Zombie Ideas and the Presbyterian Divestment Decision

35 Responses to “Zombie Ideas and the Presbyterian Divestment Decision”

1. 

   Oldguyincolorado June 21, 2014 at 6:49 pm #

   Evil Israel which renders medical care to Mrs Abbas, a grandchild of the head of Hamas, Syrian refuges, etc. Never any
   balance in reporting by the professor. Abbas has recently said: will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state; will never negotiate over division of land; must have full right of return; no Jew will be a citizen of a Palestinian state; etc. So what should Israel do? What realistic solution exists for Israel? In the real world, the professor actually offers no constructive solution. He offers only a distorted view of only some of the demands by the Arab and ignors the offer of Israel to swap certain lands, a request that if some Jews wish to remain in those swapped lands that they be allowed to become citizens of the Arab state, a reciprocal right of return to Arab lands or just compensation for their losses, etc. This is not just an issue over the West Bank.
   What the professor suggests is exactly what the larger Arab community seeks : no Jews. Sadly that means him, too.

   Reply
   • 

     Richard Falk June 21, 2014 at 7:31 pm #

     Before you point to humane moments in the Israeli treatment of Palestinians consider the overall plight and
     tragedy that has befallen this people, partly also as a result of the complicity of several Arab governments;
     Israel alone should not be blamed for this tragedy, although its territorial ambitions have been the efficient
     cause. Read this news report on the suffering of Palestinian refugees in the Syrian camps:

     Inside Mosul: ISIS fears Popular Uprising; Baathists cry Foul
     Posted: 20 Jun 2014 11:25 PM PDT
     By a Special Correspondent via Niqash.org

     NIQASH’s correspondent takes a walk around Mosul to see how the city has changed since extremists took it over last week. Despite masked men at checkpoints and burned out military facilities, things are strangely calm.

     Two hundred meters from the eastern entrance to Mosul, the Iraqi Kurdish taxi driver stopped the car and told us to get out. He had brought us all the way from Erbil, capital of the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan to the outskirts of Mosul, the nearby city that was taken over by Sunni Muslim extremists last week.

     “As I already told you, my mission ends here,” he said. “I won’t go one more centimetre.”

     But my mission – and that of my fellow passengers – would not end here. My travelling companions were a doctor and a student, both of whom wanted to see their families in Mosul. My mission was one born out of curiosity – I am familiar with Mosul and I wanted to see what was going on there.

     The road ahead of us was open and we were quickly able to find a taxi that would take us into the city. We were all shocked to see how things had changed.

     The first checkpoint was manned by gunmen and men with masks on. Above them was a big sign on which was written: “The Wilaya of Ninawa welcomes you”. [Editor’s note: Wilaya is an Arabic word for a provincial division and stems from the word, wali, which means caretaker or custodian.]

     The checkpoint scared us all but the driver, looking at our faces, told us not to be afraid. “Don’t worry, they don’t stand in anyone’s way,” he reassured us.

     After going through the checkpoint we began to see the former premises of the Iraqi government security forces – these were destroyed or burned out, there were wrecked military vehicles along the sides of the roads and the uniforms that soldiers had cast off as they fled the city, still lay on the ground.

     Our driver didn’t seem to mind this scene. “The conditions in the city today are similar to those before 2003,” he said. “All the roads are open.”

     Previous to the retreat of the Iraqi army, a lot of the roads in Mosul had been blocked. As many locals have said, it was like living on a military base. But those groups who took over the city, including ISIS, have re-opened most of them. People were happy about this.

     The doctor then asked our driver about basic services like water and electricity and the availability of fuel. “God will take care of us,” the driver replied.

     Once in the city proper, we saw a lot of gunmen moving around in an organized way, driving SUVs with black flags on them.

     According to one local man I met, Ahmed, who now works as a driver for one of the leaders of the insurgent groups, the whole area has been divided into sections and each section is headed by an emir, or leader, who gets orders directly from the head of the wilaya, via his assistants.

     Ahmed is 20 years old and he first met his boss in an Iraqi prison. A year after he was released from prison, he joined the Sunni Muslim extremist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria; he was sent to do intensive military training in the desert.

     Ahmed then started talking enthusiastically to a group of young men who have just joined the organization. “Your warrior brothers are right now fighting on the outskirts of Baghdad,” he told them. “I swear to God that we are going to open up all the Iraqi cities and we will establish an Islamic state.”

     The young men cheered and chanted back at him: “Long live the Islamic state”.

     I found some accommodation with friends and I decided that one day was not long enough to really see how a city of over a million people lives in these conditions. Given what seemed to be a stable security situation, I decided to stay a little longer.

     Mosul’s people still seem reluctant to live as they normally do. Everyone is cautious. A group of people I know arranged to meet in the same café they normally do; it was the first time they had all met up since the city was taken over by the extremists.

     Although everyone likes football, nobody was talking about the World Cup in Brazil. It was clear that everyone had the same thing on their minds: The city, its unpredictable future and how they would find safe places for their families. They all know things cannot remain the same in Mosul after what has happened here and their conversation was carried on in whispers.

     “Let’s smoke a shisha [water pipe] because this may be the last time we can,” one of the friends said. He had heard that ISIS would ban shisha smoking and cigarettes as well as many other things.

     I wanted to meet as many people as possible. And I tried to meet the foreigners I heard were fighting with ISIS in Mosul but I couldn’t find any; someone told me they had all left to fight in other areas of Iraq and that they had put local militias in charge of the city.

     According to one active member of these militias, who is also a member of the outlawed Baath party, ISIS is still the most powerful authority in Ninawa and the power and presence of other militia groups is limited.

     “There is absolutely no doubt that ISIS opposes any activity that goes on, that is not under their banner,” this man told me. “ISIS had also stressed that they didn’t want civilians carrying guns around. They’re afraid that the people may eventually revolt against them,” he said.

     This Baath party member wasn’t a big fan of ISIS- he said that they had betrayed the agreement his party had reached with them, when they refused to allow them to nominate one of their senior members, a former army officer, to be part of the city council. “We will wait until after Baghdad’s future is determined,” he added ominously.

     Another thing I wanted to do was find out what had happened to the Christians in Mosul. I had met some of them in Erbil after they fled the area for Iraqi Kurdistan. [Editor’s note: The nearby Ninawa Plain is one of Iraq’s last major enclaves for Assyrian Christians.]

     I passed the Roman Catholic church, built by Dominican friars, and saw a number of armed men in position near the church – they claimed responsibility for burning the church. But I was also slightly surprised to see three nuns, in their habits, going shopping.

     Mosul’s Saa neighbourhood is the city’s Christian quarter but those who live there say that many families have now left and that there are only a few Christians left in Saa.

     Not far from the church is the Omar al-Aswad mosque in the Farouq neighbourhood. While I was standing there, a large number of security officers and policemen came and went: They were repenting for their past jobs thanks to a general amnesty put in place by ISIS.

     A former policeman, Watheq, was one of these. He handed over his gun and read a statement of repentance. Now he no longer needs to fear ISIS’ vengeance, he explained. Hundreds of locals who were in the police or military have done the same thing.

     I asked Watheq how he was going to provide for his family of five now. “I am not the only one with this problem,” he said. “There are hundreds of thousands of people in Mosul who have no salaries and no financial resources to support their families.”

     Despite the new city administrators’ best efforts, life in Mosul is paralysed. Public institutions are closed and service –related departments and health centres don’t know how long they can keep going. Employees at these places don’t know if they are going to be paid by the government in Baghdad or whether ISIS will pay them out of the billions the group is thought to have in its own coffers.

     As services have started to deteriorate in the city, some of the locals here, who had celebrated the new situation with ISIS as a sort of liberation, have started to have regrets. To get 20 litres of fuel they have to stand in a queue for literally hours and the price has tripled.

     The national grid is only supplying a maximum of two hours of electricity per day and the owners of private generators, which are now used a lot to power the city, say they will soon run out of fuel. There is no Internet service in the city at all.

     Although many people have returned to the city there are still a lot of empty houses. In the markets and commercial centres, business seems to be very slow.

     While I was walking around, I also saw an armoured car punctured with many bullet holes. More than one person told me that this was the car that had belonged to the Turkish consulate. The consul’s party was last seen on the western side of the city but after that it had disappeared – the militants always move their hostages around and now nobody knows where he is.

     It is quiet here but the level of anxiety is high and seems to be rising. Nobody knows how long things will stay this way. Yesterday the militants destroyed one of the local religious sites, the Qabr al-Bint, because they claim it is against the teachings of Islam. There are concerns that the militants will destroy other important statues and tombs, such as, perhaps the tomb of the Prophet Yunis (Jonah).

     In fact, the city hasn’t really been this calm in years. It is the calm before the storm, many people say.

     Mirrored from Niqash.org

     ——-

     Related video:

     CNN’s Arwa Damon: “Secret video of ISIS smuggled out of Iraq”

     Fiji to Rich Carbon-Spewing Nations: History will Judge you for Sinking Us!
     Posted: 20 Jun 2014 11:05 PM PDT
     By Jon Queally

     The interim prime minister of Fiji on Thursday condemned the international community for its continued failure to address the crisis of climate change, saying Pacific island nations like his have been left “to sink beneath the waves” as the planet warms and the oceans rise.

     Fiji’s interim Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama told those gathered at the Pacific Islands Development Forum on Thursday that ‘history will judge harshly’ those who fail to act as nations drown. Speaking as host at the opening session of the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF), Fiji’s interim prime minister Frank Bainimarama chastised world leadership across the world, saying “the collective will to adequately address the crisis is receding at a time when the very existence of some Pacific Island nations is threatened by rising sea levels.”

     Bainimarama said the very existence of numerous island nations – including Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands – are already experiencing the swamping of coastal areas, unprecedented storm surges, and other threats.

     He also pointed a finger at major countries—including the U.S., Canada, China, and Australia—who contribute a disproportionate majority of the world’s carbon pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, saying, “History will judge you harshly if you abandon us to our apparent fate of sinking below the waves because you don’t want to make the necessary adjustment to your domestic policies.”

     The regional gathering, the second time the PIDF has officially convened, was also addressed by Indonesian President Dr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who said the forum’s dual focus on sustainable economic development and addressing climate change was essential and that “a new economic paradigm which promotes economic progress without harming our natural riches and resources” is the key to future resilience for island nations.

     ___________________________________

     Mirrored from Commondreams.org

     This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

     ——

     Related video:

     ABC News for Australia Network:
     Pacific nations urge climate change action, ask Australia for help

     Global Warming is about to Decimate the Building Blocks of Life in the Ocean
     Posted: 20 Jun 2014 10:39 PM PDT
     By Alex Kirby

     Researchers warn that marine life could be dramatically affected as climate change threatens to cause severe reduction of plankton – the key source of nutrients − in some ocean regions by the end of the century

     LONDON, 12 May − There are plenty more fish in the sea − but not for too much longer in some parts of the world, researchers say. And the reason is very simple: the food on which they all depend faces a marked decline.

     Researchers from AZTI-Tecnalia, a Spanish-based technology centre specialising in marine and food research, report in the journal Global Change Biology that the warming of the oceans will cause phytoplankton biomass to decrease by 6% by the end of this century.

     Phytoplankton are the single-celled plants that are the basic building blocks of most marine life. In particular, they sustain zooplankton − tiny animals that are eaten in turn by fish. The study found evidence that, by 2100, zooplankton biomass will be 11% less than it is today, with obvious implications for the fish that feed on them.

     The report says that sea surface temperature is predicted to increase by 3.4ºF on average globally by 2080-2100. The consequences of this increase will include changes in ocean circulation and higher water column stratification, where water of different densities forms distinct layers instead of mixing, affecting the availability of nutrients.

     Biomass reduction

     The depletion expected in the amount of plankton in the marine food web could reduce fish biomass in 47% of the total global ocean area, especially in tropical oceans.

     But phytoplankton and zooplankton reduction will affect different regions in different ways. In the North Sea and temperate north-east Atlantic, higher stratification and lower nutrient levels will reduce phytoplankton growth. In the Baltic, Barents and Black Seas, it is expected to increase.

     Guillem Chust, an Azti-Tecnalia researcher and the lead author of the paper, said: “In the ocean regions that lose more phytoplankton and zooplankton biomass, fish biomass may also decrease dramatically.” He said this would especially affect pelagic species − deep-sea fish that are not bottom dwellers.

     He said the oceans’ role in moderating climate change would also be damaged: “As there will be less phytoplankton, absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere by the oceans will be lower, as plankton is responsible for half of the planet’s photosynthetic activity. This in turn will reduce the ocean’s capacity to regulate the climate.”

     The research was undertaken as part of Marine Ecosystem Evolution in a Changing Environment (MEECE), a European Union project to explore the impact of climate and human activities on marine ecosystems.

     One of the project’s concerns is the growing evidence of damage from ocean acidification, the process by which emissions of carbon dioxide are making the seas increasingly acid and hostile to some forms of marine life.

     Emission limits

     A group which works to protect seafood supplies and marine ecosystems, Global Ocean Health, has welcomed a move by the US Environmental Protection Agency intended to lead to the introduction of performance-based emission limits for new power plants, which would help to reduce the threat of acidification.

     “The rule would help protect productive fisheries and oceans,” GOH says. “Although it cannot single-handedly staunch the flow of carbon emissions that drive ocean acidification, the rule would make a good start.”

     Capping CO2 emissions per unit of power produced would, GOH says, effectively block any new coal plants in the US, ensuring a continued shift towards natural gas, which is cheaper than coal. In the last six months, it says, more than 80% of the new electricity capacity added to the US grid was renewable energy.

     It also believes the rule would dampen global investors’ appetite for coal projects by demonstrating that the US is no longer willing to tolerate unlimited CO2 emissions from coal.

     “With this policy, the world’s most influential economic superpower would signal to global capital markets that coal is no longer a safe investment,” GOH says.

     This would add to the growing argument that fossil fuel reserves risk becoming unusable “frozen assets” because of their climate impact. − Climate News Network

     Mirrored from the Climate News Network

     ——

     Related video:

     Phytoplankton and Climate Change

     Afghanistan Elections: Abdullah refuses to Concede, Protests Erupt charging Fraud
     Posted: 20 Jun 2014 10:03 PM PDT
     By Frud Bezhan via RFE/RL

     KABUL — As allegations of fraud in Afghanistan’s runoff election pile up, protest movements have mobilized against what they see as systematic vote-rigging.

     Two groups have taken the lead in protesting the June 14 presidential vote, holding separate demonstrations and sit-ins in several locations around Kabul. In various events that began on June 20, each has said it would not accept the results of the election and demanded an investigation into the actions of the country’s electoral bodies, which they accuse of engaging in electoral fraud.

     The demands mirror those made by presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, who has said the election process is no longer “legitimate.” Abdullah has accused the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and Afghan President Hamid Karzai of orchestrating the election to favor his rival, Ashraf Ghani. Abdullah has also warned that any looming “crisis” is out of his hands.

     The developments come amid unofficial returns that indicate that Ghani is poised to pull off an unexpected upset and win the election by as many as 1 million votes.

     Anti-Fraud Movement

     The protest groups say their demonstrations could turn to violence if their demands are not met. They have each pledged to mobilize tens of thousands of people in Kabul in the coming days in a show of force.

     The Anti-Fraud Movement is one of two major groups that have taken to the streets to express their grievances. The movement, made up mainly of youths, has organized a peaceful sit-in Khare Khana, a predominately Tajik neighborhood in Kabul. Abdullah, who is half Tajik, has considerable support among Tajiks.

     “Death to fraud. Death to those who have committed fraud!” These are among the slogans blaring through loudspeakers to a crowd of several hundred protesters assembled at the site on June 20. The group, which has already set up a dozen tents, says it is not affiliated with either of the candidates, although the majority who spoke to RFE/RL said they had voted for Abdullah.

     “We want those ballots that are fraudulent and as a result of ballot-stuffing to be separated from the real votes cast by the people,” says Zabi Mehdi, a member of the Anti-Fraud Movement. “For us, it doesn’t matter from which camp the fraudulent ballots come from. We want them all of fraudulent votes thrown out.”

     Mehdi predicts the movement will mobilize around 50,000 people for a mass protest on June 21.

     “Our intention is to stand up against fraud committed during the election,” says Abdullah Khudadat, one of the organizers. “There is a lot of evidence that the IEC and the president were involved in fraud. We will not accept an election that has resulted from fraud.”

     Many of the group’s members wear red scarves in a symbolic show of solidarity. Khudadat says the electoral bodies and the government have crossed a “red line” by being involved in fraud. Khudadat also says the red refers to the blood they are willing to shed to fight for their cause.

     Although the protests have so far been peaceful, many members say they will resort to violence if their demands are not fulfilled, although they say this is only a last option.

     Ethnic Tensions

     Ethnic friction is also a concern, as Abdullah — who is half Tajik, half Pashtun — has strong support among the Tajik community. Ghani is Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.

     Abdullah’s supporters have made provocative remarks in the past week, threatening violence if their demands were not met.

     In Focus: Afghan Election Blog

     Atta Mohammad Noor, the powerful governor of Balkh Province and supporter of Abdullah, posted a photo on Facebook on June 18. The photo depicted tanks making their way toward the front line during the jihad against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. The accompanying text read: “To become president, Ashraf Ghani has to cross this border. Passing this border is impossible. A second generation of jihad is coming.”

     Meanwhile, Amrullah Saleh, the country’s former spy chief and Abdullah supporter, said during an address in Kabul on June 19 that “resistance” needs to be waged against fraud.

     Saleh’s National Movement, Besij-e-Melli in Dari, has also organized a sit-in protest for the past two days in Kabul. The grassroots political movement, which has adopted the color green, was inspired by the Arab Spring and Iran’s opposition Green Movement. It first emerged on the scene in 2011.

     The Anti-Fraud Movement and the National Movement say they are not affiliated and say they will not join hands, at least for now.

     The National Movement is hoping to organize its own mass protest on June 21.

     One of the National Movement’s chief demands is the immediate suspension of the IEC’s chief electoral officer, Ziaulhaq Amarkhil, who is being investigated for possible ballot-stuffing. Amarkhil was arrested by Kabul’s police chief, General Zahir, on June 14 when he apparently left the IEC headquarters with several cars full of ballot papers.

     “Some of our brothers have armed themselves because they are angry,” says Hasib Reyazi, a member of the National Movement. “This is not only our voice but the voices of people from Kandahar, Paktia, and Khost Provinces. The whole country is voicing our concerns.”

     Frud Bezhan covers Afghanistan and the broader South Asia and Middle East region. Send story tips to bezhanf@rferl.org.

     Copyright (c) 2014. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

     Mirrored from RFE/RL

     —–

     Related video:

     VICE News from last week “Elections in Afghanistan”

     Palestinians 66 Yrs Later: An Unsustainable Refugee Crisis
     Posted: 20 Jun 2014 09:35 PM PDT
     By Pierre Krähenbühl via EurActiv

     Commissioner General of the United United Nations Relief and Works Agency Pierre Krähenbühl writes on the unsustainability of the Palestine refugee crisis on World Refugee Day (20 June).

     120 children were recently allowed out of Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, to sit public exams. The 14-year-olds emerged from the apocalyptic city-scape they call home shell-shocked and bewildered, child victims of one of the most pitiless conflicts of our age.

     Two weeks later those same children returned to Yarmouk to be reunited with their families, to a place where UN food deliveries are meeting just a quarter of the nutritional requirements of over 18,000 civilians trapped there in an extraordinarily harsh environment, an environment in which the absence of medical care can result in death from conditions that are otherwise easily treated and cured.

     It was a bittersweet, profoundly tragic moment that cruelly exposed the hopelessness confronting those young students. Moreover, it was a metaphor that poignantly encapsulated the unsustainability of the Palestine refugee crisis in the Near East.

     In Syria, more than 50% of the 550,000 UNRWA registered refugees have been displaced by the conflict, with over half of the 12 Palestinian refugee camps where we work transformed into theatres of war. On World Refugee Day, the plight of this often forgotten population must be acknowledged and the dramatic context in which they struggle to survive understood in all its complexity.

     Beyond Syria, unsustainability confronts Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank, where the human impact of the Israeli occupation and settlement expansion is multi-dimensional and profound. Palestinian refugees are subject to a permit system that prevents freedom of movement. Many are forced to deal with home demolitions and land expropriations. Children and ordinary civilians face increased threats from the use of live ammunition. The West Bank separation barrier is destroying whole communities. The occupation is synonymous with de-development, stifling economic life with predictable human consequences. Food insecurity in Palestine has reached 33 per cent, affecting 1.6 million people according to the United Nations’s latest food survey.

     In Gaza, unsustainability has many yardsticks. One in particular has struck me profoundly. The number of Palestinian refugees coming to UNRWA for food handouts has increased from 80,000 in 2000 to over 800,000 today. When last in Gaza I met a once prosperous businessman who has now joined the food line, a tragic transformation which puts a human face to the notion of unsustainability. In Gaza there are many. Youth unemployment stands at 65%. Unemployment among young women is 80%. Unsustainability has an alarming environmental aspect in Gaza. 90% of water is unsafe to drink. The entire aquifer is likely to be unusable as early as 2016, with the damage irreversible by 2020 if present blockade policies are not changed. There are few immediate signs that they will be.

     Projections for the numbers of Palestine refugees the UN may have to serve in the coming years underlines the unsustainability of the refugee crisis. In 2012, 5.27 million people were registered with UNRWA. This is expected to increase to 5.75 million in 2016 and 6.46 million in 2021. The number of those registered with us as “poor” will rise to 1.7 million in 2021.

     With each passing day, it becomes an increasing imperative to listen to the voices of the dispossessed and heed their enduring warnings about loss and fear. Decades on, and with so many other crises affecting the Middle-East and the world, there is a real risk that their fate will be overshadowed and seen as an “old story”. I would argue that neglecting the plight of Palestine refugees is a risk the world cannot take.

     Yet from Yarmouk, to the dismal Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon swollen by over 50,000 new arrivals from Syria, to the refugee communities trapped behind the barrier in the West Bank, and on to the downward spiral in Gaza, unsustainability haunts almost all aspects of life. I have yet to meet a refugee who wanted to be a refugee and even less so, who wished to remain a refugee. Palestinian refugees are no different. Their call for a just and lasting solution to their plight must be heard.

     Until this is achieved, relief workers have a transformative role to play. During times of relative peace, our human development work in education, health, relief and social services promotes stability, dignity and respect for rights. In times of war, our emergency assistance builds resilience and mitigates the denial of rights to some, albeit an inadequate extent.

     Now in our seventh decade, the United Nations’ contribution speaks for itself: we have achieved some of the highest literacy rates in the Middle-East, dramatic reductions in child and maternal mortality. Our commitment rivals that of any humanitarian actor, working under fire to provide emergency relief in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. This will continue until a solution to the plight of the Palestine refugees is found. I understood from day one that the United Nations’ mandate is not for sale.

     I believe passionately that UNRWA’s contribution is inextricably linked to that of the refugees who make up the vast majority of our staff. Like all refugees, the Palestinians are also individuals with achievements and pride. They are victims of injustice, of occupation, blockade and conflict. They are also actors in their own development with skills that many in the world would envy. Palestinians are justly proud of the comparative literacy rates of their children and the highest attainment levels of generations of professionals.

     The UN’s efforts will focus both on mobilising hosts and donors to preserve and further strengthen our achievements, while raising the importance of increasingly recognizing that international assistance must come with the promotion of rights and dignity. Let us not forget that this is a crisis with a human face, be it those shell-shocked children in Yarmouk, the ex-businessman in the food line in Gaza, or any of the five million individual refugees registered with us. No amount of aid will ever make up for the denial of their rights and dignity.

     Mirrored from EuraAtiv.com

     ——

     Reply
   • 

     rehmat1 June 23, 2014 at 8:14 pm #

     It’s very painful to swallow truth.

     On April 14, Israeli finance minister, Yair Lapid, posted his Passover prayer on his Facebook page, asking his G-d to help Zionist regime get rid of Native Muslims and Christians from the Holy Land.

     After complaining that Arabs don’t want Jews to live in peace in Palestine which G-d promised to Abraham (he was not Jewish) – and the whole world turned against the “Jewish homeland” with antisemitism on rise among many European nations – Lapid asked his “vengeful G-d” to help Jews get rid of Arabs from Palestine.

     “I know You cannot remove this burden. But couldn’t You just role it to the side a bit? This (Palestinian) boulder is a heavy burden on our hearts. They say no one can stop a terrorist. But You can – and we need You in so many situations like that, where we have no other solution,” wrote Lapid as reported by Arutz Sheva newspaper on April 14, 2014.

     http://rehmat1.com/2014/04/15/passover-prayer-a-palestine-without-palestinian/

     Reply
2. 

   Oscar H. Blayton June 21, 2014 at 7:05 pm #

   This is a very useful and thought provoking commentary.

   Reply
   • 

     Dan Livni June 22, 2014 at 12:05 am #

     http://eoznews.blogspot.com/2014/06/elder-of-ziyon-israel-news-egyptian_20.html
     Egyptian actor brags about the success of antisemitic propaganda
     June 20, 2014

     In 2002, during Ramadan, Arab TV stations broadcast a 41-part miniseries called “Knight Without a Horse” that was based on proving that the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is legitimate.

     One of the driving forces behind it was actor/comedian Mohamed Sobhi, who starred in the series.

     Today, he is telling Egyptian media how important that series was.

     He told Youm7 that the success of the series “Knight Without a Horse” is not in the number of people who watched it, but in the fact that (he claims) the series caused two million Egyptian citizens to purchase copies of the book “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” to see for themselves whether Sobhi’s thesis – that Jews have already succeeded in 19 of the 24 protocols, and the rest are being implemented at this very moment – is true.

     Reply
     • 

       rehmat1 June 24, 2014 at 4:43 pm #

       Livni – It might surprise you to find out that several Jewish writers too believe that ‘The Protocols’ are genuine. My fellow Canadian Henry Makow PhD is one of those “self-hating Jews”.

       http://www.rense.com/general45/protodd.htm
3. 

   ray032 June 22, 2014 at 5:42 am #

   Opinion
   Two-State Illusion
   By IAN S. LUSTICK
   Published: September 14, 2013

   THE last three decades are littered with the carcasses of failed negotiating projects billed as the last chance for peace in Israel. All sides have been wedded to the notion that there must be two states, one Palestinian and one Israeli. For more than 30 years, experts and politicians have warned of a “point of no return.” Secretary of State John Kerry is merely the latest in a long line of well-meaning American diplomats wedded to an idea whose time is now past.

   True believers in the two-state solution see absolutely no hope elsewhere. With no alternative in mind, and unwilling or unable to rethink their basic assumptions, they are forced to defend a notion whose success they can no longer sincerely portray as plausible or even possible.

   It’s like 1975 all over again, when the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco fell into a coma. The news media began a long death watch, announcing each night that Generalissimo Franco was still not dead. This desperate allegiance to the departed echoes in every speech, policy brief and op-ed about the two-state solution today.

   True, some comas miraculously end. Great surprises sometimes happen. The problem is that the changes required to achieve the vision of robust Israeli and Palestinian states living side by side are now considerably less likely than other less familiar but more plausible outcomes that demand high-level attention but aren’t receiving it.

   Strong Islamist trends make a fundamentalist Palestine more likely than a small state under a secular government. The disappearance of Israel as a Zionist project, through war, cultural exhaustion or demographic momentum, is at least as plausible as the evacuation of enough of the half-million Israelis living across the 1967 border, or Green Line, to allow a real Palestinian state to exist. While the vision of thriving Israeli and Palestinian states has slipped from the plausible to the barely possible, one mixed state emerging from prolonged and violent struggles over democratic rights is no longer inconceivable. Yet the fantasy that there is a two-state solution keeps everyone from taking action toward something that might work.

   All sides have reasons to cling to this illusion. The Palestinian Authority needs its people to believe that progress is being made toward a two-state solution so it can continue to get the economic aid and diplomatic support that subsidize the lifestyles of its leaders, the jobs of tens of thousands of soldiers, spies, police officers and civil servants, and the authority’s prominence in a Palestinian society that views it as corrupt and incompetent.

   Israeli governments cling to the two-state notion because it seems to reflect the sentiments of the Jewish Israeli majority and it shields the country from international opprobrium, even as it camouflages relentless efforts to expand Israel’s territory into the West Bank.

   American politicians need the two-state slogan to show they are working toward a diplomatic solution, to keep the pro-Israel lobby from turning against them and to disguise their humiliating inability to allow any daylight between Washington and the Israeli government.

   Finally, the “peace process” industry — with its legions of consultants, pundits, academics and journalists — needs a steady supply of readers, listeners and funders who are either desperately worried that this latest round of talks will lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state, or that it will not………………………………………………………………………

   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/opinion/sunday/two-state-illusion.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&pagewanted=all

   Reply
   • 

     Richard Falk June 22, 2014 at 6:46 am #

     Ray: A very helpful excerpt from Ian Lustig’s article that makes the more comprehensive case against the Zombie character of the two-state ‘solution.’

     Reply
4. 

   Noushin June 22, 2014 at 2:36 pm #

   The Presbytetian Church also approved an overture (right before the one on divestment) with no debate, on doing a study on whether the 2-state solution should still be our policy or whether it’s time to change our position. This study will be done by the 2016 General Assembly in Portland, at which time the church will vote on whether we want to change our position. Because of the fear-mongers, for divestment to pass, it needed all the language it had so as to mollify those who were afraid of offending the Jewish community. So, yes, it’s zombie alright, but we are well ware of that. See here for the other overture calling for the church to reexamine its position: http://pc-biz.org/PC-Biz.WebApp_deploy/(S(ip0ouju1q05zenq5tl4z3avx))/IOBView.aspx?m=ro&id=4575
   It passed by a very wide margin.
   Peace!

   Reply
   • 

     Kata Fisher June 22, 2014 at 7:36 pm #

     Peace to you while there is no Peace in the earth.

     I have something to say to this Church:

     Presbyterian Church has something to will need a reliable standing when comes to their standing in relationship with Palestinian/Israel crises.

     Two state solutions can be very risky solution for all people in the region, especially, the Jews within Israel state in the region; it has to be under laws national that are valid /legit and international Law that will protect the rights of all citizens, equally. Palestine is ecclesiastical entity within Holy Land. Israel is a state without legit borders and likely also not the legit / illegally attained /claimed the capital city of Israel. So, Jerusalem city, as ecclesiastical city; meaning, a city ecclesiastical / free of any sate entity that binds all people in the region to the International Law and obligations to the Freedom of Faiths.

     People in general (Church when valid) needs to stick to the Law/s and not their wishes – this is according to the Scriptures. Still, Church must respect free will of others either good or evil will — will of the people in Holy Land to choose blessing or curse that comes with all works that they intend to implement in Holy Land.

     We do understand that parting people; territories and cities are and will be extremely risky task ahead. The Church shall not have anything to do with that, but have to respect the will of the people in Holy Land according to their self-determinations. Meaning, if the people in Holy Land want to practice racism and separatism, so to tear up Holy Land and peoples tribes/ groups in the Land – they can do that in the will-power and without will of the Church. There is none / not any Church support because they just can’t have Church support on things that are done in stubborn spirit, ill will, and Lawlessness.

     People in the Holy Land and outside the Holy Land should repent of their ill-will toward each other, and stop to bow down to frenzy’s of the inclination to vast fears.

     The fact is that Holy Land has an ancient Jews (Muslim/Islam Religion) population and integrated population /tribes that are mainly convert to different branches of Jewish Faith/Jewiish Religion.

     They need to serve each other because they can, regardless of their circumstances they can repent and do that what is valid.

     Right now people in Holy Land have guilt of blood that it is imposed on to them. They need to figure out how to set them self’s free from that which is imposed on to them, and not to attain the guilt of blood that is directly fruit of their doing upon their descendants. So the Church should show them risks and get them out of the guilt of blood – not watch them helpless because they are not.

     Seriously, how do you approach and split ecclesiastical city, as Jerusalem is? Israel can have Haifa or Tel Aviv for their capital if they want to be a state in Holy Land. We really do not care – nor should we? The city of Jerusalem is the ecclesiastical one — touch it without spiritual appointing and a spiritual authority and watch the guilt of blood upon the offspring day in and day out — we understand this as Church baptized in God’s Spirit that came after Jesus Christ of Nazareth left.

     Reply
5. 

   Noushin June 22, 2014 at 2:38 pm #

   Right link for earlier post
   http://pc-biz.org/PC-Biz.WebApp_deploy/(S(ip0ouju1q05zenq5tl4z3avx))/Explorer.aspx?id=4575

   Reply
   • 

     Dan Livni June 22, 2014 at 6:28 pm #

     Rayo32.here’s a great response to Ian Lustick.
     http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=33&x_article=2425
     Ian Lustick Needs A New Map (And Flare Gun)
     by Dexter Van Zile
     March 28, 2013

     Ian Lustick, a political science professor from the University of Pennsylvania with a penchant for making predictions that simply don’t pan out and for downplaying Islamist intransigence, is at it again, this time with a March 19, 2013 Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times. In the piece, titled, “Israel Needs a New Map,” Lustick depicts Israel as a pariah state and glosses over the sins of its adversaries. He apparently suffers from a bad case of the Oslo Syndrome, which afflicts its victims with the false delusion that Jewish self-criticism and Israeli concessions can bring a unilateral end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Lustick also mocks Israeli concern about the campaign to de-legitimize the Jewish state.

     Lustick wrongly suggests that the Arab-Israeli conflict can be brought to an end solely by Israeli concessions. In fact, the lack of peace between Israel and its adversaries cannot be blamed on Israel alone. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat did not negotiate in good faith at Camp David in 2000 and Mahmoud Abbas responded to an Israeli settlement freeze on 2009 with more bad faith by refusing to negotiate with Israel until the freeze had almost expired. And when he finally came to the table to negotiate, Abbas demanded that the freeze be extended for negotiations to continue.

     Moreover, Israel has been demonized in the United Nations despite the fact that it has been attacked from nearly every bit of territory from which it has withdrawn since the Oslo Accords. This has had a huge impact on Israeli public opinion and Israeli policies, but has yet to make a dent on Lustick’s analysis. Other things that don’t make a dent on Lustick’s analysis: history, facts, events in the region and any degree of good sense.

     Some Background

     Ian Lustick is one of a number of American Jews who invoke their Jewish identity to lend credence to a distorted, generally anti-Israel narrative about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Like Marc Ellis and Mark Braverman, Lustick is unable to convince his fellow Jews in the United States and Israel to embrace his worldview, so he takes his story to non-Jewish audiences in the United States.

     The story he tells these audiences is that Israel is governed by bad leaders who violate Judaism’s ethical demands and that Hamas really isn’t so bad.

     Lustick’s tendency to downplay Hamas’ violent agenda was evident in an interview he gave to the Voice of America in 2006. In the interview, he said “Hamas is mainly popular because one of the things it is trusted to do is probably be ready to live with Israel, even if not officially, for a very long time.” (Note: The page at the link above states the article was updated in 2009, but the original interview took place in 2006.)

     In the years since Lustick offered this prognostication, Hamas kidnapped and killed Israeli soldiers, launched thousands of rockets and initiated three rounds of fighting – all in an effort to exercise a veto of Jewish national life in Israel. Events have proved that Hamas simply cannot be trusted to do what Lustick said it could be trusted to do – tolerate Israel’s existence.

     Lustick did not stop making harebrained predictions despite getting it wrong in 2006. In an piece published in Forbes in June 2010, he chided Israel for withdrawing from the Gaza Strip without a treaty, stating that it left the territory “without an agreement to make it part of a viable Palestinian state, and having corrupted and humiliated what was left of the Palestinian nationalist movement, Israel lost the best opportunities it had to domesticate Hamas as a loyal opposition.”

     He also argued that Israel could change the dynamic by accepting a Hudna (or temporary truce) offered by Hamas and then engage in a non-violent competition with the Islamist organization to “determine if and how the conflict would be continued after two or three decades and whose attachments to the land and belief would prevail.”

     What would the model for this arrangement be? “Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere,” he writes. Lustick writes that “In a variety of Sunni Arab countries the Muslim Brothers and affiliated groups (Hamas is in the category) have agreed to compete peacefully in the social, cultural and ideological spheres while foregoing directed military or political attacks on the secular governments.”

     Hamas, Lustick reported in 2010 had offered the “equivalent” arrangement to Israel.

     One only has to look at the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover in Egypt to see that Lustick’s prognostications were wrong – and disastrously so. In the years since Lustick’s benign assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization has attacked its secularist foes in the streets of Cairo, allowed the murder and oppression of Coptic Christians and has worked to establish a constitution based on shariah – all since the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

     In sum, the centerpiece of Lustick’s argument in favor of Israeli negotiation with Hamas – his assessment that the Muslim Brotherhood was playing by the rules in Egypt – has been thoroughly discredited. The Muslim Brotherhood is simply not playing by the rules Lustick said it was. It is a ruthless organization intent on grabbing and keeping power by whatever means necessary. Just ask its secularist opponents.

     Lustick in LA Times

     Despite Lustick’s tendency to get it wrong – and demonstrably so – the LA Times gave him the opportunity to lambaste Israel in March 19 op-ed. In this piece, Lustick offers a litany of predictions of the things that will happen in light of Benjamin Netanyahu’s success in forming a center-left government in Israel. His assessment is dire:

     Nothing of substance will change. Peace negotiations will not resume; settlement activity will expand; war with Iran will still be threatened; and Israel will move even closer to becoming an international pariah. When President Obama speaks to the Israeli public, he will no doubt treat his counterpart cordially, but that won’t mute the shocking dishonesty of what he has already said. An Israeli government led by Netanyahu cannot be a partner for productive peace talks.
     This isn’t really a series of predictions, but rather Lustick’s assessment of responsibility for the lack of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In the story Lustick tells, Israel is in the wrong and the sins of its adversaries are not worth mentioning.

     In Lustick’s worldview, Israel’s reputation suffers not because of a systematic campaign of de-legitimization in the international arena, but because it refuses to mold its behavior to his expectations. After recounting high levels of disapproval of Israel in Europe, Lustick writes:

     Worried about “delegitimization” as an “existential threat,” the Israeli government and its U.S. friends have funded a host of rebranding PR efforts. But Israel’s image has suffered more from repeated outrages to the world’s sense of fairness than from bad public relations.
     In this passage, Lustick has attributed the moral and diplomatic high-ground to institutions such as the United Nations General Assembly – which ignored genocide in Sudan while passing resolution after resolution condemning Israel – and the UN Human Rights Council, which has ignored human rights abuses in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East while demonizing Israel. Things have gotten so bad at the UNHRC that Nobel Peace Laureate David Trimble, member of the British House of Lords recently told the body to follow the advice of a number of UN General Secretaries to stop singling Israel out for condemnation “to the exclusion of virtually everything else.”

     Lustick also engages in hyperbole, stating that in response to the Palestinian bid for observer status at the UN, the Israeli government “announced radical expansion of Jewish settlement in sensitive areas of Jerusalem and the West Bank. This is overblown. The E-1 announcement which took place after the Palestinians achieved observer status at the UN detailed the construction of homes in an area that was slated to become part of Israel at Camp David negotiations. (For more details, click here.)

     Lustick’s Post-Zionism

     Lustick’s biggest beef is with the persistence of Zionism as a credible ideology. He describes Zionism, which posits that Jews have a right to a sovereign state in their historical homeland, as a tired, worn out movement that is unable to adapt to current circumstances, give Israelis a proper map of reality and as a result, “is an obstacle to Jewish welfare and security.”

     This is simply ridiculous. Despite Lustick’s calumnies, Jews live in freedom and safety in Israel, and have been able to achieve a degree of security for Jews who fled oppression in both Europe and the Middle East that had been unheard of in the centuries prior to Israel’s establishment in 1948.

     Israeli Jews (and Arabs) enjoy a degree of human rights and safety that has been denied religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East since time immemorial. Israeli Jews are have achieved what only one other people group – the Armenians – has been able to obtain in recent history: sovereignty in the face of Islamist supremacy.

     Compared to virtually every other country in the region, such as Syria and Lebanon, Israel has been a runaway success. Zionism has worked while virtually every other ideology that has manifested itself in the Middle East, whether it be Pan-Arabism, Baathism, or Islamism, has been an astounding, and catastrophic failure.

     Lustick’s problem is a simple one: He simply cannot see what is going on in front of him.

     It is not the adherents Zionism who are having a tough time dealing with current events, it is Lustick and the “human rights” community that cannot adapt to them.

     For example, Lustick portrays the Palestinians as a beleaguered people in the Middle East whose suffering is a great wound on humanity. Yet, Lustick and others completely ignore the suffering of other groups in the region, such as Assyrian Christians, more than 1 million of whom have been driven from their homeland in the past decade. Their efforts to create a special province for religious and ethnic minorities have largely gone unnoticed, as has the departure of more than 100,000 Coptic Christians from Egypt since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

     Whether Lustick wants to admit it or not, Israel is the model, not the pariah in the Middle East.

     Reply
     • 

       Rabbi Ira Youdovin June 22, 2014 at 8:09 pm #

       Prof. Falk proclaims the right to “celebrate unreservedly” the PC(USA) vote on divestment, and then eviscerates the resolution.
       In addition to ordering divestment, the resolution:

       1. affirms Israel’s right to exist.
       2. endorses the two-state solution.
       3. states explicitly that PC(USA) does not endorse the BDS movement.

       These affirmations are an anathema to Prof. Falk. But as they’ve been widely publicized, he cannot deny they exist, as he often distorts and denies reality in his blog posts and reports for the UN. (He calls the tactic “constructive imbalance.”) So he claims that the three affirmations “should be understood as expressions of intra-Presbyterian politics, and not be interpreted as serious substantive positions.”

       The arrogance in this is breathtaking. By what right is Prof. Falk empowered to determine what the Presbyterians regard as substantive and what they do not? Or more to the point, what happens to be substantive for him are things he agrees with; and what is not substantive are things that challenge his views.

       Then things s get really ugly. He derides the three affirmations cited above as “Zombie Ideas,” cynically quoting out of context Nobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (who writes about economics not the Middle East.) Foremost among these “Zombie Ideas” is the Jewish People’s right to a national homeland of their own living in peaceful co-existence with a free and independent Palestine. Calling this a Zombie Idea is about as racist as it gets.

       Prof. Falk would dismantle a sovereign state of nearly eight million people that has fought seven wars for its very existence. Twenty percent of them are Palestinian Israelis with franchise, Knesset (parliamentary) representation and full access to Israel’s activist judicial system. This is not to say that Israel is a perfect democracy. Its policies toward its own Palestinian citizens cry out for improvement, and the regime it imposes in the Occupied Territoriea is unjust and unsustainable. But it is light years ahead of its neighbors in the Arab/Moslem world.

       In its place, Prof. Falk proposes a single state whose nature he defines only in vague generalities, a tactic that only thinly disguises the fact that his idea would be catastrophic for Jews and, even more so, for Palestinians. The underlying thesis is that because the two sides are so distrustful of one another that they cannot agree on terms to live separately, they must be forced to live together! History provides strong arguments against this approach. It produces mash-ups such as Yugoslavia and Syria, which eventually disintegrate into genocidal warfare. Prof. Falk knows this history, but is unable to define a strategy for avoiding a repetition. That’s because there is none.

       The tragic irony in this is that a two-state solution offers far better prospects for Palestinians, including Palestinian refugees who would be repatriated in unrestricted numbers into the new State of Palestine. Prof. Falk declares this impossible, citing the expansionist policies of Israel’s current government. But Israel is a democracy whose government can and does change in response to changing realities. The same electorate that elected Bibi Netanyahu also chose Yizhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. The latter two offered the Palestinians far-reaching concessions that were rejected out-of-hand.

       Prof. Falk ignores this history, as he refuses to consider the possibility of removing physical obstacles to peace through bi-lateral negotiations to rearrange the map of the West Bank. Fortunately, the Presbyterians did not. Their resolution is narrowly focused on divesting from three American companies that profit from selling Israel equipment used in maintaining the Occupation. They specifically, unambiguously and unequivocally rejected the BDS movement’s more sinister objectives—delegitimizing and dismantling the State of Israel, which Prof. Falk has advocated for a long time, and which he specifically, unambiguously and unequivocally reiterates in this post. In this regard, the Presbyterians are in line not only with the United States, Canada, Great Britain, etc, but also with the United Nations General Assembly, which granted the Palestinians a form of statehood outside the 1967 borders in the context of a two state solution. I guess Zombies also reign in that big glass building in New York.

       A final word, this one personal. Last week, I acclaimed one of Prof. Falk’s posts as a potential game changer because it laid out a plan that could make Hamas a partner for peace, and give all Palestinians the opportunity to enjoy a better future. I now sadly admit that I was mistaken, as many of my friends warned me. Prof. Falk may be committed to the Palestinians, but the policies he urges reveal that his supreme objective is eliminating Israel from the face of the Earth.
       Rabbi Ira Youdovin
     • 

       Richard Falk June 23, 2014 at 8:55 am #

       This is not the first time that Rabbi Youdovin puts many false words in my mouth and does his best to test
       my limits with respect to the exclusion of personal insults. I admit to being a wimpy censor, and leave his
       post as it does express, although harshly, a fairly widely held substantive view.

       I would only point out that it has been Israel’s policies, and not only those of Netanyahu, that has made it
       ever more implausible to establish a Palestinian state. From such a perspective it is Israel not Palestine that
       imperils the future of ‘a Jewish state.’ To exaggerate my views, and turn them in extremist directions, does not
       enable a civil discourse on the future of both peoples to take place.
6. 

   Gene Schulman June 23, 2014 at 12:50 am #

   To both Dan Livni and Rabbi Youdovin: Bah, humbug! Livni turns history on its head, while Youdovin’s only purpose is to demonize Prof. Falk. Their long screeds are written only to hear themselves, but contribute nothing but more hasbara to the discussion.

   Reply
   • 

     Dan Livni June 23, 2014 at 5:43 pm #

     Gene Schulman, hows the 1 state solution working in Syria with Alawites and Sunnis.
     Hows the 1 state solution working in Iraq with Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis.
     I’d say its not working to good.
     Why is it hard for Gene to accept one small Jewish state while the Arabs have 22 countries.

     Reply
     • 

       Dan Livni June 23, 2014 at 6:26 pm #

       Gene Schulman, lets be honest here, you and Mr Falk can’t even condemn Hamas for firing missiles behind civilians in Gaza at Israeli civilians in Israel.
       Look at this video posted by Hamas of missiles being fired from civilian areas in Gaza
       http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4055975,00.html
       Video: Gaza rockets fired from civilian centers
       (Video) Hamas’ military wing releases videos showing Qassam rockets being fired from residential areas confirming IDF claims
     • 

       Kata Fisher June 23, 2014 at 8:14 pm #

       Livni:

       You are exceedingly wrong and anti-Semitic based on the Faith groups and people groups that you are misrepresenting and violating based on Scriptural Laws and Laws that are appointed. You are violating Israeli-Jews as immigrants to the Holy Land based on International Law, and OT, that they can not violate as converts to Judaism–not without spiritual consequence.

       I will say you are imature and blind- but why blind?

       Arabs in Holy Land are Hebrew-Jews (as contemporarily Muslims) that are ancient Jewish Diaspora, and Jews that are not ancient /not settled for servile generations are ‘recent’ immigrants to the Holy Land – they are mainly not “Jewish Diaspora” coming back to the Home Land/Promised Land.

       While they have had right to be immigrants into the Holy Land based on religious will/Freedom, they have no right to wipe out ancient Jewish Diaspora (Muslims, Christians and Jews) that are settled in Holy Land for servile generations, based on their misdirected religious approach.

       In this point in time, there are International Laws by which religious migrants should be guided, so that they do not end up practicing war-crimes and genocide upon ancient population into which they immigrated.

       You can look at this in another way: When Western European countries immigrated Americas as a continent, and as they were doing that many of these immigrating peoples were on a mission to wipe out ancient population /tribes.

       So here we are immigrates where the ancient population is wiped out, is ethnically cleansed. Likewise, there are crimes against humanity within US population itself – US practices crimes against humanity against their own citizens base on violation of International Laws – there is no question about that. What do they do to other nations against International Law?

       However, this is a harsh Church-Charisamtic accusation. And they will say, “Church Charismatic can’t curse and cut us off in the Name of Holy God and in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth just by God’s Spirit, right?.”

       This, in fact, is what when women ordained by trickery and disorder and against their own will do when they are under prophetic anointing and are Charismatic – they do not run around with the Scripture as women ordained and so to mock God and Jesus Christ in the Church – but curse in the Name of God by Spirit of God, in full understanding of the work of that calling.

       We do not mock body, blood, death on the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazaret, and Spirit of God by which we are confirmed and equipped against all satanic evil that is appointed to be placed under feet of Jesus Christ of Nazareth–we ourselfs do not even go about it, at all. We have language of God’s Spirit that can be interpreted and understood.

       Back to this as I was moved in another direction:

       “You can look at this in another way: When Western European countries immigrated Americas as a continent, and as they were doing that many of these immigrating peoples were on a mission to wipe out ancient population /tribes.”

       In the same spirit, this is done in Holy Land – we can watch stronger ethnically cleanse and displace the weaker one. Moreover, it is not Israel, as a state that is a weak one in the region; it is moving in the spirit and power of lawlessness.

       Again, International Law condemns the war crimes and genocide, and people who are called to this Law and committed to this Law are not dumb people without any understanding, as some would like to suggest so – so that they can turn the blame thise who servr us all / educators as Professor Falk, while they try to elevate their own stupidity, and stupidity of those who are lawless and quite evil, all together.

       Are you called, at all? Prehaps, after scales are to fall off your sight.

       Why should we worry about this? We should worry because that reckless behavior serves no one. Why should we not worry?
       We should not worry because we have evidence and sign of evil times, globally.

       There is the point in time when wicked will perish (just as we see them praising evil), and they will be in the dust, and in the dust of the earth they shall remain as their spiritual is in everlasting state of frozen rebellion.

       We as Church can look back upon hundreds and hundreds of years, and even more than a millennium where hardly anyone is grafted in/justified by the Sprit of God – but are spiritually excommunicated human race, we see them in the spirit of rebellion, as it is in Israel – so it is, globally.

       Can you recall medieval 30-year-long-wars? Ugh, the old same, just globally – we see the same thing in a different point in time/modern times.

       Why is that?

       Don’t you think that is time for you to repent, Livni?

       Can you even imagine for how many generations your family line is spiritually excommunicated? We can graft you back in by the Baptism in Gods Spirit; meaning, the Church-Charismatic-Chatolic/Protestant (when under valid pastor, and teaching office that is under the Law of God’s Spirit and prophetic anoiting – Yes, Protestant- Charismatic can be valid, too. Jonathan is – so I know that they can be valid when under prophetic anoiting and are protestant – Charismatic, under the Law of Spirit).

       Lawlessness does not yield to any Laws and not even to the Spirit of God…

       Why not? Is nothing valid?

       Where I come from by now, and I am sure where Jonathan is — we would just slap you with sound work of evangelism, so that you can see!
     • 

       Gene Schulman June 24, 2014 at 1:44 pm #

       Those states were doing just fine until the US and Israel decided they had to be divided and conquered.

       As for your condemnation request (below), look who’s calling the pot black. Would you condemn Israel for what is described in this article? http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/24/israels-new-abyss/print
7. 

   Rabbi Ira Youdovin June 24, 2014 at 12:15 pm #

   Prof. Falk,

   This is not the first time you have accused me of distorting your message by putting “false words” into your mouth. As I did with the prior episodes, I respectfully ask you to identify where and how you believe I distorted your thoughts. It seems this should be an easy thing for you to do. But in every instance, you have declined the invitation. Perhaps things will be better this time.

   To expedite the exchange, I’ll cite the passage I find most disturbing:

   “…it may not be too soon to challenge the Presbyterian text for its ‘endorsement’ of the two-state solution. It seems to me to illustrate what Paul Krugman in another context called ‘the Zombie doctrine,’ namely, the retention of an idea, thoroughly discredited by evidence and the realities of the situation, but somehow still affirmed because it serves useful political purposes…

   “With all due respect to the Presbyterian drafters of the text, it is not helpful to Palestinians, Israelis, and even Americans to lengthen the half-life of the two-state solution…Those who favor a just and sustainable peace should abandon the pretension that separate states are any longer feasible, if ever desirable. It has become important to derail two-state discourse, which is at best now diversionary…”

   I read this as your calling for dismantling the sovereign State of Israel as it has existed since May 15, 1948, welcomed into the United Nations shortly thereafter and reaffirmed in the UN’s recognition of the State of Palestine last year—replacing it with a bi-national state.

   If I am wrong in m understanding, please indicate how. If I have misrepresented your thoughts, I will offer my apologies.

   Rabbi Ira Youdovin

   Reply
   • 

     Gene Schulman June 24, 2014 at 1:15 pm #

     Being early to meeting Prof. Falk for coffee this morning in Geneva, I was browsing in my local book shop and came upon this book, http://www.amazon.com/After-Israel-Marcelo-Svirsky-ebook/dp/B00K1DCEWI.
     It was the first two sentences that drew the money out of my pocket: “Israel was a bad idea from its inception. At the time the well-integrated lives of Jews in Muslim societies were completely disregarded by European Zionists, the good intentions of securing Palestine a home for persecuted Jews were at one stroke ruined the moment Zionism required the dispossession of the Palestinians from their ancestral home.”
     Rabbi Youdovin, and others, might profit from looking at “After Israel”.

     Thank you Richard, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to meet with me. A great pleasure.

     Reply
     • 

       Fred Skolnik June 24, 2014 at 1:43 pm #

       Just passing through, Gene, but I’m not surprised that you’d put out money on anything that smells of Israel hatred, Well-integrated lives indeed!

       Here is a small sample of benevolent Arab rule, which at best, under dhimmi law, forced Jews (and Christians) to live as humiliated second-class citizens. If you want a living example, take the Copts in Egypt):

       In 1011 in Cordoba, Spain, under Muslim rule, there were pogroms in which, according to various estimates, from hundreds to thousands were murdered. In 1066 in Granada, Yosef Hanagid was executed, along with between 4,000 and 6,000 other Jews. One of the worst periods of all began in 1148, when the Almohad dynasty came to power (al Muwahhidūn), and ruled Spain and North Africa during the 12th and 13th centuries.

       Morocco: The country that suffered from the worst series of massacres. In the 8th century whole communities were wiped out by Idris the First. In 1033, in the city of Fez, 6,000 Jews were murdered by a Muslim mob. The rise of the Almohad dynasty caused waves of mass murders. According to testimony from that time, In 1465, another massacre took place in Fez, which spread to other cities in Morocco.

       There were pogroms in Tetuan in 1790 and 1792, in which children were murdered, women were raped and property was looted. Between 1864 and 1880, there were a series of pogroms against the Jews of Marrakesh, in which hundreds were slaughtered. In 1903, there were pogroms in two cities – Taza and Settat, in which over 40 Jews were killed.

       In 1907, there was a pogrom in Casablanca in which 30 Jews were killed and many women were raped. In 1912, there was another massacre in Fez in which 60 Jews were killed and about 10,000 were left homeless. In 1948, another series of pogroms began against the Jews which led to the slaughter of 42 in the cities of Oujda and Jrada.

       Algeria: A series of massacres occurred in 1805, 1815 and 1830. The situation of the Jews improved with the start of the French conquest in 1830, but that did nor prevent anti-Jewish outbursts in the 1880s. The situation deteriorated again with the rise of the Vichy government. Even before 1934, the country was permeated by Nazi influences, which led to the slaughter of 25 Jews in the city of Constantine. When it achieved independence in 1962, laws were passed against citizenship for anyone who was not a Muslim and their property was effectively confiscated. Most of the Jews left, usually completely penniless, together with the French (“pieds noirs”).

       Libya: In 1785, hundreds of Jews were murdered by Burza Pasha. Under Nazi influence, harassment of the Jews intensified. Jewish property in Benghazi was plundered, thousands were sent to camps and about 500 Jews were killed. In 1945, at the end of World War II, a program against the Jews began and the number of murdered reached 140. The New York Times reported the horrible scenes of babies and old people who had been beaten to death. In the riots that broke out in 1948, the Jews were more prepared, so only 14 were killed. Following the Six Day War, riots broke out once again and 17 Jews were slaughtered.

       Iraq: a massacre occurred in Basra in 1776. The situation of the Jews improved under British rule in 1917, but this improvement ended with Iraq’s independence in 1932. German influences increased and reached a peak in 1941 in the pogrom known as Farhud, in which 182 Jews were slaughtered (according to historian Elie Kedourie, 600 people were actually murdered) and thousands of houses were pillaged.

       Those were the days of Haj Amin al Husseini, who preached violence against the Jews. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Iraqi parliament acted according to the Arab League bill and in 1950 and froze the assets of Jews. Sanctions were imposed on those who remained in Iraq. The Farhud massacre and the harassment from 1946 to 1949 to all intents and purposes turned the Iraqi Jews into exiles and refugees. The few thousand who remained in Iraq suffered from harsh edicts. In 1967, 14 Iraqis were sentenced to death on trumped up charges of espionage. Among them were 11 Jews. Radio Iraq invited the masses to the hanging festivities.

       Syria: The first blood libel in a Muslim country occurred in 1840, and led to the kidnapping and torture of dozens of Jewish children, sometimes to the point of death, and a pogrom against the Jews. In 1986, the Syrian Minister of Defense, Mustafa Talas, published a book, “The Matzah of Zion,” in which he claims that the Jews did, indeed, use the blood of a Christian monk to bake matzah. Same old anti-Semitism, new edition. Other pogroms occurred in Aleppo in 1850 and in 1875, in Damascus in 1848 and in 1890, in Beirut in 1862 and in 1874, and in Dir al Kamar there was another blood libel which also led to a pogrom in 1847. That year, there was a pogrom against the Jews of Jerusalem, which was the result of that blood libel. In 1945, the Jews of Aleppo suffered severe pogroms. 75 Jews were murdered and the community was destroyed. There was a resurgence of the violence in 1947, which turned most of the Syrian Jews into refugees. Those who remained there lived for many years as hostages.

       Iran: There was a pogrom against the Jews of Mashhad in 1839. A mob was incited to attack Jews, and slaughtered almost 40. The rest were forced to convert. That is how the Marranos of Mashhad came into being. In 1910, there was a blood libel in Shiraz in which 30 Jews were murdered and all Jewish homes were pillaged.

       Yemen: There were fluctuations in relations that ranged between tolerance and inferior subsistence, between harassment and pogroms. The Rambam’s Letter to Yemen was sent following a letter he received from the leader of the Yemeni Jews, describing edicts of forced conversion issued against the Jews (1173). There were further waves of apostasy edicts which cannot be detailed here for lack of space.

       One of the worst milestones was the Mawza exile. Three years after Imam Al Mahdi took power in 1676, he drove the Jews into one of the most arid districts of Yemen. According to various accounts, 60 – 75% of the Jews died as a result of the exile. Many and varied edicts were imposed on the Jews, differing only in severity. One of the harshest was the Orphans’ Edict, which ordered the forced conversion of orphaned children to Islam. In nearby Aden, which was under British rule, pogroms occurred in 1947 which took the lives of 82 Jews. 106 of the 170 shops that were owned by Jews were completely destroyed. Hundreds of houses and all the community’s buildings were burned down.
       Egypt: As in the other Arab countries, the Jews of Egypt also suffered inferior status for hundreds of years. A significant improvement occurred when Muhammad Ali came to power in 1805. The testimony of French diplomat, Edmond Combes, leaves nothing in doubt: “To the Muslims, no race is more worthy of contempt than the Jewish race.” Another diplomat added, “The Muslims do not hate any other religion the way they hate that of the Jews.”

       Following the blood libel in Damascus, similar libels began to spread in Egypt as well and incited mobs to carry out a series of attacks: in Cairo in 1844, 1890, and in 1901-1902; and Alexandria in 1870, 1882 and in 1901-1907. Similar attacks also occurred in Port Said and in Damanhur.

       Later on, there were riots against the Jews at the end of World War II, in 1945, in which 10 were killed and hundreds were injured. In 1947, the Companies Law was passed, which severely damaged Jewish businesses and led to the confiscation of property. In 1948, following the UN resolution on partition, riots began in Cairo and Alexandria. The dead numbered between 80 and 180. Tens of thousands were forced to leave, many fleeing and abandoning their property. The lot of those who remained did not improve. In 1956, a law was passed in Egypt which effectively denied the Jews citizenship, forcing them to leave the country with no property. This was an act of pure expulsion and mass property confiscation.

       See, if you have the guts for it: Andrew G. Bostom, ed., The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History (NY: Prometheus Books, 2008).
     • 

       ray032 June 24, 2014 at 5:54 pm #

       Fred, “Here is a small sample of benevolent Arab rule, which at best, under dhimmi law, forced Jews (and Christians) to live as humiliated second-class citizens.”

       If that is wrong when it is done to Jews and Christians, it is also wrong when Jews do it to Palestinians which the whole world is beginning to see happening in the 47 year Israeli Military Dictatorship. The only ones who don’t seem to see it is the Israelis.
   • 

     Richard Falk June 24, 2014 at 11:56 pm #

     Rabbi Youdovin:

     I have difficulty responding to these kinds of presentations of my views that I find so alien to my
     intentions that I hardly know where to begin. It is not at all my intention to call for the dismantling of
     Israel as a sovereign state. What I claim is that Israel as established in 1948 has proceeded to create a set
     of conditions that makes it impossible for the Palestinians to be protected in accord with international law
     or justice. I do not know under these circumstances what will allow both peoples to live in peace, and it may
     require some modification of the Zionist design of a Jewish homeland in the form of a sovereign state.

     You pose all the questions, but never provide real explanations for Israeli moves in directions that have for
     years made the two-state solution a fading dream–for instance, the continuing expansion of settlements, roads,
     and more recently the election of a president of Israel by the Knesset of an avowed exponent of the annexation
     of Judea & Samaria. How cannot send a signal more powerful than some words in a political document drafted 30 years
     ago. You favor a rewriting of the Hamas Charter, as do I, but you are mute when it comes to Israel providing some
     reassurance about its intentions.

     Reply
     • 

       Fred Skolnik June 25, 2014 at 12:37 am #

       Since I am in front of my computer, I hope Rabbi Youdovin will forgive me for jumping in here. “Modifying” the existence and reality of “a Jewish homeland in the form of a sovereign state” means precisely the dismantling of the State of Israel.

       The views of a president who has no political power are irrelevant to the peace process. Israel is not expanding settlements. All new building – the little of it that there is – is taking place within existing settlements. The eviction of a few dozen or a few hundred Arabs from East Jerusalem houses that the courts have determined belong to Jewish owners has as much to do with ethnic cleansing as the eviction of an Arab for not paying his rent, which by the way is just as difficult in the Israeli court system. As for “roads,” I think you know very well that the security roads exist to prevent terrorist acts. It’s a shame that the road from Gush Etzyon wasn’t a security road as well.

       What will allow the two people to live in peace, Professor Falk, is the Arab acceptance of the existence of a sovereign non-Muslim state in the Middle East. This they have been unable to do until now and if the Big Dream of a great massacre on the shores of the Mediterranean persists, they are liable to find themselves not with a one-state solution but with a zero-state solution when out of total exasperation Jordan and Israel divide the West Bank between themselves. Such a solution did not trouble you in the least before 1967 after Jordan had unilaterally annexed the West Bank in 1950 so why should it trouble you now.
8. 

   Gene Schulman June 24, 2014 at 1:59 pm #

   Fred, why don’t you just go “straight to jail without passing go”?

   As long as you’re going back in history to find anti-Semitism, why don’t you go all the way back to the Bible? More up to date, you might find Naeim Giladi’s “Ben-Gurion’s Scandals” of interest, which tells how Israel created false flags to scare Jewish citizens in Arab countries into emigrating to the new Jewish homeland.

   Get something straight in your head. I do not hate Israel, I am opposed to its policies and treatment of the people in the illegal occupation.

   Reply
   • 

     Fred Skolnik June 24, 2014 at 2:11 pm #

     You’re in denial, Gene. You’re the one with the nonsense about well-integrated lives. Naiem Giladi isn’t going to save you.

     Reply
     • 

       ray032 June 25, 2014 at 5:58 am #

       Professor, remember your November 30 article, ‘GAZA: The Unfolding Tragedy?’
       I re-blogged it to my site, renaming it ‘AM I MY BROTHER’S KEEPER, and adding images I deemed relevant.

       Interesting to note the coincidence after the fact, the Israeli political offensive in the West Bank against Hamas is called ‘Operation Brother’s Keeper’

       Reading Israeli and other analysis of this operation, the IDF and this political purge of Hamas in the West Bank, the only keeping being in jail, will incite the 3rd intifada, and then there will be hell to pay by everybody on all sides.

       There will be no sitting on the fence.
     • 

       Richard Falk June 25, 2014 at 8:21 am #

       Ray: I am glad you pointed this out to me. There is something eerie about calling the extension
       of collective punishment from Gaza to the West Bank ‘Operation Brother’s Keeper.’ What mentality
       could have proposed such a label, and then persuaded others that it was appropriate? It seems highly
       unlikely that Hamas would engage in a West Bank kidnapping at a time when Israel was so eager to discredit
       Hamas after the formation of the ‘unity government.’ Possibly, although there is no evidence to date, it
       could be a dissident militia that was unhappy about the PA-Hamas move toward reconciliation.
     • 

       Fred Skolnik June 26, 2014 at 9:14 pm #

       The mentality that could have thought of such a label is one that is committed to the well-being of its citizens and feels connected to them by deep familial ties, unlike people who are alienated from their fellow countrymen.

       “Highly unlikely that Hamas would engage …” Once again you are demonstrating how little you know about the Middle East. And why rush to make pronouncements that are highly likely to explode in your face. They only serve to call into question your other pronouncements.
9. 

   rehmat1 June 24, 2014 at 4:51 pm #

   Naeim Giladi was 101% correct. Last year, Israeli historian professor Yigal Bin-Nun (Bar-Ilan University), in a study exposed Zionist lies about Jewish exodus from Morocco. Based on his study of Moroccan Jewish community, Bin-Nun has claimed that Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel, was behind the whole operation wherein about 160,000 Moroccan Jews left Morocco for the Zionist occupied Palestine.

   http://rehmat1.com/2013/11/13/why-jews-left-morocco/

   Reply
   • 

     Fred Skolnik June 24, 2014 at 9:33 pm #

     Don’t you mean 10% correct? Aren’t you the one wjo told us that 4,000 Jews didn’t show up for work at the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11?

     Reply
10. 

    Kata Fisher June 24, 2014 at 9:08 pm #

    I have a reflection:

    I believe that it is important to correctly handle all truth. Meaning, get all bricks together – if you intend to build anything. I believe that the cornerstone to this issue will be guidance based on International Law.

    We understand what was done in the past by Christians, Muslims and Jews – all this is time pass. We can reflect upon generational issues/sins, but why are we to be impaired by these issues just because they have lacked the wisdom and understanding in that time-sphere– they had no universal guidance, as we have today.

    Let’s get hand on things that can be grasped /reality of the Law International, as a guide in this point in time. There is some wisdom to that.

    There is no question that religious hate has guided past generations, yet they seem to be more civilized than this generation is due to rich resources that this generation has acquired and has misused; it has implemented destruction against the rule of the Law International, and not to service to the rule of the Law, so that there are some valid achievements for humanity.

    If we are to tap into the Love of God that surpasses all understanding, and get wisdom by that – there are things that we have to pursue, and obey, as we know the first requirement to human existence: that inner peace, so that when attained is also stirred as a gift-spiritual..

    If you want to get hands on analyzing and interpreting things/information, getting hands on that – get your hands on with that Love of God that is anchored in pursuit of the peace for yourself, first.

    Do not provoke anyone without spiritual obligation.

    How do you achieve the peace to the region of Holy Land?

    First, get some peace in this gartering, by avoiding conflict, intentionally. We told each other about our thoughts and prayers, and we do not have a joke for anyone –so let’s move on in more excellent things, beside that.

    It is time to focus more intensively on the actual existence of peace in Holy Land. All this household has to do is get a bit more settled, peaceful and creative. If you lack wisdom, just ask God for supernatural impartation of that gift, and/or just show up here.

    If your gifts are stirred do not ‘horde’ those to yourself because what you believe-and/or is going through your mind can act as gift-spiritual, and can make a difference between the peace and the war in Holy Land.

    So write all things down, and if there are things that are harsh/critical, and you have to go about that, do so as well as you try to apply as much discerning to yourself, as possible.

    We need more spiritual gifts here to these problems. Professors Falk understanding acts as a cornerstone, and stands individually solid.

    Solutions need to be attained and can be ASAP so that can be fine-tuned for the actual impact in Holy Land.

    I want for anyone to think for themselves this: Are you spiritual house of David / Israel or are you not? If you are worried about issues in Holy Land then there must be a spiritual brick behind that.

    Another thing: This is a virtual environment and misunderstanding of intended thought-processes is possible. With that, clarify any doubts that may cause conflicting thought processes to you, first.

    I have a strong impression that prophetic anointing are active here, but it is not smooth as it should be due to other interference. So be aware of your spiritual gifts, so that you are effective, and try to harness more to that so that is literal.

    You have to achieve literal existence of that spiritual gift (individually, and corporately).

    Also, please avoid conflicts that will distract and waste those gifts-spiritual.

    Remember: a) spiritual meaning/literal meaning b) literal meaning/spiritual meaning.

    So the first order of things and other order of things, as you reflect.

    Reply
11. 

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12. 

    Beau Oolayforos September 11, 2014 at 1:16 pm #

    Dear Mr. Falk,
    The end of your piece paints a difficult picture indeed, but one we must evidently all face. If the only acceptable solution is one-state, then that one State must be diligently secular, with a careful and thorough separation of religion and politics. Needless to say, the Israeli government, as presently constituted, would never consider such a plan. They need to be nudged, but by whom? Their contempt for the UN and for international law is second nature by now. It was encouraging to learn that the Swiss were receptive to Abbas’ request for mediation, but any plan they came up with, however just and workable, would be unenforceable without…
    We come back again to Israel’s chief sponsor, its raison d’etre. Unless the US can force her client, and decide herself, to join law-abiding peoples – do we need to repeat it? – there will be more bloodshed. Fat-ass Bibi has already promised us more murders next time. Resolution 498 was a chilling wake-up call, as if we needed one. The unanimity is truly breathtaking, but the Tonkin Gulf resolution was nearly so, and look what happened…if only we could’ve saved all those thousands of lives in between.
    May we yet hope that the American people will divest themselves of such foreign despotism? Is it our only hope?

    Reply