Reclaiming the term ‘Zionism’
THE term “Zionist” has been stripped of its true meaning and instead become a term of infamy and curse, Alex Ryvchin says.Shmuley Boteach: This Code Pink Leader Is a Shameless Liar
This distortion is the motivation behind the Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO’s just released second book, Zionism – The Concise History, which tells the history of the Jewish people from their origins in biblical Israel to their exile and the formation of the national movement that led to their return nearly two millennia later.
It examines the leaders who shaped the Zionist movement and events that impacted on it, including Chaim Weizmann’s wartime service to the British, the Dreyfus Affair, the emergence of Jerusalem mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini and the impact of the pogroms and the Holocaust.
“It is vital that our young people understand the story of Zionism, which is not only inspiring, but is inextricably linked to every phase of Jewish history, and as such, forms a fundamental part of Jewish identity,” Ryvchin said.
“It is an organic expression of two core aspects of the Jewish people – our peoplehood and our connection to our ancestral lands.”
He said the consequence of allowing deliberate distortions of the meaning of Zionism to go unchallenged is that new generations “will only know of Zionism and Zionists as an evil to be fought”.
“The movement to liberate or at least shelter the Jewish people from antisemitism, the movement that seeks nothing more than to give the Jews a scrap of land to call their own, to ensure that the Jewish people and their contributions to humanity shall not vanish from this earth – somehow this has become akin to racism, to Nazism, to colonialism, to white supremacism, and every other popular conception of evil known today,” he said.
“These are lies that cannot be allowed to be laundered into truth.”
Last week, my organization, the World Values Network, hosted a discussion with Yair Netanyahu, son of the Israeli prime minister, and one of Israel’s best-known young social media influences.On the Anniversary of Kristallnacht and the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Remembering East Germany’s Jews
I’m a free speech absolutist and consider the First Amendment to be inviolate. I am so proud of countries like the United States and Israel for ensuring that people can speak their mind without fear of government censorship or arrest.
I allowed Ariel Gold, National Co-Director of Code Pink, to attend our event. As she entered the talk, someone spotted her and a spirited debate ensued between our organizers and security as to whether she would remain. Everyone was sure she would try and destroy the event.
So I walked up to her, and asked if she planned to disrespect our speaker and destroy the talk. She told me, and other organizers, that her sole desire was to listen and take notes. I asked her again for her commitment to not disrupt. She looked me in the eye and gave me her word. And I took her at her word. She, however, did not keep her word — and tried to ruin our event.
It turns out that in addition to Ariel Gold’s repulsive views on Israel and role as an apologist for Iran, she is also an inveterate liar who has the nerve to look people right in the eye and lie. Even after I spoke to her privately, I extracted a public commitment from her — only to witness Gold get up with scores of other protesters to try and destroy a free speech event because they disagreed with the views of our guest.
Gold would later say on her Twitter feed that she protested alone and did not lead the others. But she’s a confirmed liar, as we all saw. So why believe anything she says?
As a religious man, I have debated some of the world’s most famous atheists, like Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens. As a pro-Israel activist, I have debated some of the world’s leading Palestinian apologists, including Peter Beinart and Hussein Ibish. All of these debates have been respectful, and we did not try to shut each other up.
It was mid-September 1988, and while shuffling through the mail in my Budapest apartment, I came upon an oversize envelope inviting me, as a journalist, to cover the events of the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht on Nov. 9 in Berlin. That was not unusual since the city of West Berlin and the rest of the Federal Republic—West Germany—marked the event in scores of towns, villages and cities. As well they should, of course.PodCast: The Fifth Column 159 - w/ Bari Weiss "How to Fight Anti-Semitism, Shifting Political Baggage"
I did a double take. This envelope came from the press office of the East German government, the German Democratic Republic, and after a few phone calls to friends in the press corps in West Germany, they were as surprised as I was.
When did the GDR start commemorating Kristallnacht, I asked a friend at Reuters in Budapest, who called his bureau in West Berlin.
“You mean in its entire 38-year history?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Never.”
Word was that Erich Honecker, head of East Germany’s Communist Party, was trying to secure legitimacy for his country, and since Romania’s dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, had managed to secure Most Favored Nation Trading status from the United States—mostly because he allowed the Jewish community to function and receive financial support from America—Honecker was keen to deal a Jewish card he’d never played before.
And did he ever play it. Over a two-day period in East Berlin there would be an exhibition on the history of Jews in Berlin (the first in East Germany’s history), a special session of the East German parliament, a rededication of the giant, ruined synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse, which was going to be rebuilt as a Jewish museum, and an evening performance by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.
Honecker would never see a return on his investment, because exactly one year later, on Nove. 9, 1989, Berliners would be tearing away at the Berlin Wall, and he himself would be sitting at home, watching history unfold on TV. Having been fired a few weeks earlier, he would soon be on trial and the German Democratic Republic would be erased from the map.
But that lay in the future. It was fall, 1988, I had my permission, an official invitation, and a few weeks later I drove up from my home in Budapest to East Berlin, arriving on Nov. 9.
GUEST: Bari Weiss
Op-Ed Staff Editor and Writer @ The New York Times
Author, "How to Fight Anti-Semitism" (2019)
Small talk till about 14min