Friday, September 20, 2013

Nicole Bernstein Hands Out Friendship and Hope

Mike L.

As my readers will recall, lecturer Ghassan Zakaria, of San Diego State University, gave out a map of the Middle East to his students with the homeland of the Jewish people deleted.

This kind of thing is pernicious because without actually criticizing Israel, Zakaria merely makes the country of our ancestry disappear.  This is simply unacceptable.  No one who teaches at the university level should be allowed by their department to simply make the Jewish people, or the Jewish State, go poof.

It's a form of heritage theft and whenever it occurs we need to stand up.

Zakaria teaches the Arabic language and, according to the SDSU Chair of Department of Linguistics and Asian / Middle Eastern Languages, Professor Ghada Osman, used "Palestine" in place of Israel on the labels of that map to "reflect the view of Arab-speakers in the region."

I just got off the phone with Nicole Bernstein, the StandWithUs Regional Director for San Diego, and I have to say I am pleased.  Nicole pursued this story and was interviewed live by ABC (10 News) correspondent, Cristin Severance.

StandWithUs is an organization, introduced to me by Dr. Michael Harris, that those of us who care about the well-being of the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel can be proud of.  They fight strong.  They fight smart.  And they don't seem to be ideologically beholden to either the political left or the political right.

Nicole tells me, furthermore, that SDSU, in response to this situation, has created two scholarships for those who wish to study in Israel and for those who wish to learn more about Jewish history and culture.

This, she says, is a move unprecedented among American universities.  In recent years some American universities have turned against the Jewish people, by turning against the Jewish State.  Thus Yale University closed its Institute for the study of anti-Semitism (YIISA).  This was a very important initiative headed by Professor Charles Small, the director of the program.  I, for one, looked to this organization because they highlighted scholars from around the world who concerned themselves with a question that should be of deep concern to all Jewish people.

The University of Pennsylvania, sadly, held a conference at the very beginning of this year to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the Jews of the Middle East.  Columbia University, amazingly enough, hosted Iranian president Ahmadinejad in 2007.

San Diego State University, however, seems to be taking another tack.  Instead of caving to anti-Semitic anti-Zionism, SDSU has stood up and said "no" and we should appreciate that fact.  It's important because it represents a bit of a turn in the way that things have been going.

A story like this is important precisely because it gives heart, and it gives hope, to our relationships around the world.

It's not every university in California that is willing to stand up for the Jewish people in the Middle East and the Jewish people of the Middle East are, in fact, a people under siege.

This story, in my view, represents a hopeful moment and hopeful moments are always more than welcome.

{G-d Knows.}

Many thanks to Nicole.

.

Michael Lumish is the editor of Israel Thrives.


Sunday, September 15, 2013

Che At The Conversation

ANU Seminar on human rights in the West Bank
Get a load of this comment

Che Gorrilla I think you are incorrect in your assertions. The project to create a Jewish and Zionist state is long running and was largely financed through the patronization of Rothschild in France.
It is interesting to see them here and supporting the divisions that gave rise to the World Wars on the other hand. So they profit from the Nazi's and from the insertion of the Israeli state at the crossroads of the Eurasian continent.
Elsewhere in this comment stream it is established the manifest criminality of the USA Israel's main and contemporary sponsor. Rather than stabilize the region, the Israel state provides a point of friction and dirty tricks. In league with the USA it has established client relationships with Arabian states dividing the Arab/Muslim civilization. In allowing itself to be divided it shows it's own weakness.



Che Gorilla

Human Rights Activist
In reply to greg fullmoon
"What is new in this? Enjoy your Succot, and your move out of the wilderness. The trick is to acknowledge the acceptance you received from the 19th century Palestinians and the treatment you meted out in return. Not much alters whilst we refuse the lessons of history."
I was going to let this pass. There is a point of view that the racist nonsense that drips from this comment is best ignored. It is of course antisemitism in its classic form. The Jews are responsible for all the world's ills. Rothschild (the French one) caused both world wars from which he (they?) profited. All the problems in Arab countries are sourced in Israel. Israel is always guilty. The Arabs are always innocent. Israel's repeated peace offers never happened. Arab rejectionism is a myth. Everything is a conspiracy. The Jews have been evil since biblical times.
You see this is an example of ingrained racism which now so prevalent it is hardly noticeable. No one bats an eyelid.
But get this phrase again.
"....to acknowledge the acceptance you received from the 19th century Palestinians and the treatment you meted out in return."
Mate, I admit that sometimes I feel like I'm 150 years old but I can assure you I was not around in the nineteenth century. Nor were any Israelis.
That you can even refer to me in the second person plural says everything we need to know about you.
The Eternal Jew.




No  antisemitism here.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Creeping Racism In Australian Universities -- Exhibit B

geoffff

Check this out. A comment on a thread about the Sunni v Shiite civil war on the Syrian front at the Conversation attracts this comment. 

You don't even have to scratch the surface these days. It lays on the ground like dog turds on a Paris footpath. If it wasn't for the ape it would never be challenged. You can just see the weekend perusers nodding their heads in contemplative agreement. 

I haven't looked at the rest of the thread. "Billy Field''s is the most recent contribution to the discussion. You can just imagine. Listen. Hear that growing rumble over the horizon like an approaching summer storm?

That's the sound of antisemitism denial on this windy cloudy Yom Kippur morning. 









Billy Field

logged in via Facebook
I saw something somewhere that this whole "Syria/Iran" "intervention" agenda is really about a "smokescreen" to divert attention from Israels "expansionist" & "refusal to settle with Palestinians" agenda.
When one considered it seems to be the "Israel fronts" & lobbies that seem to be doing pushing for this war on Syria (as it was for the Iraq invasion) one must suspect this is why the USA is seemingly backing the Syria rebels....
We need a settlement in Israel/Palestine foe everyone sakes...(except of course profiteers)....The USA can do this in 5mins by telling Israel it will stop "Aid" & do banking sanctions if they don't settle.....Lets move forward PLEASE....I suspect more money & benefit in trade than war for all!!
reportReply


  1. Che Gorilla

    Human Rights Activist
    In reply to Billy Field
    What a creepy comment.
    I was about to write another post on the creeping racism in Australian universities, following the ANU's international hate meet this week, and thought I would just quickly check out The Weekend Conversation email first for some light entertainment to steel the nerves.
    Sure enough. First thing I see is this nasty little titbit from the Goebbels' Centre For Peace And Conflict Studies.
    Muslims murdering Muslims on an industrial scale? Arabs committing crimes against humanity as pretty much as ugly as they get?
    "It's all the Jews fault" . They profit from it. Note the inverted commas. And where they stop.
    What really scrapes the nerves like a Nazi dentist's drill is that comments like this on a forum with academic pretensions always, always,  go unchallenged. It's like the neighbours during a Kristalnacht pogrom down the street.
    Will be up at the Joint in five minutes. Some one must speak out. No point on relying on the "intellectual" class. The rot sets in there first.




    Updated


    Chris Saunders

    retired
    In reply to Che Gorilla
    Che could you explain more fully your point? You surely can't deny that Israel's establishment in the Middle East had a de-stablizing influence which has persisted ever since. Claims have been constantly made about Israel and its territorial ambitions and its influence upon US policy. Is it reasonable to ignore these claims in the light of the military engagements it has been involved in the past and surely you are not claiming that any criticism of Israel is racism. Israel is reported to have chemical and nuclear weapons and are not signatories to the UN Chemical weapons convention. Is this racism to state such a report because Israel denies its truth, or is it racism because it is said about Israel? And I am not clear why the Billy Field comment is considered creepy. Surely, when a comment thread is seeking reasons for actions a lot of media reports will be thrown into the mix seeking rebuttal or agreement. When one does not know, one does not usually answer. Other's silence surely means little else?


    The ape is always happy to oblige


    Regrettably he appears to have been banned.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Letter From Israel

 elinor        אלינור   


                                                                                                                        



HOLIDAYS IN THE HOLY LAND—SUCCOT

  
5774 is upon us and people on the street are greeting each other with calls of Shana tova—a good year—whether they know each other or not.  Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement—begins tonight and the call has changed to G’mar chatima tova, may you be inscribed in the Book of Life for good.  Thank you.

For those of us who aren’t certain as to what holiday falls when, Succot is the one that comes up right after Yom Kippur.  It’s called that because people build succot, huts, in commemoration of the 40 years following the Exodus from Egypt.  Each succa (or sukka or sukkah, there is no end to the translations and transliterations)—a temporary booth which implies a residence—reflects the builders’ tastes and family traditions. In any case there are no more than three full walls and the roof is left mostly open to the sky, as was the case without proper building materials during the Exodus. Throughout the holiday, which lasts for seven days, people eat in the succa and often sleep there as well. 

Succot (plural of succa) is a national religious holiday which is expressed in the building of the succa, acquiring the Four Species and needless to say, food preparation.

One of the best parts of living in Israel is the celebration of what is called in the Diaspora ‘the Jewish holidays’.  (We just call them ‘holidays’.)  Friends who had moved to Australia several years ago recently moved back here, saying they didn’t feel any real Jewishness in Sydney.  The atmosphere of the city didn’t change when the High Holydays came around, although they certainly had access to every sort of synagogue imaginable. 

The difference is clear:  In Israel, the atmosphere is the country—the scurrying to organise the essentials; the hustling for ingredients; the cooking of mounds of food according to ethnic dictates and if you’re lucky, a noisy, hungry crowd to enjoy all that with you.  Then the peaceful hush of the holiday begins.  Even if you have no real connection to Jewish practices, it’s affecting.

So here’s the drill:  Succot follows on the heels of Yom Kippur and there are only four days in which to build a succa. Whilst many people buy them ready-made, or haul the pieces down from their boydem—overhead storage spaces—the succa still needs to be assembled, so the sounds of hammering and drilling are heard all day and much past the night-time legal noise limit, which is widely ignored. 

Palm fronds, called schach, are the preferred covering for the top of the succa and are purchased from the schach sellers who suddenly appear on street corners.  Wrestling those huge, awkward branches back to the site of the succa is easily a job for two grown men.

For the Four Species, a shuk—a street market—is essential.  Endless tables display samples, each vendor hawking his wares as pure, absolute perfection.  Observant Jews roam the shuk, comparing this etrog (citron) against that, considering the freshness of the lulav, calculating the relative costs and wondering if they’ll ever find a set of one fruit and three kinds of branches—willow, myrtle and palm—that will please them.  They inevitably do.

Neighbourhoods clatter with activity until the last hour before the holiday begins. Some families construct a small succa, meant only for themselves; other succas are gigantic—often built on the grounds of synagogues—so that those who have the need but not the means can eat and rest as prescribed.  Electric lights (with timers) for the evening meals are connected by endless cords to their home base outlets—and you’d best watch your step, those cords are pernicious.

Many apartment buildings assemble one conjoined succa, each unit belonging to a different family but attached without interior walls so that neighbours can eat together.  Meals are carried into the succa and often shared.  Tree roots and various fauna are forgiven their intrusion and the tables, which are left in situ overnight, often provide early morning sleeping quarters for local cats.  There are no proper doors, so the tablecloths are renewed daily. 

After the banging and the building, what?  As in any new home, decoration!  For days and days before the holiday begins, schoolchildren have been creating artwork for the succa, featuring the elements of Succot.  All those kindergarten mornings, slaving away over paper chains; all those afternoons in primary school, depicting the Four Species and the Exodus from Egypt; producing hanging lanterns; crafting ungainly fruits of papier mache in improbable shades along with the best of holiday wishes scrawled on every colour of paper—those are the homey arts of Succot.  If the decorations are well made and the rain doesn’t come to ruin them, they might feature again next year. In the ultra-religious zones, one can buy a range of Christmas decorations, with lots of dazzle. 

Succot engages the whole family, from the crayon pushers to the kids who this year are finally tall enough to help hang the artwork to the teenagers who wrestle with the schach and handle the tools to the adults who are schlepping, banging and cooking.  As holidays go, Succot is a winner.


G’mar chatima tova.

cross posted Israel Thrives

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Tchaikovsky Flashwaltz at Hadassah Hospital

geoffff





hat tip Ken

Revisiting the Failings of the Jewish Left

Mike L.
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

The history of the State of Israel is grounded in progressive-left Zionism and progressive-left Zionism has failed both the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

There is a reason that the Soviet Union was so quick to recognize Israel in May of 1948 and that reason is because Stalin understood that David Ben Gurion was a socialist and believed that Jewish ideals of social justice could be used in the service of the great ideological endeavor which was Soviet Communism.  In the early history of the Cold War it was up for grabs whether Israel would side with the Soviet Union or the United States in the struggle between American capitalism and its Russian and Chinese rivals.

It quickly became clear, however, that Israel, despite its socialist roots and the tradition of the kibbutzim, was not going to side with the Soviets in the Cold War.  Although Israel remains a country heavily influenced by the ideals of social democracy - more so than in the United States - it has in recent decades moved closer toward the sensibilities of competitive capitalism.  Benjamin Netanyahu, himself, is well-known for his free market economic reforms as the Israeli Finance Minister between 2003 and 2005.

Nonetheless, within diaspora Jewry, the main political strain is that of the progressive-left.

Most American Jews come out of this movement.  We tend to be heavily influenced by the rise of economic progressivism, as it emerged under Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression, as well as the rise of the Civil Rights Movement following World War II and the blatant cruelties of the Nazis and the injustices of the Jim Crow south in the United States.  Western diaspora Jews have tended to favor the rise of women's rights and gay rights and the rights of ethnic minorities.  This is, in part, because of the Holocaust, which led the post-Holocaust Jewish community to favor the movements for social justice and universal human rights within which the progressive-left allegedly grounds itself.

The Jewish people were integral to the movements for social justice in the latter part of the twentieth century precisely because we were among the primary victims of Germany's National Socialists.  After World War II the Jewish people throughout the west fought for liberalism, or the "progressive" view, because we saw ourselves in solidarity with the various minorities, including the African-American minority in the United States, struggling for freedom against racist persecution.

The problem, of course, is that our alleged former allies have turned against us and have targeted the Jewish state for defamation, if not annihilation.  The progressive-left, as a movement, has betrayed the Jewish people because it has accepted anti-Semitic anti-Zionism, and the BDS movement, as part of its larger coalition.  They have taken one of their foremost allies, the Jewish people, and thrown us into the gutter.  It is out of the progressive-left, and it is out of the Democratic Party, that hatred toward Israel is most prominent within the western political milieu today.

It therefore should come as surprise to no one that the majority of Democratic Party delegates, in its nominating convention for a second Obama term, booed the fact that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state.  Barack Obama, of course, does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and neither does the western-left, in general.  In fact, it is entirely questionable if the majority of progessive-left Jews do so.



It is my contention that progressive-left western Zionism has failed the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel in a number of ways.

1)  The Jewish left generally fails to acknowledge, or seriously address, the rise of political Islam.  Given the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood and its various off-shoots, including Hamas and al-Qaeda, oppress women, kill Gay people outright, and call for the submission, if not genocide, of the Jews, this is a moral failing.  It is not a moral failing on par with the moral failing of prominent diaspora Jews during the Holocaust, such as that as the owners of the New York Times, but it comes in a close second.

2) The Jewish left justifies hatred toward their fellow Jews.  The Arabs of that part of the world are uncomfortable with the Jewish people in their midst because the Arab-Muslim Middle East is the single most racist part of the planet. Western Jews, to the extent that they excoriate the "settlers" for daring to live where neither Barack Obama, nor Mahmoud Abbas, justify that racism.

3) Progressive-left Jews continually play defense.  Throughout western-left venues, such as the various blogs and journals and newspapers, anti-Semitic anti-Zionists attack and progressive-left Jews defend.  On a daily basis, they attack and we defend.  Over and over and over again, the pattern repeats.  Perhaps it is time to throw the ball down-field.

4) Progressive-left Jews uphold the moral equivalency canard.  Because they have generally accepted the "Palestinian narrative" of perfect victim-hood, they often think that Arab violence against Jews in the Middle East is the result of Jewish misbehavior.  In this way they conjure a moral equivalency between those who seek to harm the Jewish people and their Jewish victims.

5)  Progressive-left Jews have thrown the history of the Jewish people into the garbage.  They disregard the history of their own people under al-Sharia, which is to say, under the system of dhimmitude, because it makes Muslims look bad.  This would be something akin to if black people in the United States pretended that slavery never happened.  It's like trying to explain the history of Jim Crow without reference to slavery in the United States.

Because the Jewish left, which comprises the majority of diaspora Jews, refuses to seriously acknowledge and discuss the rise of the political Islam throughout the Middle East it endangers the Jewish people as a whole, particularly those of us who live in the Middle East.  The rise of political Islam under the misnomer "Arab Spring" was supported by American president Barack Obama who hailed it as the great upwelling of Arab democracy, despite the fact that it was nothing of the sort.  Deposed Egyptian president Muhammed Morsi even referred to the Jewish people as the children of apes and pigs and smiled through a party convention at Tahrir Square in which delegates cried out for the conquest of Jerusalem and, yet, Obama still supported the Muslim Brotherhood and American Jews still supported Obama.




"The capital of the Caliphate - the capital of the United States of the Arabs - will be Jerusalem, Allah willing."

That is what the man above said, with Morsi in attendance during an election rally, and yet this gave the president of the United States no pause whatsoever.  Obama still pledged financial and military aid to people who despise the United States and who seek to conquer the Jews.

Furthermore, it must be noted, that diaspora-left Jewry tends to spit hatred at their co-religionists who choose to live in Judea and Samaria.  The Jews who choose to live on what is historically Jewish land suffer the hatred and the defamation of much of the Jewish left because they are accused by Mahmoud Abbas and the Obama administration of impeding the "peace process."  Mahmoud Abbas and Barack Obama insist upon yet another Judenrein Arab state within the Jewish heartland and well-meaning American Jews go along with it.

Progressive-left Zionists always play defense and never go on the offense, but one cannot win a fight if one only takes punches.  In my observations, subjective as they are, of western Jews who engage with anti-Semitic anti-Zionists within venues such as the Huffington Post and the Guardian and Daily Kos, it is the anti-Zionists who always spit at the Jews and it is the Jews who always duck and run before an audience of non-Jewish "liberals."  If the Jewish left wishes to develop any respect from the rest of us, they must learn to take the fight to our rivals.  So long as we remain too cowardly to do so then we can never win the war of ideas against us.

Perhaps one of the most egregious failing of the Jewish left, however, is the tendency to fall into the moral equivalency canard.  We want so badly to be treated fairly that we bend over backwards to treat others fairly even when they never even begin to return the favor.  The Arabs of the Middle East have, over many long centuries, committed genocide against the Jews in that part of the world and, yet, we constantly harp on the "hill top youth" and the "settlers" and the "price-tag" graffiti kids.

Maybe instead of beating up on our fellow Jews, we should stand up for the rights of the Jewish people on historically Jewish land.  There is no moral equivalency between those who seek to murder Jews and those Jews who are willing to fight back.  This whole notion that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter needs to be countered because it is unjust and entirely unfair to the tiny Jewish minority.

Finally, we have to place the long Arab war against the Jews in the Middle East within the context of Jewish history in that part of the world.  What Ben Gurion, and the Zionists of 1948 and earlier, did was relieve the Jewish people of dhimmitude under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperialism.  In the United States there is a general respect for the fact that African-Americans suffered centuries of persecution and oppression and no one, aside from the African-American community, shows more respect for the fact of that injustice than do American Jews.

And, yet, somehow we have no regard for thirteen centuries of Jewish persecution under Arab-Muslim rule and abuse.

The Muslim-Jewish conflict in the Middle East cannot be understood without acknowledging the long history of the Muslim persecution and genocide of the Jewish people on Jewish land.

Period.

.

Michael Lumish is the editor of Israel Thrives.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Say Hello To Australia's New Foreign Minister.

geoffff




As widely anticipated Australia has a new government. The new Prime Minister is Tony Abbott. 

The new foreign minister will be Julie Bishop who is deputy leader of the Liberal Party.

 Julie Bishop was born in South Australia  and was educated at St Peter's Collegiate Girl's School and the University of Adelaide. She graduated from the University of Adelaide with a law degree in 1978, and subsequently practised as a barrister and solicitor in Adelaide.  
Bishop relocated to Perth where she practised as a commercial litigation solicitor.. She became a partner of prominent law firm Clayton Utz in 1985, and managing partner of the Perth office in 1994. In 1996 she attended Harvard Business School in Boston and completed an Advanced Management Program for Senior Managers.
In 1998 she was elected to the Australian Parliament representing the Western Australian seat of Curtin. She became a minister in the Howard coalition government in 2003 and held posts in the Howard ministry until the defeat of the Government in the 2007 elections. 
On BDS Julie Bishop had this to say in the Parliament . 

 Ms JULIE BISHOP (Curtin—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:03): I rise to move this motion condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign that continues to be waged against the state of Israel and its people, and reiterating our support for the two-state solution and for the resumption of direct negotiations by the leaders of the Israeli and the Palestinian people for a lasting peace.
The provocative, counterproductive and highly discriminatory actions of this BDS campaign come at a time of increased uncertainty and upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa, as the hopes and aspirations of restless populations have cast aside old regimes. Israel is confronted with a new strategic environment more hostile to its interests and the security of its people than perhaps at any other time in recent history. At a moment when the community of nations should be offering their hands in support, Israel faces renewed pressure on the international stage.
The coalition has never supported and will not support any attempt in the United Nations, other fora or elsewhere that results in Israel's international isolation and that is the purpose of this BDS campaign. We wholeheartedly reject the attempt by members of the Socialist Alliance, the Australian Greens and the 21 trade union movement members and affiliates who seek to hold Israel, its people and its business community hostage to their ideologies and prejudices. This intolerance has found expression in recent times through the BDS campaign initiated in 2005, which now has targeted action against the Israeli owned Max Brenner company, which operates chocolate cafes in Australia. 
The whole of the speech is here.
In a recent interview with the Australian edition of the Guardian Julie Bishop said that Bob Carr, the Labor foreign minister, came to the foreign affairs job fifteen months ago "telling everyone the one thing he wanted to achieve as foreign minister was to change Australia's stance on Israel." She said Carr succeeded when he played a leading role in overruling the prime minister's preferred position last December so that Australia abstained from the vote on upgrading the recognition of a Palestinian state., "We will return to what was previously bipartisan support for Israel," .
She has repeatedly condemned the BDS campaign as antisemitic.
And say goodbye to Bob Carr who had this to say early in the election campaign from the Lakemba mosque. 
” I’ve been to Ramallah, I’ve spoken to the Palestinian leadership, and we support their aspirations to have a Palestinian state in the context of a Middle East of peace. And that means respect for the right of Israel to exist. But we want that Palestinian state to exist, in the context of a peace in the Middle East, and that’s why we say, unequivocally, all settlements on Palestinian land are illegal under international law and should cease. That is the position, of Kevin Rudd, the position of the Federal Labor Government, and we don’t make apologies for it.”
Bye bye Bobby.


cross posted Israel Thrives

Pat Condell -- "Wake up, girls. You're on the wrong side."

geoffff 

Is there anything more vile than a "progressive" feminist who rants and raves about a conservative politician who makes an unfortunate comment about the appearance of a woman candidate within range of a live microphone, but has nothing to say at all about the treatment of women in Islamic countries and is determined to never know about it?

Pat Condell doesn't think so.

I  disagree. There is something more vile.

A "progressive" Israel bashing, Jew boycotting gay man who has nothing to say about this and who also ignores the ingrained racism in these cultures is much more vile. Sexist, racist, homophobic and above all cowardly. Sheer gutlessness.

The NSW Greens spokesperson for gay rights who  gives an interview condemning Israel to Press TV on Al Quds day. That is political man at its worst.

Welcome to the modern "progressive" left. 







Taking Back Our History

Mike L.

{Cross-posted at Israel Thrives, the Times of Israel and News and Views from Jews Down Under.}

The Jewish people in the Middle East are a people under siege.

Aside from the perpetual violence leveled at the Jewish minority in the region, the Jewish people are also subject to the theft of our history.  This is a theft that cannot be measured in financial terms.  This is a theft that goes to the core of our humanity and our dignity as a people.  It seeks, in fact, to eliminate us as a people.

For reasons which I find unfathomable, we are failing to place the Arab-Jewish conflict within the history of the Jews in the Middle East under thirteen centuries of Arab-Muslim persecution.  The conflict between the vast Arab-Muslim majority and the tiny Jewish minority needs to be understood in just those terms.  The Jews of the Middle East were a subjugated people since Muhammed's armies marched out of the Saudi peninsula in the 7th century.  From that day to this the Jews were considered dhimmis, second and third class citizens under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperialism.

But the Day of the Dhimmi is Done.

When people read about the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews in the Middle East they are, today, generally given the distinct impression that Jewish militarists are oppressing an innocent, "indigenous" Arab minority.  Ever since the 6 Day War Israel has been depicted as the "Goliath" to the Palestinian-Arab "David."  Sometimes, in fact, the Jews of the Middle East are even depicted as the "New Nazis" while the local Arabs are depicted as the "New Jews."  For those of us with relatives dead from the Holocaust, such depictions are sadistic and the extent to which they come from the progressive-left, or even progressive-left Jews like David Harris-Gershon, is the extent to which the progressive-left has betrayed its own alleged values.

Sadism toward Jews, of course, is nothing new and it was the theocratic hallmark of Arab rule for thirteen centuries.  There is, however, an extreme reluctance within the international Jewish community to discuss this fact, but fact it is.  The Long Arab War Against the Jews of the Middle East has gone through many phases.

These include:

Phase 1, 1920 - 1947: Riots and Massacres

Phase 2, November 1947 - April 1948: The Civil War in Palestine

Phase 3, 1948 - 1973: Conventional Warfare

Phase 4, 1964 - Present: The Terror War

Phase 5, 1975 - Present: The Delegitimization Effort

It is the delegitimization effort, beginning with the UN "Zionism equals racism" resolution of 1975 that, today, represents the greatest threat to both the Jewish people and to the Jewish state of Israel.  The delegitimization effort, and the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS), is grounded in the denial of Jewish history.  The only way that it can be maintained - if it wishes to have any moral legitimacy - is through the denial of Jewish history and the theft of Jewish history.

The Denial of Jewish History:

The denial of Jewish history is a game played by Arabs and Jews alike.

The Jews play it by simply keeping quiet because we don't want to upset anyone.  Given Israel's success, and given the shaming that the world lathers on us, we don't want to discuss the fact of Jewish persecution under Arab rule because it seems almost petty at this point.  Why dig up little things like the fact that historically in many places under Arab rule, Jews were not allowed to build new synagogues?  Why even mention the fact that in many places throughout the Middle East, Jews were not allowed to ride horses?  Or that sometimes we had to wear distinctive clothing in order to distinguish us from Muslims?  Or why even mention the fact that throughout the region a Muslim could beat a Jew, but it was illegal, under al-Sharia, for a Jew to fight back?

There is a reason that young Arab boys love to throw stones at Jews and they've been doing so long, long before anyone ever heard of any such person as David Ben-Gurion.

If in the Jewish world the denial of Jewish history is a matter of silence, in the Arab world, however, it is not.

The foremost example is what Dore Gold refers to as "Temple Denial."  The first that Bill Clinton heard about it was during the Oslo "peace process" wherein Yassir Arafat denied that the Jewish Temple ever resided in Jerusalem.  Clinton was, by all accounts, flabbergasted at Arafat's assertion, but this certainly did not prevent the PLO and Hamas and Fatah, and their western-progressive allies, from undertaking the full-scale theft of Jewish history in the years following.  Within Islamic historiography, Abraham was a Muslim.  Moses was a Muslim.  And now we learn that Jesus was the first "Palestinian shaheed."

We even have Jewish opinionators claiming that some contemporary Jews, despite DNA evidence to the contrary, have no actual connection to the Land of Israel.

So, what we need to do is take back our own history and place the Arab war against us within the context of that history.  It's a matter of time and place.  History did not start in 1967, after all, nor 1948.  The ongoing hostility against the Jews in that part of the world has been consistent and vicious and incessant since Muhammed.  He decided that because the Jewish people refused to accept him as "the Prophet" that we are his mortal enemy who need to be either murdered or subdued under the rules of Sharia and Arab hostility against the Jewish minority has been predicated on that ever since.

The Theft of Jewish History and Replacement Theology:

What is perhaps most egregious is not the denial of Jewish history, but the theft of Jewish history within something akin to "replacement theology" or what is also known as supersessionism.  Anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, pro-Arab propagandists love to appropriate Jewish history and claim it as their own.  The Jewish people, of course, are among the most ancient people on the planet.  Our history predates written history, itself.  Yet, as you can see from the image of Anne Frank in a keffiyeh, the Arabs, and there supporters, love to abscond with our history.

It's a form of cultural theft and it is widespread within the delegitimization war against the Jews of the Middle East.

Another example, of course, is the attempt to replace the Holocaust with al-Nakba, the "catastrophe."  Among Arab anti-Jewish racists, and their supporters in the west, the failure of their Arab grandparents and great-grandparents to commit genocide upon the Jews - directly after the Holocaust - is considered a catastrophe on the level of the Holocaust, itself.

They even use the term "Nakba denial" to place the failure to kill the Jews, and thus their subsequent displacement to neighboring Arab countries, on a moral level with the Holocaust, itself.  This is despite the fact that the only reason there was any such thing as al-Nakba is because of intense Arab racism toward the indigenous Jewish population as that population restored its national home after World War II and after freeing itself from dhimmitude.

What we need to do going forward is to stand up for our rights of self-determination and self-defense and to remind our detractors that the Jews of the Middle East withstood thirteen centuries of abuse under Arab rule, but those days are over.   In my view, the "Palestinians" can have a state for themselves within the Jewish heartland, but that can only happen if they demonstrate an actual inclination toward peace.  So long as they continue to revile Jews throughout Arab media and threaten us with genocide and teach their children that stoning us makes for good sport, there can never be a twenty-third Arab state.

So long as they endeavor to steal our history and heritage, the vast Arab-Muslim majority can never be friends with the tiny Jewish minority.

It's sad, but it is true.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Father Dave Watch

geoffff


George Galloway and Father Dave - July 2013
"Mine is the good old fashioned right handed salute. The other  ugly fascist uses the left." 



It has been a while since this blog has found the stomach to cast its sweeping light house eye on this seriously unpleasant little creep of a man, fed and watered by the Anglican Church of Australia as part of what it sees as its effort to make this a better world according to its own sweeping ideology.

It is all about the evil Jews who without the slightest qualm poison children with Sarin    to advance their evil plans.

This is a man who does not hesitate to speak for "Church leaders".  This is what he says

 Personally, as one who considers Galloway a friend and a mentor, I find his theory entirely plausible.

Of course he finds the theory plausible. Ugly men like him have always found these theories plausible.  They know, just know, that it is the Jews who poison the wells. 

A couple of responses. One from friend Doodad in the US. The other from yours truly that will never see the light of day at David Smith's racist and vile site. That you can count on.

This is way beyond a joke in this dangerous and hateful world. It is time the Anglican Church did something about this truly odious and ignorant bigot in their midst. It is time decent Australians insisted. Not just decent Anglicans. Not just decent Christians. This creep enjoys taxation and other benefits bestowed by our secular state. We all subsidise him just as we all subsidise the rest. But not for this. Not to attack the foundations of our tolerant and liberal society that so many have sacrificed so much to build and defend.

Enough. 




One Response to Galloway: chemical weapons in Syria were used by Al Qaeda, supplied by Israel!

  1. Doodad says:
    “the video is intended to illustrate Galloway’s lunacy!”
    No video required to accomplish that.
  2. geoffff says:
    Your comment is awaiting moderation.
    That you can even post this filthy slander without embarrassment is all that is needed to prove that there is something sick and evil at the very core of your soul.
    You have no place in civilised discourse about the horrors that confront the Syrian people. You, and people like you, are responsible for it. You, and people like you, have always been responsible.
    You shame your Church. You shame your religion. You and your murderous Islamist friends disgrace religion.