Monday, January 18, 2010

The Mumble-Jumble of Mondoweiss

Mondoweiss is one of those blogs of which Zionists have bad feelings, justifiably so.

It's not not that the web owners attack Israel and Zionism but the evident animosity and delight in twisting the simple facts just so that their outlook will look good. Moreover, it is a bright light attracting all the ugly moths who leave comments, many antisemitic.

It is run by

Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz. Weiss is 54 and lives in New York state. Horowitz is 36 and lives in New York City. We maintain this blog because of 9/11, Iraq, Gaza, the Nakba, the struggling people of Israel and Palestine, and our Jewish background.


Mondoweiss asserts that it

is a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective.

It has four principal aims:

1. To publish important developments touching on Israel/Palestine, the American Jewish community and the shifting debate over US foreign policy in a timely fashion;

2. To publish a diversity of voices to promote dialogue on these important issues;

3. To foster the movement for greater fairness and justice for Palestinians in American foreign policy;

4. To offer alternatives to pro-Zionist ideology as a basis for American Jewish identity.


Let's take, for example, this post, wherein Horowitz takes on Birthright through this map.



What bothers him?

This:-

A few things stand out about the map. First are the terms Judea and Samaria to help designate the West Bank. These are the biblical terms for the West Bank, and most associated in the US with the Israeli settler movement who use the designation to imply the Jewish "birthright" to the land. At least the the map also says West Bank, which is maybe a nod to the supposedly "disputed" nature of the territory.

More odd to me is that Gaza is displayed in green, while the West Bank and Golan Heights are in light blue. This which would seem to indicate that Gaza is a foreign entity similar to Egypt, Jordan, Syria or Lebanon, and not part of the occupied territories.


That is stupid.

a) the terms Judea and Samaria actually appear in the 1947 UN Partition Resolution. Yes, they are biblical terms but also the internationally recognized geographic terms as well. The Mondos are so inimical to anything that would support any Zionist claim, they will twist historical truth to force that claim to be ignored.

b) and yes, the Jewish people do have a 'birthright' to this land and the entire civilized world a century ago recognized that right when it voted to "reconstitute" the Jewish national home.

c) and as even Horowitz notes, the term "West Bank" appears so there can't have been any malice aforethought, God forbid, to deny the Arabs the wild visions. Moreover, it is colored a lighter blue than Israel so obviously, there was an intention to distinguish between the areas.

d) and as for Gaza being green, well, that is the color of Hamas, no? Should we not be singing: "Giro giro tondo, casca il mondo..."?

The Mondos are not "progressive" as they claim but cosmopolitan is in their name. They are detached from whatever they consider to be Jewish - as a religion, as a nationality, as an ethnicity and as a culture. The only thing Judaism serves them is a perverse form of exploitation so that they can 'justify' their hostility and corruption of Jewish values.

It's all a crazy mumble-jumble.

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I left this at their comment section:

You may call yourselves “progressives” but you sound like a parody of Bob Dylan’s “Talking John Birch Blues”:

Well, I was feelin’ sad and feelin’ blue,
I didn’t know what in the world I was gonna do,
Them Zionists they wus comin’ around,
They wus in the air,
They wus on the ground.
They wouldn’t gimme no peace. . .

So I run down most hurriedly
And joined up with the Birthright Society,
I got me a secret membership card
And started off a-walkin’ down the road.
Yee-hoo, I’m a real Birthrighter now!
Look out you Zionists!

…Well, I wus lookin’ everywhere for them gol-darned Zionists.
I got up in the mornin’ ‘n’ looked under my bed,
Looked in the sink, behind the door,
Looked in the glove compartment of my car.
Couldn’t find ‘em . . .

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