Let us do everything to counteract this boycott- I plan on doing all my Chanukah shopping come Tuesday November 30th- and every item will be Israeli made!
Please do the same!
skip to main | skip to sidebar
Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers
Monday, November 22, 2010
Its a BIG deal: Buy Israeli Goods Nov. 30 and Always
It’s a BIG deal: Buy Israel Goods Campaign November 30
From the Israeli advocates at Stand With Us:
On Tuesday, November 30, anti-Israel activists in New York City plan to demonstrate and call for boycotts of stores that sell Israeli products. Their target is Ricky's because it carries Ahava goods. But this action in New York is just one of many. Boycotters have been energetically lobbying other stores across the country to drop Israeli products, from local co-ops to Costco and Trader Joe's.
The pro-Israel, pro-peace community urges you to join a counter campaign. We are making November 30 a BIG (Buy Israeli Goods) Day. Let us show anyone that calls for boycotts of even one or two stores, that it will always be met with a much larger counter-movement to buy Israeli goods.
StandWithUs and the America-Israel Chambers of Commerce calls on schools, college campuses, synagogues, community organizations, and individuals to designate Tuesday, November 30, as the day to actively Buy Israeli Goods. Go to your local stores and request Israeli products. Whenever a boycott is called, respond by purchasing the very Israeli goods that are being targeted and let store managers know they should keep them well-stocked on the shelves.
The holiday season is fast approaching. When you go holiday shopping, choose presents from the wonderful array of Israeli-made items, from fine Israeli wines to the high quality Ahava beauty products, Israeli jewelry, shoes and clothing lines, and of course, food. Select Sabra or Tribe hummus, great Israeli wines and Osem cookies to grace your holiday party.
We must defeat the boycotters who advocate destructive instead of constructive measures, who undermine hopes for peaceful co-existence, and whose only goal is to defame, cripple and damage Israel.
We can defeat them if we join together. The very date, November 30th, should encourage us. It comes the day after the 53rd anniversary of the UN Partition Resolution when the effort, against all odds, to restore the Jewish State was endorsed and recognized by the international community. It also comes just as Hannukah is approaching when we celebrate the Maccabees who also restored Jewish independence, and who were a few who triumphed over the many. We can do the same, and shine a light on Israel for all people of good will.
On November 30th, go shopping for Israel no matter where you live. Buy for Israel. Buy for peace. Be a big part of this BIG (Buy Israeli Goods) Day.
Where can you buy Israeli products locally?
Try here.
Posted by Dusty at 7:39 PM
Labels: BIG, Buy Israeli Goods Day, Buycott Israel, Stand With US
2 comments:
Becky Johnson said...
I for one will be buying from Trader Joe's here in Santa Cruz which has resisted pressure from anti-Israel groups such as the ISM, Students for Justice in Palestine and the Resource Center for Nonviolence to boycott Israeli food products.
November 23, 2010 12:45 AM
Dusty said...
Thank you, Becky. I plan on shopping at the Berkeley Bowl, an independent grocery store in Berkeley which has steadfastly refused to submit to the haters and carries a beautiful variety of Israeli products. They have Health and beauty aids made from Dead Sea minerals, Israeli olive oils, cheeses and chocolates. They are also one of the few places locally to get "Sharon fruit"- a gorgeous variety of Israeli persimmon that is candy sweet and crunchy. They are spectacular, eaten like an apple, but they are also delightful sliced thinly in a spinach salad, with a fruit or nut vinegrettte
November 23, 2010 10:25 AM
Post a Comment
Links to this post
DovBear: Down with Derek Jeter
Derek Jeter is 37 years old, and on the decline. Within two years we're likely to discover that he doesn't have the range or the speed to play shortstop anymore, and he already can't hit with enough power to play third or DH. ...
Posted by noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) at November 24, 2010 7:26 AM
DovBear: Who are the nursing mother and the Sar Apis?
The gemarah identified the former with Eve, who "suckled the whole world" and thus became a deity. The latter is said to represent Joseph who was a sar prince who calmed the world by handing out grain. I hate to be a party pooper, ...
Posted by noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) at November 23, 2010 8:00 PM
DovBear: Judge Kimba Wood gives a great response to a lawyer who ...
Judge Kimba Wood gives a great response to a lawyer who asks to be excused for his grandchild's bris. After Judge Kimba Wood, of NYC, receives a request to be excused from court for a Bris, the Judge gives an awesome response (which was ...
Posted by DovBear at November 23, 2010 9:31 AM
Create a Link
Older Post Home
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Raison d'être
An opportunity to vent, a useful resource, and a reference library for pro-Israel bloggers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Contributors
The back of the hill
Baruch P.
Fuzpin
Eclectic Infidel
DEATH BY NOODLES
Chaim ben David
Steffy
AnarchoZionist
ViciousKitty
Dusty
Becky Johnson
GRANT!PATEL!
BBJ
News Service
MacTav
Gland 'X'
Friar Yid (not Shlita)
Blog Archive
▼ 2010 (135)
▼ November (11)
Its a BIG deal: Buy Israeli Goods Nov. 30 and Alwa...
JVP ATTACKS MIDDLE AGED DISABLED WOMAN
If you Plant Ice You're Gonna Harvest Wind. Heckl...
Jewish Voice for Peace and bully tactics
Hamas reveals IDF death toll from Gaza conflict wa...
Amazon.com - Hijacked by haters. Its time to fight...
International ANSWER calls for Solidarity with Who...
Truth is not Key in Al Awda Propaganda Ploy
“ The Movement for One Democratic State in Palesti...
"Divest this: How to Stop the Global Boycott Sanct...
Lonely Planet: Tel Aviv is one of the top three ci...
► October (12)
Mövenpick, Ramallah. 5 star luxury in the West Ba...
"Peace Activists" and Palestinians Destroy Olive T...
Iranian weapons bound for Gaza seized in Nigeria
Tony Greenstein: Dishonest, dangerous and anti-Dem...
"You must give back to the country you live off" ...
Israeli soldiers at a California University
If you are going to Boycott Israel, do it right
The California BDS Initiative-- Anti-Peace and Unj...
An inside look into the prison of Gaza
Recruiting a new Rachel Corrie.
A matter of perspective: Israeli and Palestinian t...
Sacramento Natural Food co-op says No to BDS
► September (12)
Beautiful! Another failed Ahava Boycott in NYC
Port Townsend: Another Co-op rejects BDS.
Friends of Israel Initiative: A strong voice for I...
The Audacity of Hope: the New Ship of Fools
Hamas Uses Phosphorous Bombs . The silence of t...
BDS Its not about " Occupation": Its about Israel'...
BDS: Its not about "Occupation". Its about Israel'...
Iranians claim: Israel behind Planned Koran Burnin...
Fidel Castro : Ahmadinejad is anti-Semitic. What'...
PALESTINIAN SHOW-STOPPER
"There is no free speech in Berkeley if you speak...
US Palestinian Community Network rejects Peace Pro...
► August (10)
Europeans upset at exclusion
Labor Says Yes to Israel, No to BDS
A Tale of Two Cities: A Photo Essay
So, Hows' that Boycott Going? The epic fail of B...
Zionism is Self Determination
New Seasons in Portland: The latest BDS victim
WAR DRUMS ARE BOOMING
BDS is Not About Peace
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Why we need to oust Congressman Tierney
http://www.congressmanjohntierney.com
please link and read it all
please link and read it all
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Letter Written by Dr. Hal Scherz
The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal
Dear Patients: Vote to Repeal ObamaCare
Don't believe Democrats who promise to fix the bill once they're re-elected.
Text
By HAL SCHERZ
Facing a nationwide backlash, Democratic congressional candidates have a new message for voters: We know you don't like ObamaCare, so we'll fix it.
This was the line offered by Democrat Mark Critz, who won a special election in Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district after expressing opposition to the law and promising to mend it—but not to repeal it. As a doctor I know something about unexpected recoveries, and this latest attempt to rescue ObamaCare from repeal needs to be taken seriously.
For Democrats who voted for ObamaCare, this tactic is an escape route, a chance to distance themselves from the president with a vague promise to fix health-care reform in the next Congress.
To counter this election-year ruse, my colleagues and I at Docs4PatientCare are enlisting thousands of doctors in an unorthodox and unprecedented action. Our patients have always expected a certain standard of care from their doctors, which includes providing them with pertinent information that may affect their quality of life. Because the issue this election is so stark—literally life and death for millions of Americans in the years ahead—we are this week posting a "Dear Patient" letter in our waiting rooms.
Associated Press
Andy Griffith pitches President Barack Obama's health care law to seniors.
The letter states in unambiguous language what the new law means:
"Dear Patient: Section 1311 of the new health care legislation gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and her appointees the power to establish care guidelines that your doctor must abide by or face penalties and fines. In making doctors answerable in the federal bureaucracy this bill effectively makes them government employees and means that you and your doctor are no longer in charge of your health care decisions. This new law politicizes medicine and in my opinion destroys the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship that makes the American health care system the best in the world."
Our doctor's letter points out that, in addition to "badly exacerbating the current doctor shortage," ObamaCare will bring "major cost increases, rising insurance premiums, higher taxes, a decline in new medical techniques, a fall-off in the development of miracle drugs as well as rationing by government panels and by bureaucrats like passionate rationing advocate Donald Berwick that will force delays of months or sometimes years for hospitalization or surgery."
We cite the brute facts of ObamaCare's passage:
"Despite countless protests by doctors and overwhelming public opposition—up to 60% of Americans opposed this bill—the current party in control of Congress pushed this bill through with legal bribes and Chicago style threats and is determined now to resist any 'repeal and replace' efforts. This doctor's office is non-partisan—always has been, always will be. But the fact is that every Republican voted against this bad bill while the Democratic Party leadership and the White House completely dismissed the will of the people in ruthlessly pushing through this legislation."
Then we address the Democrats' evasive campaign maneuver:
"In the face of voter anger some Democratic candidates are now trying to make a cosmetic retreat, calling for minor modifications or pretending they are opposed to government-run medicine. Once the election is over, however, they will vote with their party bosses against repealing this bill."
The letter's final lines are the most important:
"Please remember when you vote this November that unless the Democratic Party receives a strong negative message about this power grab our health care system will never be fixed and the doctor patient relationship will be ruined forever."
This message is going out to an electorate that is already frustrated over what they see happening to health care. Missouri voters rejected ObamaCare overwhelmingly in August, voting by a margin of 71%-29% to reject the federal requirement that all individuals purchase health insurance. Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen has assessed that ObamaCare is "a disaster" for Democrats. And around the country many little-noticed primaries have reflected voter rage—including the Republican primary victory of surgeon, political newcomer, and advocate of repeal Daniel Benishek in Michigan's first district.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration's damage-control efforts have fallen flat. The latest round of pro-ObamaCare television spots targeting the elderly and starring veteran actor Andy Griffith have not only failed to move the polling numbers. They have caused five U.S. Senators to ask for an investigation of the ads as a violation of federal laws barring the use of tax dollars ($750,000) for campaign purposes.
America's doctors have millions of personal interactions each week with patients. We have political power. And we intend to use it by working to defeat those who have disrupted and gravely endangered the best health-care system in the world.
Dr. Scherz, a pediatric urological surgeon at Georgia Urology and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, serves on the faculty of Emory University Medical School and is president and cofounder of Docs4PatientCare.
Dear Patients: Vote to Repeal ObamaCare
Don't believe Democrats who promise to fix the bill once they're re-elected.
Text
By HAL SCHERZ
Facing a nationwide backlash, Democratic congressional candidates have a new message for voters: We know you don't like ObamaCare, so we'll fix it.
This was the line offered by Democrat Mark Critz, who won a special election in Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district after expressing opposition to the law and promising to mend it—but not to repeal it. As a doctor I know something about unexpected recoveries, and this latest attempt to rescue ObamaCare from repeal needs to be taken seriously.
For Democrats who voted for ObamaCare, this tactic is an escape route, a chance to distance themselves from the president with a vague promise to fix health-care reform in the next Congress.
To counter this election-year ruse, my colleagues and I at Docs4PatientCare are enlisting thousands of doctors in an unorthodox and unprecedented action. Our patients have always expected a certain standard of care from their doctors, which includes providing them with pertinent information that may affect their quality of life. Because the issue this election is so stark—literally life and death for millions of Americans in the years ahead—we are this week posting a "Dear Patient" letter in our waiting rooms.
Associated Press
Andy Griffith pitches President Barack Obama's health care law to seniors.
The letter states in unambiguous language what the new law means:
"Dear Patient: Section 1311 of the new health care legislation gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and her appointees the power to establish care guidelines that your doctor must abide by or face penalties and fines. In making doctors answerable in the federal bureaucracy this bill effectively makes them government employees and means that you and your doctor are no longer in charge of your health care decisions. This new law politicizes medicine and in my opinion destroys the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship that makes the American health care system the best in the world."
Our doctor's letter points out that, in addition to "badly exacerbating the current doctor shortage," ObamaCare will bring "major cost increases, rising insurance premiums, higher taxes, a decline in new medical techniques, a fall-off in the development of miracle drugs as well as rationing by government panels and by bureaucrats like passionate rationing advocate Donald Berwick that will force delays of months or sometimes years for hospitalization or surgery."
We cite the brute facts of ObamaCare's passage:
"Despite countless protests by doctors and overwhelming public opposition—up to 60% of Americans opposed this bill—the current party in control of Congress pushed this bill through with legal bribes and Chicago style threats and is determined now to resist any 'repeal and replace' efforts. This doctor's office is non-partisan—always has been, always will be. But the fact is that every Republican voted against this bad bill while the Democratic Party leadership and the White House completely dismissed the will of the people in ruthlessly pushing through this legislation."
Then we address the Democrats' evasive campaign maneuver:
"In the face of voter anger some Democratic candidates are now trying to make a cosmetic retreat, calling for minor modifications or pretending they are opposed to government-run medicine. Once the election is over, however, they will vote with their party bosses against repealing this bill."
The letter's final lines are the most important:
"Please remember when you vote this November that unless the Democratic Party receives a strong negative message about this power grab our health care system will never be fixed and the doctor patient relationship will be ruined forever."
This message is going out to an electorate that is already frustrated over what they see happening to health care. Missouri voters rejected ObamaCare overwhelmingly in August, voting by a margin of 71%-29% to reject the federal requirement that all individuals purchase health insurance. Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen has assessed that ObamaCare is "a disaster" for Democrats. And around the country many little-noticed primaries have reflected voter rage—including the Republican primary victory of surgeon, political newcomer, and advocate of repeal Daniel Benishek in Michigan's first district.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration's damage-control efforts have fallen flat. The latest round of pro-ObamaCare television spots targeting the elderly and starring veteran actor Andy Griffith have not only failed to move the polling numbers. They have caused five U.S. Senators to ask for an investigation of the ads as a violation of federal laws barring the use of tax dollars ($750,000) for campaign purposes.
America's doctors have millions of personal interactions each week with patients. We have political power. And we intend to use it by working to defeat those who have disrupted and gravely endangered the best health-care system in the world.
Dr. Scherz, a pediatric urological surgeon at Georgia Urology and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, serves on the faculty of Emory University Medical School and is president and cofounder of Docs4PatientCare.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Huffington Post Article by Alan Krinsky
8 Reasons Leftists Should be Pro-Israel
by Alan Krinsky, The Huffington Post, July 20, 2010
Israel continues to be the demon poster-child of the Left. The prime example of a repressive regime and abuser of human rights. On the Left, people became outraged and agitated over Israel more than over any other cause. Israel's supposed villainy will bring out protestors on cold, rainy days in a way no other issue can. Many of these people are earnest, but perhaps misled.
In most ways, my own politics tend to be Liberal-Left: I support single-payer, universal healthcare, I opposed the war in Iraq and the Bush-Cheney "imperial presidency," I even voted twice for Ralph Nader. However, like French philosopher Bernard Henri-Lévy, I differ on Israel and reject the demonization of Israel, whether at the United Nations, in the world media, or among American and European Leftists.
If my fellow Leftists or even Liberals think that the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement will help bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as peace to the Middle East and harmony to the community of nations, they are sadly mistaken. There is a difference between criticism and demonization, and the campaign against Israel is of the latter type. Criticism, and there is much of it within Israel's own healthy democracy, can result in positive change. But the focused attempt to demonize Israel, not undertaken against any other nation, is aimed at delegitimizing Israel and undermining its very existence, as if the problems of the world were the fault of the Israelis—the fault of the Jews—and if they would only go away, all would be better.
Not only is this a sorry illusion, but this concerted assault on Israel itself betrays the principles of the Left. Here, then, are 8 reasons Leftists should be Pro-Israel (or, at least, Pro-Peace rather than Anti-Israel):
1. Human Rights. The Left fights for human rights in the world. Even if one thinks Israel or its soldiers guilty of human rights violations (and I am not willing at the outset to grant this point), there is no international or historical comparison that could reasonably rank Israel among the worst criminals of the world or of history. Whether we look at the scale of the conflict, the numbers of lives lost, or the treatment of the press or of dissidents, there are far too many examples of bloodshed and persecution dwarfing anything done by Israel against the Palestinians over the last four decades since the Six Day War, when Israel was attacked by its neighbors. Even Arab treatment of Palestinians, such as in Jordan's Black September massacre, caused thousands of deaths, possibly more in 10 days than in four decades of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And how can we compare Israel to Mugabe's Zimbabwe, or the Chinese crackdown on Tibet and Tiananmen? Or the disappearances and death squads of Latin America Square or the killing fields of Pol Pot? Let alone the genocide pursued by Hitler or Stalin's murderous reign? Let us be clear: genocide is the attempt to exterminate an entire people and culture; this is not what has happened to the Palestinians, and it is not the goal of Israeli policy. By contrast, the explicit aim of Hamas is to eliminate Israel. So, if we support human rights and oppose persecution, ought we not first to focus our efforts on the places where we find the worst situations? Can anyone rationally claim that among these places, let alone the most horrendous of all, is a small nation on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea?
2. Internationalism. Leftists tend to support internationalism. One would think that the United Nations would be the world body most dedicated to furthering this aim. But how is it that Israel, this small nation, has become such a central concern? From 2003-2010, there have been more than 900 human rights actions against Israel at the U.N.; the next closest is Sudan at just under 400. Israel is the only member of the U.N. to be excluded from any of the five regional groups. And should not all on the Left oppose the absurdity of the so- called Human Rights Council, whose members include such paragons of humanitarianism as China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Kyrgyzstan? How can Leftists stand silent when the Turkish Prime Minister denounces Israel for human rights crimes while then promising that the Kurds will "drown in their own blood," in a conflict with human rights abuses on both sides and tens of thousands individuals killed? If Gaza is not the ideal place to live, if the Gazans are suffering, nevertheless the photos in The New York Times and elsewhere and the testimony of reporters clearly demonstrate that Gazans are not starving, their store shelves are not empty, whether for food or consumer goods; as difficult as the situation may be, it is simply not the pinnacle of human rights disasters, and Israel is thus not deserving of international condemnation above all other nations in the world.
3. Peace. Leftists want peace. In the Middle East and elsewhere. The polls make clear that, overwhelmingly, Israelis desire peace with their neighbors; the difficult sacrifices, including the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza make this evident. Israelis are prepared for a secure, two-state solution, to live side-by-side in peace. Meanwhile, the stated goal of its enemies is to end its existence. A simple thought-experiment should make the matter starkly clear: If tomorrow Hamas and other Palestinian groups unilaterally put down their weapons, what would follow? Peace. If Israelis unilaterally put down their weapons, what would follow? Millions of dead or exiled Jews. Anyone on the Left who does not recognize this is living in denial. Leftists should support peace and not live in denial.
4. Anti-Authoritarianism. Leftists oppose authoritarianism and dictatorship and instead support popular, democratic rule. Israel maintains a vibrant, parliamentary democracy, with a broad range of views represented, much more so than in the United States, for example. Indeed, Arabs parties and Communists have long had representatives voted into the Israeli Knesset. Can we imagine such representation, as well as the freedom of assembly and freedom of speech in Israel's Arab neighbors? In the Gaza ruled by Hamas? In Egypt or Syria or Saudi Arabia? By opposing Israel and supporting groups like Hamas, the Left is not supporting a liberation struggle but rather the effort to replace the Middle East's only democracy with yet another repressive dictatorship. Do Leftists really desire such an outcome? How can the one major effort to boycott, divest, and sanction be aimed at a democratic nation like this? As Bernard Henri-Levy has written at the Huffington Post of the "Confusion of an era when we combat democracies as though they were dictatorships or fascist States. This maelstrom of hatred and madness is about Israel. But it also concerns, as we should be well aware, some of the most precious things established in the movement of ideas in the last thirty years, especially on the left, and these are thus imperiled."
5. Human Dignity and Equality. The Left fights for the values of dignity and equality. Are these traits exemplified more by Israel or its neighbors? Look at how much Israelis value the life of a single soldier, in the willingness to trade hundreds of prisoners for one soldier, and even to trade prisoners to recover their dead for proper burial. Look at the rules of engagement of the Israeli Defense Forces, at how the IDF calls and leaflets civilians to warn them; does any other military do such a thing? In terms of equality and human rights, compare the state of women's and gay and lesbian rights in Israel with that in the rest of the Middle East. And in terms of human dignity, do people on the Left think so little of Palestinian dignity that they are willing to claim Palestinians have "no choice" but to turn themselves into homicidal-suicidal bombers to kill Israeli children? Can we not expect more of people? Treating Palestinians like helpless victims does less than recognize their human dignity.
6. Anti-Discrimination. Leftists oppose sexism, racism, and any similar sort of discrimination. And so, Leftists do or ought to oppose anti-Semitism in the same way. And yet, Leftists too often give a pass to anti-Semitism masked as anti-Zionism or anti-Israel sentiment. The playwright David Mamet has written in the Huffington Post as follows: "Yet most of the Western Press, European and American, pictures Israel as, somehow the aggressor, and the Israelis as somehow inhuman, and delighting in blood." As Mamet has elaborated in his book The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews, this is nothing less than a reworking of the old Blood Libel against the Jews--except this time, instead of being accused of using non- Jewish blood to bake matzah, the Jews are accused of spilling blood for no reason other than gratuitous pleasure. Leftists ought to be vigilant in distinguishing between constructive criticism of Israel and dehumanizing caricatures of Jews.
7. Self-Defense. Only the most uncompromising pacifists oppose the right to self-defense, and certainly most Leftists uphold this right. At least when Palestinians are doing the defending. Why are Israelis exempt from this right? How many Leftists would sit idly by while rockets rained down on their towns and families, with their children traumatized? And if we said, oh, but people are only killed occasionally, would that minimize your commitment to protect your family? Only Jews are expected to lay down their weapons and offer their throats. How dare the Jews have the chutzpah to fight back?!
8. Progress. We want movement on Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli peacemaking. Yet, demonizing Israel, singling it out, as is done at the UN and on college campuses will do little to advance peace. We all know, have all known for decades the basic outlines of a peace settlement. The Israelis have been prepared for this and have prepared their citizens. The Left should be pressuring Palestinians to accept peace and to stop teaching their children that Jews are monsters after their blood. This sort of pressure might bring some progress.
It was long ago time for Leftists to tear down the poster that features Israel as the demon-child of human rights abuse and repression. It is time for Leftists to become outraged not over Israel, but over the distortions and demonization of Israel on college campuses and at the United Nations and throughout the media and politics. It is time for Leftists to reject the treatment of Israel as a pariah, or Jews as bloodthirsty murderers, and time instead to welcome Israel into the community of nations as a full member, subject to the same criticism and praise as any other nation.
by Alan Krinsky, The Huffington Post, July 20, 2010
Israel continues to be the demon poster-child of the Left. The prime example of a repressive regime and abuser of human rights. On the Left, people became outraged and agitated over Israel more than over any other cause. Israel's supposed villainy will bring out protestors on cold, rainy days in a way no other issue can. Many of these people are earnest, but perhaps misled.
In most ways, my own politics tend to be Liberal-Left: I support single-payer, universal healthcare, I opposed the war in Iraq and the Bush-Cheney "imperial presidency," I even voted twice for Ralph Nader. However, like French philosopher Bernard Henri-Lévy, I differ on Israel and reject the demonization of Israel, whether at the United Nations, in the world media, or among American and European Leftists.
If my fellow Leftists or even Liberals think that the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement will help bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as peace to the Middle East and harmony to the community of nations, they are sadly mistaken. There is a difference between criticism and demonization, and the campaign against Israel is of the latter type. Criticism, and there is much of it within Israel's own healthy democracy, can result in positive change. But the focused attempt to demonize Israel, not undertaken against any other nation, is aimed at delegitimizing Israel and undermining its very existence, as if the problems of the world were the fault of the Israelis—the fault of the Jews—and if they would only go away, all would be better.
Not only is this a sorry illusion, but this concerted assault on Israel itself betrays the principles of the Left. Here, then, are 8 reasons Leftists should be Pro-Israel (or, at least, Pro-Peace rather than Anti-Israel):
1. Human Rights. The Left fights for human rights in the world. Even if one thinks Israel or its soldiers guilty of human rights violations (and I am not willing at the outset to grant this point), there is no international or historical comparison that could reasonably rank Israel among the worst criminals of the world or of history. Whether we look at the scale of the conflict, the numbers of lives lost, or the treatment of the press or of dissidents, there are far too many examples of bloodshed and persecution dwarfing anything done by Israel against the Palestinians over the last four decades since the Six Day War, when Israel was attacked by its neighbors. Even Arab treatment of Palestinians, such as in Jordan's Black September massacre, caused thousands of deaths, possibly more in 10 days than in four decades of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And how can we compare Israel to Mugabe's Zimbabwe, or the Chinese crackdown on Tibet and Tiananmen? Or the disappearances and death squads of Latin America Square or the killing fields of Pol Pot? Let alone the genocide pursued by Hitler or Stalin's murderous reign? Let us be clear: genocide is the attempt to exterminate an entire people and culture; this is not what has happened to the Palestinians, and it is not the goal of Israeli policy. By contrast, the explicit aim of Hamas is to eliminate Israel. So, if we support human rights and oppose persecution, ought we not first to focus our efforts on the places where we find the worst situations? Can anyone rationally claim that among these places, let alone the most horrendous of all, is a small nation on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea?
2. Internationalism. Leftists tend to support internationalism. One would think that the United Nations would be the world body most dedicated to furthering this aim. But how is it that Israel, this small nation, has become such a central concern? From 2003-2010, there have been more than 900 human rights actions against Israel at the U.N.; the next closest is Sudan at just under 400. Israel is the only member of the U.N. to be excluded from any of the five regional groups. And should not all on the Left oppose the absurdity of the so- called Human Rights Council, whose members include such paragons of humanitarianism as China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Kyrgyzstan? How can Leftists stand silent when the Turkish Prime Minister denounces Israel for human rights crimes while then promising that the Kurds will "drown in their own blood," in a conflict with human rights abuses on both sides and tens of thousands individuals killed? If Gaza is not the ideal place to live, if the Gazans are suffering, nevertheless the photos in The New York Times and elsewhere and the testimony of reporters clearly demonstrate that Gazans are not starving, their store shelves are not empty, whether for food or consumer goods; as difficult as the situation may be, it is simply not the pinnacle of human rights disasters, and Israel is thus not deserving of international condemnation above all other nations in the world.
3. Peace. Leftists want peace. In the Middle East and elsewhere. The polls make clear that, overwhelmingly, Israelis desire peace with their neighbors; the difficult sacrifices, including the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza make this evident. Israelis are prepared for a secure, two-state solution, to live side-by-side in peace. Meanwhile, the stated goal of its enemies is to end its existence. A simple thought-experiment should make the matter starkly clear: If tomorrow Hamas and other Palestinian groups unilaterally put down their weapons, what would follow? Peace. If Israelis unilaterally put down their weapons, what would follow? Millions of dead or exiled Jews. Anyone on the Left who does not recognize this is living in denial. Leftists should support peace and not live in denial.
4. Anti-Authoritarianism. Leftists oppose authoritarianism and dictatorship and instead support popular, democratic rule. Israel maintains a vibrant, parliamentary democracy, with a broad range of views represented, much more so than in the United States, for example. Indeed, Arabs parties and Communists have long had representatives voted into the Israeli Knesset. Can we imagine such representation, as well as the freedom of assembly and freedom of speech in Israel's Arab neighbors? In the Gaza ruled by Hamas? In Egypt or Syria or Saudi Arabia? By opposing Israel and supporting groups like Hamas, the Left is not supporting a liberation struggle but rather the effort to replace the Middle East's only democracy with yet another repressive dictatorship. Do Leftists really desire such an outcome? How can the one major effort to boycott, divest, and sanction be aimed at a democratic nation like this? As Bernard Henri-Levy has written at the Huffington Post of the "Confusion of an era when we combat democracies as though they were dictatorships or fascist States. This maelstrom of hatred and madness is about Israel. But it also concerns, as we should be well aware, some of the most precious things established in the movement of ideas in the last thirty years, especially on the left, and these are thus imperiled."
5. Human Dignity and Equality. The Left fights for the values of dignity and equality. Are these traits exemplified more by Israel or its neighbors? Look at how much Israelis value the life of a single soldier, in the willingness to trade hundreds of prisoners for one soldier, and even to trade prisoners to recover their dead for proper burial. Look at the rules of engagement of the Israeli Defense Forces, at how the IDF calls and leaflets civilians to warn them; does any other military do such a thing? In terms of equality and human rights, compare the state of women's and gay and lesbian rights in Israel with that in the rest of the Middle East. And in terms of human dignity, do people on the Left think so little of Palestinian dignity that they are willing to claim Palestinians have "no choice" but to turn themselves into homicidal-suicidal bombers to kill Israeli children? Can we not expect more of people? Treating Palestinians like helpless victims does less than recognize their human dignity.
6. Anti-Discrimination. Leftists oppose sexism, racism, and any similar sort of discrimination. And so, Leftists do or ought to oppose anti-Semitism in the same way. And yet, Leftists too often give a pass to anti-Semitism masked as anti-Zionism or anti-Israel sentiment. The playwright David Mamet has written in the Huffington Post as follows: "Yet most of the Western Press, European and American, pictures Israel as, somehow the aggressor, and the Israelis as somehow inhuman, and delighting in blood." As Mamet has elaborated in his book The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews, this is nothing less than a reworking of the old Blood Libel against the Jews--except this time, instead of being accused of using non- Jewish blood to bake matzah, the Jews are accused of spilling blood for no reason other than gratuitous pleasure. Leftists ought to be vigilant in distinguishing between constructive criticism of Israel and dehumanizing caricatures of Jews.
7. Self-Defense. Only the most uncompromising pacifists oppose the right to self-defense, and certainly most Leftists uphold this right. At least when Palestinians are doing the defending. Why are Israelis exempt from this right? How many Leftists would sit idly by while rockets rained down on their towns and families, with their children traumatized? And if we said, oh, but people are only killed occasionally, would that minimize your commitment to protect your family? Only Jews are expected to lay down their weapons and offer their throats. How dare the Jews have the chutzpah to fight back?!
8. Progress. We want movement on Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli peacemaking. Yet, demonizing Israel, singling it out, as is done at the UN and on college campuses will do little to advance peace. We all know, have all known for decades the basic outlines of a peace settlement. The Israelis have been prepared for this and have prepared their citizens. The Left should be pressuring Palestinians to accept peace and to stop teaching their children that Jews are monsters after their blood. This sort of pressure might bring some progress.
It was long ago time for Leftists to tear down the poster that features Israel as the demon-child of human rights abuse and repression. It is time for Leftists to become outraged not over Israel, but over the distortions and demonization of Israel on college campuses and at the United Nations and throughout the media and politics. It is time for Leftists to reject the treatment of Israel as a pariah, or Jews as bloodthirsty murderers, and time instead to welcome Israel into the community of nations as a full member, subject to the same criticism and praise as any other nation.
Why the Mosque should not be built at Ground Zero
The Strongest Horse
By Dennis Hale
Why it will be good for Muslims if the Ground Zero Mosque is stopped.
The plan to build a mosque and Islamic center at the site of the 9/11 attacks is one of those rare events that is more important for what it portends than for what it does. To build a mosque on the spot where three thousand people died in the name of Islam would be deeply offensive; but what seems even more important about this event is what it teaches - about those who are building the center, about the non-Muslims who are supporting them. As President Obama might have put it, this is a "teaching moment." What can we learn?
Despite the fog that surrounds so many controversies these days, a number of things are clear enough by now that all whose eyes are open should be able to see them without difficulty.
The mosque is hugely unpopular, all over the country (by about 70 percent). It is unpopular not simply because it is a mosque at Ground Zero, but because the people who are building it are far too close to the ideology of al-Qaeda - a fact which they have demonstrated, over and over again, by their statements and by their associations. The public has noticed this, although their leaders have not. Certainly, the official media doesn't know (the New York Times, for example, claims that for his entire career, Rauf has been trying to "reconcile Islam with America and modernism", a truly preposterous claim), and it's apparently not known to the folks in the White House, either - but it manages to be true nonetheless.
Here is what the Times and the White House do not know about Imam Faisal Rauf and his partners, and about what they called, revealingly, their "Cordoba Initiative."
Imam Rauf, an Egyptian born in Kuwait, is the son of the founder of the Islamic Center of New York, whose leaders have consistently been telling their congregants that someone other than Muslims was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. (Rauf is on the Board of the ICNY, and has never interfered with this teaching.) The first candidate, naturally, was "the Jews." Then it was the United States government. Then it was just "someone" other than Muslims. Rauf himself has said that the United States was "to blame" for 9/11 - a statement just a shade more nuanced than blaming it on "the Jews". (It's also what bin Laden said.)
Rauf's father was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a friend of its founder, Hassan al-Banna, and Rauf's professional and political connections are all to the Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas support network in the United States: the Council on American Islamic Relations; the Muslim American Society; the Islamic Society of North America; the International Institute of Islamic Thought. Three of these organizations were unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing trial - which produced the now famous (in some circles) Brotherhood memo from 1993 describing their goal in America: "eliminating and destroying . . .Western civilization from within . . . so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious . . . ."
Accordingly, Rauf has always refused to describe Hamas as a terrorist organization, insisting that "terrorism is complicated." He eagerly promotes the imposition of shari'a law on American Muslims, and eventually on non-Muslims as well. He has spent a lot of time in Malaysia, getting an education in religious law from the lunatic anti-Semite who used to be the nation's prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad. Rauf's business partners have included agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran, where he says he might secure financing. He will also accept financing from Saudi Arabia, but he has refused so far to say where his actual pledges have come from, if any. It is unlikely that he could raise $100 million for this project anywhere else but the Gulf.
Just in case there might have been some room for doubt about their intentions, Rauf and his partners named the Ground Zero project after the Cordoba Mosque in Spain, which displaced the last Christian church in that city after the 8th century Muslim conquest. (There were still Christians; just no more churches.) It has long been an orthodox Muslim practice to build mosques where Allah's enemies have been defeated (e.g., the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus). The Cordoba Initiative is intended to be a monument to yet another famous Islamic victory. It is, in fact, a 9/11 Memorial, built by the enemy.
That's what the controversy teaches about the builders. What does the controversy tell us about their supporters?
First, they are a minority, and this is something of a surprise. The fault line in this controversy has broken considerably to the left of the political center, and the doubters must include many people who voted for Barack Obama. The Anti-Defamation League, for example, has joined the opposition (though not Alan Dershowitz, normally a partner of the ADL). The official guardians of morality in the mainline Protestant churches are all on board, but it is not at all clear how many of their congregants are with them.
Evangelical Christians are opposed, mostly, but so are many Democrats, who are usually at odds with the "Christian Right". Harry Reid opposes it, and so does Howard Dean, who even criticized fellow-Democrats for "demonizing" the center's critics.
Second, we have learned that there are many people in the leadership of the nation's religious, cultural, and political institutions who simply will not look at the evidence about Imam Rauf, or any other Muslim leader or organization, no matter how clear or damning that evidence is. This is a form of irresponsibility that borders on the criminal.
Included in this indictment, unfortunately, is the State Department, which is even now sending Rauf on a good-will tour to the Muslim world. The amply demonstrated fact that most of the major Muslim organizations in this country are Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas affiliates and apologists comes to many Americans, over and over again, as news - and then quickly disappears down the memory hole. For a certain kind of liberal, as for birds, the world is born again every morning.
A favorite argument of the Center's supporters is that if "Muslims can't build mosques, then we are no longer living in a free country." Yet the principle of religious freedom is embedded in the very Constitution Imam Rauf has promised to replace with the Quran, ASAP. There is a word for that; the word is "sedition," and if Imam Rauf is a naturalized American citizen, then he was lying when he took his oath of allegiance, and ought to be deported. And no critic of the Cordoba Initiative has argued that "Muslims" in general should not be able to build mosques. Their ire is directed at this group, and this project, at this particular place.
Given the fecklessness of America's elites, what must American Muslims, standing on the sidelines, be thinking? Supporters of the Center talk as if Muslims were united in its defense, but that is far from the case. "Make no mistake," said the courageous Dr. Zudi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, "this Islamic center is not a spiritual statement but a global political one in the name of Islam." Rahel Raza, one of the founders of the Canadian Muslim Council, testified against the plan at the Community Board hearings in New York - after which, she says, the Center's financial backer, Sharif Gamal, threatened her over the telephone. The director of Al-Arabiya TV, Abd Al-Rahman al-Rashid, said that he couldn't "imagine that Muslims want a mosque at this particular location, because it will become an arena for the promoters of hatred, and a monument to those who committed the crime."
Many American Muslims - how many we have no sure way of knowing - are alienated from the Muslim Brotherhood network that runs so many of the country's Muslim institutions. They have no desire to see this network score yet another victory. Yet other Muslim-Americans on the sidelines are undoubtedly more conflicted. They may have doubts about Faisal Rauf, but they may also be drawn by the power of orthodoxy, which has always appealed to those unimpressed by easy, half-way answers to life's most difficult questions. This group is much bigger, almost certainly, than the group determined to modernize Islamic practice and doctrine. They are not yet committed to the radicals, either, but are up for grabs - not just in America, but all over the world.
This group in particular needs to understand that support for shari'a is sedition in a liberal democratic republic, and that the movement to impose it in the West is a political and cultural dead end, a non-starter - a certain route to political isolation and irrelevance (if not deportation). We should work with real moderate Muslims to isolate and disable the fake moderates like Rauf and others from the Brotherhood front groups, in order to stop them from passing their ugly teachings to the next generation - and to set an example for those still on the sidelines.
Yet we are doing exactly the opposite. Imam Rauf is not the only Islamist with good connections inside the government, the press, the universities, and the churches. He has hundreds if not thousands of comrades, in the Defense Department, Homeland Security, the FBI, and in state and local law enforcement. This makes the pious moralizing of the mosque's defenders doubly dangerous: it enables the enemy, and demoralizes those American Muslims who hope for a different kind of life from the life lived by most Muslims abroad.
This means that the debate over what gets built at Ground Zero is not just a debate among Muslims, and neither is the larger debate about Muslim reform. True enough, there is a war going on inside the Muslim community, a struggle for the soul of Islam and for the future of American Muslims, and that war will have to be fought mostly by Muslims. But it is not a war between equals, and it is not a war in which Americans can be neutral. The Islamists have on their side money, influence, and a ruthless determination to get their way, no matter who has to be hurt. They have already taken over, with Saudi money, most of the mosques in America - one reason why so many American Muslims are "unmosqued" and worship in private. The radicals have also planted themselves inside the government, and have won the admiration and support of the political, religious, and media elites. We have essentially said to the true moderates: You are on your own, and out of luck; the bad guys are running the store.
Bid Laden once said that when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they will naturally prefer to ride with the strong horse. By caving in to the likes of Rauf and his triumphalist Cordoba cronies, we are letting Muslim Americans know who the strong horse is. And it ain't us.
They will not forget.
Dr. Dennis Hale is a professor of political science at Boston College and a lay eucharistic minister in the Episcopalian Church. He is a member of the APT's Board of Directors.
The Internal Revenue Service recognizes Americans for Peace and Tolerance as a 501c3 non-profit corporation. If you would like to donate to our cause, you may send a check to APT, 15 Main St. Suite 118, Watertown, MA 02472 or donate online:
By Dennis Hale
Why it will be good for Muslims if the Ground Zero Mosque is stopped.
The plan to build a mosque and Islamic center at the site of the 9/11 attacks is one of those rare events that is more important for what it portends than for what it does. To build a mosque on the spot where three thousand people died in the name of Islam would be deeply offensive; but what seems even more important about this event is what it teaches - about those who are building the center, about the non-Muslims who are supporting them. As President Obama might have put it, this is a "teaching moment." What can we learn?
Despite the fog that surrounds so many controversies these days, a number of things are clear enough by now that all whose eyes are open should be able to see them without difficulty.
The mosque is hugely unpopular, all over the country (by about 70 percent). It is unpopular not simply because it is a mosque at Ground Zero, but because the people who are building it are far too close to the ideology of al-Qaeda - a fact which they have demonstrated, over and over again, by their statements and by their associations. The public has noticed this, although their leaders have not. Certainly, the official media doesn't know (the New York Times, for example, claims that for his entire career, Rauf has been trying to "reconcile Islam with America and modernism", a truly preposterous claim), and it's apparently not known to the folks in the White House, either - but it manages to be true nonetheless.
Here is what the Times and the White House do not know about Imam Faisal Rauf and his partners, and about what they called, revealingly, their "Cordoba Initiative."
Imam Rauf, an Egyptian born in Kuwait, is the son of the founder of the Islamic Center of New York, whose leaders have consistently been telling their congregants that someone other than Muslims was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. (Rauf is on the Board of the ICNY, and has never interfered with this teaching.) The first candidate, naturally, was "the Jews." Then it was the United States government. Then it was just "someone" other than Muslims. Rauf himself has said that the United States was "to blame" for 9/11 - a statement just a shade more nuanced than blaming it on "the Jews". (It's also what bin Laden said.)
Rauf's father was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a friend of its founder, Hassan al-Banna, and Rauf's professional and political connections are all to the Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas support network in the United States: the Council on American Islamic Relations; the Muslim American Society; the Islamic Society of North America; the International Institute of Islamic Thought. Three of these organizations were unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing trial - which produced the now famous (in some circles) Brotherhood memo from 1993 describing their goal in America: "eliminating and destroying . . .Western civilization from within . . . so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious . . . ."
Accordingly, Rauf has always refused to describe Hamas as a terrorist organization, insisting that "terrorism is complicated." He eagerly promotes the imposition of shari'a law on American Muslims, and eventually on non-Muslims as well. He has spent a lot of time in Malaysia, getting an education in religious law from the lunatic anti-Semite who used to be the nation's prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad. Rauf's business partners have included agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran, where he says he might secure financing. He will also accept financing from Saudi Arabia, but he has refused so far to say where his actual pledges have come from, if any. It is unlikely that he could raise $100 million for this project anywhere else but the Gulf.
Just in case there might have been some room for doubt about their intentions, Rauf and his partners named the Ground Zero project after the Cordoba Mosque in Spain, which displaced the last Christian church in that city after the 8th century Muslim conquest. (There were still Christians; just no more churches.) It has long been an orthodox Muslim practice to build mosques where Allah's enemies have been defeated (e.g., the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus). The Cordoba Initiative is intended to be a monument to yet another famous Islamic victory. It is, in fact, a 9/11 Memorial, built by the enemy.
That's what the controversy teaches about the builders. What does the controversy tell us about their supporters?
First, they are a minority, and this is something of a surprise. The fault line in this controversy has broken considerably to the left of the political center, and the doubters must include many people who voted for Barack Obama. The Anti-Defamation League, for example, has joined the opposition (though not Alan Dershowitz, normally a partner of the ADL). The official guardians of morality in the mainline Protestant churches are all on board, but it is not at all clear how many of their congregants are with them.
Evangelical Christians are opposed, mostly, but so are many Democrats, who are usually at odds with the "Christian Right". Harry Reid opposes it, and so does Howard Dean, who even criticized fellow-Democrats for "demonizing" the center's critics.
Second, we have learned that there are many people in the leadership of the nation's religious, cultural, and political institutions who simply will not look at the evidence about Imam Rauf, or any other Muslim leader or organization, no matter how clear or damning that evidence is. This is a form of irresponsibility that borders on the criminal.
Included in this indictment, unfortunately, is the State Department, which is even now sending Rauf on a good-will tour to the Muslim world. The amply demonstrated fact that most of the major Muslim organizations in this country are Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas affiliates and apologists comes to many Americans, over and over again, as news - and then quickly disappears down the memory hole. For a certain kind of liberal, as for birds, the world is born again every morning.
A favorite argument of the Center's supporters is that if "Muslims can't build mosques, then we are no longer living in a free country." Yet the principle of religious freedom is embedded in the very Constitution Imam Rauf has promised to replace with the Quran, ASAP. There is a word for that; the word is "sedition," and if Imam Rauf is a naturalized American citizen, then he was lying when he took his oath of allegiance, and ought to be deported. And no critic of the Cordoba Initiative has argued that "Muslims" in general should not be able to build mosques. Their ire is directed at this group, and this project, at this particular place.
Given the fecklessness of America's elites, what must American Muslims, standing on the sidelines, be thinking? Supporters of the Center talk as if Muslims were united in its defense, but that is far from the case. "Make no mistake," said the courageous Dr. Zudi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, "this Islamic center is not a spiritual statement but a global political one in the name of Islam." Rahel Raza, one of the founders of the Canadian Muslim Council, testified against the plan at the Community Board hearings in New York - after which, she says, the Center's financial backer, Sharif Gamal, threatened her over the telephone. The director of Al-Arabiya TV, Abd Al-Rahman al-Rashid, said that he couldn't "imagine that Muslims want a mosque at this particular location, because it will become an arena for the promoters of hatred, and a monument to those who committed the crime."
Many American Muslims - how many we have no sure way of knowing - are alienated from the Muslim Brotherhood network that runs so many of the country's Muslim institutions. They have no desire to see this network score yet another victory. Yet other Muslim-Americans on the sidelines are undoubtedly more conflicted. They may have doubts about Faisal Rauf, but they may also be drawn by the power of orthodoxy, which has always appealed to those unimpressed by easy, half-way answers to life's most difficult questions. This group is much bigger, almost certainly, than the group determined to modernize Islamic practice and doctrine. They are not yet committed to the radicals, either, but are up for grabs - not just in America, but all over the world.
This group in particular needs to understand that support for shari'a is sedition in a liberal democratic republic, and that the movement to impose it in the West is a political and cultural dead end, a non-starter - a certain route to political isolation and irrelevance (if not deportation). We should work with real moderate Muslims to isolate and disable the fake moderates like Rauf and others from the Brotherhood front groups, in order to stop them from passing their ugly teachings to the next generation - and to set an example for those still on the sidelines.
Yet we are doing exactly the opposite. Imam Rauf is not the only Islamist with good connections inside the government, the press, the universities, and the churches. He has hundreds if not thousands of comrades, in the Defense Department, Homeland Security, the FBI, and in state and local law enforcement. This makes the pious moralizing of the mosque's defenders doubly dangerous: it enables the enemy, and demoralizes those American Muslims who hope for a different kind of life from the life lived by most Muslims abroad.
This means that the debate over what gets built at Ground Zero is not just a debate among Muslims, and neither is the larger debate about Muslim reform. True enough, there is a war going on inside the Muslim community, a struggle for the soul of Islam and for the future of American Muslims, and that war will have to be fought mostly by Muslims. But it is not a war between equals, and it is not a war in which Americans can be neutral. The Islamists have on their side money, influence, and a ruthless determination to get their way, no matter who has to be hurt. They have already taken over, with Saudi money, most of the mosques in America - one reason why so many American Muslims are "unmosqued" and worship in private. The radicals have also planted themselves inside the government, and have won the admiration and support of the political, religious, and media elites. We have essentially said to the true moderates: You are on your own, and out of luck; the bad guys are running the store.
Bid Laden once said that when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they will naturally prefer to ride with the strong horse. By caving in to the likes of Rauf and his triumphalist Cordoba cronies, we are letting Muslim Americans know who the strong horse is. And it ain't us.
They will not forget.
Dr. Dennis Hale is a professor of political science at Boston College and a lay eucharistic minister in the Episcopalian Church. He is a member of the APT's Board of Directors.
The Internal Revenue Service recognizes Americans for Peace and Tolerance as a 501c3 non-profit corporation. If you would like to donate to our cause, you may send a check to APT, 15 Main St. Suite 118, Watertown, MA 02472 or donate online:
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Oliver Stone ---the Huge Anti-Semite
Home / Globe / Opinion / Op-ed Jeff Jacoby
Double standard
Why is it that Mel Gibson is ripped by the media for anti-Semitic statements, and Oliver Stone isn’t?
By Jeff Jacoby
Globe Columnist / August 4, 2010
E-mail this article To: Invalid E-mail address Add a personal message:(80 character limit) Your E-mail: Invalid E-mail address
Sending your articleYour article has been sent. E-mail| Print| Reprints| Comments (217)Text size – + LATE IN July, a Hollywood honcho uncorks a blast of anti-Semitic bile, the sort of malignant stereotype about Jews one might expect from David Duke or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Is that newsworthy?
Tweet 6 people Tweeted thisSubmit to DiggdiggYahoo! Buzz ShareThis It certainly was in 2006, when Mel Gibson, arrested in Malibu for drunken driving, demanded to know whether the arresting deputy was Jewish, and then launched into an anti-Semitic rant: “[Expletive] Jews,’’ he raged. “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.’’
What followed was a Category 4 media hurricane.
Within a week, according to the Nexis news database, the number of articles mentioning “Mel Gibson’’ and “Jews’’ had soared to 1,077. The New York Times reported the incident in a Page 1 story on July 30, and followed it up with much longer stories on Aug. 1 and 2. The coverage in the Los Angeles Times was even more extensive, with three front-page stories and another half-dozen inside. Numerous other papers gave heavy play to Gibson’s tirade and its aftermath. The network and cable news shows were all over the story, broadcasting scores of segments about it in that first week.
Pervading much of the media’s coverage and commentary was a tone of unforgiving revulsion.
“Let’s not cut Mel Gibson even the tiniest bit of slack,’’ began Eugene Robinson’s op-ed column in The Washington Post. Talent agent Ari Emanuel’s call for Gibson to be blacklisted was widely noted: “People in the entertainment business, whether Jew or gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him,’’ Emanuel wrote in an open letter on the Huffington Post.
On “The View,’’ Barbara Walters announced that she wouldn’t see any more of Gibson’s movies. Slate explained “How To Boycott Mel Gibson.’’ CNN’s Brooke Anderson, co-host of “Showbiz Tonight,’’ described “a sudden explosion of outrage with some of the most influential people in Hollywood now saying they will never work with Mel Gibson again.’’ As if to confirm the point, ABC cancelled a Holocaust-themed mini-series it had been developing with Gibson.
But when, almost exactly four years later, another Hollywood bigfoot uttered an anti-Semitic rant, the reaction couldn’t have been more different.
In a July 25 interview with the Times of London, filmmaker Oliver Stone complained that “Jewish domination of the media’’ focuses too much attention on the Holocaust, and prevents Americans from understanding Hitler (and Stalin) “in context’’ — a wrong he intends to right in a documentary he is making for Showtime. Stone described these media-controlling Jews as “the most powerful lobby in Washington’’ — “hard workers’’ who “stay on top of every comment,’’ and are responsible for the fact that “Israel has [expletive]-up United States foreign policy for years.’’
Like Gibson blaming Jews for the planet’s wars, Stone’s lament about Jewish control of the media is classic anti-Semitism, straight out of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’’ and Henry Ford’s “The International Jew.’’ Unlike Gibson, however, Stone gave vent to his bigotry while perfectly sober.
Yet far from triggering a media storm, Stone’s anti-Semitic conspiracy-mongering barely stirred a breeze.
Seven days after his words first appeared, Nexis had logged fewer than 150 items mentioning Stone’s toxic rhetoric. On ABC, CBS, and NBC, the news shows completely ignored the story. The New York Times restricted its coverage to two short items in its “Arts, Briefly’’ section — and few other papers ran even that much.
Media mogul Haim Saban did urge Showtime to cancel Stone’s documentary, and posted an online message calling on Hollywood to give Stone “a vigorous shove into the land of forced retirement.’’ But few if any media voices seconded the motion — not a word from Slate, for example — and some went out of their way to pooh-pooh it: Los Angeles Times blogger Patrick Goldstein pronounced the idea “not so different’’ from “the infamous 1950s Hollywood blacklist.’’
Gibson and Stone are both guilty of indulging in rank anti-Semitism (for which both promptly “apologized’’), but only Gibson was buried under a newsroom avalanche of outrage and disgust. What explains that glaring difference? Surely the media don’t think Jew-baiting is intolerable only when it comes from a right-wing Christian like Gibson. Surely they wouldn’t overlook Stone’s noxious rant just because he is a pluperfect left-wing activist.
Surely that can’t be the explanation for so disgraceful a double standard.
Can it?
Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com.
© Copyright 2010
Double standard
Why is it that Mel Gibson is ripped by the media for anti-Semitic statements, and Oliver Stone isn’t?
By Jeff Jacoby
Globe Columnist / August 4, 2010
E-mail this article To: Invalid E-mail address Add a personal message:(80 character limit) Your E-mail: Invalid E-mail address
Sending your articleYour article has been sent. E-mail| Print| Reprints| Comments (217)Text size – + LATE IN July, a Hollywood honcho uncorks a blast of anti-Semitic bile, the sort of malignant stereotype about Jews one might expect from David Duke or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Is that newsworthy?
Tweet 6 people Tweeted thisSubmit to DiggdiggYahoo! Buzz ShareThis It certainly was in 2006, when Mel Gibson, arrested in Malibu for drunken driving, demanded to know whether the arresting deputy was Jewish, and then launched into an anti-Semitic rant: “[Expletive] Jews,’’ he raged. “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.’’
What followed was a Category 4 media hurricane.
Within a week, according to the Nexis news database, the number of articles mentioning “Mel Gibson’’ and “Jews’’ had soared to 1,077. The New York Times reported the incident in a Page 1 story on July 30, and followed it up with much longer stories on Aug. 1 and 2. The coverage in the Los Angeles Times was even more extensive, with three front-page stories and another half-dozen inside. Numerous other papers gave heavy play to Gibson’s tirade and its aftermath. The network and cable news shows were all over the story, broadcasting scores of segments about it in that first week.
Pervading much of the media’s coverage and commentary was a tone of unforgiving revulsion.
“Let’s not cut Mel Gibson even the tiniest bit of slack,’’ began Eugene Robinson’s op-ed column in The Washington Post. Talent agent Ari Emanuel’s call for Gibson to be blacklisted was widely noted: “People in the entertainment business, whether Jew or gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him,’’ Emanuel wrote in an open letter on the Huffington Post.
On “The View,’’ Barbara Walters announced that she wouldn’t see any more of Gibson’s movies. Slate explained “How To Boycott Mel Gibson.’’ CNN’s Brooke Anderson, co-host of “Showbiz Tonight,’’ described “a sudden explosion of outrage with some of the most influential people in Hollywood now saying they will never work with Mel Gibson again.’’ As if to confirm the point, ABC cancelled a Holocaust-themed mini-series it had been developing with Gibson.
But when, almost exactly four years later, another Hollywood bigfoot uttered an anti-Semitic rant, the reaction couldn’t have been more different.
In a July 25 interview with the Times of London, filmmaker Oliver Stone complained that “Jewish domination of the media’’ focuses too much attention on the Holocaust, and prevents Americans from understanding Hitler (and Stalin) “in context’’ — a wrong he intends to right in a documentary he is making for Showtime. Stone described these media-controlling Jews as “the most powerful lobby in Washington’’ — “hard workers’’ who “stay on top of every comment,’’ and are responsible for the fact that “Israel has [expletive]-up United States foreign policy for years.’’
Like Gibson blaming Jews for the planet’s wars, Stone’s lament about Jewish control of the media is classic anti-Semitism, straight out of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’’ and Henry Ford’s “The International Jew.’’ Unlike Gibson, however, Stone gave vent to his bigotry while perfectly sober.
Yet far from triggering a media storm, Stone’s anti-Semitic conspiracy-mongering barely stirred a breeze.
Seven days after his words first appeared, Nexis had logged fewer than 150 items mentioning Stone’s toxic rhetoric. On ABC, CBS, and NBC, the news shows completely ignored the story. The New York Times restricted its coverage to two short items in its “Arts, Briefly’’ section — and few other papers ran even that much.
Media mogul Haim Saban did urge Showtime to cancel Stone’s documentary, and posted an online message calling on Hollywood to give Stone “a vigorous shove into the land of forced retirement.’’ But few if any media voices seconded the motion — not a word from Slate, for example — and some went out of their way to pooh-pooh it: Los Angeles Times blogger Patrick Goldstein pronounced the idea “not so different’’ from “the infamous 1950s Hollywood blacklist.’’
Gibson and Stone are both guilty of indulging in rank anti-Semitism (for which both promptly “apologized’’), but only Gibson was buried under a newsroom avalanche of outrage and disgust. What explains that glaring difference? Surely the media don’t think Jew-baiting is intolerable only when it comes from a right-wing Christian like Gibson. Surely they wouldn’t overlook Stone’s noxious rant just because he is a pluperfect left-wing activist.
Surely that can’t be the explanation for so disgraceful a double standard.
Can it?
Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com.
© Copyright 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
Caroline Glick on the anti-semitic Oliver Stone
Jewish World Jewish Society See No Evil
Oliver Stone joins Thomas, Gibson in ranks of out-of-closet Jew-haters.
by Caroline Glick It’s springtime for Jew-haters. This week Oscar winning conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone joined Helen Thomas and Mel Gibson in the swelling ranks of out-of-the-closet celebrity Jew-haters. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Stone said that Adolf Hitler had been given a bum rap and that through “Jewish domination of the media,” the Jews have inflated the importance of the Holocaust and wrecked US foreign policy.
In the wake of criticism in Jewish circles, on Wednesday Stone’s publicist issued a mealy-mouthed clarification.
Stone failed to retract or amend his statement that “There’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has ----- up United States foreign policy for years.”
He also did not retract his view that Jews use the Holocaust to control American foreign policy.
Stone simply referred to his claim that Jews make too much of the Holocaust because the Germans killed more Russians than Jews as “clumsy.”
He then broadened his initial allegation that Jews make too much of the Holocaust by allowing that we are joined in our efforts by non-Jews.
And since non-Jews are involved also, he was wrong to criticize us.
As Stone put it, “The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity.”
Stone still believes that the rounding up and exterminating of three-quarters of Europe’s Jews is really not as notable or morally troubling as high Russian wartime casualties, but it’s not solely Jews’ fault that people don’t share Stone’s views.
Even more despicable than Stone’s display of Jew-hatred was the thunderous silence of the media and the insistent attempts to justify his statements.Arguably even more despicable than Stone’s display of Jew-hatred was the manner in which it was received. On the one hand, there was the thunderous silence of the media. And on the other hand there were the insistent, repeated attempts to justify his statements.
Readers’ talkbacks to write-ups of his remarks were rife with assertions that Stone’s statements were not bigoted. Many agreed that Jews dominate the media, and since they believe this is true, they argued that saying so is not a bigoted act. Others claimed that while Stone’s statements were inaccurate, there is no evidence that he hates Jews and therefore, his statements weren’t bigoted. At any rate, Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times and many others have argued, it would be wrong for Stone to be discredited for his attacks against Jews.
It is difficult to imagine that if someone trafficked in ethnic stereotypes about groups like blacks, and claimed that they wreck US foreign policy to serve their own nefarious aims, Goldstein and the talk-backers would defend him.
But then anti-Jewish bigotry has different rules than other hatreds.
Stone and his defenders are not alone in either their attitude towards Jews or their denial of their attitude towards Jews. Indeed, they are part of a worldwide trend.
Take the situation in Malmo, Sweden. Last Friday, Jew-haters set off firecrackers outside a synagogue in Malmo. The blasts came a day after Jew-haters posted a bomb threat on the wall of the synagogue for the second time in two weeks.
Malmo is a hotbed of anti-Jewish violence and the Jews of the city are fleeing in droves.
Yet in the face of all this, Malmo’s non-Jews cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that there is a problem with anti-Semitism in their city.
Even those who are supposed to be responsible for combating anti-Semitism refuse to acknowledge that Jews in Malmo are being attacked because they are Jews.
Bjorn Lagerback is the man in Malmo who is supposed to care about anti-Semitic violence.
Lagerback serves as the coordinator of the local forum in the city charged with combating hate crimes. In an interview with Malmo’s The Local cited by the World Jewish Congress, Lagerback tried to impress on the world that the bombing was serious. Not because it was violence aimed at Jews, of course.
No, according to Lagerback, this bombing is serious because it might hurt non-Jews. He said.
“We condemn this completely. Such an event is not just directed against the synagogue, but also at other targets that could be described as ethnic or religious.”
The acceptance of anti-Semitism has reached epidemic proportions.Forget about the fact that only Malmo’s synagogues, and not its churches and mosques, require around the clock security. If no other ethnic or religious groups were targeted, would bombing synagogues no longer warrant condemnation? The acceptance of anti-Semitism has reached epidemic proportions.
In Amsterdam, anti-Semites are making the mundane act of walking around outside in broad daylight a dangerous prospect for Jews.
Jews are regularly attacked verbally and physically by anti-Semites as they walk on the streets of the Dutch capital.
In an attempt to catch and punish anti-Semitic thugs, the Amsterdam police force has dispatched policemen dressed as Jews to pound the pavement. The hope is that these decoys will be able to draw out the offenders and arrest them.
Apparently, some Dutch have a problem with punishing anti-Semitic attackers. As Paul Belien reported in the Brussels Journal, “Evelien van Roemburg, an Amsterdam counselor of the Green Left Party, says that using a decoy by the police amounts to [entrapment], which is itself a criminal offence under Dutch law.”
In other words, Van Roemburg thinks that people who walk around while appearing to be Jewish are asking for it.
Van Roemburg no doubt also believes that women in mini-skirts deserve to be raped.
All of this brings us to a discussion of the most endemic form of contemporary anti-Semitism: Anti-Zionism. There is no reason for anyone to be surprised that anti-Semites deny that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. After all, they deny that every other form of anti-Semitism is anti-Semitism. Why should anti-Zionism receive special treatment? It is self-evident that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
Zionism after all is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. To say that Jews – uniquely among all the nations – have no right to freedom and self-determination is obviously anti-Semitic.
Anti-Semites give a variety of excuses to justify their rejection of the Jewish people’s right to freedom and sovereignty in our homeland. Sometimes they say they have no problem with Jewish nationalism per se. They are simply anti-nationalist generally. But remarkably, these anti-nationalist anti-Zionists invariably just happen to be outspoken supporters of Palestinian nationalism.
Moreover, it is curious that universalist anti-nationalists only have a special term to describe their opposition to Jewish nationalism. No one ever mentions being anti-Irishist, for instance.
When someone says they oppose Irish nationalism, the obvious conclusion is that they don’t like Irish people. Just so, people who are anti-French tend not to like French people. And yet, the anti-Zionists would have us believe that their opposition to the Jewish state has nothing to do with their feelings about Jews.
Beyond their nonsensical attempts to deny the fact that anti-Zionism is a specific rejection of a specific – that is Jewish – type of nationalism, there is the fact that anti-Zionists tend inevitably to drink from other anti-Jewish sewers as well.
Take former British parliamentarian Clare Short for example.
During her just ended career in the British Parliament, Short became known as an outspoken anti-Zionist. Short rejected Israel’s right to exist and castigated it for its “bloody, brutal and systematic annexation of land, destruction of homes and the deliberate creation of an apartheid system.”
But Short’s Israel kick didn’t end with her frequent condemnations of imaginary but lurid Israeli crimes. As time went by, Short began channeling centuries of British Jew-hatred. Like her forefathers who blamed Jews for rain, drought, plague and fire, Shore blamed Israel for global warming.
As she put it in a speech at the European Parliament three years ago, Israel “undermines the international community’s reaction to global warming.”
As Short saw it, European leaders are properly obsessed with attacking the Jewish state. But because Israel insists on existing and so requires Europeans to condemn it, Israel prevents the Europeans from attending to the threat of carbon that, if left unregulated, will “end the human race.”
So if the world boils over, the cauldron will be made in Israel.
One of the most prominent anti-Zionists today is Prof. Juan Cole from the University of Michigan.
Part of being a successful anti-Zionist involves claiming that Jews have no right to the land of Israel. So to be a good anti-Zionist, one needs to deny Jewish history.
To this end, in March Cole published a piece of historical fiction in the Salon online magazine.
Titled “Ten reasons why East Jerusalem does not belong to Israel,” Cole mixed half truths with flagrant lies to justify his denial of Jewish history and belittlement of the Jewish rights.
Cole wrote, “Jerusalem not only was not being built by the likely then non-existent ‘Jewish people’ in 1000 BCE, but Jerusalem probably was not even inhabited at that point in history. Jerusalem appears to have been abandoned between 1000 BCE and 900 BCE, the traditional dates for the united kingdom under David and Solomon.”
This assertion is so mendacious that it takes your breath away. As anyone who has actually been in Jerusalem can attest, it is all but impossible to be physically present in the oldest areas of the city and not bump into relics dating from between 1000 and 900 BCE.
Cole’s allegation is the academic equivalent of Louis Farakhan’s claim that white people are devils planted on earth by aliens. As an anti-Zionist anti-Semite, it was just a matter of time until Cole traveled into the fetid swamp of denying the historical record to facilitate his false claim that Jews are not a people and therefore are bereft of rights as a nation to our national homeland.
Anti-Semites have been wildly successful in whitewashing their bigotry.And why shouldn’t he cover himself in anti-Semitic muck? So far, the stench has brought him great success. The very fact that I felt compelled to write an essay explaining why anti-Semitism is anti-Semitism and why anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is depressing proof that anti-Semites have been wildly successful in whitewashing their bigotry.
What makes contemporary anti-Semitism unique is its purveyors’ great efforts to hide its very existence. Their motivation is clear. Outside the openly genocidal anti-Semitic Muslim world, most anti-Semites are self-described liberals who claim to oppose bigotry. For these people, pretending away their prejudice is the key to their continued claim to enlightenment.
And so the likes of Oliver Stone publish clarifications.
And Cole invents history. And the Europeans blame Jews and Israel and Zionism when Jews inside and outside Israel are assaulted and killed.
And I am sorry I wrote this column.
Because an audience that demands an explanation of why evil is evil is an audience that has already sided with evil.
This article originally appeared on the Jerusalem Post.
Published: Saturday, July 31, 2010
Hear related audio on this topic.
Like this article? Help us create more. Aish.com exists
only through the support of our readers.
Visitor Comments: 23
(23) Doron, August 2, 2010
Evil is Showing its Ugly Face
When we step back, it is plain to see that evil in the world is becoming bolder and bolder. Why? Because, we let it...
(22) compugraphd, August 2, 2010
As Usual, Caroline Glick hits the nail on the head
As usual, Caroline Glick hits the nail on the head. Thanks for continuing to write, Caroline. I also write about Israel on my blog at http://israelanditsplaceintheworld.blogspot.com/
(21) yehudit levy, August 2, 2010
I am also sorry....
I am also sorry you had to write this article, brilliant as it is. I often wonder to mysef what would happen if we ourselves remained "thunderously silent" in the press after a vicious slander? Would the outspoken offender be forced to put tail between legs and miss out on a much needed publicity boost? perhaps. As we often tell children, "He/she just does it to get a reaction. If you ignore it, he will get bored and stop" I guess dreaming that anti-semitic outbursts are like a mutant form of sibling rivalry is perhaps a little too much wishful thinking....
(20) DINA.HOROVITZ, August 2, 2010
wake up world
wake up world,.hope there are no more there kind of creatures,Mell Gobson andOliver Stone.Mell is a christian church man I can't beleave how antesimt he is and Oliver Stone has to be ashamed even to think about what he said.These people have a mjor problem ,unfortunately no body can help them'DROGS AND DRINK.I fell sorry for them
(19) Linda Bellamy, August 2, 2010
Choosen
Oliver Stone is crazy to say those thing's about the Jewish people I will never watch another of his movies. If his grandmother or sister, father or brother had been in one of those gas camber's I'm sure he would have a very differant view of our history.
(
Oliver Stone joins Thomas, Gibson in ranks of out-of-closet Jew-haters.
by Caroline Glick It’s springtime for Jew-haters. This week Oscar winning conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone joined Helen Thomas and Mel Gibson in the swelling ranks of out-of-the-closet celebrity Jew-haters. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Stone said that Adolf Hitler had been given a bum rap and that through “Jewish domination of the media,” the Jews have inflated the importance of the Holocaust and wrecked US foreign policy.
In the wake of criticism in Jewish circles, on Wednesday Stone’s publicist issued a mealy-mouthed clarification.
Stone failed to retract or amend his statement that “There’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has ----- up United States foreign policy for years.”
He also did not retract his view that Jews use the Holocaust to control American foreign policy.
Stone simply referred to his claim that Jews make too much of the Holocaust because the Germans killed more Russians than Jews as “clumsy.”
He then broadened his initial allegation that Jews make too much of the Holocaust by allowing that we are joined in our efforts by non-Jews.
And since non-Jews are involved also, he was wrong to criticize us.
As Stone put it, “The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity.”
Stone still believes that the rounding up and exterminating of three-quarters of Europe’s Jews is really not as notable or morally troubling as high Russian wartime casualties, but it’s not solely Jews’ fault that people don’t share Stone’s views.
Even more despicable than Stone’s display of Jew-hatred was the thunderous silence of the media and the insistent attempts to justify his statements.Arguably even more despicable than Stone’s display of Jew-hatred was the manner in which it was received. On the one hand, there was the thunderous silence of the media. And on the other hand there were the insistent, repeated attempts to justify his statements.
Readers’ talkbacks to write-ups of his remarks were rife with assertions that Stone’s statements were not bigoted. Many agreed that Jews dominate the media, and since they believe this is true, they argued that saying so is not a bigoted act. Others claimed that while Stone’s statements were inaccurate, there is no evidence that he hates Jews and therefore, his statements weren’t bigoted. At any rate, Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times and many others have argued, it would be wrong for Stone to be discredited for his attacks against Jews.
It is difficult to imagine that if someone trafficked in ethnic stereotypes about groups like blacks, and claimed that they wreck US foreign policy to serve their own nefarious aims, Goldstein and the talk-backers would defend him.
But then anti-Jewish bigotry has different rules than other hatreds.
Stone and his defenders are not alone in either their attitude towards Jews or their denial of their attitude towards Jews. Indeed, they are part of a worldwide trend.
Take the situation in Malmo, Sweden. Last Friday, Jew-haters set off firecrackers outside a synagogue in Malmo. The blasts came a day after Jew-haters posted a bomb threat on the wall of the synagogue for the second time in two weeks.
Malmo is a hotbed of anti-Jewish violence and the Jews of the city are fleeing in droves.
Yet in the face of all this, Malmo’s non-Jews cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that there is a problem with anti-Semitism in their city.
Even those who are supposed to be responsible for combating anti-Semitism refuse to acknowledge that Jews in Malmo are being attacked because they are Jews.
Bjorn Lagerback is the man in Malmo who is supposed to care about anti-Semitic violence.
Lagerback serves as the coordinator of the local forum in the city charged with combating hate crimes. In an interview with Malmo’s The Local cited by the World Jewish Congress, Lagerback tried to impress on the world that the bombing was serious. Not because it was violence aimed at Jews, of course.
No, according to Lagerback, this bombing is serious because it might hurt non-Jews. He said.
“We condemn this completely. Such an event is not just directed against the synagogue, but also at other targets that could be described as ethnic or religious.”
The acceptance of anti-Semitism has reached epidemic proportions.Forget about the fact that only Malmo’s synagogues, and not its churches and mosques, require around the clock security. If no other ethnic or religious groups were targeted, would bombing synagogues no longer warrant condemnation? The acceptance of anti-Semitism has reached epidemic proportions.
In Amsterdam, anti-Semites are making the mundane act of walking around outside in broad daylight a dangerous prospect for Jews.
Jews are regularly attacked verbally and physically by anti-Semites as they walk on the streets of the Dutch capital.
In an attempt to catch and punish anti-Semitic thugs, the Amsterdam police force has dispatched policemen dressed as Jews to pound the pavement. The hope is that these decoys will be able to draw out the offenders and arrest them.
Apparently, some Dutch have a problem with punishing anti-Semitic attackers. As Paul Belien reported in the Brussels Journal, “Evelien van Roemburg, an Amsterdam counselor of the Green Left Party, says that using a decoy by the police amounts to [entrapment], which is itself a criminal offence under Dutch law.”
In other words, Van Roemburg thinks that people who walk around while appearing to be Jewish are asking for it.
Van Roemburg no doubt also believes that women in mini-skirts deserve to be raped.
All of this brings us to a discussion of the most endemic form of contemporary anti-Semitism: Anti-Zionism. There is no reason for anyone to be surprised that anti-Semites deny that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. After all, they deny that every other form of anti-Semitism is anti-Semitism. Why should anti-Zionism receive special treatment? It is self-evident that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
Zionism after all is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. To say that Jews – uniquely among all the nations – have no right to freedom and self-determination is obviously anti-Semitic.
Anti-Semites give a variety of excuses to justify their rejection of the Jewish people’s right to freedom and sovereignty in our homeland. Sometimes they say they have no problem with Jewish nationalism per se. They are simply anti-nationalist generally. But remarkably, these anti-nationalist anti-Zionists invariably just happen to be outspoken supporters of Palestinian nationalism.
Moreover, it is curious that universalist anti-nationalists only have a special term to describe their opposition to Jewish nationalism. No one ever mentions being anti-Irishist, for instance.
When someone says they oppose Irish nationalism, the obvious conclusion is that they don’t like Irish people. Just so, people who are anti-French tend not to like French people. And yet, the anti-Zionists would have us believe that their opposition to the Jewish state has nothing to do with their feelings about Jews.
Beyond their nonsensical attempts to deny the fact that anti-Zionism is a specific rejection of a specific – that is Jewish – type of nationalism, there is the fact that anti-Zionists tend inevitably to drink from other anti-Jewish sewers as well.
Take former British parliamentarian Clare Short for example.
During her just ended career in the British Parliament, Short became known as an outspoken anti-Zionist. Short rejected Israel’s right to exist and castigated it for its “bloody, brutal and systematic annexation of land, destruction of homes and the deliberate creation of an apartheid system.”
But Short’s Israel kick didn’t end with her frequent condemnations of imaginary but lurid Israeli crimes. As time went by, Short began channeling centuries of British Jew-hatred. Like her forefathers who blamed Jews for rain, drought, plague and fire, Shore blamed Israel for global warming.
As she put it in a speech at the European Parliament three years ago, Israel “undermines the international community’s reaction to global warming.”
As Short saw it, European leaders are properly obsessed with attacking the Jewish state. But because Israel insists on existing and so requires Europeans to condemn it, Israel prevents the Europeans from attending to the threat of carbon that, if left unregulated, will “end the human race.”
So if the world boils over, the cauldron will be made in Israel.
One of the most prominent anti-Zionists today is Prof. Juan Cole from the University of Michigan.
Part of being a successful anti-Zionist involves claiming that Jews have no right to the land of Israel. So to be a good anti-Zionist, one needs to deny Jewish history.
To this end, in March Cole published a piece of historical fiction in the Salon online magazine.
Titled “Ten reasons why East Jerusalem does not belong to Israel,” Cole mixed half truths with flagrant lies to justify his denial of Jewish history and belittlement of the Jewish rights.
Cole wrote, “Jerusalem not only was not being built by the likely then non-existent ‘Jewish people’ in 1000 BCE, but Jerusalem probably was not even inhabited at that point in history. Jerusalem appears to have been abandoned between 1000 BCE and 900 BCE, the traditional dates for the united kingdom under David and Solomon.”
This assertion is so mendacious that it takes your breath away. As anyone who has actually been in Jerusalem can attest, it is all but impossible to be physically present in the oldest areas of the city and not bump into relics dating from between 1000 and 900 BCE.
Cole’s allegation is the academic equivalent of Louis Farakhan’s claim that white people are devils planted on earth by aliens. As an anti-Zionist anti-Semite, it was just a matter of time until Cole traveled into the fetid swamp of denying the historical record to facilitate his false claim that Jews are not a people and therefore are bereft of rights as a nation to our national homeland.
Anti-Semites have been wildly successful in whitewashing their bigotry.And why shouldn’t he cover himself in anti-Semitic muck? So far, the stench has brought him great success. The very fact that I felt compelled to write an essay explaining why anti-Semitism is anti-Semitism and why anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is depressing proof that anti-Semites have been wildly successful in whitewashing their bigotry.
What makes contemporary anti-Semitism unique is its purveyors’ great efforts to hide its very existence. Their motivation is clear. Outside the openly genocidal anti-Semitic Muslim world, most anti-Semites are self-described liberals who claim to oppose bigotry. For these people, pretending away their prejudice is the key to their continued claim to enlightenment.
And so the likes of Oliver Stone publish clarifications.
And Cole invents history. And the Europeans blame Jews and Israel and Zionism when Jews inside and outside Israel are assaulted and killed.
And I am sorry I wrote this column.
Because an audience that demands an explanation of why evil is evil is an audience that has already sided with evil.
This article originally appeared on the Jerusalem Post.
Published: Saturday, July 31, 2010
Hear related audio on this topic.
Like this article? Help us create more. Aish.com exists
only through the support of our readers.
Visitor Comments: 23
(23) Doron, August 2, 2010
Evil is Showing its Ugly Face
When we step back, it is plain to see that evil in the world is becoming bolder and bolder. Why? Because, we let it...
(22) compugraphd, August 2, 2010
As Usual, Caroline Glick hits the nail on the head
As usual, Caroline Glick hits the nail on the head. Thanks for continuing to write, Caroline. I also write about Israel on my blog at http://israelanditsplaceintheworld.blogspot.com/
(21) yehudit levy, August 2, 2010
I am also sorry....
I am also sorry you had to write this article, brilliant as it is. I often wonder to mysef what would happen if we ourselves remained "thunderously silent" in the press after a vicious slander? Would the outspoken offender be forced to put tail between legs and miss out on a much needed publicity boost? perhaps. As we often tell children, "He/she just does it to get a reaction. If you ignore it, he will get bored and stop" I guess dreaming that anti-semitic outbursts are like a mutant form of sibling rivalry is perhaps a little too much wishful thinking....
(20) DINA.HOROVITZ, August 2, 2010
wake up world
wake up world,.hope there are no more there kind of creatures,Mell Gobson andOliver Stone.Mell is a christian church man I can't beleave how antesimt he is and Oliver Stone has to be ashamed even to think about what he said.These people have a mjor problem ,unfortunately no body can help them'DROGS AND DRINK.I fell sorry for them
(19) Linda Bellamy, August 2, 2010
Choosen
Oliver Stone is crazy to say those thing's about the Jewish people I will never watch another of his movies. If his grandmother or sister, father or brother had been in one of those gas camber's I'm sure he would have a very differant view of our history.
(
Thursday, July 22, 2010
www.tomgrossmedia.com
Mideast Dispatch Archive
A nice new shopping mall opened today in Gaza: Will the media report on it?
July 17, 2010
Will the Western media show these images?
All notes below by Tom Gross
Please scroll down below for photos of the new shopping mall that opened today in Gaza. I have also attached new photos and film of Gaza’s hotels, beauty spas, swimming pools, beaches and street markets -- images the BBC, New York Times and others refuse to show you.
Meanwhile, Hamas are deliberately leaving some Gazans in plastic tents, in order to fool gullible Western journalists and politicians who are brought to Gaza to witness a staged “humanitarian crisis.”
(Photo of a new mall that opened today, July 17, 2010. If there “are no building materials allowed into Gaza” how did they build this shopping center, or the new Olympic-size swimming pool pictured below?)
Two days ago the EU pledged tens of millions of EU taxpayers’ euros to add to the hundreds of millions already donated to Gaza this year, much of which has been misused to procure arms.
UPDATE, Sunday July 18, 2010:
Some journalists who subscribe to this list have asked me for a quote. You are welcome to use the following.
Political and media commentator Tom Gross said:
“On a day when (because EU Foreign Policy Chief Baroness Ashton is in Gaza) the BBC and other media have featured extensive reports all day long on what they term the dire economic situation in Gaza, why are they not mentioning the new shopping mall that opened there yesterday?
“When leading news outlets mention the so-called humanitarian flotillas from Turkey, why do they omit the fact that life expectancy and literacy rates are higher, and infant mortality rates are lower in Gaza than corresponding rates in Turkey? Have they considered that perhaps the humanitarian flotillas ought to be going in the other direction, towards Turkey?”
WHAT HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE?
Last year, this website revealed to a Western audience pictures of the bustling, crowded food markets of Gaza that the Western media refuse to show you. Earlier this year, I reported the new Olympic-size swimming pool of Gaza (no shortage of building materials or water here) and the luxury restaurants, where you can “dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu”. (Over 300,000 people have viewed photos on that webpage since May, according to my website monitor.)
Now I want to draw attention to the fact that this morning, on the day that the EU again criticized Israel (but not Egypt) for supposedly oppressing Gazans, on a day when the BBC TV world news headlines again lead with a report about how “devastated the economy in Gaza is,” an impressive new shopping mall opened in Gaza (photos below, followed by a selection of other photos from Gaza).
Will those Western journalists who write stories about “starvation” in Gaza and compare it to a “concentration camp” report this?
Instead of reporting on the mall opening, the British-based international satellite broadcaster Sky News reported today “The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains dire.”
NEW GAZA SHOPPING MALL
Photos from Saturday, July 17, 2010:
More photos here.
Here is a news report in Arabic on the opening of the mall from today’s Palestine Times. (Click on each of these thumbnails to view the full photos.)
This is the official website of the Gaza mall.
UPDATE, July 20, 2010
More pictures of the mall here, here, and here from The Palestine Times.
And this video of the mall has today gone up on YouTube. (The captions that have been added to this video are not mine, nor do I approve of all of them.)
The mall is being widely featured in media throughout the Arab world, for example here, (courtesy of AP) but why the continuing silence from Western media who subscribe to AP and who continue to cover “the situation in Gaza” day after day without mentioning the economic progress there?
UPDATE, July 21, 2010
Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s largest newspaper, whose editors subscribe to this email list, has now covered the mall.
UPDATE, July 21, 2010
The National Post, one of Canada’s largest newspapers, almost alone among Western media has run a comment piece about the Gaza mall and also referring to this (Tom Gross media) webpage.
UPDATE, July 21, 2010
Glen Beck today showed the mall on his show on Fox. He said that the media will gladly show you a “Palestinian with a bloody face but won’t show you the Gaza shopping mall.”
It is fine that Fox hyave featured the mall, but why aren’t the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS and others interested in a balance, rounded approach to covering Palestinian issues?
BIAS IN A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN
Before I draw attention to other photos below, please let me restate again my overall position since several other commentators have misrepresented it recently:
I have consistently supported the creation of an independent Palestinian Arab state alongside Israel since I first became interested in politics. But there is no point in creating a new Palestinian state if it will primarily be used as a launching ground for armed attacks on Israel, which would only in turn likely lead to a much bloodier war between Israelis and Palestinians than anything we have witnessed in the past.
In order to make sure any Palestinian state is peaceful, and respects human rights for both its own citizens and its neighbors, it is crucial for Western policy-makers not be misled into making bad policy (as they have so often done in the past) in part, at least, as a result of believing the utter distortions of Western journalists, who greatly exaggerate the suffering of Palestinians and consistently cover up for the misdeeds of Hamas and Fatah.
Of course, one should not forget that the media is full of stereotypes and mistakes about other issues. Yet when every allowance has been made, the sustained bias against Israel is in a league of its own.
I am not for one moment suggesting that Israeli misdeeds should not be fully and unsparingly reported on (and indeed Israel being a vigorous democracy, such misdeeds are widely reported on in the Israeli media itself, and debated in the Israeli Knesset). But propagating the falsehoods of Fatah and Hamas propagandists has done nothing to further the legitimate aspirations of ordinary Palestinians, any more than parroting the lies of Stalin helped ordinary Russians.
Such bias, I believed, is not only wrong in itself but seriously detrimental to international efforts to bring about peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
MALNOURISHMENT?
These are some of the photos previously carried on the dispatch “Fancy restaurants and Olympic-size swim pools: what the media won’t report about Gaza” (May 25, 2010).
Above: the courtyard of the Roots restaurant in Gaza.
Above: A part of the restaurant’s 12-page menu, which includes a wide range of meat, poultry and seafood dishes. The restaurant is popular with Gazans holding weddings and other celebrations, UN and NGO workers, and foreign journalists.
Here are more pictures of the restaurant. (Also see more pictures of Roots further down this dispatch.)
***
Whereas the restaurant above is one of those popular with wealthier Gazans, the pictures below show life for ordinary people in Gaza.
Above: Recent photos show one of Gaza’s fruit and vegetable markets, a cake shop, and a children’s toy store in Gaza city. Hardly the “World War II-era concentration camp” that some Western journalists have claimed Gaza resembles.
Tom Gross adds: As I have written before, of course there is poverty in parts of Gaza. There is poverty in parts of Israel too. But when was the last time a foreign journalist based in Israel left the pampered lounge bars and restaurants of the King David and American Colony hotels in Jerusalem and went to check out the slum-like areas of southern Tel Aviv? Or the hard-hit Negev towns of Netivot or Rahat?
Playing the manipulative game of the BBC is easy. If we had their vast taxpayer-funded resources, we too could produce reports about parts of London, Manchester and Glasgow and make it look as though there is a humanitarian catastrophe throughout the U.K. We could produce the same effect by selectively filming seedy parts of Paris and Rome and New York and Los Angeles too.
MAYBE THE TURKISH FLOTILLAS ARE GOING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION?
In Turkey, life expectancy is 72.23 and infant mortality is 24.84 per 1,000 births.
In Gaza, life expectancy is 73.68 and infant mortality is 17.71 per 1,000 births.
Turkey has a literacy rate of 88.7% while in Gaza it is 91.9%. (It is much lower in Egypt and other Arab countries where Israel did not establish colleges and universities in the 1970s and 1980s.)
Gaza’s GDP is almost as high as Turkey’s and much, much higher than most of Africa that gets 1,000th of the aid per capita that Gaza gets from the West.
(Source for above info: CIA World Factbook)
World hunger organizations report that 10-15 million children below the age of 5 die each year, and 50,000 people die daily. One-third of all deaths in the world are due to poverty.
While famine kills millions of children in Africa, India, and elsewhere, life expectancy for Gaza Arabs, at 72 years, is nearly five years higher than the world average. In Swaziland, for example, life expectancy is less than 40 years, and it is 42 years in Zambia.
Meanwhile Western governments, misled by Western media, continue to pour more and more money into Gaza for people that don’t need it, while allowing black Africans to starve to death.
As the correspondent for one of Japan’s biggest newspapers said to me last week, “Gaza and the West Bank are the only places in the world where I have seen refugees drive Mercedes.”
Photo above: India, where hundreds of millions live in poverty.
Photo above: A beach in Gaza.
STEAK AU POIVRE AND CHICKEN CORDON BLEU
(Repeat item from May 2010 dispatch.)
If you drop by the Roots Club in Gaza, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook for Gaza and the West Bank, you can “dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu”.
The restaurant’s website in Arabic gives a window into middle class dining and the lifestyle of Hamas officials in Gaza.
And here it is in English, for all the journalists, UN types and NGO staff who regularly frequent this and other nice Gaza restaurants (but don’t tell their readers about them).
Please take a look at the pictures on the above website. They are not the kind of things you see in The New York Times or CNN or in Newsweek, whose international edition last week had one of the most disgracefully misleading stories about Gaza I have ever seen, portraying it in terms which were virtually reminiscent of Hiroshima after a nuclear blast.
And here is a promotional video of the club restaurant:
In case anyone doubts the authenticity of this video (which is up on the club’s own website), I just called the club in Gaza City and had a nice chat with the manager who proudly confirmed business is booming and many Palestinians and international guests are dining there.
The front of the Roots Club flyer reads:
Ambiance galore.
Beautifully designed buffets.
Every detail handled for you.
GAZA’S OLYMPIC-SIZED SWIMMING POOL
Above: A Palestinian newspaper photo (May 18, 2010) shows Gazan children in the newly built Olympic-sized swimming pool which opened earlier in May 2010, despite continuing claims by some Western journalists and NGOs that there are no building materials and a severe shortage of water in Gaza.
***
Repeat item from May 26, 2010 dispatch:
While Western media, misled by corrupt and biased NGOs, continue to report on a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports on the Olympic-size swimming pool that opened in Gaza in mid-May 2010 (i.e. before all the recent kerfuffle about humanitarian flotillas sailing to Gaza).
“Gaza, (May 18, 2010): – Ma’an – Gaza’s first Olympic-standard swimming pool was inaugurated at the As-Sadaka club during a ceremony on Tuesday held by the Islamic Society.
“Gaza government ministers, members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, leaders of Islamic and national governing bodies, as well as club members and athletes were among those at the opening ceremony, where Secretary-General of the Islamic Society Nasim Yaseen thanked the donors who helped realize the project.
“Yaseen praised the As-Sadaka club for a number of wins in international and regional football, volleyball and table tennis matches.
“As-Sadaka athletes performed a number of swimming exercises in the new pool to mark its opening.”
STARVED OF WATER AND BUILDING MATERIALS?
Most Israeli towns do not have an Olympic-sized municipal swimming pool. Cities like Netanya – which have been hit by repeated Palestinian suicide attacks, car bombings, and terrorist gunmen that have left over fifty Israeli residents of the town dead and more than three hundred injured – do not have such a pool.
Nor, for example, do the Israeli towns of Sderot or Ashkelon which have been hit by thousands of Hamas rockets fired from Gaza in recent years, have an Olympic-sized municipal swimming pool.
BLAIR’S SISTER-IN-LAW: GAZA IS “WORLD’S LARGEST CONCENTRATION CAMP”
(This is a repeat item from the dispatch of September 14, 2008.)
In an appalling insult to Holocaust survivors everywhere, British journalist Lauren Booth said last week that the situation in Gaza was just like a “concentration camp,” and added that the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza is on the scale of Darfur.”
Booth’s brother-in-law, Quartet envoy to the Middle East Tony Blair, does not share her views. Her sister, Tony Blair’s wife Cherie Blair, once made comments appearing to justify Palestinian suicide bombs against Israeli school buses, but later apologized for the remarks.
Lauren Booth was recently issued a Palestinian passport by Hamas. Here is a photo from AFP (Agence France Presse) of Lauren Booth shopping in a grocery store in Gaza a few days before she made her Israeli “concentration camp” comments. Does it look like Auschwitz, or Darfur?
Here she is again in Gaza last week (i.e. Sept. 2008).
And here she is meeting Hamas terrorist leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who presents her with a special Palestinian “diplomatic passport”.
Booth writes for several British newspapers, including the Daily Mail, New Statesman, Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Times, and is often a guest on the BBC.
HOTELS IN GAZA
(Photos, June 2010)
AL-DEIRA HOTEL
This is just one of several such hotels in “concentration camp” Gaza:
GETTING A FACIAL BEFORE YOUR MASSAGE
A facial runs from $20 to $75, a one-hour massage is around $40 and a monthly gym membership is around $35 at the “Rosy spa” (above) in Gaza.
ANOTHER SIDE OF GAZA
(Film shot, June 2010)
More images of the horrendous situation in Gaza you won’t see on the BBC.
for photos check the website www.tomgrossmedia.com
MORE AID, ANYBODY?
Never mind the economic crisis in Spain, Greece and elsewhere in the EU.
On July 14, 2010, the EU announced increased financial support for the Palestinians.
The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports:
The European Commission has agreed an additional financial package worth € 71 million for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, topping up the € 224 million already allocated by the EU in the 2010 European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument, as well as a reinforcement of humanitarian aid for Palestinian refugees.
***
Note: Also pioneering the way into exposing the hypocrisy of the mainstream media in not informing the public about economic development in Gaza has been this Middle East specialist site.
[All notes above by Tom Gross.]
All notes and summaries copyright © Tom Gross. All rights reserved.
A nice new shopping mall opened today in Gaza: Will the media report on it?
July 17, 2010
Will the Western media show these images?
All notes below by Tom Gross
Please scroll down below for photos of the new shopping mall that opened today in Gaza. I have also attached new photos and film of Gaza’s hotels, beauty spas, swimming pools, beaches and street markets -- images the BBC, New York Times and others refuse to show you.
Meanwhile, Hamas are deliberately leaving some Gazans in plastic tents, in order to fool gullible Western journalists and politicians who are brought to Gaza to witness a staged “humanitarian crisis.”
(Photo of a new mall that opened today, July 17, 2010. If there “are no building materials allowed into Gaza” how did they build this shopping center, or the new Olympic-size swimming pool pictured below?)
Two days ago the EU pledged tens of millions of EU taxpayers’ euros to add to the hundreds of millions already donated to Gaza this year, much of which has been misused to procure arms.
UPDATE, Sunday July 18, 2010:
Some journalists who subscribe to this list have asked me for a quote. You are welcome to use the following.
Political and media commentator Tom Gross said:
“On a day when (because EU Foreign Policy Chief Baroness Ashton is in Gaza) the BBC and other media have featured extensive reports all day long on what they term the dire economic situation in Gaza, why are they not mentioning the new shopping mall that opened there yesterday?
“When leading news outlets mention the so-called humanitarian flotillas from Turkey, why do they omit the fact that life expectancy and literacy rates are higher, and infant mortality rates are lower in Gaza than corresponding rates in Turkey? Have they considered that perhaps the humanitarian flotillas ought to be going in the other direction, towards Turkey?”
WHAT HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE?
Last year, this website revealed to a Western audience pictures of the bustling, crowded food markets of Gaza that the Western media refuse to show you. Earlier this year, I reported the new Olympic-size swimming pool of Gaza (no shortage of building materials or water here) and the luxury restaurants, where you can “dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu”. (Over 300,000 people have viewed photos on that webpage since May, according to my website monitor.)
Now I want to draw attention to the fact that this morning, on the day that the EU again criticized Israel (but not Egypt) for supposedly oppressing Gazans, on a day when the BBC TV world news headlines again lead with a report about how “devastated the economy in Gaza is,” an impressive new shopping mall opened in Gaza (photos below, followed by a selection of other photos from Gaza).
Will those Western journalists who write stories about “starvation” in Gaza and compare it to a “concentration camp” report this?
Instead of reporting on the mall opening, the British-based international satellite broadcaster Sky News reported today “The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains dire.”
NEW GAZA SHOPPING MALL
Photos from Saturday, July 17, 2010:
More photos here.
Here is a news report in Arabic on the opening of the mall from today’s Palestine Times. (Click on each of these thumbnails to view the full photos.)
This is the official website of the Gaza mall.
UPDATE, July 20, 2010
More pictures of the mall here, here, and here from The Palestine Times.
And this video of the mall has today gone up on YouTube. (The captions that have been added to this video are not mine, nor do I approve of all of them.)
The mall is being widely featured in media throughout the Arab world, for example here, (courtesy of AP) but why the continuing silence from Western media who subscribe to AP and who continue to cover “the situation in Gaza” day after day without mentioning the economic progress there?
UPDATE, July 21, 2010
Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s largest newspaper, whose editors subscribe to this email list, has now covered the mall.
UPDATE, July 21, 2010
The National Post, one of Canada’s largest newspapers, almost alone among Western media has run a comment piece about the Gaza mall and also referring to this (Tom Gross media) webpage.
UPDATE, July 21, 2010
Glen Beck today showed the mall on his show on Fox. He said that the media will gladly show you a “Palestinian with a bloody face but won’t show you the Gaza shopping mall.”
It is fine that Fox hyave featured the mall, but why aren’t the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS and others interested in a balance, rounded approach to covering Palestinian issues?
BIAS IN A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN
Before I draw attention to other photos below, please let me restate again my overall position since several other commentators have misrepresented it recently:
I have consistently supported the creation of an independent Palestinian Arab state alongside Israel since I first became interested in politics. But there is no point in creating a new Palestinian state if it will primarily be used as a launching ground for armed attacks on Israel, which would only in turn likely lead to a much bloodier war between Israelis and Palestinians than anything we have witnessed in the past.
In order to make sure any Palestinian state is peaceful, and respects human rights for both its own citizens and its neighbors, it is crucial for Western policy-makers not be misled into making bad policy (as they have so often done in the past) in part, at least, as a result of believing the utter distortions of Western journalists, who greatly exaggerate the suffering of Palestinians and consistently cover up for the misdeeds of Hamas and Fatah.
Of course, one should not forget that the media is full of stereotypes and mistakes about other issues. Yet when every allowance has been made, the sustained bias against Israel is in a league of its own.
I am not for one moment suggesting that Israeli misdeeds should not be fully and unsparingly reported on (and indeed Israel being a vigorous democracy, such misdeeds are widely reported on in the Israeli media itself, and debated in the Israeli Knesset). But propagating the falsehoods of Fatah and Hamas propagandists has done nothing to further the legitimate aspirations of ordinary Palestinians, any more than parroting the lies of Stalin helped ordinary Russians.
Such bias, I believed, is not only wrong in itself but seriously detrimental to international efforts to bring about peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
MALNOURISHMENT?
These are some of the photos previously carried on the dispatch “Fancy restaurants and Olympic-size swim pools: what the media won’t report about Gaza” (May 25, 2010).
Above: the courtyard of the Roots restaurant in Gaza.
Above: A part of the restaurant’s 12-page menu, which includes a wide range of meat, poultry and seafood dishes. The restaurant is popular with Gazans holding weddings and other celebrations, UN and NGO workers, and foreign journalists.
Here are more pictures of the restaurant. (Also see more pictures of Roots further down this dispatch.)
***
Whereas the restaurant above is one of those popular with wealthier Gazans, the pictures below show life for ordinary people in Gaza.
Above: Recent photos show one of Gaza’s fruit and vegetable markets, a cake shop, and a children’s toy store in Gaza city. Hardly the “World War II-era concentration camp” that some Western journalists have claimed Gaza resembles.
Tom Gross adds: As I have written before, of course there is poverty in parts of Gaza. There is poverty in parts of Israel too. But when was the last time a foreign journalist based in Israel left the pampered lounge bars and restaurants of the King David and American Colony hotels in Jerusalem and went to check out the slum-like areas of southern Tel Aviv? Or the hard-hit Negev towns of Netivot or Rahat?
Playing the manipulative game of the BBC is easy. If we had their vast taxpayer-funded resources, we too could produce reports about parts of London, Manchester and Glasgow and make it look as though there is a humanitarian catastrophe throughout the U.K. We could produce the same effect by selectively filming seedy parts of Paris and Rome and New York and Los Angeles too.
MAYBE THE TURKISH FLOTILLAS ARE GOING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION?
In Turkey, life expectancy is 72.23 and infant mortality is 24.84 per 1,000 births.
In Gaza, life expectancy is 73.68 and infant mortality is 17.71 per 1,000 births.
Turkey has a literacy rate of 88.7% while in Gaza it is 91.9%. (It is much lower in Egypt and other Arab countries where Israel did not establish colleges and universities in the 1970s and 1980s.)
Gaza’s GDP is almost as high as Turkey’s and much, much higher than most of Africa that gets 1,000th of the aid per capita that Gaza gets from the West.
(Source for above info: CIA World Factbook)
World hunger organizations report that 10-15 million children below the age of 5 die each year, and 50,000 people die daily. One-third of all deaths in the world are due to poverty.
While famine kills millions of children in Africa, India, and elsewhere, life expectancy for Gaza Arabs, at 72 years, is nearly five years higher than the world average. In Swaziland, for example, life expectancy is less than 40 years, and it is 42 years in Zambia.
Meanwhile Western governments, misled by Western media, continue to pour more and more money into Gaza for people that don’t need it, while allowing black Africans to starve to death.
As the correspondent for one of Japan’s biggest newspapers said to me last week, “Gaza and the West Bank are the only places in the world where I have seen refugees drive Mercedes.”
Photo above: India, where hundreds of millions live in poverty.
Photo above: A beach in Gaza.
STEAK AU POIVRE AND CHICKEN CORDON BLEU
(Repeat item from May 2010 dispatch.)
If you drop by the Roots Club in Gaza, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook for Gaza and the West Bank, you can “dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu”.
The restaurant’s website in Arabic gives a window into middle class dining and the lifestyle of Hamas officials in Gaza.
And here it is in English, for all the journalists, UN types and NGO staff who regularly frequent this and other nice Gaza restaurants (but don’t tell their readers about them).
Please take a look at the pictures on the above website. They are not the kind of things you see in The New York Times or CNN or in Newsweek, whose international edition last week had one of the most disgracefully misleading stories about Gaza I have ever seen, portraying it in terms which were virtually reminiscent of Hiroshima after a nuclear blast.
And here is a promotional video of the club restaurant:
In case anyone doubts the authenticity of this video (which is up on the club’s own website), I just called the club in Gaza City and had a nice chat with the manager who proudly confirmed business is booming and many Palestinians and international guests are dining there.
The front of the Roots Club flyer reads:
Ambiance galore.
Beautifully designed buffets.
Every detail handled for you.
GAZA’S OLYMPIC-SIZED SWIMMING POOL
Above: A Palestinian newspaper photo (May 18, 2010) shows Gazan children in the newly built Olympic-sized swimming pool which opened earlier in May 2010, despite continuing claims by some Western journalists and NGOs that there are no building materials and a severe shortage of water in Gaza.
***
Repeat item from May 26, 2010 dispatch:
While Western media, misled by corrupt and biased NGOs, continue to report on a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports on the Olympic-size swimming pool that opened in Gaza in mid-May 2010 (i.e. before all the recent kerfuffle about humanitarian flotillas sailing to Gaza).
“Gaza, (May 18, 2010): – Ma’an – Gaza’s first Olympic-standard swimming pool was inaugurated at the As-Sadaka club during a ceremony on Tuesday held by the Islamic Society.
“Gaza government ministers, members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, leaders of Islamic and national governing bodies, as well as club members and athletes were among those at the opening ceremony, where Secretary-General of the Islamic Society Nasim Yaseen thanked the donors who helped realize the project.
“Yaseen praised the As-Sadaka club for a number of wins in international and regional football, volleyball and table tennis matches.
“As-Sadaka athletes performed a number of swimming exercises in the new pool to mark its opening.”
STARVED OF WATER AND BUILDING MATERIALS?
Most Israeli towns do not have an Olympic-sized municipal swimming pool. Cities like Netanya – which have been hit by repeated Palestinian suicide attacks, car bombings, and terrorist gunmen that have left over fifty Israeli residents of the town dead and more than three hundred injured – do not have such a pool.
Nor, for example, do the Israeli towns of Sderot or Ashkelon which have been hit by thousands of Hamas rockets fired from Gaza in recent years, have an Olympic-sized municipal swimming pool.
BLAIR’S SISTER-IN-LAW: GAZA IS “WORLD’S LARGEST CONCENTRATION CAMP”
(This is a repeat item from the dispatch of September 14, 2008.)
In an appalling insult to Holocaust survivors everywhere, British journalist Lauren Booth said last week that the situation in Gaza was just like a “concentration camp,” and added that the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza is on the scale of Darfur.”
Booth’s brother-in-law, Quartet envoy to the Middle East Tony Blair, does not share her views. Her sister, Tony Blair’s wife Cherie Blair, once made comments appearing to justify Palestinian suicide bombs against Israeli school buses, but later apologized for the remarks.
Lauren Booth was recently issued a Palestinian passport by Hamas. Here is a photo from AFP (Agence France Presse) of Lauren Booth shopping in a grocery store in Gaza a few days before she made her Israeli “concentration camp” comments. Does it look like Auschwitz, or Darfur?
Here she is again in Gaza last week (i.e. Sept. 2008).
And here she is meeting Hamas terrorist leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who presents her with a special Palestinian “diplomatic passport”.
Booth writes for several British newspapers, including the Daily Mail, New Statesman, Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Times, and is often a guest on the BBC.
HOTELS IN GAZA
(Photos, June 2010)
AL-DEIRA HOTEL
This is just one of several such hotels in “concentration camp” Gaza:
GETTING A FACIAL BEFORE YOUR MASSAGE
A facial runs from $20 to $75, a one-hour massage is around $40 and a monthly gym membership is around $35 at the “Rosy spa” (above) in Gaza.
ANOTHER SIDE OF GAZA
(Film shot, June 2010)
More images of the horrendous situation in Gaza you won’t see on the BBC.
for photos check the website www.tomgrossmedia.com
MORE AID, ANYBODY?
Never mind the economic crisis in Spain, Greece and elsewhere in the EU.
On July 14, 2010, the EU announced increased financial support for the Palestinians.
The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports:
The European Commission has agreed an additional financial package worth € 71 million for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, topping up the € 224 million already allocated by the EU in the 2010 European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument, as well as a reinforcement of humanitarian aid for Palestinian refugees.
***
Note: Also pioneering the way into exposing the hypocrisy of the mainstream media in not informing the public about economic development in Gaza has been this Middle East specialist site.
[All notes above by Tom Gross.]
All notes and summaries copyright © Tom Gross. All rights reserved.
Great Blog on Charles Jacobs and the Roxbury Mosque
World News| US News| Money| Science & Technology| Lifestyle| Conservatism 2.0Rabbis Gone Wild: Boston Edition
Seventy progressive rabbis, strutting like peacocks showing off their moral finery, versus one lonely truth-teller? I like the odds.
July 21, 2010 - by Stella Paul Page 1 of 2 Next -> View as Single PageShare |
Boston is famous for Harvard, Paul Revere, and now for 70 loony liberal rabbis, each blessed with an ego bigger than the Green Monster at Fenway Park, and wisdom smaller than a baked bean.
Already, their noxious stunt of June 10 is legend, astounding Jews from Boston to San Francisco, Israel and beyond. For on that day, the rabbis finally managed to bestir themselves about the notorious, Saudi-funded mega-mosque in Roxbury. Its founder, MIT graduate Abdurahman Alamoudi, is currently serving a 23-year sentence for al-Qaeda-linked terrorist pranks. Its trust president, Osama Kandil, is the director of an Islamic charity designated as terrorist by the U.S. government. Its trustee, Jamal Badawi, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial.
So what did these genius rabbis do? Did they demand an investigation into why Mayor Thomas Menino gave away $2 million of precious public land to the Islamic Society of Boston on which to build the mosque? Did they launch a public awareness campaign of the mosque’s terrifying link with Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the wart-faced “spiritual leader” of the Muslim Brotherhood who’s banned from the U.S. but served as the mosque’s trustee? Did they picket outside the home of Governor Deval Patrick, singing rousing protest songs and demanding he give back a $50,000 check he publicly accepted from a jihad-spouting imam for the purpose of training Massachusetts police in “Muslim cultural sensitivities”?
Of course not! These are far-left Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis we’re talking about and they worship only the progressive creed: putting barbarians first.
Instead, what these wise and wonderful rabbis chose to do was issue a public “Jewish fatwa” against Dr. Charles Jacobs, Boston’s heroic one-man truth squad about the mosque’s radical leadership. Yes, the Saintly Seventy all loudly signed their names to “An Open Letter to the Jewish Community,” published in the Jewish Advocate, in which they demanded that “Mr. Jacobs discontinue his destructive campaign against Boston’s Muslim community, which is based on innuendo, half-truths and unproven conspiracy theories. We call upon members of our community to reject the dangerous politics of division that Mr. Jacobs fosters.”
The rabbis then applauded their own “commitment to interfaith dialogue and cooperation. We stand together in our commitment to a community in which neighbors seek to know one another and join together for the common good.”
Finally, they closed with a reference to the Torah portion in which Israelite scouts are struck by fear: “Because they succumbed to their fears, God condemned this generation to die in the wilderness. We refuse to allow Mr. Jacobs to spread his calumnies and paralyze our community in fear.”
I’ll pause a moment to let the fumes of the rabbis’ galloping smug-itis clear the room.
Dr. Charles Jacobs is a morally serious man. We’re talking about a man who was given the Boston Freedom Award by Coretta Scott King for helping to emancipate enslaved black Africans in Sudan, in his work as founder of the American Anti-Slavery Group.
In 2007, Jacobs was named by The Forward as one of America’s top 50 Jewish leaders. He not only co-founded Boston’s branch of CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), to expose media bias against Israel, he also founded The David Project in 2002. This powerhouse organization trains college students to advocate for Israel and fight back against the demonization of Israel on campus.
Today, Dr. Jacobs heads Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group he started in 2008 to safeguard American values from attack by radical Islamists and to support moderate Muslims.
This is the fine, brave man that 70 Boston rabbis defamed and tossed in the trash — and even potentially endangered by targeting him and his family for attack by vengeful Islamists.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the trashcan. It turns out Boston’s Jews did not relish the discovery that their spiritual leaders are preening ignoramuses.
Seventy progressive rabbis, strutting like peacocks showing off their moral finery, versus one lonely truth-teller? I like the odds.
July 21, 2010 - by Stella Paul Page 1 of 2 Next -> View as Single PageShare |
Boston is famous for Harvard, Paul Revere, and now for 70 loony liberal rabbis, each blessed with an ego bigger than the Green Monster at Fenway Park, and wisdom smaller than a baked bean.
Already, their noxious stunt of June 10 is legend, astounding Jews from Boston to San Francisco, Israel and beyond. For on that day, the rabbis finally managed to bestir themselves about the notorious, Saudi-funded mega-mosque in Roxbury. Its founder, MIT graduate Abdurahman Alamoudi, is currently serving a 23-year sentence for al-Qaeda-linked terrorist pranks. Its trust president, Osama Kandil, is the director of an Islamic charity designated as terrorist by the U.S. government. Its trustee, Jamal Badawi, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial.
So what did these genius rabbis do? Did they demand an investigation into why Mayor Thomas Menino gave away $2 million of precious public land to the Islamic Society of Boston on which to build the mosque? Did they launch a public awareness campaign of the mosque’s terrifying link with Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the wart-faced “spiritual leader” of the Muslim Brotherhood who’s banned from the U.S. but served as the mosque’s trustee? Did they picket outside the home of Governor Deval Patrick, singing rousing protest songs and demanding he give back a $50,000 check he publicly accepted from a jihad-spouting imam for the purpose of training Massachusetts police in “Muslim cultural sensitivities”?
Of course not! These are far-left Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis we’re talking about and they worship only the progressive creed: putting barbarians first.
Instead, what these wise and wonderful rabbis chose to do was issue a public “Jewish fatwa” against Dr. Charles Jacobs, Boston’s heroic one-man truth squad about the mosque’s radical leadership. Yes, the Saintly Seventy all loudly signed their names to “An Open Letter to the Jewish Community,” published in the Jewish Advocate, in which they demanded that “Mr. Jacobs discontinue his destructive campaign against Boston’s Muslim community, which is based on innuendo, half-truths and unproven conspiracy theories. We call upon members of our community to reject the dangerous politics of division that Mr. Jacobs fosters.”
The rabbis then applauded their own “commitment to interfaith dialogue and cooperation. We stand together in our commitment to a community in which neighbors seek to know one another and join together for the common good.”
Finally, they closed with a reference to the Torah portion in which Israelite scouts are struck by fear: “Because they succumbed to their fears, God condemned this generation to die in the wilderness. We refuse to allow Mr. Jacobs to spread his calumnies and paralyze our community in fear.”
I’ll pause a moment to let the fumes of the rabbis’ galloping smug-itis clear the room.
Dr. Charles Jacobs is a morally serious man. We’re talking about a man who was given the Boston Freedom Award by Coretta Scott King for helping to emancipate enslaved black Africans in Sudan, in his work as founder of the American Anti-Slavery Group.
In 2007, Jacobs was named by The Forward as one of America’s top 50 Jewish leaders. He not only co-founded Boston’s branch of CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), to expose media bias against Israel, he also founded The David Project in 2002. This powerhouse organization trains college students to advocate for Israel and fight back against the demonization of Israel on campus.
Today, Dr. Jacobs heads Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group he started in 2008 to safeguard American values from attack by radical Islamists and to support moderate Muslims.
This is the fine, brave man that 70 Boston rabbis defamed and tossed in the trash — and even potentially endangered by targeting him and his family for attack by vengeful Islamists.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the trashcan. It turns out Boston’s Jews did not relish the discovery that their spiritual leaders are preening ignoramuses.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
this will make you proud
Listen to what biggest business companies in the world have to say about Israel
THIS IS MAGNIFICENT, I WOULD LIKE TO ENCOURAGE YOU TO WATCH IT, IT WILL TAKE YOU LESS THEN 5 MINUTES -- I KNOW THAT'S SOMETIMES A LONGER VIEW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHStBGk_D8Y
THIS IS MAGNIFICENT, I WOULD LIKE TO ENCOURAGE YOU TO WATCH IT, IT WILL TAKE YOU LESS THEN 5 MINUTES -- I KNOW THAT'S SOMETIMES A LONGER VIEW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHStBGk_D8Y
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Piece by Tom Gross,
I cried when I read this, not for Rachel Corrie, but for the truly innocent Isralis Rachels who died from suicide bombings- they are the tragedy for whom a play should have been written-- NOT FOR RACHEL CORRIE!!
Sunday, 6th June 2010
The other Rachel
Fraser Nelson 9:25am
The boat the Israelis peacefully intercepted was called Rachel Corrie - named after a young American protester accidentally killed when offering herself as a human shield in Gaza. Her name became immortalised, some 30 songs have been written for her, a London play named after her and a film last year. But another Rachel, completely forgotten, is Rachel Thaler - a 16-year-old British citizen murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber in 2002. Only one British publication has ever mentioned her: The Spectator. Here, below, is Tom Gross' article from 22 October 2005:
'Dead Jews aren't news: British newspapers care greatly about some victims of the Israel army, says Tom Gross, but not the Jewish victims of Palestinian terror - even if they are British
Rachel Thaler, aged 16, was blown up at a pizzeria in an Israeli shopping mall. She died after an 11-day struggle for life following a suicide bomb attack on a crowd of teenagers on 16 February 2002. Even though Thaler was a British citizen, born in London, where her grandparents still live, her death has never been mentioned in a British newspaper.
Rachel Corrie, on the other hand, an American radical who died in 2003 while acting as a human shield during an Israeli anti-terror operation in Gaza, has been widely featured in the British press. According to the Guardian website, she has been written about or referred to on 57 separate occasions in the Guardian alone, including three articles the Saturday before last.
The cult of Rachel Corrie doesn’t stop there. Last week the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, reopened at the larger downstairs auditorium at the Royal Court Theatre (a venue which the New York Times recently described as “the most important theatre in Europe”). It previously played to sold-out audiences at the upstairs theatre when it opened in April. (It is very rare to revive a play so quickly.)
On 1 November the “Cantata concert for Rachel Corrie” – co-sponsored by the Arts Council – has its world premiere at the Hackney Empire.
But Rachel Thaler, unlike Rachel Corrie, was Jewish. And unlike Corrie, Jewish victims of Middle East violence have not become a cause célèbre in Britain. This lack of response is all the more disturbing at a time when an increasing number of British Jews feel that there has been a sharp rise in anti-Semitism.
Thaler is by no means the only Jewish Rachel whose violent death has been entirely ignored by the British media. Other victims of the Intifada include Rachel Levy (aged 17, blown up in a grocery store), Rachel Levi (19, shot while waiting for the bus), Rachel Gavish (killed with her husband, son and father while at home celebrating a Passover meal), Rachel Charhi (blown up while sitting in a Tel Aviv cafe, leaving three young children), Rachel Shabo (murdered with her three sons aged 5, 13 and 16 while at home), Rachel Ben Abu (16, blown up outside the entrance of a Netanya shopping mall) and Rachel Kol, 53, who worked at a Jerusalem hospital and was killed with her husband in a Palestinian terrorist attack in July a few days after the London bombs.
Corrie’s death was undoubtedly tragic but, unlike the death of these other Rachels, it was almost certainly an accident. She was killed when she was hit by an Israeli army bulldozer she was trying to stop from demolishing a structure suspected of concealing tunnels used for smuggling weapons.
Unfortunately for those who have sought to portray Corrie as a peaceful protester, photos of her burning a mock American flag and stirring up crowds in Gaza at a pro-Hamas rally were published by the Associated Press and on Yahoo News on 15 February 2003, a month before she died. (Those photos were not used in the British press.)
While Thaler’s parents, after donating their murdered daughter’s organs for transplant surgery, grieved quietly, Corrie’s parents embarked on a major publicity campaign with strong political overtones. They travelled to Ramallah to accept a plaque from Yasser Arafat on behalf of their daughter. They circulated her emails and diary entries to a world media eager to publicise them. They have written op-ed pieces, including a recent one in the Guardian.
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the group with which Corrie was affiliated, is routinely described as a “peace group” in the media. Few make any mention of the ISM’s meeting with the British suicide bombers Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Muhammad Hanif who, a few days later, blew up Mike’s Place, a Tel Aviv pub, killing three and injuring dozens, including British citizens. Or of the ISM’s sheltering in its office of Shadi Sukiya, a leading member of Islamic Jihad. Or of the fact that in its mission statement the ISM said “armed struggle” is a Palestinian “right”.
According to the “media co-ordinator” of the ISM, Flo Rosovski, “‘Israel’ is an illegal entity that should not exist” – which at any rate clarifies the ISM’s idea of peace.
Indeed, partly because of the efforts of Corrie’s fellow activists in the ISM, the Israeli army was unable to stop the flow of weapons through the tunnels near where she was demonstrating. Those weapons were later used to kill Israeli children in the town of Sderot in southern Israel, and elsewhere.
However, in many hundreds of articles on Corrie published in the last two years, most papers have been careful to omit such details. So have actor Alan Rickman and Guardian journalist Katharine Viner, co-creators of My Name is Rachel Corrie, leaving almost all the critics who reviewed the play completely ignorant about the background to the events with which it deals.
So in April, when reviewers first wrote about the play, they tended to take it completely at face value. “Corrie was murdered after joining a non-violent Palestinian resistance organisation,” wrote Emma Gosnell in the Sunday Telegraph. The Evening Standard, for example, described it as a “true-life tragedy” in which Corrie’s “unselfish goodness shines through”.
Only one critic (Clive Davis in the Times) saw the play for the propaganda it is. At one point Corrie declares, “The vast majority of Palestinians right now, as far as I can tell, are engaging in Gandhian non-violent resistance.” As Davis notes, “Even the late Yasser Arafat might have blushed at that one.” But ultimately the play, and many of the articles about Corrie that have appeared, are not really about the young American activist who died in such tragic circumstances. They are about promoting a hate-filled and glaringly one-sided view of Israel.'
(Tom Gross is a former Jerusalem correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph.)
Sunday, 6th June 2010
The other Rachel
Fraser Nelson 9:25am
The boat the Israelis peacefully intercepted was called Rachel Corrie - named after a young American protester accidentally killed when offering herself as a human shield in Gaza. Her name became immortalised, some 30 songs have been written for her, a London play named after her and a film last year. But another Rachel, completely forgotten, is Rachel Thaler - a 16-year-old British citizen murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber in 2002. Only one British publication has ever mentioned her: The Spectator. Here, below, is Tom Gross' article from 22 October 2005:
'Dead Jews aren't news: British newspapers care greatly about some victims of the Israel army, says Tom Gross, but not the Jewish victims of Palestinian terror - even if they are British
Rachel Thaler, aged 16, was blown up at a pizzeria in an Israeli shopping mall. She died after an 11-day struggle for life following a suicide bomb attack on a crowd of teenagers on 16 February 2002. Even though Thaler was a British citizen, born in London, where her grandparents still live, her death has never been mentioned in a British newspaper.
Rachel Corrie, on the other hand, an American radical who died in 2003 while acting as a human shield during an Israeli anti-terror operation in Gaza, has been widely featured in the British press. According to the Guardian website, she has been written about or referred to on 57 separate occasions in the Guardian alone, including three articles the Saturday before last.
The cult of Rachel Corrie doesn’t stop there. Last week the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, reopened at the larger downstairs auditorium at the Royal Court Theatre (a venue which the New York Times recently described as “the most important theatre in Europe”). It previously played to sold-out audiences at the upstairs theatre when it opened in April. (It is very rare to revive a play so quickly.)
On 1 November the “Cantata concert for Rachel Corrie” – co-sponsored by the Arts Council – has its world premiere at the Hackney Empire.
But Rachel Thaler, unlike Rachel Corrie, was Jewish. And unlike Corrie, Jewish victims of Middle East violence have not become a cause célèbre in Britain. This lack of response is all the more disturbing at a time when an increasing number of British Jews feel that there has been a sharp rise in anti-Semitism.
Thaler is by no means the only Jewish Rachel whose violent death has been entirely ignored by the British media. Other victims of the Intifada include Rachel Levy (aged 17, blown up in a grocery store), Rachel Levi (19, shot while waiting for the bus), Rachel Gavish (killed with her husband, son and father while at home celebrating a Passover meal), Rachel Charhi (blown up while sitting in a Tel Aviv cafe, leaving three young children), Rachel Shabo (murdered with her three sons aged 5, 13 and 16 while at home), Rachel Ben Abu (16, blown up outside the entrance of a Netanya shopping mall) and Rachel Kol, 53, who worked at a Jerusalem hospital and was killed with her husband in a Palestinian terrorist attack in July a few days after the London bombs.
Corrie’s death was undoubtedly tragic but, unlike the death of these other Rachels, it was almost certainly an accident. She was killed when she was hit by an Israeli army bulldozer she was trying to stop from demolishing a structure suspected of concealing tunnels used for smuggling weapons.
Unfortunately for those who have sought to portray Corrie as a peaceful protester, photos of her burning a mock American flag and stirring up crowds in Gaza at a pro-Hamas rally were published by the Associated Press and on Yahoo News on 15 February 2003, a month before she died. (Those photos were not used in the British press.)
While Thaler’s parents, after donating their murdered daughter’s organs for transplant surgery, grieved quietly, Corrie’s parents embarked on a major publicity campaign with strong political overtones. They travelled to Ramallah to accept a plaque from Yasser Arafat on behalf of their daughter. They circulated her emails and diary entries to a world media eager to publicise them. They have written op-ed pieces, including a recent one in the Guardian.
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the group with which Corrie was affiliated, is routinely described as a “peace group” in the media. Few make any mention of the ISM’s meeting with the British suicide bombers Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Muhammad Hanif who, a few days later, blew up Mike’s Place, a Tel Aviv pub, killing three and injuring dozens, including British citizens. Or of the ISM’s sheltering in its office of Shadi Sukiya, a leading member of Islamic Jihad. Or of the fact that in its mission statement the ISM said “armed struggle” is a Palestinian “right”.
According to the “media co-ordinator” of the ISM, Flo Rosovski, “‘Israel’ is an illegal entity that should not exist” – which at any rate clarifies the ISM’s idea of peace.
Indeed, partly because of the efforts of Corrie’s fellow activists in the ISM, the Israeli army was unable to stop the flow of weapons through the tunnels near where she was demonstrating. Those weapons were later used to kill Israeli children in the town of Sderot in southern Israel, and elsewhere.
However, in many hundreds of articles on Corrie published in the last two years, most papers have been careful to omit such details. So have actor Alan Rickman and Guardian journalist Katharine Viner, co-creators of My Name is Rachel Corrie, leaving almost all the critics who reviewed the play completely ignorant about the background to the events with which it deals.
So in April, when reviewers first wrote about the play, they tended to take it completely at face value. “Corrie was murdered after joining a non-violent Palestinian resistance organisation,” wrote Emma Gosnell in the Sunday Telegraph. The Evening Standard, for example, described it as a “true-life tragedy” in which Corrie’s “unselfish goodness shines through”.
Only one critic (Clive Davis in the Times) saw the play for the propaganda it is. At one point Corrie declares, “The vast majority of Palestinians right now, as far as I can tell, are engaging in Gandhian non-violent resistance.” As Davis notes, “Even the late Yasser Arafat might have blushed at that one.” But ultimately the play, and many of the articles about Corrie that have appeared, are not really about the young American activist who died in such tragic circumstances. They are about promoting a hate-filled and glaringly one-sided view of Israel.'
(Tom Gross is a former Jerusalem correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph.)
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Please check out Bill Hudaks' press release on Flotilla Fiasco
HUDAK ASSERTS UNEQUIVOCAL SUPPORT OF ISRAEL’S RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF
June 4th – (Danvers, MA) Bill Hudak, United States Congressional Candidate for the 6th District of Massachusetts, earlier today stressed the importance of the United States asserting its firm support of Israel. See complete article:
http://www.hudakforcongress.com/blog/june-friday-2010/hudak-asserts-unequivocal-support-israels-right-defend-itself
People may also find it published as a Note on Bill Hudak's Facebook page.
http://tinyurl.com/22wyr6z
June 4th – (Danvers, MA) Bill Hudak, United States Congressional Candidate for the 6th District of Massachusetts, earlier today stressed the importance of the United States asserting its firm support of Israel. See complete article:
http://www.hudakforcongress.com/blog/june-friday-2010/hudak-asserts-unequivocal-support-israels-right-defend-itself
People may also find it published as a Note on Bill Hudak's Facebook page.
http://tinyurl.com/22wyr6z
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Bill Hudak's Position Paper on US/ISRAEL relationship
Hudak Issues Position Paper on IsraelBill Hudak for U.S. Congress
United States – Israel Relationship
Position Paper May 20, 2010
My support for the nation of Israel is solid and unwavering.
Israel and the United States share common fundamental values of individual freedom, democracy, religious faith, and the pursuit of free enterprise and open markets. For over sixty years, Israel has been America’s solid ally in the Middle East, the one nation in the Middle East with the conviction to stand on these principles for the good of its own people as well as its Muslim neighbors. Israel’s desires and commitments to peace in the region have been steadfast, despite the constant threat and acts of terror launched against it by its neighbors.
If elected to the United States Congress from the Sixth District of Massachusetts, I pledge to continue to advance America’s commitments to stand by its ally, to insure Israel’s qualitative military advantage as it seeks peace through strength, to oppose efforts by Iran to obtain or develop nuclear weapons, and to support Israel’s desire to successfully achieve a two state solution negotiated on its own accord.
Peace Through Strength
I strongly believe that the only way in which Israel can achieve a lasting peace is to rest assured that the United States will stand firmly behind it militarily and economically. In that regard, we must continue our commitment to assure Israel’s qualitative military advantage, provide aid, and assure economic superiority. That commitment must be full and total, and publicly acknowledged.
Israel’s military must maintain the ability to defend itself against any conventional threats by its surrounding neighbors and the organized terrorist threats in the region. I support the ten year security agreement reached in August 2007 which will continue to provide approximately three billion dollars in annual aid to Israel to help Israel deal with existing threats. This assistance not only helps Israel maintain its military advantage, but boosts America’s own national security, provides overseas markets for our goods, and creates jobs here at home.
I also oppose efforts by anti-Israel factions which seek to use the United Nations to undermine and demean Israel’s determination to remain strong in its quest for peace. Unlike my opponent, Congressman John Tierney, who only voted “present”, I would have immediately joined the other 344 House members and voted in favor of H.R. 867, to openly condemn the Goldstone Report and to urge the Obama administration to completely disregard it going forward. That report contained a myriad of flaws inherent in it from the outset, and the subject matter was neither objectively investigated nor fairly reported in its
conclusions. In particular, the Goldstone report’s false accusations that Israel committed war crimes simply because it defended itself and its innocent civilian populations, as well as Palestinians, against a barrage of Hamas launched missiles and attacks, can never be justified or supported.
My commitment to support Israel’s quest for peace through strength would go farther than other recent actions by the Obama administration generally, and the congressman of this district in particular. Those actions evidence a clear erosion of our nation’s previous steadfast support of Israel which, unless checked immediately, threatens to increase tensions rather than foster peace.
President Obama’s failure to meet with and accord Prime Minister Netanyahu during his trip to Washington the full courtesy owed to the leader of one of our staunchest allies in order to force some type of concession was an insult unbecoming the head of our nation. Congressman Tierney’s signature on a petition with 44 other democratic representatives urging President Obama to force Israel to open its borders to Gaza signals his desire to support Hamas over Israel; an act which demonstrates his waning support of Israel in favor of the Arab states. It further shows an indifference to the safety of the Israeli population as dropping the blockade would allow further violent attacks on Israel’s people and sovereignty. I would never have signed or supported such a petition; instead, to the contrary, unlike Congressman Tierney, I would have signed the bipartisan letter addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama urging reaffirmation of a strong U.S./Israeli relationship.
Without reservation, it is my position that America must constantly strive to support Israel publicly. Israel’s agreement to self-impose a moratorium on construction of apartments in the West Bank was not an agreement to cease such in Jerusalem, and the public condemnation of announcements for further homes in Jerusalem by Vice President Biden and others was counterproductive to Israel’s efforts to seek peace. This type of public criticism only serves to encourage Palestine and the Arabs to wait for the United States to pressure Israel to make concessions rather than enter the negotiations in a neutral, good faith manner. We must constantly strive to resolve any U.S. – Israel misunderstandings or differences which may arise in private, through trust and confidence, rather than airing them publicly.
Israel’s Self-Negotiated Two State Solution
I strongly support Israel’s attempt to negotiate, on its own, a two state solution directly with its Arab neighbors. The United States must strongly support that initiative, and coordinate closely with Israel, but avoid efforts by outside entities to impose solutions.
Israel has clearly demonstrated its desire to negotiate, and as gestures of good faith has previously withdrawn unilaterally from Gaza and Lebanon. In return, terrorist entities, including Hamas and Hizbullah, now control those regions and remain by their terrorist ideology and acts constant threats to the safety and autonomy of Israel. Certainly, we must be mindful of those historical facts going forward, and stand with Israel’s desire to self-negotiate only with those non-terrorist entities who can truly partner and enforce a peaceful solution.
Accordingly, I support a peace negotiated by Israel for a two-state solution, but that solution must be premises on several factors: (1) Jerusalem, must remain the undivided capital of Israel, (2) Israel’s security must be strictly assured and not imposed by outside parties, (3) there must be guarantees that Palestinians will abide by agreements which have been signed by their past leaders, (4) Israel’s borders must be secured and the safety of its people must be assured. I believe that a strict return to the 1967 borders would be counter to these objectives and would oppose efforts for a strong and lasting peace.
Above all, the United States must always support Israel by encouraging the Arab states to recognize Israel’s right to exist. We must always be mindful that the Hamas charter, in particular, provides that Israel exists only as long as the Muslims desire it to exist; in effect, calling for its ultimate demise. Encouraging other Arab states to adopt our mutual belief in democracy, freedom, and free enterprise offers the greatest potential to lessen tensions going forward.
The Iranian Threat
Iran remains as the largest threat to Israel and a true danger to our own interests. For nearly 20 years, it engaged in a secret nuclear program until it was exposed in 2002. Iran is a leading sponsor of terrorism, and a nuclear armed Iran would threaten the region and world in a completely unacceptable manner.
Iran President Ahmadinejad has made clear that he does not believe the Holocaust ever occurred, has expressed his view that Israel should be destroyed, and has expressed his disrespect for all Jews. Iran supports Hamas and Hizbullah in Gaza and Lebanon, respectively, and is clearly intent on wiping Israel off the map. Not content on its own region, Iran is also pursuing alliances with terrorists in Argentina and Venezuela. Its desire to obtain nuclear weapons can have only one purpose in mind: to advance its interests and threaten the safety of the Middle East and the world.
I strongly support all measures designed to compel Iran to cease efforts to develop a nuclear capability and to cause them to cease efforts in the regard, and would strongly support and propose efforts to sanction Iran severely in an effort to compel compliance. This includes concluding, and strengthening, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009, H.R. 2194 (passed by the House and Senate, and now in conference) in light of evidence that Iran is clearly engaging in deception to advance development of nuclear weapons. I also support the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act of 2009, H.R. 1327, authorizing state pension funds to divest from companies that invest in Iran, and would work toward bringing those principles to conclusion.
United States – Israel Relationship
Position Paper May 20, 2010
My support for the nation of Israel is solid and unwavering.
Israel and the United States share common fundamental values of individual freedom, democracy, religious faith, and the pursuit of free enterprise and open markets. For over sixty years, Israel has been America’s solid ally in the Middle East, the one nation in the Middle East with the conviction to stand on these principles for the good of its own people as well as its Muslim neighbors. Israel’s desires and commitments to peace in the region have been steadfast, despite the constant threat and acts of terror launched against it by its neighbors.
If elected to the United States Congress from the Sixth District of Massachusetts, I pledge to continue to advance America’s commitments to stand by its ally, to insure Israel’s qualitative military advantage as it seeks peace through strength, to oppose efforts by Iran to obtain or develop nuclear weapons, and to support Israel’s desire to successfully achieve a two state solution negotiated on its own accord.
Peace Through Strength
I strongly believe that the only way in which Israel can achieve a lasting peace is to rest assured that the United States will stand firmly behind it militarily and economically. In that regard, we must continue our commitment to assure Israel’s qualitative military advantage, provide aid, and assure economic superiority. That commitment must be full and total, and publicly acknowledged.
Israel’s military must maintain the ability to defend itself against any conventional threats by its surrounding neighbors and the organized terrorist threats in the region. I support the ten year security agreement reached in August 2007 which will continue to provide approximately three billion dollars in annual aid to Israel to help Israel deal with existing threats. This assistance not only helps Israel maintain its military advantage, but boosts America’s own national security, provides overseas markets for our goods, and creates jobs here at home.
I also oppose efforts by anti-Israel factions which seek to use the United Nations to undermine and demean Israel’s determination to remain strong in its quest for peace. Unlike my opponent, Congressman John Tierney, who only voted “present”, I would have immediately joined the other 344 House members and voted in favor of H.R. 867, to openly condemn the Goldstone Report and to urge the Obama administration to completely disregard it going forward. That report contained a myriad of flaws inherent in it from the outset, and the subject matter was neither objectively investigated nor fairly reported in its
conclusions. In particular, the Goldstone report’s false accusations that Israel committed war crimes simply because it defended itself and its innocent civilian populations, as well as Palestinians, against a barrage of Hamas launched missiles and attacks, can never be justified or supported.
My commitment to support Israel’s quest for peace through strength would go farther than other recent actions by the Obama administration generally, and the congressman of this district in particular. Those actions evidence a clear erosion of our nation’s previous steadfast support of Israel which, unless checked immediately, threatens to increase tensions rather than foster peace.
President Obama’s failure to meet with and accord Prime Minister Netanyahu during his trip to Washington the full courtesy owed to the leader of one of our staunchest allies in order to force some type of concession was an insult unbecoming the head of our nation. Congressman Tierney’s signature on a petition with 44 other democratic representatives urging President Obama to force Israel to open its borders to Gaza signals his desire to support Hamas over Israel; an act which demonstrates his waning support of Israel in favor of the Arab states. It further shows an indifference to the safety of the Israeli population as dropping the blockade would allow further violent attacks on Israel’s people and sovereignty. I would never have signed or supported such a petition; instead, to the contrary, unlike Congressman Tierney, I would have signed the bipartisan letter addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama urging reaffirmation of a strong U.S./Israeli relationship.
Without reservation, it is my position that America must constantly strive to support Israel publicly. Israel’s agreement to self-impose a moratorium on construction of apartments in the West Bank was not an agreement to cease such in Jerusalem, and the public condemnation of announcements for further homes in Jerusalem by Vice President Biden and others was counterproductive to Israel’s efforts to seek peace. This type of public criticism only serves to encourage Palestine and the Arabs to wait for the United States to pressure Israel to make concessions rather than enter the negotiations in a neutral, good faith manner. We must constantly strive to resolve any U.S. – Israel misunderstandings or differences which may arise in private, through trust and confidence, rather than airing them publicly.
Israel’s Self-Negotiated Two State Solution
I strongly support Israel’s attempt to negotiate, on its own, a two state solution directly with its Arab neighbors. The United States must strongly support that initiative, and coordinate closely with Israel, but avoid efforts by outside entities to impose solutions.
Israel has clearly demonstrated its desire to negotiate, and as gestures of good faith has previously withdrawn unilaterally from Gaza and Lebanon. In return, terrorist entities, including Hamas and Hizbullah, now control those regions and remain by their terrorist ideology and acts constant threats to the safety and autonomy of Israel. Certainly, we must be mindful of those historical facts going forward, and stand with Israel’s desire to self-negotiate only with those non-terrorist entities who can truly partner and enforce a peaceful solution.
Accordingly, I support a peace negotiated by Israel for a two-state solution, but that solution must be premises on several factors: (1) Jerusalem, must remain the undivided capital of Israel, (2) Israel’s security must be strictly assured and not imposed by outside parties, (3) there must be guarantees that Palestinians will abide by agreements which have been signed by their past leaders, (4) Israel’s borders must be secured and the safety of its people must be assured. I believe that a strict return to the 1967 borders would be counter to these objectives and would oppose efforts for a strong and lasting peace.
Above all, the United States must always support Israel by encouraging the Arab states to recognize Israel’s right to exist. We must always be mindful that the Hamas charter, in particular, provides that Israel exists only as long as the Muslims desire it to exist; in effect, calling for its ultimate demise. Encouraging other Arab states to adopt our mutual belief in democracy, freedom, and free enterprise offers the greatest potential to lessen tensions going forward.
The Iranian Threat
Iran remains as the largest threat to Israel and a true danger to our own interests. For nearly 20 years, it engaged in a secret nuclear program until it was exposed in 2002. Iran is a leading sponsor of terrorism, and a nuclear armed Iran would threaten the region and world in a completely unacceptable manner.
Iran President Ahmadinejad has made clear that he does not believe the Holocaust ever occurred, has expressed his view that Israel should be destroyed, and has expressed his disrespect for all Jews. Iran supports Hamas and Hizbullah in Gaza and Lebanon, respectively, and is clearly intent on wiping Israel off the map. Not content on its own region, Iran is also pursuing alliances with terrorists in Argentina and Venezuela. Its desire to obtain nuclear weapons can have only one purpose in mind: to advance its interests and threaten the safety of the Middle East and the world.
I strongly support all measures designed to compel Iran to cease efforts to develop a nuclear capability and to cause them to cease efforts in the regard, and would strongly support and propose efforts to sanction Iran severely in an effort to compel compliance. This includes concluding, and strengthening, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009, H.R. 2194 (passed by the House and Senate, and now in conference) in light of evidence that Iran is clearly engaging in deception to advance development of nuclear weapons. I also support the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act of 2009, H.R. 1327, authorizing state pension funds to divest from companies that invest in Iran, and would work toward bringing those principles to conclusion.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Great Article by Alan Dershowitz
The Anti-Israel Lobby
Apr 23, 2010 12:08 am | Alan M. Dershowitz
J-Street can no longer claim to support the Jewish state.
comments | read more
J Street has gone over to the dark side. It claims to be “a pro-Israel, pro peace lobby.” It has now become neither. Its Executive Director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, has joined the off key chorus of those who falsely claim that Israel, by refusing to make peace with the Palestinians, is placing the lives of American soldiers at risk.
This claim was first attributed to Vice President Joe Biden and to General David Petraeus. It was quickly denied by them but continued to have a life of its own in the anti-Israel media. It was picked up by Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer, Pat Buchanan and others on the hard right and hard left who share a common disdain for the Jewish state. It is the most dangerous argument ever put forward by Israel bashers. It is also totally false.
It is dangerous for two reasons. First, it seeks to reduce support for Israel among Americans who, quite understandably and correctly, care deeply about American soldiers being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel has always understood this and that’s why it is one of the few American allies who has never asked the United States to put its troops in harm’s way in defense of Israeli citizens. If Americans were to believe the falsehood that Israel were to blame for American deaths caused by Islamic extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for the Jewish state would suffer considerably.
It is also dangerous because its implication is that Israel must cease to exist: the basic complaint that Muslim extremists have against Israel is not what the Jewish state does, but what it is: a secular, non-Muslim, democracy that promotes equal rights for women, gays, Christians and others. Regardless of what Israel does or doesn’t do, its very existence will be anathema to Muslim extremists. So if Israel’s actions were in fact a cause of American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan–which they are not–then the only logical solution would be Israel’s disappearance. This might be acceptable to the Walts, Mearsheimers and Buchanans of the world, but it is surely not acceptable to Israel or anyone who claims to be pro-Israel.
Finally, the argument is totally false as a matter of fact. At the same time that Israel was seeking to make peace in 2000-2001 by creating a Palestinian state on the West Bank and in Gaza with a capital in East Jerusalem, Al Qaeda was planning the 9/11 attack. So Israel’s “good” actions did nothing to make America safe from Islamic terrorism. On the other hand, when Israel took tough action against Gaza last year in Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s “bad” actions did not increase American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, there is absolutely no relationship between Israel’s actions and the extent of American casualties. It is a totally phony argument based on equal parts of surmise and bigotry.
Yet this dangerous and false argument, which is being hotly debated within the Obama Administration, has now received the imprimatur of J Street. In the letter to the New York Times on April 21, 2010, Jeremy Ben-Ami, speaking on behalf of J Street, included the following paragraph:
“An analysis of the Obama administration’s calculus on Middle East policy should reflect that many in the Jewish community recognize that resolving the conflict is not only necessary to secure Israel’s future, but also critical to regional stability and American strategic interests.”
Although Ben-Ami doesn’t explicitly make a direct connection between Israeli actions and American casualties, his use of the phrase “critical to…American strategic interests,” is a well-known code word, especially these days, for the argument that there is a connection between Israeli actions and American casualties.
In lending support to that dangerous and false argument, J Street has disqualified itself from being considered “pro-Israel.” The argument is also anything but “pro peace,” since it will actually encourage Islamic extremists to target American interests in the hope that American casualties will be blamed on Israel. It will also encourage the Palestinian leadership to harden its position, in the expectation that lack of progress toward peace will result in Israel being blamed for American casualties.
Truth in advertising requires that at the very least J Street stop proclaiming itself as pro-Israel. As long as it was limiting its lobbying activities to ending the settlements, dividing Jerusalem and pressing for negotiations, it could plausibly claim the mantle of pro-Israel, despite the reality that many of its members, supporters, speakers and invited guests are virulently anti-Israel. But now that it has crossed the line into legitimating the most dangerous and false argument ever made against Israel’s security, it must stop calling itself pro-Israel. Some of its college affiliate groups have already done that. They now describe themselves as pro peace because they don’t want to burden themselves with the pro Israel label. J Street should follow their lead and end its false advertising. Or else it should abandon its anti-Israel claim that Israel is damaging American strategic interests.
=
Apr 23, 2010 12:08 am | Alan M. Dershowitz
J-Street can no longer claim to support the Jewish state.
comments | read more
J Street has gone over to the dark side. It claims to be “a pro-Israel, pro peace lobby.” It has now become neither. Its Executive Director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, has joined the off key chorus of those who falsely claim that Israel, by refusing to make peace with the Palestinians, is placing the lives of American soldiers at risk.
This claim was first attributed to Vice President Joe Biden and to General David Petraeus. It was quickly denied by them but continued to have a life of its own in the anti-Israel media. It was picked up by Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer, Pat Buchanan and others on the hard right and hard left who share a common disdain for the Jewish state. It is the most dangerous argument ever put forward by Israel bashers. It is also totally false.
It is dangerous for two reasons. First, it seeks to reduce support for Israel among Americans who, quite understandably and correctly, care deeply about American soldiers being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel has always understood this and that’s why it is one of the few American allies who has never asked the United States to put its troops in harm’s way in defense of Israeli citizens. If Americans were to believe the falsehood that Israel were to blame for American deaths caused by Islamic extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for the Jewish state would suffer considerably.
It is also dangerous because its implication is that Israel must cease to exist: the basic complaint that Muslim extremists have against Israel is not what the Jewish state does, but what it is: a secular, non-Muslim, democracy that promotes equal rights for women, gays, Christians and others. Regardless of what Israel does or doesn’t do, its very existence will be anathema to Muslim extremists. So if Israel’s actions were in fact a cause of American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan–which they are not–then the only logical solution would be Israel’s disappearance. This might be acceptable to the Walts, Mearsheimers and Buchanans of the world, but it is surely not acceptable to Israel or anyone who claims to be pro-Israel.
Finally, the argument is totally false as a matter of fact. At the same time that Israel was seeking to make peace in 2000-2001 by creating a Palestinian state on the West Bank and in Gaza with a capital in East Jerusalem, Al Qaeda was planning the 9/11 attack. So Israel’s “good” actions did nothing to make America safe from Islamic terrorism. On the other hand, when Israel took tough action against Gaza last year in Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s “bad” actions did not increase American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, there is absolutely no relationship between Israel’s actions and the extent of American casualties. It is a totally phony argument based on equal parts of surmise and bigotry.
Yet this dangerous and false argument, which is being hotly debated within the Obama Administration, has now received the imprimatur of J Street. In the letter to the New York Times on April 21, 2010, Jeremy Ben-Ami, speaking on behalf of J Street, included the following paragraph:
“An analysis of the Obama administration’s calculus on Middle East policy should reflect that many in the Jewish community recognize that resolving the conflict is not only necessary to secure Israel’s future, but also critical to regional stability and American strategic interests.”
Although Ben-Ami doesn’t explicitly make a direct connection between Israeli actions and American casualties, his use of the phrase “critical to…American strategic interests,” is a well-known code word, especially these days, for the argument that there is a connection between Israeli actions and American casualties.
In lending support to that dangerous and false argument, J Street has disqualified itself from being considered “pro-Israel.” The argument is also anything but “pro peace,” since it will actually encourage Islamic extremists to target American interests in the hope that American casualties will be blamed on Israel. It will also encourage the Palestinian leadership to harden its position, in the expectation that lack of progress toward peace will result in Israel being blamed for American casualties.
Truth in advertising requires that at the very least J Street stop proclaiming itself as pro-Israel. As long as it was limiting its lobbying activities to ending the settlements, dividing Jerusalem and pressing for negotiations, it could plausibly claim the mantle of pro-Israel, despite the reality that many of its members, supporters, speakers and invited guests are virulently anti-Israel. But now that it has crossed the line into legitimating the most dangerous and false argument ever made against Israel’s security, it must stop calling itself pro-Israel. Some of its college affiliate groups have already done that. They now describe themselves as pro peace because they don’t want to burden themselves with the pro Israel label. J Street should follow their lead and end its false advertising. Or else it should abandon its anti-Israel claim that Israel is damaging American strategic interests.
=
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)