FW: ISRAEL LIVES May 9, 2016 16th day of the Omer 1st of Iyyar, 5776 Anti-Zionism, Golan, American Jewry, Martin Sherman responds, Yom HaShoah
Robert Hand
From: jane...@israellives.org
To: hands...@webtv.net
Subject: ISRAEL LIVES May 9, 2016 16th day of the Omer 1st of Iyyar, 5776 Anti-Zionism, Golan, American Jewry, Martin Sherman responds, Yom HaShoah
Date: Mon, 9 May 2016 13:05:57 -0400
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ISRAEL LIVES May 9, 2016 16th day of the Omer 1st of Iyyar, 5776 Anti-Zionism, Golan, American Jewry, Martin Sherman responds, Yom HaShoah
THIS WEEK
The Agony and the Ecstasy
Wed, May 11
Yom HaZikaron Israeli Memorial Day
Thu, May 12
Yom HaAtzma'ut Israeli Independence Day
NOVEMBER 8, 2016 GROWS CLOSER. Lest Hillary Clinton be the nominee PLEASE REMEMBER, READ AND FORWARD FREQUENTLY this recollection by the years 1998-2016, reduced to 5 easy to print and decidedly unsettling pages, of Hillary's activities with regard to ISRAEL, beginning in 1998 when Hillary is praised during a visit to Israel and the disputed Palestinian territories, by the New York Times as being "hailed here as a champion of Palestinian statehood." During the same visit, Hillary praises "the leadership of Chairman Arafat" in the peace process and "hope for the future."
1999 November 11, Hillary kisses Suha Arafat
FOR AMERICAN'S WHO ARE/WERE MEMBERS OF THE OBAMA FAN CLUB -THERE IS A CHAIN OF COMMAND DOWN FROM PRESIDET OBAMA-Each aspect is important to note 1.US Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communication Ben Rhodes 2.Rhodes asst., Ned Price who constructed a cadre of 'force multipliers' Laura Rozen, RSS feed/foreign policy reporter; Tanya Somander, White House digital guru; use of outside groups to push the policy such as Ploughshares, MoveOn.org, Tides Foundation.
ISRAEL'S SYRIAN REACTOR STRIKE SLOWED A N. KOREAN-IRANIAN-JIHADI BOMB The United States dodged a bullet in Syria-and, it's worth stressing, all courtesy of the Israelis who 'took out' Syria's nuclear program in 2007. "North Korea has for decades sold missiles and missile technology to any state willing to pay," nuclear weapons proliferation could be next, according to John Hannah, former national security advisor to Vice President Richard Cheney and now a senior counselor at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C. think tank.. He notes that Pyongyang's "military relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran, in particular, has been longstanding and deep." Israel's discovery and attack "was almost certainly the only means of ensuring the reactor never went hot."
Now, "the North is seeking to perfect precisely those elements of its military nuclear arsenal that Iran has yet to develop: the testing of an actual bomb; warhead miniaturization; reentry technology; and a functional ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile]," Hannah says. "The potential for synergy between these two rogue states and longtime proliferation partners is more than obvious." (CAMERA Blog To subscribe to CAMERA Blog see panel on the left margin of this CAMERA SNAPSHOT page)
9,000 Photos from 1800's British Mandate of Palestine - with no trace of Palestinians' https://palestineisraelconflict.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/9000-photographs-and-israel-from-1800s-with-no-trace-of-displaced-palestinians/
EVENTS
Tuesday,
May 10 - Sunday, May 15
Upper
West Side (of Manhattan) Celebrates Israel Week
Click http://www.uwsisrael.org/ for
schedule of events
Wednesday,
May 11
Yom
HaZikaron, Israel Memorial Day
Thursday,
May 12
Yom
HaAtzma'ut, Israel Independence Day
Sunday,
May 22, 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Jerusalem
Post Annual Conference
At the Marriott Marquis Hotel, NYC (West 47 St. &
Broadway)
http://www.jpost.com/landedpages/ConferenceNewYork2016/Conference_Home.aspx
June
1-8, Wednesday to Wednesday - Spring 2016 Chizuk
Mission,
Celebrate Yom Yerushalayim in Israel with
AFSI.
Americans
for a Safe Israel/AFSI, has been leading semi-annual Chizuk missions to Israel
for over twenty years. We call them Chizuk missions because we strengthen the
beleaguered heroes and heroines of Israel, just as we derive strength from them.
At this particular time in history, as the enemies of Israel and the Jews seem
to be circling the tents, it is especially critical that we travel to Israel and
give our support to those who endure the dangers and difficulties, as well as
the delights, on a daily basis. We are calling on all who are faithful to follow
us as we trace the biblical road map, charting a whole Israel, an indivisible
Jerusalem, and a total devotion to our promised land.
The Chizuk itinerary for June
1-8, 2016
Contact:
Ju...@AFSI.ORG / 212 828
2424
I'm
an AFSI CHIZUK enthusiast, I've participated in the last 4 Fall trips and more
to come. Need testimonials? Call me
Janet c.516 353 6450
Wednesday,
June 1, 6:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Friends
of the IDF (FIDF) Five Towns & Greater Shore 5th Annual Community
Event
At The Sephardic Temple, Cedarhurst, NY
Click HERE for
details.
Sunday,
June 5
Yom
Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day
An
Israeli national holiday commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem and the
establishment of Israeli control over the Old City in the aftermath of the June
1967 Six-Day War.
Click here for info about Yom
Yerushalayim:
http://www.knesset.gov.il/holidays/eng/jerusalem_day.htm
Sunday,
June 5
NYC Celebrate Israel
Parade The
"Celebrate Israel Parade", commemorates the creation of the State of Israel in
1948. It began in 1964, when
thousands of people gathered together to walk down Riverside Drive to show their
support for the young State of Israel. Over the years, the parade has evolved
into the world's largest gathering in support of Israel and celebration of its
people's spirit.
Wednesday,
June 8, 6:00 PM Cocktail Reception, 7:00 PM Program
Washington,
D.C.
The
Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) presents: Rays of Light in the Darkness
10th Anniversary Dinner
The
Grand Hyatt 1000 H Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20001
Register
by June 3 at www.emetonline.org
Inquiries:
202-601-7422 or in...@emetonline.org
Sunday,
June 26, 7:00 PM,
Long
Island's Annual Celebrate Israel
Eisenhower
Park, Harry Chapin Lakeside Theater.
Featuring a free concert with Dudu Fisher
Info:
516-433-0433 or jcr...@jcrcli.org
NEWS
REPORTS
1-
Anti-Zionism
is the new anti-Semitism - Rabbi Sacks writing for Newsweek
He
notes: Almost a
third of Europe's Jews have considered emigrating because of anti-Semitism, with
numbers as high as 46 percent in France and 48 percent in
Hungary. The United States is beset with an
unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism focused on College Campuses nationwide. (So much for importing foreign students
to support a moribund tenure system.)
Thomas
Braun writes: Anti-Semitism is the oldest
known psychopathology and a veritable threat to the quality of life of any
society that harbors it. Help eradicate
it.
2-THE NEW
UN CONSENSUS ON SYRIA: ISRAEL MUST PAY, ISRAEL MUST SURRENDER THE GOLAN TO
SYRIA! This week, all 15
members of the UN Security Council including the USA, UK and France voted that Israel must return
the Golan to Syria. Who can forget the constant rain of military fire rained
upon Israel for several years while Syria held the Heights. Israel MUST retain
this strategic area at all costs!
One wonders whether the UNSC will vote to make China return Tibet to its
former independence? or Russia to return Crimea?
The
Golan Heights is life and death to Israel where 35,000 Israelis live and farm,
and from the Golan, guard Israel.
This is the same UN that denies any Jewish roots to the Land of Israel,
this month ruling that the Kotel is actually the supporting wall of the Aqsa
Mosque; not of the ancient Jewish Temple.
WIKI lists the UN resolutions concerning Israel and
Palestine As
of 2013, Israel had been condemned in 45 resolutions by United Nations Human Rights
Council since its creation in 2006. From 1967 to 1989 the UN Security Council adopted 131 resolutions directly addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict. Insanely, the United Nations General
Assembly has adopted a number of resolutions
saying that the strategic relationship with the United States encourages Israel
to pursue aggressive and expansionist policies and practices.
3- NEW
PALESTINIAN PACT-FOR-TERROR Various
Hamas terror networks are operating against Israel, from within and
without. Neither of the operations
was carried out by "lone wolves" but rather by large terror networks. The secret
tunnel discovered in the Gaza border area was built by the Hamas military wing,
the Izaddin al-Qassam brigades, while the suicide bombing in Jerusalem was
carried out by the Hamas infrastructure in Judea and Samaria, specifically its
operatives in the Bethlehem area.
Each of
these terror networks poses a different, mortal challenge to
Israel.
4-AMERICAN
JEWRY WILL NO LONGER BE THE CENTER OF THE JEWISH WORLD Elliot Abrams writing: In
the 20th century the American Jewish community was the world's largest and
strongest, and helped establish and protect the Jewish State. The
21st century will be different. At the time of Israel's founding, as Martin
Kramer explains, its Jewish population was one-ninth the size of American Jewry,
and was also largely poor and needy. Today, the population ratio is one to one,
Israel's economic situation has improved immeasurably, and its population is
growing-even as our numbers in America are being reduced by low birth rates and
intermarriage.
Elliot Abrams
concludes: The day-school movement in America is one of
the proven secrets of continuing Orthodox strength and solidarity and he
urges social service organizations to support day-school education for those
children now in public schools because they can not afford day-school
education.
5-Concerning
Conflict Resolution with those who wish all Jews dead, this is the most valuable
article you are likely to read.
INTO
THE FRAY: A VERY SIMPLE CONFLICT
by Martin Kramer. Martin
Kramer is
an American-Israeli scholar
of the Middle East at Shalem College in
Jerusalem. His focus is on Islam and Arab politics. He
earned his PhD at Princeton where his doctoral theses was directed by
Bernard Lewis.
It's
a matter of 1-2-3-4
THE
INTRACTABILITY OF THE 100-YEAR DISPUTE BETWEEN JEW AND ARAB OVER THE LAND OF
ISRAEL IS ROOTED NOT IN ITS COMPLEXITY, BUT ITS BRUTAL
SIMPLICITY.
The
only way to ensure who rules - and does not rule - GAZA IS FOR ISRAEL TO RULE IT
ITSELF. PRECISELY THE SAME LOGIC HOLDS FOR JUDEA-SAMARIA.
THE ONLY WAY FOR ISRAEL TO DO THIS WITHOUT "RULING ANOTHER PEOPLE" IS TO
RELOCATE THE "OTHER PEOPLE" OUTSIDE THE TERRITORY IT IS OBLIGED TO
ADMINISTER.
THE
ONLY NONVIOLENT AND HUMANE WAY TO EFFECT SUCH RELOCATION OF THE "OTHER PEOPLE"
IS BY ECONOMIC INDUCEMENTS - increasing material incentives to leave and
disincentives to stay.
Q.E.D.
What could be simpler or more compelling?
This
brought tears to my eyes, both sorrow and joy. The divisions between support and
condemnation of Israel 1-its policies toward its Arab ('palestinean') neighbors
and 2-desire to obtain for itself, as a secure national/political entity, the
British Mandate as limited by the Mediterranean to the West and the Jordan to
the East - (not the full Mandate which included the land of Trans-Jordan) are
not marked solely by US Jews, but shared vociferously by Hararetz and a vocal
number of Israelis as well.
Martin
Kramer is a frequent speaker on their semi-annual AFSI Chizzuk Missions as are
Jeff Daube of ZOA and Daniella Weiss, former Mayor of Kedumim and Ruth Matar and
Yehudit Katsover, co-founders of
Women in Green.
6-TWO INTERNATIONALLY
CELEBRATED HOLOCAUST DAYS are muddying the very specific crime against the
Jewish People marked annually as Yom HaShoah. 'Waters of Rememberance', International
Holocaust Remembrance Day, celebrated Jan. 27th 2016 has gradually
watered down the particularly Jewish aspect of the Nazi extermination of the
Jews marked on Yom HaShoah, this year on May 4th.
Jan. 27 marked the
decade anniversary of the United Nations-designated International Holocaust
Remembrance Day, which member states are encouraged to commemorate. Though an
Israeli initiative, International Holocaust Remembrance Day has gradually been
subjected to the universalizing prescriptions of those who would water down the
particularly Jewish aspect of the Nazi extermination of the
Jews.
The evolution of two
different days of Holocaust commemoration and the ways they increasingly run
counter to each other are symptomatic of the seizure of Jewish history and
suffering for ulterior purposes. This victim displacement appropriates the most
traumatic experience in Jewish history, pointedly erases the specificity of the
events supposedly being commemorated, and then harshly chides Jews for inserting
their own particularistic concerns into the discussion.
I am reminded of a
chapter in a German history text book published post WWII which spoke only about the suffering of the German
people during WWII.
The United Nations is
rewriting history daily. Laws of the Sea, Holocaust Rememberance... The USA is
paying a substantially inequitable burden maintaining what is a sham of
neutrality; Israel is its principle ;whipping boy'. Consider the UN as the world's religion,
or the world's school - or more realistically, the world's government - Why, Why
should any member of the free world remain a member? As technology has transformed business
in our era, it allows for new ways for governments to work together, apart from
now moribund structures.
It's Spring - Let's be
HOPEFUL
The Negev
The Judean Hills
1>ANTI-ZIONISM
IS THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM
Rabbi
Sachs
Newsweek
April
3, 2016
http://www.newsweek.com/jonathan-sacks-anti-semitism-anti-zionism-bds-israel-labour-442978
Jonathan
Sacks served
as Britain's chief rabbi from 1991 to 2013. He was recently named as
the 2016
Templeton Prize Laureate.
His latest book is Not
in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence.
On March 27, speaking to
the Sunday
Times, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams expressed
his concern at rising levels of anti-Semitism on British university campuses.
There are, he said, "worrying echoes" of Germany in the 1930s. Two days later,
in The
Times, Chris Bryant, the Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
and a senior member of the British Labour party, warned that the political left
was increasingly questioning the right of the state of Israel to exist, a view
he called a "not too subtle form of anti-Semitism."
Across Europe, Jews are
leaving. A survey in 2013 by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights
showed that almost a third of Europe's Jews have considered emigrating because
of anti-Semitism, with numbers as high as 46 percent in France and 48 percent in
Hungary.
Nor is this a problem in Europe alone. A
2015 survey of North American Jewish college students by Brandeis University
found that three-quarters of respondents had been exposed to anti-Semitic
rhetoric. One third had reported incidents of harassment because they were
Jewish. Much of the intimidation on campus is stirred by "Israel Apartheid"
weeks and the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign against Israel.
These have become what Easter was in the Middle Ages, a time for attacks against
Jews.
Something is clearly
happening, but what? Many on the left argue that they are being wrongly accused.
They are not against Jews, they say, only opposed to the policies of the state
of Israel. Here one must state the obvious. Criticism of the Israeli government
is not anti-Semitic. Nor is the BDS movement inherently anti-Semitic. Many of
its supporters have a genuine concern for human rights. It is, though, a front
for the new anti-Semitism, an unholy alliance of radical Islamism and the
political left.
What then is
anti-Semitism? It is not a coherent set of beliefs but a set of contradictions.
Before the Holocaust, Jews were hated because they were poor and because they
were rich; because they were communists and because they were capitalists;
because they kept to themselves and because they infiltrated everywhere; because
they clung tenaciously to ancient religious beliefs and because they were
rootless cosmopolitans who believed nothing.
Anti-Semitism is a virus
that survives by mutating. In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their
religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries they were hated because of their race.
Today they are hated because of their nation state, Israel. Anti-Zionism is the
new anti-Semitism.
The legitimization has
also changed. Throughout history, when people have sought to justify
anti-Semitism, they have done so by recourse to the highest source of authority
available within the culture. In the Middle Ages, it was religion. In
post-Enlightenment Europe it was science. Today it is human rights. It is why
Israel-the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East with a free press
and independent judiciary-is regularly accused of the five crimes against human
rights: racism, apartheid, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and
attempted genocide. This is the blood libel of our time.
Anti-Semitism is a classic
example of what anthropologist Ren? Girard sees as the primal form of human
violence: scapegoating. When bad things happen to a group, its members can ask
two different questions: "What did we do wrong?" or "Who did this to us?" The
entire fate of the group will depend on which it chooses.
If it asks, "What did we
do wrong?" it has begun the self-criticism essential to a free society. If it
asks, "Who did this to us?" it has defined itself as a victim. It will then seek
a scapegoat to blame for all its problems. Classically this has been the
Jews.
Today the argument goes
like this. After the Holocaust, every right-thinking human being must be opposed
to Nazism. Palestinians are the new Jews. The Jews are the new Nazis. Israel is
the new crime against humanity. Therefore every right thinking person must be
opposed to the state of Israel, and since every Jew is a Zionist, we must oppose
the Jews. This argument is wholly wrong. It was Jews not Israelis who were
murdered in terrorist attacks in Toulouse, Paris, Brussels and
Copenhagen.
Anti-Semitism is a form of
cognitive failure. It reduces complex problems to simplicities. It divides the
world into black and white, seeing all the fault on one side and all the
victimhood on the other. It singles out one group among a hundred offenders for
the blame. It silences dissent and never engages in self-criticism. The argument
is always the same. We are innocent; they are guilty. It follows that if
we -Christians, members of the Aryan race or Muslims-are to be free, they, the
Jews, or the state of Israel must be destroyed. That is how the great crimes
begin.
Jews have been hated
because they were different. They were the most conspicuous non-Christian
minority in pre-World War Christian Europe. Today they are the most conspicuous
non-Muslim presence in an Islamic Middle East. Anti-Semitism has always been
about the inability of a group to make space for difference. No group that
adopts it will ever create a free society.
The hate that begins with
Jews never ends with Jews. In a world awash with hate across religious divides,
people of all faiths and none must stand together, not just to defeat
anti-Semitism but to ensure the rights of religious minorities are defended
everywhere.
History will judge us by
how we deal with this challenge. We must not fail.
2>THE NEW UN CONSENSUS ON SYRIA: ISRAEL
MUST PAY!
April 26, 2016
http://NYPost.Com/2016/04/26/The-New-Un-Consensus-On-Syria-Israel-Must-Pay/
The Bashar al-Assad
regime is outraged. So angry, in fact, that on Tuesday it asked the UN Security
Council to do something. And the council, including America, finally agreed on
something regarding Syria: It must get back the Golan Heights from
Israel.
Not Raqqa, the capital
of the ISIS caliphate, nor ancient Palmyra. Not northeast Syria, owned by the
Kurds, nor the Syrian heartlands controlled by the al Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra
Front. And not the enclaves ruled by Druze and various
warlords.
Nah. After all, what are
half a million lost Syrian lives compared to Syria's wounded pride over events
of a half-century ago?
The Golan, which Israel
annexed shortly after winning in a 1967 defensive war, is the itch that the
Assad clan keeps scratching.
This month Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his cabinet's weekly meeting on the Golan -
a first. The high plateau will forever remain Israeli, he later declared. That
declaration was "against all Security Council resolutions," Rafael Dario
Ramirez, the UN ambassador of Venezuela, told me Tuesday.
So he and his Egyptian
colleague called for a special meeting of the UN body charged with maintaining
global peace and security. Later, all council members (including the United
States) expressed "outrage" over Netanyahu's statement. They recalled a 1981
resolution that declared that year's annexation of the Golan by Israel "null and
void, and without international legal effect."
On the Israeli side of
the Golan you'll find apple groves, quaint wineries and beer microbreweries -
not to mention the Mideast's best locally-grown steak (grass-fed and kosher,
too). Also there, you can get closest to the raging war on the Syrian side
without risking life or limb.
That's what UN
peacekeepers do. They've been stationed on both sides of the border to observe a
Syrian-Israeli ceasefire, since Damascus tried to wrest the Golan by force in
1973.
Soon after the civil war
erupted in 2012, Assad started neglecting the Golan. The border area was taken
over by gangs, who discovered kidnapping UN peacekeepers is a lucrative
business. The United Nations withdrew to the safety of the Israeli side, where
it continues to periodically report on ceasefire violations by "both
sides."
"Sides"? In Geneva, UN
envoy Staffan de Mistura is trying in vain to get Syria's numerous warring
factions to negotiate with each other. He can't even get them in the same hotel
room.
Indeed, the entire
Mideast is involved in Syria's multi-sided war, plus Russia and the United
States. Assad controls a third of the country. No one knows how to end the
carnage.
Israel, miraculously, is
the one Syrian neighbor to (mostly) stay out. It has its interests, of course.
Last week Netanyahu confirmed reports of several successful attacks on convoys
transferring arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
He also flew to Moscow
for a hastily arranged meeting with President Vladimir Putin, after Russian
planes reportedly buzzed Israeli jets over Syrian skies. Netanyahu wanted to
resume and tighten coordination with Moscow, to allow both countries to maintain
their interests in Syria.
Yet once Bibi publicly
reasserted Israel's hold over the Golan (perhaps for domestic political
reasons), international-law eggheads jumped to Assad's aid: He who can barely
control his capital, Damascus, somehow has indisputable sovereignty over the
Golan. Israel must return an occupied territory, goes the cry from Malaysia to
Morocco.
Return to whom? To
al-Nusra or ISIS, which the entire world has declared unworthy of even
participating in the Geneva peace talks? To Hezbollah, which tops the US
terrorist list and now tries to establish a beachhead on the Golan? To Assad the
butcher, who, according to President Obama, has lost
legitimacy?
Whatever. The Security
Council, including America, called Tuesday for returning the Golan and, indeed,
negotiating "to establish a comprehensive just and lasting peace in the Middle
East."
Yes, in the past
Netanyahu tried to negotiate a return of the strategic Golan to Syria. One of
his successors may one day do so again, perhaps after Syria, a country that no
longer really exists, is properly divided.
But now? Those who think
so must be off their meds.
3>NEW
PALESTINIAN PACT-FOR-TERROR
DEBKAfile
Exclusive Report
April 25, 2016, 6:50 PM (IDT)
http://debka.com/article/25387/ http://debka.com/article/25387/
Israel
embarked on a P. R. campaign to play down the extent of the threat which
surfaced in one day in the discovery of Hamas tunnel near Kibbutz Sufa, and the
suicide bombing of Jerusalem bus No. 12 on April 18, with 20 people injured. The
police initially claimed for example that the explosion was due to a technical
problem with the engine. But the two developments actually represented a sharp
and serious escalation of the Palestinian wave of terror against Israel.
Neither of the operations was carried out by "lone wolves" but rather by
large terror networks. The secret tunnel discovered in the Gaza border area was
built by the Hamas military wing, the Izaddin al-Qassam brigades, while the
suicide bombing in Jerusalem was carried out by the Hamas infrastructure in
Judea and Samaria, specifically its operatives in the Bethlehem area.
Each of these terror networks poses a different challenge to Israel.
In Gaza, the Hamas political leadership is no longer in contact with the
heads of its military wing. Neither the top commanders nor the regional
commanders of the brigades obey any Hamas political body. They only heed three
sources:
1. The Hamas military command framework headed by Mohammad Deif
and Marwan Issa.
2. Iranian or Hizballah intelligence services, which
maintain contacts with them and often provide funds or weapons.
3. The
ISIS affiliate in the Sinai, with which the Hamas military wing maintains
operational ties.
There is an equally serious problem in Judea and
Samaria. Over the past few weeks, the Hamas terror networks have started to make
contact with sleeper cells from Fatah's Tanzim paramilitary force that have the
knowledge, ability, means and experience for major terrorist attacks against
Israel, such as the Jerusalem bus bombing.
This dormant wing of Mohammad
Abbas's Fatah has began to show signs of life and willingness to return to the
path of terror.
These contacts began immediately after publication of a
letter from jailed Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti to members of the force that
called on them to start coordinating their operations against Israel with Hamas.
Nobody has bothered to explain how a senior terrorist jailed in a high-security
Israeli prison succeeded in smuggling such a letter out.
The link
between part of the Tanzim and the Hamas terror networks is no less dangerous
than the tunnel discovered near Kibbutz Sufa, and it presages an escalation of
terror operations in the future.
The only way to prevent a major
deterioration of the security situation is to strike targets of the Izzadin
al-Qassam brigades. There is no need to launch a total war against Hamas or to
occupy Gaza.
But instead of responding as needed, Israel's government
and security establishment have released pictures of digging equipment that has
finally succeeded in locating a single Hamas infiltration tunnel out of the many
that exist, and claimed that those responsible for the Jerusalem bombing have
yet to be identified. At the same time, senior officials and IDF officers
continue to assert that Hamas is not seeking escalation.
Unfortunately,
this can only mean a resurgence of the wave of terror.
4>AMERICAN JEWRY WILL NO LONGER BE THE CENTER OF THE JEWISH
WORLD
IN
THE 20TH CENTURY THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMUNITY WAS THE WORLD'S LARGEST AND
STRONGEST, AND HELPED ESTABLISH AND PROTECT THE JEWISH STATE. THE
21ST CENTURY WILL BE DIFFERENT.
Elliott Abrams
Mosaic Magazine
April 26, 2016
*Elliot Abrams-
former American diplomat, lawyer and political
scientist, served in foreign policy positions for U.S. Presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Abrams was convicted for withholding
information from Congress about the Iran-Contra affair while serving for Reagan, but pardoned
by President George H. W. Bush.
He is
currently a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Additionally, Abrams holds positions on
the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG), Center for Security
Policy & National Secretary Advisory Council, Committee for a Free Lebanon,
and the Project for the New American Century. Abrams is a current member of the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Council and teaches foreign policy at Georgetown University
as well as maintaining a CFR blog called "Pressure Points" about the U.S.
foreign policy and human rights. In February 2014, Abrams, a
commissioner of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, gave
testimony before a House congressional committee that Christians globally are
the most persecuted of the world religions. (Wiki)
More about: American Jews, Israel & Zionism, Jewish continuity
In late fall
1940, as World War II raged in Europe and despite the parlous situation of the
Jews in British-Mandate Palestine, their leader David Ben-Gurion spent three and
a half months in the United States, returning again in November 1941 for a far
longer stay of more than nine months. The wartime route from Palestine to the
U.S. was lengthy and dangerous, but Ben-Gurion keenly understood not only the
prime importance of relations with America but also the fact that the American
Jewish community had now become the center of world Jewry.
Indeed, soon
enough-and for decades to come-that same Jewish community, the world's largest
and strongest, would play a critical role in the establishment and subsequent
support and protection of the first Jewish state in 2,000 years.
But that was the 20th century; the 21st will be different. That is
the conclusion of my essay in Mosaic, "If American Jews and Israel are Drifting
Apart, What's the Reason?"
I'm grateful to Daniel Gordis,
Martin Kramer,
and Jack Wertheimer
for their kind words about the essay itself and especially for their thoughtful
comments on its thesis. Taken together, those comments affirm but also broaden
and deepen my argument.
All three of
my respondents note the remarkable change in the relationship between Israel and
American Jewry since 1948, some of which is due to sheer demographics. At the
time of Israel's founding, as Martin Kramer explains, its Jewish population was
one-ninth the size of American Jewry, and was also largely poor and needy.
Today, the population ratio is one to one, Israel's economic situation has
improved immeasurably, and its population is growing-even as our numbers in
America are being reduced by low birth rates and intermarriage.
As Kramer
puts it, "Israeli Jews have worked out a successful survival strategy," while,
by contrast, the "American Jewish survival strategy is struggling." The trend
lines are clear-which is why I suggested in my essay that we American Jews may
end up needing what amounts to foreign aid, with the Israelis trying to rescue
us, or anyway some of us, as best they can.
The
distances between Israeli and American Jews are growing in other ways as well. A
couple of generations ago, most Israeli and most American Jews were immigrants
from Europe; today, 70 percent of Israeli Jews were born in Israel and an even
higher percentage of American Jews were born in the United States. Moreover,
something like 90 percent of American Jews are of Ashkenazi heritage, while, as
Kramer points out, half of Israeli Jews are of Sephardi or Mizra?i
descent.
All of this
has taken its toll in feelings of inter-community solidarity, and so has another
factor mentioned in my essay: the detachment of most American Jews from the
combined ritual and communal moorings that held Jews together for 2,000 years of
exile. Driving this point home is the sad tale that Daniel Gordis tells about an
uncle of his. A former executive vice-president of the American Jewish
Committee, this uncle has taken to the public prints to proclaim that "in every
important way Israel has failed to realize its promise for me."
Gordis
rightly underscores those amazing final words-"for me"-as if the task of
Israelis, who live in a region "leaning toward perpetual war," were "to soothe
the moral disquiet of Jews whose circumstances are "more peaceful and stable
than any environment in the history of humankind since Adam." Writing with
similar bite, Jack Wertheimer, the eminent American Jewish historian and an
acute, unblinking analyst of contemporary realities, records that growing
numbers of American Jews have become so "deracinated" as to lose all empathy
with fellow Jews living in "a neighborhood considerably more dangerous than
brownstone Brooklyn or the Edenic communities of the San Francisco
Bay."
Sadly, in
this context, none of my three respondents has protested that I'm dead wrong in
my analysis and that the future glows brightly both for the American Jewish
community itself and for its relationship with Israel. Nor does any of the three
offer a magic formula to extricate ourselves from our troubles, because there is
none. To the contrary, all appear to accept, as I do, the further and all but
inevitable weakening of the non-Orthodox American Jewish community.
Still, their
comments do suggest some paths forward.
One of them
is critical: an Israel-oriented education that will take in the enormous miracle
of the recreation of a Jewish state after two millennia, absorbing its history
and the lessons contained in that history, and inculcating a knowledge of the
Hebrew language. About 10 percent of American Jews say they can carry on a
conversation in Hebrew; I would bet that most of them are Orthodox-themselves by
far a minority within the community as a whole. Gordis correctly refers to the
"essentially across-the-board neglect of Hebrew-language literacy as a community
priority."
This is not
the case in other Diaspora communities. Jews elsewhere not only are likelier to
speak Hebrew but, correlatively, visit Israel more frequently, and acquire a
more thorough Jewish education. In the UK, for example, 60 percent of Jewish
children attend day schools.
For American
Jews outside the Orthodox community, such day schools hold little attraction. I
suspect they strike many as contrary to the long-prevailing desire for full
integration into America society: the central goal of American Jews who in the
decades after World War II did not struggle to move to Evanston and Scarsdale
and Beverly Hills in order to send their children to Jewish schools.
But that
integration is now a fact, and staring the American non-Orthodox in the face is
the prospect of Jewish assimilation leading to Jewish extinction. That being the
reality, is it possible that day schools might be re-examined?
One critical barrier here, even for the moderately affluent, is
financial: on top of the other burdens of engaged Jewish life-synagogue dues,
summer camps, kosher food, and so forth-day schools are an expensive
proposition. Especially in localities boasting excellent public schools, they
may seem either beyond reach or unnecessary, or both. And here, to make things
worse, the organized community's priorities are upside-down. Rather than making
sure that a day-school education is affordable and available to all who want
it-as Jack Wertheimer has tirelessly advocated-Jewish agencies have not only undervalued the relative worth of
such an education but have often led the fight against extending any help
at all to religious schools in general, even in the form of vouchers, tuition
tax credits, or other tax breaks that are clearly
constitutional.
The
day-school movement in America is one of the proven secrets of continuing
Orthodox strength and solidarity. As Wertheimer has written, a day-school
education "greatly increases the chances of children learning the skills
necessary for participation in religious life, for living active Jewish lives,
and for identifying strongly with other Jews." One can only hope that
non-Orthodox Jews and Jewish organizations seeking to survive in America will
reconsider its benefits and relax their visceral and ideological opposition to
communal and other forms of support for non-public schools.
Whether or
not they do, however, I join my three respondents in fearing the
near-irreversibility of the underlying trends contributing to the weakening of
the American Jewish community. All the more reason, then, to keep front and
center in one's consciousness the single key fact of modern Jewish existence:
for the first time in 2,000 years there is a Jewish state, it is growing and
thriving, and it is becoming the center of world Jewish life. Would we want it
otherwise? American Jews today may be declining in strength and centrality, but
they are also witness to and can actively participate in the miracle of the
Jewish state. In Daniel Gordis's words, Israel is "the Jewish people's last
remaining hope." It is also something more: something, in Martin Kramer's words,
that we should always regard just as a hundred generations of Jews before us
would have done-with "pure wonder."
5>INTO THE FRAY: A VERY SIMPLE
CONFLICT
THE
INTRACTABILITY OF THE 100-YEAR DISPUTE BETWEEN JEW AND ARAB OVER THE LAND OF
ISRAEL IS ROOTED NOT IN ITS COMPLEXITY, BUT ITS BRUTAL
SIMPLICITY.
Martin
Sherman
Jerusalem
Post
April
28, 2016
Dr.
Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.net) is founder and executive director of the
Israel Institute for Strategic Studies
(www.strategicisrael.org).
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Into-The-Fray-A-very-simple-conflict-452547
Until
1967, Israel did not hold an inch of the Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank, the
Gaza Strip or the Golan Heights. Israel held not an acre of what is now
considered disputed territory. And yet we enjoyed no peace. Year after year
Israel called for - pleaded for - a negotiated peace with the Arab governments.
Their answer was a blank refusal and more war... The reason was not a conflict
over territorial claims. The reason was, and remains, the fact that a free
Jewish state sits on territory at all. -
Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, before a joint session of the US Congress, January
28, 1976
We will never recognize the
Jewishness of the State of Israel. -
Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, Cairo, November,
2014
One of the widely propagated falsehoods regarding
the Arab-Israeli conflict in general, and Palestinian-Israeli one in particular,
is that it is an immensely complex problem requiring great sophistication and
creativity to resolve.
Brutal
simplicity
Nothing could be further from the
truth.
The 100-year struggle
between Jew and Arab over control of the Holy Land, extending west of the Jordan
River to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, is in fact a very simple
one.
But recognition of the stark
simplicity of the conflict does not in any way imply that it is easy to resolve.
In fact, it is the brutal simplicity of the conflict that makes a solution so
elusive.
Any endeavor to obfuscate
this unpalatable fact can only have - indeed, has had - gravely detrimental,
even tragic, consequences, just as mistaken diagnosis of
a malaise is likely to have detrimental, even tragic, outcomes. Any attempt to
portray the conflict as "complicated" is not a mark of sophistication or
profundity, but rather of a desire to evade the merciless, unembellished
truth.
For the clash between Jew and Arab
over the exercise of
national sovereignty anywhere west of the Jordan is a classic "them" or "us"
scenario, an arch-typical zero-sum game, in which the gains of one side are
unequivocally the loss of the other.
No amount of genteel pussyfooting around this harsh
reality will change it. No amount of polite politically correct jargon
will soften it.
Essence
of enmity
This reality is aptly conveyed by the
introductory excerpt from
Yitzhak Rabin's January 1976 address to a joint session of the US Congress, when
in his more lucid, pre-Oslo, period he succinctly diagnosed that the root of
Arab Judeophobic enmity was not a dispute over any particular allocation of
territory between Jew and Arab, but the allocation of any territory for Jewish
sovereignty: "The reason [for the Arab refusal of peace and the ongoing
belligerency] was not a conflict over territorial claims. The reason was, and
remains, the fact that a free Jewish state sits on territory at
all."
Rabin's assessment was valid then; it is valid
today.
No matter what
territorial configuration for
dividing the land was proposed, it was invariably rejected by Israel's Arab
interlocutors - from the 1947 Partition Plan, through the far-reaching
concessions offered by Ehud Barak in 2000, that elicited nothing but a massive
wave of violence that lasted almost five years and left thousands dead and
injured; to the even more dramatically pliant proposal put forward by Ehud
Olmert and rejected by Abbas in 2008.
Clearly then, as Rabin identified, the roots of Arab
belligerence vis-a-vis the Jews cannot be traced to any specific borders of the
Jewish state - but to the existence of the Jewish state
itself.
Not
about borders, but existence
Accordingly we are compelled to the conclusion that
the "root causes" of the dispute are:
. not about Jewish military "occupation" of Arab land;
but about Jewish political existence on any land;
. not about the Jewish State's policies; but about
the Jewish State per se; and
. not about what the Jewish people do; but about
what the Jewish people are.
Resounding affirmation of this came from the allegedly
"moderate" and "pragmatic" Abbas himself, who in November 2014 told an emergency
meeting of Arab League foreign ministers that no peace accord with Israel was
possible if this involved recognizing Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish
people - see introductory excerpt.
This was no slip of the tongue.
Several months earlier,
Reuters reported (March
9): "The Arab League has backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's rejection
of Israel as a 'Jewish state'... [and] endorsed Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas's rejection of Israel's demand for recognition as a Jewish state." The
League issued a statement declaring:
"The Council of the Arab League confirms its support for the Palestinian
leadership...
and emphasizes its rejection of recognizing Israel as
a 'Jewish State.'" Clearly, this should be a sobering message for all the
self-professed Zionists who have so eagerly advocated that Israel adopt the Arab
League Plan (aka the "Saudi Initiative") - which calls for a return to the
indefensible pre-1967 lines, division of Jerusalem, return of Arab refugees, and
withdrawal from the Golan Heights - as a basis for peace negotiations and
pan-Arab recognition.
Recognition?
Really? As an un-Jewish state? How accommodating.
Resolute
rejection of recognition
This resolute rejection of Jewish sovereignty, which
increasingly has reflected itself in expression of revulsion at things Jewish,
should be seen as the back drop to some recently reported - and
revealing - incidents.
Thus
following Abbas's outrageous declaration last September that Jews have no right
to "desecrate" the Temple Mount with "their filthy feet," and his incendiary
endorsement of the harassment of Jewish visitors by Arab hooligans, the
allegedly moderate Jordanian government warned of "serious consequences" if the
Jewish state allowed Jews to visit the site which according to Jewish religion
is the most holy to Jews.
Significantly, the Jordanian warning came soon after
Amman, under intense Palestinian pressure, recanted on its proposal
to installsecurity
cameras to document events
and monitor attempts to instigate violence on the Temple Mount, leaving Arab
hoodlums free to assail Jewish visitors with impunity while accusing them of
aggression and desecration.
Then, of course there was the impudent and blatantly
Judeophobic characterization of MK Tzipi Livni as "so smelly" by a Harvard law
student, one Husam El-Qoulaq, reportedly head of Harvard's Students for Justice
in Palestine.
The reported transcript (Ynet,
April 22) of the incident dispels any doubt that the barb was an intentional
slur: STUDENT: Okay, my question is for Tzipi Livni, um, how is it that you are
so smelly? (panel looks confused) STUDENT: Oh, it's regarding your
odor.
MODERATOR: I'm not sure I understand the
question.
STUDENT: I'm question
(sic) about the odor of Tzipi Livni, very smelly.
Bitter
fruits of pliancy
There
is a bitter sense of irony in this incident involving Livni. After all, she has
been arguably the most pliant of all mainstream Israeli politicians toward
Palestinian demands.
The abuse she
was subject to serves to underscore the bitter fruits of such pliancy and to
reinforce the validity of the previous diagnosis of the sources of Arab
opprobrium toward all things Jewish: It is not about what the Jews do, but
what they are - Jewish.
Commenting on the incident, well-known scholar Robert
Spencer aptly remarked: "One thing is certain: If the roles had been reversed,
and a Jewish student had asked a Muslim politician why she was so 'smelly,' that
student would no longer be at Harvard, and would be subjected to international
opprobrium, while stories on 'Islamophobia' would be blanketing the airwaves and
filling mainstream media publications."
Too true.
Indeed, imagine the international outcry if an Israeli
leader, say Benjamin Netanyahu, had declared that the Palestinian-Arabs were
desecrating Judaism's holy sites, say the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron,
"with their filthy feet" and called on the "settlers" to "defend it by all means
possible..."
Just
imagine...
Perilous
parallels
Irrepressible
optimists and indefatigable two-state advocates cling desperately to irrelevant
historical precedents in which once implacable enemies have put their bloody
past and inimical grievances behind them and forged lasting peace agreements
that have permitted them to live in political harmony and economic
prosperity.
In this regard, they
frequently point to the cases of Germany and Japan, who were bitter enemies of
the Allies in WWII, the largest conflict humanity has ever known, in which tens
of millions perished, cities were devastated and economies ruined. Yet a few
short decades after the cessation of hostilities, both were staunch allies and
robust trading partners of their erstwhile foes.
These are dangerously false analogies. We should be
wary of being misled by them and cautious of drawing misplaced conclusions from
them.
Putting aside for the moment
the innate and obdurate antagonism that Islam harbors for all that is not Islam,
there are important differences in the geo-political structure of the situation
prevailing in post-WWII Japan and Germany, on the one hand, and that facing
Israel today, on the other.
First of
all, both the Germans and Japanese were unequivocally defeated and signed
documents of unconditional surrender, something the Arabs in general, and the
Palestinian-Arabs in particular, have not been required to do.
Berlin
is not Baghdad
Secondly, and arguably more
significant, unlike any prospective Palestine state,
which would be part and parcel of a larger Islamic world, Germany was not
surrounded by a swathe of kindred Teutonic nations, nor Japan by kindred
Nipponic nations, that, driven by a radical Teutonic/Nipponic ideology, strove
continually to undermine the stability and legitimacy of any peaceable regime
that foreign powers might install.
Overlooking this element was in no small measure part
of the reason for the failure of the American attempt to set up amenable,
democratically oriented regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. For unlike defeated
Berlin (and Tokyo), Baghdad (and Kabul) and their environs were continually
assailed by Islamic insurgents, financed and equipped from surrounding Muslim
countries, imperiling any government not to their liking.
This is a lesson Israel will ignore at its
peril.
For this is precisely the
situation that any regime set up in territory evacuated by Israel is almost
certainly liable to face - and precisely the predicament that Israel would have
to deal with in the wake of such evacuation.
Sadly, the vast majority of proposals for resolution
of the conflict do exactly that, and are totally unmindful of the repercussions
their implementation are liable to foment.
If
Hamas were disarmed...
Thus,
one of the frequently aired proposals is for the disarming of
Hamas.
Nothing could highlight
more effectively the moronic myopia of these kinds of suggestions than the
previous analysis. For in the unlikely event that Hamas could be persuaded to
disarm, how would it defend itself against more radical - and armed -
challengers that would abound in and from its Islamic surrounds? And to what
avail would Israel endeavor to disarm Hamas, only to have it replaced by a more
menacing successor? This confronts Israeli policy-makers with almost
mathematical algorithmic logic: The only way to ensure who rules - and does not
rule - Gaza is for Israel to rule it itself. Precisely the same logic holds for
Judea-Samaria.
The only way for
Israel to do this without "ruling another people" is to relocate the "other
people" outside the territory it is obliged to administer.
The only nonviolent and humane way to effect such
relocation of the "other people" is by economic inducements - increasing
material incentives to leave and disincentives to stay.
Q.E.D.
What could be simpler or more compelling?
6>THE
HOLOCAUST WITHOUT JEWS
ATTEMPTS
TO UNIVERSALIZE THE SPECIFIC SUFFERING OF JEWS IN THE SHOAH GO HAND IN HAND WITH
EFFORTS TO DE-LEGITIMIZE THE JEWISH STATE
Tablet
Magazine, May 3, 2016
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/201420/the-holocaust-without-jews
On Thursday, Israel will
mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom
HaShoah. As has been the custom for over six decades, a 2-minute air
raid siren will be blared across the entire country and citizens from all walks
of life will interrupt their daily routines for a moment of solemn reflection.
Jan. 27 of this year also marked the decade anniversary of the United
Nations-designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which member states
are encouraged to commemorate. Though an Israeli initiative, International
Holocaust Remembrance Day has gradually been subjected to the universalizing
prescriptions of those who would water down the particularly Jewish aspect of
the Nazi extermination of the Jews.
The evolution of two
different days of Holocaust commemoration and the ways they increasingly run
counter to each other are symptomatic of the seizure of Jewish history and
suffering for ulterior purposes. This victim displacement appropriates the most
traumatic experience in Jewish history, pointedly erases the specificity of the
events supposedly being commemorated, and then harshly chides Jews for inserting
their own particularistic concerns into the discussion. At a certain point,
these phenomena become a continuation of a specific form of oppression and
erasure rather an antidote to "hatred."
Imagine a remembrance of
slavery that did not acknowledge the suffering of African-Americans-or a
commemoration of the AIDS epidemic omitting the experiences of gay men. Such
acts of dissociation would be inconceivable, the subjects of rightful
denunciations and outraged protests. Yet in recent years, that is precisely what
has been going on with regard to the Holocaust and its chief victims, the Jews.
Last month, Britain's National Union of Students (NUS)-which claims to represent
some 7 million students across 600 campuses-debated whether it should even
commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. That this was a subject for argument is
absurd enough; the actual proceedings were scandalous. "Of course there
shouldn't be anti-Semitism," said a student speaking against the measure,
offering the sort of throat-clearing assertion from which anti-Semitism almost
inevitably follows. "But it's not about one set of
people."
The fracas took place
against a backdrop of resurgent anti-Semitism in British higher education and
politics. Earlier this year, a co-chairman of Oxford University's Labor Party
club quit after claiming that a large number of
its members "have some kind of problem with Jews." Meanwhile, at the same
convention where it debated the propriety of commemorating the Holocaust, the
NUS elected as its president a young woman named Malia Bouattia, who had
previously opposed a declaration condemning ISIS, railed against the "Zionist-led media," and advocated
in favor of violent Palestinian "resistance" against Israel. Responding to
critics in the pages of the Guardian,
Bouattia began by noting that she is "the first black woman" and "the first
Muslim" to be elected president of the NUS; the unspoken purpose of sharing
these biographical details is that it is therefore impossible for her to be a
bigot.
While the NUS measure
endorsing Holocaust commemoration eventually passed, Darta Kaleja, a student at
Chester University, no doubt spoke for many of her student comrades when she
complained, to loud applause, that she wasn't against commemorating the
Holocaust per se but rather "prioritizing some lives over others. . In my five
years of UK education . not once were the genocides of Tibet, Rwanda, or
Zanzibar taught to me and my peers." This is as logically fallacious as it is
morally obscene; in no way does Holocaust remembrance obviate educational
efforts about other slaughters. (On the contrary, the homepage of Britain's Holocaust Memorial Day
Trust includes links to informational resources on the genocides in Cambodia,
Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.) One might expect Kaleja to be of Muslim or Arab
extraction given the widespread resentment in those communities toward the
memorialization of Jewish suffering. She is apparently from Latvia, however,
where the locals did an especially thorough job of wiping out their Jewish
neighbors without much prompting from the Germans.
The vociferous
endorsement of Kaleja's sentiments by a roomful of left-wing students
demonstrates the confluence of three distinct types of Holocaust minimization:
the Eastern European nationalist attempt to "obfuscate" the extermination of 6 million Jews
by relativizing it as just one of many "genocides" committed during World War
II, the traditional Arab-Muslim denial or diminishment of the Holocaust as a
grossly exaggerated event that pales in comparison to Israeli crimes, and a new
progressive narrative that expunges Jewish suffering in its account of an
amorphous, context-free misdeed-no worse, and holding no more meaning, than any
other episode of mass murder-inflicted upon some generalized notion of
"humanity." With respect to the latter, some go so far as to label the Holocaust
an instance of "white on white crime"
that, because its victims did not hail from the "global South," is undeserving
of recognition.
Sometimes, the speaking
of a Holocaust without Jews can be innocuous, the result of a muddle-headed
utopianism that desperately avoids singling out any one group's suffering as
having been worse than any other's. When Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau omitted any mention of Jews or anti-Semitism in
his first commemorative statement for International Holocaust Remembrance Day,
it was not due to any conscious bigotry on his part but a sort of purblind,
mushy progressivism. Still, it is distressing that the sort of Holocaust
revisionism that was always the sole province of the far right and Arab
nationalists-simultaneously denying the Shoah while hijacking it to bully Jews
as "the new Nazis"-is, in newfangled form, becoming a badge of progressive
virtue.
***
To understand the
perverse logic of the Holocaust without Jews, one must work backward from the
political end goal of those pushing it: the de-legitimzation of the Jewish
State. For if the Holocaust isn't about Jews, then Jews have no claim on their
history, or reason to fear anti-Semitism, or the need for a state. The complaint
used to be that Jews abused the Holocaust as a shakedown. Now, the Holocaust-at
least as much as it was as a crime targeting the Jews above all others-doesn't
exist at all.
Labeling Muslims "the new Jews" of
Europe when
anti-Semitic crimes are at a postwar high-and almost entirely the doing of
Muslims-is a particularly egregious form of this confiscation of Jewish history
and inversion of reality. (In many schools across Europe, teachers report that
they have difficulty teaching the Holocaust for fear of reprisals by Muslim
students.) So too are the sanctimonious reprimands bysoi-disant arbiters of good taste like the Atlantic's
Jim Fallows, who scold Jews for invoking the Holocaust to
contextualize contemporary anti-Semitic incitement. This most recent Holocaust
Memorial Day, just a day after Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khameini posted a video on
the Internet questioning whether the Holocaust even happened, the leading
Scottish Nationalist Party politician Alex Salmond used a commemorative event at
the Council of Europe in Strasbourg to scold not the Iranians but Israeli
Knesset Member Michael Oren, who had criticized European governments for hosting
the Iranian president on his whirlwind tour across the continent. There was a
"time and place for international politics," Salmond intoned. "Someone had to
say what a lot of people who attended the service were thinking." Well, bully
for him, then.
In this era of
hypersensitivity about "cultural appropriation" (which, taken to its extreme,
has seen college campuses erupt in protest over yoga classes and the serving of
bad Asian food in dining halls), it's noteworthy how often the greatest crime in
human history is casually manipulated by those who purport to be concerned with
"oppression." But to the mandarins of the progressive left, the Holocaust's
meaning is always and necessarily to be found in its "universalism." According
to this historical interpretation, the evil of the Nazis can be located in their
abandonment of the European cosmopolitan tradition and descent into bestial
particularism and nationalism-the very qualities that Israel, foremost among the
nations, is charged with embodying today. This sleight of hand has the
miraculous effect of clouding the causes of the Holocaust so that anti-Semitism
is relegated to a background role, if it is mentioned at all. Harping on the
fact of six million dead Jews, then, becomes weirdly tribal, even Nazi-like;
asserting Jewish peoplehood is too close to asserting Aryan-ness, the disastrous
results of which Europeans have been expiating for the past seven decades. It
doesn't matter that there is no Israeli Auschwitz, or anything even approaching
it; the particularism and nationalism of Israel is enough to imply everything
that has followed or at least could follow.
Israel is the carrier of the European disease that wise Europeans have
transcended through their enormous, Christ-like suffering, and formation of the
European Union.
Last November in Sweden,
the organizers of a Kristallnacht commemoration chosenot to invite Jews lest the universal lessons of the
Holocaust be marred by the official participation of the people who were its
primary victims. Yet the left-wing activists who organized the rally had no
problem with Palestinian flags or posters equating the Star of David to a
swastika, both of which make annual appearances at an event ostensibly called to
remember the genocide of Jewish people.
Erasing Jews from the
history of the Holocaust makes the likening of them to Nazis more palatable. In
the upcoming documentary film Let
My People Go, Marcel Ophuls promises to expose modern-day Israel
like he did Vichy France in his classic,The
Sorrow and the Pity, telling similarly "unpleasant truths." Ophuls
teamed up with Eyal Sivan, an Israeli filmmaker self-exiled in Paris who speaks
of anti-Zionist Jews as a righteous minority akin to anti-Apartheid Afrikaners
or members of the French resistance. To capture the full enormity of the Jewish
State's depravity, the two traveled to Germany to meet with what Robert Mackey,
the blogger then of theNew
York Times, called "young Israeli dissidents" who fled the
Jewish State, in the words of Sivan, "seeking refuge from Israel's politics in
Berlin."
For the dwindling
true-believers in a post-national Europe, it is hard to imagine a story that
could be more satisfying than Jews fleeing their Nazi-like nation-state for the
utopia of Berlin, whose residents have learned the lessons of their past as the
stiff-necked Jews manifestly have not. For anyone not quite so enamored of the
EU, it is hard to imagine a story that is at once so magnificently
self-flattering, and which lets Europeans off the hook so completely for their
repulsive historical crimes-while further enabling the deeply ingrained
anti-Semitism that made those crimes so deadly.
Today's progressive
narrative of the Holocaust without Jews is not altogether different from the
last, great leftist attempt to deny the truth of the Shoah. After WWII, the
Soviet Union and its puppet communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe
solemnized the Nazis' victims as "anti-fascists," lumping in together the 6
million Jews who were, by dint of their birth, singled out for execution,
alongside the communists and socialists who were targeted because of their
political disposition. Emphasizing the specifically anti-Semitic nature of the
Holocaust, communists worried, would work against their political purposes as
the populations over which they ruled were quite anti-Semitic themselves-and had
by and large looked away, or even eagerly participated, as their Jewish
neighbors were carried off to the gas chambers. Ever amoral, the communists
utilized anti-Semitism in much the same way Muslim regimes have exploited
Jew-hatred to mobilize discontented populations; from the 1952 "Doctors' Plot"
to the infamous Slansky Trial that same year to Poland's 1967-1968 Jewish purge,
communist authorities raised the phantom menace of nefarious Jewish power,
usually under the guise of "anti-Zionism." In his 1971 study Anti-Semitism
Without Jews, Hungarian-born Austrian writer Paul Lendvai detailed
the cynical ways that communist governments incited their people against
imaginary Jewish threats in lands almost entirely depleted of their Jewish
populations-and how those conspiratorial hysterias spoke to a deeper societal
sickness having little to do with Jews. "The very fact that what we are
witnessing is essentially an anti-Semitism without Jews is an all the more
alarming symptom of moral pollution and political disintegration," he wrote.
"The fewer Jews there are, the more the fight against racial hatred becomes
primarily, almost exclusively in the interest of
non-Jews."
If anti-Semitism without
Jews is a marker of "moral pollution and political disintegration," then so too
is the Holocaust without Jews an indicator of ethical rot. The lessons of the
Holocaust are indeed universal, and Jews-contrary to the anti-Semitic stereotype
of a selfish people hungry for the world's pity-have been at the forefront of
applying its lessons to latter-day manifestations of bigotry, intolerance, and
genocide. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for instance, has an
entire center devoted to the prevention of genocide,
and practically no commemoration of the Holocaust-be it a book, a film, or a
religious service-lacks mention of contemporary struggles against
injustice.
Yet the Holocaust's
universal meanings are not inconsistent with an appreciation of its singularity,
both in terms of process (the first and only time a modern state carried out an
industrial-scale, mechanized mass-mass murder with the aim of exterminating an
entire people) and victims (primarily, but not exclusively, Jews). Indeed, these
unique aspects of the Holocaust complement one other in distinguishing the event
from any other crime against humanity. Without independently acknowledging both
the universality and the historicity of the Holocaust, we will fail to
understand what happened, and to whom-and how to prevent such a tragedy from
ever happening again, to anyone.
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Janet
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If I am not for myself, WHO WILL
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IsraelLives
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WIKI lists the UN resolutions concerning Israel and Palestine As of 2013, Israel had been condemned in 45 resolutions by United Nations Human Rights Council since its creation in 2006. From 1967 to 1989 the UN Security Council adopted 131 resolutions directly addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict. Insanely, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted a number of resolutions saying that the strategic relationship with the United States encourages Israel to pursue aggressive and expansionist policies and practices.
Each of these terror networks poses a different, mortal challenge to Israel.
Q.E.D. What could be simpler or more compelling?
http://www.newsweek.com/jonathan-sacks-anti-semitism-anti-zionism-bds-israel-labour-442978
On March 27, speaking to the Sunday Times, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams expressed his concern at rising levels of anti-Semitism on British university campuses. There are, he said, "worrying echoes" of Germany in the 1930s. Two days later, in The Times, Chris Bryant, the Shadow Leader of the House of Commons and a senior member of the British Labour party, warned that the political left was increasingly questioning the right of the state of Israel to exist, a view he called a "not too subtle form of anti-Semitism."
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
April 25, 2016, 6:50 PM (IDT)
http://debka.com/article/25387/ http://debka.com/article/25387/
Israel embarked on a P. R. campaign to play down the extent of the threat which surfaced in one day in the discovery of Hamas tunnel near Kibbutz Sufa, and the suicide bombing of Jerusalem bus No. 12 on April 18, with 20 people injured. The police initially claimed for example that the explosion was due to a technical problem with the engine. But the two developments actually represented a sharp and serious escalation of the Palestinian wave of terror against Israel.
Neither of the operations was carried out by "lone wolves" but rather by large terror networks. The secret tunnel discovered in the Gaza border area was built by the Hamas military wing, the Izaddin al-Qassam brigades, while the suicide bombing in Jerusalem was carried out by the Hamas infrastructure in Judea and Samaria, specifically its operatives in the Bethlehem area.
Each of these terror networks poses a different challenge to Israel.
In Gaza, the Hamas political leadership is no longer in contact with the heads of its military wing. Neither the top commanders nor the regional commanders of the brigades obey any Hamas political body. They only heed three sources:
1. The Hamas military command framework headed by Mohammad Deif and Marwan Issa.
2. Iranian or Hizballah intelligence services, which maintain contacts with them and often provide funds or weapons.
3. The ISIS affiliate in the Sinai, with which the Hamas military wing maintains operational ties.
There is an equally serious problem in Judea and Samaria. Over the past few weeks, the Hamas terror networks have started to make contact with sleeper cells from Fatah's Tanzim paramilitary force that have the knowledge, ability, means and experience for major terrorist attacks against Israel, such as the Jerusalem bus bombing.
This dormant wing of Mohammad Abbas's Fatah has began to show signs of life and willingness to return to the path of terror.
These contacts began immediately after publication of a letter from jailed Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti to members of the force that called on them to start coordinating their operations against Israel with Hamas. Nobody has bothered to explain how a senior terrorist jailed in a high-security Israeli prison succeeded in smuggling such a letter out.
The link between part of the Tanzim and the Hamas terror networks is no less dangerous than the tunnel discovered near Kibbutz Sufa, and it presages an escalation of terror operations in the future.
The only way to prevent a major deterioration of the security situation is to strike targets of the Izzadin al-Qassam brigades. There is no need to launch a total war against Hamas or to occupy Gaza.
But instead of responding as needed, Israel's government and security establishment have released pictures of digging equipment that has finally succeeded in locating a single Hamas infiltration tunnel out of the many that exist, and claimed that those responsible for the Jerusalem bombing have yet to be identified. At the same time, senior officials and IDF officers continue to assert that Hamas is not seeking escalation.
We will never recognize the Jewishness of the State of Israel. - Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, Cairo, November, 2014
One of the widely propagated falsehoods regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict in general, and Palestinian-Israeli one in particular, is that it is an immensely complex problem requiring great sophistication and creativity to resolve.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The 100-year struggle between Jew and Arab over control of the Holy Land, extending west of the Jordan River to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, is in fact a very simple one.
But recognition of the stark simplicity of the conflict does not in any way imply that it is easy to resolve. In fact, it is the brutal simplicity of the conflict that makes a solution so elusive.
Any endeavor to obfuscate this unpalatable fact can only have - indeed, has had - gravely detrimental, even tragic, consequences, just as mistaken diagnosis of a malaise is likely to have detrimental, even tragic, outcomes. Any attempt to portray the conflict as "complicated" is not a mark of sophistication or profundity, but rather of a desire to evade the merciless, unembellished truth.
For the clash between Jew and Arab over the exercise of national sovereignty anywhere west of the Jordan is a classic "them" or "us" scenario, an arch-typical zero-sum game, in which the gains of one side are unequivocally the loss of the other.
No amount of genteel pussyfooting around this harsh reality will change it. No amount of polite politically correct jargon will soften it.
Essence of enmity
This reality is aptly conveyed by the introductory excerpt from Yitzhak Rabin's January 1976 address to a joint session of the US Congress, when in his more lucid, pre-Oslo, period he succinctly diagnosed that the root of Arab Judeophobic enmity was not a dispute over any particular allocation of territory between Jew and Arab, but the allocation of any territory for Jewish sovereignty: "The reason [for the Arab refusal of peace and the ongoing belligerency] was not a conflict over territorial claims. The reason was, and remains, the fact that a free Jewish state sits on territory at all."
Rabin's assessment was valid then; it is valid today.
No matter what territorial configuration for dividing the land was proposed, it was invariably rejected by Israel's Arab interlocutors - from the 1947 Partition Plan, through the far-reaching concessions offered by Ehud Barak in 2000, that elicited nothing but a massive wave of violence that lasted almost five years and left thousands dead and injured; to the even more dramatically pliant proposal put forward by Ehud Olmert and rejected by Abbas in 2008.
Clearly then, as Rabin identified, the roots of Arab belligerence vis-a-vis the Jews cannot be traced to any specific borders of the Jewish state - but to the existence of the Jewish state itself.
Not about borders, but existence
Accordingly we are compelled to the conclusion that the "root causes" of the dispute are:
. not about Jewish military "occupation" of Arab land; but about Jewish political existence on any land;
. not about the Jewish State's policies; but about the Jewish State per se; and
. not about what the Jewish people do; but about what the Jewish people are.
Resounding affirmation of this came from the allegedly "moderate" and "pragmatic" Abbas himself, who in November 2014 told an emergency meeting of Arab League foreign ministers that no peace accord with Israel was possible if this involved recognizing Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people - see introductory excerpt.
This was no slip of the tongue.
Several months earlier, Reuters reported (March 9): "The Arab League has backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's rejection of Israel as a 'Jewish state'... [and] endorsed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's rejection of Israel's demand for recognition as a Jewish state." The League issued a statement declaring: "The Council of the Arab League confirms its support for the Palestinian leadership...
and emphasizes its rejection of recognizing Israel as a 'Jewish State.'" Clearly, this should be a sobering message for all the self-professed Zionists who have so eagerly advocated that Israel adopt the Arab League Plan (aka the "Saudi Initiative") - which calls for a return to the indefensible pre-1967 lines, division of Jerusalem, return of Arab refugees, and withdrawal from the Golan Heights - as a basis for peace negotiations and pan-Arab recognition.
Recognition? Really? As an un-Jewish state? How accommodating.
Resolute rejection of recognition
This resolute rejection of Jewish sovereignty, which increasingly has reflected itself in expression of revulsion at things Jewish, should be seen as the back drop to some recently reported - and revealing - incidents.
Thus following Abbas's outrageous declaration last September that Jews have no right to "desecrate" the Temple Mount with "their filthy feet," and his incendiary endorsement of the harassment of Jewish visitors by Arab hooligans, the allegedly moderate Jordanian government warned of "serious consequences" if the Jewish state allowed Jews to visit the site which according to Jewish religion is the most holy to Jews.
Significantly, the Jordanian warning came soon after Amman, under intense Palestinian pressure, recanted on its proposal to installsecurity cameras to document events and monitor attempts to instigate violence on the Temple Mount, leaving Arab hoodlums free to assail Jewish visitors with impunity while accusing them of aggression and desecration.
Then, of course there was the impudent and blatantly Judeophobic characterization of MK Tzipi Livni as "so smelly" by a Harvard law student, one Husam El-Qoulaq, reportedly head of Harvard's Students for Justice in Palestine.
The reported transcript (Ynet, April 22) of the incident dispels any doubt that the barb was an intentional slur: STUDENT: Okay, my question is for Tzipi Livni, um, how is it that you are so smelly? (panel looks confused) STUDENT: Oh, it's regarding your odor.
MODERATOR: I'm not sure I understand the question.
STUDENT: I'm question (sic) about the odor of Tzipi Livni, very smelly.
Bitter fruits of pliancy
There is a bitter sense of irony in this incident involving Livni. After all, she has been arguably the most pliant of all mainstream Israeli politicians toward Palestinian demands.
The abuse she was subject to serves to underscore the bitter fruits of such pliancy and to reinforce the validity of the previous diagnosis of the sources of Arab opprobrium toward all things Jewish: It is not about what the Jews do, but what they are - Jewish.
Commenting on the incident, well-known scholar Robert Spencer aptly remarked: "One thing is certain: If the roles had been reversed, and a Jewish student had asked a Muslim politician why she was so 'smelly,' that student would no longer be at Harvard, and would be subjected to international opprobrium, while stories on 'Islamophobia' would be blanketing the airwaves and filling mainstream media publications."
Too true.
Indeed, imagine the international outcry if an Israeli leader, say Benjamin Netanyahu, had declared that the Palestinian-Arabs were desecrating Judaism's holy sites, say the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, "with their filthy feet" and called on the "settlers" to "defend it by all means possible..."
Just imagine...
Perilous parallels
Irrepressible optimists and indefatigable two-state advocates cling desperately to irrelevant historical precedents in which once implacable enemies have put their bloody past and inimical grievances behind them and forged lasting peace agreements that have permitted them to live in political harmony and economic prosperity.
In this regard, they frequently point to the cases of Germany and Japan, who were bitter enemies of the Allies in WWII, the largest conflict humanity has ever known, in which tens of millions perished, cities were devastated and economies ruined. Yet a few short decades after the cessation of hostilities, both were staunch allies and robust trading partners of their erstwhile foes.
These are dangerously false analogies. We should be wary of being misled by them and cautious of drawing misplaced conclusions from them.
Putting aside for the moment the innate and obdurate antagonism that Islam harbors for all that is not Islam, there are important differences in the geo-political structure of the situation prevailing in post-WWII Japan and Germany, on the one hand, and that facing Israel today, on the other.
First of all, both the Germans and Japanese were unequivocally defeated and signed documents of unconditional surrender, something the Arabs in general, and the Palestinian-Arabs in particular, have not been required to do.
Berlin is not Baghdad
Secondly, and arguably more significant, unlike any prospective Palestine state, which would be part and parcel of a larger Islamic world, Germany was not surrounded by a swathe of kindred Teutonic nations, nor Japan by kindred Nipponic nations, that, driven by a radical Teutonic/Nipponic ideology, strove continually to undermine the stability and legitimacy of any peaceable regime that foreign powers might install.
Overlooking this element was in no small measure part of the reason for the failure of the American attempt to set up amenable, democratically oriented regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. For unlike defeated Berlin (and Tokyo), Baghdad (and Kabul) and their environs were continually assailed by Islamic insurgents, financed and equipped from surrounding Muslim countries, imperiling any government not to their liking.
This is a lesson Israel will ignore at its peril.
For this is precisely the situation that any regime set up in territory evacuated by Israel is almost certainly liable to face - and precisely the predicament that Israel would have to deal with in the wake of such evacuation.
Sadly, the vast majority of proposals for resolution of the conflict do exactly that, and are totally unmindful of the repercussions their implementation are liable to foment.
If Hamas were disarmed...
Thus, one of the frequently aired proposals is for the disarming of Hamas.
Nothing could highlight more effectively the moronic myopia of these kinds of suggestions than the previous analysis. For in the unlikely event that Hamas could be persuaded to disarm, how would it defend itself against more radical - and armed - challengers that would abound in and from its Islamic surrounds? And to what avail would Israel endeavor to disarm Hamas, only to have it replaced by a more menacing successor? This confronts Israeli policy-makers with almost mathematical algorithmic logic: The only way to ensure who rules - and does not rule - Gaza is for Israel to rule it itself. Precisely the same logic holds for Judea-Samaria.
The only way for Israel to do this without "ruling another people" is to relocate the "other people" outside the territory it is obliged to administer.
The only nonviolent and humane way to effect such relocation of the "other people" is by economic inducements - increasing material incentives to leave and disincentives to stay.
Q.E.D. What could be simpler or more compelling?
