Earlier this week we reported on the case of a Palestinian man who just completed his conversion to Judaism who was then, on the even of Yom Kippur, arrested and imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority on Yom Kippur and reportedly tortured.
I found two small Israeli NGOs working to help this man. One is B'Tzalmo, which works for equal rights for all concentrating on religious Jews in Israeli courts, and the other is Itim, which works to help people (including converts) navigate through Israel rabbinical bureaucracy.
One would think that this case would appeal to the larger human rights organizations working in Israel - Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, Amnesty International, Rabbis for Human Rights, Yesh Din. All these groups are pro-Palestinian, and here is a Palestinian who is being oppressed simply because of his beliefs.
These organizations either don't care about human rights, or they don't consider Jews to be fully human.
All they need to do is a single tweet to defend a man who is being persecuted for his beliefs. A Palestinian, no less. Public pressure from any major human rights organization will shame the PA into releasing them.
But they refuse, even when asked.
The hypocrisy of the so called "human rights" community is disgusting.
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J-Street released a really unprofessional survey on Democratic voters' attitudes towards Israel and the Palestinians.
The questions are so biased as to be laughable.
For example:
People often talk about being pro-Israel. Do you think someone can be critical of Israeli government policies and still be pro-Israel? Total Yes.........................................................................................81 No ..........................................................................................13 (Don't know/refused) ..............................................................5
I'm actually surprised at the 13%. Every thinking person, right or left, agrees that someone can be critical of Israeli policies and still pro-Israel. J-Street, of course, is critical of virtually every Israeli government policy. If they would have asked "Do you think someone can have thousands of anti-Israel tweets and not a single pro-Israel tweet, and still be pro-Israel?" then the answer would not have pleased them, because that is what J-Street is.
Similarly, J-Street worded this question not to illuminate but to pretend that their opinions are mainstream, asking whether voters would be more likely to choose "A candidate who says he or she strongly supports Israel, and the United States must stand behind all of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's policies." Who thinks that?
Here's another loaded question that proves that J-Street themselves have no idea why anyone should support Israel:
Please tell me which statement comes closest to your own point of view, even if neither is exactly right. 1.The United States should act as a fair and impartial broker in order to achieve a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. 2. The United States should side with Israel during peace negotiations because Israel is our democratic ally and needs our support against a world that isolates them.
Is that the only reason why Americans support Israel?
Why didn't J-Street try this statement?
The United States should side with Israel because Israel shares American liberal values, giving rights to minorities, women and LGBT who are oppressed in Arab countries. Israel has offered to live in peace with its Arab neighbors multiple times yet the Palestinians have rejected every single plan. An "even handed" approach rewards Palestinian intransigence.
How would liberals answer that one? After all, only one side has liberal values and has shown a real desire for peace - but J-Street will never point that out.
The fact is that J-Street knows that most respondents don't know squat about the Middle East so it phrases questions to lead the ignorant to the conclusions they want.
While 61% of the respondents said that they followed news about Israel "very" or "somewhat" closely, only 9% said that they were very familiar with what BDS was about. If you don't know what BDS is, you aren't following the news. Meaning that the vast majority of Democratic voters do not follow the Middle East closely at all, but they think they know what they are talking about.
J-Street uses this ignorance to create a poll that provides the answers they pre-determine within the questions themselves.
Professional pollster Steve Miller called this "shitty polling and incoherent questions."
In the annals of shitty polling and incoherent questions lies this slide https://t.co/pvYnJGrsoN
Why did J-Street release this poll, taken in May, now? Because it wants to use the results to pretend that it is mainstream ahead of its conference next week. The poll is meant to do one thing only: to make J-Street look good.
Anyone who reports on the poll as if it actually reflects reality is ignorant or knowingly deceptive.
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Review of 'The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir' by Samantha Power
It surprised no one, least of all U.S. intelligence agencies. As Joby Warrick reported in the Washington Post the following week, “U.S. spy agencies recorded each step in the alleged chemical attack, from the extensive preparations to the launching of rockets to the after-action assessments by Syrian officials.” The administration had no doubt now, and no plausible deniability either.
Obama was now convinced he had to strike Syria. But he had a problem of his own making: UN inspectors were on the ground. So the president waited. And as he waited, he got cold feet and started looking for a way out. He chose to put the matter in the hands of Congress—he needed no authorization for strikes, he said, but wouldn’t strike without congressional say-so. No real strategy to persuade even Democrats in Congress was set forth. And there was, Power writes, no Plan B.
In the end, Obama’s desperation to be bailed out of action led him to agree to a joint U.S.-Russian plan to rid Syria of the chemical weapons. It was a sham. Assad hid some weapons from inspectors and continued bombing civilians with chemicals that were left off the list. Obama rewarded Assad and Vladimir Putin by ceding them the playing field conclusively. Power looks back on one administration meeting after the August chemical attacks:
What I did not know in that Saturday meeting was that this would end up being the only time Obama would seriously contemplate using military force against the Assad regime. We would have countless meetings and debates on Syria over the next three and a half years, but he would never again consider taking the kind of risk he had been prepared to bear in the immediate aftermath of the August 21st attack.
And why wouldn’t he ever again consider it? Because he had undertaken to strike a deal with Assad’s patron in Tehran and to reorganize American alliances to allow Iran and Russia to fill the vacuum of U.S. influence in the region, a vacuum that Obama specifically aimed to create. As Frederic Hof, a U.S. envoy to Syria in 2012, put it: “To complicate the ability of Iran’s man in Syria to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity would have placed at risk nuclear negotiations aimed ultimately at dissolving American relationships of trust and confidence with key regional powers.”
Power never realized that she wasn’t there to be heeded. Rather, she was there to be silenced. Obama’s conduct of U.S. foreign policy required the coopting of his critics. He found a way to let the world burn without running afoul of Samantha Power’s network of interventionist scolds: Make Power the public face of doing nothing.
A key problem is denialism. As Stellman points out, “Anti-Zionists are very sensitive when charged with antisemitism.” Anti-Zionists protest their revulsion against all forms of racism and, in an ironic twist, accuse their accusers of conspiring against them “to shut down criticism of Israel.”
What is astonishing is that this transparent ruse, itself utilizing an antisemitic trope, appears to have worked. At a recent Intelligence Squared debate in London, the motion that “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism” was defeated by a margin of 4-1. Those who applaud that result will be discomfited to read Kaplan and Small’s landmark 2006 study of 5,000 citizens in 10 European countries. Stellman quotes their important finding of a direct statistical correlation between anti-Israel rhetoric and antisemitism: “Even after controlling for numerous potentially confounding factors...anti-Israel sentiment consistently predicts the probability that an individual is antisemitic.”
The sickness that lies at the heart of the current assault on Israel’s legitimacy is laid out in forensic detail by Stellman’s dispassionate, methodologically rigorous approach. The result is this little volume packed with valuable – if often depressing – information presented in a way that activists and scholars alike should find compelling. The short chapters are easy to read, aided by bullet points and a comprehensive index. The final section contains a set of tools specifically designed for use by trainers and educators.
Some of Stellman’s assertions will elicit controversy: is there really any practical difference between “political” and “anti-Israel” anti-Zionism? Both have the same ultimate objective. And are statements lacking nuance, such as “Islam is basically an expansionist religion” and that “Muslims must wage a ‘Jihad’, a ‘Holy War’, until the whole world becomes “Dar al-Islam” appropriate in a text that explores (among other issues) religiously inspired hatred of one group by another?
The evidence for the central thesis of the book – that anti-Zionsim and antisemitism are closely interlinked – is overwhelming. This is an observation with major implications for the discourse around the Arab-Israeli conflict, yet it is one that is rarely discussed or even acknowledged by allegedly “expert” commentators, academics, politicians, NGOs and the media. That lacuna of awareness represents an existential threat to the future of Israel (and, by extension, the Jewish people) and, in consequence, the prospects for peace.
This handbook is an important contribution to the scant but growing literature on anti-Zionism. Stellman has formulated an important response to that vacuum of serious academic thought. In any future edition (and I gather that the Stellman is planning a follow-up book containing new material), it would be helpful to the reader if the author could add a section by tying together the disparate threads of his argument into a small number of key conclusions. Ideally, these would be linked to a series of recommendations as to how activists might develop practical and effective strategies for countering the anti-Zionist threat to Israel, Jews and civilized norms everywhere.
At a conference held at Bard College two weeks ago on the subject of “racism and anti-Semitism,” a group of protesters—organized by Students for Justice in Palestine—attempted with some success to disrupt a talk by Ruth Wisse and two (Jewish) discussants. (Wisse, known for speaking her mind forcefully against campus anti-Semitism, thanked the protestors for “providing a demonstration” of the topic at hand.) Administrators and security did little to stop the demonstrators.
While such scenes are hardly remarkable in today’s universities, more notable was the flood of indignant denials from conference participants that followed an article by one of the discussants, Batya Ungar-Sargon, describing what happened. The indignation, perhaps, stemmed from Ungar-Sargon’s willingness to label the demonstrations anti-Semitic. Shany Mor, a professor at Bard and the third participant on the panel, defends Ungar-Sargon’s account and exposes the feeble excuses for the thuggish behavior of the students:
The protest was only against Wisse, I was told repeatedly, even though flyers against all three of us were distributed. This was the reception controversial speakers should expect, I was told, even though there were many far more controversial speakers at the conference. But this is a liberal campus, I was told, and the reception was always going to be worse for controversial speakers from the right than from the left. This was doubly odd, as neither Ungar-Sargon nor I can be fairly imagined as being on the right by anyone’s imagination.
And, while many of the more provocative lectures were not terribly provocative to a left-liberal audience, [others] were. There was a panelist who argued that black underachievement was not due to racism but to fathers. There was a panelist arguing that “chosenness” had distorted Jewish political thought and as such infected later European thought on colonialism. . . . . There was a panelist who argued that certain African and Asian countries might have been better off had they remained under European colonial rule. . . . Some had difficult questions from the audience; many didn’t even have that. None was protested.
This is what makes [one Bard professor’s] claim that the demonstration was motivated by nothing more than the fact that the three panelists “espouse political opinions with which the students disagree” so outrageous. It’s understandable that this is what he might want believe, but it’s verifiably false. The three of us up there on that stage actually have radically different political views from each other, and radically different views on the issue in question at that session. This would have been apparent had a civilized discussion taken place.
It has been note that the left and right do not exist on the opposite sides of a straight line, but on each prong of a horseshoe, where they get close to meeting at the extremes.
Here's the horseshoe.
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Jerusalem, October 24 - Every delegation to the Knesset restated its acceptance of pedophiles, abusers, polygamists, and other criminals among their backers and decision-makers today, promising to maintain ties and curry favor with such persons unless and until public attention to such relationships renders those ties politically problematic.
Fractured polity notwithstanding, each of the nine factions in Israel's parliament gave its unanimous imprimatur to a statement underlining their individual and collective commitment to sex offenders, whether those offenders occupy prominent positions within the parties, make significant funding contributions thereto, or otherwise wield electoral influence, at least as long as the nature of those individuals' behavior and their relationships to their respective political parties of choice attract negative attention in measures beyond which such relationships will do the party in question more electoral harm than good.
Sex offenders around the country hailed the move, which they characterized as a crucial measure at a time when those who exploit vulnerable victims for lustful satisfaction or for a sense of power face increasing isolation and threats to their continued political influence. "I understand that certain social taboos prevent a full-throated endorsement of our demographic, but we welcome this announcement just the same," stated Rabbi Eliezer Berland, whose endorsement Haredi politicians often seek. "I, for one, commend [Minister of Health and United Torah Judaism MK Yaakov] Litzman for his steadfastness in ignoring the pernicious influence of the wider secular culture that automatically disqualifies a person from public life when credible reports emerge of his sexual misconduct, instead of waiting for the eventual reestablishment of the Sanhedrin to adjudicate such cases and in the meantime acting as if nothing is wrong."
Berland was not alone in singling out Litzman for praise. Malka Leifer, whose extradition Australian authorities have sought so that she may face child sexual abuse charges there, voiced confidence that the minister would continue to frustrate efforts to bring her to justice. "It's a community issue," she explained. "I'm Haredi; he's Haredi; we're in this together, no matter how horrific the things I might have perpetrated or abetted."
Joint List parties expressed appreciation for authorities continuing to ignore the flagrant polygamy of one of its legislators, and the Democratic Union hailed the mainstream media's curious lack of curiosity regarding Ehud Barak's documented associations with the late pedophile and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein; Likud MKs joined their colleagues in showing solidarity with sex offenders, but several privately conveyed regret that no prominent figures from the party's present composition number among the ranks of those with problematic peccadilloes. "[Former President Moshe] Katzav is already out of jail - he's ancient history," lamented one. "We don't have anyone who can compete with the other parties on this front right now, regardless of Bibi's corruption cases."
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In total, as of Jan. 1 more than half of council members will be non-democracies.
Does it matter that the world’s highest human-rights body is being subverted?
It does. The council’s pronouncements and reports are translated into multiple languages and influence the hearts and minds of millions worldwide.
Dictators on the council will continue to ensure that most of the world’s worst abusers enjoy impunity. Violators like China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia have never been the object of a single resolution, urgent session or commission of inquiry.
Instead, Israel is repeatedly singled out for condemnation, the only country targeted under a special agenda item at every meeting. Hamas terrorism is ignored.
Dictators will also make sure to appoint more anti-Western figures like Jean Ziegler, the longest-serving council official, who openly defends the Maduro regime. In 1989, he announced the creation of the Moammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize, which over the years was awarded to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and, in 2002, to Ziegler himself.
After Moammar Khadafy’s Libya was elected to the council in 2010, Swiss foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey defended the choice, saying it was “important to keep a dialogue” in order to “improve the human-rights situation across the world.” Yet after regimes like Russia, China and Cuba served on the council for a decade, their repression only got worse.
Sadly, for the foreseeable future at the United Nations, the inmates will be running the asylum.
Dictators will appoint more scoundrels like Jean Ziegler—the longest-serving council official—who defends the Maduro regime. In 1989 he co-founded the Qaddafi Human Rights Prize, awarded to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and, in 2002, to Ziegler himself. pic.twitter.com/cKsjkOyLEE
The UN independent expert on human rights in the Palestinian territories on Wednesday called for an international ban on all products made in Israeli settlements, as a step to potentially end Israel’s 52-year-old “illegal occupation” of the West Bank.
Michael Lynk, the Special Rapporteur on Palestinian territories, told the General Assembly’s human rights committee Wednesday that the international community should also issue “a clarion call to the United Nations” to complete and release a database “on businesses engaged in activities related to the illegal settlements.”
Lynk said the international community has a responsibility and a legal obligation to compel Israel to completely end its occupation and remove barriers to self-determination for the Palestinians.
Israel is deeply opposed to a Palestinian-led international boycott movement, which it views as an attack on its very existence. Supporters of the boycotts say they are a non-violent way of protesting Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
The UN Human Rights Council has repeatedly delayed the release of a controversial report about companies doing business in Israeli settlements, which was originally to be published in 2017.
There is a new World Jewish Congress survey of German attitudes towards Jews - and the results are not encouraging.
41% of Germans say that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to Germany.
41% also say that Jews talk too much about the Holocaust.
29% say that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the countries in which they live.
26% say Jews have too much economic power, and 24% say Jews have too much power in the international financial markets.
24% also say Jews have too much power over world politics.
24% say that Jews think they are better than other people.
21% say Jews have too much control over the global media landscape.
19% say Jews do not care what happens to anyone else.
12% blame Jews for most wars.
25% said that something like the Holocaust could happen in Germany today, and 38% said it could happen in another European country.
On the other hand, only 16% of Germans admitted to having unfavorable opinions of Jews (meaning that many people with antisemitic attitudes don't believe that they do) - compared to 53% who have unfavorable opinions of Muslims, 23% who have an unfavorable opinion of Christians and 64% who do not like Roma (Gypsies.)
34% don't like Israelis, and 51% don't like Palestinians.
66% say Israel has the right to exist as the Jewish state. But 58% disagree with the statement that Israel is unfairly criticized internationally for its treatment of Palestinians, only 19% agree.
42% say supporters of Israel use the charge of antisemitism to shut down criticism of Israel as opposed to 22% who disagree.
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Last month it was reported that the Facebook page of Fatah, the political party that dominates the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, was taken down after Palestinian Media Watch documented its explicit support for terror.
Fatah admitted it took down the page because it was worried that Facebook would find it to be promoting terror.
Only a few days later, it returned. And it still pushes a pro-terrorist message.
It regularly gives biographies of other terrorists; this week featuring two who raided Israeli villages in 1968 from Lebanon and were killed.
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Telegraph India reports that on October 14, students at Jamia Millia Islamia University protested a medical infrastructure expo hosted at the university in which Israel showed some innovations.
The international conference titled "Global Health Zenith Confluence ’19" was seemingly organized by the Faculty of Architecture and Ekistics, which now denies any involvement. When students found out that there was going to be an Israeli presence, they protested.
Five students were being charged with discipline violations for their violent protest. Other students went on strike in solidarity, paralyzing the university.
On Wednesday, the university caved into all their demands. Besides giving amnesty to the students, the demand included an agreement that no Israelis would be allowed to participate in any university program.
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What I’m about to write will probably be off-putting, even offensive to some Western readers. But it’s a subject that is extremely relevant to life in much of the rest of the world, especially in the Middle East. Everyone knows that tribal identity plays an important role here, more so than in the West. And there is a related idea that is no less important.
I’m talking about honor, and what I believe to be the moral imperative to maintain one’s honor and the honor of one’s tribe or nation.
Right now, the Tikkunists of liberal Judaism (and liberal Christianity as well) are running for the exits. According to the philosophy espoused by liberal, humanistic Westerners, the only moral considerations are those that relate to not hurting others and being fair to all. Indeed, many believe that tribalism and nationalism are actually immoral, because they imply treating outsiders and insiders differently.
But in other cultures, there are other principles that are important, in many cases important enough to die – or kill – for. One of them is honor, which refers to the public reputation of a person or tribe for the willingness to do whatever is necessary to defend its property and interests. In the Middle East, a person (or nation) that will not fight to protect their property deserves to lose it.
This is at variance with Western usage of the word. In the West, honor is an objective characteristic of an individual. In the Middle East, it refers to the subjective beliefs of others about an individual, a family, a tribe, or a nation. In the West, honesty is the most important component of honor. In the Middle East, toughness and the willingness to do what you must to protect yourself or your group are what determine the degree of honor you possess.
When you lose honor, which you do by not defending yourself when someone takes something of yours or hurts you in some other way, you put the world at large on notice that it is permissible to hurt you.The consequences of losing your honor include losing your property or your life.
In some Arab societies the concept has expanded to a pathological degree. Insofar as women are considered property, even a hint that the “ownership” of a woman by her own or her husband’s family is compromised is enough to damage the honor of her family. Such cases often have tragic endings, when the woman is murdered by close family members in order to restore the family’s honor. This happens even among well-off, educated Arab citizens of Israel.
I do not suggest that we adopt the hateful pathologies of Arab societies. But many Israelis, particularly the Ashkenazi elite that comprise our decision-making classes, are too quick to trade honor for peace and quiet. Our enemies value honor more than we do. There are countless examples of damaging compromises: we don’t punish terrorists in a manner commensurate with their crimes (i.e., we don’t kill them, and sometimes we even punish our own soldiers for killing them). We don’t retaliate for arson balloons, or sometimes even for rocket attacks.
We allow Arab members of the Knesset to literally call for the destruction of the state, despite a law that says that anyone who does that may not sit in the Knesset (we disqualify right-wing Jewish candidates for less). We selectively enforce laws, tax regulations, etc., in favor of Arab citizens to avoid trouble. We allow our enemies to hold our citizens, dead and alive, captive. And, disgracefully, we have allowed the piecemeal takeover of the Temple Mount and most of the Old City of Jerusalem by the Palestinian Arabs, after the high price in blood that we paid to take them back in 1967.
I could go on and on, but it is always the same: it would be hard, expensive, dangerous, or – very important – make us look bad in the eyes of the West, if we were to protect our honor; and since honor is only subjective, why bother?
But honor is not “only subjective.” In the Middle East, deterrence is not determined only by the size of your army and whether you have nuclear weapons (not that these aren’t important); honor is a big part of it. Why is it possible for Hamas to keep throwing thousands of terrorists at our border fence every Friday, and to burn our fields and forests with impunity? Could it be that the repetition of rocket attacks is due to our policy of attacking empty buildings? When we don’t kill those who are trying to kill us, the message is sent that they should keep trying.
While Israel has great military power at hand, it keeps squandering its honor. When Hillel said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” he was saying that it is morally required to act in one’s own interest, no less so than it is morally wrong to be “for myself alone.” One of the characteristics of moral situations is that moral principles sometimes conflict, and that makes it hard to take decisions in particular cases. In Israel, it often happens that our Western moral sensibility conflicts with Middle Eastern imperatives. Unfortunately, the Western sensibility usually pushes the Middle Eastern one aside. We need to learn to balance these principles before our honor deficit becomes so great that we completely lose the ability to defend ourselves.
We can start by removing those members of the Knesset who despise and incite against the Jewish state, by ensuring that terrorists do not survive to enjoy the benefits paid to them by the Palestinian Authority, by taking back sovereignty over the Temple Mount and the Old City, by making Hamas pay in blood for burning our fields, and so on.
Some will say that this is unjust or illiberal, and perhaps by Western standards – standards growing out of Hellenistic and Christian traditions, which do not factor in honor – they may be correct. But we live in the Middle East, not Seattle or Berkeley, and in this neighborhood you can’t ignore tribe, nationality, or religion – and above all, honor.
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Hiding pro-Israel videos and content is nothing short of antisemitic. Maybe some want to claim that it is anti-Israel and not antisemitic, but we just call that modern antisemitism. It might look different than it did before the modern state of Israel existed, but antisemitism is antisemitism. Stopping people from seeing content that supports the Jewish state – well, what else would that be called? It screams antisemitism!
If YouTube tried to stop people from seeing pro-Muslim videos, the world would be outraged. If YouTube tried to stop people from supporting the Palestinian Arabs, again, the world would be outraged. But when it comes to the Jewish people and the Jewish state, the world is silent.
YouTube has shut down the channel of the Center for Near East Policy (otherwise known as the Israel Resource Review) for what it claims were “repeated or severe violations of our Community Guidelines on Violence or Graphic content.”
In a letter sent last week to the center’s head, David Bedein, “the YouTube Team” said that the platform “prohibits violent or gory content posted in a shocking, sensational or disrespectful manner.
“We have decided to keep your account suspended,” the letter continued. “You won’t be able to access or create any other YouTube accounts.”
The letter, according to Bedein, was in response to an appeal by the organization. The YouTube channel was shut down for the first time about one week prior.
The Center for Near East Policy works to uncover corruption within the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA. The organization has produced several mini documentaries, including UNRWA in Jerusalem: Anatomy of Chaos, which examines what it describes as the “human tragedy of life in the UNRWA refugee camp of Shuafat, in the heart of Jerusalem.”
Another documentary, Terror of Return, was shot on the Gaza border in the summer of 2018, showing how “UNRWA’s right of return policy is the ideological foundation with which the next generation of children are brainwashed to believe.”
The documentaries are filmed by Arabs on site and produced by academics in Israel.
“The only real proof that UNRWA is violent is film,” Bedein told The Jerusalem Post. “We have statements by UNRWA children, but these are just statements. The films are convincing proof.”
He said he was shocked that a social media outlet would shut down a team of journalists for doing their jobs.
The lower house of the Czech parliament on Tuesday passed a resolution condemning all forms of anti-Semitism as well as calls for boycotts of Israel.
The non-binding resolution, which passed the Chamber of Deputies with an overwhelming majority, strongly condemns “all manifestations of anti-Semitism directed against individuals, religious institutions, organizations as well as the State of Israel, including the denial of the Holocaust.”
It further rejects “any questioning of the State of Israel’s right of existence and defense” and “condemns all activities and statements by groups calling for a boycott of the State of Israel, its goods, services or citizens.”
The resolution calls on the government in Prague not to offer any financial support to groups that promote a boycott of Israel and to intensify efforts to prevent anti-Semitism. It also urges the government to provide “greater security” to people and institutions that could become the target of anti-Semitic attacks.
During a brief discussion before the vote, lawmakers stressed the historically close relations between Israel and the Czech Republic.
Jan Bartošek, the head of the Christian Democrats faction in the chamber, who introduced the resolution, said the Czech Foreign Ministry helped formulate the wording of the resolution.
“I am convinced that Israel is our strategic partner and ally in the Middle East,” he said.
The whole thing happened in front of a class of 28 ten-year-olds, 11 of whom are Jewish. Trying to
get them to hand in their work, the teacher said, “You better finish off your
work quick, or I’ll ship you all off to the gas chambers.”
The kids told their parents, the
teacher got fired, and that’s all fine, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t need a
backstory. These basic facts are enough. That teacher deserved to be fired.
Newberries Primary School, in Hertfordshire
But one of my friends (let’s
call him “Max”) thought the dismissal of the teacher was “a shonda for de
goyim.” From his point of view, we had a chance to show this teacher just how
wonderful and merciful we are, and instead of least giving her a chance to prove that she was ONLY JOKING,
we got her fired.
To Max, it’s as if a
traditional antisemitic trope has been played out ON THE STAGE OF REAL LIFE and
now this teachers thinks we are nasty Jews who run the world and get people
fired.
This is sad and bad.
Max thinks we would have done
better to educate the teacher, (in particular about the destruction of the
Temple!) rather than fire her. Otherwise, he says, we are “only creating more
Jew-haters.”
Max, it is clear, prefers to take
a gentler approach, to be “nice” about the Holocaust, and assume the teacher
had only been joking, just like she said. He thinks we have no reason NOT to
believe her.
But this I do not understand: Why
does Max want to be “nice” about the Holocaust?
Scratch marks on gas chamber wall in Auschwitz
Because from my point of view,
there is no world in which we should be nice about the Holocaust, ever. There
is no paradigm or context in which the idea of systematically gassing and
burning millions of my people because they are Jews, is funny. And for an
educator to have access to young minds using such horrific images with such a
stupendous lack of sensitivity is, to me, pure evil.
No. There is no benign way to
look at this. None at all.
I can’t judge Max, of course. I
can only turn his supposition around in my mind, try to see a context, weigh
these things against my own beliefs and come to a conclusion. Could she have
been joking? Could it be that to the teacher, threatening kids with gas
chambers was a way to inject some lighthearted fun into things? Like telling ghost stories in
the dark or going on a roller coaster? Like, “MWUHAHAHAHA, if you don’t do your
homework, I’ll send you to the gas chambers, My Pretties!”
You see what I did there,
right? I tried to look at things from the perspective of Max.
I failed.
Because there is no way young
minds should be exposed to such an attitude: such appalling insensitivity and
ignorance as that teacher displayed. And that is why the parents had to speak
out. It’s what we have to do, every single time someone is cavalier about the
horrors that have decimated our people. In particular in the case where the offender is an educator. And in particular in front of Jewish children, who feel these
things more deeply than their classmates. Which is only natural.
So you see, from my point of
view, this was exactly the right time to fire this teacher, and it was also the right thing
to do. Why? Because this teacher failed at her job in every possible way: as an educator, as an
example for young people, and as a human being.
Max thinks we should educate
the teacher. We could do that: give her a course on the Holocaust (rather than on
the destruction of the Temple). But here is what I wish Max understood: it is not
our responsibility to educate that teacher. It is her responsibility to educate
herself. It is every person’s responsibility to know and internalize the
lessons of this recent history: the lessons of the Holocaust.
We are speaking of a teacher. Presumably
college-educated. This person can read. What happened in the Holocaust is all on
record.
The Holocaust did not, after all, take place in Ancient
Greece.
This is contemporary history.
It's practically NOW.
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The ethnic cleansing no-one tells you about
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More young Jews seem to be challenging the false narrative that Jews are
white colonial settlers from Europe. This video not only makes the point
that most...
The Jewish Cordoba
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I have blogged multiple times here on what I see as a parallel between the
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of ...
Hamas in America
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[image: Dry Bones cartoon, Biden, Pro-Palestinian demonstrations, Hamas,
Bibi, Jewish, Israel, Oct 7, Jews, Israel, Rafah, Gaza,]
We should have seen it c...
Jonathan Sacks – Faith After the Holocaust
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Jonathan Sacks – Faith After the Holocaust IsraelSeen.com
Jonathan Sacks – Faith After the Holocaust Faith After the Holocaust Rabbi
Sacks responds to the ...
Yom Hashoah 5784 – 2024
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Israel’s Yom Hashoah began at sundown this evening with the annual ceremony
at Yad Vashem with torches lit in memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of
the...
The Palestinian “Two-State” Plan: Duping the West
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One of the great unsolved mysteries of the 21st century is why, given what
a catastrophe it proved to be, anyone, much less a whole phalanx of
politicians,...
Closing Jews Down Under Website
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With a heavyish heart I am closing down the website after ten years.
It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
past...
‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
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Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
about the need for a ‘working’ Test & Trace system even more loudly than
the govern...
Friday, October 25, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
