tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2270285378350712932024-02-08T09:17:42.659-08:00Warped Mirror archivesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-70589013807806353342023-03-19T12:20:00.001-07:002023-03-19T12:20:00.160-07:00Destroying Muslim heritage [updated]<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;">Destroying Muslim heritage [updated]</h1><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">March 24, 2013</span> <span class="comments-link" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-sep" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">|</span></span></div><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">There is a veritable industry out there producing an endless stream of “reports” about imaginary Israeli efforts to destroy, damage or defile Muslim sites, in particular the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. I have repeatedly written about</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> </span><a href="file:///G:/tag/al-aqsa/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">this vicious campaign</a><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">that goes back to the days of Haj Amin al Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who later gained notoriety as a Nazi collaborator. Many recent examples of this ongoing incitement have been compiled by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), and for the very latest installment, you can always turn to the website of Quds Media Center .</span></div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The manufactured outrage that usually accompanies the false reports on invented Israeli transgressions against Muslim holy places stands in stark contrast to the docile silence that has allowed Saudi authorities to transform Islam’s holiest places into glitzy luxury destinations.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">However, by now several reports highlighting the destruction of historic Islamic sites in Saudi Arabia have appeared in the media. A <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CNN</em> report includes some fascinating photos dramatically illustrating how much reckless construction has transformed the area of Islam’s holiest site.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="CNN Mecca screenshot" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1109" data-attachment-id="1109" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="CNN Mecca screenshot" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/cnn-mecca-screenshot.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/cnn-mecca-screenshot.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/cnn-mecca-screenshot.jpg" data-orig-size="539,487" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2013/03/24/destroying-muslim-heritage-updated/cnn-mecca-screenshot/" height="451" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/cnn-mecca-screenshot.jpg?w=500&h=451" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/cnn-mecca-screenshot.jpg?w=500&h=451 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/cnn-mecca-screenshot.jpg?w=150&h=136 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/cnn-mecca-screenshot.jpg?w=300&h=271 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/cnn-mecca-screenshot.jpg 539w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CNN</em> report notes:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Lavish skyscrapers now tower over devotees circling the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">Most imposing is the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, a 120-floor hotel that resembles London’s Big Ben and which, at 601 meters, is the world’s second tallest building.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">The U.S.-based Institute for Gulf Affairs estimates that 95% of Mecca’s millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Independent</em> has also published several related reports; the most recent one is headlined “The photos Saudi Arabia doesn’t want seen – and proof Islam’s most holy relics are being demolished in Mecca.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Saudi destruction 1of3" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1110" data-attachment-id="1110" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Saudi destruction 1of3" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-1of3.jpg?w=351" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-1of3.jpg?w=238" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-1of3.jpg" data-orig-size="351,443" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2013/03/24/destroying-muslim-heritage-updated/saudi-destruction-1of3/" sizes="(max-width: 351px) 100vw, 351px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-1of3.jpg?w=500" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-1of3.jpg 351w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-1of3.jpg?w=119 119w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-1of3.jpg?w=238 238w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Previous reports include a September 2011 piece on “Mecca for the rich: Islam’s holiest site ‘turning into Vegas’” and another report from last October about “Medina: Saudis take a bulldozer to Islam’s history.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Saudi destruction 2of3" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1111" data-attachment-id="1111" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Saudi destruction 2of3" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-2of3.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-2of3.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-2of3.jpg" data-orig-size="505,440" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2013/03/24/destroying-muslim-heritage-updated/saudi-destruction-2of3/" height="435" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-2of3.jpg?w=500&h=435" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-2of3.jpg?w=500&h=435 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-2of3.jpg?w=150&h=131 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-2of3.jpg?w=300&h=261 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-2of3.jpg 505w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /><img alt="Saudi destruction 3of3" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1112" data-attachment-id="1112" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Saudi destruction 3of3" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-3of3.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-3of3.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-3of3.jpg" data-orig-size="533,444" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2013/03/24/destroying-muslim-heritage-updated/saudi-destruction-3of3/" height="416" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-3of3.jpg?w=500&h=416" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-3of3.jpg?w=500&h=416 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-3of3.jpg?w=150&h=125 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-3of3.jpg?w=300&h=250 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-destruction-3of3.jpg 533w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In a related article in October 2012, <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Independent’s</em> Jerome Taylor asked “Why don’t more Muslims speak out against the wanton destruction of Mecca’s holy sites?”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s of course a good question given that the affected sites are part of Islam’s holiest places.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As Taylor pointed out:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“One area that you might think would see Muslims speaking out with one voice is the wholesale archaeological and historical destruction of Islam’s birthplace. Over the past twenty years, fuelled by their petro-dollars and intolerant Wahabi backers, the Saudi authorities have embarked on cultural vandalism of breath-taking proportions.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam, are being systematically bulldozed to make way for gleaming sky scrapers, luxury hotels and shopping malls. […] Most appallingly dozens of early Islamic sites – including those with a direct link to the Prophet himself – have been wiped off the map. The situation is so bad that the Washington based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 percent of the millennium old buildings in the two cities have been destroyed in the past twenty years.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Taylor goes on to argue that “Muslim silence on this issue isn’t just cowardly, it’s deeply hypocritical,” noting that it is of course “politically a lot more convenient to blame infidels for disrespecting your religion’s founder than it is to point the finger of blame at your own kind.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But while nothing may beat the political convenience of getting all worked up about imaginary Israeli plans to destroy Al Aqsa, it turns out that the real destruction wreaked by the Saudis includes a centuries-old column (possibly dating back to the 8th century) that was “supposed to mark the spot where Muslims believe Muhammad began his heavenly journey on a winged horse, which took him to Jerusalem and heaven in a single night.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This means of course that from the monuments associated with Muhammad’s legendary “Night Journey,” only the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem remains.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I doubt very much that any of the purveyors of the “Al-Aqsa-in-danger”-libel and similar incitement had anything to say about this. And if one hears anything from these quarters, one can expect something along the lines of a screed posted last December by Iran English Radio under the promising title “Saudi-Zionist plot to destroy cultural heritage of Muslims.” About two-thirds of the piece are devoted to summarizing western media reports about the destruction of Islamic sites in Saudi Arabia – with some added heartfelt comments like: “the Saudis are following the footsteps of the pagan Arabs in their hatred of Islam, and the Prophet’s family;” but inevitably, the last third moves on to all the usual fantasies about nefarious “Zionist” plots that justify the conclusion that “the Wahabbis and the Zionists have joined hands to destroy the cultural and religious heritage of the Islamic world.”</p><p align="center" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>* * *</b></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cross-posted from my JPost blog.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Update:</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Under the wonderful title “McMecca: The Strange Alliance of Clerics and Businessmen in Saudi Arabia,” <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Atlantic</em> has now also published a piece on the destruction of historical sites in Islam’s holiest city. Zvika Krieger notes there that “developers and retailers have found an unlikely ally in Wahhabi clerics, who consider the veneration of historical sites to be a form of idolatry, and are happy to see all them demolished.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Krieger highlights a pamphlet published by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs that was endorsed by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and distributed at the Prophet’s Mosque – where Mohammed, Abu Bakr, and the Islamic Caliph Umar ibn Al Khattab are believed to be buried – which declared: “The green dome shall be demolished and the three graves flattened in the Prophet’s Mosque.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">According to the article, examples of already destroyed sites include an “ancient house belonging to Mohammed [that] was…razed to make room for, among other developments, a public toilet facility. An ancient mosque belonging to Abu Bakr has now been replaced by an ATM machine. And the sites of Mohammed’s historic battles at Uhud and Badr have been…paved to put up a parking lot.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Krieger writes that when he questioned the head of all the hajj-related construction projects about the destruction of historical sites in Mecca, “he seemed unconcerned about their religious significance. More important to him was that the hajj was ‘a good opportunity to visit Mecca and Medina, do some shopping, make a vacation out of it.’”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It should go without saying that only Muslim vacationers are welcome in Saudi Arabia’s holy cities…</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Saudi apartheid" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1113" data-attachment-id="1113" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Saudi apartheid" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-apartheid.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-apartheid.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-apartheid.jpg" data-orig-size="673,453" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2013/03/24/destroying-muslim-heritage-updated/saudi-apartheid/" height="336" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-apartheid.jpg?w=500&h=336" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-apartheid.jpg?w=500&h=336 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-apartheid.jpg?w=150&h=101 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-apartheid.jpg?w=300&h=202 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/saudi-apartheid.jpg 673w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" />[Screenshot]</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-66740893543856634922023-03-18T17:00:00.001-07:002023-03-18T17:00:00.156-07:00The UN and HRW’s list of shame<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;">The UN and HRW’s list of shame</h1><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">June 5, 2015</span><span class="comments-link" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Last week, I wrote at my <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">JPost</em> blog about efforts at the UN to blacklist the IDF – together with savage terror groups like the Islamic State – as an entity that regularly harms children. The post is reproduced below, but since Human Rights Watch (HRW) is now so energetically pushing for Israel’s inclusion in this “list of shame,” I felt it is worthwhile to add this update as a reminder of the organization’s shameful bias against Israel.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">HRW’s persistent negative focus on Israel is well documented, and I have written about the organization’s <a href="file:///G:/2013/01/03/human-rights-watch-war-crimes-for-dummies-updated/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">double standards</a> and the animosity against Israel that is openly displayed by HRW executive director Ken Roth. As I have noted in my previous posts, HRW always stands ready to condemn Israel as soon as the Israeli army moves to defend the country’s citizens against the attacks of terror groups. HRW would perhaps claim that its latest effort is even-handed, since it apparently also recommended the inclusion of Hamas in the UN’s blacklist. But this of course means that HRW sees no difference between Israel and Hamas when it comes to harming children.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet, HRW’s own examples of how Hamas has harmed children explain why Palestinian children are sometimes inadvertently harmed by the IDF. According to HRW, “Palestinian armed groups” are guilty of</p><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em 2.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“The repeated launching of rockets from densely populated areas in Gaza, placing children and other civilians living there at risk of retaliatory attacks; and</li><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The use of at least three empty schools in Gaza to store weapons, two of which may have been used for launching rockets or mortars.”</li></ul><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">One should not overlook that HRW describes Israeli attacks on rocket launching sites as “retaliatory attacks” – which is of course just another not so subtle attempt to delegitimize Israel’s right to defend its citizens.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Among the Palestinian violations that HRW prefers not to mention is the longstanding training and recruitment of <a href="file:///G:/2013/03/16/the-child-soldiers-of-palestine/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">child soldiers</a>. And of course HRW also prefers to ignore the fact that Palestinians have repeatedly celebrated terror attacks that killed Israeli teens.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is also revealing to see who gets blamed by HRW for strikes that result in civilian deaths when Israel is not involved. Here is one telling example from a recent media report on the war in Yemen [my emphasis]:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“On March 31, Human Rights Watch said a diary factory in the western port city of Hodeida came under attack by Saudi airstrikes, killing 31 workers. <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The rights group blamed Houthis forces for putting civilians at risk, saying that the factory is about 100 metres from a military airbase controlled by Houthis</span>.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Finally, it should be noted that two international law experts have recently stated that after examining Israel’s targeting methods and its application of the law of armed conflict (LOAC),</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“we concluded that IDF positions on targeting law largely track those of the United States military. Moreover, even when they differ, the Israeli approach remains within the ambit of generally acceptable State practice. […] While there are certainly Israeli legal positions that may be contentious, we found that their approach to targeting is consistent with the law and, in many cases, worthy of emulation.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How low can the UN sink?</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The United Nations (UN) has a long and sordid record of singling out the world’s only Jewish state for hypocritical censure and condemnation. Most recently, Israel was the only country to be condemned as “a violator of health rights;” unsurprisingly, the supporting “evidence” included antisemitic claims by the Syrian regime, which accused Israel of “continu[ing] to experiment on Syrian and Arab prisoners with medicines and drugs and to inject them with pathogenic viruses.” That is of course the same regime that mercilessly bombs and kills its own population, while Israel has so far treated some 1600 injured Syrians.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But the UN’s next move against Israel is already being planned: according to a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Y-Net</em> report, the “UN secretary-general’s envoy for Children and Armed Conflict recommended this week to include the IDF on a blacklist of countries and organizations accused of regularly causing harm to children. The blacklist includes terror organizations like al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Islamic State, and Taliban, as well as African countries such as the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and others.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As the report notes, the UN is “facing heavy pressure from the Palestinians, their supporters and human rights organizations to include the Israeli army on the list.” However, few people know that this kind of “pressure” is in part generated by the UN itself, which sustains “a whole network of anti-Israel institutions ” that were built up in the wake of the infamous “Zionism is Racism”-resolution of 1975. Even though the resolution was repealed in 1991, this “network of extremely well-funded UN structures and offices” continues to exist to this day.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Needless to say, those who love the Nazi-slogan “Die Juden sind unser Unglück” in its 21st-century version “The Jewish State is our misfortune” are excited about the prospect to have the IDF equated with terror organizations like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) – and as was only to be expected, Max Blumenthal tweeted the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Y-Net</em> report adding the hashtag JSIL, which he popularized to associate Israel with the terror group Islamic State (once known as ISIL, i.e. Islamic State in the Levant) as “Jewish State in the Levant” (JSIL).</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="MB on UN blacklisting IDF" class="size-large wp-image-1410 aligncenter" data-attachment-id="1410" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="MB on UN blacklisting IDF" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/mb-on-un-blacklisting-idf.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/mb-on-un-blacklisting-idf.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/mb-on-un-blacklisting-idf.jpg" data-orig-size="960,720" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2015/06/05/the-un-and-hrws-list-of-shame/mb-on-un-blacklisting-idf/" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/mb-on-un-blacklisting-idf.jpg?w=500&h=375" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/mb-on-un-blacklisting-idf.jpg?w=500&h=375 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/mb-on-un-blacklisting-idf.jpg?w=150&h=113 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/mb-on-un-blacklisting-idf.jpg?w=300&h=225 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/mb-on-un-blacklisting-idf.jpg?w=768&h=576 768w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/mb-on-un-blacklisting-idf.jpg 960w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If the UN will once again please Jew-haters everywhere with yet another bigoted condemnation that puts the IDF on the same level as savage terror groups like IS remains to be seen. But in the unlikely case that the UN actually cares about the welfare of Palestinian children, Leila Zerrougui, the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, could highlight the longstanding <a href="file:///G:/2013/03/16/the-child-soldiers-of-palestine/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">abuse of Palestinian children</a> as child-soldiers – indeed, campaigning against this kind of child abuse is supposedly an important part of her work. While all Palestinian factions have used children to fight, nowadays mostly Hamas and other Gaza terror groups openly boast of providing military training to children; one of the most recent examples is a “graduation ceremony” in a Gaza kindergarten.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Gaza kindergarten terror show" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1411" data-attachment-id="1411" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Gaza kindergarten terror show" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/gaza-kindergarten-terror-show.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/gaza-kindergarten-terror-show.jpg?w=280" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/gaza-kindergarten-terror-show.jpg" data-orig-size="637,683" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2015/06/05/the-un-and-hrws-list-of-shame/gaza-kindergarten-terror-show/" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/gaza-kindergarten-terror-show.jpg?w=500" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/gaza-kindergarten-terror-show.jpg?w=500 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/gaza-kindergarten-terror-show.jpg?w=140 140w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/gaza-kindergarten-terror-show.jpg?w=280 280w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/gaza-kindergarten-terror-show.jpg 637w" style="height: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In addition, the UN might note the fact that Hamas employed children to dig its extensive tunnel network – which they hoped to use to kill Israelis, including children – and that at least 160 children died working on the tunnels.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And perhaps the UN’s Special Representative Leila Zerrougui could take note of regular TV programs that indoctrinate kids to hate and “shoot the Jews” – ‘all of them’? Perhaps it would also be appropriate to address the very high percentage of forced underage marriages in Gaza? Or the heartbreaking mistreatment of children with disabilities that seems quite common in Palestinian society?</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But perhaps the UN will somehow find it more appealing to demonize the IDF that has to fight an enemy that openly celebrates the killing of Israeli children – for Hamas, they are just “prey” to be killed and hidden ‘under the rock.’</p><div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled" id="jp-post-flair" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon sd-sharing" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><h3 class="sd-title" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-style: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.025em; margin: 0px 0px 0.425em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">SHARE THIS:</h3></div></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-23036389794821425852023-03-17T12:16:00.001-07:002023-03-17T12:16:00.151-07:00Global March to Jerusalem: denying Jewish rights and history<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></h1><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">March 17, 2012</span><span class="comments-link" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Last week, a panel devoted to the question of Jerusalem’s importance to Muslims highlighted a few politically incorrect truths: from the days of Islam’s founder Muhammad, Muslims have been “raising or lowering Jerusalem’s importance in accordance with [their] political concerns.” As a matter of fact, the city that has been holy to Jews for millennia is not mentioned even once in the Koran.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But while Muhammad decided to downgrade Jerusalem’s importance for the followers of his newly established faith when his hopes to be accepted as a prophet by the Jews of what is now Saudi Arabia proved futile, Ayatollah Khomeini concluded that the chances to export his “Islamic revolution” beyond Iran would greatly benefit from efforts to rally all Muslims – whether Shiites or Sunnis – around the city that the re-established Jewish state had re-united in 1967. Khomeini lost no time, and in August 1979, shortly after taking power, he called on “Muslims all over the globe to consecrate the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan as Al-Quds Day and to proclaim the international solidarity of Muslims in support of the legitimate rights of the Muslim people of Palestine.” Khomeini also expressed his hopes “for the victory of the Muslims over the infidels.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some ten years later, during the First Intifada in January 1988, the Jerusalem Committee of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference found it useful to follow suit and decided that “Quds Day” should be commemorated in public events throughout the Arab world.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By now, many in the Western media have dutifully taken to describing Jerusalem as Islam’s “third holiest city” – while mentioning Jerusalem’s status in Judaism and Christianity is somehow less popular…</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To take matters a bit further, there are now efforts to popularize the rather ridiculous concept of the “Judaization” of Jerusalem. A recent conference on Jerusalem in Qatar ended with a (not entirely coherent) declaration that invokes this notion repeatedly.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet another effort to protest the “Judaization” of Judaism’s millenia-old spiritual capital is being planned for the end of this month, when activists hope to mobilize one million people to set out from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt to storm Israel’s borders and march on to Jerusalem. Thanks to a great initiative by Cif Watch, all the relevant information about this planned “Global March to Jerusalem” (GMJ) is available on a special website.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The most recent post on the site’s blog provides a good idea about the people behind the planned march: as explained there, the official GMJ website has sided with Gaza’s terrorists by issuing a condemnation of what it termed “criminal Israeli assassinations of Gaza civilians.” Referring to the recent events in Gaza, the GMJ website declared:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"> “We, the Global March to Jerusalem, condemn the Zionist campaign of killing Palestinian citizens and imprisoning the Palestinians of Gaza in an open-air prison, just as we condemn the continued occupation of Palestinian land and the intentional destruction and Judaisation of Jerusalem, as well as all of historic Palestine.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Another recent post provides a comprehensive background paper originally published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. In addition to lots of interesting information on the already mentioned Qatar conference on Jerusalem and other relevant issues, you can find there gems like this declaration by the European Preparatory Committee for the Global March to Jerusalem:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“We say no to Zionism; and to an exclusive Jewish colonial state, which reacts to the legitimate struggle of the indigenous Palestinian people with the expansion of its Apartheid rule.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It may sound like a lot of pathetic sloganeering, but the intent of the people who put so much energy into organizing this “Global March to Jerusalem” is clear enough: to “de-Judaize” Jerusalem and the Jewish state. And yes, we live in a time when such an odious idea attracts a lot of enthusiastic support – and very little official condemnation.</p><p align="center" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cross-posted from my JPost blog.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Addendum:</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Here’s a great clip of an <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> interview where Professor Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University gets accused of rewriting the Koran because he points out to the interviewer that Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran.</p><span class="embed-youtube" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><iframe allowfullscreen="true" class="youtube-player" height="282" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VHpMhAzj-Tk?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="500"></iframe></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-3671552883663321912023-03-16T12:06:00.001-07:002023-03-16T12:06:00.145-07:00Expect a long ‘Arab Winter’ of discontent<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span><span style="color: #888888; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">November 22, 2011</span><span style="color: #888888; font-size: 12px;"> </span></h1><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ever since the unexpected development of the optimistically misnamed “Arab Spring”, it has become fashionable to insist that it would be foolish to try to predict how the events that shook the Middle East over the past year would pan out.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In today’s <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ha’aretz</em>, the always insightful Moshe Arens defies the councils of caution (and political correctness) and confidently states that while the “toppling of the Arab dictators was inevitable […] just as inevitable is what is going to follow their overthrow. It looks like it is going to be [a] long Arab Winter.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As Arens’s analysis suggests, it will be a long winter of discontent because the Islamist groups that are now gaining power in the region will merely “replace secular dictatorships with Islamic ones” and the “deeply rooted shortcomings” that the UN’s Arab Human Development reports first diagnosed almost 10 years ago will continue to hamper meaningful progress in the Arab world.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Back in 2002, the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Economist</em> headlined its commentary on the UN’s first report on the Arab world with the brutally honest verdict “Self-doomed to failure.” Emphasizing the conclusion of the UN report, the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Economist</em> noted:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> “The barrier to better Arab performance is not a lack of resources […] but the lamentable shortage of three essentials: freedom, knowledge and womanpower. Not having enough of these amounts to what the authors call the region’s three ‘deficits’. It is these deficits, they argue, that hold the frustrated Arabs back from reaching their potential—and allow the rest of the world both to despise and to fear a deadly combination of wealth and backwardness.”</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Does anyone really believe that Islamist regimes will work hard to increase “freedom, knowledge and womanpower”?</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We now get to hear a lot about how wonderfully “moderate” most of the Islamists vying for power really are, and we are told all the time that Arab Islamists will follow the “Turkish model”.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But let’s not have too many illusions about what following the “Turkish model” would mean for freedom: Turkey is currently the world’s number one when it comes to imprisoning journalists, and for years, its Islamist government has been prosecuting hundreds of Turkish citizens who, on the basis of flimsy and fabricated evidence, are accused of anti-regime conspiracies.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Arguably, the pundits who wax lyrically about the “Turkish model” don’t realize that there is a solid case for concluding that Turkish Islamists are following the “Arab model.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Consider this recent piece by Egyptian-born André Aciman, who wrote in <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The New York Times</em>:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Rather than see things for what they are, Egyptians, from their leaders on down, have always preferred the blame game — and with good reason. Blaming some insidious clandestine villain for anything invariably works in a country where hearsay passes for truth and paranoia for knowledge.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes those hidden hands are called Langley [i.e. the CIA], or the West, or, all else failing, of course, the Mossad. […]</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">False rumor, which is the opiate of the Egyptian masses and the bread and butter of political discourse in the Arab world, trumps clarity, reason and the will to tolerate a different opinion, let alone a different religion or the spirit of open discourse.”</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nothing that has happened since the media cheered the “Arab spring” suggests that forces able to tackle the Arab world’s deficits in “freedom, knowledge and womanpower” are being empowered.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And here is a thought: a genuine Arab spring will perhaps only be possible when Arabs are willing to look honestly at their societies and their history and acknowledge that, instead of blaming Israel for whatever is wrong with the region, they would be much better off accepting and emulating the Jewish state.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-69926184309528785242023-03-15T12:04:00.001-07:002023-03-15T12:04:00.153-07:00Dying for an imaginary right of return<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;">Dying for an imaginary right of return</h1><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">March 19, 2014</span> <span class="comments-link" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-sep" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">|</span></span></div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Picking up on a report by the Palestinian news agency <i>Ma’an</i>, blogger <i>Elder of Ziyon</i> recently found out that a Palestinian official used a meeting with diplomats to spread what can only be called a blood libel.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">According to the <i>Ma’an</i> report, Fatah central committee member Mohammad Ishtayyeh said in a meeting with diplomats organized by the German Heinrich Böll Foundation in Ramallah “that the Palestinian Authority had attempted to negotiate the return of Palestinian refugees from Syria, but Israel had refused […] to allow them to come to the Palestinian territories.” The report noted that some “1,500 Palestinians have been killed in the ongoing Syria conflict, and around 250,000 Palestinian refugees have been forced to leave their homes in Syria due to violence in the country.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But as <i>Elder of Ziyon</i> shows by quoting an <i>AP</i> report from January 10, 2013, Israel had “agreed to the return of those refugees to Gaza and the West Bank, but on condition that each refugee … sign a statement that he doesn’t have the right of return (to Israel).”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">According to the <i>AP</i> report, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejected this offer mediated by UN chief Ban Ki-moon, telling a group of Egyptian journalists in Cairo:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“So we rejected that and said it’s better they die in Syria than give up their right of return.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">With this callous statement Abbas demonstrated the hollowness and duplicity of Palestinian politics on several issues.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A report from this past January, entitled “Abbas hardens his stance on Palestinian ‘right of return,’” quotes Abbas stating in a recent speech:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Let me put it simply: the right of return is a personal decision. What does this mean? That neither the PA, nor the state, nor the PLO, nor Abu-Mazen [Abbas], nor any Palestinian or Arab leader has the right to deprive someone from his right to return.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If this was truly his position, Abbas would obviously also have no right to decide that Palestinians in Syria should remain in a dangerous war zone without even being asked if they wanted to give up their imaginary “right of return” to Israeli towns and villages they had never seen in order to find some safety in Gaza or the West Bank.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Quite unintentionally, Abbas also illustrated once more – and in multiple ways – how utterly ridiculous the Palestinian concept of a “right of return” really is. In early December 2012, a year before Abbas denied Palestinians in Syria the chance to find refuge in Gaza or the West Bank, he “returned to a triumphant homecoming in Ramallah after winning a resounding endorsement for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly.” He told the cheering crowd:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“We now have a state… the world has said loudly ‘yes’ to the state of Palestine.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Palestinians like to pose as a state at the UN (and on Twitter), they have countless embassies around the world, and the Arab League considers Palestine a member state. Yet, there are Palestinian “refugee” camps in the West Bank and Gaza, populated by residents who consider themselves “refugees” even though they and their parents were born in the territories that 138 UN member states supposedly recognize as the “State of Palestine.” They are “refugees” because, once upon a time, their grandparents lived in a place that is a few kilometers away from the place they live now, and it doesn’t matter that both places are supposedly in “historic Palestine.” As Abbas demonstrated once again by declaring that “it’s better” if Palestinians “die in Syria” than if they seek safety in the “State of Palestine” and give up the fantasy of “returning” to Israel, the so-called Palestinian cause is about one thing, and one thing only: trying to achieve what the Arab armies failed to accomplish in 1948 when they attempted to destroy the fledging Jewish state.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is also the cause pushed so energetically by so-called “pro-Palestinian” activists – and they are as cynically open about it as Abbas: with their annual “Israel Apartheid Week” farce winding down, the <i>Electronic Intifada</i> published a post devoted to “Visualizing the discrimination faced by Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.” Yes, it turns out, there is real apartheid in Lebanon, and activists know it very well.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"> <img alt="Lebanon apartheid" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-1243" data-attachment-id="1243" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Lebanon apartheid" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/lebanon-apartheid.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/lebanon-apartheid.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/lebanon-apartheid.jpg" data-orig-size="960,720" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2014/03/19/dying-for-an-imaginary-right-of-return/lebanon-apartheid/" height="375" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/lebanon-apartheid.jpg?w=500&h=375" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/lebanon-apartheid.jpg?w=500&h=375 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/lebanon-apartheid.jpg?w=150&h=113 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/lebanon-apartheid.jpg?w=300&h=225 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/lebanon-apartheid.jpg?w=768&h=576 768w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/lebanon-apartheid.jpg 960w" style="height: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The text accompanying the graphics laments:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“After more than six decades of forced displacement, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon find themselves largely excluded from the formal labor market. As a result of discriminatory laws and biased attitudes, most Palestinians face precarious working conditions and economic hardship.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">In Lebanon nowadays, when asked why they are paid less, many refugees can only reply ‘because I’m Palestinian.’ Why are you banned from practicing more than 70 professions? Why can’t you travel? Why can’t you own property? Why were you arrested at every security checkpoint? Why won’t Lebanese hospitals treat you?</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">The answer is always the same: ‘because I am Palestinian.’”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But no prize for guessing who’s to blame, and what’s the solution:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“In the last 66 years of forced displacement caused by the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon today survive but are deprived of the freedom to really live. […]</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">The most important question inside the Palestinian refugee camps is one which also has only one answer: what do you want?</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">The answer rings out: to return to Palestine and live in dignity.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And needless to point out, to “return to Palestine” means to “return” to the part of “Palestine” that was “occupied” by Israel 66 years ago…</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Whether it’s the Palestinian president or “Palestine Solidarity” activists in America, they don’t hide in any way what their “cause” is all about, and yet, hardly anyone notices that it’s not about the settlements. The world continues to pretend that it’s Israel’s responsibility that the Palestinians don’t have a state, while the Palestinians keep saying very clearly that they don’t want a state if that means accepting Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.</p><p align="center" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>* * *</b></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cross-posted from my <i>JPost</i> blog.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-65098150984306139212023-03-14T12:03:00.003-07:002023-03-14T12:03:40.475-07:00Imagine how bad the news would be without Obama [Updated]<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title">Imagine how bad the news would be without Obama [Updated]</h1><div class="entry-meta"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date">October 1, 2012</span> <span class="comments-link"><span class="meta-sep">|</span></span></div><div class="entry-content"><p>In a devastating commentary on the end of the US troop surge in Afghanistan, Walter Russell Mead noted sarcastically:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">“We should all be very glad that we have a Democratic president right now; otherwise the news would be terrible. We would be seeing a rash of horrible and depressing stories in the newspapers about strategic failure […]</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">There would be continuous coverage of the disarray in Afghanistan: the soldier’s we’re training are shooting us, the corruption is intensifying, and the opium trade spreading. There would be story after story about how Afghanistan seems little changed after the surge, and how peace is still not at hand. These stories wouldn’t be on the back pages; they’d be perceived as major news with profound implications for America’s global position […]</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">There would be bitter, wounding comparisons between the president and LBJ in Vietnam. If we had a conservative Republican president right now, we’d be hearing him compared to the noble Duke of York, who marched 10,000 men to the top of the hill only to march them down again.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">And we’d be hearing all kinds of damning stories about the failure of the U.S. government to deal with the chaos in Pakistan.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">We’d also be reading stories linking the apparent U.S. failure in Afghanistan to the empowerment of anti-American movements throughout the Middle East. The recent riots would be used as a stick to beat the president with—his weakness, indecision and strategic inconsequentialism in Afghanistan would be endangering our interests all over the region. Instead of concentrating on the real terror threat, the press would tell us, this hypothetical clueless Republican president wasted time, treasure and attention on a failed strategy in Afghanistan. The press would try to hang the corpse of the U.S. ambassador in Libya around the neck of a Republican president, if we had one right now.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">But thankfully we have a Democratic president, and in an election year the normally feisty American media—the same media that worked night and day to expose every flaw and contradiction in the Bush policies in the region (and they had plenty to expose)—is too busy reporting the flaws in the Romney campaign […] to pay attention to anything as insignificant as a comprehensively failed presidential strategy in a foreign war.”</p><p>This is not the first time that Mead has criticized the media, and I’ve quoted him repeatedly (<a href="file:///G:/2012/08/27/wrong-about-israel-and-much-else/">see e.g. here</a>) because in my view, his voice is particularly important in the fiercely partisan debate about media bias. As Mead himself notes in a new essay on the public’s growing distrust of the mainstream media (MSM), complaints about media bias are usually associated with the political right – and therefore shrugged off by the liberal media elites. Since Mead has a well-deserved reputation as a brilliant analyst whose focus on substance largely ignores partisan politics, his criticism of the media is all the more noteworthy.</p><p>In his most recent essay on this subject, Mead suggests that we might begin to see the “MSM Tipping Point On Obama in the Middle East.” He argues that the recent “anti-American riots that have been rocking the Muslim world since 9/11 [2012] have shaken the [media] establishment out of its complacency” and that there is now a growing realization that “[the] turbulence in the region is impossible to miss, the problems for American interests and even security are disturbing to contemplate, and the failures of the Obama administration can no longer be ignored.”</p><p>However, the fact that the failures of the Obama administration’s Middle East policies have been ignored by the MSM for so long has some important implications.</p><p>Perhaps most obviously, there are a number of analysts who can rightfully say “told you so.” If I could name just one of those analysts, it would be Barry Rubin – and I think everyone who has followed his prolific and knowledgeable commentary over the past few years would agree that his readers knew long ago what the MSM seem to discover only now.</p><p>But of course, for the past few years of the Obama administration, it was “right-wing” or “neo-con” to find fault with US Middle East policies. This kind of labeling – practiced enthusiastically both by the left and the right – is of course an easy way to dismiss an argument by saying essentially: you have your world view and I have mine, and yours is wrong.</p><p>What is completely ignored is the question if the rejected view is based on facts and logical reasoning. This is perhaps hardly surprising since we live in a time when almost all certainties have been shattered and postmodernism has made it fashionable to assert that there is no such thing as “facts,” let alone “truth”.</p><p>I have to admit that I was delighted to find out that it is apparently not as old-fashioned as I had feared to ponder what all this means for the politics of our times: just last fall, the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College organized a conference devoted to exploring the challenges of “Truthtelling: Democracy in an Age Without Facts.” While I feel quite ambivalent about Arendt and have some reservations about the introductory lecture for this conference, I think there is one observation that deserves to be cherry-picked:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">“We face today a crisis of fact. Facts […] are all around us being reduced to opinions; and opinions masquerade as facts. As fact and opinion blur together, the very idea of factual truth falls away. And increasingly the belief in and aspiration for factual truth is being expunged from political argument.”</p><p>But it’s actually not just about facts, but also facts in their relevant context. One excellent example is the attempt of Justin Martin, a journalism professor blogging at the prestigious <em>Columbia Journalism Review</em>, to use published data about the number of journalists jailed in various countries to calculate the completely meaningless ratio of how many journalists per capita are jailed in any given country. You can easily see where this gets us: Naturally, tiny Israel swarming with journalists needs to arrest only one journalist to get a bad ranking, while a big and populous country like China with relatively few journalists can round up quite a few and still look pretty good.</p><p>As Sohrab Ahmari rightly noted in a critical commentary:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">“The ultimate impact of pieces like Mr. Martin’s is a softening of the reading public’s moral intuitions and sensitivities. By placing Israel on the same plane as the likes of Iran and Syria, Mr. Martin minimized the threats faced by journalists working under genuine authoritarianisms—not to mention the broader human rights catastrophes underway in these societies.”</p><p>Tellingly, in his response, Justin Martin notes right at the outset:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">“Some issues in journalism fire up audiences more than others […] Globally, it is reporting on the Middle East, particularly Israel/Palestine matters, that draws ire, fulsome praise, or ad hominem molotovs.”</p><p>Of course, this obsession with “Israel/Palestine matters” has to a considerable degree been created by the media, not least because in the wake of 9/11, it has become particularly popular to view Israel as the root cause for the Middle East’s problems: after all, agreeing with long-held Arab and Muslim “narratives” that depict the tiny Jewish state as the region’s biggest problem is a fabulously convenient way to follow the “politically correct” imperative to avoid a “clash of civilizations.”</p><p>But as Walter Russell Mead observes in a just published must-read essay entitled “Dispatches From The War That Nobody Wants:”</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">“We may be tired of the war on terror, but the terrorists aren’t tired of waging war on us. Far from it. They are just warming up.”</p><p>This is bad news for everyone – but for Israelis, it’s not really news. However, thanks to the MSM, this will be really bad news for a lot of people.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Cross-posted from my JPost blog.</p><p> </p><p><strong><span style="text-decoration-line: underline;">UPDATE:</span></strong></p><p>Walter Russell Mead has done it again: In yet another new must-read essay under the title “Thank God W Isn’t President Anymore,” Mead pokes more fun at the media, but also offers some very serious and important observations.</p><p>As a teaser, here’s one highlight from the fun part, fantasizing what we would get to read if Bush was still president:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">“There would be no end to the woes and the recriminations. There would be the most moving and eloquent examples of hand wringing in the <em>New York Review of Books</em>, elegantly demonstrating that the cretinous assumptions and moral failings that led Bush into his failed Afghan policy weren’t his alone, but reflected broader, deeper failings in America itself. One is almost sorry for the sake of the authors of these diatribes that Bush is gone; the failure of our Afghan strategy is so sweeping, so unavoidable, that it would be the best possible backdrop against which to paint a stirring portrait of a failed president misleading a flawed people. What works of polemical literature have been lost, what inspired jeremiads will never be penned, what scalding portraits of America’s inherent flaws will never see the light of day because W left the White House too soon.”</p><p>In the serious parts of the essay, Mead points out that there “may not be any real answers to America’s conundrums in Afghanistan;” as another example of a problem that might not have a solution, Mead mentions the “Israel-Palestine problem.”</p><p>Taking the media to task once again, he argues:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">“The implicit assumptions in the press that anything less than a flawless performance in war is <em>prima facie</em> evidence of bumbling incompetence merely reflects the cluelessness and arrogance of a pseudo-educated elite that thinks textbooks on theory and lessons in political correctness plus good SAT scores amount to a grounding in the real business of life.”</p><p>But Mead emphasizes that he is of course not advocating that the media should treat Obama as it treated Bush:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">“There is a happy medium between clueless cheer leading and attempts to destroy: it is called responsible analysis [and] we could use a lot more of it. A press that neither waves pom-poms nor throws stink bombs non-stop is an important component of healthy democratic society; there are plenty of excellent reporters out there who want to do exactly that. May their tribe prosper and their numbers increase.”</p><p> </p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-14730650544796778002023-02-23T06:29:00.001-08:002023-02-23T06:29:00.160-08:00Yafa Yarkoni and the songs of Israel<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-style: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></h1><div class="entry-meta" style="border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">January 2, 2012</span> </div><div class="entry-content" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When Yafa Yarkoni passed away this Sunday, a eulogy posted at <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ha’aretz</em> noted that the legendary singer “was known as the singer of Israel’s wars, [who] entertained Israeli troops beginning in 1948 and was one of Israel’s most acclaimed artists.” The <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jerusalem Post’s</em> eulogy noted, however, that Yafa Yarkoni “detested” being described as “the singer of the wars.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Given the fact that Yarkoni’s career spanned well over half a century, it is easy to see that she had good reason for rejecting this description with its narrow focus on just a few of her songs. Moreover, it would be wrong to imagine that her “war songs” were the type of songs usually associated with martial music.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Among Yarkoni’s famous songs is Bab el Wad, and when (<a href="file:///G:/2012/01/01/quote-of-the-day-8/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">ex-blogger</a>) Yaacov Lozowick recommended it yesterday in a tweet as “perhaps her single most important song,” I thought this was finally my chance to mention Yaacov’s wonderful series on Hebrew songs. In the first post of this series, Yaacov wrote:</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Songs – or are they poems? – are an extremely important part of Israeli history and culture. There is an ever-growing canon of songs, called Shirim Ivri’im (simply: Hebrew songs), without which one cannot understand how Israelis tick. Since the songs Israelis sing are so crucial, it has long been clear to me one way to tell the evolving story of Israel would be by following these shirim.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The series also includes one post on Bab el Wad, the song Yaacov recommended yesterday. Introducing this song, Yaacov wrote:</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Many shirim ivri’im deal with bereavement. The mother of them all is Bab elWad. Bab elWad is the Arab name for the narrow pass when the road to Jerusalem first enters the Judean Hills on its way up from the coast: a perfect place to block traffic, if you’re of that mind. Which is precisely what the Palestinians decided to do in the early months of 1948, as the British control of Mandatory Palestine was winding down: bring the Jewish majority in Jerusalem to starvation. I suppose the assumption was that they’d then pick up and leave or something like that. Today this would be a major breach of international law and all that, but in 1948 it wasn’t anything special. The British allowed it to happen, but the [Jewish Defense Force] Hagana didn’t. Eventually a second road was paved, and then the Palestinians villages were conquered and the threat removed, but for a while in early 1948 100,000 Jewish civilians in Jerusalem were supplied by occasional convoys which managed to shoot their way through the pass. Remnants of the vehicles which didn’t make it are still scattered along the roadside to remind us not to take things for granted.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The translation of this and other songs can be found here; below the clip Yaacov linked to; and, last but not least, a quote from a just published tribute in <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ha’aretz</em>:</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Lyricist Avi Koren, a close friend of the singer’s for 45 years, recalled yesterday that Yarkoni, an Israel Prize laureate, once said to him: “Look how I am fooling the entire world – after all, I have no voice.” “She may not have had a voice, but she was the voice of the country. My mother listened to Yaffa Yarkoni; my grandson listens to Yaffa Yarkoni; and she accompanied us, the members of my generation, all our lives.”</span></p><div><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-85497164030802113572023-02-22T06:21:00.001-08:002023-02-22T06:21:00.146-08:00 The lowest common denominator<p> </p><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">January 19, 2012</span> </div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In a long essay in <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tablet</em> magazine, Adam Kirsch argues that “Israel Lobby”-authors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt may have “failed in their stated goal of disrupting America’s close alliance with Israel,” but that it seems “they are winning the war, on the most important battleground of all: that of ideas and language.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kirsch highlights many of the developments that I’ve addressed in several posts about the mainstreaming of antisemitism, most recently in “When the mainstream left embraces the rhetoric of the far right.” But I think Kirsch makes a very noteworthy point when he reminds his readers that the “Israel Lobby” – which was after all authored by two professors from highly regarded US universities – was widely and harshly criticized by reviewers:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To look back on <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Israel Lobby</em>’s reception today is to see a remarkable unanimity of rejection, from the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">New York Times</em> (“mostly wrong … dangerously misleading”) and <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Foreign Affairs</em> (“written in haste, the book will be repented at leisure”) to <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Nation</em> (“serious methodological deficiencies … a mess”). There was also a general recognition that in their insinuations about secret Jewish power, Mearsheimer and Walt—professors at the University of Chicago and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, respectively—had given a respectable imprimatur to old and sinister anti-Semitic tropes.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">That is worth emphasizing: a book that was widely seen as a professional failure and embarrassment succeeded in shaping the political discourse. As Kirsch puts it:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So the floodgates were opened: What we have witnessed in the five years since [the publication of the “Israel Lobby’] is a blithe recuperation of dangerous, vicious imagery and ideas, with no apparent compunction about their origins or consequences. In 2010, Tablet’s Lee Smith <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">investigated</span> the way certain bloggers—including Walt himself—amassed large anti-Semitic readerships through their conspiratorial denunciations of Israel and the Israel Lobby. Quoting the comments sections of such blogs, Smith found them rife with unbridled anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The piece by Lee Smith that Kirsch links to is also worth (re-)reading. Under the title “Mainstreaming Hate”, Smith explores how the Internet can be used to facilitate the spread of antisemitism, arguing:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If not quite as popular as adult-content sites, the anti-Israel blogosphere is a dirty little thrill that major U.S. media outfits have mainstreamed for the masses, the intellectual equivalent of the topless “Page Three” girls that British tabloids use to boost circulation.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This comparison is arguably vindicated by the comment threads that usually follow posts channeling the “Israel Lobby”-spirit.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-27214163406666083492023-02-21T06:16:00.001-08:002023-02-21T06:16:00.151-08:00The progressive quest for comparative consolations<p><br /></p><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">January 30, 2012</span> </div><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">The folks who expected that the “Arab Spring” would lead to a Tweeples-government in Egypt are understandably disappointed by the landslide victory of the Muslim Brothers and the Salafists.</span></div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But progressives were quick to find a formula that offers comparative consolation: the basic recipe is to simply claim that Egypt’s Islamists are really no worse – and maybe even better!!! – than disagreeable political figures or forces in your own country.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Following this recipe, Lisa Goldman, writing for the Israeli left-wing blog +972, claims:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">citizens of the democratic state of Israel […] freely elected, as the largest faction in its governing coalition after the Likud, the quasi-fascist Yisrael Beitenu party. […] In our Knesset, we also have Kahanists and a large contingent from Shas, which is quite similar to the [Salafist] Nour party.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Unsurprisingly, Goldman’s comment was promptly quoted by <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Arabist</em>, where Issandr El Amrani added that “Israelis might mind their own business about Egypt and other post-uprising countries” because “they won’t be doing much business with them at all for some time to come.” Since the post was entitled “Israel and the new Egypt”, I can’t resist the temptation to take Amrani’s comment as a validation of the point I made when I wrote some two months ago that it would be the “Same old story in the new Middle East” because “when it comes to anti-Western and ‘anti-Zionist’ sentiments, the new rulers of the Middle East will be at least as eager as their predecessors to put them to demagogic use.” And as Amrani’s comment illustrates, even supposed Arab liberals seem happy to hold on to the “anti-Zionism” that provided Arab dictators for decades with a useful tool to distract the masses.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But naturally, Goldman was very pleased to be quoted by <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Arabist</em>, and tweeted:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">arabist</span></span> linked to my +972 piece, ‘Egypt’s election results are none of Israel’s business.’ I can die happy now. <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://tinyurl.com/6u58lzs</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Another example of the quest for comparative consolations was provided by “Informed Comment” blogger and Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, Juan Cole. Under the promising headline “South Carolina & Gingrich, Egypt & the Muslim Brotherhood,” Cole argued that the media unfairly emphasized the religious motivations of Egyptian voters, while downplaying similar sentiments when it came to American voters [emphasis Cole’s]:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The result of this difference in approach is that it is implicitly deemed illegitimate for Egyptians to be religious or vote for a religious party. But it is legitimate for South Carolinians to be religious, to vote on a religious basis, to seek to impose their religious laws on all Americans.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But what if Egyptians voted for the religious parties because they saw them as uncorrupt and <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">despite</span> their religious platforms, not because of them? […]</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is therefore probable that religious motivations actually played a larger role in the primary in South Carolina than in the election in Egypt! Likewise, an MB leader like Essam El-Erian is the voice of reason <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">compared to Gingrich</span> and is no worse in his own way than <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gingrich’s sugar daddy, Sheldon Adelson.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Since Cole claims to be an expert on the Middle East and the Muslim world, it seems fair to assume that he knows full well that there is plenty of reason to conclude that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is a <a href="file:///G:/2012/01/16/news-from-israels-islamist-neighborhood-2/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">totalitarian movement</a> espousing vile Jew-hatred and that the MB is likely to pursue a theocratic domestic policy and a confrontational foreign policy.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But if Professor Cole thinks it makes for “Informed Comment” to equate the MB with Newt Gingrich, I can only conclude that I have a different idea of informed comment…</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In their rather desperate quest for comparative consolations, progressives like Cole and Goldman also ignore the importance of democratic institutions and a well-developed civil society. To simply dismiss America’s historical record as a democracy and pretend that the consequences of a landslide victory for religious parties in Egypt are somehow comparable to a Gingrich victory in the Republican primaries in South Carolina is utterly bizarre. Perhaps Professor Cole should read Professor Mead’s truly informed comment on the left’s enduring obsession with the “Christianist” threat?</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is similarly ridiculous to dismiss Israel’s record as a democracy, because even if Israel’s democracy may not be perfect, it presents truly a record: Israel’s democracy was established when the country had to fight for its very survival, and Israel’s democracy was maintained in the most challenging circumstances, which included not only hostile neighbors threatening war, but also the need to absorb large numbers of destitute refugees.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Canadian-born Lisa Goldman, who found life in Israel so “unbearable” that she returned to Canada after 14 years here, may feel that Yisrael Beitenu – which is strongly dominated by immigrants from the former Soviet Union – is best described as “quasi-fascist”, and that Shas – traditionally associated with religious Mizrahi and Sephardi voters – is “quite similar to the [Salafist] Nour party,” but democracy is a process, and in a country like Israel, where waves of immigration have brought together groups with very different outlooks, it is not necessarily a simple process. Perhaps Lisa Goldman would have found life in Israel less “unbearable” if the country was still dominated by left-wing Ashkenazi elites that follow the Schocken line – but then it would be a less vibrant democracy.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And while Goldman may be happy that her scathing view of Israel’s democracy was quoted by <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Arabist</em>, it has always been real easy to get scathing views of Israel published in the Arab press – and this is just one of the things that the Arab Spring hasn’t changed.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-30617968986510502422023-02-20T06:14:00.006-08:002023-02-20T06:14:58.329-08:00Unveiled: The nun, the hijabi, and Zionist supremacism<p> <span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">December 26, 2015</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span></p><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I didn’t quite trust my eyes: while browsing the output of anti-Israel activists on Twitter, I came across a tweet shared and “liked” by hundreds of users (and re-tweeted by “progressive” anti-Israel activist Max Blumenthal) that – as you can see in the screenshot below – compares a Christian nun with a woman wearing a hijab, i.e. the covering for the head and neck that is either mandatory for women or imposed by social pressure in most Muslim countries and societies.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Hijab 1" class="wp-image-1562 aligncenter" data-attachment-id="1562" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Hijab 1" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-1.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-1.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-1.jpg" data-orig-size="737,720" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2015/12/26/unveiled-the-nun-the-hijabi-and-zionist-supremacism/hijab-1/" height="391" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-1.jpg?w=400&h=391" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-1.jpg?w=400&h=391 400w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-1.jpg?w=150&h=147 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-1.jpg?w=300&h=293 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-1.jpg 737w" style="clear: both; display: block; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Supposedly, this image had led to the suspension of a user who posted it on Facebook – and I’ll get back to this below. But let’s first consider the image that is cut in the tweet shown in the screenshot. When I checked out the full image on the Twitter account of the tagged user, i.e. @Resistance48, I saw that below the pictures of the nun (whose perfect make-up indicates that she’s not a real nun) and the hijab-covered Muslim woman there is the question “What’s the difference..?!” Above the picture, Abbas Hamideh aka @Resistance48 had answered the question: “The only difference is racism, bigotry and #Islamophobia.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, no: the difference is that one picture shows a nun, i.e. a woman who dedicates her life to celibacy and service to her order and church – which nowadays very few Christian women do –, whereas the other picture shows a woman who wears the head- and neck covering that the vast majority of Muslim women chose, or are forced, to wear. It is very relevant in this context that the male counterpart to a nun, i.e. a monk, also has to follow a strict dress code, as required by his order. In stark contrast, Muslim men are generally free to wear whatever they please, with the exception of some particularly reactionary Muslim societies.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Equating the hijab with a nun’s head covering provides by far the best argument against the hijab I have ever encountered.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So it’s now apparently as politically correct as it can get to say: the Muslim hijab is just like a Christian nun’s head covering – it is meant to set the wearer apart from society, indicating a life that sacrifices individuality and sexuality in favor of selfless service.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There has been an often heated debate in western societies about what the hijab signifies, and perhaps the post as well as the related tweets were a response to a very interesting recent contribution to this debate authored by Asra Q. Nomani and Hala Arafa in the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Washington Post</em>. Both women firmly oppose supposedly well-meaning “interfaith” efforts that encourage non-Muslim women to show solidarity with Muslims by donning a hijab.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nomani and Arafa also provide a fascinating glimpse of the history of the notion that Muslim women must demonstrate their “modesty,” religiosity and good character by covering their hair and neck. Interestingly, they point out that “Hijab’ literally means ‘curtain’ in Arabic. It also means ‘hiding,’ ‘obstructing’ and ‘isolating’ someone or something. It is never used in the Koran to mean headscarf.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Could anything be more revealing than supposedly “progressive” people in the West promoting the hijab for Muslim women by equating it with a nun’s head covering and the renunciation of individuality and sexuality it implies?</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But there’s more revealing stuff: as mentioned above, the image of the nun and the Muslim woman had first been posted by Abbas Hamideh, aka Twitter user @Resistance48, who claimed that his Facebook account had been suspended because of this post. In his Twitter bio, Hamideh describes himself as a “Palestinian Right of Return Activist.” He also mentions that he is a co-founder of Al-Awda, an organization that campaigns for the imaginary Palestinian “right of return.” Hamideh’s Twitter bio also includes the declaration “I don’t compromise on one inch of Palestinian land!” His Twitter handle @Resistance48 is a not so subtle hint that he opposes the existence of Israel.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Naturally, @Resistance48 couldn’t resist (pun intended) offering some explanations for the suspension of his Facebook account. The first was “@facebook succumbed to #Islamophobic @realDonaldTrump (#Trump) White Supremacist supporters & disabled my account.” A few minutes later, @Resistance48 realized that there must be another reason: “@facebook is just another racist Zionist supremacist tool. So far no trouble with @twitter when posting comparisons.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Hijab Zio FB" class="wp-image-1571 aligncenter" data-attachment-id="1571" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Hijab Zio FB" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-zio-fb.jpg?w=498" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-zio-fb.jpg?w=208" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-zio-fb.jpg" data-orig-size="498,720" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2015/12/26/unveiled-the-nun-the-hijabi-and-zionist-supremacism/hijab-zio-fb/" height="578" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-zio-fb.jpg?w=400&h=578" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-zio-fb.jpg?w=400&h=578 400w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-zio-fb.jpg?w=104&h=150 104w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-zio-fb.jpg?w=208&h=300 208w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/hijab-zio-fb.jpg 498w" style="clear: both; display: block; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But of course: who else but racist Zionist supremacists could object to equating nuns with Muslim women!!!</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Update:</span> Here is another recent piece on the subject from Pakistan’s <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nation</em> (not to be confused with the “progressive” US <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nation</em>, which would be very unlikely to publish any criticism of dress codes for Muslim women). The author’s conclusion:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“The ‘freedom to wear what I choose’ argument is in fact an insidious dynamic of women sustaining the mullah directed patriarchal order of Muslim society, and treating those women who reject it as enemies of the correct and proper order of Muslim society.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">One has to see objectively what the hijab, niqab, and burqa have come to signify. There [sic] are symbols of oppression of the unwilling, and the atrocities faced by Muslim women who don’t keep their “proper” place. When the Taliban got projected into our living rooms in the 90s with their stadium executions and thrashings of women in blue burqas, there was no doubt as to what was going on. With the advent of Wahabbism/Salafism across the Muslim world, the hijab is being enforced on girls as young as three.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">So I find it very hard to accept the efforts of women in free countries to use the symbol of oppression as a means of showing solidarity. I can only label it as either ignorance of the Liberals of the West, or outright appeasment by the regressive Left of the backward, oppressive, misogynistic attitudes of Muslim society.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">I am still unable to understand the desperate desire in the Western democratic Left to appease and coddle the most regressive aspects of the conservative Muslim right.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I saw only now that the image equating the nun with the hijab-covered Muslim woman was</span> <span style="border: 0px; color: blue; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">also posted</span> <span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">on Facebook by Al-Awda, the “right of return” organization Hamideh co-founded. At the time of this writing, this post had garnered more than 500 “likes” and had been shared by more than 800 people.</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-34770049153924917362023-02-17T14:03:00.001-08:002023-02-17T14:03:00.146-08:00Stephen Walt and the Islamist Lobby<p> </p><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">April 2, 2013</span> </div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published their book “The Israel Lobby” in 2007, the respected American scholar Walter Russell Mead argued in a very critical review that this “may be a book that anti-Semites will love, but it is not necessarily an anti-Semitic book.” Mead also noted that the book was “written in haste” and predicted that it would “be repented at leisure.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As it turned out, the assumption that Mearsheimer and Walt would have any regrets about writing “a book that anti-Semites will love” was all too optimistic.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some four years later, Mead commented on reports that John Mearsheimer had endorsed a book written by “a Hitler Apologist and Holocaust Revisionist.” Mead noted politely that “this is not normally the intellectual company a Distinguished Professor at the University of Chicago is expected to keep” and he suggested that “we may even hear some thoughts from Professor Walt about his co-author.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Unfortunately, this was again an all too optimistic expectation, because Stephen Walt promptly used his blog at <i>Foreign Policy</i> to give his co-author a prominent platform to double down on his endorsement of the book in question and its author Gilad Atzmon.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">At this point it was becoming increasingly hard to avoid the conclusion that both Walt and Mearsheimer didn’t mind at all if their writings appealed to people with openly antisemitic views. Indeed, whether intentionally or not, there can be little doubt that Walt and Mearsheimer have done much to mainstream antisemitism.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Now Stephen Walt has taken another step to confirm this conclusion. He has been featured as the March 2013 Guest Writer for the <i>Middle East Monitor</i> (MEMO), a website whose self-described mission is promoting “the Palestinian cause” by reaching out “to opinion makers and decision makers in a deliberate, organized and sustained manner.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">However, as far as MEMO is concerned, the “Palestinian cause” is really the cause of Hamas. It is therefore no coincidence that, together with their esteemed guest writer Stephen Walt, MEMO also featured a “New strategic document” by Hamas leader Khalid Mishaal (also spelled Mashal or Meshaal).</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Walt & Hamas on MEMO" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1121" data-attachment-id="1121" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Walt &amp; Hamas on MEMO" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/walt-hamas-on-memo.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/walt-hamas-on-memo.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/walt-hamas-on-memo.jpg" data-orig-size="753,512" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2013/04/02/stephen-walt-and-the-islamist-lobby/walt-hamas-on-memo/" height="339" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/walt-hamas-on-memo.jpg?w=500&h=339" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/walt-hamas-on-memo.jpg?w=500&h=339 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/walt-hamas-on-memo.jpg?w=150&h=102 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/walt-hamas-on-memo.jpg?w=300&h=204 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/walt-hamas-on-memo.jpg 753w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"> Screenshot from MEMO homepage</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To be sure, Mishaal offers little that is in any way “new”; instead, he focuses mainly on re-affirming the Hamas principles laid down in the group’s notorious charter that provides religious justifications for eternal enmity towards Jews and claims Palestine “from the river to the sea” as Muslim land. When Mishaal calls for change, he demands a “move towards changing the attitude towards the resistance and resistance movements. What used to be strange, rejected, or taboo in the past by the standards of the official Arab norms, such as not supplying the resistance with arms, must become possible today.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There can be little doubt that “resistance” in the sense Hamas understands it is something that MEMO fully supports. Consider this truly sickening homage to Ahlam al-Tamimi. You wouldn’t know it from the “fact sheet” posted by MEMO, but Tamimi is the terrorist who chose a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem as the target for a suicide bomber whom she brought there in August 2001. To Tamimi’s great pride and delight, the terror attack she helped plan and execute resulted in the death of 15 people, including 7 children, and some 130 additional victims with injuries – and to the great joy of her many ardent admirers in MEMO and elsewhere, Tamimi was among the convicts released by Israel in exchange for Hamas hostage Gilad Shalit in the fall of 2011.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As Walter Russell Mead observed, this may not be quite the company that a distinguished professor is expected to keep, but Harvard’s Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs Stephen Walt was apparently happy to be a MEMO Guest Writer.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Walt’s supposedly “exclusive” contribution to MEMO is entitled “Obama, American Jewry and the prospects for Middle East peace;” but as it happens, he was not the only writer on this topic featured by MEMO. There was another piece by one of MEMO’s well-known contributors , Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Arabic language newspaper <i>Al Quds Al Arabi</i>, <a href="file:///D:/2013/03/17/visualizing-palestine-updated/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">who prides himself</a> on his “often controversial opinions” that include admiration for Osama bin Laden, endorsements of terror attacks against Israelis and the declaration that he would “dance with delight in Trafalgar Square” if Iran bombarded Israel.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Unsurprisingly, Atwan’s piece was entitled “Obama, the Israel sycophant;” and Atwan complained bitterly that Obama “has disappointed us and reminded us of Uncle Tom in the famous American novel.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Since documenting the appalling views propagated by MEMO could easily fill a book, I will for now just highlight that the site’s current offerings include an utterly lunatic “report” claiming that “Israeli police enable rabbis and settlers to mark Passover inside Al-Aqsa Mosque.” Needless to say, MEMO is also among the ardent admirers of Sheik Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement’s Northern Branch in Israel, who subscribes to the medieval libel that Jews use the blood of Christian children to make Matzo bread.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Of course, Professor Walt may not have known any of this when he agreed to provide MEMO with an “exclusive” – but just a few moments of googling could have enlightened him and led him, for example, to this excellent post by Alan Johnson.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Among the unsavory examples of MEMO’s connections listed by Johnson is Lord Nazir Ahmed of Rotherham, who hosted a book launch in the House of Lords for the notorious Israel Shamir in 2005. As Johnson explains:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Shamir’s speech, reported [by] the Times journalist Stephen Pollard, included these opinions: ‘All the [political] parties are Zionist-infiltrated.’ ‘Your newspapers belong to Zionists . . . Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media, this mainstay of Imperial thinking.’ ‘In the Middle East we have just one reason for wars, terror and trouble—and that is Jewish supremacy drive.’”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Writing in April 2011, Johnson noted that Lord Ahmed “paid no price” for going through with this disgraceful event. However, recently Lord Ahmed was accused of having expressed sentiments that echo the “Jewish control”-meme of Shamir, and he has been suspended pending an investigation.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But in general, Johnson is obviously right: efforts to mainstream anti-Jewish hatred and the Islamist demonization of the Jewish state have become so commonplace that there is little risk to high-profile professionals and academics who join in.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">First published at <i>The Algemeiner</i>.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-43869928972352414922023-02-16T14:01:00.001-08:002023-02-16T14:01:00.164-08:00Teen terrorists made in Palestine<p> </p><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">January 7, 2016</span> </div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Note</em></span>: This is an updated version of a post first published in November on my TOI blog.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">*</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Child Sacrifice Brings No Honor to the Palestinian Cause” was the title of a recent <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ha’aretz</em> op-ed by Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie. It’s 2015, and one might have hoped there would be no need for an op-ed with such a title. But sadly, there is even a Wikipedia entry for “Child suicide bombers in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict,” and the recent stabbing attacks by Palestinian teenagers – including a boy as young as 11 – are only another reminder of the abusive indoctrination and exploitation of children practiced by Palestinian society for decades.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Long before Hamas officials <a href="file:///D:/2013/03/16/the-child-soldiers-of-palestine/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">boasted</a> in recent years that their efforts to train a “true generation of martyrdom-seekers” were so successful that “Palestinian youngsters … fight and quarrel over performing a courageous suicide operation,” a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Life Magazine</em> cover story on “Palestinian Arabs” in 1970 included a photo showing a group of very young boys with guns and the caption: “The ‘Tiger Cubs’ train at a camp in Jordan.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Life Mag 1970 cover" class="wp-image-1608 aligncenter" data-attachment-id="1608" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Life Mag 1970 cover" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/life-mag-1970-cover.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/life-mag-1970-cover.jpg?w=210" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/life-mag-1970-cover.jpg" data-orig-size="505,720" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2016/01/07/teen-terrorists-made-in-palestine/life-mag-1970-cover/" height="641" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/life-mag-1970-cover.jpg?w=450&h=641" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/life-mag-1970-cover.jpg?w=450&h=641 450w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/life-mag-1970-cover.jpg?w=105&h=150 105w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/life-mag-1970-cover.jpg?w=210&h=300 210w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/life-mag-1970-cover.jpg 505w" style="clear: both; display: block; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="450" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Why Palestinians considered it useful to train child soldiers was explained by the prominent cartoonist Nagi Al-Ali in an article published in 1985, where he first denounced Israel’s 1982 campaign against Palestinian terror groups in Lebanon and then gloated:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I saw for myself how afraid the Israeli soldiers were of the children. A child of ten or eleven had sufficient training to carry and use an RBG rifle. The situation was simple enough. The Israeli tanks were in front of them and the weapon was in their hands. The Israelis were afraid to go into the camps, and if they did, they would only do so in daylight.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">More than three decades have passed since then, but Palestinians still believe that the same Israeli soldiers they regularly denounce as brutal and trigger-happy are “afraid” of children – which of course means they know full well that Israeli soldiers don’t want to shoot kids. Sadly, that in turn only means Palestinians find it very useful to involve their children in protests and violent provocations.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The deeply cynical game that Palestinians like to play was illustrated a few months ago, when a video showing the attempt of an Israeli soldier to arrest a seemingly frightened boy for rock-throwing went viral. The fully armed soldier was quickly attacked and forced to retreat by a group of women and girls from the Tamimi clan of Nabi Saleh – a small village near Ramallah, which has become a popular destination for international activists who are attracted by the weekly efforts of the Tamimis to provoke clashes with the IDF.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The boy in the video elicited all the more sympathy around the globe because he had one arm in a cast. His parents, Bassem and Nariman Tamimi, proceeded to tell the media various stories about how their son had broken his arm, and needless to say, all the stories blamed the brutality of Israeli’s army. However, when I decided to look into the matter, <a href="file:///D:/2015/09/09/the-tamimi-masterclass-on-media-manipulation/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I found out</a> that Facebook posts by the Tamimis revealed that their son Mohammad (aka Abu Yazan) had broken his arm when he stumbled while throwing stones at an army jeep – for which his parents not only praised him to the high heavens, but which they also encouraged him to continue. When a Facebook friend expressed concern and suggested it might be better to stop these provocations, Mohammad’s loving mother coldly responded: “Either victory or martyrdom; and everything is going to be OK.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For the Tamimis everything was more than OK when the video of the attempted arrest of their son went viral. They greatly enjoyed the global media attention and shared countless reports condemning Israeli brutality against an innocent helpless little boy on their Facebook pages. But they also shared a revealing cartoon that illustrates their cynical exploitation of their own children: the ostensibly terrified boy with the broken arm, who was exhibited to the world as the victim of a brutal assault by a heavily armed soldier, is transformed into a little superman who needs just one arm to toss a monstrously huge Israeli soldier into the air; the triumphant caption reads in English: “Shatter the myth of the Zionist army at the hands of the children of Nabi Saleh.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Tamimi kids shatter IDF myth" class="aligncenter wp-image-1422" data-attachment-id="1422" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Tamimi kids shatter IDF myth" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/tamimi-kids-shatter-idf-myth.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/tamimi-kids-shatter-idf-myth.jpg?w=231" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/tamimi-kids-shatter-idf-myth.jpg" data-orig-size="542,704" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2015/09/09/the-tamimi-masterclass-on-media-manipulation/tamimi-kids-shatter-idf-myth/" height="585" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/tamimi-kids-shatter-idf-myth.jpg?w=450&h=585" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/tamimi-kids-shatter-idf-myth.jpg?w=450&h=585 450w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/tamimi-kids-shatter-idf-myth.jpg?w=115&h=150 115w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/tamimi-kids-shatter-idf-myth.jpg?w=231&h=300 231w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/tamimi-kids-shatter-idf-myth.jpg 542w" style="clear: both; display: block; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="450" />While the Tamimis gloat that it is child’s play to “shatter the myth of the Zionist army,” they also happily spread current versions of the medieval blood libel, including accusations that Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinian children for fun or arrest them to harvest their organs.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="BTamimi Pal kids stolen organs" class="aligncenter wp-image-1616" data-attachment-id="1616" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="BTamimi Pal kids stolen organs" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/btamimi-pal-kids-stolen-organs.jpg?w=486" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/btamimi-pal-kids-stolen-organs.jpg?w=208" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/btamimi-pal-kids-stolen-organs.jpg" data-orig-size="486,700" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2016/01/07/teen-terrorists-made-in-palestine/btamimi-pal-kids-stolen-organs/" height="648" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/btamimi-pal-kids-stolen-organs.jpg?w=450&h=648" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/btamimi-pal-kids-stolen-organs.jpg?w=450&h=648 450w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/btamimi-pal-kids-stolen-organs.jpg?w=104&h=150 104w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/btamimi-pal-kids-stolen-organs.jpg?w=208&h=300 208w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/btamimi-pal-kids-stolen-organs.jpg 486w" style="clear: both; display: block; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="450" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s arguably worthwhile to ponder for a moment how it must feel to grow up in such an environment: on the one hand, your parents and adult family members push you relentlessly to provoke Israeli soldiers and praise you when you do so; on the other hand, your parents and adult family members say that the Israeli soldiers you are supposed to provoke kill kids for fun or arrest them to harvest their organs.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Add to this frightful demonization the pervasive glorification of terrorism in Palestinian society with the clear message that there is nothing more heroic than being killed while killing – or at least trying to kill – Israeli Jews, and it’s no longer such a mystery why even young Palestinian teens would grab a knife and go out to stab a Jew.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So it was no surprise that the Tamimis cheered the recent stabbing attacks – even when the attacks were thought to be carried out by 15-year-olds.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="MTamimi 15yo hero stabs settler" class="aligncenter wp-image-1619" data-attachment-id="1619" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="MTamimi 15yo hero stabs settler" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/mtamimi-15yo-hero-stabs-settler.jpg?w=426" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/mtamimi-15yo-hero-stabs-settler.jpg?w=234" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/mtamimi-15yo-hero-stabs-settler.jpg" data-orig-size="426,546" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2016/01/07/teen-terrorists-made-in-palestine/mtamimi-15yo-hero-stabs-settler/" height="513" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/mtamimi-15yo-hero-stabs-settler.jpg?w=400&h=513" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/mtamimi-15yo-hero-stabs-settler.jpg?w=400&h=513 400w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/mtamimi-15yo-hero-stabs-settler.jpg?w=117&h=150 117w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/mtamimi-15yo-hero-stabs-settler.jpg?w=234&h=300 234w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/mtamimi-15yo-hero-stabs-settler.jpg 426w" style="clear: both; display: block; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In this case, the attacker turned out to be actually 19, and the victim was a yeshiva student; but as I have shown in a detailed documentation published recently by <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Tower Magazine</em>, the Tamimis had been rooting for a “third intifada” for years and could see nothing wrong when it seemed that this long-hoped-for “third intifada” might be brought about by knife-wielding Palestinian teenagers stabbing Jews on the streets of Israel’s cities. Since the Tamimis had long promoted the use of children in violent confrontations with the IDF, they were now ready to hail teenaged terrorists as “heroes” if they were arrested, and as “martyrs” if they were killed while killing or trying to kill; at the same time, they were shameless enough to claim repeatedly that the “martyrs” were innocent victims executed in cold blood by the evil Zionists.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sadly, the Tamimis are quite representative of mainstream Palestinian support for violence and terrorism, which is well-documented in surveys that go back more than two decades.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What makes the Tamimis’ support for terrorism – along with their openly displayed Jew-hatred and their frank rejection of a peacefully negotiated two-state solution – noteworthy is that they have the unwavering support of Amnesty International. At the end of the second intifada, Amnesty eventually got around to issuing a belated statement criticizing “Palestinian armed groups” for using children. But apparently, Amnesty sees nothing wrong when the Tamimis insist that even children have the “duty” to “resist.” Indeed, when Bassem Tamimi recently faced criticism for trying to indoctrinate American Third Graders during a US-speaking tour that was co-sponsored by Amnesty, an official of the organization rejected the criticism and emphasized that Amnesty had “adopted his village of Nabi Saleh as a community-at-risk” and that “AI groups globally work on behalf of the village long term.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s supposedly an African proverb that says “It takes a whole village to raise a child.” As I have shown in <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Tower Magazine</em> documentation, children in the Amnesty-supported village of Nabi Saleh are raised by adults who push them relentlessly to put themselves in danger in order to fulfill their “duty” to “resist;” the children see their parents cheer teenagers who went out to stab Jews, and they grow up among adults who feel that Israel’s Jews deserve to be killed because they are all bloodthirsty “settlers” and “Zionists” who want global strife. And as soon as the children are on Facebook, they will be “friends” with one of the most notorious Tamimi-clan members: Ahlam Tamimi, the mastermind of the 2001 Sbarro massacre in Jerusalem.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Update:</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">About a month after <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Tower Magazine</em> published my documentation, Amnesty International decided to show again its support for the Tamimis and organized a campaign on Twitter that was joined by numerous regional and local Amnesty branches all posting tweets with the hashtag #NabiSaleh.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Amnesty’s continued support for the Tamimis is shameful, all the more so since in the meantime, some Palestinian journalists and intellectuals have begun to speak out against the indoctrination and exploitation of children in confrontations with the IDF and terror attacks. To quote one voice repudiating the kind of views promoted by the Tamimis:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Do not send your children into the fray, even though the occupation does not distinguish between children, youth, and adults… We must not bring our children into the cycle of violence… Even the Prophet Muhammad refused to bring children into battle… We should keep our children away from the demonstrations in the areas of conflict and clashes so they can experience their childhood. Even if it is a difficult [childhood], it is better than the childhood of the injured, the prisoner, or the martyr who is [completely] bereft of a childhood.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">[…]</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Do not cheer [the stabbing children] and do not take pride [in them], since this has become a game of blood. Those who scream and roar, congratulating a child for pulling out a knife or a schoolgirl for taking up a pair of scissors, should see them as though they were their own children. Would they agree to throw their son into this furnace?”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">However, a recent poll shows overwhelming support for the current wave of Palestinian terror attacks, though most do not want “young school girls” to commit stabbings.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-7897779762811853692023-02-15T20:12:00.001-08:002023-02-15T20:12:00.154-08:00 Free Gaza tweets for terror and a world without Zionism<p><br /></p><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">October 8, 2012</span> <span class="comments-link" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-sep" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">|</span></span></div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The still ongoing controversy about <a href="file:///D:/2012/10/06/defending-free-gazas-antisemitism-at-972-and-open-zion/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Free Gaza’s propagation of antisemitic material</a> has revealed the for me somewhat surprising fact that apparently quite a few of the group’s supporters seem to believe that Free Gaza is somehow dedicated to promoting peace and coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">That is plainly not the case.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">One of the most recent tweets from Free Gaza is a call to #NormalizeResistance. As I write, this hashtag seems to be primarily used to protest an invitation for Gilad Shalit by FC Barcelona, and the top tweet right now comes from an account set up under the name of <a href="file:///D:/2012/02/23/twitter-vs-the-real-world-khader-adnans-victory/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Khader Adnan</a>.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-941" data-attachment-id="941" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Free Gaza Adnan" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-adnan.jpg?w=392" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-adnan.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-adnan.jpg" data-orig-size="392,221" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2012/10/08/free-gaza-tweets-for-terror-and-a-world-without-zionism/free-gaza-adnan/" sizes="(max-width: 392px) 100vw, 392px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-adnan.jpg?w=500" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-adnan.jpg 392w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-adnan.jpg?w=150 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-adnan.jpg?w=300 300w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" title="Free Gaza Adnan" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We know what Islamic Jihad member Khader Adnan means by “resistance” – and as it happens, Gaza’s rulers understand “resistance” in pretty much the same way.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><div class="embed-vimeo" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/37225151" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe></div><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is precisely this kind of “resistance” advocated by Islamic Jihad and Hamas that has led to the “blockade” that Free Gaza opposes: Since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, more than 8,000 rockets have been fired from there by the “resistance,” terrorizing about one million Israeli civilians who live within the range of these rockets.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So let’s see what Free Gaza has to say about the “resistance”:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-942" data-attachment-id="942" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Free Gaza terror" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror.jpg?w=263" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror.jpg?w=263" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror.jpg" data-orig-size="263,291" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2012/10/08/free-gaza-tweets-for-terror-and-a-world-without-zionism/free-gaza-terror/" sizes="(max-width: 263px) 100vw, 263px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror.jpg?w=500" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror.jpg 263w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror.jpg?w=136 136w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" title="Free Gaza terror" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-943" data-attachment-id="943" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Free Gaza terror2" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror2.jpg?w=370" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror2.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror2.jpg" data-orig-size="370,220" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2012/10/08/free-gaza-tweets-for-terror-and-a-world-without-zionism/free-gaza-terror2/" sizes="(max-width: 370px) 100vw, 370px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror2.jpg?w=500" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror2.jpg 370w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror2.jpg?w=150 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror2.jpg?w=300 300w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" title="Free Gaza terror2" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">These tweets refer to an incident on June 1, 2012, when an armed infiltrator associated with Islamic Jihad from Gaza was discovered by IDF units near the Gaza border and managed to kill one soldier before being killed himself.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To sum up Free Gaza’s take on the event: an “operation” executed by “Gaza defenders” succeeded in killing one “IOF” soldier – though Free Gaza had apparently hoped the “operation” would result in three “dead Israeli soldiers.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">On the rockets raining down on Israeli towns, Free Gaza has this to say:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Over 100 retaliatory projectiles and rockets including long-range Grad type have been fired from Gaza by Palestinian resistance groups.#<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gaza</span>”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-944" data-attachment-id="944" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Free Gaza terror3" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror3.jpg?w=378" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror3.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror3.jpg" data-orig-size="378,242" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2012/10/08/free-gaza-tweets-for-terror-and-a-world-without-zionism/free-gaza-terror3/" sizes="(max-width: 378px) 100vw, 378px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror3.jpg?w=500" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror3.jpg 378w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror3.jpg?w=150 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-terror3.jpg?w=300 300w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" title="Free Gaza terror3" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When it comes to Free Gaza’s – and certainly Greta Berlin’s – vision for the future, there seems to be no room for Israel as a Jewish state, and indeed, there seems to be no room for Jewish Israelis. In January, Free Gaza tweeted a link to a blog post entitled “Call me a Palestinian from Palestine.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-945" data-attachment-id="945" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Free Gaza GB Pal1" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal1.jpg?w=440" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal1.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal1.jpg" data-orig-size="440,390" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2012/10/08/free-gaza-tweets-for-terror-and-a-world-without-zionism/free-gaza-gb-pal1/" sizes="(max-width: 440px) 100vw, 440px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal1.jpg?w=500" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal1.jpg 440w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal1.jpg?w=150 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal1.jpg?w=300 300w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" title="Free Gaza GB Pal1" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The post features a large photo of a mural depicting the widely idolized Leila Khaled, whose “fame” rests on her contribution to making airplane hijackings a successful terrorist tactic some 30 years ago.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The text of the post itself is fairly typical for the Palestinian “steadfastness”-genre that usually invokes the <a href="file:///D:/2012/04/01/not-only-on-land-day-the-palestinian-blood-and-soil-fixation/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">popular “blood-and-soil”-theme</a> that self-described progressives apparently find deeply moving when it’s employed by Palestinians. In this case it’s an image often used on “Land Day”:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“My blood and sweat have since the dawn of history watered this land, kept it green and blooming and gave the poppies their colour.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The main theme of the post is built on a much-used dichotomy: on one side are the unspeakably evil and cruel “Zionist racist” colonizers who are the real terrorist that “raped and continue to rape [Palestine] for over 63 years;” on the other side are the noble natives who patiently suffer, waiting for the day when their “home between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River … will be free of the Zionist colonists, the cowards and racists that … have no place in this land.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Among the rapturous reader comments, there is one by Greta Berlin, linking to Free Gaza’s website, saying: “Heartbreaking and uplifting. As long as the young people of Palestine never forget, Palestine will always be remembered and will, one day. be returned.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-946" data-attachment-id="946" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Free Gaza GB Pal" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal.jpg" data-orig-size="683,188" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2012/10/08/free-gaza-tweets-for-terror-and-a-world-without-zionism/free-gaza-gb-pal/" height="137" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal.jpg?w=500&h=137" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal.jpg?w=498&h=137 498w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal.jpg?w=150&h=41 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal.jpg?w=300&h=83 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-gb-pal.jpg 683w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" title="Free Gaza GB Pal" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet another indication that Greta Berlin wants a “Zionist-free” Palestine “between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River” is the indignant tweet sent out by Free Gaza about a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Huffington Post</em> story with the somewhat misleading headline “Helen Thomas Denied Table For White House Correspondents Dinner.” However, as the report explains, Helen Thomas was given the privilege to get two tickets for this dinner even though she was no longer a White House correspondent. The <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Huffington Post</em> report delicately alludes to “controversial comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” that cost Thomas her status as a White House correspondent; the incident referred to is a clip showing Thomas voicing the view that Israelis should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home [to] Poland, Germany… America and everywhere else.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In any case, Free Gaza was clearly very upset that Helen Thomas wasn’t granted the extraordinary privilege of reserving a whole table at the glitzy White House Correspondents’ Dinner, tweeting:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Helen Thomas denied own table at big D.C. dinner. http://huff.to/HdDf28 via @<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gaza</span> Please write to the organizers and express your disgust.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Last but by no means least, it is noteworthy that in the ongoing controversy about the antisemitic material tweeted by Free Gaza, it is widely ignored that several of these tweets link to fringe websites <a href="file:///D:/2012/10/06/defending-free-gazas-antisemitism-at-972-and-open-zion/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">that propagate bizarre conspiracy theories</a>. Unsurprisingly, Free Gaza has also done this when it’s not really about Jews or Zionists: At the end of last December, Free Gaza posted a tweet about the “Engineered ‘Arab Spring:’” “2011 YEAR of the DUPE: One Year into the Engineered “Arab Spring,” One Step Closer to Global Hegemony.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-947" data-attachment-id="947" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Free Gaza Arab Spring" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-arab-spring.jpg?w=409" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-arab-spring.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-arab-spring.jpg" data-orig-size="409,211" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2012/10/08/free-gaza-tweets-for-terror-and-a-world-without-zionism/free-gaza-arab-spring/" sizes="(max-width: 409px) 100vw, 409px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-arab-spring.jpg?w=500" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-arab-spring.jpg 409w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-arab-spring.jpg?w=150 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/free-gaza-arab-spring.jpg?w=300 300w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" title="Free Gaza Arab Spring" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The article Free Gaza linked to revealed that “the US had been behind the uprisings and that they were anything but ‘spontaneous,’ or ‘indigenous;’” indeed, according to the lengthy piece, “the uprisings were part of an immense geopolitical campaign conceived in the West and carried out through its proxies with the assistance of disingenuous foundations, organizations, and the stable of NGOs they maintain throughout the world.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Unsurprisingly, the site that published this piece also offers the “truth” about a whole lot of other dreadful cover-ups, including the terrorist attacks of 9/11…</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-11222547448690184642023-02-14T13:58:00.002-08:002023-02-14T13:58:00.146-08:00Petra Marquardt-Bigman - who I am and what this blog is about<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">I grew up in the southern part of Germany, in the small village of Schlat not far from Stuttgart. My parents were “Flüchtlinge” – refugees from the part of Germany that is nowadays Poland. The fact that we didn’t speak the local Suebian dialect was perhaps one of the reasons why I’ve always felt a bit like a foreigner there.</span></p><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet, I spent close to three decades in the Schwabenland, attending the Freihof Gymnasium in Göppingen and studying at the Eberhard Karls Universität in Tübingen.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In 1986, I got a scholarship as a Visiting Researcher at Georgetown University to do the research for my Ph.D. on US intelligence on Germany in the 1940s. I left for Washington D.C. in August 1986, and a few days after my arrival there, I met a certain David Bigman…</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">That was the beginning of a twentysomething-years-long period of a rather nomadic existence. To be sure, we always had a base in Israel, and for much of the 1990s, we lived in Washington, D.C. But we also lived for a few years in the Netherlands, spent some fascinating time in India, Korea, Vietnam and China and got to visit many other countries.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As exciting and interesting as all the globetrotting was, I’ve been ready to settle down again for some time, and I’m more than happy that we have now done so right on the beach of Bat Yam.</p><div class="jetpack-slideshow-window jetpack-slideshow jetpack-slideshow-black" data-autostart="1" data-gallery="[{"src":"https:\/\/warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/10\/002.jpg","id":"258","title":"002","alt":"","caption":"","itemprop":"image"},{"src":"https:\/\/warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/10\/080-e1321658740117.jpg","id":"259","title":"080","alt":"","caption":"","itemprop":"image"},{"src":"https:\/\/warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/10\/082-e1321658801887.jpg","id":"260","title":"082","alt":"","caption":"","itemprop":"image"},{"src":"https:\/\/warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/10\/086.jpg","id":"261","title":"086","alt":"","caption":"","itemprop":"image"}]" data-trans="fade" id="gallery-106-4-slideshow" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/ImageGallery" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So why start a blog when you live on the beach?</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Blame the BBC: I began writing about Israel and related issues almost exactly five years ago, in fall 2006 – after I had watched the Second Lebanon War abroad, where I only had access to the BBC’s TV coverage. Need I say more?</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 90px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: #999999; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Senior diplomatic officials in Jerusalem went as far as saying that “the reports we see give the impression that the BBC is working on behalf of Hizbullah instead of doing fair journalism.”</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By the end of 2006, I started <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Warped Mirror</em> at the Jerusalem Post. (Due to technical changes, most of the archived posts there are no longer accessible.) I still post there several times a month and occasionally, I also contribute posts and articles to other sites. (See <a href="file:///D:/about-4/petra-marquardt-bigman/publications/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Publications</a>.)</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But I’ve felt for some time that I would like to have a place to collect and share my thoughts with people who share my interest in the warped-mirror-view of the world that all too often seems to dominate political and even academic debates.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Israel looms large in this warped mirror and I think it’s hardly an exaggeration to say that the obsession with the tiny Jewish state – whether in the media, the UN, on campus or in the work of human rights organizations – may well be considered the mother of all distortions that derail reasoned debate in our time.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When well-documented historical facts and relevant contexts are routinely dismissed in favor of emotionally charged “narratives” demonizing Israel, it is not just the world’s only Jewish state that is targeted, but the very foundations of the progress derived from the West’s enlightenment heritage. We live in times when access to information and knowledge is easier than ever; yet, depressingly, conspiracy theories seem as popular as they were when only privileged elites could read and educate themselves. There are eerie parallels between the medieval view that the Jews were responsible for Europe’s Black Death and the fashionable notion that it’s the Jewish state that should be blamed for the lack of peace and progress in the Middle East.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And make no mistake: what works for the Israel-bashers also works for those who propagate the “Great-Satan”-view of the US and favor a version of history consisting of an endless litany of Western crimes against humanity.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Therefore, this blog is not just about Israel. I have come to believe that the efforts to turn Israel into a “state beyond the pale” are ultimately manifestations of a broader malaise affecting the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Zeitgeist</em>, because reasoned debate becomes impossible when “narratives” are preferred over facts. To illustrate the implications of this point with just one example: the quest to make Israel look real bad all too often means that the many failings of Israel’s Arab and Muslim enemies are studiously ignored. As a result of this approach, pundits, politicians and professors often foster an image of the Middle East that has little to do with the realities of this volatile region that has become a breeding ground for easily exported extremism.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The context that is so often missing in debates about Israel will be a major focus of this blog. I hope that anyone who stumbles on this site will find it interesting enough to come back often.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-48583082992729628322023-02-13T13:56:00.001-08:002023-02-13T13:56:00.146-08:00Making a mockery of human rights<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></h1><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">December 29, 2011</span> </div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There is a straight line from the UN’s obsessive focus on condemning Israel to the cynical decision of the Arab League to appoint “the world’s worst human rights observer” as the head of its mission to monitor violence in Syria.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As UN Watch noted in a report on the first few years of UN Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) operation:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The 47-nation body has condemned Israel in 80% of its country censures, in 20 of 25 resolutions. The other 5 texts criticized North Korea once, and Myanmar four times. The Council has ignored the UN’s other 189 countries, including the world’s worst abusers. While Darfur was addressed several times, these resolutions were non-condemnatory, often praising Sudan for “cooperation.”</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This dismal record is hardly surprising in view of the fact that even the worst human rights violators are eligible to serve on the UNHRC – while the world’s only Jewish state is excluded, since the Arab and Muslim states will not admit Israel as member of the Asian regional group: I’ve called it Apartheid, UN-style.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet another illustration of the limitless hypocrisy that is so commonplace at the UN was the recent nomination of Syria to two committees dealing with human rights, and the approval of this nomination by the UNESCO Executive Board.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After making a mockery of human rights for so long, the Arab League probably couldn’t imagine that anyone would notice how cynical it is that its mission to Syria is headed by the Sudanese General Mohammad Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dabi may be the unlikeliest leader of a humanitarian mission the world has ever seen. He is a staunch loyalist of Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity for his government’s policies in Darfur. And Dabi’s own record in the restive Sudanese region, where he stands accused of presiding over the creation of the feared Arab militias known as the “janjaweed,” is enough to make any human rights activist blanch.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If past experience is any guide, it is unfortunately not really true that human rights activists always “blanch” (or blush) when human rights abusers play human rights defenders — and given the composition of the UNHRC and some other UN human rights groups, Dabi is actually not such an unlikely leader for a “humanitarian” mission.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Unsurprisingly, the Arab League’s intrepid human rights monitor from Sudan told reporters after his mission’s first day in Syria “that the observers had seen ‘nothing frightening’.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There were always victims of human rights abuses who had to pay a painful price for the mockery that was made of human rights – this time, it may be the turn of the Syrians.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-50687975219890884882023-02-12T13:55:00.008-08:002023-02-12T13:55:52.420-08:00Progressively regressive<p> <span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date">December 19, 2011</span> </p><div class="entry-content"><p>In an interesting essay published recently in the <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>, Alan Johnson, founder of the online journal Democratiya and co-author of The Euston Manifesto, tackles a question that underlies many of today’s political debates: “Why do some of our intellectuals find it so very difficult to see dictatorship when it is clear, or to summon up the moral clarity to oppose it?”</p><p>Focusing on Iran, Johnson argues:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: grey;">The Iranian revolution bamboozled left-wingers from the start. First, where class consciousness “should” have been, there was religious fervour. Second, because its world-view split the globe into just two warring camps – reactionary exploiting nations that must be opposed and progressive exploited nations (usually also romanticised as noble and authentic) that must be supported – the left struggled to see clearly the independent history and reactionary character of Islamism […]</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: grey;">That revolutionary Iran could be a brutal and reactionary sub-imperialist power seeking regional hegemony did not compute to many commentators. The Manichean left could not even rouse itself to oppose the brutal tyranny of the regime because, when tyranny was opposed by America, it was miraculously reborn as “the resistance”.</span></p><p>As Johnson points out, the “Manichean left” also glorified Iran’s terrorist proxies Hamas and Hizbollah as “resistance” movements; the downright hilarious example he cites is American cultural theorist Judith Butler telling a campus teach-in in 2006 that “understanding Hamas, Hizbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left, is extremely important.”</p><p>Citing Jean Bethke Elshtain’s book Just War Against Terror, Johnson notes that according to Elshtain, one can identify “four strategies” that are used to sustain the world view of leftist ideologists:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: grey;">distorting or ignoring facts, deploying twisted categories of a bygone era, taking refuge in false clarity derived from flawed analogies, and attacking the motivations of free societies such as America and Israel, while giving the benefit of every doubt to the fear societies (and their proxies) that attack the West.</span></p><p>While this sounds rather dry and perhaps also obvious, Johnson then goes on to demonstrate these strategies at work in some recent articles by Mehdi Hasan, senior political editor of the <em>New Statesman</em>. For me the best point he makes in this discussion is when he explains that the “second reality-avoidance strategy involves the use of clapped-out categories developed in the 1960s. The philosopher Michael Walzer has argued that many intellectuals are hamstrung by ‘the third worldist doctrines of the 1960s and 1970s’.”</p><p>Johnson argues that the result of this approach is that “politics is no longer a sphere of concrete responsibility […] but a sphere for the performance of a fossilised left-wing identity.”</p><p>I have to confess that I’ve never quite thought about it in these terms, but it seems rather intriguing to contemplate the possibility that some of our supposedly “leading” progressive intellectuals are actually stuck in some sort of mind-time-machine, oblivious to the changes of the past half century (and counting!). And it also sounds a bit as if these progressives were bitterly clinging to their “guns or religion”, doesn’t it?</p><p>UPDATE:</p><p>How could I forget to mention my favorite example of a progressive regressive? Some two years ago, I wrote a post on “Iranian nukes and ‘progressive values’” that focused on the one and only Slavoj Zizek and his call to “give Iranian nukes a chance”:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: grey;">But there are people on the left – or rather, people who claim to be on the left – who think that a nuclear-armed Iran is just what the world needs. “Give Iranian Nukes a Chance” is the playful title of an article published in August 2005 on the website of “In These Times”, an American magazine that describes itself as being committed to “progressive values”. The author of the article is the philosopher Slavoj Zizek who enjoys rock-star-like celebrity among his fans; indeed, in 2005, he even was the focus of a movie that presented him not only as an “eminent and intrepid thinker”, but also as “the Elvis of cultural theory”.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: grey;">Zizek justified his plea to ‘give Iranian nukes a chance’ with his belief that the Cold War doctrine of MAD, i.e. mutually assured destruction, should be considered valid also for a nuclear-armed Iran, which could thus be expected to refrain from actually using its nuclear weapons in a war of aggression. Furthermore, Zizek argued that an Iranian nuclear arsenal would actually be a positive factor, because in his view, “countries like Iran should possess nuclear arms to constrain the global hegemony of the United States”.</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-36919467008256728502023-02-11T20:17:00.001-08:002023-02-11T20:17:00.139-08:00The Lede news on Israel and Ahmadinejad<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></h1><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">April 23, 2012</span> <span class="comments-link" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-sep" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">|</span> </span></div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A few days ago, Robert Mackey devoted a long post on his <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">New York Times</em> (NYT) blog The Lede to the old and often rehashed controversy about how best to translate a phrase used by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a speech for a “conference” anticipating a “World Without Zionism” back in October 2005. Mackey was apparently thrilled that Israeli minister Dan Meridor acknowledged in a recent <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> interview that in this specific speech, Ahmadinejad had not issued a straightforward statement about Iran’s intentions to “wipe out” Israel.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Since Meridor also pointed out that, irrespective of the precise translation of this specific phrase, Iranian officials have made plenty of vicious statements about their hopes and intentions to see Israel’s demise, it’s a bit puzzling what exactly prompted Mackey to rehash the old controversy about the most accurate translation of the 2005 speech. It seems that the message Mackey wanted to get across is summed up in this paragraph:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Although there is general agreement now among translators and scholars that Mr. Ahmadinejad did not commit his country to the project of destroying the state of Israel in that 2005 speech, the phrase that was wrongly attributed to him then remains so firmly rooted in the popular imagination that it is frequently used as evidence of Iran’s genocidal intentions.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The spin here is of course that if it wasn’t for this one mistranslated expression from a speech back in 2005, there would be precious little “evidence of Iran’s genocidal intentions,” and there isn’t really any reason to think that the Iranian regime is committed to destroying the state of Israel. It’s apparently just one big misunderstanding as far as Robert Mackey of The Lede is concerned.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But historian and acclaimed author Daniel Jonah Goldhagen – who has written a book about genocide and “eliminationism” – is arguably a bit better qualified on this subject. In a recent commentary on the controversy about the accusations of German Nobel laureate Günter Grass against Israel, Goldhagen wrote:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Israel has been existentially threatened for its entire existence and continues to be so today, both by states that wish merely to defeat it or to have it relinquish the West Bank (Gaza it already gave back), and by states, often supported by their publics, that wish to destroy it and eliminate or exterminate its Jews. Why does Grass fail to mention that Iranian leaders, and not just Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have routinely threatened to destroy Israel and kill Jews, and occasionally even hinted that it could be done with nuclear weapons? As the ‘moderate’ former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani explained already in 2001, ‘the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything.’ Why does Grass fail to mention that the Iranian leaders speak of Israel using Nazi-like language and metaphors, of cancer and pestilence which must be utterly eradicated? Do I have to say that such speech has been shown to be the rhetorical prelude to genocide?”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To quote just one news item from earlier this year that illustrates Goldhagen’s point:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“‘The Zionist regime is a cancerous tumor and it will be removed,’ Teheran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Friday. Khamenei addressed thousands of worshipers attending a Tehran University prayer service marking the Fajr celebration. […]</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, said that Iran has helped Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas in their fights against Israel. The crowd met the statement by chanting ‘Death to Israel.’”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are of course plenty of similar Iranian statements. A few years ago, Jeffrey Goldberg responded to efforts like Mackey’s by compiling a list of relevant statements by Ahmadinejad; the ADL also offers a list of Ahmadinejad quotes; Elihu D. Richter and Alex Barnea have compiled a timeline of statements by Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders from 2000-2008; and Wikipedia has a relevant entry that also includes Ahmadinejad’s statements on the occasion of Israel’s 60-year-anniversary in 2008:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“‘Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken. Today the reason for the Zionist regime’s existence is questioned, and this regime is on its way to annihilation.’</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ahmadinejad also stated that Israel ‘has reached the end like a dead rat after being slapped by the Lebanese.’ Later, he said: ‘The Zionist regime is dying,’ and ‘The criminals imagine that by holding celebrations (…) they can save the Zionist regime from death.’ Ahmadinejad also stated that ‘They should know that regional nations hate this fake and criminal regime and if the smallest and briefest chance is given to regional nations they will destroy (it).’”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To the Mackey-minded, that probably sounds like a polite call for regime change – if it’s not a mistranslation, anyway. Needless to say, if any Western or Israeli politician talked about the Iranian regime in this way, it would be a totally different matter…</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By now, the callous attempts to downplay the viciousness of Iranian threats against Israel have often been countered with evidence showing that the Iranian rhetoric not only echoes the way the Nazis talked about the Jews, but also fits well-researched findings by genocide scholars who “have identified hate language and incitement—notably the use of dehumanizing medical metaphors—as predictors, promoters, and catalysts of genocidal agendas in Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and the Sudan.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Perhaps <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">NYT</em> Lede editor Robert Mackey would claim that he is unaware of this research; indeed, the fact that he has written a lengthy post trying to argue that it’s only due to one mistranslated phrase from a 2005 speech that Iran is accused of genocidal intentions could be taken as ample evidence that his feelings about the subject are much deeper than his knowledge.</p><p align="center" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Cross-posted from my JPost blog.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-38771586983129625502023-02-10T14:00:00.001-08:002023-02-10T14:00:00.154-08:00Apartheid activists unmask themselves<p> </p><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">February 2, 2012</span><span class="comments-link" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Once again, anti-Israel activists are busy organizing their annual “Israel Apartheid Week” hullabaloo, which they apparently hope to stretch out over some three weeks from mid-February to early March.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is a pathetically undignified spectacle – indeed, if the intention was to discredit the Palestinian cause, it wouldn’t be all that easy to come up with something more embarrassing.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As Professor Gideon Shimoni, who authored a book about the Jewish community in apartheid South Africa, has pointed out, it is utterly disingenuous to transform “the term ‘apartheid’ from the description of a singular historical phenomenon in a particular time and place – South Africa from about 1948 to 1994 – into a generic concept. This deceptive device functions much like use of the term ‘holocaust’ to describe any and all human disasters.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shimoni also emphasized that there can be no comparison between the conduct of the African National Congress (ANC) and the PLO and other Palestinian factions:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“In South Africa the blacks started with a tradition of non-violent resistance. They tried in every peaceful way to argue their case, only turning to violence as a last resort, because the other side refused to negotiate. Even when the African National Congress (ANC) turned to violence, its nature was incomparable with the barbarically indiscriminate practice not only of the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad but even of the PLO. […] Comparing the Palestinian struggle to that of the ANC is an absolute insult to the latter’s historical record.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Moreover, Shimoni argued that</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">the Israel=apartheid fallacy can serve as a litmus test for distinguishing between those who are hostile to Israel’s very existence and those who are conscientious critics of the policies and actions of Israel’s governments and public.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is a crucial point, because all the activist verbiage about “legitimate” Palestinian rights, justice and equality cannot obscure the fact that those who have made a career of demonizing Israel as an apartheid state plainly share the Iranian president’s view that Palestinian “rights” will only be fully realized in a “world without Zionism.” In other words, this view posits that the realization of Palestinian rights requires the denial of the Jewish right to self-determination and the abolition of the Jewish state.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But professional demonizers of Israel like Ali Abunimah tend to tailor their message. When Abunimah addresses a broader audience, he will emphasize “Palestinian rights and international law,” but when he addresses primarily his faithful fan club, he will leave no doubt that “apartheid”-activists like him have no interest in a Palestinian state alongside Israel:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-585" data-attachment-id="585" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="AbunimahApartheid" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/abunimahapartheid.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/abunimahapartheid.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/abunimahapartheid.jpg" data-orig-size="756,358" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2012/02/02/apartheid-activists-unmask-themselves/abunimahapartheid/" height="236" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/abunimahapartheid.jpg?w=500&h=236" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/abunimahapartheid.jpg?w=498&h=236 498w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/abunimahapartheid.jpg?w=150&h=71 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/abunimahapartheid.jpg?w=300&h=142 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/abunimahapartheid.jpg 756w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" title="AbunimahApartheid" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As these tweets demonstrate nicely, Israel doesn’t have to do anything to be demonized: the fantasies of Ali Abunimah are enough to get him going.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the screenshot above, you also see a retweet from benabyad, aka Ben White, a fellow-blogger at Ali Abunimah’s <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Electronic Intifada</em> and author of a book on “Israeli Apartheid.” White tweeted his pride in being quoted in a Knesset debate by MK Hannen Zoabi, who contributed a Foreword to his most recent book – which is in itself a splendid illustration of “Israeli Apartheid:” an Arab – excuse me: Palestinian – MK who, with impunity, spends a lot of time engaging in activities designed to undermine the state in whose parliament she is serving, all the while complaining about discrimination… Where else in the Middle East could she do this?</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ben White is of course also convinced that there shouldn’t be a Jewish state in any borders – indeed, his CV consists only of anti-Israel activism – but he often prefers to put it in a less than straightforward way. For example, when he was recently interviewed on the website <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jadaliyya</em>, he was asked what audience he was trying to reach with his new book and what impact he hoped for:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">I hope that this book can be a useful resource for university students, and also for human rights/solidarity activists, seeking to have a better grasp of Israel’s discriminatory policies towards Palestinian citizens. But I also would like this to be read by those people who have an interest in the issue or region as a whole, and who have never had a chance to seriously unpack the implications of Israel’s definition as a “Jewish and democratic” state. There are insights here, I believe, that are crucial for an approach to the conflict that realistically appreciates what it will take to reach a settlement.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As is evident from all of Ben White’s writings, the “approach” he hopes to popularize is one that demands the abolition of Israel as a Jewish state.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The interview is followed by a short excerpt of Ben White’s new book, which starts with these assertions:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Negev, or al-Naqab in Arabic, is an area that has been consistently targeted by Israeli governments, along with agencies like the Jewish National Fund (JNF), for so-called “development,” i.e. Judaization. In parallel to the indigenous Bedouin Palestinians being expelled and forcibly relocated (see Chapter Two), private resources have been mobilized in order to “settle” the Negev with Jews.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, could there be anything more outrageous than Israel planning to develop part of the state’s underdeveloped territory???</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Notice also that the Bedouin are now “Bedouin Palestinians” – and what should we make of the fact that Ben White is so utterly opposed to having Jews moving to the Negev? Sounds like he’s in favor of a Jew-free Negev, or maybe some kind of apartheid???</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But what is perhaps particularly ridiculous is that Ben White hopes that his book will be read by people “who have an interest in the issue or region as a whole.” Follow benabyad’s (oh, the spell-check would prefer beanbag…) tweets for a few days, and you’ll see that he has absolutely no interest in the “region as a whole.” The region doesn’t exist for him, even the Palestinians exist only insofar as their affairs can be related to Israel – Ben White is truly a one-trick-pony, and for him, it’s all about the Jewish state.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So no, Ben White wouldn’t know a thing about the Bedouins in the Sinai, and since they are probably not “Bedouin Palestinians” and it would be tricky to blame any of their grievances on Israel, Ben White couldn’t care less. Oh boy, what he is missing – of course there could be an Israeli angle! As Amr Yossef explained in a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Foreign Affairs</em> article last September:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ever since 1982, when Egypt restored its control over the Sinai Peninsula after 15 years of Israeli occupation, the Bedouin majority who live there have been framed by the government in Cairo as outlaws. They are culturally and ethnically apart from Egyptians of the Nile Valley and share largely nomadic and clan-based social connections that extend beyond national borders. Bedouins were also long suspected of being collaborators during the Israeli occupation, accused of taking jobs with Israeli companies and starting new businesses under Israeli control.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">As a result, Sinai Bedouins have long faced state discrimination: Almost a fifth are refused Egyptian citizenship, and all are denied the right to own land for fear that they would resell it to Israelis. Bedouins are also excluded from Egypt’s mandatory conscription, prohibited from joining police or military academies or from holding key positions in Sinai’s two governorates.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">These discriminatory policies have been compounded by economic marginalization. Only a tiny fraction of Bedouins were able to find work in Egypt’s tourism industry, the country’s largest economic sector. In fact, many Bedouins believe that they were better off in terms of employment, education, and medical services under Israeli administration.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No doubt, the Sinai Bedouins are <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">desperately</span> in need of being educated by Ben White. So here’s a worthy cause for the activist networks he relies on: organize a Sinai book tour for Ben White!!! But of course, he would consider this only if Israel re-occupied the Sinai…</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cross-posted from my JPost blog</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-76596075985874797522023-02-09T20:14:00.001-08:002023-02-09T20:14:00.151-08:00Gingrich and the Golden Rule<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></h1><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">December 11, 2011</span> <span class="comments-link" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-sep" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">|</span></span></div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Once upon a time, Newt Gingrich was a professor of history, and since he is now competing to become the Republican presidential candidate, his record as a historian is being mined for clues about his political views. Needless to say, Gingrich’s professorial past doesn’t necessarily impress his critics – indeed, Gingrich has already been advised to “read a history book.” If he followed this advice, he could read one of the books he wrote…</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Unsurprisingly, Gingrich also got some history lessons in response to his recent observation that historically, “there was no Palestine as a state” and that the Palestinians are an “invented” people “who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Responding to Gingrich’s statement, Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine asserted that “there was no Israel and no such thing as an ‘Israeli people’ before 1948. So the idea that Palestinians are ‘an invented people’ while Israelis somehow are not is historically indefensible and inaccurate. Such statements seem to merely reflect deep historical ignorance and an irrational hostility towards Palestinian identity and nationalism.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">While Ibish conveniently ignores the fact that the “Land of Israel” as well as the “Israelites” are of course biblical concepts, he is not entirely wrong, because – as Walter Russell Mead demonstrates in an essay devoted to Gingrich’s statement – it is indeed easy to argue that national identity is often an “invented” construct. At the same time, Mead acknowledges that Gingrich’s statement “is not factually incorrect as far as it goes;” yet, he is also sharply critical of Gingrich, arguing that his “error isn’t to say that Palestinian identity is to some degree invented; his error is to use that fact to undercut the reality and legitimacy of the Palestinian national movement.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mead also emphasizes that “both the US and Israel need people who can make a sober and reasoned case for the legitimacy of the Jewish state and of America’s support for it in ways that reduce international misunderstanding of and opposition to the two countries. But unfortunately remarks like Mr. Gingrich’s (to be fair, a short aside in a longer interview) make that conversation harder, not easier to have.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">While I would largely agree with Mead’s post, I think it’s worthwhile contemplating the notion that there is still a need to “make a sober and reasoned case for the legitimacy of the Jewish state and of America’s support for it in ways that reduce international misunderstanding of and opposition to the two countries.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Obviously, Mead believes that it is utterly counterproductive to respond to the prevalent questioning of the Jewish state’s legitimacy by Palestinians and the larger Arab and Muslim world by pointing out the fact that the case for a Palestinian state is not based on a long-established and historically-rooted Palestinian national identity.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But I’m not sure if this really true.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As Adam Levick points out on <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cif Watch</em>, the non-existent state of Palestine is already recognized by some 125 of the 193 UN member states – while Israel, more than six decades after its acceptance as a UN member state, is still not recognized by 36 UN members, including 30 Muslim majority countries. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence showing that the UN supports a veritable “infrastructure of anti-Israel propaganda” and devotes truly disproportionate resources and energies to censuring Israel.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So while Israel and its supporters are supposed to play by the rules of fairness and to strictly observe the dictates of political correctness, the rule for the supporters of Palestine seems to be “anything goes.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But it turns out that when the Palestinians find themselves at the receiving end of even the slightest breach of political correctness, the result could most definitely be described as a “teachable moment.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Consider some of the Palestinian reactions to Gingrich’s statement:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Saeb Erekat, the veteran Palestinian peace negotiator, characterized Gingrich’s statements as “despicable,” asserting that they not only reflected “the lowest point of thinking anyone can reach” but also contributed to “the cycle of violence.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hanan Ashrawi, another veteran Palestinian spokesperson, described Gingrich’s remarks as “very racist” and “an invitation to further conflict rather than any contribution to peace.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, asserted that Gingrich had made “grave comments that represented an incitement for ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If all these Palestinian officials familiarized themselves with the “Golden Rule” that admonishes us to “do as you would be done by,” we can look forward to a bright future in which no Palestinian – and no Arab or Muslim – will ever think of denying Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Crossposted from the JPost</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-16541376873262170062023-02-06T20:11:00.001-08:002023-02-06T20:11:00.163-08:00Qaradawi for the (deliberately) clueless<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></h1><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">December 24, 2012</span> </div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s probably not a good idea to try to debate Islamophobia on Twitter – but I got involved in such a debate anyway because I was thinking about this issue after having read a very interesting post on “Theocracy in the UK.” However, the Twitter debate wasn’t at all related to this post. At the point I joined in, the focus was on the controversial term Islamophobia, which in my view is very problematic because it implies that the teachings of Islam cannot legitimately be criticized.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To illustrate my point, I linked to a post of mine entitled “<a href="file:///D:/2011/12/18/whos-defaming-islam/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Who’s defaming Islam?</a>,” where I argued that there are plenty of examples of popular Muslim leaders or widely respected authorities making statements about Islam that depict the faith as requiring Jew-hatred and support for jihadi terrorism.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I then focused in particular on Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, because he is without a doubt a mainstream figure who is regarded as a great scholar by many millions of Muslims and who has even been described as the “<a href="file:///D:/2012/07/17/a-very-short-history-of-antisemitism/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Global Mufti</a>” due to his enormous influence.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But unfortunately, Qaradawi’s views fully justify the conclusion of Mark Gardner and Dave Rich that he represents “the combination of theological anti-Judaism, modern European antisemitism and conflict-driven Judeophobia that make up contemporary Islamist attitudes to Jews.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Indeed, Qaradawi is an avowed Jew-hater who fervently believes in a divinely ordained battle between “all Muslims and all Jews.” As Qaradawi emphasizes in his “Fatawa on Palestine” in reference to the notorious hadith that features prominently in the Hamas Charter:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“The last day will not come unless you fight Jews. A Jew will hide himself behind stones and trees and stones and trees will say, ‘O servant of Allah – or O Muslim – there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“[W]e believe that the battle between us and the Jews is coming … Such a battle is not driven by nationalistic causes or patriotic belonging; it is rather driven by religious incentives. This battle is not going to happen between Arabs and Zionists, or between Jews and Palestinians, or between Jews or anybody else. It is between Muslims and Jews as is clearly stated in the hadith. This battle will occur between the collective body of Muslims and the collective body of Jews i.e. all Muslims and all Jews. (p. 77)”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Perhaps even more disturbingly, Qaradawi has expressed the view that</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.” […]</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">On another occasion, Qaradawi prayed:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Oh Allah, take your enemies, the enemies of Islam. Oh Allah, take the Jews, the treacherous aggressors. Oh Allah, take this profligate, cunning, arrogant band of people. Oh Allah, they have spread much tyranny and corruption in the land. Pour Your wrath upon them, oh our God. Lie in wait for them. Oh Allah, You annihilated the people of Thamoud at the hand of a tyrant, and You annihilated the people of ‘Aad with a fierce, icy gale. Oh Allah, You annihilated the people Thamoud at the hand of a tyrant, You annihilated the people of ‘Aad with a fierce, icy gale, and You destroyed the Pharaoh and his soldiers – oh Allah, take this oppressive, tyrannical band of people. Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">However, in the debate on twitter, two people were resolved to downplay both Qaradawi’s Jew-hatred and his influence. @LutherBlissetts claimed triumphantly that Qaradawi wasn’t the only one who regarded the Holocaust as a divine punishment inflicted on the Jews, citing the fervent (and controversial) supporter of Israel John Hagee and Rabbi Yoel Teitlebaum (the Satmar Rebbe).</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Now, it is indeed true that both Pastor Hagee and the Satmar Rebbe have argued that the Holocaust should be understood as God’s punishment for the Jews – and they both have done so in the context of a theological quest to explain the unspeakable evil and suffering of the Nazi genocide. To suggest that this is in any way comparable to Qaradawi’s views is simply beneath contempt: Qaradawi makes it crystal clear that he thinks it was praiseworthy that the Nazis “managed to put them [the Jews] in their place” and he explicitly expresses the hope that there will be a “next time…at the hand of the believers [i.e. the Muslims].”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The argument advanced by @TellMamaUK – an organization that encourages Muslims to report instances of harassment and bigotry – was very different: they claimed that Qaradawi’s views “do not reflect the range of British Muslims” and complained that I was “really hung up on the ‘mainstream’ thing,” arguing that “Communities are diverse or does that not matter?”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But it is of course a platitude to say that there will be some diversity and a range of views in any given group of people – whether it’s a religious, political, social or ethnic group. It’s also a platitude to say that in any group of people, there are likely some fringe figures with bizarre and outrageous views – and Qaradawi wouldn’t be worth mentioning if he was such a fringe figure.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the context of the debate about the term Islamophobia, my point about Qaradawi being mainstream by virtue of his huge following and influence was therefore a different one: while Qaradawi’s standing obviously does not justify bigotry against individual Muslims, it illustrates very well the problems with the term Islamophobia.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Runnymede Trust’s definition of Islamophobia – which was mentioned in the debate as the relevant definition – includes the point that Islam “is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism, and engaged in a clash of civilizations.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">While Qaradawi may not accept the wording here, he certainly is an enthusiastic advocate of an Islam that stands for violence – indeed for genocidal violence – and a “clash of civilizations” when it comes to the Jews (and to a somewhat lesser degree to the US and the West).</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So should Qaradawi – and the many other Muslim clerics and scholars who preach <a href="file:///D:/2012/01/16/news-from-israels-islamist-neighborhood-2/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">similar views</a> – be denounced as Islamophobic ?</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The problem is obviously – as this debate illustrated all too well – that it is much more likely that it is considered Islamophobic to argue that there is a serious problem when somebody with Qaradawi’s views is mainstream.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-60135732387293203172023-02-05T20:10:00.001-08:002023-02-05T20:10:00.149-08:00Christmas news for Christians<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span><span style="color: #888888; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">December 21, 2011</span><span style="color: #888888; font-size: 12px;"> </span></h1><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar once promised his audience during a mass rally in Gaza that “Islam will enter every house and will spread over the entire world;” more recently, the mufti of the Jordan-based Palestine Liberation Army seems to have entertained similar hopes.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Maybe it’s people like Zahar and the militant mufti that Walter Russell Mead has in mind when he notes that a new report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life “will make a lot of people unhappy.” Mhm, and Mead’s headline won’t be much of a consolation for those unhappy people, either: “The Missionaries Win: Christianity Becomes Global Religious Superpower.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mead highlights some of the most important findings of the report:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Christianity in the last one hundred years grew to become the world’s most widespread and diverse religion as well as the largest. Roughly one third of the world’s almost seven billion people are (or at least say they are) Christian. The second largest religion, Islam, claims about one fourth of the world’s population.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The most dramatic change in the last 100 years is Christianity’s global surge. In 1910, there were about 9 million Christians in sub-Saharan Africa, the Pew survey reports. Today there are more than half a billion. This fact is of interest to geopoliticians as much as to believers: sub-Saharan Africa remains the scene of intense Christian-Muslim competition, a competition that frequently breaks out into violence. The Christians appear to be winning the “race for Africa” at least for now as more than 60 percent of sub-Saharan Africans look to the Cross rather than to the Crescent. As the US increases its presence in Africa, the common religious orientation will likely make for better and deeper ties.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In another major development, Christianity has achieved a significant presence on the mainland of Asia. […] the future of Christianity as a global faith will likely depend on what happens in countries in East, South and Southeast Asia. […]</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As Mead points out, religious demography is a problematic field, but the Pew report provides the most reliable information available – and, so says the professor, because “familiarity with religious history, religious culture and religious demography is essential for anybody who aspires to be a serious student of world affairs; this Pew report is not to be missed.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To add just one observation from the report’s executive summary – which explains why Zahar and the militant mufti are so upbeat about the ultimate victory of Islam:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Though Christianity began in the Middle East-North Africa, today that region has both the lowest concentration of Christians (about 4% of the region’s population) and the smallest number of Christians (about 13 million) of any major geographic region.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Particularly in the Christmas season, it’s popular in some quarters to blame one of the Middle East’s tiniest countries for the plight of the region’s Christian population…</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Perhaps less known is the fact that due to an influx of Christian workers and refugees, some think that there are “enough newcomers now for a Catholic cathedral in every major Israeli city.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Another piece of rather surprising news can be found at the website of the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">National Catholic Reporter</em>, where a lengthy post under the hopeful title “Liberating the Christian voice in the Arab Spring” claims that</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: grey; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Israel is not the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population is experiencing growth. Statistics provided at last October’s Synod for the Middle East show that of the sixteen nations that make up the Middle East, seven have seen spikes in their Christian population since 1980: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Yemen. All are part of the Arabian Peninsula.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No doubt in all these places – and particularly in Saudi Arabia – construction workers are frantically building cathedrals and churches to provide the “spiking” Christian population with adequate places for worship…</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And sadly, as far as the (equally unrealistic) hopes about the “Arab Spring” are concerned, it seems that almost 100 000 Egyptian Copts have already given up any such hopes and left their country.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-11395579316966419662023-02-04T20:09:00.000-08:002023-02-04T20:09:24.561-08:00Good Jews, bad Jews, and the ugly writings of Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad<p> <span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">May 22, 2013</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span class="comments-link" style="border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-sep" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">|</span></span></p><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In early May, <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Algemeiner</em> published an article in which I documented that several <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> op-eds by Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad on Zionism and Israel included material that was hard to distinguish from the kind of antisemitic texts one can find at a site like Stormfront [article cross-posted below]. About ten days later, a new op-ed by Massad caused a huge outcry – which apparently prompted <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> to remove the piece a few days after it was published. Anyone who wanted to read Massad’s piece after <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> had removed it could still find it on Stormfront – or on Ali Abunimah’s blog at the Electronic Intifada…</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For some reason, it was featured there with an image of the Nazi-publication “Der Stürmer” in the background.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Massad on EI" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1151" data-attachment-id="1151" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Massad on EI" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-on-ei.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-on-ei.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-on-ei.jpg" data-orig-size="755,471" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2013/05/22/good-jews-bad-jews-and-the-ugly-writings-of-columbia-university-professor-joseph-massad/massad-on-ei/" height="311" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-on-ei.jpg?w=500&h=311" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-on-ei.jpg?w=500&h=311 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-on-ei.jpg?w=150&h=94 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-on-ei.jpg?w=300&h=187 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-on-ei.jpg 755w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">However, the saga continued when <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> eventually decided to re-publish Massad’s piece on May 21, together with a short note from the editor who claimed that <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> had neither succumbed to any pressures when it pulled the piece nor when it decided to re-publish it:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Al Jazeera does not submit to pressure regardless of circumstance, and our history is full of examples where we were faced with extremely tough choices but never gave in. This is the secret to our success.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Oh well… Perhaps they were ultimately swayed by Liam Hoare’s argument, who wrote on his blog that the removal of Massad’s article was “exactly the wrong thing for al-Jazeera to have done” because “denying people the right to read this disgraceful, unlettered essay also denies people the right to find out just what a horrible little man Joseph Massad is — which is a useful public service for al-Jazeera to be engaging in.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In any case, to wrap up this installment of the Massad saga, I cross-post my own two commentaries below, with some minor modifications [as indicated].</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">However, a few additional points should perhaps be highlighted.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">First, it is hard to convey just how bizarre Massad’s piece is. He started out with the preposterous claim that Nazism and Zionism were both antisemitic and then proceeded to demonstrate that he himself was perfectly able to distinguish between good Jews and bad Jews: according to Massad, most Jews were anti-Zionists (and therefore of course good) because just like Massad, they realized the evils of Zionism right away… Unfortunately, however, these good Jews were all killed by the antisemitism of the Nazis, while the bad Jews were saved by the antisemitism of the Zionists – or, as Massad puts it:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“While the majority of Jews continued to resist the anti-Semitic basis of Zionism and its alliances with anti-Semites, the Nazi genocide not only killed 90 percent of European Jews, but in the process also killed the majority of Jewish enemies of Zionism who died precisely because they refused to heed the Zionist call of abandoning their countries and homes.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">After the War, the horror at the Jewish holocaust did not stop European countries from supporting the anti-Semitic programme of Zionism. On the contrary, these countries shared with the Nazis a predilection for Zionism.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So no, it’s not your fault if you can’t make sense of this. Indeed, Massad’s bizarre “reasoning” reminded me that Walter Russell Mead once noted that antisemitism usually indicates the “inability to see the world clearly and discern cause and effect relations in complex social settings […] Anti-Semitism isn’t just the socialism of fools; it is the sociology of the befuddled. The anti-Semite fails to grasp how the world works, and that failure condemns him to endless frustration.” Sarcastically, Mead added: “Naturally, this is the fault of the Jews.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Naturally, Massad’s fans also knew whom to blame for <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera’s</em> decision to remove his column. As the “Angry Arab,” Massad’s colleague As’ad AbuKhalil put it, the decision was “due to pressures from Zionist hoodlums.” And there were momentous implications: “The Qatari ruling dynasty is now at the feet of Zionists.”</p><p align="center" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Stormfront Material from Columbia University Professor<br />Joseph Massad</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[First published at <i>The Algemeiner</i>]</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In one of his recent columns for <i>Al Jazeera</i>, Columbia University professor Joseph Massad holds forth on the topic of “Israel and the politics of boycott.” He casually claims in this piece that “the Zionists…were pioneers in their use of boycotts to effect racial separatism,” while “the Nazis would be latecomers to the tactic.” In other words, the Nazis were just imitating “the Zionists”…</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No doubt the politically correct thing to do is to regard Professor Massad as just another Israel “critic.” But one of Massad’s older <i>Al Jazeera</i> columns offers an excellent example of the professor’s methods and the kind of “intellectual” company he gets to keep as a result.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some two years ago, Massad penned a bitter complaint about the contrast between a supposed western indifference to any suffering by Arab/Palestinian children and an eagerness to sympathize when Jewish children are in danger. Reflecting his obsessive hatred of Zionism, Massad devoted one section of his article to “Zionism and Jewish children,” where he claimed that “Zionism did not always show similar love towards Jewish children, whom it never flinched from sacrificing for its colonial goals.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The “evidence” Massad produced to support his vicious claim is a quote of David Ben-Gurion, who, according to Massad, rejected a generous British offer to take a few thousand Jewish children from Germany to Britain in the wake of the so-called “Kristallnacht”-pogroms in November 1938. The quote reads:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“If I knew it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel), then I would opt for the second alternative, for we must weigh not only the life of these children but also the history of the people of Israel.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As noted in a relevant section on “Ben Gurion and the Holocaust” in a longer post by CAMERA, “so-called ‘post-Zionists’ and anti-Zionist radicals” love to insinuate that the Zionists happily collaborated with the Nazis in order to promote immigration to Palestine irrespective of overall Jewish interests and the survival of Europe’s Jews.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But in late 1938, it was already clear that precious few countries were willing to take in Jewish refugees. Indeed, Germany’s Nazi government gloated in the wake of the Evian Conference in the summer of 1938 “how ‘astounding’ it was that foreign countries criticized Germany for their treatment of the Jews, but none of them wanted to open the doors to them.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">That is the context for the Ben Gurion quote presented by Massad – but of course, Massad prefers to ignore this context. (And needless to say, his interest in the rescue of Jewish children from the Nazis doesn’t include the Jewish children whose rescue was sabotaged by the Palestinian leader who became notorious as “Hitler’s mufti.”)</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Massad’s Ben Gurion quote is taken from a debate that focused on Britain’s decision to deny the Jewish children from Germany entrance into Palestine, giving rise to the concern that the British offer to instead take these children to Britain would only help to undermine the idea that British Mandate Palestine should serve as a safe haven for Jewish refugees, which would ultimately leave many desperate refugees without any place to go.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet another piece of context-free “evidence” produced by Massad is an incident from November 1940, when – according to Massad – “the Zionists responded to the British-imposed restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine, long demanded by the Palestinian people, by blowing up a ship with Jewish civilian passengers in Haifa – killing 242 Jews, including scores of children.” Triumphantly, Massad concludes: “For Zionism, Jewish children are as expendable as Palestinian and Arab children, unless they serve its colonial goals.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">However, very different from what Massad suggested, there was of course no intent to blow up the ship – named Patria – that carried almost 2000 Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. The sinking of the ship was due to a tragically miscalculated explosive charge that was placed on board to damage the Patria in order to prevent it from sailing to Mauritius, where –bowing to Arab pressure and violence – the British authorities intended to deport and intern the refugees.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Now, do you care to guess where else the kind of “evidence” marshaled by Massad is popular for very much the same purpose?</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yes, indeed: at Stormfront – the neo-Nazi “White Pride World Wide” hate site.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Massad Stormfront1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1152" data-attachment-id="1152" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Massad Stormfront1" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront1.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront1.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront1.jpg" data-orig-size="898,207" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2013/05/22/good-jews-bad-jews-and-the-ugly-writings-of-columbia-university-professor-joseph-massad/massad-stormfront1/" height="115" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront1.jpg?w=500&h=115" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront1.jpg?w=500&h=115 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront1.jpg?w=150&h=35 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront1.jpg?w=300&h=69 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront1.jpg?w=768&h=177 768w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront1.jpg 898w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Massad Stormfront2" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1153" data-attachment-id="1153" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Massad Stormfront2" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront2.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront2.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront2.jpg" data-orig-size="892,453" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2013/05/22/good-jews-bad-jews-and-the-ugly-writings-of-columbia-university-professor-joseph-massad/massad-stormfront2/" height="253" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront2.jpg?w=500&h=253" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront2.jpg?w=498&h=253 498w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront2.jpg?w=150&h=76 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront2.jpg?w=300&h=152 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront2.jpg?w=768&h=390 768w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront2.jpg 892w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Clearly, the “Friend of Stormfront” who posted this would appreciate Massad’s use of the Patria incident.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But there is much more: scroll down a little bit on this same page, and you’ll find a text that is sourced as a quote from David Duke’s notorious “minor league <i>Mein Kampf</i>” – and as it happens, it’s pretty much identical to what Columbia University professor Joseph Massad wrote in his <i>Al Jazeera</i> column.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Stormfront isn’t a site I would normally link to, but there is arguably no longer a point avoiding such sites if their offerings are mainstreamed on <i>Al Jazeera</i> English by a professor from a highly regarded American University. So here is the link and an image of the David Duke text that includes the Ben Gurion quote and the Patria incident.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Massad Stormfront DDuke" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1154" data-attachment-id="1154" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Massad Stormfront DDuke" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront-dduke.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront-dduke.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront-dduke.jpg" data-orig-size="891,488" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2013/05/22/good-jews-bad-jews-and-the-ugly-writings-of-columbia-university-professor-joseph-massad/massad-stormfront-dduke/" height="273" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront-dduke.jpg?w=500&h=273" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront-dduke.jpg?w=498&h=273 498w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront-dduke.jpg?w=150&h=82 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront-dduke.jpg?w=300&h=164 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront-dduke.jpg?w=768&h=421 768w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-stormfront-dduke.jpg 891w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So should we conclude that this is where Professor Massad looks for his “evidence”? Or is it perhaps just a case of not so great minds thinking alike? After all, former Klansman David Duke uses the Ben Gurion quote to argue that if “Israel’s first prime minister’s regard for Jewish life was such that he would rather see half the Jewish children of Germany die than be transported to England instead of Israel, how much value could one expect him to place on the life of a Palestinian child?” And Professor Massad uses the same quote for an article asking “Are Palestinian children less worthy?” And then both David Duke and Professor Massad go on to mention the Patria incident… Ah, what a coincidence!</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But lo and behold, there are more examples of David Duke and Joseph Massad thinking alike: both like to talk about “Jewish Supremacism” – and needless to say, the fans of White Supremacism at Stormfront agree that this is a very worthwhile topic. Similarly, both David Duke and Joseph Massad are adamant that the Jewish state is inherently racist – and when it comes to Israeli racism, even Stormfront fans are of course appalled!</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To be sure, Massad is far too sophisticated to engage in the fevered antisemitic conspiracy theories that come natural to David Duke. At the same time, Massad is not too sophisticated to keep repeating utterly misleading claims about how “helpful” European antisemitism and Nazism was for the Zionist project.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When it comes to one of Massad’s favorite topics – the efforts of German Zionists to facilitate the emigration of German Jews to Palestine by collaborating with Nazi authorities – he would probably claim to rely on Francis R. Nicosia’s book on “Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany.” But while Nicosia emphasizes that, given the historical context, it would be completely unjustified to suggest any moral or political equivalency between the Nazis and the Zionists, Massad keeps insinuating exactly such an equivalency.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Massad writes about this issue as if history had not vindicated the Zionist conviction that Jews urgently needed a homeland as a safe haven – and of course, he also ignores that the expulsion of Jews from their ancient communities in the Arab and Muslim world provided yet another vindication for Zionism.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The result is that it’s not easy to tell if you read Massad or Stormfront. Try for yourself – with these Massad-style-cherry-picked quotes [updated version, from my JPost blog, cross-posted below; correct answers below]:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1) “Nazism was a boon to Zionism throughout the 1930s.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">2) “For all intents and purposes, the National Socialist government was the best thing to happen to Zionism in its history.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">3) “In Germany, the average Jews were victims of the Zionist elite who worked hand in hand with the Nazis.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">4) “Hitler could have just confiscated all the Jewish wealth. Instead he used the ‘Haavara Program’ to help establish the State of Israel.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">5) “Between 1933 and 1939, 60 percent of all capital invested in Jewish Palestine came from German Jewish money through the Transfer Agreement.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">6) “In fact, contra all other German Jews (and everyone else inside and outside Germany) who recognised Nazism as the Jews’ bitterest enemy, Zionism saw an opportunity to strengthen its colonisation of Palestine.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">7) “Zionists welcomed the Nazis’ anti-Semitic policies. Like the Nazis, they believed in race-based national character and destiny. Like the Nazis, they believed Jews had no future in Germany.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">8) “the Zionist Federation of Germany […] supported the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, as they agreed with the Nazis that Jews and Aryans were separate and separable races. This was not a tactical support but one based on ideological similitude.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">9) “Zionism […] developed the idea of the first racially separatist planned community for the exclusive use of Ashkenazi Jews, namely the Kibbutz.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">10) “The Zionists were afraid that the ‘Jewish race’ was disappearing through assimilation.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p align="center" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">***************</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1) Massad 2) Stormfront 3) Stormfront 4) Stormfront 5) Massad 6) Massad 7) Stormfront 8) Massad 9) Massad 10) Stormfront</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">From Al Jazeera to Columbia University:<br /></span><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Joseph Massad’s obsession with Israel</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[Cross-posted from my <i>JPost blog</i>]</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">IMPORTANT UPDATE:</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> has deleted Massad’s op-ed “The Last of the Semites” from its website.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">According to a furious post by Ali Abunimah at the Electronic Intifada, “Massad told The Electronic Intifada that he had ‘received confirmation’ from his editor at Al Jazeera English that ‘management pulled the article.’”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[But as noted above, the article was later re-published.]</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Columbia University professor Joseph Massad has been at it for years, but for some reason, his latest op-ed for <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> finally made many people sit up and pay attention to Massad’s relentless efforts to taint Israel and Zionism with preposterous Nazi-comparisons and claims of Nazi-collaboration.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Popular columnist Jeffrey Goldberg tweeted sarcastically: “Congratulations, al Jazeera: You’ve just posted one of the most anti-Jewish screeds in recent memory.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Goldberg on Massad AlJaz" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1155" data-attachment-id="1155" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Goldberg on Massad AlJaz" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/goldberg-on-massad-aljaz.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/goldberg-on-massad-aljaz.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/goldberg-on-massad-aljaz.jpg" data-orig-size="665,500" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2013/05/22/good-jews-bad-jews-and-the-ugly-writings-of-columbia-university-professor-joseph-massad/goldberg-on-massad-aljaz/" height="375" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/goldberg-on-massad-aljaz.jpg?w=500&h=375" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/goldberg-on-massad-aljaz.jpg?w=500&h=375 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/goldberg-on-massad-aljaz.jpg?w=150&h=113 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/goldberg-on-massad-aljaz.jpg?w=300&h=226 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/goldberg-on-massad-aljaz.jpg 665w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">While a lot of people agreed with Goldberg and either retweeted him or posted similar tweets, it is debatable if Massad’s latest <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> column was really so much worse than the many others that reflect his obsession with Israel. As I have documented only recently, Massad’s writings on Israel can easily be confused with material from the neo-Nazi “White Pride World Wide” hate site Stormfront – and at least in one case, he actually did write a passage that closely resembles a Stormfront post that is taken from David Duke’s notorious “minor league <i>Mein Kampf</i>.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It was therefore arguably long overdue that people finally noticed that Massad was using his <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> columns to spread his vicious views on Israel and Zionism. In his latest lengthy and rather incoherent screed, Massad tries once again to resurrect the “Zionism is racism”-equation with the added twist of insisting that Zionism is really Nazi-like racism. This brings Massad to the utterly ridiculous conclusion that</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Israel and the Western powers want to elevate anti-Semitism to an international principle around which they seek to establish full consensus. They insist that for there to be peace in the Middle East, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims must become, like the West, anti-Semites by espousing Zionism and recognising Israel’s anti-Semitic claims [i.e. Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state].”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Furthermore, according to Massad,</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“the Palestinian people and the few surviving anti-Zionist Jews […] are […] the heirs of the pre-WWII Jewish and Palestinian struggles against anti-Semitism and its Zionist colonial manifestation. It is their resistance that stands in the way of a complete victory for European anti-Semitism in the Middle East and the world at large.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is almost amusing that Massad insists that “the Palestinian Authority and its cronies” are not part of this oh-so-noble tradition of opposing the kind of antisemitic Zionism that is the product of his fevered imagination. But of course, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Columbia University professor Joseph Massad clearly share a fondness for the “historical narishkayt” that there was some sort of cozy “relationship between Zionism and Nazism before World War II.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Indeed, Massad – who works at Columbia University as an expert on “modern Arab politics and intellectual history” – faithfully reflects the antisemitic demonization of Israel that is so commonplace in the Arab media and that keeps poisoning Arab politics.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In reaction to Massad’s latest screed, many on Twitter dismissed his vicious views as proof of his ignorance, and a widely recommended post by Liam Hoare opened with the verdict that “Joseph Massad’s op-ed, ‘The Last of the Semites’, demonstrates above all that the Columbia professor knows very little about not a lot.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But while Hoare does a good job demonstrating that Massad’s views amount to “a total perversion of Jewish history and what Herzl actually thought and wrote,” it’s safe to assume that Professor Massad thinks of himself as a foremost expert on Zionism and Israel. Indeed, his <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> columns on these subjects usually include a reference to his book on “The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians,” and it turns out that this spring semester, Massad is also teaching a course that covers some of the very subjects he knows so “very little about.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Massad course" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1156" data-attachment-id="1156" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Massad course" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-course.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-course.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-course.jpg" data-orig-size="899,386" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2013/05/22/good-jews-bad-jews-and-the-ugly-writings-of-columbia-university-professor-joseph-massad/massad-course/" height="214" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-course.jpg?w=500&h=214" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-course.jpg?w=498&h=214 498w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-course.jpg?w=150&h=64 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-course.jpg?w=300&h=129 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-course.jpg?w=768&h=330 768w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-course.jpg 899w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Unfortunately, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Massad’s students are likely to learn how to present Zionism as “a total perversion of Jewish history and what Herzl actually thought and wrote.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Whether the resulting ideas are articulated in a Columbia University classroom or on <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> or Stormfront makes little difference as far as their substance is concerned. I tried to illustrate this point in my recent post on Massad with some quotes that are either from Massad or from Stormfront – see if you can tell them apart .</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[…]</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Needless to say, Massad and his admirers who enthusiastically endorsed his recent column – among them Max Blumenthal of Mondoweiss, Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, and the “Angry Arab” Professor As’ad AbuKhalil – would all insist, just as Massad claims in his <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera</em> piece, that their staunch anti-Zionism means quasi by definition that they can’t be antisemitic, even if they propagate the same perverted tropes that are popular on Stormfront.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> *************************</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Update:</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I just saw that Massad’s column on “The last of the Semites” is being shared and debated at Stormfront.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Massad latest Stormfront" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1157" data-attachment-id="1157" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Massad latest Stormfront" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-latest-stormfront.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-latest-stormfront.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-latest-stormfront.jpg" data-orig-size="937,537" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2013/05/22/good-jews-bad-jews-and-the-ugly-writings-of-columbia-university-professor-joseph-massad/massad-latest-stormfront/" height="286" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-latest-stormfront.jpg?w=500&h=286" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-latest-stormfront.jpg?w=500&h=286 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-latest-stormfront.jpg?w=150&h=86 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-latest-stormfront.jpg?w=300&h=172 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-latest-stormfront.jpg?w=768&h=440 768w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/massad-latest-stormfront.jpg 937w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><div class="sharedaddy sd-like-enabled sd-sharing-enabled" id="jp-post-flair" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0.5em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon sd-sharing" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><h3 class="sd-title" style="border: 0px; color: black; display: inline-block; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.025em; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">SHARE THIS:</h3></div></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-37777469058475657652023-02-02T04:41:00.000-08:002023-02-02T04:41:43.420-08:00The Palestinians and the Holocaust<p><br /></p><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">April 27, 2014</span><span class="comments-link" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the past few weeks, several reports highlighted the vitriolic backlash that followed a visit by a group of Palestinian students to Auschwitz at the end of March. The controversial visit – apparently the first of its kind – was organized as part of a joint program on Reconciliation and Conflict Resolution with the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and was led by Al-Quds University professor Mohammed S. Dajani.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The media reports on this visit leave little doubt that Professor Dajani reacted to the abuse and threats directed at him with admirable courage and integrity; it is also clear that he greatly inspired the students who participated in this trip. Moreover, the organizers of this program obviously had only the best of intentions. Yet, it is arguably deplorable that nobody seems to have made an effort to use this opportunity to teach the Palestinian students about the collaboration of Haj Amin al-Husseini with the Nazis. As one of the Palestinian students who visited Auschwitz reportedly noted afterwards: “It is a strange thing for a Palestinian to go to a Nazi death camp. But I would recommend the trip.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Quite obviously, this student remained completely unaware that when Palestinians visit a Nazi death camp, they have no reason to feel like detached spectators for whom it is somewhat “strange” to come. On the contrary, when Palestinians visit a Nazi death camp, they are following in the footsteps of the man who is nowadays sometimes referred to as “Hitler’s mufti,” and they have the chance to understand what this Palestinian ally of the Nazis saw and what he envisaged for the Middle East after the Nazi victory he hoped for.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Barry &Schwanitz book" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1258" data-attachment-id="1258" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Barry &amp;Schwanitz book" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/barry-schwanitz-book.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/barry-schwanitz-book.jpg?w=232" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/barry-schwanitz-book.jpg" data-orig-size="557,720" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2014/04/27/the-palestinians-and-the-holocaust/barry-schwanitz-book/" height="300" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 232px) 100vw, 232px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/barry-schwanitz-book.jpg?w=232&h=300" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/barry-schwanitz-book.jpg?w=232&h=300 232w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/barry-schwanitz-book.jpg?w=464&h=600 464w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/barry-schwanitz-book.jpg?w=116&h=150 116w" style="display: inline; float: left; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-right: 11px; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="232" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">According to the recently published book “Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East” by Barry Rubin and Wolfgang Schwanitz, it was either al-Husseini himself or one of his aides and relatives who visited Sachsenhausen in June 1942 together with three other Arab officials (p.2); there is also credible information indicating that one year later, “Eichmann personally took al-Husaini to visit the Auschwitz and Maidanek concentration camps.” (p. 164)</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Rubin and Schwanitz also document that at this time, al-Husseini traveled extensively in German-occupied Poland and in early July 1943, he was Himmler’s guest in the Ukrainian town of Zhitomir. As al-Husseini later recorded in his own memoirs, Himmler told him on this occasion that the Nazis had already “liquidated about three million” Jews. (p.188)</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Mufti & Himmler" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1259" data-attachment-id="1259" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Mufti &amp; Himmler" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/mufti-himmler.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/mufti-himmler.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/mufti-himmler.jpg" data-orig-size="960,720" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2014/04/27/the-palestinians-and-the-holocaust/mufti-himmler/" height="375" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/mufti-himmler.jpg?w=500&h=375" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/mufti-himmler.jpg?w=500&h=375 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/mufti-himmler.jpg?w=150&h=113 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/mufti-himmler.jpg?w=300&h=225 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/mufti-himmler.jpg?w=768&h=576 768w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/mufti-himmler.jpg 960w" style="clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">Screenshot showing a photo of Haj Amin al-Husseini meeting<br />SS leader Heinrich Himmler,<br />with the dedication:<br />To His Eminence the Grand Mufti as a memory; 4 VII: 1943; H.Himmler.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> This was obviously good news for al-Husseini. While the Nazis were initially content to solve their “Jewish problem” by driving Jews out of Germany and German-occupied areas, Rubin and Schwanitz argue that the importance they attached to their alliance with the Palestinian mufti was one of the factors that led to the adoption of the “Final Solution:” since al-Husseini wanted the Arab lands he intended to rule as “judenrein” as the Nazis wanted Germany and Europe, the Nazis had one more reason to conclude that it was in their interest to begin the systematic killing of Jews.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">According to Rubin and Schwanitz, it was therefore also not entirely coincidental that shortly “after seeing the grand mufti Hitler ordered invitations sent for a conference to be held at a villa on Lake Wannsee. The meeting’s purpose was to plan the comprehensive extermination of all Europe’s Jews.” (p. 8) Al-Husseini was also “the first non-German informed about the plan, even before it was formally presented at the conference. Adolf Eichmann himself was assigned to this task. Eichmann briefed al-Husaini in the SS headquarters map room, using the presentation prepared for the conference. The grand mufti, Eichmann’s aide recalled, was very impressed, so taken with this blueprint for genocide that al-Husaini asked Eichmann to send an expert […] to Jerusalem to be his own personal adviser for setting up death camps and gas chambers once Germany won the war and he was in power.” (pp. 8-9)</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Nazis believed that, in contrast to some of the other Arab leaders who had shown interest in cooperating with them, the mufti had transnational appeal and influence due to his standing as a religious leader. The resulting esteem shown to al-Husseini by the Nazis was not only reflected in his access to the highest echelons of the Nazi leadership – including a lengthy audience with Hitler – but also in the lavish accommodations and payments he received:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“In November 1941, al-Husaini arrived in Berlin to a reception showing the Germans saw him as future leader of all Arabs and Muslims […] He was housed in the luxurious Castle Bellevue, once home to Germany’s crown prince and today the official residence of Germany’s president. Al-Husaini was paid for his personal and political needs an amount equivalent to about twelve million dollars a year in today’s values. The funds were raised by selling gold seized from Jews sent to concentration camps. Following this pattern, al-Husaini requested and received as his office an expropriated Jewish apartment. His staff was housed in a half-dozen other houses provided by the Germans. In addition, al-Husaini was given a suite in Berlin’s splendid Hotel Adlon and, for vacations, luxurious accommodations at the Hotel Zittau and Oybin Castle in Saxony.” (p.5)</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So it is not at all “a strange thing for a Palestinian to go to a Nazi death camp” – particularly given the fact that al-Husseini remains a revered Palestinian leader. In recent years, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly paid homage to al-Husseini, which inevitably casts a shadow over today’s news that for the first time, Abbas issued a special statement for Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day describing the Holocaust as “the most heinous crime to have occurred against humanity in the modern era.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This statement shouldn’t be dismissed lightly, since it will no doubt trigger furious reactions by all those who insist that the Palestinian “nakba” was a comparable tragedy. Nevertheless, those who will now rush to praise Abbas for this statement should pause for a moment and consider how much more could be achieved for the prospects of genuine reconciliation and peace if the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world were finally willing to confront their own historical connections to the Nazi era. As Rubin and Schwanitz rightly highlight: “The regimes that would later rule Iraq for forty years, Syria for fifty years, and Egypt for sixty years were all established by groups and leaders who had been Nazi sympathizers.” (p.4) Given the re-emergence of Islamism, it is no less important to realize that this “ideology bore the mark of al-Husaini and the other wartime [Nazi] collaborators, especially the Muslim Brotherhood.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Also posted at <span style="border: 0px; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: blue; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Algemeiner</em></span></span>, my <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">JPost</em> blog, <span style="border: 0px; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> and on the Polish blog</span> <i><span style="border: 0px; color: blue; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Listy z naszego sadu</span></i></span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-55895982416855035662023-02-02T04:40:00.000-08:002023-02-02T04:40:00.191-08:00What ‘never again’ means for Günter Grass<p> </p><h1 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></h1><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">April 5, 2012</span> <span class="comments-link" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-sep" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">|</span></span></div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In an awkward, cliché-laden “poem,” German Nobel laureate Günter Grass has announced to the world that he had to break his silence about an issue that has burdened him for too long: even at the risk of being labeled an antisemite, he simply had to sound the alarm about the terrible threat to world peace posed by Israel…</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There is already a huge outcry against Grass’s strange poem, and many of the responses refer to the last time Grass broke a very long silence – and also caused a huge outcry: In August 2006, shortly before the publication of his autobiography, Grass revealed in an interview that he had served in the Waffen SS.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">That was a truly sensational revelation given the fact that Grass had carefully cultivated the image of a moral authority who was always ready to admonish Germans that they had to face up to their Nazi past. Unsurprisingly, Grass is now again alluding to Germany’s dark history, but he does so with a twist that has become quite popular: by now, many Germans and Europeans seem to feel that they can claim to have learnt the often invoked “lessons” of the Holocaust so much better than the Jews – and in particular so much better than the Jews in Israel.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Indeed, the idea Grass is hawking now is quite popular: Remember the controversial Eurobarometer poll of fall 2003 that revealed that 59 percent of EU citizens regarded Israel as the greatest threat to world peace? Back then, embarrassed European officials tried to dismiss the poll as some kind of aberration, but that was quite plainly not what it was, because other polls showed similar results. To quote just one example: A BBC poll published in March 2007 revealed that Israel was viewed as the country with the most negative influence in the world, and interestingly, Germany was the European country with the largest percentage of respondents who viewed Israel in these terms: 77 percent of Germans rated Israel’s influence as negative — even in some Muslim countries, Israel actually fared slightly better.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">While it has been documented that there is a clear correlation between sharply critical attitudes towards Israeli policies and a propensity for antisemitic views, Grass has of course tried to shield himself against accusations of antisemitism by announcing that he was fully expecting them, and by emphasizing that he feels a strong connection with Israel. But many of the reactions to his bizarre “poem” show that this hasn’t quite worked. One excellent example is Josef Joffe’s comment at <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Zeit Online</em>, where Joffe argues (in German) that Freud would have been pleased with this demonstration of long-repressed resentments bursting out.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I think Joffe outlines a dynamic that I have tried to explore <a href="file:///D:/2011/10/11/sixty-years-of-silence-the-story-of-gunter-grass/" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">in an essay</a> I wrote some five years ago after Grass revealed the long-kept secret of his service in the Waffen SS. I argued there that efforts to come to terms with Germany’s Nazi past – and the many cases of European collaboration – gave rise to a “grand narrative” that structured history in terms of victims and perpetrators.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the prism of this “grand narrative”, Germans – and, to some extent also Europeans – related to Israel primarily as the state of the victims who had survived the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis. But eventually, Germans and Europeans began to regard also themselves as victims of the Nazis, while the Jewish state – that had become an “occupying power” after its victory in the Six-Day-War – was increasingly often criticized as a perpetrator.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Taken to the extreme, the resulting inversions are all too familiar: Gaza is the Warsaw Ghetto, Israeli soldiers are the new Nazis, and the Palestinians are the new “Jews”, i.e. victims.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Even if only a minority embraces this inversion fully, everyone knows that it exists and that it has been legitimized by countless intellectuals and public figures – and the perceived exculpatory appeal of this inversion is certainly enormous.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Günter Grass would likely object to the idea that he is among those who demonize Israel as a Nazi-like perpetrator. Yet, he does so quite clearly when he refers to a possible Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program as a potentially genocidal crime that can be anticipated. His “poem” is his attempt to avoid any German “guilt” for this “crime,” since Grass worries Israel could use German-manufactured submarines to strike Iran. This concern stands in stark contrast to Grass’s apparent silence about the role of German companies in facilitating Iran’s nuclear program.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ultimately, Grass demonstrates in his poem that the meaning of the pledge “never again” is very different for the historic perpetrators and their victims: for the former Waffen SS recruit, the most important thing is to be never again seen as a perpetrator – and since he firmly believes Israel is eager to launch a devastating attack on Iran, he has no doubt who should be blamed as the perpetrator.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is revealing that it apparently matters little for Grass that Iran is led by a Holocaust-denier who has repeated the most vicious threats against Israel over and over again, or that a regime-allied analyst would pen a long-winded article to explain “The <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fiqh</em> [Islamic Jurisprudence]-Based Reasons for the Need for Israel’s Annihilation.” For Grass, Ahmadinejad is just a “loudmouth” who oppresses his people – the very same people that, in the view of Grass, faces a genocidal threat from Israel just because somewhere in Iran, there may be a “suspected” atom bomb.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The longer one ponders the curious fact that Grass doesn’t think it worthwhile to wonder if Iran’s theocrats might be as eager as the Nazis were to make good on their threats against the Jews the clearer it becomes: his claim that he feels connected to Israel couldn’t be more hollow – he knows nothing about Israel, and he has no idea what “never again” means for the people that his former comrades worked so hard to wipe out. His most urgent need is to think of Israel’s Jews as dangerous: potential perpetrators of a Nazi-like crime.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As a young man at the end of the war, Grass was clever enough to get rid of his SS uniform before he could be captured, but it seems he never quite got rid of what he learned about the Jews while he wore the uniform: “Die Juden sind unser Unglück.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</span></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cross-posted from my JPost blog</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227028537835071293.post-35832709231186538332023-02-02T04:37:00.003-08:002023-02-02T04:37:08.880-08:00Mondoweiss on ‘Court Jew’ Elie Wiesel [updated]<p> <span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><a href="file:///D:/2012/12/17/mondoweiss-on-court-jew-elie-wiesel-updated/" rel="bookmark" style="border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="23:16"><span class="entry-date" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">December 17, 2012</span></a></p><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="comments-link" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.85em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For some people, the holiday tradition of charitable giving for good causes means donating to sites that work hard all year round to depict Israel as an abomination that should have no place in a civilized world. Unsurprisingly, people who like to donate for a daily dose of hate have some choice: one example I described last week is The Electronic Intifada (EI); another site with a similar agenda is Mondoweiss.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Compared to EI, Mondoweiss is rather modest – their fund-raising goal is just $40 000, and they even promise a gift for donations over $60: appropriately, it is the recent book of Shlomo Sand, author of the widely discredited “Invention of the Jewish People,” who seems resolved to serialize his flights of fancy and has come out with another installment on “The Invention of the Land of Israel.” Interestingly, none of the two books are mentioned on Sand’s page at Tel Aviv University, where he is a full professor at the Department of History.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But let’s stay with the professors at Mondoweiss, because the site doesn’t just offer Professor Sand’s book as reward for donations. There is also a “feature” written by Marc H. Ellis, whom Mondoweiss describes as “an author, liberation theologian, and Distinguished Visiting Professor, University for Peace, Costa Rica.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="file:///D:/2012/12/17/mondoweiss-on-court-jew-elie-wiesel-updated/mondoweiss-ewiesel/" rel="attachment wp-att-1006" style="border: 0px; color: #0060ff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Mondoweiss EWiesel" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1006" data-attachment-id="1006" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Mondoweiss EWiesel" data-large-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/mondoweiss-ewiesel.jpg?w=500" data-medium-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/mondoweiss-ewiesel.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/mondoweiss-ewiesel.jpg" data-orig-size="659,298" data-permalink="https://warped-mirror.com/2012/12/17/mondoweiss-on-court-jew-elie-wiesel-updated/mondoweiss-ewiesel/" height="226" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" src="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/mondoweiss-ewiesel.jpg?w=500&h=226" srcset="https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/mondoweiss-ewiesel.jpg?w=500&h=226 500w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/mondoweiss-ewiesel.jpg?w=150&h=68 150w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/mondoweiss-ewiesel.jpg?w=300&h=136 300w, https://warpedmirror.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/mondoweiss-ewiesel.jpg 659w" style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" width="500" /></a></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s arguably a company Professor Sand deserves: Ellis is a rather controversial figure, as is even reflected in a Mondoweiss post urging readers to support an apparently unsuccessful petition endorsed by a gallery of well-known “anti-Zionists” who spoke out when Ellis faced dismissal from Baylor University.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But to know who Ellis is and what he stands for, it is enough to read one of the recent installments for his pompously titled “Exile and the Prophetic”-series at Mondoweiss.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ellis’s post on “Elie Wiesel and the history of the court Jew” is an almost unreadable concoction of incoherent ramblings that isn’t worth summarizing. Suffice it to say that Ellis takes Elie Wiesel’s contacts with influential people like the Clintons as a point of departure for some ruminations about the history of “Court Jews.” But according to Ellis, Wiesel is not just a “Court Jew,” because supposedly he “also symbolizes the crucified Jew, Jesus, since Jesus was persecuted through no fault of his own – as was Wiesel in the Holocaust – and Jesus was Jewish, like Wiesel.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Based on this, Ellis concludes:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Being a Court Jew and the Crucified Jew – the combination is Wiesel’s genius. His invitation to the dinner tables of the powerful is thus highly charged.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">In America, Wiesel represents a politics infused with spirituality. He plays the part to the hilt but here’s the caveat. Wiesel is 84 years old. His Court Jew/Crucified Jew shelf-life is decreasing daily.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Not quite satisfied with this effort at scraping the bottom of the barrel, Ellis throws in the suggestion that perhaps Netanyahu should be regarded “as Israel’s Court Jew” and that it would be worthwhile to ponder the question “Has Israel become the Court Jew par excellence?”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Suggestions for printable words to describe Ellis’s outpourings are most welcome.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Perhaps this is what the Mondoweiss call for donations really means when they boast that the site “push[es] the issues others shy away from.” With the support of readers, Mondoweiss hopes to “be even louder in 2013.” Astonishingly, the site seems to qualify for tax-deductible contributions and accepts donations through the “Network for Good.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This sounds all the more Orwellian considering the fact that Mondoweiss has often been accused of antisemitism – including by people who have some qualifications to judge the matter. Under the apt title “Can we call Mondoweiss anti-Semitic yet?,” Liam Hoare has recently posted a lengthy review of some of the related controversies. He ends his post by looking at Ellis’s ruminations on the soon-to-be-dead Court Jew Elie Wiesel in the context of some of the other views that Mondoweiss pushes so fearlessly:</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Ellis’ screed cannot help but say a little something about the publication it appears in. After all, if a media organisation believes that Israel is a failed state, that Israelis are racist, colonial settlers and occupiers, that Jews who celebrate Hanukkah exhibit bloodlust, that Jews organised into cabals wield a disproportionate amount of power over the media and the organs of government, that Jews covet power and control the direction of United States foreign policy, it follows that it is not out of character for it to play host to an article so uncultured, so unlettered, and so heinous that a drifter who stands out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup would be embarrassed to have his name attributed to it.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Indeed, this looks very much like yet another example of just how slippery the slope from anti-Zionism to antisemitism really is. And at the time of this writing, Mondoweiss readers have donated some $13 000 to get more of the same.</p><p align="center" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cross-posted from my JPost blog.</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Update:</span></b></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Just to illustrate the weird world of Mondoweiss with another current offering: a recently posted piece asks “Who’s afraid of the Qassams?” The argument – if that’s what it can be called – is that “stopping Palestinian rockets is not a plausible explanation for Israeli attacks [on Gaza].” The reason is supposedly that the rockets from Gaza threaten “mostly Mizrahi, usually lower-class, Jewish Israelis” and that somehow suits the Israeli government just fine, because “Israeli ‘security’ policies […are] simultaneously a ruling-class strategy of social control and a framework for capitalist accumulation.” And all this means that it was extremely clever of the Qassam Brigade to address the Israeli public during a press conference on 17 November, claiming: “It was your leadership …that dragged you into this and into the shelters to score cheap political points.” According to Mondoweiss wisdom, this was an “open anti-government appeal to the people of Israel” which “was well-placed.”</p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.7em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, the Qassam Brigade clearly knew what they were doing when they included Mondoweiss among the 11 Twitter accounts they follow…</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0