More on Jordan Really Was Palestine

In previous posts (here; and also here), I noted that actually the United States opposed Jordan's independence in 1946 and its acceptance into the UN when first proposed by Great Britain.

One main reason, central to understanding the concept of the Mandate for Palestine's territorial conceptualization, is that TransJordan was intrinsically part of the area defined as "Palestine" and due to the 1924 Anglo-American Convention, Jordan could not exist without first resolving  the matter of the Jewish national home as the two were intertwined.

I found now new material from this book

which contains this article:

which includes further details to my previous posts (and another one) on the opposition to the recognitition of Jordan as an independent state based on the 1924 Anglo-American Convention that confirmed the original status of TransJordan as territory within the Mandate of Palestine area, territory that was potentially to become part of the historic Jewish homeland.

As argued then, until Israel was created, Jordan could not be considered a state.

The information of the political battle behind the scenes:

And there's something here, a

Letter, dated July 15, 1946, from Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson to President Harry S. Truman, recommending that the United States vote in favor of admitting Trans-Jordan into the United Nations, and an attached memo detailing the United States State Department's position on the question of admitting Trans-Jordan to the United Nations. From the Confidential File.

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Will There Be A Second Crimea War?

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Melanie Phillips Explains the Why

From this WSJ article:

Yet the U.S. and U.K. hold only Israel's feet to the fire. Why? An important part of the answer lies in the inherent nature of the "peace process" itself.
This rests on two premises. The first is the Western fallacy that everyone in the world is governed by reason and material self-interest, whereas in fact some have non-negotiable agendas. The second is the current liberal belief that trans-national instruments such as international law can transcend the grievances of nation states.
War thus becomes a primitive throwback. It must be replaced by conflict resolution, negotiation and the "peace process."
This then becomes a deeply problematic end in itself. Based on an amoral equivalence in such negotiations between aggressor and victim, the peace process has to be kept going at all costs if war is to be avoided.
That means ignoring the fact that the aggressor in the dispute may still be violent or threatening. For if that is acknowledged, the "peace process" becomes something unconscionable: an enforced surrender to violence.
If the victims protest at this free pass to murderous aggression and refuse to submit, it is they who get the blame for derailing the peace process. That process is therefore innately inimical to justice, and biased in favor of the aggressor in a conflict.

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American Aid and the Nazi Flag

From this clip:

P.S.

And I have now seen this:

Turning on the 'Jewish state'

There'll be no peace if the Palestinians don’t contribute their share; but they won't contribute their share unless people who want peace insist they contribute it.

And that principle includes funders of Pal. Authority projects, like the one above. 
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My Letter on the Palmach and the Templars

On January 30th this year, a book review was published by Alexander Zvielli, "Swastikas over Tel Aviv".

I had a letter published but it seems it isn't on-line.

So, here it is:

The review of Heidemarie Wawrzyn's new book, "Nazis in the Holy Land", by Alexander Zvielli (Jan. 31) mentions that "Jews objected to and criticized" the activities of the local Nazis in Mandate Palestine from amongst the Templar community.  I think additional activities should be recalled that Zveilli did not include.
On March 22, 1946, the Palmach assassinated Gotthilf Wagner, former Burgomaster of Sarona, on Tel Aviv's Levinsky Street.  Another violent attack against the Templar village Waldheim, today Alonei Abba, was comitted on September 17, 1946, also by the Palmach. Given the Palmach's opposition to the 'terror' of the Irgun and Lechi, its operations and their character in this case, and that the war in Europe was already over for months, this episode is unique in the Yishuv's armed struggle history and it also reflects of the way Germans were viewed at the time.

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I'm Shocked, Shocked by the US

Reported:

“We were shocked by Moshe Ya'alon’s comments, which seriously call into question his commitment to Israel’s relationship with the United States,” the official said. “Moreover, this is part of a disturbing pattern in which the defense minister disparages the U.S. administration, and insults its most senior officials. Given the unprecedented commitment that this administration has made to Israel’s security, we are mystified why the defense minister seems intent on undermining the relationship.”

What did the Minister say?  He spoke

harsh criticism leveled...at the Obama administration in an address at Tel Aviv University, reported in Haaretz on Tuesday. Ya'alon said the United States “shows weakness” in various arenas around the world – including Ukraine – and that its allies in the Middle East are disappointed. Ya'alon said that because it is “sitting at home," America is opening itself up to terror attacks “and the United States will suffer.”

What's so shcoking in Yaalon's correct analysis, being repeated by many media commentators?

Who is undermining whom in this relationship?

Who is displaying less-than-required committment?

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Erekat and Ugly

Reported:

[Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb] Erekat insisted Palestine would not interfere with how Israelis “want to define themselves”, but said it was unwarranted to insist Palestinians should recognise Israel as a specifically Jewish state.
“Israelis cannot deny that I have my own narrative, I have my religion, I have my story,” he said. “When they ask me to recognise the Jewish state, what they are doing is asking me to change my narrative.”

Saeb, all we what is historical truth, not romanticized fiction. 

And this:

Erekat said the Palestinian delegation showed the US president a map showing 10,589 housing settlement units he said were built on Palestinian-claimed territory since negotiations began less than eight months ago.
“We put a map to president Obama – showed him the extent of what happened since we began in July,” Erekat said, showing the same map to an audience at the Wilson Center thinktank in Washington.
“It is a very ugly map. This was supposed to be land of the Palestinian state.” Describing how Israeli settlements weaken his hand in Palestinian negotiators, Erekat added: “I cannot weigh two kilos in Jericho and weigh 100 kilos in Washington, I really cannot.”

The map is not ugly.  That map is of life, and industry, and growth and development.  The Arab terror against Jews, though, is.  And that territory was originally supposed to be the Jewish state as guaranteed by the League of Nations.

As for kilos, we are not going to do any geographical dieting.

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The Ganzer Chaim Gans

A quotation:

What supports and excuses Butler's view of Zionism as having a "structural commitment to state violence against minorities" [she argues for a total rejection of Zionism by identifying it with colonial policies of uprooting of entire populations] is the fact that since the 1970s, Zionist policies cannot but be identified with the most abhorrent interpretations of this ideology and with this structural commitment.

That was Chaim Gans of Tel Aviv University, author of A Just Zionism,

In A Just Zionism, Chaim Gans presents a philosophical analysis of the
justice of contemporary Zionism as realized by the State of Israel. He argues forcefully that ethnocultural nationalism can be just, and boldly advocates a two state solution, a Palestinian state living side by side Israel in secured borders, along the 1967 Green Line. 

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So, FDR Uttered Anti-Semitic Slurs

An excerpt from an article by Rafael Medoff:

At one point during the Yalta conference, in February 1945, the conversation between President Roosevelt and Soviet premier Josef Stalin turned to what was known, in those days, as the "Jewish problem". FDR mentioned he would soon be seeing Saudi Arabian leader Ibn Saud, and Stalin asked if he intended to make any concessions to the king. According to the transcript, “The President replied that there was only one concession he thought he might offer and that was to give him the six million Jews in the United States.”
Professors Breitman and Lichtman, in 'FDR and the Jews', say that this "quip," as they call it, was likewise used by FDR as "an ice-breaker." (p.301)
(Assistant Secretary of State Walter Bedell Smith was so concerned it would be seen as more than a "quip" that he censored that sentence when the Yalta transcripts were first released in 1955. The full text eventually leaked out, however.)
...the "ice-breaker" claim is not supported by the historical record. The Yalta conference lasted a week. The transcripts show that Roosevelt made his "quip" about Jews on the next to last day, long after the ice was broken...

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Quote the Bible

Get back at Islamists suggesting the Jewish Temples were somehow "alleged".

Quote the Bible.  It's better than the Quran:

4فَاشْتَرَى دَاوُدُ الْبَيْدَرَ وَالْبَقَرَ بِخَمْسِينَ شَاقِلاً مِنَ الْفِضَّةِ.
وَبَنَى دَاوُدُ هُنَاكَ مَذْبَحاً لِلرَّبِّ وَأَصْعَدَ مُحْرَقَاتٍ وَذَبَائِحَ سَلاَمَةٍ. وَاسْتَجَابَ الرَّبُّ مِنْ أَجْلِ الأَرْضِ، فَكَفَّتِ الضَّرْبَةُ عَنْ إِسْرَائِيلَ.

And that is:

So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. David built there an altar to the LORD and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. Thus the LORD was moved by prayer for the land, and the plague was held back from Israel.

From II Samuel 24:24:25.

I did.

That's a picture of the cave under the "Foundation Stone" under the Dome of the Rock.
Cool, no?

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A 'Stern' 'Murder', Wrote Bishop

Did you know that:

-   Patrick Bishop will be talking at the London Jewish Cultural Centre on March 19?

-   He will also be speaking to the chairman of Liberal Judaism, Lucian Hudson, at the Oxford Literary Festival on March 30.

He is the author of ‘The Reckoning: How the Killing of One Man Changed the Fate of the Promised Land’ 

a book described so:

...Bishop tells the story of [Avraham] Stern [leader of the militant Zionist group, the Stern Gang] and the middle-class Londoner, assistant superintendent Geoffrey Morton, sent to track him down. The spectacular and murderous crimes of the Stern Gang had caused outrage among both British and Jewish groups. Morton cornered Stern in Tel Aviv and shot him dead. The events of that day had a major impact on British rule in Palestine and on the events that shaped the birth of Israel.

Here is from the official blurb:

...the mesmerising true story of two ruthless adversaries and the wartime killing of Avraham Stern – an event that shook the modern world.

On a cold morning in February 1942, with the world plunged in the horrors of World War Two, Avraham Stern hid in an attic in Tel Aviv, a price on his head. He’d been on the run for weeks, his picture blazoned across newspapers all over Palestine. As leader of the Stern Gang, he had committed spectacular and murderous crimes, sparking outcry from both British and Jewish groups. An intellectual poet and mystic, Stern believed himself destined for greatness; the Jewish liberator of British Palestine. Drawn always to the margins – his writings were drenched in images of martyrdom and blood.

Assistant Superintendent Geoffrey Morton, a middle-class Londoner who had swopped milk deliveries for the dangers of colonial policing, was the man tasked with stopping Stern. Seemingly so different, in fact the men had much in common – ambition, dedication and conviction in his own righteousness. The incidents of that morning would be endlessly contested but two things were clear; Morton had cornered Stern and, minutes later, shot him dead.

The shots Morton fired that day would echo down the remaining years of British rule in Palestine and through the titanic events that shaped the birth of Israel.

Based on revelatory research, the private archive of Morton and interviews with witnesses, ‘The Reckoning’ is the first book to tell the tale of a rebel who terrorized Palestine, the lawman determined to stop him and the creation of a cult of martyrdom that destroyed any hope of compromise between Arab and Jew.

Here he is further on his book:

...Morton never denied killing him but always maintained he fired in self-defence after Stern made a sudden dash for what he feared was the trigger for a hidden bomb. Claims that he had been executed in cold blood were met with libel actions. Towards the end of Morton’s life, however, his story was challenged from an unexpected quarter when another British police officer who was in the room gave a very different version of events.

(and that was only page 3)

What seemed at the time to be a dramatic but ultimately inconsequential cops-and-robbers shoot-out was soon to take on a much greater significance. The murky circumstances of Stern’s death — combined with the continued policy of turning away refugees from Germany — helped turn moderate Jewish opinion against the British and increase support for radical action against them.  Six years later they would depart in ignominy bringing to an end one of the shabbiest and most painful episodes in the history of the empire.

A friend of mine published another good book a few years ago on the matter. And you'll recall the Farran Affair.

That Winterbottom film is still in abeyance but the subject of the Hebrew war for liberation against a foreign occupier will reach out still and the facts and truth will be available for all.



(with thanks to EG)

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Scarlett Stands By Her Decision

Scarlett Johansson defended herself.

Was the whole thing just a bit of a mistake?
...she shakes her head. "No, I stand behind that decision. I was aware of that particular factory before I signed it." Really? "Yes, and… it still doesn't seem like a problem. Until someone has a solution to the closing of that factory to leaving all those people destitute, that doesn't seem like the solution to the problem."

But the international community says that the settlements are illegal and shouldn't be there. "I think that's something that's very easily debatable. In that case, I was literally plunged into a conversation that's way grander and larger than this one particular issue. And there's no right side or wrong side leaning on this issue."

Except, there's a lot of unanimity, actually, I say, about the settlements on the West Bank. "I think in the UK there is," she says. "That's one thing I've realised… I'm coming into this as someone who sees that factory as a model for some sort of movement forward in a seemingly impossible situation."

..."When I say a mistake," I say, "I mean partly because people saw you making a choice between Oxfam – a charity that is out to alleviate global poverty – and accepting a lot of money to advertise a product for a commercial company. For a lot of people, that's like making a choice between charity – good – and lots of money – greed."

"Sure I think that's the way you can look at it. But I also think for a non-governmental organisation to be supporting something that's supporting a political cause… there's something that feels not right about that to me. There's plenty of evidence that Oxfam does support and has funded a BDS [boycott, divest, sanctions] movement in the past. It's something that can't really be denied." 

+972 attacked:-

By stating that the illegality of settlements is ‘very easily debatable’ and that there is no ‘right or wrong side,’ the actress has proven she is not naive at all – but is rather choosing money over humanitarian concerns. By default, she is enabling the occupation.

I left this comment:

on the other hand, she could be correct in her legal analysis of the status of the Jewish residential communities in the parts of the League of Nations mandated area to become the resonsituted Jewish national home and that the only profits that could result from a prolonging of the hostilities by Arab, supported by progressive leftist forces, are the profits of war, or, the profits of the "human rights industry" which prolongs the suffereing of people, calssifying them as refugees, etc. just so they can donate money and pay the salaries of all sorts of groups and associations.

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Comforting Head Injuries News

Bashed skulls normative:-

Head-bashing hostilities haunted the Middle East long before the region's current conflicts arose. Skulls of people who occupied the lands of Israel and the West Bank over the last 6,000 years display a consistently high rate of serious injuries.
These head wounds typically were inflicted in small-scale brawls, not wars, say anthropologist Israel Hershkovitz of Tel Aviv University and his colleagues.
Skull injuries vary in frequency from about 1 percent to 25 percent at ancient sites around the world. Among human skulls previously excavated in Israel and the West Bank, 25 percent of individuals had suffered severe head wounds, whether they lived during the Copper Age or as recently as a century ago, the researchers report online July 11 in the International Journal of Osteoarcbaeology. That rate held for skulls from farming and urban populations and from societies that included Egyptians, Babylonians and Assyrians.
Hershkovitz's team, which includes Palestinian anthropologist Issa. Jubrael. Sarie of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, examined 783 skulls from old community cemeteries, excluding massacre sites and battle graves. 

^



Some head injuries in the new study might have resulted from warfare. Instances of such damage would have been even greater had the researchers examined skulls from battle sites, comments archaeologist Augusta McMahon of the University of Cambridge in England. "Prehistory was not peaceful," says McMahon, who is directing excavations of a 5,800-year-old mass grave in Syria.

For ancient populations that were armed mainly with clubs, injuries caused by one-on-one fights or warfare are difficult to distinguish. "A mace blow received from a neighbor during an argument and a mace blow received from a foreign enemy in battle look the same on a skull," McMahon says.

More on Militants

Terrorists?  Al-Qaida members?

Not according to AP:

3 militants killed in Yemen explosion

AP | By AHMED AL-HAJ
Published March 16, 2014 01:44PM EDT

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Security officials in Yemen say three alleged al-Qaida operatives have accidentally blown themselves up while outfitting a car with explosives in preparation for an operation in the southern Yemeni province of Shabwa. Tribesmen from the area and security officials identified the three, one Saudi and two Yemenis, as al-Qaida members.

And that appeared in TIME,  and ABC News, the Washington Post and other outlets.

Last year, in the BBC, we read

The government is battling al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula militants who often target the military.

This pervasive perversion of the news is dangerous.

(Thanks BT) 

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Will Muslims Pay for the Rebuilding of the Temple?

I caught this item and thought to myself, Purim or not, can we apply this to the Muslim Waqf authorities and get them to fork over for the revuildsing rebuilding of the Temple?

When Elaine Hession opened the letter she almost passed out and her partner Jonathan Hill turned "as white as a ghost".  Last month the couple received a notice from the Land Registry informing them their local church had registered its right to make them contribute to the cost of repairs.
Under chancel repair liability, homeowners living within the parishes of churches built before 1536 can be held liable for costs. The law dates back to the time of Henry VIII and, although actual claims are rare, in 2009 Adrian and Gail Wallbank from Warwickshire sold their home after losing an 18-year legal case and being left with costs of £250,000.
Mr Hill, a builder, said he had spent about £100,000 renovating the home he inherited from his father Frank in Stottesdon, Shropshire, but he now fears it has been devalued because of the registration made by the local parochial church council (PCC).
...Monasteries often acquired this land together with the responsibility for paying for the repair of the chancel.  When Henry Vlll sold the monasteries' land, the liability to pay for the repair of the chancel remained with the land sold.
"It is medieval madness," said the 41-year-old, whose father is buried on the land and "loved the property".
Ms Hession said she could not believe what she was reading when the notice arrived.  "I had a vague notion of chancel repair liability but we were astounded to receive it," she said...
...Liability for chancel repair does not necessarily show on the title deeds of a house and solicitors often advise people to take out insurance against potential liability claims with premiums costing from about £50.

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Acronym

Describe

Judith Butler, Arundhati Roy, Amira Hass, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UNHRC, Chomsky, Palestinian cause, post-colonialists, Guardian, Le Monde, Nation, Haaretz…

Cosmopolitan

Radical

Agitprop

Progressives 

C.R.A.P.

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What Does A Real Watchdog Look Like?

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Sure We Can Depend on John Kerry

On March 3rd at the AIPAC Conference, John Kerry said,

...strong diplomacy is also essential to another threat to Israel’s security: ending the conflict with the Palestinians, and in doing so, preserving the Jewish and democratic nature of the state of Israel...My friends, we understand that Israel has to be strong in order to make peace. But we also understand that peace will make Israel stronger. Any peace agreement must also guarantee Israel’s identity as a Jewish homeland...what the end-game should look like is straightforward: security arrangements that leave Israelis more secure, not less; mutual recognition of the nation-state of the Jewish people and the nation-state of the Palestinian people; an end to the conflict and to all claims; a just and agreed solution for Palestinian refugees, one that does not diminish the Jewish character of the state of Israel; and a resolution that finally allows Jerusalem to live up to its name as the City of Peace...

And later this month, 

Secretary of State John Kerry told members of Congress on Thursday..."I think its a mistake for some people to be raising it again and again as the critical decider of their attitude toward the possibility of a state, and peace, and we've obviously made that clear..."'Jewish state' was resolved in 1947 in Resolution 181 where there are more than 40-- 30 mentions of 'Jewish state,'" Kerry continued. "In addition, chairman Arafat in 1988 and again in 2004 confirmed that he agreed it would be a Jewish state. And there are any other number of mentions."

Uh, er, Mr. Kerry, I think there is an essential contradiction between those two utterances.


Oh, and this site has President Obama last year, on March 2oth, saying this:

let me just reiterate that a central element of a lasting peace must be a strong and secure Jewish state

Oiy vey.

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A Comment of the Essence of the Book of Esther

(Based on a Dvar Torah by Rav Amnon Chedri)


The essence of the Purim story is the concept of ונהפוך הוא, that is, the turning-around aspect of the story in that the opposite of what seems to be happening occurs.

it was turned to the contrary, that the Jews had rule over them that hated them;(9:1)

Haman prepares a gallows but he is hanged upon it.  He presumes he is to be honored by the King but must himself so honor Mordechai.  Mass murder is planned for the Jews but their enemies are attacked and killed.

The drama begins with the convincing by Haman of King Achasverus to permit him to deal with the Jews, saying:

There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and their laws are diverse from those of every people; neither keep they the king's laws; therefore it profiteth not the king to suffer them. (3:8)

But what are those "king's laws"?   

If we search through the Book of Esther for the term דת we will discover the following "laws":

 1:8 And the drinking was according to the law;

That would be public licentiousness

1:10  he commanded...To bring Vashti the queen before the king

That would be sexual harrassment

1:19 If it please the king, let there go a royal commandment from him...That Vashti come no more before king Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal estate unto another that is better than she. 

Indiscriminate execution and property expropriation.

1:20 And when the king’s decree which he shall make shall be published throughout all his empire, (for it is great,) all the wives shall give to their husbands honour, both to great and small. 

Oppression of women.

2:2 Then said the king's servants that ministered unto him: 'Let there be sought for the king young virgins fair to look on; and let the king appoint officers in all the provinces of his kingdom, that they may gather together all the fair young virgins unto Shushan the castle, 

Kidnapping and forced prostitution.

4:11 All the king’s servants, and the people of the king’s provinces, do know, that whosoever, whether man or woman, shall come unto the king into the inner court, who is not called, there is one law of his to put him to death, except such to whom the king shall hold out the golden sceptre,

Government isolation and lack of interaction with the populace.

For all intents and purposes, these are the characteristics of all tyrannies until this day.

The Jewish religious and cultural heritage is the exact opposite of those "laws" and that is the true message of the story of the Jews in Persia: indeed, we are different and demand the right to be different and our difference will have a positive effect on society.

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Purim Parody

From the Yesha Council weekly sheet:-

Translation;

A purchasing group is organizing for the city of the future, Rawabi.

10 minutes from Ramallah. 40 minutes from Shchem

Details at the HaAretz newspaper, ذ٣٥٣٢١١١١١

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They Ruined a Country

Sounds intriguing:

The Byzantine-early Islamic transition on the Palestinian coastal plain: 

a re-evaluation of the archaeological evidence

by Itamar Taxel

Abstract
The Muslim conquest of Palestine, which put a final end to the Byzantine hegemony on that part of the eastern Mediterranean, is considered in recent studies to have been a generally non-violent event, in which the negative impact on the continuity of local settlement was for the most part peripheral. While the first assumption may be true [??? "non-violent"], the latter seems too optimistic, especially with regard to the Palestinian Mediterranean coastal plain. A re-evaluation of the archaeological and some historical evidence for the period between ca. 640 and 700, regarding a selection of urban and rural excavated coastal sites and survey maps, shows that the Muslim conquest had various short- and long-term impacts on every settlement, including economic, social and/or functional changes. Generally speaking, the archaeological evidence from the Palestinian coast (and especially the seashore belt) at the beginning of early Islamic times presents a pattern of decline, or abatement. This of course occurred gradually, and the exact process varied from place to place.

My understanding?

They ruined the Land of Israel. 

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Migrants Evicted

Did this take place in south Tel Aviv where many of the illegal migrant workers are located?

Police evict Eritreans from Tel Aviv neighborhood

No.

But this took place in Sweden:

Police evict Romanians from Stockholm campPublished: 13 Mar 2014 09:43 GMT+01:00

Police have evicted a large group of Romanian migrants who had set up temporary living arrangements in a suburb of northern Stockholm.  A group of demonstrators were on the scene on Thursday morning in Helenelund, northern Stockholm, to meet the police, and were beating drums and chanting for the rights of the migrants.  One of the demonstrators told Sveriges Television (SVT) that they were trying to stop the eviction.

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Antagonized and Angry

Item One:

Three Arab countries have banned the biblical epic movie “Noah” because it contradicts Islam...

Egypt’s top Islamic body, the Al-Azhar institute, said last week that the big budget film violated Islam by portraying a prophet and should not be screened in the country.

Having an actor play a prophet “contradicts the stature of prophets and messengers… and antagonizes the faithful,”

Item Two:

50-year-old man says he was angry at Jewish presence on Temple Mount, got idea from recent gas blast accident in capital.  Ziz Mussa Salam Auysat, a 50-year-old Arab from East Jerusalem, was arrested...after allegedly cutting gas pipes in the East Talpiot area of the city...
 According to police, Auysat admitted cutting pipes to harm Jews in retaliation to their ongoing presence on the Temple Mount and IDF operations in Gaza. As such, he is considered to have a nationalistic motivation for his actions.

Can some one tell why they are so angry and antagonized to the extent, that they do not only criminal and murderous actions but silly ones, as well?  That they must violently react, whether verbally or physically?

^

Poor Peter

You have to be blind not to see that liberal Zionists—those of us who believe in the legitimacy of a state dedicated to Jewish self-protection and the illegitimacy of Israel’s unjust, undemocratic control of the West Bank—are losing ground to one-staters at both ends.

That was Peter Beinart.

I feel so sorry for him, not.

^ 

And In 1989 I Said

I stand on what I said back in July 1989 (and published in March 1990) at the 24th Annual American-Israel American Jewish Congress dialogue:

and I think my thoughts and words are still relevant.

^

Pooh-poohing on the Left

An example of the Leftist conciliatory-concessionist camp claptrap, via Zvi Barel of Haaretz:

After all, a few dozen rockets and mortar shells are no threat to Israel’s existence. 

Of course just "a few" of anything can be pooh-poohed.  Except perhaps one bullet to the head or one atom bomb anywhere near Israel.

But Barel misses, purposefully, the point.

It's not really, or fully, a matter of Israel's existence.

Yes, it could be only the injuries caused to hundreds and the deaths, God forbid, of many dozens and the property damage caused if those Iranian-exported rockets had gotten through.  Yet what Barel conveniently hides is that scenario is only the beginning of an incremental process that intends to weaken Israel, terrorize its population and ultimately, in the political sense, cause those frightened voters to alter Israel's government decisions and positions.

There is a threat and those rockets are the beginning.  And the more intense the threat and the weaker the response, the greater the danger to, yes, Israel's existence.  Barel wishes that you ignore the minor and has you ignoring the major.  A version of the frog in boiling water parable.

But why should even one death by downplayed by the Left?  Aren't they the humanists?  Aren't they concerned with the individual and not the state and its institutions?  Why should any drop of Jewish blood be spilled - just so Barel and Co. can prove (which they can't) their point of coming to terms with aggression and hostility?  Why the pooh-poohing?

My thought: they want us to sacrifice, to get used to sacrifices, to sacrificing. "Israel must make difficult sacrifices" becomes the mantra not of a danger but of a false hope, a vision of deceit, a trick.  Israel's sacrifices become honorable and praiseworthy and therefore, somehow, good.  But they aren't.

Barel wants us to believe there's nothing too much wrong with someone sending weapons of death to terrorists.

That is immoral.

But what is an existential danger to Israel, at this point, is the Haaretz editorial staff and columnists who are creating the mirage that the world out there is containable and ultimately, not at all dangerous.  And they are leading us down a pooh-pooh path.

^

Shiloh Spirituality

Spiritual Emphasis Week at Shiloh

That headline is not about a happening here in Shiloh, Binyamim Region, Israel.

It's at a Christian school in Bismarck.  In North Dakota.

They have Mission projects which include: Hope for Jemo: supporting an effort to reach children in Jemo, Ethiopia; and Writing letters to imprisoned missionaries across the world.

Shiloh has gone far away from where the Tabernacle was erected, where the tribal portions of the Land of Israel were divided by Joshua, where Samuel was initiated into the true ministry of God at his altar and where Achiyah spoke to the power of Yoravam (1 Kings 14:5-18):

Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Forasmuch as I exalted thee from among the people, and made thee prince over My people Israel...yet thou hast not been as My servant David, who kept My commandments...herefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam every man-child, and him that is shut up and him that is left at large in Israel, and will utterly sweep away the house of Jeroboam, as a man sweepeth away dung...

But spirituality is a good thing, no matter where.

^ 

 

.

GraphicZionism: Into Deep Water

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By the way, the movie does show that the waters not only fell from above but also arose from the earth which, as some of us know, is according to the Midrashic interpretation:

Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 107b-108b -

Raba taught: What is meant by the verse, He that is ready to slip with his feet is as a stone despised in the thought of him that is at ease?  — This teaches that when Noah rebuked them and spoke words to them that were as hard as fiery flints, they derided him. Said they to him, `Old man, what is this ark for?` — He replied, `The Holy One, blessed be He, will bring a flood upon you.` `A flood of what,` they jeered?... if He brings it up from the earth, we have iron plates with which we can cover the earth [to prevent the water from coming up];...

Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer 23   -

Rabbi Zadok said: On the l0th of Marheshvan all the creatures entered the ark; on the 17th of the same (month) the waters of the Flood descended from heaven upon the earth, for they were the waters (endowed with the) male (principle). And there came up the waters of the depths, for they arc the waters (endowed) with the female (prin­ciple), and they were joined with one another, and they prevailed so as to destroy the world, as it is said, And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth (ibid. 7:19).

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Their Goal: The Undoing of Zionism

In a review article of a book of collected essays on leftist anti-Zionism, Rebels against Zion edited by August Grabski, David Hirsh of Goldsmiths, University of London, makes some reflective points worth repeating:

...all the strategies adopted against antisemitism failed...But Israel became a reality, a nation state, not because Zionism ‘won’ the debates outlined in this book, but because the material basis of Jewish life in Europe was utterly transformed by the ‘Final Solution’ and by Israel’s victory in the war of 1948 against the Palestinians and against the Arab Nationalist states which tried to eradicate it at birth...

I think Hirsh is contradicting himself there but the point needs be repeated: Zionism was victorious. It won out not only against its external enemies, the enemies of Jewish peoplehood as an idea and against Jews as persons, but it bested the competing ideologies from within the Jewish people who sought out other 'escapes' from their Jewishness.

And with Isaac Deutscher admitting in 1954 that

...he had ‘of course’ abandoned his life-long anti-Zionism...the key questions changed. It was no longer relevant to ask whether Zionism was a winning strategy against antisemitism; the question was how would the Jewish state reach a peace with its neighbours and how it would negotiate the contradiction between its Jewishness and its democracy?

a new characterization of antagonism to and opposition of Zionism was established which was: it does not matter what the non-Jewish reality is, the Jews must somehow be different and quite unrealistic.  Their morality must always be 10 degrees higher, their willingness to submit greater, their necessity for accommodating much more.  All of this, of course, will lead Jews and the Jewish state, as it did since then, into more difficult situations where survival is at stake rather than just a set of values and ethics that the Left promotes.

Back in 1917, Lord Montague opposed the Balfour Declaration.  Then Jacob De Hass opposed Zionism.  The ACJ's Elmer Berger opposed Zionism.  Stephen Wise weakened Zionism and Jewry during the Holocaust years.  Judah Leib Magnes weakened Zionism all throughout the Mandate years and almost succeeded in having the Jewish state left totally defenseless in his May 1948 meetings with George Marshall and Harry Truman. They failed but nevertheless, reduced Zionism's comprehensiveness.  There always has to be a Jew to distance himself from Judaism as a religion, as a culture, as a nationalism, as a model for ethical existence within the real world, not the fictitious or purposely blown out of proportion criticism they create.

One of the first books I purchased on the subject of dissent from Zionism was "Zionism Reconsidered: The Rejection of Jewish Normalcy", edited by Michael Selzer, in 1970.  All the "greats" were represented.  Selzer had already published "The Aryanization of the Jewish State", a really evil work that Shlomo Avineri describes so:

An impressive mass of data and facts has been assembled; historical perspectives have been traced; all the right quotations have been adduced; a good deal of the argument even manages to make sense; yet the outcome corresponds to a reality that exists solely in the mind of the author.
...During his student days Selzer was president of the Zionist Society at Oxford University; now he works for the violently anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism. Not unexpectedly, his book has the unmistakable air of having been written by a disillusioned renegade, turning now with venom against the ideals he once so dearly—and naively—cherished. It seems safe to assume that Selzer’s erstwhile Zionism was as uncritical as his present virulent rejection of it.

And there's this:

Selzer argues that Zionism rejected entirely the uniqueness of Judaism and its mission in the world: “The most startling innovation of this new Zionist doctrine lay precisely in the fact that it rejected belief in the unique constitution of the Jewish people...the Zionists would attempt to mold their new society in a manner which would invalidate the accusations of their oppressors … for nothing would more definitely ensure the approval of anti-Semitism for ‘the new Jewish society’ than its success in recreating the Jew in the image of his oppressor … what we might call the ‘Aryanization’ of the Jews.”  

Does all that not sound very familiar to us today?

The detractors of today, just as the forefathers, have not halted Zionism but seek constantly to derail it, to roll back its vindication in the face of irrational anti-Semitism, implaccable hatred and, seemingly, a psychological need to blame Zionsim - and the Jews - for all they see as interfering with their lives, their personal advancement or the promotion of ideologies and policies that may parallel Jewish civilization but are not fully Jewish.

And over the past four decades, following the glorious victory in 1967, those of the Left, radical, progressive and universalist, who follow in their footsteps, employ every method used and new ones to oppose Zionism.  Their goal, I suggest is the undoing of Zionism whether out of jealousy or a need to stand apart.

As Hirsh in the review I quote from at the beginning puts it:

Jewish anti-Zionism which, through a relentless succession of slippages, omissions and unacknowledged assumptions, will make the lasting impression...If ‘the Zionists’ are characterised as essentially ‘racist’ or ‘apartheid’ or ‘Nazi’, then Israeli Jews can be treated, once again, as exceptional to the human community...Jewish anti-Zionists also tend to have a particular Jewish focus on Israel. They often feel particularly concerned by Israeli human rights abuses, by the injustice of the Israeli occupation and by what they feel is the unthinking support offered by Jewish communal bodies around the world to Israeli governments.

As noted elsewhere in discussing the "Rebels Against Zion" book,

[a] most striking post-Holocaust expression of anti-Semitism is the adoption of an “anti-Zionist” standpoint, which is then combined with many of the traditional themes of anti-Semitism (in particular, the notion of behind-the-scenes Jewish rule, which today finds expression in the theme of the power of the Jewish lobby in the USA). 

And he provides for us an analysis of Canadian researcher Todd M. Endelman who lists the circumstances when anti-Zionist criticism slides too easily into expressions of anti-Semitism:

1. When it questions the legitimacy of the Jewish state, but no other state, and the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism, but no other nationalism, either in the Middle East or elsewhere.
2. When it denies to the Jewish state, but no other state, the right to express the character of the majority of its citizens (that is, to be as Jewish as France is French).
3. When it demonizes the Jewish state, turning the Arab-Israeli conflict into a morality play, a problem that Jews, and Jews alone, created and for which Jews, and Jews alone, are responsible.
4. When it expresses an obsessive, exclusive, and disproportionate concern with the shortcomings of the Israelis and the sufferings of the Palestinians – to the point that a conflict between two small peoples is transformed into a cosmic, Manichean struggle between the forces of Good and Evil.

His conclusion:

When criticism of Israel crosses any of these lines and becomes an obsessive narrative of fantasies and fears – that is when we are dealing solely with anti-Semitic notions.

Some post-Zionists, such as the peace activist Uri Avnery, Gideon Levy and Amira Haas, Norman Finkelstein and Ilan Pappé, Abraham Burg, are utopians in their world-view.  They ignore everything and concentrate on Israel and in doing so, they pervert not on what is real but the values to would have us believe they foster.

The Left always seeks to fix the parameters of discussion on "values" which become solely theirs. Rightists cannot be democrats is a mantra they push.  They have no appreciation for human rights. They wish, ipso facto, to harm civil liberties goes the claim.  But what the enemies of the Jews do has nothing to do with this at all for them.  That they downplay becuase what they are concerned with is not the totality but what Jews do (or supposedly do) and what the state of Israel does (or supposedly does).  The Left, not only are they hypocrites, but they are the ultimate double-standard crowd, allowing Israel and the Jews to be opened for attacks, verbal and physical.

And having lost the ideological battle with Israel proving them wrong and more importangtly, Israel's and Jewry's enemies and haters proving the Leftists wrong in their optimism, good will wishing and hopes, they do not accept defeat but seek to undo Zionism's victory.

They are rebels against themselves.

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From the Sea to the River

Gaza premier Ismail Haneyya has asserted that the strategy of resistance against Israeli occupation would never be forsaken until end of occupation of the Palestinian lands...Haneyya stressed that no negotiations, agreements, or bargaining would make our people forsake their right to historical Palestine from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

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Judea for the ... Jews

with thanks to DF

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