity of the
people behind those big concepts. Tellingly, none match what Israelis say when
you ask them what Israel means to them.
There is one concept that unites
religious, secular and even Israelis that have been living in America for 15
years. All of them will tell you that Israel is HOME.
One little word, so simple, yet so
profound, explains everything about this country of ours.
HOME is the place we returned to after
2000 years of exile, after centuries of longing to return. This is the
difference between “house” and “home.” You can live in any house but home is
the place you long to go back to, even if it takes 2000 years. How is a place
where you always belong, even if you haven’t been there for ages. It is the
place you feel complete. Home is the place you are attached to, even if it is
less convenient or attractive than someone else’s home.
HOME is the place where your FAMILY is. That’s
why, in Israel, family extends beyond the walls of our private homes to include
strangers – they are just family members we haven’t met yet.
This is why Israeli cab drivers and shopkeepers think it’s perfectly natural to
ask you extraordinarily intrusive questions. Manners are for strangers, with
family you can say whatever you want.
This is why strangers will invite you over for meals and even to stay in their
home – especially if they think you might be alone on Shabbat or a holiday or
if your area of the country is under attack and your kids need a few days rest
someplace quiet.
This is why one soldier is everyone’s
soldier and why grief is not private. This is why we can argue viciously and immediately
unite over an external threat. “Family” are the people that might drive you
nuts but you are also willing to die for. Literally.
Israel’s strength comes from HOME.
Wherever we are in the world, no matter how much we enjoy it, home is where the
heart is. That’s why when there is a war one might expect people to leave but
instead many Israelis abroad come back (or at least feel like they should).
When your family is in trouble, you stand by their side. Even if you can’t
really help, there is strength in being together.
Our resilience and tenacity come from the
simple truth that home is the place you don’t give up on. Where else would you
go?
People who understand Israel as “the Holy
Land” or “the land of prophecy” often find themselves disappointed when they
encounter the realities of normal, standard and sometimes very inconvenient
life. Bureaucracy and poor service seem incongruent with the concept of
holiness.
Those who see Israel as a land of
innovation don’t necessarily understand why the same kind of innovation can’t
happen elsewhere. Why insist on living in a “bad neighborhood” when true
innovators could go work in Silicon Valley or some other place? And why do so
many of those who do go, live and work, someplace else still say that Israel is
HOME even when they have been away for years? Why do they long for the smells,
the food, the warmth of friends and community (family)? Why is it that anywhere
there are Israelis abroad you will find more Israelis and when there are enough
of them you will find stores that sell Bamba, chocolate spread, Elite coffee
and “shkedey marak” (a kind of Israel soup crouton)?
Of course those that see Israel as an
“occupier” do not understand that it is impossible to occupy your own home.
They see “bully” not a family trying to protect its family members. Because
they don’t know, or don’t care to know the truth, they see “no heart” rather
than “all heart.”
Does any other nation on earth have a
collective home? How is it possible for people born in Iraq, America, Brazil
and Russia to all belong to the same home? How can our home be ancient and yet
new? Holy and singular yet at the same time cosmopolitan?
These seem like inexplicable paradoxes
but they are no different than your parents liking different kinds of food or
siblings having conflicting personalities. Facts and figures will never convey
what Israel means to Israelis. Diversity or doing good for the world is not a
justification for existence. Jew hate is not enough to explain why people don’t
understand our reality. Even the most virulent Jew hate is not enough to explain
why protecting Israel as a sanctuary for Jews is vital (because why not just
address the local cultural problem, teach people not to be violent to anyone?).
It is important to protect HOME because
it’s yours. Because that’s where your family is.
Perhaps if we explained THAT to the
world, we would be better understood.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
One cannot understand Arab society without understanding the honor/shame dynamic.
It is not racist to point out that Arabs are brought up in a culture where receiving honor, and avoiding shame, are the top priorities. Westerners, on the other hand, are raised in a "guilt" society. In the West, what you do has inherent value even if no one else knows about it; in the Arab world nearly everything is dependent on how you are perceived as opposed to what you are.
In Arab culture, shame must be avoided at all costs. This is why there are so-called "honor killings." Even someone's life can be sacrificed to preserve one's supposed honor.
Arabs historically regarded themselves as warriors, with romantic Islamic artwork showing Muslims on horseback with swords fighting their enemies.
Yet Arabs and Muslims have lost wars many times in their history to the Christian West, possibly starting in 732 with the Battle of Tours.
After a while, it was not considered so shameful to lose to the Christians and their powerful armies.
This never applied to Jews, though.
Muslim antipathy to Jews is as old as Islam itself, and Arab hate for Jews goes back to Ishmael. Under Muslim rule, Jews were regarded as despised and weak second class citizens.
In 1948, the combined Arab armies not only failed to push the hated Jews into the sea, but they lost, convincingly, to these weak dhimmi Jews.
This is the reason the loss, alone among all Arab and Muslim losses in history, is called the "nakba." The scale of the military defeat isn't the important factor - the fact that it was so humiliating is.
There are two reasons the Arabs of Palestine who fled were never integrated into the Arab world and remain a separate, stateless people 71 years later. One is that their very existence reminds the Arab nations of their impotence in war, and the Arab leaders want to blame the Palestinian Arabs for fleeing rather than fighting for their lands. The other is the realization that a large refugee population can be weaponized itself in the insistence of the "right to return." The hope that Israel can still be destroyed through a combination of terror, demographics and politics remains.
Israeli concessions for peace are invariably looked upon as evidence of weakness and they embolden Israel's enemies, rather than appease them.
Something interesting has happened in recent years. Arab nations have slowly gotten used to the fact that Israel is strong and will not disappear so soon. As they did with the Christian West, they are recognizing that they cannot defeat Israel militarily and therefore it starts to make sense to begin to cooperate with Israel in cases of common interest.
Palestinian Arabs have not reached that point. Their classrooms still teach that they will one day "return" and claim all of the land from the river to the sea. They still pretend that symbolic support from the Arabs is meaningful. They have created an entire mythology around a Palestinian nation that never existed. Their need for pride precludes their ability to recognize reality.
Until they reach the point of knowing that Israel is a Jewish state and will remain there for a long time, the Nakba will remain a catastrophe to them.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 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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Wednesday, May 15, 2019
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Tel Aviv, May 15 - Tragedy struck the Middle East today when a careless reporter omitted the geopolitical context of an annual entertainment event, resulting in the violent killings of 300 in the ensuing riots.
