Love of the Land: Myths?

Myths?

Jennifer Rubin

Contentions/Commentary

09 September 09

J Street has apparently gotten so much flack about its perpetual criticism of Israel and cheerleading for every Palestinian propaganda point that the J Street team has been forced to come up with a “Myths and Facts About J Street” crib sheet. Let me just say that if a Jewish organization has to put out a statement denying that it is anti-Israel, pro–Mary Robinson, is funded mostly by Arabs, and has defended a nuclear-armed Iran, then they might as well pack it in. Suffice it to say, you don’t see the ADL or AIPAC or any other genuinely pro-Israel group in such a defensive crouch.

Moreover, some of its “defenses” are rather, well, pathetic. Let’s take just two. On Mary Robinson, J Street says it never defended the choice of Mary Robinson for the Medal of Freedom Award. The “defense”? They were mute! Only their friends defended her. No, really:

J Street never issued a single statement related to Mary Robinson. Individuals associated with J Street’s public relations firm may have done some personal work on the issue — but that had nothing to do with J Street, just as the firm’s work for dozens of other clients is completely unrelated to J Street.

Wow, that sure settles that.

Then there is Iran. J Street denies it has defended Iran’s nuclear program. Well, they haven’t defended it. They just don’t think we should, you know, do anything about it:

As of the early fall of 2009, we are not of the opinion that the time has come for Congress to move ahead with further sanctions. We agree with those who are calling for ’strategic patience’ at this moment of unrest and uncertainty in Iranian domestic politics and continue to urge Congress to give the diplomatic and political processes currently underway more time to unfold.

I think the mullahs are the one’s calling for more and more and more time to “unfold.”

And so it goes: J Street doesn’t support U.S. negotiation with Hamas; it just thinks Hamas is too important to ignore:

Ultimately, a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will require Palestinian political reconciliation and we support efforts by third parties to achieve reconciliation and a unity government, whose officials will work within a diplomatic process to achieve an acceptable two-state solution. Further, we would not oppose a decision by the Israeli government, the United States, or other countries to find unofficial, indirect ways to engage Hamas in order to advance U.S. and Israeli interests.

Sort of easy to see how these “myths” take hold. It seems that crack team at J Street’s PR firm that defended Mary Robinson isn’t very good at its job. But then it has an impossible task—trying to convince the Jewish community that they really, deep down, support a strong and secure Jewish state.

Related: J Street Acquisitions And Mergers

Love of the Land: Myths?

Love of the Land: Despair, Indeed

Despair, Indeed

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
05 September 09

Jimmy Carter brings us his report, fresh from his Middle East visit with his fellow ”Elders,” including the Medal of Freedom prize-winning duo of Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson. Carter and crew go to the Middle East and see “despair.”

Not the despair of Jews in Israel who would like to live in peace with their neighbors and have tried repeatedly to give the Palestinians their own state. Not the despair of victims of Hamas violence or of honor killings. Not the despair of the Palestinian people who would like a government free from corruption. Not the despair of Jews who find it incomprehensible that teaching the Holocaust is considered to be a human-rights violation by Hamas. Not the despair of Israel and its neighbors who are contemplating a nuclear-armed Iran and a timid U.S. response. And certainly not the despair that Israelis must feel as a U.S. administration renounces past obligations and delights in picking a fight with its ally.

Read All at :

Love of the Land: Despair, Indeed

Love of the Land: Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Virgin boss Richard Branson play on the Holocaust to advance case against Israel

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Virgin boss Richard Branson play on the Holocaust to advance case against Israel

Richard Shepherd
Think Tank Blog
28 August 09

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Virgin boss Richard Branson play on the Holocaust to advance case against IsraelIt is a sign of the corrosiveness of the anti-Zionist agenda that even some of the most admirable and well-regarded of international luminaries feel no compunction these days about using the greatest crime against the Jewish people as a convenient weapon against the Jewish state. Holocaust inversion has now entered the mainstream. No-one, it seems, is immune from its temptations.

Enter former anti-apartheid campaigner, Nobel laureate, and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu who has used an interview with the liberal-Left Israeli newspaper Haaretz today to make some typically ill considered remarks of his own:

“The lesson that Israel must learn from the Holocaust is that it can never get security through fences, walls and guns,” he was quoted by the paper as saying. “…in South Africa, they tried to get security from the barrel of a gun. They never got it. They got security when the human rights of all were recognized and respected.”

This is crass even by Tutu’s standards when talking about Israel. But it was nothing compared to the truly disturbing comments made earlier this week by Virgin Atlantic boss and international NGO financier Richard Branson.

Asked to draw on his business and public relations skills to advise Israel on how to improve its image, he said:

“I think it’s something similar to what happened after 9/11. You know after 9/11 the world had enormous sympathy for America, and you know that sympathy was somehow lost. And obviously after the Second World War, the world had enormous sympathy for the Jewish people. Over a number of decades, that sympathy has been lost …. You’ve got a great country, but you’ve just got to hold the hands of your neighbors, and then you’ll get back on top again.”

I have remarked on a number of occasions on how submersion in the anti-Zionist agenda leads otherwise reasonable and sane individuals to say things which make them look ridiculous. But “you’ve just got to hold the hands of your neighbours, and then you’ll get back on top again.”? Don’t these people ever think about what they are saying? The mind boggles.

That aside, the first thing to note about Branson and Tutu is that it is obvious that neither of them has any idea of what they are talking about. They seek to pronounce on a matter of great complexity while demonstrating that the history and basic facts of the conflict are simply lost on them. All we are left with is the standard UN/NGO narrative in which a belligerent and colonialist Israel is juxtaposed with oppressed third-world freedom fighters struggling against all odds for justice and recognition.

Tutu in particular has form in this regard. As an attentive reader reminded me earlier today, he made some particularly vicious remarks in a commentary in the Guardian along such lines in April 2002. In an article tellingly entitled Apartheid in the Holy Land he said of the struggle against Israel:

“For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.”

Well, I’m glad that Desmond Tutu thinks we are living in a “moral universe”. And one trusts he is confident that, when confronted with the higher authority he invokes, his Faustian pact with the forces of anti-Zionist bigotry is not held against him.

As for Richard Branson, one really has to marvel at his audacity. I am not Jewish myself, but I would venture to say that “sympathy” is not quite what the Jewish people were looking for in establishing their state after the Holocaust.

Even so, if defending that state against extremism is all it has taken for all that “sympathy” to evaporate I am not convinced that it was all that deeply rooted in the first place.

Originally posted at :Love of the Land: Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Virgin boss Richard Branson play on the Holocaust to advance case against Israel