Thursday 19 November 2009
Jewish Defence League Parsha and Weekly Update
When her term to bear grew full, then behold! There were twins in her womb. (Bereishis 25:24)
The twins, were none other than Ya'akov and Eisav.
According to the Midrash, even while still in the womb their religious differences were apparent, as Rashi explains:
THEY STRUGGLED: . . . Whenever she passed the doors of the Torah (i.e., the yeshivah of Shem and Eiver), Ya'akov moved convulsively in his efforts to be born, but whenever she passed by the gate of a pagan temple, Eisav moved convulsively to be born. (Rashi, Bereishis 25:22)
G-d told him, "Your name will no longer be 'Ya'akov,' but 'Yisroel' will be your name . . ." (Bereishis 35:10)
The Jewish People are the descendants from Ya'akov and the Arab People are from Eisav. We do not share the same vision. The Arab People do not support the idea of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel. Two weeks ago, the Reform Judaism Movement at their convention in Toronto, passed an anti Jewish State resolution. This resolution was organized from the New Israel Fund. For those that are concerned about anti Israel movements on campus and the lack of a Jewish reaction, the following information should explain that our true problems are from within. The Reform Judaism Movement are upset and claim that Israel discriminates against Arabs that are opposed to a Jewish State.
The New Israel Fund was the recipient in 2003 of a landmark $20 million grant from the Ford Foundation. (The Ford Foundation itself has been criticized for funding anti-Israel groups and agendas).
The NIF has funded the following groups:
· Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel; and Mossawa Center: In 2006-07, these two NIF grantees entered Israel's national debate over a constitution with their own proposals: Adalah proposed a 'Democratic Constitution,' and the Mossawa Center proposed 'An Equal Constitution For All?' Both proposals called for a binational state that would couple an unlimited 'right of return' for Palestinians with abolishing the Jewish Law of Return. In addition, some NIF-Ford grantees weighed in on a third such proposal, the 'Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel' which opposes Israel's existence as Jewish state.
· Yesh Din, Bimkom, Machsom Watch, HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel: In March 2007, eight groups, including these seven NIF grantees, successfully petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice against what it labeled the 'Apartheid order' to create an 'Apartheid road' on which Israeli police would restrict Palestinians from traveling in Israeli cars in the West Bank. The petition did not mention Israel's justification for the directive, which it said was to prevent the transport of possible terrorists.
· The Association of Civil Rights in Israel: In March 2008, the New York Times quoted a lawyer from this group, described as a "flagship grantee of the NIF" by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency report – was reported as saying that, "There is already a separate legal system in the territories for Israelis and Palestinians … With the approval of separate roads, if it becomes a widespread policy, then the word for it will be 'apartheid.'" (The late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin once described another beneficiary of NIF's largesse, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, as the Organization for the Rights of Hamas Terrorists).
· Adalah: In its April 2008 newsletter, this NIF grantee published an article by the group's general-director, Hassan Jabareen, titled 'The Israeli Regime of Hafradah (Separation in English and Apartheid in Afrikaans).' With no mention of Palestinian attacks, Jabareen alleges that Israel "aims to redefine the Jewishness of the state." Also in April, five Adalah board members joined an Israeli Arab delegation to South Africa in a visit the group itself portrayed as commiserating with fellow victims of apartheid
Other groups and individuals supported or funded by NIF not mentioned in the JTA report include:
· International Solidarity Movement: it gave a stipend to a member of the International Solidarity Movement, which not only promotes divestment, but justifies Palestinian 'armed struggle' [i.e., terrorism] and participates in efforts to impede legitimate Israeli counter-terrorist measures. Its co-founder, George Rishmawi, is even on record justifying the "need" for terrorism.
· Shamai Leibowitz: Leibowitz was NIF's 2004 Fellow, Shamai Leibowitz, who, according to NGO Monitor, 'has devoted great efforts to advancing the cause of economic and diplomatic war against the existence of the Jewish state.'
· Israeli Arab MK Azmi Bishara: NIF also honored Israeli Arab MK, Azmi Bishara, by inviting him to speak at a major NIF function despite the fact that Bishara is a determined foe of Israel as a Jewish state, has laid a wreath on the grave of an Islamic Jihad leader, endorsed the so-called 'right of return' and called for a jihad against Israel. Has praised Syria for its "struggle to liberate occupied Arab land, its resistance against occupation and its defense of the legitimacy of such resistance" (Jerusalem Post, September 12, 2006); stated that "We are Syria's ally" and supported its efforts to free "occupied Arab land" (Haaretz, September 10, 2006); condemned "Israel's barbaric onslaughts" against Lebanon and urged Hizballah's Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah to "continue his fight" (Jerusalem Post, September 12, 2006) and warned Syria of likely "preemptive Israeli strikes" (Jerusalem Post, September 12, 2006), something of which he might well have knowledge as a result of his presence in the Knesset. Bishara's National Democratic Assembly (Balad) Party, have been shown in a video chanting in Arabic "Our Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine] – we want an attack from you" and "Oh [PLFP chief Ahmed] Sadaat we want weapons to build." The video was screened by Israel TV's Channel One in connection with Arab protests over Land Day in the Arab village of Arrabe ('Israeli Arabs call for terror attacks against Israel at Land Day protest,' Independent Media Review Analysis, March 30, 2008). Bishara left Israel in April 2007, following police investigations into his anti-Israel activities and charges of treason and espionage, including passing information to the enemy and contacts with a foreign agent, as well as laundering money received from foreign sources ('Balad Chairman Bishara: I cannot receive a fair trial in Israel,' Haaretz, April 28, 2007).
Get involved with the Jewish Defence League of Canada. Come out every Monday evening 7:00 pm for Karav Maga (Israeli Martial Arts) at the Toronto Zionist Center 788 Marlee Avenue. Also, every Tuesday evening at 7:00 pm will be an open discussion group with snacks and refreshments. Come and discuss the issues. Visit our web site at www.jdl-canada.com
The JDL will continue to lead and speak out.
With Love of Israel,
Meir Weinstein National Director Jewish Defence League of Canada
Get involved with the Jewish Defence League of Canada. Come out every Monday evening 7:00 pm for Karav Maga (Israeli Martial Arts) at the Toronto Zionist Center 788 Marlee Avenue. Also, every Tuesday evening at 7:00 pm will be an open discussion group with snacks and refreshments. Come and discuss the issues. Visit our web site at www.jdl-canada.com
The JDL will continue to lead and speak out.
With Love of Israel,
Meir Weinstein National Director Jewish Defence League of Canada
Originally poste by B'NAI ELIM (Sons of the Mighty)
Love of the Land: Frolicking in the Quicksand: How the Obama Administration Keeps Making Huge Mistakes in the MIddle East
Frolicking in the Quicksand: How the Obama Administration Keeps Making Huge Mistakes in the MIddle East
Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
19 November 09
Of course, the Obama Administration has its defenders. They either ignore criticism of the Administration’s foreign policy or claim it is all partisan and ideological. And yet the truth is that if you watch the government's policy on a daily basis it is truly remarkable how many dumb, avoidable mistakes are made.
I won’t supply a long list here but instead will talk about the latest one. Let’s take it step by step to see what a mess is being created.
Background: Israel announced in 1993, at the time of the Oslo agreement with the PLO, that it did not view construction on existing settlements as a violation. The Palestinians, during the ensuing 16 years, never made this a big issue. The U.S. government, while it can say it technically opposed this, was pretty quiet about it, never did anything.
Then President Barack Obama came to office and made the construction issue the centerpiece of his Middle East policy, sometimes it has appeared to be the keystone of his whole foreign policy. It may seem like an exaggeration but often it seems as if the administration believes that if Israel stopped building 3000 apartments all the region’s problems would go away.
So far, the Administration has wasted almost ten months in this pursuit. First, it shouted at Israel as if it were some servant to do it fast or else. Then when Israel didn’t, the Administration realized that perhaps Israel should get something in exchange for the concession. So it went to Arab states and asked—presuming, wrongly, that they are desperate for a peace agreement—for some compromise but got nothing.
Now it had destroyed its own policy since the Palestinian Authority (PA) refused to come to negotiations until there was a complete freeze. How could it be less hardline than the president?
But there was a solution, sort of. Israel agreed to stop all construction once the apartments currently being built are finished. And naturally, Israel said, this didn’t apply to east Jerusalem.
The United States accepted the deal, with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton exulting about what a huge concession Israel was making. Aside from everything else, the U.S. government knew how big a risk Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was taking with his coalition.
Ok. Sorry to give you all this background but it is necessary to understand how the Administration loves to jump in the quicksand.
(Continue reading...)
Love of the Land: Frolicking in the Quicksand: How the Obama Administration Keeps Making Huge Mistakes in the MIddle East
Love of the Land: Sudan?!
Sudan?!
When last we left the UN clown show, Richard Goldstone’s report had been roundly applauded and approved, and Anne Bayefsky (who has spent a quarter century bird-dogging the UN, a task which few of us could endure for an afternoon, let alone an entire career) had been carted off and her credentials taken for speaking up with righteous indignation about the UN’s latest round of Israel-bashing. The kicker, as reported by Fox News:
Bayefsky is now waiting for the U.N. to return her credentials or to refer her case to the Committee on NGOs, which will meet during January and February and could decide whether to renew her NGO pass — a prospect that has her deeply worried.
“The chances of my getting through that committee are basically nil,” she said.
The nation that chairs the committee, Sudan, is currently engaged in a murderous war on its own citizens and expelled 13 major aid NGOs from the country in March — meaning that a human rights violator that rejects NGOs within its own borders will be overseeing the approval of NGOs at the U.N.
Asked about this apparent inconsistency, a spokeswoman for the U.N. body overseeing the NGO committee said in an e-mail that “the Departments concerned are investigating this matter on the basis of established practice, jurisprudence and thorough review of the facts.”
Well isn’t that par for the course. It’s all there: the high-minded double-talk (what “jurisprudence” justifies roughing up a critic and snatching her badge?) and the inmates running the asylum, and all of it in service of the UN’s one great and constant mission — vilifying Israel. The timing here is far from coincidental:
“The next three weeks are the heart of the entire year at the U.N. General Assembly. The frenzy of anti-Israel activity is going on right now,” she said. “There’s a reason they’re keeping me away — this is no accident.”
This hypocrisy circus is the “international community” whose approbation Obama seeks. The Obami treat the UN with decorum and respect, as if it were a serious organization rather than a gang of thugs that devotes its time to silencing critics, providing cover to terrorists, and averting its gaze from its member states’ own appalling human-rights records. Obama tells us that the world community is one that enjoys shared values. Really. Which goals and values in particular do we share with this crowd?
Bayefsky may miss the “heart of the entire year,” but she’s gotten to the nub of the problem. Unfortunately, the Obami show no sign of taking this or any other incident to heart, nor of reconsidering their role in enabling the UN miscreants.
Love of the Land: Sudan?!
Love of the Land: Kiss the Independence Intifada goodbye
Kiss the Independence Intifada goodbye
Michael Young
The Daily Star
19 November 09
The death of the Independence Intifada of 2005 has been prematurely announced many times. However, today we have in front of us a genuine corpse, the end of the fleeting aspiration four years ago, at least in its more restricted form, of establishing a system emancipated from Syria.
The Syrians, who left Lebanon through the window after Rafik Hariri’s assassination only to re-enter by the front door in recent months, have done so thanks to an understanding with Saudi Arabia. There are differences between what we have today and the Syrian-Saudi condominium after Taif, above all that the Syrian Army is no longer deployed in Lebanon. The latest contract is more equitable and is complicated by the fact that Iran has a powerful stake in the system through Hizbullah. However, it is familiar in leaving Lebanon with little discernible sovereignty, in large part courtesy of Lebanese divisions.
It’s no secret that the Saudis put considerable pressure on the prime minister-elect, Saad Hariri, to come to an arrangement over the new government with the opposition, one reason why he was forced to spend much time negotiating with Michel Aoun, to the irritation of his Christian partners. The Syrians, too, kept their end of the bargain, apparently with Turkish prodding, by bringing Aoun into line. After five months, the Hariri government was made in Lebanon only in the narrowest of ways.
This represents a fundamental shift from what Lebanon had between 2005 and 2009. From 2004 on, the country was placed under an effective, if highly imperfect, form of international trusteeship, thanks to a series of Security Council resolutions governing Lebanese affairs. This began with Resolution 1559, calling for a Syrian withdrawal, an end to foreign interference in Lebanon’s presidential election that year (and presumably all years), and the disarmament of armed groups. The UN decisions also included Resolution 1595, which set up an international commission to investigate Hariri’s murder, and it was followed by Resolution 1701, establishing a reinforced mechanism for the stabilization of southern Lebanon after the summer war of 2006.
That international scaffolding has been substantially eroded in recent years, by action or omission. Resolution 1559 has been implemented only in the sense that Syrian soldiers have left Lebanon. However, Syrian meddling in Lebanese affairs has been unrelenting, and in late 2007 France significantly undermined the letter of the resolution, which it had co-sponsored, by actively bringing Damascus into the Lebanese presidential election. As for the disarmament of Hizbullah or pro-Syrian Palestinian groups, nothing has happened, and the Cabinet is preparing to find a consensual rhetorical formula in its statement to evade the question.
(Continue reading...)
Love of the Land: Kiss the Independence Intifada goodbye
Love of the Land: Helping the Palestinians Falsify History
Helping the Palestinians Falsify History
For sheer gall, Barack Obama’s labeling half of Israel’s capital a “settlement,” as Jonathan has pointed out, may be hard to beat. But a New York Times report of a new book about the Temple Mount is definitely in the running. Seeking to give readers some background, the report offered the following gem: “The lack of archaeological evidence of the ancient temples has led many Palestinians to deny any real Jewish attachment or claim to the plateau.”
We’ll ignore the fact that the Second Temple is actually well-documented in extant writings from the period, and that several sections of the Temple compound’s outer walls, as described in these writings, have been uncovered (the Western Wall being one of them).
Instead, let’s discuss why there is a dearth of findings from the Temples themselves. (1) There happens to be a mosque on the exact site where, according to tradition, the Temples once stood. (2) Israel, contrary to Palestinian propaganda, is not out to “destroy al-Aqsa”; indeed, it scrupulously avoids any action that might endanger the mosque. (3) Israel is so deferential to Muslim sensibilities that, after capturing the Mount in 1967, it handed control of the site back to the Muslim waqf. Which brings us to (4): for all these reasons, Israel has never excavated the only place in the world where remnants of the Temple could possibly be found. Nor were any digs conducted there before 1967: al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock have stood undisturbed for hundreds of years. And yes, it is hard to produce archaeological evidence if you never even conduct a dig.
What is outrageous about this report is not just the way it abets Palestinian falsifications of history, though it certainly does that: since the reader isn’t told that this “lack of evidence” stems from the fact that nobody ever looked, he naturally assumes that archaeologists did, in fact, look and found nothing.
Even more outrageous, however, is the way Israel’s generosity is being used against it: its very restraint in eschewing excavations on the Mount — its concern, again, for Muslim sensibilities, its desire to avoid even the appearance of harm to the mosques — has been twisted into “evidence” that no Jewish connection to the Mount ever existed.
This is a standard Palestinian tactic: Israel’s refusal to let Jews pray on the Mount, also in deference to Muslim sensibilities, is similarly used as “proof” that Jews have no connection to the site. After all, Muslims pray there; Jews don’t; QED. And this tactic has been wildly successful: most of the world is completely convinced that Israel lacks any rights on the Mount.
But if Israel’s generosity is being exploited in this fashion, perhaps Jerusalem needs to rethink its tactics — and start demonstrating the Jewish connection to the Mount in actions rather than words. Excavating under al-Aqsa would be too drastic a first step. But letting Jews pray on a designated section of the Mount devoid of mosques would be an excellent place to begin.
Love of the Land: Helping the Palestinians Falsify History
Love of the Land: 'Myself As Exhibit A'
'Myself As Exhibit A'
Backspin/Honest Reporting
18 November 09
18 November 09
Boyd writes:
Perhaps most important, it failed to mention in any detail why some Jewish leaders may feel compelled to support Israel. Leaving aside the politics of the region, the notion that Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, or that Israel is the only nation state in the world in which Judaism is mainstream, Jewish culture is the norm and the Hebrew language is widely spoken and celebrated, were all ignored.
But it is, apparently, much easier to trot out the old antisemitic myth. After all, the public deserves to know what these nasty, rich Jews are up to. And what could possibly be wrong in uncovering the truth? There cannot conceivably be a connection between the way Israel and Jews are presented in the media and antisemitism on the streets of Britain.
Or so Alan Rusbridger would have us believe. In the documentary, he maintained that he found it "difficult to believe" that any journalistic coverage of events in Israel could result in acts of violence against Jews on the streets of Britain.
Boyd goes on to describe being attacked by a Briton in 2002, thanks to irresponsible media coverage of Jenin:
Well, allow me to present myself as exhibit A. In April 2002, at the height of the Palestinian intifada, media reports began circulating that a massacre had been committed by the Israel Defence Force in Jenin, in the West Bank. Rumours circulated that hundreds of Palestinians had been killed. The BBC suggested 150. Saeb Erekat, interviewed on CNN, claimed 500. Yasser Abed Rabbo intimated 900. The overarching impression was that the IDF had committed a horrific atrocity.
On the following Saturday, I was walking to synagogue, wearing my kippah (skull cap) in the north London suburb of Finchley. On the way, I was punched in the face by a young man. It was an entirely unprovoked assault. We were simply crossing paths when he delivered a sudden, forceful, right hook. Taken aback, my first response was to ask why he had done it. "That's what happens to Jews," he responded, "when they behave like that."
Mitch Bard reached a similar conclusion to about rising levels of anti-Semitism in 2002:
Love of the Land: 'Myself As Exhibit A'
Love of the Land: Gilo and Diplomatic Dismay
Gilo and Diplomatic Dismay
Noah, as you note, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’s statement that the administration is “dismayed” at the construction of more housing in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem — because “neither party should unilaterally preempt negotiations” – is a non-sequitur. Last May, Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House for his first meeting as prime minister with President Obama and announced he wanted to commence negotiations “immediately,” without preconditions, which has been his position ever since.
What unilaterally preempted negotiations was the Obama/Abbas precondition of a settlement “freeze” that (1) was not previously demanded in any prior negotiations, (2) contradicted a six-year understanding about the meaning of a “freeze” (no new settlements, no expansion of existing settlement borders, and no financial incentives for new settlers), (3) could not be defined in practical terms even by George Mitchell, and (4) was not a condition that any Israeli government, Left or Right, could accept.
There was a little comedy silver at the State Department press conference yesterday, as spokesman Ian Kelly repeated the notion that the expansion of housing in Gilo was “dismaying” because it could “unilaterally” preempt negotiations. One of the reporters asked Kelly if he could “give us just a brief synopsis of the progress that Senator Mitchell has made in his months on the job” — to which Kelly responded that the administration had gotten both sides to agree on a goal:
Love of the Land: Gilo and Diplomatic Dismay
Love of the Land: Another Vast Jewish Conspiracy
Another Vast Jewish Conspiracy
British media and society are gripped by lies about a "secret" Israel lobby controlling foreign policy.
Robin Shepherd
Wall Street Journal
19 November 09
Here is a small selection of events that have taken place in Britain since the end of Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza earlier this year.
The government has imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel and failed to vote against the Goldstone report in the U.N . The charities War on Want and Amnesty International U.K. have both promoted a book by the anti-Israeli firebrand Ben White, tellingly called "Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide." The Trades Union Congress at its annual conference has called for boycotts of Israeli products as well as a total arms embargo.
In the media, the Guardian newspaper has stepped up its already obsessive campaign against the Jewish state to the extent that the paper's flagship Comment is Free Web site frequently features two anti-Israeli polemics on one and the same day. The BBC continues to use its enormous influence over British public opinion to whitewash anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in the Middle East. Its Web site, for example, features a profile of Hamas that makes no mention of the group's virulent hatred of Jews or its adherence to a "Protocols of Zion"-style belief in world-wide Jewish conspiracies.
Readers may be surprised to learn, therefore, that the British media and political establishment is apparently cowering under the sway of a secretive cabal of Zionist lobbyists who have all but extinguished critical opinions of Israel from the public domain.
Such charges have been aired to mass critical acclaim this week in a landmark documentary, "Inside Britain's Israel Lobby," on Channel 4—the same outlet that offered Iran's Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an uninterrupted, seven-minute propaganda slot on Christmas Day last year.
The makers of the documentary—top Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne and TV journalist James Jones—have also written about their program in the Guardian. Both furiously deny that they are peddling conspiracy theories. But the mindset we are dealing with was neatly exposed by the authors' own explanation on how their suspicions were aroused that something sinister is at work in the corridors of British power.
It all transpired, they told readers ominously, during an address earlier this year by Conservative Party leader David Cameron at a dinner hosted by the Conservative Friends of Israel.
(Read full article)
Love of the Land: Another Vast Jewish Conspiracy
Love of the Land: The Campaign to Delegitimize Israel With the False Charge of Apartheid
The Campaign to Delegitimize Israel With the False Charge of Apartheid
If Israel's detractors can associate the Jewish movement for self-determination with the Apartheid South African regime, they will have done lasting and maybe irreparable damage. Yet the comparison of Israel to South Africa under white supremist rule has been utterly rejected by those with intimate understanding of the old Apartheid system.
Israel is a multi-racial and multi-colored society, and the Arab minority actively participates in the political process. There are Arab parliamentarians, Arab judges including on the Supreme Court, Arab cabinet ministers, Arab heads of hospital departments, Arab university professors, Arab diplomats in the Foreign Service, and very senior Arab police and army officers. Incitement to racism in Israel is a criminal offence, as is discrimination on the basis of race or religion.
The accusation is made that the very fact that Israel is considered a Jewish state proves an "Apartheid-like" situation. Yet the accusers have not a word of criticism against the tens of liberal democratic states that have Christian crosses incorporated in their flags, nor against the Muslim states with the half crescent symbol of Islam. For a Western state, with Jewish and Muslim minorities, to have Christmas as a national holiday is permissible, but for Israel to celebrate Passover as a national holiday is somehow racist. For various Arab states to denote themselves as Arab Republics is not objectionable.
Zionism is perhaps the only national movement that has received explicit support and endorsement both from the League of Nations and from the United Nations. It was the League of Nations that approved the mandate for Palestine with its ringing endorsement of "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."
The real goal behind the Apartheid campaign is the denial of the legitimacy of the State of Israel and the determination that the only status the Jewish population in Israel can hope for is that of a "protected" ethnic minority in an Arab Palestinian state.
Click here to read the full paper.
*Dr. Robbie Sabel served as Legal Adviser to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1985 to 1993, and is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Love of the Land: The Campaign to Delegitimize Israel With the False Charge of Apartheid
Love of the Land: Philistines and Palestinians
Philistines and Palestinians
Rabbi Mendel Weinbach
Ohr Somayach
02 Kislev 5770
The envy felt by the nations throughout history towards the success of Jews in every field seems to find expression in an incident described in this week's Torah portion.
"Yitzchak sowed in the land and in that year reaped a hundredfold... the man became great and kept becoming greater… and the Philistines envied him." (Bereishet 26:12-14)
The envious Philistines stopped up and filled with earth the wells that Yitzchak's father had dug, and when Yitzchak's servants dug two new wells of fresh water the Philistines claimed the water was theirs. Only when a third well was dug there was finally no resistance.
The success of Jews in our own day in turning a barren land into a thriving state has once again stirred the envy of "Philistines". We must be confident that we will someday reach that third uncontested well and enjoy a peaceful Israel forever.
Love of the Land: Philistines and Palestinians
Love of the Land: Outrage over 'rape' poster that demonises Israel
Outrage over 'rape' poster that demonises Israel
Robyn Rosen
Jewish Chronicle
12 November 09
Jewish Chronicle
12 November 09
(Maybe I'm missing something, but why the choice of allegedly in the first sentence?)
The offending image and caption
The New Israel Fund (NIF) has defended a conference sponsored by three Palestinian groups it funds, which allegedly “demonised” Israel.
The poster publicising the conference, held in Haifa on Monday, shows the hand of an IDF soldier grasping the breast of a woman wearing a traditional Palestinian dress.
The poster reads: “Her husband needs a permit to touch her. The occupation penetrates her life everyday.”
The groups behind the event received NIF funding last year. Mada Al-Carmel was given $100,000 (£59,000), the Arab Forum for Sexuality was given $23,000 (£14,000) and Women Against Violence was given $217,000 (£129,000).
The conference, My Land, Space, Body and Sexuality: Palestinians in the Shadow of the Wall, was part of a campaign in 11 countries highlighting the attack on sexual rights in Muslim societies.
Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, said: “NIF presents itself as a Zionist organisation and claims to have red lines regarding funding. Yet NIF officials sometimes ignore these boundaries, and grant funds to groups that blatantly are involved in the demonisation of Israel as a democratic Jewish state.”
NIF chairman Nicholas Saphir defended the conference, saying there is a “real humanitarian problem” in Israel, where it is illegal to grant citizenship to Palestinians married to Israeli citizens.
“NIF supports free expression of the various views of our broad spectrum of grantees — whether we agree with all their positions or not,” he said. “As long as the work is within the framework of Israel’s charity law and other Israeli laws, NIF will continue to support them in the interests of sustaining its vibrant democracy.”
Conference organisers insisted that they were not claiming that IDF soldiers rape or sexually violate Palestinians.
Dr Himmat Zuabi, a researcher at the Mada Al-Carmel centre, which carries out studies on the Israeli Arab society, said: “We didn’t talk about actual rape and sexual harassment, we tried to show how the political issue, which is what everybody talks about, has a daily effect on the lives of Palestinian women. The poster was just an artistic device to convey a message.”
Love of the Land: Outrage over 'rape' poster that demonises Israel
Love of the Land: May Your Curse be on Me, My Son
May Your Curse be on Me, My Son
"Perhaps my father will feel me, and I will be in his eyes as a mocker and I will bring upon myself a curse and not a blessing. And his mother said to him, 'May your curse be upon me, my son'." (From this week's Torah portion, Toldot, Genesis 27:12-13)A youth who had "illegally" entered Gush Katif in its last days asked me:
"I don't know what to do. I must leave Gush Katif for a few days and then I will not be able to return."
"Why not?" I asked him.
"Because if I come back I will have to use a false identity at the checkpoint, and that would force me to lie," he answered. "I do not want to sin."
"I have a great solution," I said to him. "I will write you a note in which I accept upon myself the Divine punishment that you will receive for lying to get back into Gush Katif. After you have lived out your 120 years on this earth, request to be buried with the note and I will merit your Divine retribution. Do we have a deal?"
It didn't take the boy long to see the absurdity of his question, and I lost out on the deal of a lifetime.
It is easy to confuse young people. They are inexperienced and naive. Jacob lacks the life experience of his mother, Rivkah. He is not yet worldly, spending all his time learning Torah. He has not yet acquired the perspective needed to place contradicting values in their proper order. Suddenly, his mother makes an outrageous request of him – to lie to his father, Isaac, and to re-arrange events so that he will give him the blessing reserved for his brother, Esau.
Isaac loved his sons. He was blind to the fact that Esau was deceiving him. He was liable to entrust the faith in G-d revolution that his father had pioneered in the hands of his wicked son, Esau.
Rivkah understood that this would be a tragic mistake. Jacob also understood. So now what? It is forbidden to lie!
The answer to this dilemma is not simple. Generally, the preferred course of action is not to break the law – even for a worthy purpose. "Justice, justice must you pursue," says the Torah. Justice must also be pursued with justice.
That is generally the case, but not always. When should one break the rules?
"Who should one listen to? The teacher or the student?" the Rambam rhetorically asks in the Laws of Kings. In other words, if a person is instructed to carry out an action that is against the commandments of the King of the world and His Torah – he is forbidden to do so.
In reality, this simple directive becomes more complex. In any given set of circumstances, there will always be the rabbis who will explain that it is a terrible sin to deceive Isaac, that Jacob is a terrible soldier, the whole country will fall apart because of him and that we will be left with no army.
We have already witnessed the result of this approach; the destruction of Gush Katif, Israel's defeat in the two wars that came on its heels and the world's negation of Israel's right to exist. Those military, political and spiritual leaders who confused the naive Jacob, leading him to believe that it is a terrible sin to oppose the law - brought the State of Israel to the edge of the precipice. Today, when they once again condemn the conscientious soldiers who refuse to evict Jews from their homes, they prove that they have learned nothing from their mistakes.
"Who is it who hunted food and brought it to me, and I ate from it all before you came, and I blessed him, and he shall surely be blessed," says Isaac to Esau. The famous Biblical commentator Rashi explains that it is not true that if Jacob had not deceived his father, he would not have received his blessings. In this verse, Isaac endorsed the blessing that he gave to Jacob. Ex post facto, he agrees with Rivkah and Jacob.
Rivkah and Jacob identified and prevented the mistake before it happened, warding off catastrophe in the process. Likewise, now is the time to deal with the crimes into which the government is dragging the IDF – not after the next catastrophe, G-d forbid!
The role cast upon the youthful Jacob is not an easy one. His commanders and some of his rabbis are pressuring him, trying to confuse him into gagging his own conscience. They would prefer that he would stop listening to the voice of G-d that clearly instructs him to stop.
May your curse be on me, my son. May your curse be on me.
Shabbat Shalom,
Moshe Feiglin
Love of the Land: May Your Curse be on Me, My Son
Love of the Land: Another Tack: Save the scarecrow
Another Tack: Save the scarecrow
Sarah Honig
JPost
12 November 09
Some scarecrows are charmers. They cannot maintain their upright position without outside support, but there's a wide engaging smile scrawled on their faces and their incontrovertible cute-factor makes everyone adore them.
Just hear all that pretentious poppycock spouted at us by world opinion (as ever, resonated shrilly by our own left wing). According to trendy conventional wisdom, the Palestinian Authority's scarecrow - Mahmoud Abbas - can do no wrong. At the same time, the Israelis who keep him from keeling over can do no right. Simple isn't it?
Abbas was universally lauded for purity of heart and purpose when he first ascended Yasser Arafat's vacated throne in 2004. After his recently announced retirement, Abbas is piteously beseeched to please reconsider. As per pompous Western pundits, the scarecrow shakily ensconced in Ramallah is our last viable hope for peace. The scarecrow must be saved. Without him the sky is sure to come crashing down.
And who instilled all that dejection and gloom in our upstanding scarecrow? Who is responsible for his desperation, for the I-can-go-on-no-longer melancholy? Only one answer exists: intransigent settlement-building, concord-stifling, conquistador Israel.
BUT BEFORE we subscribe to the international community's premise of Israeli culpability for all that goes awry (and plenty does), there are four critical questions to ponder: Does Abbas deserve his good-guy credentials? Why has he proven such an abysmal failure? Who truly undermined him? And is he worth saving?
1. Is Abbas really righteous? Holocaust-denier Abbas is indisputably a more urbane version of Arafat, with better PR-sense and a closer shave (not that Arafat in his day wasn't adulated as the harbinger of optimism and harmony). True, Abbas sings Arafat's song, but, oh, how much more genteel the rendition!
Abbas has no use for Arafat's in-your-face hysterical chants. He'd never send us to drink from Gaza's sea nor openly exhort millions to march on Jerusalem. His style is slyer than that. To paraphrase Roberta Flack's 1973 hit, mild-mannered Abbas is "killing us softly with his words."
His repertoire consists of the same reliable old Arafat standbys - back to the 1949 armistice lines, Jerusalem is Arab Palestine's capital, no antiterrorist campaign, no end to incitement and no relinquishment of the right to inundate the Jewish state with hostile Arabs.
But Abbas does offer compromise. While he insists the Western Wall be placed under exclusive Muslim control, he magnanimously agrees to permit small numbers of Jews to pray at a limited section thereof under conditions stipulated in 1930 by the Mandate's post-Hebron-massacre Shaw Commission (which forbade the blowing of the shofar). Abbas pledges to generously allow us to reassume our once-lowly status. Big of him.
(Read full article)
Love of the Land: Another Tack: Save the scarecrow
Love of the Land: American Politics (1980)
American Politics (1980)
Today's Golden Oldie is from October 1980.
The cartoon was about Jimmy Carter who was on the campaign trail for a bid at a second term as U.S. President. He lost.
With Obama we now face an American President who treats the repression of Iranian demonstrators as an internal Iranian affair while taking a stern and personal interest in the question of where Jews may or may not be allowed to live in the city of Jerusalem!?!! This Presidency does not feel the need to hide its double-standard support of the "Palestinian" cause behind empty pro-Israel promises.
It will be interesting to see if Obama will, like Jimmy Carter, turn out to be a one-term wonder.
Love of the Land: American Politics (1980)
Israel Matzav: Sarah Palin does it again
Sarah Palin does it again
Sarah Palin told ABC's Barbara Walters on Wednesday night that the Obumbler has gotten it all wrong on Israel and the 'Palestinians.' Palin, whose book, "Going Rogue: An American Life," hit bookshelves today, took aim at the Obama administration's stance on Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories.
"I disagree with the Obama administration on that," Palin told Walters. "I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don't think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand."
I saw the book all over the place on Tuesday and Wednesday. But there's no index so I couldn't find what she has written about Israel, if anything.
But I'm not surprised. Although she's been brutalized by the leftist media in the US, Sarah Palin seems to have her head on pretty straight (and for those of you who want to criticize her about her daughter, you've probably never raised a teenager - they do what they want once they get to a certain age).
Here's Palin with Charles Gibson talking about foreign policy.
But I'm not surprised. Although she's been brutalized by the leftist media in the US, Sarah Palin seems to have her head on pretty straight (and for those of you who want to criticize her about her daughter, you've probably never raised a teenager - they do what they want once they get to a certain age).
Here's Palin with Charles Gibson talking about foreign policy.
Israel Matzav: Sarah Palin does it again
STOP BASHING ISLAM...(or else!)
STOP BASHING ISLAM...(or else!)
Islam Bashers Repent
Monday, 16 November 2009
Monday, 16 November 2009
What does it take to make Islam bashers mend their ways? Why don’t these folks come to their senses and see Islam as a religion of peace and praise the God of Abraham for continuing his beneficence on humanity by sending Muhammad to guide and humanize us?
Why is it that some people keep criticizing a religion that has nearly 1.5 billion followers throughout the world? Now, if this faith was indeed what its detractors claim it is, wouldn’t these masses of people see through it and dump it?
Didn’t our very own President go around the Muslim heartland and sing the praises of Islam at every stop? Didn’t he bow with great deference to
the King of Islam in Saudi Arabia? Didn’t he proudly proclaim Islam as the faith of his dear and near kindred? Didn’t he, time and again, tell us that Islam is indeed the religion of peace? Didn’t he with his captivating oratory skills cite passages from the Quran to show how reverent he was toward this religion? Didn’t he appoint a raft of “devoted” Muslims to sensitive and high posts in government?
Even ignoring the President’s behavior and pronouncements, we have numberless others in the know such as politicians, media experts, academics and what nots who keep preaching to us that Islam is indeed a sanctified religion wrongly vilified by a bunch of hatemongers. After all, its very name means peace. How could anyone possibly have anything but praise for a religion called peace? What is more precious than peace?
Exacerbated, the champions of the religion of peace bemoan: what does it take to convince the detractors of Islam to stop their unceasing effort to present a distorted image of this wonderful world-encircling religion?
Well, just a few problems that makes taking the President’s remarks and actions, as well as all the other Islamic apologists and know-it-alls, difficult.
* Claiming “Islam” means “peace” is fraudulent to begin with. Islam is an Arabic word. And the word for peace in Arabic is “solh,” and not Islam. Islam is derived from the root word “taslim,” which means submission or surrender. Hence, Islam’s true name, surrender, is in fact most descriptive of what it is: total, unconditional submission and surrender of the individual and the community to the will and dictates of Allah as revealed by his “rasool,” messenger, Muhammad.
* Further proof of the fraudulent nature of billing Islam as a religion of peace is the irrefutable fact that Muhammad himself led his followers during his lifetime in 78 battles, only one of which was defensive in nature
* Perusing the religion of peace’s holy book, the Quran, taken by Muslims as the literal revelation of Allah, reads more like a manual of intolerance and war than a divinely-revealed prescription from a benevolent God for a life of brotherhood and peace.
Quran 2:216 "Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but it may happen that you hate a thing which is good for you and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, you knew not."
Quran 8:65 "O Prophet exhort the believers to fight. If there be of you 20 steadfast, they will overcome 200 and if there be of you a 100, they shall overcome a 1000, because the disbelievers are a folk without intelligence"
* Deeds speak louder than words. From its very inception, Islam was a movement of violence. Violence both within its ranks as well as against the non-Muslims has been the unceasing practice. The minute Muhammad died, jockeying for power among his disciples led to numberless murders and battles. The faith of peace never saw peace even within its own ranks and never allowed the rest of the world any peace at all by lashing out to other lands near and far.
* A quick scan of the daily news shows the adherent of the religion of peace engaged in unspeakable acts of mayhem and murder in much of the world. There is hardly any need to allude to them here. But the Islamists have an answer for that too. Islam is not responsible, they say. It is only a bunch of opportunists who commit these acts for their own political and economic objectives. We are to believe that those daily suicide bombers explode their vests in the midst of marketplaces, funeral processions, and even mosques are doing so to further their own personal agenda.
* All these aside, a recent report from the FBI estimates that of the 2000 mosques in the United States, 10% preach Jihad. Welcome to the religion of peace as it is invading the land of the free to make it the land of submission. This is not some Islam-hating crackpot group reporting. It is the FBI, an agency known for its bending backward to be politically correct in tune with the rest of the administration.
* The Muslim population is rapidly burgeoning in America by high birth rate as well as successful extensive conversion in prisons. Even by the rules of probability, a fraction of these Muslims may be deeply influenced by the Jihad preachers and take upon themselves Islamist missions of various severity and destruction. How many Jihadists did it take to pulverize the NY Trade Centers? It took one Maj. Nidal Hasan to take the life of 13 and injure 29 others in an outburst of Islamic peace-making.
* Islamist apologists come in all shades. There are true faithful who are out and out in front about it. They believe Islam and its ways are the answer. It doesn’t matter whether it is seen as good or bad by others. Then there are those who are hired mouthpieces who are like lawyers that defend a murderer to the limit of their ability simply because they are paid to do so. That’s their chosen profession. We may not like either of the above two types, yet it is understandable.
* What really is hard to deal with are those who either, through ignorance or a misplaced sense of fairness and multiculturalism, keep saying that Islam itself is not bad, the Quran contains no more violence than does the Bible, and that the moderate Muslims who are the vast majority are good people and need to do something about the criminal minority. These folks go even a step further and call those of us who sound the alarm against Islam in general, as unjustified hatemongers.
But the notion of moderate Muslims is an illusion created by the wishful thinking of a good-hearted yet deluded people. The so-called minority Jihadist-types are indeed the real Muslims. These Jihadists hate the so called moderate Muslims as much as they hate the kefirs – the infidels. And it is always the small group, the militant minority that eventually topples the complacent uncaring majority. History is replete with support of this contention.
In my view, truth and the naked truth should be the only standard. No sugar-coating, no political correctness, no hired-guns to cover up for the Islam menace that has inflicted humanity for so long and keeps marching across the globe for doing more harm.
So who is to repent? A Muslim by any other name is a Muslim. It is the human calling for every Muslim to cast off the chain of Islam and take his or her rightful place along the ranks of the truly peaceful and free people of the world.
Originally posted by B'NAI ELIM (Sons of the Mighty)
RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth-Grade: Did Americans Think That Asians “All Looked Alike”?
Life in an American Fourth-Grade: Did Americans Think That Asians “All Looked Alike”?
[Please subscribe for daily original articles on history, American schools, the Middle East, and U.S. foreign policy]
By Barry Rubin
First, I have to report a really great exchange in class. Two students, my son and a boy who studied hitherto in Great Britain, responded to the endless romanticizing of Native Americans by pointing out that many tribes were very warlike. The teacher responded: We don't really have evidence of that. So much for actual history. Native Americans: good, innocent, children of nature living in a utopian society. American settlers: evil, warlike, and just plain mean. Welcome to the taxpayer-funded indoctrination into hating America.
But mainly this article is an addendum to my previous dispatch from the classroom front about the teaching of Japanese internment during World War Two in my son’s fourth-grade class (see here). The kids were informed that also interned were Koreans and Chinese because the Americans couldn’t tell the difference between them. This is nonsense, of course, for Americans in 1941-1942 were easily able to do so.
Saying this is not to deny discrimination in immigration and other ways against Chinese, especially in California, in earlier years. If put side by side to the treatment suffered by every wave of immigrants starting with the Irish, however, it was quite comparable in many ways. I'm not, however, writing about that but rather on the situation by the 1930s and 1940s.
There is a wider problem here, an element of World War Two largely forgotten today, that gives us a key for understanding how America's story is distorted. In the United States at that time, there was tremendous sympathy for the Chinese before and during the war, and also for the Filipinos once the Japanese attacked. There are many articles and films of that period which express admiration and respect for these two groups. (Korea was pretty much unknown.)
Americans were well informed about the sufferings of the Chinese at the hands of Japan and there was much indignation about it. In fact, this is a major element now largely overlooked. It was because of what we would call today human rights concerns that the United States put up economic embargos on Japan, especially for oil and petroleum products.
Indeed, a major reason for the attack on Pearl Harbor was this U.S. pressure on Tokyo. Just as the United States was nominally neutral but supported the United Kingdom against Nazi Germany, it also supported China against imperial Japan. This was noble behavior on the part of the United States. We should remember that estimates of Chinese war deaths, overwhelmingly civilian, were twenty million.
Once the war began, the United States worked hard to help and supply the Chinese Nationalist forces--many American airmen died taking supplies "over the hump" from Burma to China, and also came to work with the Communists as well. The Chinese Communist revolution after the war and the long hostility helped push these facts into oblivion.
Why is this important today? Because typically Political Correctness and the anti-Americanism so prevalent, in its urge to indict America as racist, ignores the fact that the United States was usually on the side of one “non-white” or Third World group against another. U.S. interventions in Latin America, for example, were almost always due to being asked for help by one faction against another.
While at times the United States intervened on behalf of dictatorships (Guatemala, 1953, being a prime example), it almost equally often (at least except for the brief high Cold War combat against Castro’s Cuba in the 1960s and early 1970s when Washington felt the dangerous situation necessitated backing anyone who was anti-Communist) was on the side of democratic forces. If Fidel Castro had ruled as a liberal democrat he would have had an excellent relationship with the United States.
Today American children are being taught in all too many classrooms that their country was always racist and imperialist. Even if you accept the basic framework of contemporary historical views this simply isn’t true. The United States was not “against” Asian people in 1941, for example. It supported one group of Asians against another and it was on the right side.
I remember growing up on films and books about heroic pre-World War Two Chinese peasants trying to eke out a living against flood and famine or bravely battling the Japanese (as with those who saved the American airmen from the Jimmy Doolittle raid on Tokyo) and films about brave Filipino partisans fighting side by side with American forces against great odds. There was never any distinction made on the basis of race or to portray these people as inferior. For that matter, compared to what went on in other countries (even among warring Europeans) materials about the Japanese enemy were pretty mild stuff despite Pearl Harbor.
It should equally be noted that today, and for the past half-century, the United States has not opposed or fought against “Arabs” or “Muslims” but supported one group against another. During the period between the 1950s and 1990s, those treated as enemies were radical, anti-American, and usually aligned with the USSR. Since then, they have been usually radical Islamists who want to install dictatorships even worse than the existing ones.
The United States has very little to apologize for in its history, especially compared to pretty much any other country on the face of the earth. Are we ever going to see the day when it is fashionable to be proud of America again, a pride that can easily be based on the facts?
By Barry Rubin
First, I have to report a really great exchange in class. Two students, my son and a boy who studied hitherto in Great Britain, responded to the endless romanticizing of Native Americans by pointing out that many tribes were very warlike. The teacher responded: We don't really have evidence of that. So much for actual history. Native Americans: good, innocent, children of nature living in a utopian society. American settlers: evil, warlike, and just plain mean. Welcome to the taxpayer-funded indoctrination into hating America.
But mainly this article is an addendum to my previous dispatch from the classroom front about the teaching of Japanese internment during World War Two in my son’s fourth-grade class (see here). The kids were informed that also interned were Koreans and Chinese because the Americans couldn’t tell the difference between them. This is nonsense, of course, for Americans in 1941-1942 were easily able to do so.
Saying this is not to deny discrimination in immigration and other ways against Chinese, especially in California, in earlier years. If put side by side to the treatment suffered by every wave of immigrants starting with the Irish, however, it was quite comparable in many ways. I'm not, however, writing about that but rather on the situation by the 1930s and 1940s.
There is a wider problem here, an element of World War Two largely forgotten today, that gives us a key for understanding how America's story is distorted. In the United States at that time, there was tremendous sympathy for the Chinese before and during the war, and also for the Filipinos once the Japanese attacked. There are many articles and films of that period which express admiration and respect for these two groups. (Korea was pretty much unknown.)
Americans were well informed about the sufferings of the Chinese at the hands of Japan and there was much indignation about it. In fact, this is a major element now largely overlooked. It was because of what we would call today human rights concerns that the United States put up economic embargos on Japan, especially for oil and petroleum products.
Indeed, a major reason for the attack on Pearl Harbor was this U.S. pressure on Tokyo. Just as the United States was nominally neutral but supported the United Kingdom against Nazi Germany, it also supported China against imperial Japan. This was noble behavior on the part of the United States. We should remember that estimates of Chinese war deaths, overwhelmingly civilian, were twenty million.
Once the war began, the United States worked hard to help and supply the Chinese Nationalist forces--many American airmen died taking supplies "over the hump" from Burma to China, and also came to work with the Communists as well. The Chinese Communist revolution after the war and the long hostility helped push these facts into oblivion.
Why is this important today? Because typically Political Correctness and the anti-Americanism so prevalent, in its urge to indict America as racist, ignores the fact that the United States was usually on the side of one “non-white” or Third World group against another. U.S. interventions in Latin America, for example, were almost always due to being asked for help by one faction against another.
While at times the United States intervened on behalf of dictatorships (Guatemala, 1953, being a prime example), it almost equally often (at least except for the brief high Cold War combat against Castro’s Cuba in the 1960s and early 1970s when Washington felt the dangerous situation necessitated backing anyone who was anti-Communist) was on the side of democratic forces. If Fidel Castro had ruled as a liberal democrat he would have had an excellent relationship with the United States.
Today American children are being taught in all too many classrooms that their country was always racist and imperialist. Even if you accept the basic framework of contemporary historical views this simply isn’t true. The United States was not “against” Asian people in 1941, for example. It supported one group of Asians against another and it was on the right side.
I remember growing up on films and books about heroic pre-World War Two Chinese peasants trying to eke out a living against flood and famine or bravely battling the Japanese (as with those who saved the American airmen from the Jimmy Doolittle raid on Tokyo) and films about brave Filipino partisans fighting side by side with American forces against great odds. There was never any distinction made on the basis of race or to portray these people as inferior. For that matter, compared to what went on in other countries (even among warring Europeans) materials about the Japanese enemy were pretty mild stuff despite Pearl Harbor.
It should equally be noted that today, and for the past half-century, the United States has not opposed or fought against “Arabs” or “Muslims” but supported one group against another. During the period between the 1950s and 1990s, those treated as enemies were radical, anti-American, and usually aligned with the USSR. Since then, they have been usually radical Islamists who want to install dictatorships even worse than the existing ones.
The United States has very little to apologize for in its history, especially compared to pretty much any other country on the face of the earth. Are we ever going to see the day when it is fashionable to be proud of America again, a pride that can easily be based on the facts?
RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth-Grade: Did Americans Think That Asians “All Looked Alike”?