Recently I participated in a conference on global inequality and human rights held at the University of Texas in Austin, a lively quite cosmopolitan city. During the lunch break I was talking with a young PhD student from Israel who had just presented an informative paper on inequality in the Philippines. I asked her about her career plans and how it was like to be living in Israel these days. She told me that she was married to an Israeli and planned to return to finish her studies in Tel Aviv after a fellowship year at UT.
I tried to engage her in conversation about evolving Israeli attitudes toward the Palestinians and the related failed diplomacy, but she seemed rather uninformed and perhaps even disinterested as if the peace agenda was not really present in her active consciousness. Then all at once she said something that surprised me. “I am not looking forward to returning to Israel, it is becoming a fascist state.”
What made this strong statement surprising was that it contrasted with the blandness of everything that had preceded it. I asked inquisitively, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, “What makes you say that?”
She pondered the question as if it had come to her from the wild blue yonder. It seemed as if she had never thought about it before, and maybe it was just a spontaneous assertion that she was articulating for the first time. After a pause, she answered somewhat hesitantly: “Because the army is the most powerful and admired institution in Israel, and the government controls everything, it is acting as a totalizing force.” I suppose that gets you to Franco style fascism that prevailed for so long in Spain, but not the more virulent forms of fascism associated with Mussolini’s Italy and especially Hitler’s Germany.
I agreed with the young woman about the hegemony of the armed forces, both institutionally and psychologically, but I was less sure about the totalizing reach of the government. After all, Haaretz continues to publish Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, and they are both outspoken critics of Israeli policies and leaders, but then again there seems to be mounting pressure in Israel against human rights NGOs and peaceful protests, and an official tone of belligerence toward the BDS movement that even South African apartheid racists never exhibited.
The Israeli young woman in Texas never mentioned the oppression of the Palestinians as one dimension of this Israeli drift from democracy to fascism, although many progressive Israelis believe that it is the prolonged occupation of Palestinian territory that has pushed the country toward or over the precipice of fascism. Jeff Halper, author of War Against the People: Israel, Palestinians, and Global Pacification (2015), a leading Israeli activist scholar who emigrated from the U.S. decades ago and has fearlessly placed his body in front of bulldozers to block the demolitions of Palestinian homes, has a different way of putting his concerns about what is happening to the Israeli governing process. “Israel is a vibrant democracy if you are Jewish.” But even for Jews there is pushback, according to Halper, making it “harder and harder to protest.”
What of others living in Israel, especially the Palestinians? Those living in Israel or under occupation are given a fugitive identity by being called ‘Arabs,’ a designation that functions as a way of denying nationalist claims based on a ‘Palestinian’ primary identity. As is well known, Israel uses the legalities of citizenship strategically. It has been recently offering the 25,000 Druze residents of the Golan Heights Israeli citizenship, apparently to neutralize their antagonism toward Netanyahu’s land grab, which defies international law by insisting on permanent Israeli sovereignty over conquered and occupied Syrian territory. So far few Druze have accepted this offer of Israeli citizenship, but this could change if Israel is able to sustain its claim.
As Palestinians know from bitter experience, the privileged societal status of Jews within and without Israel is mostly achieved by way of nationality laws that are ethnically framed to favor Jews, while Israeli citizens, whether or not Jewish, enjoy formal equality that doesn’t count for much when it comes to rights and legal protection. The most notorious of the many ethnographic discriminations in Israeli law is between Jews who are granted an unlimited right of return wherever they live in the world and however tenuous their links to Israel, while Palestinians and other minorities do not have any right of return even if the Palestinian roots of their families go back many generations. Israeli apologists contend that as a Jewish state Israel can do what many other states do, and be selective about its policies toward immigration, and privilege whoever it wishes, and further that the historical context of Zionist was shaped by the aspiration to create a sanctuary for Jews so long targeted for persecution. What this rationale leaves out is that this sanctuary was created by the displacement of the majority of the indigenous population of Palestine, and surely those Palestinians who remain in Israel should not be disadvantaged in their own homeland.
There are other ways in which the fascist tendency toward racism and purification are manifest. The apartheid structures of occupation, differently maintained in the West Bank and Gaza impose systematic and severe discrimination and a miserable status of stateless rightlessness on the Palestinians while according internationally unlawful Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem the full panoply of rights associated with ‘the rule of law’ as bestowed by most constitutional democracies. Also, Israel’s consistent reliance on excessive force against Palestinian protests and resistance activities is also a sign of fascist disrespect for adversary ethnic and religious identities, and even of the right to dissent and display a posture of opposition to the state.
Of course, whether Israel is or is becoming fascist or not in the end is a matter of interpretation, but sadly, it is no longer an extremist assertion or a sign of anti-Semitism to regard Israel as a fascist state. And by way of contrast, it is extreme whitewashing to keep insisting that Israel is ‘the only democracy in the Middle East.’
Some years ago, Henry Seigman, seemed to imply a similar set of circumstances when he argued that Israel had become an ‘ethnocracy,’ that is, a Jewish state in which non-Jews were at best subordinated, and at worst scapegoated in such a way as to make involuntary population transfers an increasingly popular option with the public. Seigman, former head of the American Jewish Congress, also wrote that instead of being the only democracy Israel has become the ‘only apartheid regime in the Western world.”
Of course, the question of the American drift toward fascism has also been noted for several decades. To some extent, the awareness that ‘perpetual war’ is incompatible with the maintenance of real democracy was part of this concern. Peter Dale Scott’s explorations of ‘the deep state’ with its unaccountable dark forces of secrecy that pulled the strings of the national security was an indictment of the merger of covert intelligence and special ops with the underworld of crime and drugs that have intensified fears of the erosion of democratic governance. And we not must overlook Edward Snowden’s brave disclosures of the webs spun by the surveillance state that potentially entangle every person on the face of the earth or the special bonds connections the hedge fund moguls of Wall Street with the bureaucratic elites in Washington that are doing their assigned job of keeping the citizenry on an extremely short leash. This may help explain the anger in America bubbling to the surface during a time when profits continue to rise geometrically while wages remain either flat or keep declining in constant dollars.
And then came Trump, unleashing the dormant underbelly of populist fascism in America, surfacing in various virulent forms: Islamophobia and xenophobia being the most obvious. Just as some understanding of white racism was finally seeping into liberal consciousness by the much belated recognition that ‘black lives matter,’ it was also becoming clear that Muslim lives don’t matter, or matter even less, and Latino lives were becoming problematized by the sudden passion for upholding the law that was sweeping across the American plains, lending strident support to those calling for the punishment, and the massive deportation of those categorized as ‘the illegals.’
The caustic cultural critic and ardent American Zionist, Leon Wieseltier, recently commented on Trump: “Someone asked me if I thought he was a fascist, and I said, ‘he says fascistic things, but to call him a fascist imputes too great a degree of intellectual coherence to him.” And then condescendingly added, “There is no belief system there. I mean he is not wrong. He’s pre-wrong.” He went on to say that Clinton also worried him as a candidate, not because of her hawkish views and record, but people might not vote for her because she was unlovable. As Wieseltier caustically put it, “I’m getting exceedingly nervous about her ability to beat that monster Trump. She’s not very nimble and nobody loves her.” Of course, no mention of Sanders as a glimmer of light, at least on the American horizon.
Instead Wieseltier instructs his 13-year old son “that presidential elections are lesser of evil exercises. I have never once voted happily.” Of course, this is not such an outlandish assessment, although as a candidate eight years ago, I still feel that Barack Obama was not the lesser of evils, but his candidacy represented an extraordinary breakthrough. Although often deeply disappointing later, as president, especially in the domains of security, neoliberalism, and the Middle East, the Republican extreme antipathy toward the man and his policies has fascist, as well as racist, undertones. And why wouldn’t even Wieseltier want to cheer his son up a bit by mentioning Bernie Sanders, who may not be the revolutionary he claims to be, but he is authentically talking some truth to power in ways that defy the mores of the American plutocracy? The American media and liberal mainstream, especially among older folks, is understandably preoccupied with the rightest surge, and is unabashedly counting on a Clinton victory. It is not nearly ready to ditch Democrats linked to Wall Street, Pentagon, and Israel in the manner of Clinton. In fact, most Clinton supporters see little, if any, substantive problem with her, but if critical at all, lament her lack of charm or go ‘tut, tut’ if anyone brings up her past support for the Iraq War, the Libyan intervention, and various authoritarian moves in Central America, most notably Honduras.
Robert Paxton, the author of one of the best books on fascism, The Anatomy of Fascism (2004), is reluctant to give a definition of fascism, both because there are many varieties and because it tends to essentialize fascism, which is better comprehended, he believes, as a process that evolves rather than as a system with certain defining attributes. Paxton at the very end of his book relents, offering a list of characteristics that he believes are shared by historical instances of fascism. I believe it is worth reproducing Paxton’s list [219-220], although its application to the U.S. and Israel depends on nuanced interpretation:
–“a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solution;”
–“the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it;;”
–“the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;”
–“dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;”
–“the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, by exclusionary violence if necessary;”
–“the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male(, culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny;”
–“the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason;”
–“the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success;”
–“the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterior of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.”
It makes little difference as to whether we explain this militarist drift observed in Israel and the United States as the outcome of decades of high alert geopolitics or the impoverishment of tens of millions due to the cruel dynamics of neoliberal capitalism or primarily as a response to the changing paradigm of global conflict with its borderless battlefields and extremist non-state, transnational political actors. Widespread violent discontent and highly coercive security structures of state power seem here to stay, and so it becomes prudent to fear resurgent forms of fascism reconfigured to correspond with the parameters of the digital age. Reading through Paxton’s list is a chilling reminder of how fascist regimes destroy the fabric of humane societies, but the list also may be read as a cautionary reminder that what exists in Israel and the United States is best understood as pre-fascist, and that there remain anti-fascist political spaces to turn the tide of events in more progressive directions.
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
All lies.
But since you refuse to allow free and honest debate..why bother.
Enjoy your incestuous love-fest!
Talk about fascism!!
This website is not available for insulting comments. I thought that was the purpose of ‘Falk Uncensored.’
If you are unwilling to contribute substantively without personal attacks, then you should not waste your
time in the future by submitting here.
Then why are you refusing “free and honest debate”?
When there is no common ground, debate degenerates into mere argument and name calling,
and that is what I have been trying to avoid. I was encouraging those with your outlook
to have a useful conversation under the banner of ‘falkuncensored,’ but as I suspected,
the interest of the extreme defenders of Israel’s behavior are primarily interested in
discrediting the critics, and usually by challenging their character and reputation. I
do not want this kind of back and forth on this website.
“When there is no common ground, debate degenerates into mere argument and name calling, and that is what I have been trying to avoid. I was encouraging those with your outlook to have a useful conversation under the banner of ‘falkuncensored,’ but as I suspected, the interest of the extreme defenders of Israel’s behavior are primarily interested in discrediting the critics, and usually by challenging their character and reputation. I
do not want this kind of back and forth on this website.”
Of course. The banner of ‘falkuncensored,’ is not a forum for name calling nor personal attacks.
It is clearly a forum for those that you (Richard Falk) disagree with to get to have their opinion aired without you redacting and deleting with what you don’t agree with.
You have consistently labeled those that disagree with you as “personal attacks”.
That is a cheap shot that will not hold water..
Either you will allow debate or not.
Historically, based on your years of articles and essays against Israel, I doubt very much that you will suddenly change your policy of unilateral redaction-ism!!
Comments were never blocked unless they contained personal insults like attributing ‘Jew hatred’ and questioning
integrity, or contained diatribes against the Palestinians, or for that matter against Jews, Zionists, and Israelis.
I have blocked many comments that are directly opposed to what you advocate and believe. Of course, I have a set of views
that you dislike, and you are free to attack me on other websites, but not here. At the same time you may disagree, and you
will see that you will never be blocked. If you look at the archive of comments you will find many from Fred Skolnik, Rabbi
Yudovic, Harvey Epstein, etc., and many of these were published here despite much personal innuendo and insulting language.
This is just not true. I do not attack the motivations or character of those whose comments I block, and many that sharply
disagree with me have not been blocked. It is not a genuine debate. Those of you who deeply disagree with my understanding of
the issues are not interested in debating, but in discrediting those who are critical of Israel’s leaders, policies, and practices.
If you read through the unblocked comments of yours, Fred, Ira, Harvey you will see that there is lots of allegations of ‘Jew hatred’
and obsession with hostility to Israel and so forth. The issue is civility of dialogue, and the avoidance of useless repetition of
arguments that merely assert Israel’s familiar rationalizations for their behavior.
The interest of the defenders of Israel is primarily to defend Israel. The motives of the critics is a secondary issue. When the classic language of Jew hatred comes to the fore, it is naturally pointed out, because Jew hatred has proven to be a very dangerous things and the haters should be exposed, by yourself as well, I should add, even when they share your views. Surely you are not unaware of where gratuitous generalizations about Jewish history, origins, religion, greed, power, designs, character, morality and even genes are coming from.
You are again misleading your readers.
“Those living in Israel or under occupation are given a fugitive identity by being called ‘Arabs,’ a designation that functions as a way of denying nationalist claims based on a ‘Palestinian’ primary identity.”
Those living under occupation are generally called Palestinians. Those living in Israel are generally called Israeli Arabs. How on earth would you know how Israelis refer to Arabs? Insofar as the primary national identity of Israeli Arabs is Palestinian, you have a very problematic situation that goes a long way toward explaining why Israeli Arabs experience discrimination as a potential fifth column.
“Law of Return …Displacement of Arabs.”
I’m glad to see that you are finally acknowledging that many other countries have immigration laws favoring returning expatriates at the expense of national minorities. Obviously a Jew who “returns” under this law does not have “tenuous” links to Israel but feels bound very strongly to the Jewish state, like myself. And the “sanctuary” was not created by displacing anyone. It was created through a partition plan that left the Arabs where they were, under Jewish sovereignty. Their response was an attempt to destroy the State of Israel and, if we are going to be honest, massacre its Jewish population.
“The apartheid structures of occupation.”
I have pointed out dozens of times that by definition an occupation entails separation between the occupying power and the occupied population. The word apartheid was not coined to describe such a situation. If it were, all occupations would be forms of apartheid, and I again invite you to consider how the Allies would have responded if the Germans had proclaimed “no peace, no negotiations, no recognition” after the Allied occupation, had engaged from the outset in acts of terror against Allied civilians inside and outside Germany, and had refused to disavow their Nazi leaders.
“Also, Israel’s consistent reliance on excessive force against Palestinian protests and resistance activities is also a sign of fascist disrespect for adversary ethnic and religious identities, and even of the right to dissent and display a posture of opposition to the state.”
The protests and resistance activities you are talking about include blowing up Israeli women and children in restaurants and buses and firing thousands of rockets at Israel’s civilian population. To call the measures taken to prevent these barbaric acts “fascist disrespect” is shameless.
I understand that it is irresistibly tempting to expand the meaning of the word fascism in the way you have expanded the meaning of the word apartheid so that you can apply it to Israel. Israel is neither a fascist nor an apartheid state. It is a state with a national minority that has legitimate complaints but would not consent to live under Palestinian sovereignty for all the money in the world.
I invite you to consider Mike 71’s comment to your Jeff Halper post, which makes more sense than anything I have seen on your website in quite some time.
I thought you had agreed to keep your insulting comments for the ‘Falk Uncensored’ website.
I have made it clear as possible that if you want to contribute comments here you will have to
refrain from insult me and others, and if this is too difficult, then I would not waste your energy
composing long rants of this kind.
I am certainly not insulting you. I am disagreeing with you in the language of disagreement.
You have a very personalized view of ‘disagreement.’ If ‘again misleading your readers’ is not an insult
I am at a loss as to what would qualify short of vulgar personal attacks. I agree that most of this comment
does express your view, but at the very end you revert to insult in the form of praising Mike’s hostile response
to my review of Halper’s book.
Mike’s reply is a very well-reasoned response to your post and one would have expected you to feel obliged to reply to it just as I feel obliged to reply when I come across what strikes me as grossly false or distorted representations of the conflict.
Saying that you are misleading your readers is mild indeed compared with the language one encounters on this site in the comments of your admirers.
Professor Falk – a note: you may be unaware that you have also removed relevant academic material that was previously reviewed by a public judicial person.
This doesn’t matter. If it is not explicitly connected with the discussion on this blogsite, it should not be submitted. You
must learn to connect the dots. Otherwise your concerns are not understood.
I thought it was clear when the group complaining about being censored created their own blog site
that they would no longer participate here. I am determined not to have this blog site again dominated by
this sort of continual line of attack and criticism. There are many Zionist web sites that would welcome
the kind of comments that you wish to make, but it is not what I want here.
But I do not think so, Professor Falk because of the relevance of vertical and horizontal dots to be connected. What you are proposing it just startles me. But I do accept that no means no.
A note: it seems to me that here Autism and Aspurger syndrome may make most sense.
Developments in Israel are worrying, but what develops in the US is the biggest problem.
Hillary Clinton is the real danger not only for the US, but for the whole world. Clinton is the spearhead of the Neocons in the democratic party. She brought Victoria Nuland (quote: “fuck the EU”) into the Obama administration. Nuland is the wife of Robert Kagan. Kagan is co-founder of the neoconservative “Project for the New American Century“. The neocons are more and more in control of the democratic party and of the US administration. If one wants to know what is in the Neocon „pipe“, one should read their think tank papers. In September 2000 the US Think Tank “Project for the New American Century” issued the paper “Rebuilding America´s Defenses”. On page 60 you find the announcement of Fascist atrocities! It reads:
„And advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.“
Surely it should not target white Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs)! About the possible consequences and background: “US Power Elite Declared War on the Southern Hemisphere, East Asia and all Non-Western Countries in September 2000”: https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2016/03/13/us-power-elite-declared-war-on-the-southern-hemisphere-east-asia-and-all-non-western-countries-in-september-2000/
Andreas Schlüter
Sociologist
Berlin, Germany
https://www.syracuseculturalworkers.com/sites/default/files/styles/product_detail/public/images/products/tshirts/5283-fascismback.jpg?itok=gXeUP0ru
I vowed never again to comment on this site, but as the Talmud warns: be very careful about what you vow.
First, for those of my faith, let me wish you all a very Happy Passover season – no matter on which side of any discussion you may find yourselves.
Second, I agree with Rabbi Ira that Richard should be allowed his “peace” on this site. But I would add: ONLY IF he follows his own impossibly high standard (which by inference or outright statement he believes he is doing): of not insulting, nor giving the “appearance” of insulting or demeaning or attacking anyone. Frankly, with his subject matter regarding Israel , Richard’s vow was like mine: by the very nature of it, it is impossible to achieve.
Most everything said by one side of these arguments/ discussions will invariably be construed as an attack or insult or lie by the other (and there may well be great merit in such a view). Such is the nature of this site. Richard, most respectfully, your verbiage mandates a vigorous response. Keeping that response impersonal is almost beyond human capacity. I again ask you to review what Pope Francis recently said about these types of conversations. If you insist upon continuing with these topics, and it is your right to do so since this is your site, do you really expect silence from those who hold other opinions? You may feel emotionally detached by what you postulate or pronounce (though I have serious doubts about that) , but most of your readers do not: it gets very personal. Please recall our prior discussions on this site about whether or not there can be two types of attacks: one against Jews, in general and another against Israel, as a nation, and that they are allegedly substantively different. One can intellectualize two types, but as a practical matter, the two are just two sides of the same coin, in most regards. Back to the comments of the Pope.
Richard, you have created a very hot kitchen. If you want to make it cooler, I suggest you stop with the brisket in the oven and make the salad. Happy Pesach!!
Harvey:
I do not want block you, but I also do not want to resume this polarizing debate. I am expressing my opinion in these
posts, and I see no reason why if others do not like them, then there are other venues. When you write “your verbiage mandates
a vigorous response.” Why? You are free to ignore it, and you and those that share your outlook often say we are wasting our
time by talking to each other, and have no impact.
Wishing you happy holidays,
Richard
Richard,
That is why I made my vow. My efforts to bring balance into these discussions were going nowhere. Please hear me out before you hit your ” delete button”.
This blog does represent your outlook, which may not always express what is actually going on, and therein lies the rub. Fred, Ira, Aaron and some others are just trying to point out these other views and varying facts. In their process, they often document their positions. They may not always use the most diplomatic language, but none of us, including you, does that. You seem not to understand or even want to hear that every once in a while, they just might be correct. For them, and for me, that is frustrating. In your fashion, you are yelling and we must yell louder so that you might hear and listen to what we say. You likely feel that you are speaking very softly. You are not. Your skin seems to be thinning and you get insulted. You seem not to understand, or perhaps you do understand but do not care, that your words and views are not just insulting, but highly destructive. And yes, you do insult. If you believe you are helping the Palestinian people, you are not. To just point out wrongs, real or imagined, that you perceive are being perpetrated by Israel, without also presenting solutions which are likely to be accepted by both sides, is to miss the mark. Just to say “stop doing this” to just one party in a dispute, and not to tell the other party that it, too, must act reasonably, is only going to result in your comments being rejected by the party against whom you comment. The end result is that you aggravate rather than help resolve problems. You provoke. But perhaps that is your goal and I just do not understand your real purpose in life.
I am not trying to insult you, but it appears that you countenance no opposition. Intellectually, that is not very wise. To me, it represents academic stagnation; the end of the learning cycle of life. It also represents fear, fear that you just may be wrong. I say this not with any intent to demean you, but with the hope that you rethink what you would like to accomplish: making statements in a canyon and wishing to hear only the echo of your own voice. These views of mine are not intended for any evil purpose. Please view them as a form of “tough love”.
Your efforts seem to be designed with the goal of burning down the House of Israel. That is how your opposition sees it. You may think you are just trying to make Israel into the country we (and hopefully you) all want it to be: a light unto the nations. If the latter is the case, your constant vilification of Israel only helps those who wish to pour more gasoline on the fire. If your goal is the former, then your opposition has every right to fight you where you stand: on this blog. And I, for one, hope that they are victorious.
I had hoped for much better; that is why I supported Ira in his goal of trying to turn this discussion into a vehicle of resolving issues, not aggravating them. You seem not to want to go there. That is why I made my vow.
I do not expect that this will appear on your blog. But I realize that you may wish to respond. Should you choose to fire a broadside across my bow, go onto Aaron’s site and let me know that you have done so. Perhaps there we can find some common ground for further discussions. But again, let me know on your blog that you have gone onto his. I have done you the courtesy of not posting this on Aaron’s blog. I post it on yours so that I can be sure that you see it. It is where you stand. Should you post and/or respond on your blog, hopefully my computer will alert me. I am very involved with my own writings at the moment and have little spare time. But if you wish to continue with this discussion, I will make some time.
Happy Passover.
As usual, Harvey, I appreciate your tone, which is what I have been striving for, but your assessment
of my temperament and motivations seems to be off target. I have always welcomed disagreement, whether in
classroom or here, provided is not coupled with derogatory personal attacks, whether direct or more subtle.
I read David Brooks in the NYT with much greater interest than more liberal opinion writers, despite finding his outlook conservative and sometimes
reactionary. I try to learn from adversaries, but I do not want to get drawn into either a defense of my character
or an attack on that of others.
In the context of Israel and Judaism I know there are strong and genuine feelings and fears at stake. I admit to having
a weak sense of Jewish identity and lacked the benefits of either a religious or ethnically oriented upbringing. At the same
time, my law training has led me to seek an understanding of reality by an objective assessment of the evidence. It is from
this perspective, and nothing else, that I report my belief that Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinian people is in many
respects unlawful, morally deficient, and politically imprudent. I am quite confident that anyone with a 10% open mind confronted
by the same evidence would reach similar conclusions.
I respect your views, but they seem to be shaped to a significant degree by your strong identification with Jewish tradition and aspirations.
I guess in the last analysis, I am more attached to being ‘human’ than being ‘Jewish,’ and do believe that this is a fundamental choice.
Best wishes for Passover, Richard
Dr. Falk, I believe the young Jewish woman was modest in calling the Zionist entity a “fascist state”. Your comparison of it with Franco, Hitler and Mussolini-style fascism is not based on historical facts either. Why? Let me explain:
1. Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini were all so-called “elected dictators” who were became heroes to a majority of Native people – but labeled as “fascists” by Western leaders when the formers crossed the “Red-Line”. It’s well-known that many Americans individuals and entities help Hitler and Franco.
2. Israeli government consists totally of non-Palestinian Jews whose ancestors never lived in Palestine for over 1800 years. Some idiot doesn’t has to remind me of what Scofield Bible about Jews vs Holy Land – because I believe that G-d is not a ‘real state’ agent.
3. Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion established the Israeli Army out a dozen of European Jewish terrorist militias in 1949.
4. Franco, Mussolini and Hitler didn’t established powerful groups like Israel in Western nations to run foreign governments, judiciary, internal security agencies, universities and mass media.
Therefore, the Nazi-style actions of both Israeli government and Israeli army against Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrians are worse than the common definition of “fascism”.
I’m sure you must have heard that a Swedish cabinet minister had to quit because he equated Israeli army with Nazi army last week.
Since Monday UK’s entire Zionist empire demonizing Muslim Malia Bouattia being elected new president of country’s National Union of Students (NUS). Why? Because, like the ‘antsemite’ Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, she supports Palestinians’ rights to have an independent state next to the Zionist entity.
https://rehmat1.com/2016/04/21/uk-jews-against-first-muslim-nus-president/
A Note:
Palestinians’ rights to have an independent state next to the Zionist entity is not the feasible solution – it is a delusion-irrational fraction of a mind/s. It is a civil-ecclesiastical illegal.
Palestinians’ rights include the abolishment of Jordan landmark in Holy Land and get their Landmarkers between Palestinian-Israel and Saud province of Jordan – kooked out between Arabs and Arab Tribes. I do not see anything else to be just and right, without consequences on the next Generations of Arabs and Jews in the Region.
Further, Nuclear things are not even possible to be touched out of Israel – as long as there are crookedly made landmarks of Holy Land. Perhaps, it could be possible – but no one can control their smugglers and ISIS is running around – and no one knows what those barbarians are all about. They maybe fake/made up by evil intelligence officers of wicked nations – or they may be real barbarians.
No one can ask or beg anyone to do anything that is threat increasing for someone, and irrational. Israel, in fact did bring on open grave upon themeless by stealing nuclear items – that what was not in their Spiritual authority. That fact adds another hell in the region.
But with a minute – all that- is actually done by special interest cults and sects.
I do not know about all you folks – but all of you should just slap yourself awake from bewitchments and delusions of self-made graves.
Another Note:
Blessed Passover for all that calibrate the Feast
Happy Pesach!!
“Palestinians’ rights to have an independent state next to the Zionist entity is not the feasible solution – it is a delusion-irrational fraction of a mind/s. It is a civil-ecclesiastical illegal.”
****Agreed as there is no Palestinian people. Only Arabs that call themselves such.
“Palestinians’ rights include the abolishment of Jordan landmark in Holy Land and get their Landmarkers between Palestinian-Israel and Saud province of Jordan –”
*****Not sure which Jordanian landmark you are referring to. Jordan’s only involvement in the Holy Land other then their occupation of Judea and Samaria between 1948 and 1967 is the management of the Temple Mount through their Wakf.
“I do not see anything else to be just and right, without consequences on the next Generations of Arabs and Jews in the Region.”
******True, only future strife can be anticipated by a “Palestinian” State next to Israel. Ultimately there already is one and its called Jordan. Let them change the name!!
“Further, Nuclear things are not even possible to be touched out of Israel – as long as there are crookedly made landmarks of Holy Land.”
******This is totally Chinese (no offence to our Asian friends). Unable to understand as the English is undecipherable.
“No one can ask or beg anyone to do anything that is threat increasing for someone, and irrational.”
*****Agreed
“Israel, in fact did bring on open grave upon themeless by stealing nuclear items – that what was not in their Spiritual authority. That fact adds another hell in the region.”
******I don’t know where you got this from. France built at least one of the 2 Israeli Nuclear reactors. What did Israel steal?
“But with a minute – all that- is actually done by special interest cults and sects.”
****** Unable to understand as the English is undecipherable.
“I do not know about all you folks – but all of you should just slap yourself awake from bewitchments and delusions of self-made graves.”
****** Unable to understand as the English is undecipherable.
“Blessed Passover for all that calibrate the Feast
Happy Pesach!!”
***** I guess you meant “celebrate”. Thank you too!! I just decided to eat my first time Yemenite Mazoth!!
Its is best to find out: “What did Israel steal?” “What did Israel steal/illegally acquired?”
Are there any Nuclear stockpiles in Holy Land by Israel and how did to come about? If is legally acquired then it can not be that is stolen.
Perhaps, this is too much for a lay-person to go about. But I would not mind (as Ordained) looking at open files on Iraq war – all of them. Certainly they would not be written in Chinese, but English – and I would understand what they are all about.
So Kata,
“Its is best to find out: “What did Israel steal?” “What did Israel steal/illegally acquired?”
Are there any Nuclear stockpiles in Holy Land by Israel and how did to come about? If is legally acquired then it can not be that is stolen.”
******Since Israel has always been ambiguous about its nuclear program, the only people who know are those that need to know. With regard to “stealing” as I said most of what Israel bought was either from France or elsewhere. There have been many stories about all sorts of Israeli cloak and daggery back in the 60’s. There is even a story about an Israeli connection to North Korea where a whole train blew up and wiped out a whole town. Was the train carrying nuclear material destined for Iran? Who knows. What is known is that the North Korean’s never said a word about it so maybe it was in everyone’s best interest to sweep it under the rug. In any case, Israel’s only objective is its own survival in a bad neighborhood. Sometimes the neighborhood can get rough.
“Perhaps, this is too much for a lay-person to go about. But I would not mind (as Ordained) looking at open files on Iraq war – all of them. Certainly they would not be written in Chinese, but English – and I would understand what they are all about.”
*****I agree. The redacted 28 pages should also be revealed.
A Note:
I belive that Micah 6:8 is more relevant than digging dirt from under the old carpets – they may all fall apart. There is no perfection to the human race.
YEP – Modern day Jews are not Israelite but Khazrian Turks or African Berbers. Right Netanyahu Jr.
Israeli historian, professor Eran Elhaik (Johns Hopkins University) in a study published by the Genome Biology And Evolution on December 5, 2012, had claimed that the European Jews (Ashkenazis) are not Semitic (Hebrew) people but are descendants of Khazarian Turkic tribes.
This revelation by a member of fellow tribe – hit the very core of the Zionists’ myth that ancestors of Eyropean Jews were expelled from historic Palestine by the Goyim armies. Instead of challenging Dr. Elhaik’s claim that previous genetic studies conducted by Jewish scientists like Harry Ostrer (Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine), were intentionally cooked the books (‘Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People’, etc.) to support Zionist narrative.
Since the publication of the study, Elhaik has been called “a self-hating Jew” and “antisemite”. Fed-up with Supremacists’ name-calling – Elhaik has thrown an open challenge to his accusers to come up with some new genetic data to prove that European Jews belong to the original Semite tribes.
https://rehmat1.com/2013/09/21/israeli-historian-jews-are-not-semitic-people/
Shalom and good living in self-denial, dudes……
At least they had Apologetic solution by cooking the books? But it was a fake one. Poor Jews, is any help to them?
Perhaps, if they would go back by Old Testament Law, doing exactly what the Old Testament Law requires in the Church Age. This means no stoning and things such as that – such social order Laws have expired – but has not expired in doomed blood lines? Then what? Contemporary Jews do not practice stoning – at all. It seems to me that they are, and they are not in Old Testament Law. That is complicated – but they would have to do literally what Law requires – – except stoning and all that death of the Law. That would be just weird for me to think about it – Why not just let Messianic Jews figure out for them? Would you not agree that could be done – or are they one creating all the troubles … and why? Are they in false Gospels or what is going on?
Perhaps, no one knows how to read and apply their written and rewritten (for preservation) Secret Books?
Aaron, are some of these folks saying that I can’t be a ” real Jew ” because @ 1,900 years ago a direct ansestor of mine did not actually reside in Isreal? You mean to tell me that all of the pograms my family went through while in England, Germany, Poland and Russia were all just a big mistake because they were not “real Jews”? My family got persecuted for naught? So does that also mean that every Muslim who claims to be a Palestinian also needs the same bona fides? Have to throw out the progeny of all of the 120,000 Lebanese who filtered into Isreal after those terrible ” non real Jews from Europe” started to arrive. And the Arabs from Arabia, the Syrians from Syria (whoops, I meant those Turkish folks), etc. Perhaps only the “real Bedouins” might qualify to hold title to anything as Muslims.
And, of course, few of those black Jews will qualify, either. I guess only the Sephardic Jews have any rights as Jews.
What is a Jew anyway: Just a blood type (?) or is it a religion with lots of really difficult rules you have to live by, like the 10 Commandments and things like that. If it is a blood type, 10-15 percent of the folks living on the Iberian Peninsula qualify, even though they claim to be Catholic. I will bet you a nickel that lots of those Palestinians who claim to be Muslims will qualify as the “correct folks” because their blood lines are really Jewish. Think they want to be tested for that and base their claims on that? Will they suddenly become less Muslim? In which century does one begin to base this test?
The entire argument against any claim by European Jews falls flat on its face. It holds as much water as saying that the Catholics of Africa can’t be ” real Catholics” because of the color of their skin. But if you happen to be a racist, and I am not saying that anyone engaged in this discussion is, such arguments could make sense.
Now Aaron, I have to go and eat some Yehuda Matzos. Imported from Israel, you know. I realize that you are “safe” with your Yemeni Matzos, but if I believed some of the “stuff” on this particular blog, I now have worry if my Matzos was made by a “real Jew”. They might
have been made by a Jew of European extraction, and then what? Suddenly my Matzos are not kosher?
Regards
I’ll only make a few comments:
Franco wasn’t elected. He overthrew the elected (left-wing) republican government. That was what the Spanish Civil War was about, which rehmet has apparently never heard of.
The Khazarian myth is nonsensical. There is no historical evidence of any significant westward movement of Khazarian Jews and no traces of a Khazarian (Turkic) language in East European Jewish communities. (One or two of these pseudo-historians have actually claimed that Yiddish is a Turkic language!)
On the other hand, there is full and extensive historical and linguistic documentation for the movement of the Jews from the Land of Israel into Southern Europe (Tacitus, Josephus) and from Southern Europe into Northern, Western and Eastern Europe. What is more, the origins and subsequent histories of every one of the 6,000+ historical Jewish communities of Eastern and Western Europe are also fully documented, via the Pinkasei Kehillot (Jewish communal registers), which are of much greater scope than parish records or the British Domesday Book. If anyone is interested he can begin his research with the Yale Collection and then go on to Yad Vashem’s 30+ Hebrew volumes covering the histories of all these communities, or a 3-vol. English abridgment called “The Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities Before and During the Holocaust” (NYU Press). which I myself helped edit and translate.
The genetic debate yields a broad range of conflicting findings that only a biologist can evaluate. But given the historical record, Jews do not require genetic evidence to know where they came from.
Fred Skolnik – As usual, your knowledge comes from Israel’s most celebrated historian, Benjamin Netanyahu, who last year claimed that Hitler never wanted to kill Jews – it was Mufti of Palestine who twisted his arms to kill 6 million Jews.
If Franco was no elected – did Palestinians begged Europe’s unwanted Jews to come and occupy Palestine?
If Khazarian origin of European Jews is ‘nonsense’ – then what is your conspiracy theory to reject Israeli historian’s claim?
And please spare us with you usual Israeli source ‘Wikipedia’.
Can I point out anti-Israel and former KKK leader Dr. David Duke, he, like you, too deny the Khazarian-Jewish connection.
http://henrymakow.com/2014/06/David-Duke-Downplays-Jewish-Khazar-Connection%20.html
Why does Rehmat try to pick low hanging fruit instead of dealing with my key comment on the matter?
Its irrelevant!!!!
Did you or did you not read the Koran, old and new testaments or not?
The rest is history.
And re Netanyahu, it was his father who was the historian and not him.
Also he WAS right about the Mufti. Go read the transcripts and speeches from that day.
Yes Hitler had his own plan but the Mufti tried to co-opt Hitler who in the end reneged and instead took in the Croatian fighters instead as was arranged by the Mufti.
Did you ever wonder why the Serbs were so ruthless to the Muslims in Yugoslavia during the Serbian war? Just read up on the history of what the Muslims did to their fellow Christian countrymen in WWII
Why some idiots don’t realize that the fruits I pick from Israeli trees were planted by native Palestinians and not the Europe’s unwanted Khazarian Jews.
Harvey:
Beautifully said, but I urge that you reiterate your vow to stay away from this blog. Prof. Falk has been pressing his case for a long time. He’s not likely to change now.
Fred and Aaron: Please lay off Rehmat1, who daily makes an enormous contribution to my emotional and spiritual well-being. I used to worry about the Jewish future. Hamas isn’t going away. Iran will soon have the bomb. Suicidal/homocidal terrorists attack synagogues and shoot up kosher groceries in western European capitals. The demographics are alarming. Our total world population is less than the margin of error in the Chinese census. Before long, there will be more Muslims voting in US elections than Jews. As my Bubbe would have put it “Oy Gevalt!”
And then Remat 1 comes along to remind us that we Jews control the world, and have done so since we first appeared on the scene centuries ago in the guise of Khazrian Turks and African Berbers. Heralded statesmen ruling immense populations, commanding vast armies and fearsome airpower are nothing more than Zionist puppets (except for those who are Netanyahu’s poodles.) ISIS? No sweat: it’s a Mosad black flag operation. Heck, even the Saudi Royal Family is dominated by Jews.
That kind of secret information makes it easier for us to sleep at night.
Chaverim, as we gather around our seder tables this evening, let’s simply rejoice that a Jewish commonwealth has been re-established in our People’s historic homeland after an absence of two millennia, and that we are privileged to be alive to see it.
Next year in a peaceful Jerusalem!
Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom,
Ira
I hate to wake you up from your ‘self-denial’ Moshe Ira Youdovin but if you have not noticed there are more Christians and Jews than we the Israel-hating Muslim, who claims that the Organized Jewry control almost every entity in western world. I know five rabbis who discredited the ‘Six Million Died’ story at Tehran Holocaust Conference in December 2006. The fanatic Zionist David Cole claimed in February 2015 that Holocaust is “based on fakes, frauds, and forgeries.
Dr. Falk claimed earlier that anti-Semitism hardly existed among Muslim societies until the creation of state of Israel in Palestine by the western powers.
Not to speak of a latest research which throw some eggs on your bigotry.
On March 3, 2016, the Oxford Journal published a research article, entitled, Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to Premeval villages in the ancient lands of Ashkenaz.
The study was conducted by four renowned scholars of Genome Biology and Evolution, Ranagit Das (University of Sheffield, UK, and Manipal University, India), Paul Wexler (Tel Aviv University), Mehdi Pirooznia (Johns Hopkins University), and Eran Elhaik (University of Sheffield , UK).
The Study concludes that the Ashkenazic (European) Jews don’t belongs to the so-called Semite (Israelite) tribes from the Middle East but originated from ancient Iranian, Turkish and Greek lands – and converted to Judaism after the fall of Khazarian empire.
Shalom and keep killing gays and lesbians in ‘peaceful Jerusalem’.
https://rehmat1.com/2016/04/23/new-study-ashkenazic-jews-originated-from-iran/
Priests and priestess orgies (sexual / perverted rituals) can cause crossover and mutation of genetical patterns in bloodlines or brought on by sexual abuse onto individuals, and it is same as
Illicit sexual relations – such as orgies/ (perverted rituals) of male and female genital mutilation (FGM), rapes, incest and similar illicit relationships cause and express (more or less) crossover and mutation of genetical patterns. It is either in blood-lines, or it is the abuse of sick blood-lines and satanic seals spirits of it.
So really, you can hardly ever pinpoint if you can even legitimately judge on such conditions, and in fact, in Church age, it should not be part of condemnation and judgment.
However, Priests and priestess orgies fall under condemnations – and this can be irrevocable condemnation. Most of the time humans in such conditions do not understand why they feel the way they do, and we all learned from some individuals how hunting and difficult the whole experience is, especially, if they experience public condemnation or condemnation by legitimate priests and priestess who perform orgies that actually cause such sin-conditions.
Church can correct that occurrence in human race when in Authentic Church-Rituals – but it can not correct it with false priests and priestess orgies are going in – that which actually secures spiritual excommunication of blood-lines and expression and manifestation of the sin of those blood-lines.
There are many jung women who are actually killed by orgies of female genital mutilation (FGM). But I doubt that you did not know about killings.
Orgies are evil, and those who preform them on others are exceedingly evil. It has nothing do with the condition of gay or lesbian person.
If a mother can end up ordained against her will in the Church (for example from Catholic prespective) it is just and right to have gays and lesbians practicing whatever they want in the communities.
Priests and priestess orgies bring judgment of God upon themselves, their offspring and their cults. Often is the death of their on children.
Ira
I am trying as hard as I can. I will try to renew and this time keep my vow. Please note Richard’s response to me of the 23rd and my post of the 24 th. Sorry for the obvious misspellings.
Now if Aaron can give me another lesson on how to navigate his site my day will be complete.
I was very serious about my recommendation of today regarding a meeting between you and Richard
See how cavalier I am with your time?😇
Pray tell Harvey, what about “my site” do you need help with
Richard,
You must be doing something right, or these hasbara idiots would have stayed over on Aaron’s blog and not try to shut you up on your own. Keep up your good work and pay no attention to these trolls. Just delete them. Not one of them deserves the courtesy of a reply.
Gene:
I agree that Aaron’s blog will not satisfy those that wish to demean and undermine those of us who believe
deeply in truthful witness, and are suspicious about tribal leanings, especially if they come at the expense
of the enslavement of another people.
Yet I don’t share your harshness of response. I actually welcome disagreement if it is uncoupled from personal
innuendo and insult, which pose a dilemma: either ignore such attacks despite their hurtful character or respond
in kind, and join the race to the bottom. When at the UN I chose the option of ignoring the barrage of defamatory
attacks directed at me because I didn’t want to divert attention from substantive issues.
More specifically, I think those who are consistently and misleadingly defending Israel at every turn are not equally
engaged in this effort to degrade and insult, and so I try to draw distinctions. Perhaps, this is a fool’s errand, but
it comes from decades of teaching where I always tried to make students who disagreed with me as comfortable as possible.
Greetings, Richard
Richard,
With all due respect, how can a narrative in which Israel is ALWAYS wrong and the Palestinians ALWAYS right be characterized as “truthful witness”? Is “truthful” to be totally removed from reality and accuracy? Ira
This is a false rendering of my views. I have only emphasizing what most of the world understands, namely, that Israel
has been consistently through its policies and practices denied fundamental Palestinian rights. What Palestinians due
in resisting such a structure of domination violates often law and morality, but it does not justify or explain Israel’s
expansionism and general line of behavior.
“how can a narrative in which Israel is ALWAYS wrong and the Palestinians ALWAYS right be characterized as “truthful witness”? Is “truthful” to be totally removed from reality and accuracy? “
Quite simply because the Israeli narrative is built on, in the first instance, an appealing but utterly false historical fairy tale and has since been embroidered upon by pushing the timeline of the inevitable hostilities in order to cast the indigenous people of the land as the aggressors rather than the victims that they indisputably are.
All the old myths (land without people, “Arabs” attacked peaceful, assimilationist Jews, Palestinians left of their own accord) have now been thoroughly dispensed with. Anyone with a modicum of sense and access to authentic Historical documents now knows that there was a planned invasion and dispossession which resulted in the transfer of title to the vast majority of land in Palestine from one ethnic group to another. We also know that any Palestinian attempting to return to his/her home was shot as an infiltrator/terrorist – by a group of people born thousands of miles away.
Don’t take my word for it, consult even ardent Zionist Historians such as Benny Morris.
It is logically and judicially impossible for any but the most extreme Palestinian to be wrong. Resistance to occupation and oppression is sanctioned under International Law. The rights of indigenous people are protected under treaties to which Israel is signatory.
Yet never, in the History of this conflict has Israel acknowledged this fundamental act – a premeditated policy of usurping the homes, lands and livelihoods of an indigenous population, a population which, if truth be told, are the descendants of Jews who, through centuries of Ottoman rule, adopted the Islamic creed, not to mention the 20% who adopted Christianity – Jews all.
Nothing I have written above is seriously disputed by any but the religious zealots on this blog who, I suggest, should confine their activities to matters theological. To the best of my knowledge, Theology does not concern itself with property Law.
So can we get back to discussing who actually, rightfully owns much of Palestine? Is it the people who can demonstrate title through centuries of occupation or those who arrived within living memory waving a theological flag?
As we now have Mr. Brewer bravely attempting to perpetuate the indigenousness myth and imagining that the Palestinians are converted Jews, I will point out to him that indigenousness is not communicable or transferable from a conquered to a conquering population. The Spanish did not become indigenous to Mexico by marrying (or raping) Aztec women or forcing Aztecs to convert. Today’s Palestinian Arabs are part of the Arab nation by their own definition and have absolutely nothing in common with the indigenous populations they conquered, not in terms of origins, history, culture, religion or language. At best you can call them a medieval population but even as such you have to take into account Arab migration to the Land of Israel in the 19th century, so that, according to the 1931 census, over 20 different languages were in use by Muslims at the time, and non-Jews in Palestine listed as their birthplaces at least 24 different countries (Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, Bosnia, the Caucasus, Turkmenistan, Kurdistan, India, Afghanistan, Balochistan, etc.) while the Arab population of Haifa rose from 6,000 in 1880 to 80,000 in 1919 as a result of workforce migration. If you are not prepared to address this reality but insist on calling the Jews a colonial population (though the Turks and British were in actual fact the successive colonial powers) you are simply copping out.
As for the rest, this had been discussed endlessly. What Arab aims were in the 1948 and 1967 wars they have told us themselves. What Jewish aims were the Jews have told us, but since Mr. Brewer does not have access to original documents (Ben-Gurion’s war diary, for example), he can’t really know how the Jewish leadership viewed the Arab invasion of 1948. As for land, Arabs owned 20% of the country’s land privately and the number of Arabs who fled or were expelled as a result of the war is no greater than the number of Jews displaced from Arab countries at the time and their loss of property is no greater than the Jewish loss of property, so that the end result was a de facto exchange of populations very much like the exchange of populations between India and Pakistan at the time. To conclude, Mr. Brewer is reciting a litany whose only adherents are the polemicists from whom he gets his information and has absolutely no basis in actual fact or history. I am furthermore unaware of any religious zealotry on the part of Rabbi Youdovin and Harvey Epstein, not to mention myself. Religious beliefs have absolutely nothing to do with the historical Zionist claim to the ancient homeland of the Jewish people, where their culture, language and national consciousness were formed. The notion that they do is something the haters can’t let go of because they wish to make it appear that the Jewish claim is irrational and unjustifiable, which it of course is not.
I thought you and cohorts had vowed to stay away, and allow us to have our conversation while you
have yours. We have not encroached on ‘falkuncensored’ and I would appreciate reciprocity, and if not,
I will resume blocking. Your language of repeatedly calling those who disagree with your warped construction of
the controversies bearing on the conflict as ‘haters’ is false, hurtful, and defamatory.
Calling demonstrable facts “warped” do not make them so and since I have already characterized this style of response on your part I will not repeat myself. My view of certain critics as haters has a little more basis in reality than their view that I am an idiot or a paid hack and I would seriously counsel you to start your cleansing project with those of your admirers who have recourse to the classic language of Jew hatred, such your rehmet. If you can tolerate that, you should be able to tolerate anything.
I realized that it annoys you immensely to be challenged when the holes in your reasoning and knowledge are exposed and you simply don’t have answers. By all means, block me if that’s the best you can do.
Brewer:
There was “Property Law” Alliance between Arab Saud’s and British-a church-Kingdom. When you have such occurrences – you have to wonder what they are (in reality). For Church records on times – this is more than important.
Further, Theology can be (and is) as dangerous and useless as illegitimate and even satanic legislation.
I would not get into specifics about defects of the Laws (civil) that are out there. Also, I would have to use Canonical Law occurrences and then transition them into civil Law occurrence of defects. I just do not want to go about that.
I personally do not believe in Theology, and I believe that is absolutely erring (full of errors and myths). That is reflected in no ability of current Church Leadership to correct all their evils (in practice). With that, they go about changes in legitimate ways, and they get trapped in the curses of evils they are self-appointing. Civil-Ecclesiastical is tricky stuff.
You may not realize that Church in Rome Leadership is totally under a curse, remaining accursed just by not figuring out what they did and did not do. But this same truth is for Jews and Muslims, all together.
Concerning “Property Laws” there are such things in the Scripture, and they are reflected in Commandments, as well. Just as some social order-property laws are – when disobeyed they bring on bloodshed and curses due to braking Laws of Commandments. When Law of Commandments are broken – it becomes difficult for individuals and communities that break them – whether tripped into it or self-appointed.
Further, the right to return is not even part of any resolution between Arabs and Jews. Why? Self-determination of the people is totally annulled by the imposition of the Jordan and Jordan Landmark upon the population of Holy Land – that which now is also reflected in satanic self-determinations of population / nation. This, however, would not have had occurred had it not been an “Alliance between Arab Saud’s and British-Church-Kingdom”.
Neutralising Jordan and Jordan Landmark can and may bring about some resolutions on Right to Return – but it will have to be in individual self-determination terms – in all direction – otherwise all is going to remain in Labyrinth of hell and get worse: collective self-determinations in satanic seals.
There are no rights among accursed, if you have not know this.
However, to believe in personal revenges and non forgiveness among lay-people – it is totally stupid. They should have curse of their lips active upon them. This means good or evil.
The people who are inclined to do wrong have no difficulty bring on curses to themeless – they give themselves over to devil and destruction. That is one reason why we see such death cases/numbers in Holy Land.
In general, it is done unto them according to their works. f they are so wrong – they should just curse the wicked as lay people – forget their rights among accursed.
This is my truthful estimate on some things.
It is rare to find such a store of antediluvian bilge-water these days Fred. I know no Zionist Historian who would endorse such nonsense or holds on to those long discarded, illogical themes. It is not even necessary to visit the History to demonstrate that, to paraphrase Fromm, the World would be a madhouse if all peoples claimed the rights and behaved in similar manner to the Zionists.
What you term the “indigenous myth” is proven fact beyond any shadow of doubt by Israel’s own geneticists.
The movement of Ottoman citizens throughout the region, if it were factual, conveys not one jot of privilege to a colonial enterprise such as Zionism. But in fact, British surveys and Justin McCarthy laid that myth to rest years ago:
“From analyses of rates of increase of the Muslim population of the three Palestinian sanjaks, one can say with certainty that Muslim immigration after the 1870s was small. Had there been a large group of Muslim immigrants their numbers would have caused an unusual increase in the population and this would have appeared in the calculated rate of increase from one registration list to another… Such an increase would have been easily noticed; it was not there”
– The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate 1990, p. 16
It is not necessary to consult any document apart from the Arab League Declaration to learn that 250,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes before the League intervened so please leave out the “Arab Invasion” rubbish. As for the Jewish Leadership’s tactics, I am content to rely on Jewish scholars who most certainly do have access to all manner of diaries and documents.
That the system of land tenure under the Ottomans did not conform to the contemporary capitalist model does not provide justification for any transfer of rights to an alien invader. In fact, public land was specifically protected in the Mandate document. The very idea that “Public Land” somehow became up for grabs by the Zionists is so clearly false, your reference to it demonstrates the paucity of your argument. The public land in my borough is not available to immigrants.
I am pleased you admit “Religious beliefs have absolutely nothing to do with the historical Zionist claim” for that is middle stump clean bowled. It was always a silly idea that had to be abandoned when religious states went out of fashion. That then leaves “their culture, language and national consciousness”
The number of Zionists who spoke Hebrew can be counted on the fingers of one hand and even Herzl was not much attached to Palestine – having supported Argentina, Russia and Uganda as possible locations. In any event, from 1934, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast was available so it cannot be said there was not an alternative for such aspirants.
This sort of argument: “the number of Arabs who fled or were expelled as a result of the war is no greater than the number of Jews displaced from Arab countries ” is fallacious on several counts. For it to have any validity as justification, it would have to have occurred before the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Here is what Yehouda Shenhav (Ph.D Stanford University 1985), Professor of Sociology at Tel-Aviv University and himself an Iraqi Jew has to say:
“The idea of drawing this analogy constitutes a mistaken reading of history, imprudent politics, and moral injustice.”
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/hitching-a-ride-on-the-magic-carpet-1.97357
Shenhav’s comprehensive paper (pdf) on this question here:
Click to access The-Jews-of-Iraq-Zionist-Ideology-and-the-Property-of-the-Palestinian-Refugees-of-1948.pdf
For any of these spurious arguments to attain any validity, they would have to apply to all Palestinians and that is clearly not the case.
I agree with your assessment of Fred Skolnik’s arguments, but I am striving to
maintain a tone of civility at this blogsite, and so please in the future refrain
from personal insults.
Dear Brewer
Saying “nonsense” or “everyone knows” or selectively quoting anonymous “authorities,” is not an argument so I apologize for frustrating you to such an extent.
I have no idea what you think “Israeli geneticists” have proven or where you studied biology. If I were you, I’d let the Palestinians decide for themselves who they are. Tell one of them that he is descended from a converted Jew or from any of the other peoples whose identities the Arabs destroyed in their conquest and you’re liable to get into a lot of trouble. Once again, indigenousness is not transferable.
Please explain the findings of the 1931 British population census. However, you have inadvertently stumbled on a very telling point. The fact that there was no significant population increase in the modern period, just as there wasn’t from the Middle Ages on, indicates that the Arab population was transient, and this is certainly true in the late Ottoman and British periods: Arab migrant workers came and went, so that at any given time, while there were a great many of them, the total population remained fairly stable. But do explain the many countries of origin and diverse languages of the Palestinian Arab population in the mandate period.
Zionism was not a colonial enterprise. The Ottoman Turks and the British were the colonial powers. Jews purchased land privately as many others did – the Church, the Templars, private citizens, etc. The issue is not real estate but sovereignty and the Jewish claim was no less valid than the Arab claim. As for public land, it belongs to the state. It is that simple.
As long as you are mentioning the Arab League, here is some “invasion rubbish” for you, before there was a single refugee:
“The Arab world is not in a compromising mood. It’s likely, Mr. Horowitz that your plan is rational and logical, but the fate of nations is not decided by rational logic. Nations never concede; they fight. You won’t get anything by peaceful means or compromise. You can, perhaps, get something, but only by the force of your arms. We shall try to defeat you. I am not sure we’ll succeed, but we’ll try. We were able to drive out the Crusaders, but on the other hand we lost Spain and Persia. It may be that we shall lose Palestine. But it’s too late to talk of peaceful solutions.”
— Azzam Pasha, Arab League Secretary-General, Sept. 1947
If you like, I’ll gladly give you the documentation for the flight of Arabs before the Arab invasion and what the Arabs themselves had to say about it, but it will be very long.
I don’t know which Israeli historians who studied the archives you are relying on. I suspect it is Pappe and only Pappe and there are of course other Israeli historians who studied the same archives and reached different conclusion and I really don’t understand how you go about choosing between them since you are unequipped to read the source material yourself. Benny Morris, for example, whom you are also representing as one of your authorities, has said that there is not a single sentence in Pappe’s book that can be relied upon and that he intentionally mistranslates his sources in an attempt to put Israel in the worst possible light.
“The number of Zionists who spoke Hebrew can be counted on the fingers of one hand.” This is fairly silly. I suppose it’s an example of your logic as it is factually incorrect. Almost all East European Zionists went to Tarbut or Takhkemoni schools where the language of instruction was modern Hebrew. As for the Uganda/Herzl business, you are again presenting an uninformed opinion. I invite you to read Herzl’s correspondence with Leopold Greenberg, where you will discover his views of the issue and his tactical approach.
Wars cause suffering and the Palestinians have undoubtedly suffered. They could have had a state in 1947 and they could have had one within a few months of the 1967 war if they had been capable of reconciling themselves to the existence of a sovereign non-Muslim state in the region. They could not, for religious reasons, and they paid the price.
Dear Profesor Falk,
You are an elderly person and your time short.
I find that Gene may be distracting your conscience – your conscience that I believe has to be in healing the in balance of the Spirit in order to have an everlasting departure in Friendship with God.
I hope that you experience conversion to the will of God without distraction.
I know in fact, that only balanced reality to the People in Holy Land will be helpful. Going about things in Holy Land in anything outside the Spirit that Dictated Original Scriptures to the prophets will cause the destruction of those who are involved. Anything that is in the Spiritual authority of Davidic line will not be manipulated without consequences that are destruction and death in bloodlines of those who did it, after that.
I can tell you from all things that I had to deal with there are evil people, in fact, that are spiritualy very evil, and things that they conceive in their minds and pass on to oters (in views or academia or religious writings) can be and is very satanic and evil. It can trip one under the curse – just as same as if they would accept the ministry of someone that has the satanic gospel and satanic spirit.
It is difficult to reject Satan and all his works, and sometimes impossible.
But at least a glims of hope that you will not be overthrown into the will of Satan while you are going about Holy Land.
I have personal Spiritual Testimony against Devil and children of the devil, and I with assurance can tell you and others those things that I just did.
I also have to tell you that personal forgiveness has to be automatic (for the Church as individuals). However, individuals have no power to forgive anyones sins that sins against the Church. Those sins remains. I hope that no one will end up caught into the sins against the Church. Sins against the Church include “Going about things in Holy Land in anything outside the Spirit that Dictated Original Scriptures”.
So in that Truth – we even have to ask ourselves: “What is reality off sins among us in 21 century.”
And we also have to ask: ” What are sins of the Pope against the Church”. Are they legitimate and can the Church and the world rely on them?
Kata: I do appreciate your guidance, although I do not fully comprehend its concrete relevance.
Although I am ‘elderly’ in body I want to continue living as if my time is not short, although of course
it may be. As long as the spirit flourishes age is an illusion so far as mind and heart are concerned. I
suspect you agree with this.
In any event, I appreciate your concern.
There is little that I can disagree on, Professor Falk. However, I am in grave fear that current conditions in Holy Land would extend into irrevocable blood shed. I do know that all Time (itself) belongs to God, I do belive that is possible to intercede and even try to find out what those times exactly are – and what can be changed, if at all can be.
Jordan and Jordan Landmark can be neutral in Holy Land, something like Switzerland and Europe. However, I do not understand a lot to that – it was just as the reflection in my mind. I do understand that it would allow for legitimate things between Arab and Jewish population in Holy Land and even into the Saudi Arabia. Some people feel more Arab Jews and Arab Christian then they feel Israeli Jews or Israeli Christians. Likewise, some Arabs feel more Saudi Arabs then they feel Palestinian and Israeli Arabs.
Also, I was just reading from this on Paschal Vigil, and it explains (in the symbolism)
how the lamps (in the tradition of the church) are lighted from the holy fire – and also there are readings of the prophesies.
It is parallel in both Latin and English. Translations are authoritative but not authentic (in the Word as written).
http://www.dailycatholic.org/holysat.htm
“Although I am ‘elderly’ in body I want to continue living as if my time is not short, although of course
it may be. As long as the spirit flourishes age is an illusion so far as mind and heart are concerned.”
I don’t know who can disagree with this uplifting philosophy for us aging folks. Thank you, Richard. I take it to heart, and wish you long life.
Greetings,
Gene
Richard.
Thank you for your response of April 23. Your explanation of your upbringing is enlightening. I will not “play” with your last sentence except to say that fot me it demonstrates an historical disconnect with the entire concept of Judaism. I will attribute that to your apparent lack of a substantial amount religious upbringing.
I, and other voices who oppose some of your views readily admit that Israel, like every other nation, has its shortcomings. In fact, some of us have pointed them out. What irritates me is your apparent refusal to treat the Palestinian with the same “eye” that you treat Israel. Again, I get back to the word “balance”, which seems to aggravate some on this blog.
In light of your upbringing may I suggest that you have a few meetings with Ira? I understand he is a neighbor of yours. Perhaps he can give you doing better insight into Judaism that you apparently were not given as a child. And as we both know, as a rabbi, he, too, is a proponent of the rights of the Palestinian – to some extent you will likely find him to be a kindred soul. I believe him to be not only Jewish but very human.
Regards
Richard,
Sorry for the obvious misspellings. I type one thing and another comes out. Now my phone is doing it. Probably just my failure to proofread everything when I am in a rush. This time it was to get to my matzobrei before it got too cold
Harvey: Israel is ‘not like every nation,’ it exerts control over a people that had lived on the land under a writ
from League of Nations and then the UN. Those under such oppressive rule have resisted, and often in unacceptable ways,
but there is no basis for equating Israel and Palestine given the disparities in capabilities and situation.
I appreciate your interest in providing me with ‘adult education’ with respect to Judaism, and although I believe in
the pleasure and benefits of lifelong learning I am not prepared to accept Ira as my mentor for a variety of reasons.
Incidentally, I have studied religions for most of my life, and affirm the universal common core of all the great religions
including Islam and Judaism, although each also contains destructive justifications for the destruction of competitor religions.
In this sense, I am willing to be ecumenical, but not tribal, or put more euphemistically, nor communitarian. Rooted cosmopolitanism
is fine as a way of combining universalism with a rooted identity, but with a species ethos prevailing over nationalist or
exclusivist claims.
Richard,
I need to respond since your comment is directed to me and to ignore it might be deemed a discourtesy to you.
If you review the “writs” of which you speak, the Jews, too, lived on the land under them as well. This is something that is often forgotten. Those “writs” outlined certain duties and responsibilities for each party, including the right of religious freedom. The administration of the land was also dealt with. That should also be carefully reviewed before any judgement is made.
The Arab rejected these “writs” and sought to drive the Jews into the sea. That is the historical fact.
I do admit that some Jews did not want to live with the Arabs, but Jews of high authority begged the Arabs to stay and build a country together. This many Arabs rejected. Those who did not leave now live in a land they would not dream of exchanging for a life in any Arab land. True, there is some discrimination, but there is huge freedom which those Arabs likely believe is a more than fair exchange. And things are getting better for them. Now just try and imagine the life of a Jew in almost every Arab land. And no Jew is even permitted to live in a PA dominated West Bank or Gaza.
Hence my call for some “balance”.
I also respectfully point out that anything you may find in Jewish tracts which favor “…destruction of competitive religions” is most certainly not acted out in Israel. Since the founding of that country, Christians have grown in population by 1,000%, and are generally better educated and more economically well off than the average Jew. In absolute numbers, the Muslim population has grown and is found in all areas of civil endeavor as well as being part of the government. Had Israel “acted out any destructive mandate”, all Christians, Muslims, and every other religious group would likely be “gone” from Israeli society. They are not gone. They prosper.
Now let us turn our attention to Islam. Again, I question whether or not you have ever really studied that Holy Book or ever actually read very many A’Hadith. I am absolutely positive that you have never read Sayyid Qut’b “In The Shade Of The Quo’ran”. That series forms the backbone of the philosophy of MB. These tracts are “currently being acted out” by a serious element of Muslim society.
Perhaps you can point out to me a Muslim country where its Judeo/Christian population is doing fairly well and has an upwardly trending future. Jews are pretty much gone from almost all of them. Christians are under fairly difficult pressure in most. I realize that you have good feelings about Turkey, but just over 100 years ago its Christian population was 10% and now it is well under 2%. I could list others, but perhaps you can cite some more favorable examples to me.
I and others have gone over this material with you before.
Except for comments from you directed specifically to me, I will do my best to keep my vow of no longer post on your blog.
As to your non-religious approach to humanity, that is your right. But if you believe that this is the only correct way of doing things, let me point out just one example of what would happen if Israel did it and found no reciprocity from its current opponents: Gaza. Israel complied with the demand that it leave. It did and with no real strings attached. Look what happened. That is the real world in which Israel lives. I have said this before. It is the historical truth.
My Final (?) Regards
Dear Ira
You are right about rehmat. There is nothing to reply to there since nothing he says makes any real sense in a world where “David Duke says” and five rabbis at the Tehran Holocaust Denial Conference “say” constitutes evidence. I will leave it to Prof; Falk’s conscience to contend with the intent of his “Moshe Ira Youdouvin” remark, though he has apparently allowed him to understand that he can get away with this kind of thing so he has tried it again. As for being labeled “idiots” by him and the brilliant Gene Schulman, who rarely says anything and when he does sees it explode in his face and runs away, that is also a matter for Prof. Falk to deal with in accorfance with his own standards, though I confess that it would be a rare individual who could be insulted by anything such people say. That leaves Prof. Falk, who is convinced that Israel is the great culprit in the Middle East and refuses to acknowledge the Arab record of aggressive war and barbaric terrorism in pursuit of its declared aim of destroying the State of Israel. Anyone who engages in Prof. Falk’s style of polemical writing and refuses to confront the historical realities of the conflict is being less than honest. When Prof. Falk makes one of his assertions, we address it, When any of us make an assertion, he ignores it, claiming either that we are insulting him or that our positions are too far apart to make discussion profitable. But we are of course not arguing about “positions” but about demonstrable facts and one suspects that it is because they are unanswerable that Prof. Falk’s runs away from them. This applies to his assertion that the Palestinians are an indigenous population and the Land of Israel is their “ancient homeland,” that the Zionists “displaced” the Arabs in the pre-State period, and his denial that the Arabs initiated the 1948 and 1967 wars and that Israel’s security measures have no other purpose than to prevent acts of terrorism against Israel’s civilian population,
There is more to worry then you should imagine – and has nothing to do with Professor Falk. You all are forgetting current time is critical, and it seems to me that will be more relevant to the extinction of humanity then anything thing else. I say so because spiritual condition of humanity is almost extinguished. I have been hunted about things concerning end times. The magnitude of Azusa street charismatic disorder brougham irrevocable sins- which also means irrevocable condition to the human race. I wish we could see that reversal will be possible – but it won’t. There could only be equilibrium – for shortly. It will not be for 1000 years. From all current occurrences we won’t see preterbulational 1000 years of human equilibrium. It is more and more rational to see that it can be only posterbulational equilibrium: New Order (in a way). The only relevant equilibrium to the preterbulational time – can only be relevant to the time to repent. It is not fully visible what time to repent will entail. Preterbulational events are distributed equally among human race ( in all condition/s – including the Church) and at this point in time I believe Padre Pio’s prophesy’s may be more then relevant – if not crucial to know about to all. I did study prophesies of the Scripture – but I was more hunted about it then I really read and understood. Understanding that there was /is Nuclear warming alerted me to possible rapid changes of the way things may be unfolding – in near future or far off. There are still things that are not understood by me, and I on my own certainly will not use Scripture to explore what any of occupancies are or may not be.
Face Book just reminded me of this Jerusalem Post article I shared 2 years ago. It’s more relevant Today, as the Jubilee Year of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land approaches quickly, and Israel is not prepared.
‘How to settle disputes: Parshat Kedoshim’
This week’s Torah portion, Parshat Kedoshim, deals with directions for all areas of life. Mainly, though, it addresses relationships between people. One of the instructions we find in the parsha reveals an interesting perspective on relationships that go awry. This practical instruction is as follows: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart.
You shall surely rebuke your fellow, but you shall not bear a sin on his account. You shall neither take revenge from nor bear a grudge against the members of your people; you shall love your neighbor as yourself …” (Leviticus 19, 17-18) The last verse – You shall love your neighbor as yourself – is very well-known. Rabbi Akiva, the greatest of the sages, called it “a great rule of the Torah.” But when we examine the verses that precede it, we discover that the Torah makes this rule the end product of a process that begins in a more unpleasant manner.
Whoever hates a [fellow] Jew transgresses a Torah prohibition: “‘Do not hate your brother in your heart…’ When one person wrongs another, the latter should not remain silent and despise him… Rather, he is commanded to make the matter known and ask him: ‘Why did you do this to me?’ ‘Why did you wrong me regarding that matter?’ as it states: ‘You shall surely admonish your colleague.’ At first, a person who admonishes a colleague should not speak to him harshly until he becomes embarrassed as it states: ‘[You should]… not bear a sin because of him.’ This is what our sages said: ‘Should you rebuke him to the point that his face changes [color]?’ The Torah states: ‘[You should]… not bear a sin because of him.’” (Hilchot Deot, Chapter 6, halachot 5, 6, 8) A person who takes revenge against a colleague transgresses a Torah prohibition, as it states: “Do not take revenge.” Similarly, anyone who holds a grudge against another Jew violates a Torah prohibition, as it states: “Do not bear a grudge against the children of your people.”
This is a proper quality that permits a stable environment, trade and commerce to be established among people. (Hilchot Deot, Ch 7, halachot 7-8) In the Rambam’s words based on the verses above, we read about a very exact way of resolving disputes. The case before us deals with a man who harmed his friend, insulted him, teased him and perhaps even hurt him more harshly. Perhaps we would expect the Torah to guide the person to forget his friend’s deeds and forgive him, but we discover the opposite. The hurt party must turn to the one who harmed him and raise the subject, inform him that he expects compensation or at the very least an apology, and thus fulfill the commandment of “You shall surely rebuke your fellow.” If he does not act in this manner, the hatred in our hearts will not disappear.
It will grow deeper, causing greater future damage to us and to others. Thus says the Torah: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart.”
But we must remember: If we attack with harsh words, the dispute will only get worse, as it says: “You should not bear a sin because of him,” because by attacking, we will cause the other to hurt us again. We must turn to him pleasantly, so that he does not feel threatened but will believe we desire peace. Only in this way is there a change that the dispute between us will be resolved.
The next stage is when the friend or partner understands that he behaved wrongly and asks for forgiveness. At this stage, we are expected to believe he is sincere, accept what he says and forgive him. Man has a strong tendency to take revenge, or at least bear a grudge remembering the negative. Here, the Torah warns us – “You shall neither take revenge from nor bear a grudge.” If the other person understands the severity of his deeds, we must turn a new page and forgive him wholeheartedly. Everyone errs on occasion, and when someone understands the error of his ways, we must be forgiving as we would expect others to be about our mistakes.
If we act this way, we will fulfill the great rule and the yearned-for goal of “Love your neighbor as yourself.” As the Rambam states, “This is a proper quality which permits a stable environment, trade and commerce to be established among people.”
The writer is rabbi of the Western Wall and holy sites.
A Note:
Look at this – they drive young adolescents to the edge. Shame on them that do it. When they start having young women angry – they really are accursed – all wicked involved.
That poor little kid needs mental rehabilitation out of that religiously wicked areas for a while.
Another note to some civility:
Dear Richard,
Sadly fascism is everywhere -even on this blog: However hard and most eloquently you try to explain it some insist -or it is beyond their capacity, to have a civilised dialogue never mind a discussion.
Please do yourself a favour and save your brilliant mind, wisdom, energy & time for yourself and only share it with those who really appreciate your precious efforts & ideas.
Surely there must be another way of running a blog or accepting memberships/subscriptions?
Those whose qualities or capacities are no way in par with yours may not be aware of what & how they are writing/saying are only making me to be ashamed of myself for belonging to the same species as a human being.
Once again, please do not waste your precious time and life trying to enlighten those who do not deserve your sensitivity to “right to life”. Nothing is more sacred or precious than LIFE!
Love,
Ceylan
Dear Ceylan, please explain why you are ashamed to belong to the same species as someone who disagrees with Prof. Falk’s assertions that Israel is a fascist, apartheid state.
A Note: “right to life” also means “right to coexsistance”. It is wicked world
(in its reality) – legitimate rights are impossible.
Richard
I’d like to review in civil and hopefully constructive discussion the following exchange:
Rabbi Ira Youdovin
April 24, 2016 at 7:37 pm
Richard,
With all due respect, how can a narrative in which Israel is ALWAYS wrong and the Palestinians ALWAYS right be characterized as “truthful witness”? Is “truthful” to be totally removed from reality and accuracy? Ira
Richard Falk April 25, 2016 at 12:03 am
This is a false rendering of my views. I have only emphasizing what most of the world understands, namely, that Israel has been consistently through its policies and practices denied fundamental Palestinian rights. What Palestinians due in resisting such a structure of domination violates often law and morality, but it does not justify or explain Israel’s expansionism and general line of behavior.
•
Let’s overlook the obvious question: how can an accurate account of what you write on this blog be a “false rendering” of you views? Instead, let’s explore your second sentence, in which you give the Palestinians license to violate law and morality.
I agree that an occupied people should not be held to the same standards as an occupying force. But this allowance does not extend to fashioning a narrative that omits—not explains nor justifies but omits—any mention of Palestinian misdeeds, nor mentions places on the Israeli political and ethical landscape which favor a just resolution to the conflict. Perhaps unwittingly, your narrative serves to prolong the conflict rather than ending it.
An example (one of many). A few days prior to the most recent Israeli national elections, every opinion poll found that Israelis had had enough of territorial expansionism and paying the moral price exacted by being an occupier, and were prepared to vote Netanyahu’s Likud government out of office. On election day, Likud won a substantial victory. Why? Netanyahu had launched a non-stop campaign warning voters that a victory by his more moderate opponents, who urged removing some number of West Bank settlements to facilitate peace through a two state solution, would bring Hamas guns within easy firing range of Israel’s industrial/residential heartland. One can excoriate Netanyahu for conducting a campaign of fear, as many Israeli and Diaspora Jews did. But one must also acknowledge that it worked because the fears were genuine: Hamas has never renounced its intention to destroy Israel.
The question at hand is not whether Hamas is justified in stockpiling weapons, digging attack tunnels and launching rocket attacks on isolated Israeli towns near Gaza. The issue is whether these tactics are conducive to conflict resolution, or locking the Palestinian People into extending a conflict they cannot win. Resistance “to the death” is inevitable when there is no hope for concessions from the other side. But in the present case, there are many signs of eagerness of the part of Israelis to make concessions. Analyzing the conflict without reference to these is a disservice to the Palestinians.
The intent of at least some of the comments posted on this blog is not to justify Israeli misdeeds, but to explain this reality and urge that it be figured into your approach. Isn’t that what discussion is all about?!
Ira
You are of course right, Ira, that from a Palestinian point of view the violent or what we would call the terrorist approach has been disastrous and will not get the Palestinians a state. At this point, however, moderate Palestinians lack the standing to compromise and Hamas does not wish to compromise. From an Israeli point of view, despite the growing support for unilateral action, including annexation, which in my view can only be seen as a reaction to Arab intransigence and continuing violence, the two-state solution based on an exchange of territory remains the most feasible and desirable solution. There is, however, a third point of view, and that is the one encountered in this blog, namely the anti-Israel point of view. No one here seems the least bit interested in a practical solution to the conflict. No one thinks to respond when I outline, time and again, what such a practical solution might look like. No one really cares. The intent is to establish Israel’s guilt and nothing else. All arguments, all references, all pastings, have no other purpose than to criminalize Israel, or to rationalize and justify Arab violence. When a “point” of this kind seems to be made, the “critic” is satisfied. That is what he is here for: to win the argument and make Israel look bad. Don’t expect him to ask himself what good this is doing the Palestinians. As I said, he really doesn’t care. There is an animus and he wants to get it off his chest. Now Prof. Falk will claim that by questioning the motives of Israel’s critics I am insulting them. But I am in fact only characterizing their arguments. He himself calls them, and himself, “critics of Israel,” not “seekers of peace.” That is the aim of the blog: to criticize Israel. I defy him to show me a single paragraph in which there is a hint of interest in a practical solution to the conflict. I say practical because what the “critics” would really like to see is Israel’s disappearance. So I can only say once again: this is not going to happen. You may get personal satisfaction out of vilifying Israel but you aren’t helping the Palestinians, and that should be the whole point of the exercise, shouldn’t it?
The peoples of the nations want a two-state solution! Have them have it. It is only to wash the hands from it and have them have it.
Practical Steps?
How one Israeli Arab woman seeks to wipe out hatred
When the current wave of terror, dubbed the individual intifada, broke out last October, Ghada Zoabi sensed that the discourse among Arab-Israelis on social media was turning violent and extreme. Zoabi is the founder and editor of the Arabic-language website Bokra, Arabic for “tomorrow.” With its focus on social issues and a declared agenda of Arab-Jewish coexistence, Bokra became an immediate target, and every item Zoabi posted about the joint activities of Arab-Jewish youth groups was attacked. As the cycle of violence intensified, the atmosphere on the Internet escalated, and Zoabi, a restless social activist, sought ways to soothe the violent public climate.
Zoabi, a former journalist, approached her mission by commissioning an in-depth survey, conducted in recent weeks, to examine attitudes and trends in Arab society. Although the findings hardly surprised her, they were unusual in their intensity. The impression that emerged was one of a frightened society, 85% of which fears an increase in racism among Jews, 78% admitted that they are concerned about going to shopping centers in Jewish towns lest they be harmed and 56% expressed pessimism about the possibility of co-existence.
Zoabi’s survey served as the basis for a widespread public campaign called “Wiping Out Hatred,” spearheaded by Bokra together with the Talking Coexistence group.
Billboards went up at the entrances to major Arab towns and villages, and social media is awash with video clips promoting coexistence, some of them featuring Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious leaders. The target audience is young people, and the idea is to counter the hatred-inciting videos on the web that served as a primary motivator for young Arab-Israelis to carry out terror attacks. After the incitement to hatred and violence that filled the social networks in recent months, Zoabi was unsurprised when one of the billboards in an Arab city was torched.
A significant part of the campaign is being conducted on the Facebook page of Talking Coexistence. The video clips posted there feature young Jews and Arabs talking about joint social initiatives as well as religious figures addressing conciliatory words to the young.
It was clear to Zoabi that any effort to address this issue must be based on empirical findings. She also realized that such a campaign should not be political in nature and must not involve politicians. This perspective stems from the political capital made by both Jewish and Arab politicians from the violence of recent months, using it for electoral purposes and constantly setting new fires with Knesset debates or site visits instead of trying to restore calm…………………………………………..
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/04/ghada-zoabi-campaign-incitemenet-israeli-arabs-social-media.html
Unfortunately not all Zoabi’s agree with this one.
Check out her relative:
http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/06/25/mother-of-israeli-arab-zionist-muhammad-zoabi-on-master-chef-says-i-am-a-proud-zionist-video/
Fred, Jonathan Cook is a British Independent reporter based in Nazareth. Do you have any practical suggestions to counter the growing right wing (Fascism) now developing in Israel?
In Israel, an Ugly Tide Sweeps Over Palestinians
By Jonathan Cook
April 26, 2016 In Israel’s evermore tribal politics, there is no such thing as a “good” Arab – and the worst failing in a Jew is to be unmasked as an “Arab lover”. Or so was the message last week from Isaac Herzog, head of Israel’s so-called peace camp.
The shock waves of popular anger at the recent indictment of an Israeli army medic, Elor Azaria, on a charge of “negligent homicide” are being felt across Israel’s political landscape.
Most Israeli Jews bitterly resent the soldier being put on trial, even though Azaria was caught on camera firing a bullet into the head of a badly injured Palestinian, Abdel Fattah Al Sharif.
In the current climate, Mr Herzog and his opposition party Zionist Union have found themselves highly uncomfortable at having in their midst a single non-Jewish legislator.
Zuheir Bahloul, an accommodating figure who made his name as a sportscaster before entering politics, belongs to the minority of 1.7 million Palestinian citizens, one in five of the population.
Unlike most of Israel’s Palestinian politicians, he preferred to join a Zionist party than one of several specifically Arab parties. Nonetheless, he embarrassed colleagues by briefly pricking the bubble of unreason cocooning the country.
Attacks on soldiers were wrong, said Mr Bahloul, but a Palestinian such as Mr Al Sharif – who tried to stab soldiers at a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron – was not a “terrorist” by any normal definition. Terrorists target civilians, Bahloul noted, not soldiers enforcing an illegal occupation.
Other Zionist Union MPs raced to disown Mr Bahloul, while Mr Herzog warned that the party was unelectable as long as it was seen as full of “Arab lovers”.
Mr Bahloul is hardly the first Palestinian politician in Israel to find himself denounced as a “bad” Arab. But the others have mostly sinned by demanding an end to Israel’s status as a Jewish state. Israel is currently promulgating a law to oust such dissenters from the parliament.
Now the earth is shifting beneath the feet of formerly “good Arabs” such as Mr Bahloul, the small number who cling to the belief that a self-declared Jewish state can be fair to them.
It is no longer just the state’s Jewishness that is sacrosanct. The occupation is too.
Salim Joubran, the only Palestinian judge in the supreme court, fell foul of this creed last week as the court considered an appeal from Raed Salah, leader of the northern Islamic Movement, against his jail sentence for incitement to violence.
There is almost continual incitement by Jewish political and religious leaders, but indictments are almost unheard of. Two rabbis who wrote a book, the King’s Torah, calling for the killing of Palestinian babies were investigated but not charged.
In his minority opinion, Mr Joubran thought it reasonable to observe that Mr Salah’s remark urging the Arab world to support the Palestinians with a “global intifada” to protect Jerusalem’s Islamic holy sites under occupation was more rhetorical than a call to arms.
He was wrong. Israelis took to social media calling for an “intifada” against both him and the supreme court.
The ugly political tide turning against the most moderate and pragmatic elements in Israel’s Palestinian minority was also exemplified by threats against Ayman Odeh, leader of the only joint Jewish-Arab party in the parliament.
Mr Odeh’s crime was to describe the assassinations of Palestinian leaders by the Shin Bet intelligence service as “executions without trial”.
Avi Dichter, a former Shin Bet head who is now a legislator in the ruling Likud party, wondered aloud about the merits of assassinating Mr Odeh, before concluding it was not worth “wasting the ammunition”. Mr Dichter knows there is no danger he will face a trial for incitement to violence.
Meanwhile, a TV investigation last week turned a critical lens on the late Rehavam Zeevi, a hero of the occupation. The programme revealed that the general had serially raped and assaulted women under his command, and used underworld connections to silence critics.
Tellingly, however, while the programme highlighted his crimes against Jews, it was largely untroubled by his many well-documented abuses of Palestinians.
Zeevi once proudly boasted of killing prisoners, and famously terrorised Palestinians by flying over their villages with a Palestinian corpse hanging from his helicopter undercarriage.
Later he sat in government as head of a party calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland.
When he was assassinated by Palestinians in 2001, he was quickly beatified. Scores of roads and parks are named after him, and a commemoration law requires that his “legacy and values” be taught in schools.
The anti-Arab values Zeevi embodied are in no danger of being discarded. Rather, they are being entrenched. Today, the definition of a “bad Arab” stretches from those, such as Mr Al Sharif, who take up arms against the occupation to those, such as Mr Bahloul, who do nothing more than raise their voice against it.
The trigger-happy soldier Elor Azaria and the peace camp leader Isaac Herzog have more in common than either might wish to admit. In their different ways, both have helped to turn all Palestinians into outcasts – and crush any hope of concessions from Israel to peace.
Note:
I believe that it seems that our dear Rabbi is mixing things up when he notes that this site is “more anti-Israel than pro-Palestinian.” In such acknowledgment, he indicates that looking at Israeli and Palastenian conditions, in any event, is a hopeless cause, all together.
He forgets that everyone has to be and should be in the evaluation of their conscience when they go about something – regardless what the condition of their conscience is when they start at theirs adventure.
I would say – if you can help folks (individually or corporately) with a state of their conscience – do it so. If you can’t, then do not do it. Be sure of their conscience.
Also, it is important to note that not all condition of the conscience are subjected to any changes. In that case, it is a hopeless cause, all together.
All of this is hopeless cause, but it is only for the sake of the curtesy.
An interesting video of the Jewish rally in Tel Aviv April 19, in support of the Israeli medic who executed the immobilized Palestinian with a shot to the head, having judged him not worthy of a trial for his attempted stabbing of an occupation soldier in Hebron.
“‘Peace
I leave
with you;
peace
my
I give
to you;
not
as
the
world
gives,
I
give
to you.
not
let be troubled
of you
the
heart,
nor
let it fear. ‘”
~ In John ch.14. v 27
Dear Ray
Jonathan Cook is not my guru and I don’t need him to explain Israel to me. He is writing about a country you have never seen and whose language you don’t speak so it is hard for me to understand how you evaluate his sense of the country. He, like you, interprets what makes the headlines, namely extreme acts and extreme statements, as representing the whole. That is pretty much the fault of journalists but intelligent people realize that newspaper headlines are not history. In addition, independent or not, he is writing out of enormous hostility to the State of Israel.
Most Israelis are sympathetic toward the soldier who shot the terrorist and that is natural, and most Arabs are sympathetic toward terrorists who stab Israelis, and that is natural too. However, the soldier will be tried and sentenced and you can be sure that the government is not going to name streets or squares after him.
If you wish to believe that Israel is a fascist country, that is your business. That is not my sense of Israel or its people.
Ms. Fisher,
There is an obvious path to an equitable resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It’s the one Fred Skolnick, Harvey Epstein and I have advocated while being censored by Prof. Falk and verbally abused by the likes of Gene Schulman, Rehmat 1 and Brewer.
That path is simple to describe. It entails making peace beneficial to both sides by changing the parameters of the conflict from a zero sum game in which one side wins all and the other loses all, into a win-win situation in which both sides benefit. The process entails cooperation, trust and mutual understanding. A pro-Palestinian position would also be a pro-Israel position. And the only “anti’s” would be those held by retrogrades who seek to undermine cooperation by discrediting one side or the other…as is the case that prevails on this blog.
As regards the remainder of your post, I’m afraid that I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
Shalom,
Ira
Shalom Rabbi!
Richard,
I admit to not knowing what you are trying to say, but these words you wrote to Harvey Epstein trouble me:
“I respect your views, but they seem to be shaped to a significant degree by your strong identification with Jewish tradition and aspirations. I guess in the last analysis, I am more attached to being ‘human’ than being ‘Jewish,’ and do believe that this is a fundamental choice.”
I’m troubled because you indicate that being “human” and being “Jewish” are mutually incompatible, so that an individual must choose between the two. I am both human and Jewish, as is Harvey, and wonder why you think we can’t be both.
I assume the core issue here is values: “human values” vs “Jewish values.” So let’s begin by asking what do you mean by “human values”? As you describe your religio-ethical development, you have read widely and harvested from your reading a compilation of values that works for you. That system would be what Robert Bellah, the late Elliott Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, called “Sheilaism”. The name comes from an interview Bellah and Richard Madsen had with a young woman named Sheila (Larson), who described her religious beliefs as being woven from strands taken from here and there, forming a totality she called Sheilaism. Bellah and Madsen quoted her in their book Habits of the Heart, which has become a standard text in the sociology or religion. (I’d be surprised if you haven’t read it.)
There’s nothing wrong with that. Most people who live outside the confines of a rigidly authoritarian religious discipline do what Sheila Larson did, at least to some extent. And avowed atheists employ a similar process in shaping their own secular ethics. But there’s a problem when an individual calls his/her system “human ethics”, which makes an undeserved claim to universality. Your values constitute a “Richardism”, and although the sophistication and range of reading that went into creating the system is far greater than Sheila Larson’s, the process is the same. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your ethical system is flawed in any way. But it isn’t universal. It’s yours; not the world’s.
What about Harvey’s Jewish ethics? Richard, you state repeatedly that your Jewish knowledge and experience are deficient (your word, not mine). But you continue to write as if you know what you are talking about. (n.b. I’m not seeking an invitation to be your mentor. That was Harvey’s idea, not mine!) Apparently, you equate Jewish values with those espoused by a relatively small group of benighted West Bank settlers and their political allies who see a “Jewish” Israel as one which permanently subjugates or expels all non-Jews, and especially Palestinians. Yes, they are part of the Jewish People. And much as many of us would like to, we can’t say they’re not. But to identify them as exemplars of authentic Jewish values, or as a Jewish majority, is both inaccurate and, if deliberate, prejudicial. A majority of Jews in Israel, and an even greater majority in the Diaspora, oppose the Occupation, find its brutal excesses reprehensible, and support the Palestinians’ drive for national liberation in the context of two states for two people.
When I first began following this blog, I thought that as both of us supported the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, we could find common ground on which to discuss our differing views of how this might best be achieved. But I now see that your real objective is eliminating Israel (see your posted reaction to the Presbyterians adopting a pro-BDS resolution that also affirmed Israel’s right to exist); and that you cannot accept the possibility of a liberal Zionist Jew like me advocating Palestinian state.
The core of Jewish faith is commitment to Tikkun Olam, Hebrew for repairing the world. That’s the highest of “human” values.
Rabbi Ira Youdovin
Ira:
I am at a meeting here in Washington, and cannot answer your post except to say that you devote
incredible energy to twisting my meanings in ways that do not accord with my beliefs. By the way,
I have not ‘repeatedly’ said my awareness of Jewish ‘knowledge and experience’ is ‘deficient,’ but
as far as I can recall only once. I call your attention to this because it is part of a tendency to
portray my views in ways that do not correspond with my intentions. Perhaps, I am sometimes responsible
for not being sufficiently clear, but throughout my long career during which I have been challenged quite
often, I have never before had the experience of being so frequently, and sometimes maliciously,
misunderstood. This includes my view on Palestinian self-determination. My criticism of the Presbyterian
resolution was not an objection to the endorsement of a two-state solution, but their uncritical and unconditional
call for a resumption of negotiations under the flawed Oslo framework. Again maybe I was not clear enough, but
my position is that under present conditions diplomacy will not work, and that Israel has created a series of
conditions, especially the settlements, that make it difficult to envision a robust version of a Palestinian state
coming into existence. I may be wrong about this, but this is my present judgment. The reason I favor BDS and other
nonviolent pressures is to create the conditions that might allow diplomacy to find a solution that is fair and respectful
of the rights of both peoples.
Richard
Important note: BDS can be critical in the case that sanctions items related to faith and rituals of faith or rituals of traditions, including food items. If BDS causes sanctions of any item connected with faith and traditions of it – it’s bad and is better to have nothing to do with it. Also, there is nothing wrong with self-determination of people and moves of the people, but those have to be watched and balanced out along with all other self-determination/s and people moves. In this way, they can / may be harmonized even there is a colliding of a chaos. Oterwise they move stronger independently in chaos.
Richard, it appears to me the ‘falkuncensored” clan were mostly engaged in mutual admiration with their comments here.
This is an interesting read in Mondoweiss Today:
‘Beinart’s Jewish double-bind: Support oppression or you’re out of the family’
Even when he’s serving up a soul-crushing ultimatum, you have to give Peter Beinart some credit. By comparing Israel to “your violent, drug-addicted brother,” but saying that if you call the cops– i.e., support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)– to “make them change their destructive and self-destructive behavior” you are putting your “personal morality” ahead of family loyalty, he’s enraged Israel defenders and anti-Zionists alike. In this way, he becomes the personification of the untenable situation he writes about.
“When you boycott Israel, or reject the ideology on which it was founded [my emphasis], you are estranging yourself from much of the Jewish world” runs a pull-quote from Beinart’s Haaretz piece.
On social media, the paper’s slug and headline is: “For Jewish BDS supporters, personal morality trumps Jewish solidarity.” Those words were likely not of his choosing but they crystallize the implicit threat of ostracism and accusation of treason.
The ideology on which Israel was founded assigned Jews the goal of a nationalist state on Palestinian land. Palestinians were erased from all the founders’ early visions: Theodor Herzl wrote about Jewish policemen arresting Jewish sex workers, while Chaim Weizmann told the 1919 Paris peace conference he envisioned a state that would be “as Jewish as England is English.”
To maintain our good standing inside the Jewish family, Beinart implies, we need to swallow all that — even though this ideology entered Jewish life only recently, and deeply divided Jewish communities in the decades before 1948.
Equality and justice are universal values, not personal or selfish ones. As Beinart knows well, they’re often claimed to be “Jewish” values; he emphasizes that Jewish BDS activists “see their embrace of BDS as an expression of their Jewishness.”
As a person, not just as a Jew, I’m offended to hear that opposing segregation, colonialism, exile, massacres and the ongoing brutality necessary to repress a captive indigenous population, or supporting the internationally mandated return of refugees, means I’m selfishly imposing my personal morality at the expense of “family consensus.”
Of course, there’s been much debate as to whether values like justice and civil rights are really part of the Jewish tradition. I don’t want to add to our self-flattery; all I know is what I was taught when I was little. Fighting oppressors is a common thread running through so many of the stories Jewish children are raised on, whether it’s Pharoah in the fictitious Passover story (Jews were never slaves in Egypt), the Maccabees and zealots who resisted Greek and Roman-era tyrants like King Herod, through the Middle Ages and Inquisition up through the Tsar and the Nazis………………………………………………..
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/04/beinarts-jewish-double-bind-support-oppression-or-youre-out-of-the-family/
A note: The ethics of morality is diverse. Whether inverted or perverted ethics of moral values – equals not justice, in exact terms. What we feel or think is not justice. Further, the system of convictions can be a amounted to some terms of justice. Has nothing to do with individual self-determination outside collective system of convictions / belifs if we will.
My discussion group will again raise the topic of blogs next week and I waded thru these comments to update my position of despair regarding the comment concept therein. Most glaringly, once again, was a disregard for the subject at hand – is there a rise of fascism in US and Israel? If one does a search on the net with that question, there is an inundation of response. Overwhelmingly, the notables on the net agreed to the rise in fascism in varying ways and degrees. I found Philip Geraldi’s opinion piece revealing and on target. Because the word ‘fascism’ has a variety of meanings, it would not be my choice but I cannot offer a substitute either – albeit I tried.
The issue in Israel was generally regarding the military and conscription with a small but growing number of dissenters in moral conflict concerning Palestine. The US was more around the rise of NSA and privacy issues. The AUMF, military prisons, torture et al were also noted. Because fascism has a singular authority, it is less applicable in the US. We are controlled by the pillars discussed earlier here – military, corporate, and financial. We are also very affected by special interest groups so social control is more diverse. There is always the supposition that ‘the people’ are a moral entity in the aggregate but this is an illusion. There is a hunger for an affiliation with group justice but only individuals seem to be imbued with that burden and they pay heavily for a seeming disloyalty.
Israelis refer to Palestinians as ‘Arabs’ because they will not confer an identity on them separate from the Arab world. There is no Palestine in their narrative. Those inconvenient people are just more Arabs. It appears that the Arabs in Israel choose to call themselves Palestinian Citizens in Israel. This is a rather unwieldy identity and maybe they could try again.
As to Weiseltier’s comment that he never voted happily, I feel somewhat the same. I’ve never voted for anyone, but only against someone else. As to Hillary being unlovable, that sure sounds silly. The woman has a harridan quality about her but there are other points on the continuum between that quality and sweetness.
Lastly, there is no better model of fascism that what is existent in the 3 Semitic religions. I think many people are longing to be part of a secular moral code that pursues justice and which rewards truly decent people in the heretofore. Justice for all is non existent in these religions and in places like the Security Council as well. What good are unenforced rules of morality? Or exemptions for the powerful elite?
.
A Note:
De malis et perverterunt iudicium
The root of Nazism (known to the Western and colonised World) is fascism of the civil-ecclesiastical illegalities (abuses).
Ecclesiastical (part to it) is never fascist because it is not civil in essence – without illegal civil-ecclesiastical essence, it can not become fascist.
For that reason, Ecclesiastical essence parts away from illegal civil-Ecclesiastical issue can wash hands from it – and allow it to be in manifestation and works of fascism, Nazi spirit – Antispirit, Antichrist, False-Christ.
There was Azusa Street Charismatic Disorder and abuse of the Church- Apostolic Orders and shortly after there was Berlin Declaration in 1019, Nazi Nations(Nazi-Germany was just epicentre to it) and Berlin Declaration of 1945.
Any Civil move can become fascist and Nazi if abuse of ecclesiastical essences. For that reason, it was Nazi-Germany and Nazi Nations after here was Azusa Street Charismatic Disorder and abuse of the Church- Apostolic Orders.
The move of Antichrist was so powerful in manifestation that is never again can be mistaken hat it is not what actually is – and it can become.
From the Church perspective, it can not be disputed what it is and what it is not, it is impossible.
It is Satanic seals and Blasphemy of God’s Spirit in Bloodlines (and as personal sins) among religions of the world, including in the cults and sects of Semitic Faiths.
I am telling you the Truth; the Church Authentic Roman Catholic Charismatic will wash hands from an illegal civil-Ecclesiastical issue and will allow it to become fascist in the full strength of Antispirit, Antichrist, and False Christ. It happened in the past – Church Roman Catholic Charismatic will allow it.
To put another and additional Landmarks in Holy Land and we will see what we did see during Nazi Nations and Nazi Germany in the Middle East and world-wide. Its already in the world (civil-ecclesiastically) in local and weaker then stronger apperances. We think ISIS are insaine.. that is just small fraction to it.
A correction of typing error: “1909 Berlin Deceleration” not “1019” – then was no such deceleration in Berlin
Dear Prof. Falk
If you can tolerate your Miss Laurie’s despicable and entirely gratuitous remark that the Jewish religion is a model for fascism, you should be able to tolerate anything, so I will repeat myself:
“Nothing is more ludicrous, and more indicative of the level of discourse here, than the fact that when one of Israel’s “critics” wishes to clarify a point about the nature of the country’s life or society he or she “searches the net.” It is like looking at the world through a rearview mirror distorted by other rearview mirrors or entering a world of virtual reality without knowing its language. Good luck, my friends! But do take a moment or two to reflect on the good you’re doing the Palestinians, because, as I said, that doesn’t seem to be your aim.”
Dear Mr. Skolnik:
I have told you repeatedly that I will block messages that complain about the websites
or the comments of others. You insist on doing this, and instruct me as to how manage the website.
Since you constantly denigrate both my posts and those that are appreciative, I was hoping that
you enjoy the congenial atmosphere of ‘falkuncensored’ but obviously I was wrong.
In doing a search, I did some reading about the Israel Movement For Reform and Progressive Judaism and their struggle for authenticity in Israel. They have made some progress but orthodoxy is the only recognized state sponsored form of Judaism. Would suggest reading the book of Leviticus. Also, the Reform and Reconstructionists are now 56% of the WZO. If the religion were not overly authoritarian – why the need for Reform? Reform currently seeks religious freedom, gender equality, and a 2 state solution. No mention of where that state will be located.
Also, discovered the label Christofascism. The word fascism with a small f has a definition of any system of extreme authoritarian views. Protestantism in all its factions, was a rebellion against Rome and the Pope. Then they revolted against each other’s dogma. Would suggest the book of Revelations for religion in the terrifying extreme.
In Islam, the laws regarding Apostasy, blasphemy et al have a penalty of death . The cutting off limbs as punishment exists in all 3 religions. Burning in hell and 1000 years of torture is for Christians who fail the exam.
In both Israel and the US, religion was included in the growing concern about freedom and justice. It also factors into the political arena and should, therefore, be subject to honest intellectual inquiry. I have not read that it was off limits on this blog – presented in an honest impersonal civil manner, however, and relevant to the topic. Most of the current wars in the world are connected to religion. It behooves one to examine some of the ‘sacred’ scriptural differences that motivate such extreme measures.
Thanks for the reading tips. The last religious war in the West was fought in the 17th century. I would try talking to Reform and Reconstructionist Jews before analyzing them. It seems to me that you are trying to slip in the word fascism with regard to the Jewish religion, the Jewish state and Jews in general because it is one of the dirtiest words you know.. In this world anyone you don’t like who makes rules becomes a fascist and that is indeed how precocious children may occasionally talk about their parents and teachers, maybe calling them Nazis too, and in the end you of course have Seinfeld’s soup Nazi as well. No fair-minded person who has any direct knowledge of Israeli society would use the word fascist to describe it. No fair-minded person who doesn’t have such knowledge would presume to characterize it.
The word ‘fascism’ regarding Israel did not start here. Israeli Fascism, Uri Avnery Aug 30, 2009 – also in 2006. Ma’an News Agency. Certainly Israel Shahak descriptions match the word aptly. There are, as well, no shortages of references comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. Very upsetting to me, moreover, is the codification of Noahide Laws into a US Joint Resolution in 1991.
Fred, as am exercise try 1, addressing the subject and 2. not insulting anyone. If you think that Israel is less authoritarian than formerly, you might try to support that concept.
But Laurie, the people making the Nazi and fascist comparisons are people just like you, who bear great animus toward Israel. I think I have already reviewed what the Nazis actually did, for the benefit of people who do not wish to know or are, incredibly, too ignorant to know, but I will give you the least of it and if you think this is not enough I will describe to you what occurred in the gas chambers. (Re insults, as someone who cavalierly insults entire nations and peoples, you should be the last one to complain about being insulted.)
1933
March 31
Decree of the Berlin City Commissioner for Health suspends Jewish doctors from the city’s social welfare services.
April 7
The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service removes Jews from government service.
April 7
The Law on the Admission to the Legal Profession forbids the admission of Jews to the bar.
April 25
The Law against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities limits the number of Jewish students
in public schools.
July 14
The Denaturalization Law revokes the citizenship of naturalized Jews and “undesirables.”
October 4
The Law on Editors bans Jews from editorial posts.
1935
May 21
The Army Law expels Jewish officers from the army.
September 15
The Nuremberg Race Laws exclude German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibit them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of “German or German-related blood.”
1936
January 11
The Executive Order on the Reich Tax Law forbids Jews to serve as tax consultants.
April 3
The Reich Veterinarians Law expels Jews from the profession.
October 15
The Reich Ministry of Education bans Jewish teachers from public schools.
1937
April 9
The Mayor of Berlin orders public schools not to admit Jewish children until further notice.
1938
January 5
The Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names forbids Jews from changing their names.
February 5
The Law on the Profession of Auctioneer excludes Jews from the profession.
March 18
The Gun Law bans Jewish gun merchants.
April 22
The Decree against the Camouflage of Jewish Firms forbids changing the names of Jewish-owned businesses.
April 26
The Order for the Disclosure of Jewish Assets requires Jews to report all property in excess of 5,000 reichsmarks.
July 11
The Reich Ministry of the Interior bans Jews from health spas.
August 17
The Executive Order on the Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names requires Jews bearing first names of “non-Jewish” origin to adopt an additional name: “Israel” for men and “Sara” for women.
October 3
The Decree on the Confiscation of Jewish Property regulates the transfer of assets from Jews to non-Jews in Germany.
October 5
The Reich Ministry of the Interior invalidates all German passports held by Jews. Jews must surrender their old passports, which will become valid only after the letter “J” has been stamped on them.
November 12
The Decree on the Exclusion of Jews from German Economic Life closes all Jewish-owned businesses.
November 15
The Reich Ministry of Education expels all Jewish children from public schools.
November 28
The Reich Ministry of the Interior restricts the freedom of movement of Jews.
November 29
The Reich Ministry of the Interior forbids Jews to keep carrier pigeons.
December 14
The Executive Order on the Law on the Organization of National Work cancels all state contracts held with Jewish-owned firms.
December 21
The Law on Midwives bans all Jews from the profession.
1939
February 21
The Decree concerning the Surrender of Precious Metals and Stones in Jewish Ownership requires Jews to turn in gold, silver, diamonds, and other valuables to the state without compensation.
August 1
The President of the German Lottery forbids the sale of lottery tickets to Jews.
Fred:
The whole point of my post that started this discussion of fascism was based on a conversation that I had with
a young Israeli woman who was quite committed to her life in Israel. Avnery, Halper, others in Israel are devoted
Zionists, yet find that the country’s mood and leadership is most accurately described as ‘fascist.’ There are many
varieties of fascism, and the question is whether such prominent features as excessive force, dominance of a militarized
security atmosphere, racism, occupation policies and practices, defiance of international law, add up to a pattern
that creates sufficient resemblances to clear cases of fascism. Recall that Jabotinky was an admirer of Franco’s Spain,
and both the president and prime minister of Israel, do little to hide their admiration for Jabotinsky.
Obviously you don’t see it Fred, but I, the Professor, and increasing numbers of people in this world see Israel uses different Laws with different names and terms attached to them, to keep Palestinians in the occupied territories inline and in check, as the Nazis did to the Jews in another place so long ago.
It was wrong then, and is is wrong now when Jews do it to a conquered people, stealing their land, expanding settlements, diminishing the prospects for a Palestinian State, all the while claiming Israel stands for Peace without preconditions while building preconditions on the ground. The World is beginning to see that! You rationalize all of that in your mind as Jew hatred when it is the continuing struggle for Justice.
Don’t take my words for it. Take the word of God delivered through the Jewish Major Prophet Isaiah at the Beginning of his book: Israel had already disappeared from among the kingdoms of this world, so obviously Isaiah was prophesying about a Future Israel recreated in some Future Time from the Bible.
The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, [and] Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken; Children I have raised and exalted, yet they have rebelled against Me.
An ox knows his owner and a donkey his master’s crib; Israel does not know, my people does not consider.
Woe to a sinful nation, a people heavy with iniquity, evildoing seed, corrupt children. They forsook the Lord; they provoked the Holy One of Israel; they drew backwards.
Why are you beaten when you still continue to rebel? Every head is [afflicted] with illness and every heart with malaise.
From the sole of the foot until the head there is no soundness-wounds and contusions and lacerated sores; they have not sprinkled, neither have they been bandaged, nor was it softened with oil.
Everyone is righteous in their own eyes.
Fred, I give you a flat F on the exercise. The subject was about increasing authoritarianism in Israel and the US currently. You also insulted me. I give you an A+, however, for following the Hasbara Guidelines. Always morph the discussion to past Jewish persecution and discredit the speaker. I’m guessing that the general public is familiar with that history. Scanning your list, I didn’t see any reference as to how the Palestinians were responsible and should pay for the misdeeds. Increasingly, small groups of Israelis, and others, are in accord with justice, and are making valiant attempts to reverse the Israeli actions cited by Richard and sponsored by the US. Additionally, there are challenges to the orthodox religion and its means/validity of existence. This is a tiny bit of progress.
I did not single out Israel in my criticism It is you who are blinded with a self serving ethnic and obvious bias – not me.
You are confusing the issue, Laurie. I did not cite the Nazi measures to prove how Jews were persecuted but to show you what real fascism looks like. You do understand that, don’t you.?
Prof, Falk
The opinions of “a young Israeli woman” or a small number of left-wing polemicists is not evidence of anything. There are literally thousands of writers, thinkers, publicists, etc., on the left too, who would not think of describing Israel in these terms but I certainly wouldn’t quote them to prove a point.. It is not enough to quote an opinion to establish a fact. The debate here is whether it is legitimate to expand the commonly understood meaning of the word fascism, which is explicitly attached to the regimes of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Franco’s Spain and all that they entailed, in order to apply it to Israel, I think this is being done without any intimate knowledge of how Israeli society functions but simply to put the country in the worst possible light.
You have listed the “varieties” of fascism that you believe are prevalent in Israel. The idea of the dominance of a militarized security atmosphere is simply nonsensical. To know what the atmosphere of a country is you actually have to be there. There is no such atmosphere in Israel. There is, as there has been, at various times in the past 65 years, heightened security AWARENESS, and FEAR, because everyone has always understood what the Arabs are capable of doing to Israeli civilians. I have felt absolutely no difference in the “atmosphere” of the country.
I have responded more than once to your incorrect use of the word racism. Israelis talk and think about Arabs and Arabs talk and think about Jews the way people at war generally talk and think about each other and when Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel come together in the wake of heightened terrorist activity, there is bound to be friction, and there is also bound to be, as in any society, groups of individuals who attack minority groups for whatever reasons. In Israel, physical violence against Arabs is rare and vandalism is confined to a very small group of ideological extremists. As for the West Bank, we have had this debate already and you still have not replied to my question of how you think the Allies would have responded if the Germans had proclaimed “no peace, no negotiations, no recognition” after the occupation, had engaged from the outset in acts of terror against Allied civilians inside and outside Germany, and had refused to disavow their Nazi leaders.
Everyone in Israel, including Arabs, has complete freedom of speech. If Hanin Zoabi and Ahmed Tibi were to go down to Gaza and talk about Hamas the way they talk about the Israeli government in television studios and the Knesset they would be thrown off a roof inside of 30 seconds and then dragged through the street from the back of an automobile. Remember? The same holds true for citizens of Germany, Italy and Spain in the Fascist period. In Israel the Supreme Court can strike down any law or government measure. That is not how a fascist country operates. That is not how Iran operates, or Russia, or China, or most of the countries who periodically condemn Israel in the UN General Assembly or its Human Rights Council.
Important Note: Interpretation of the Prophesy should not take place before it is fulfilled. I know this for a fact. You have to see / observe something and-and confirm that it is what appears to be.
Something can seem to be – but is not (in actual terms of reality) … it can be foreshadowing to something.
Further, you all forget the Fact that there are Messianic Jews at this point (in time).
I would caution you that you are mixing things up.
The fact is that establishment of Israel took place, in fact, it is legitimate to have it, and it is irrevocable.
Once again I am telling you that you forget the Fact that there are Messianic Jews at this point/time.
I really should not get into details, but Jewish Faith with its sects and cults in exclusive and inclusive and compatible with Church Faith and her sects and cults.
What one thing I can note is that when Protestant opposed Rome – it was not much wrong to that. However, they attempted changes and did outside the Judicial Person. This is where they accounted for grave sins of that and present times.
Any changes and did outside the Judicial Person – This alone stripped their works from the will of God, and they came out as spiritually excommunicated heretics. Much difficult they did – Protestant Church the more did tried to fix things the more they were messing things up..
For that reason so many denominations and conflict with Theological Doctrine. They consistently made / make changes outside the Judicial Person and office of the Judicial Person. Therefore all trouble.
Further,
We do not understand Messianic Jews in relationship to current Israel. I will caution all to that fact of this point in time. When we talk about Community / Faith of Jews and things that they do and do not; should do and should not – let’s not throw the baby out along with the bathing waters.
I strongly feel that Prophet Isaiah should not be part of reason to understanding outide unfulfiled time/s (in interpretations)..
Ray,
Shame on you for this grossly erroneous and prejudicial misrepresentation of history:
“Israel…keeps Palestinians in the occupied territories inline and in check, as the Nazis did to the Jews in another place so long ago.”
The Nazis forcibly moved millions of Jews (and others) from their homes to ghettos, from which they were sent to extermination camps. Six million Jews, Ray. Eleven million human beings.
Israel’s policies in the Occupied Territories are discriminatory; at times brutal. But any analogy with the Nazi Holocaust is wrong, unconscionable and biased.
Rabbi Ira Youdovin
Richard,
I hope you won’t censor me, or accuse me of misrepresenting your views if I suggest there are factual errors in the sentence below taken from your recent post:
“Recall that [Vladimir] Jabotinsky was an admirer of Franco’s Spain,
and both the president and prime minister of Israel, do little to hide their admiration for Jabotinsky.”
1. Yes, Jabotinsky envisioned a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan. But this was during the 1930’s; more than a decade before the UN Partition resolution for the first time formally allocated land to the Palestinians. And during one period of his life, he evidenced a fondness for dictators (I believe it was for Mussolini more than Franco. Fred Skolnik can clear that up.) But to say that he advocated fascism is to tar the reputation of an extremely complicated man who lived in difficult times. In the words of Benny Morris, this was Jabotinsky’s vision of a Jewish State:
“We do not want to eject even one Arab from either the left or the right bank of the Jordan River. We want them to prosper both economically and culturally. Equal rights for all Arab citizens will not only be guaranteed, they will also be fulfilled. In 1934, he wrote a draft constitution for the Jewish state which declared that Arabs would be on an equal footing with their Jewish counterparts ‘throughout all sectors of the country’s public life.’ The two communities would share the state’s duties, both military and civil service, and enjoy its prerogatives. Jabotinsky proposed that Hebrew and Arabic should enjoy equal status, and that “in every cabinet where the prime minister is a Jew, the vice-premiership shall be offered to an Arab and vice versa.”
2. Your rendering of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin is also inaccurate. Yes, he advocates incorporating the Occupied Territory into a single Jewish state, but he has used his presidency to courageously denounce the unfairness of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and to demand equal rights for both populations.
My personal opinion is that it’s unrealistic to believe that true equality can be achieved in a unitary state. But to tie Rivlin to fascism is inaccurate and unfair.
Ira
Ira:
For once, I think you take me to task justifiably on both points, and I wouldn’t consider blocking such a comment. On #1 I am not sure about the Jabodtinsky’s
attitude toward Franco and Mussolini, and I should have been more careful in my pronouncements. On #2 I agree
completely with your comments about Rivlin, and have noted them in the past as exhibiting a contrasting outlook
to that of Netanyahu when it comes to the treatment of the Palestinians. At the same time to advocate an Israeli
one state solution is to deny fundamental rights to the Palestinians, including the right of self-determination,
and for the president of the country to hold such views reinforces my view that Israel is far from ready for
meaningful diplomacy based on mutual recognition of rights and ending with some type of equality that is agreed
upon by the two parties.
Richard
Important note: Two state resolution is not even the part of meaningful diplomatic effort. Also, such self-determination Is not part of Canon Law of the Church. It is grave sin and scandal to all. In addition to that it is civil-ecclesiastical illegal. Church does not recognize illegal international law – that which constitutes for illegal human rights: illegal religious rights – such as one outlined in Hamas constitution. In essence illegal self-determination of a population … And inside of Davidic territories. Anything ecclesialisticaly iligal within Davidic Territories will account for guilt of blood and destruction. Avoid it. It is human responsibility to avoid it.
Ira, you are jumping the gun. In my reply to Fred, I was limiting it to the list of “Administrative” rules Fred posted to show evidence of Nazi Fascism against the Jews prior to the Nazi “Final Solution” to what they perceived as the ‘Jewish problem.’
I did not suggest Israel has gone that far – yet. If the world was not watching so closely, I don’t doubt Israel would be taking even more draconian steps to solve their ‘Palestinian problem.’
Since the latest round of troubles that started in October, 29 Jews have been killed and over 190 Palestinians have been killed during the same period. Palestinian life is cheap to the Zionists in Israel like Jewish life was cheap to the Nazis.
Regarding your reply to Richard on point 1, I never heard of Jabotinky before Richard’s comment, “Recall that Jabotinky was an admirer of Franco’s Spain, and both the president and prime minister of Israel, do little to hide their admiration for Jabotinsky.” This infers guilt by association and you are right to call Richard out on it.
What surprised me was the additional information you provide in your reply, Whether Benny Morris got Jabotinsky’s vision right, it did not turn out that way, just as The Balfour Declaration is violated in the Spirit and the letter by Israel to this very Day, “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”
Hell, Aaron claims Palestinians, those people already living on the Land of Palestine, don’t even exist, revising history and the Balfour Declaration.
On your point 2, I have admired President Rivlin in many of his statements and wrote to him several times to commend him on several Public statements he made that caused many Jews in Israel to hate him. I never get an acknowledgement and that’s no big deal for me.
The 1st Time I wrote him was concerning his statement in October, 2014 when he said, Time to admit that Israel is a sick society that needs treatment.’ echoing the essence of Isaiah’s Prophecy you do not address as a Rabbi.
Shalom
It has been said ‘History Repeats Itself.’ My inbox received this old video Today. It covers the period when Jews were organizing BDS against Germany in 1933 until a deal was worked out between Hitler and Zionists and BDS against Fascist Germany was called off.
Did anyone watching this video notice the Medallion Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels struck to commemorate his visit to Palestine in 1934?
Remarkable; having the Nazi Swastika on one side, and the Star of David on the other at the 6:55 mark of the video. That must be a Collector’s item!.
WOW! Along the Time Line, this video was posted here before the antisemitism hype in England, being used as a political tool to smear the Labour Party, and which just exploded onto the International Stage.
This started Monday with the reporting the former Mayor of London, England, spoke publicly about the same information established in this video without question, as evidence of his antisemitism.
Another member of the Labour Party is being smeared for posting the ‘Israel within the United States’ image as being Jew hate. I agree with Jonathan Cook. The image is more satire. It can be seen here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44583.htm
These things are almost interesting.
Post Azusa Street abuse of Church Order Nations allowed for the invention of Saud state Jordan in Holy Land, Post Nazi Nations allowed for the partial establishment of Israel. What exactly established partial Israel – that which did not fully create Jordan?
I do not feel amusement and entertainment about these things.
Perhaps, it is to much for a Jewish Rabbi to go about – He is in Traditions of Faith. He is not Church Charismatic, and he is not ordained in the Church Charismatic. Further, Rabbi is not stuck to the Perpetual Table, and it is impossible for him to keep up with all things that were of satanic seals and from satanic seals.
With that, Rabbi should tell you all to “JUST DO REPENT” and all would and should head his warning. So, we should drop all of this and have Judicial Civil-Ecclesiastical Person/s go about it – sort out all that took place and what is taking place now … and woes of hell in some future point in time.
Let’s just call us selfs proud losers! Let’s face it – were not qualified.
Things are hidden, not revealed, and we would not know what happened and why?
Post Azusa Street Charismatic Church Disorder Nations allowed for the invention of Saud state Jordan in Holy Land. Post Nazi Nations authorized for the partial establishment of Israel. What they did is not much different what Hitler was forced to do? Was it different? I do not think so. Post Azusa Street Charismatic Church Disorder Nations were in Nazi spirit against Jews. It was satanic seals, and it was blasphemy of God’s Spirit. That is why you all have Jordan today.
I do not recognise Jordan as the legal establishment in Holy Land. It is for a Saud-illegal civil-ecclesiastical establishment in Holy Land. Roman Catholic Church Charismatic does not accept it. It is in satanic seal done thing what they did.
Pre and Post WW I & II: It was an awful time in human history. Let us ask ourselves: “Are all those souls and spirits of living then, now and for all time bound to hell?” Are we (this generation) bound to hell due to all that took place? What is future of human existence?
All that took place then has bound to hell the human race. Hell on earth for the human race. Is it not?
Richard, I’m curious to know your thoughts on this Opinion piece in The Jerusalem Post?
‘Terra Incognita: Time to liberate the world from international law’
It is important to ask why so many countries have accepted as binding; concepts, borders and treaties whose origins are archaic and colonial.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Terra-Incognita-Time-to-liberate-the-world-from-international-law-452735
Thanks for calling this piece to my attention, Ray. It offers a rationalization
for Israeli expansionism by challenging the basic world order premise of territorial
sovereignty as reinforced by the idea since the end of WW II that territory should
not be acquired. This was the basis for SC 242 in 1967 unanimously calling for Israeli
withdrawal from the territory seized and occupied in the 1967 War. It is an important
trial balloon.
That’s how I read it as well!
Prof, Falk.
You are again misrepresenting Resolution 242 and I think your readers have a right to know what it includes, which is the following:
U.N. Security Council Resolution 242
November 22, 1967
The Security Council,
Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East,
Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,
Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter,
1. Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:
Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
2. Affirms further the necessity
For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area;
For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;
For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area, through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones;
3. Requests the Secretary General to designate a Special Representative to proceed to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States concerned in order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this resolution;
4. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council on the progress of the efforts of the Special Representative as soon as possible.
The Security Council did not call for unilateral action on Israel’s part but for a negotiated settlement between the parties under the auspices of a UN special envoy which would include “Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force” – to which the Arabs replied at Khartoum: no peace, no negotiations, no recognition. I fail to understand how you can allow yourself to misrepresent the letter and spirit of the resolution to such an extent.
Fred: With all due respect, interpretation of legal texts is not your strength!
It’s mind boggling. There is something New among Jews and imminently is persecuted. First by Jews, then by Nazis and then by the rest of the world. I still do not understand Zionism. Is it something like Christian Protestantism? I do not know. What is the purpose of it? Was all defects of international law on purpose in order to curb Self Determinations of Zionist Jews?
A note: I think I have mixed up all about prosecution patterns that applied to Zionist Jews self-determination. Thinking now – Je/ease they were under real wrath of devil? And really why? There was no such thing as Messianic Jews when Zionist started paving the way back?
Fred, it is you misrepresenting Resolution 242. You posted it and you cannot even understand what it is saying.
1. Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:
Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
The 1st part calls for the “WITHDRAWAL OF ISRAELI ARMED FORCES” from the land Israel captured by starting the military hostilities beyond the partial economic blockade of Israeli shipping passing through the Straits of Tiran.
Ray: I have to tell you the truth. All Resolutions are dead. All of this was said is dead:
”
1. Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:
Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
The 1st part calls for the “WITHDRAWAL OF ISRAELI ARMED FORCES” from the land Israel captured by starting the military hostilities beyond the partial economic blockade of Israeli shipping passing through the Straits of Tiran.”
Now, they can go back to Pre Word War I and War II conflict/s among Jews and Non-Jews. In addition to that they can go back to International Law that is dead – look at all defects of it.
All of that was twisted and made dead – is dead. Colonialism and its world-order was never at end in the effects of International Law. Therefore such destruction of the Twisted / Twisting of the Law
The more I look over those things the more they are ridicules and I have no other explanation but that it is in fact all twisting of Satanic seals in work – in power trough Abuse of Charismatic Church Order.
Therefore, such incredible destructions trough the merits of the illegally coded Laws.
Folks can face the Church Law and do correction to it – if they only can.
What about International Law – will they fix it? If they fix International Law and Jordan Landmark – then “WITHDRAWAL OF ISRAELI ARMED FORCES” could be negotiated. Even if so, it will not happen. It is to Late. They pushed Jews to far outside their Legit Self-Determination of Zionist Faith/Ideology – call it Whatever.
In fact, we prehaps should refer to International Law as “Whatever, Whatever, Whatever!” Just as it is done to the Canon Law of the Church. “Whatever”.
Nations have opportunity to repent.
” ,,, which should include the application of BOTH the following principles:
“Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
“Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”
Do you get it now? BOTH. Not one and then the other. BOTH.
The Arabs said NO!
I thought the whole point of your blog was to avoid this site!
In response to your statement:
“I thought the whole point of your blog was to avoid this site!”
Clearly you have just engaged a new fantasy. I can’t recall where I ever said the purpose of my blog was to avoid your site. As you can see by my clear written description of my blog it make no reference to what you state:
“Why uncensored?
There is nothing worse then so called intellectuals using both the power of the pen as well as the eraser at the same time.
It’s one thing to erase one’s own comments it’s quite another to erase someone else’s just because you disagree with his/her opinion.
In this blog I will only censor hate and personal attacks. Not opinion.
I welcome discussion on geo-politics in general.
I tend to focus on Israel (the world’s only Jewish State), Canada, the US, Middle-east and the EU.”
Perhaps you should now undelete my posting and let the readers decide?
Fred, important note: What exactly did nations and Arabs say in the past and present? What exactly are the nations saying right there?
Try this one on for size:
pure propaganda..
Each side promotes his point of view and his version of events. That is only natural. Calling this propaganda does not refute what it claims. There is nothing here that is factually untrue. I would add that in addition to the Arabs who fled or were encouraged by their leaders to flee until the massacre was over, there were certainly Arabs who were expelled, constituting, in Benny Morris’s view, the smallest number among the three causes. But we have discussed this, too, endlessly and it does not diminish the fact of Jewish displacement from Arab countries and certainly not the long history of anti-Jewish riots and pogroms there.
Such displacement is irrelevant to the dispossession of the Palestinians and the related destruction of their
villages. To fail to appreciate this behavior as ‘ethnic cleansing’ at the very least is to hide from reality.
I have strong impression that condition of refugies and refuging peoples are best to be evaluated, in detail.
Why are Arab refugees stronghold by Arabs and not integrated as they should be by countries of exile.
That they are not and they shall be is bad.
Those practices from Arabs and their countries (for years now) are spine chilling. It is beyond national racism among Arabs. It just seems and feels to be so.
Having refuges allows for urban and economic development. Why are they not taking care of folks – how long will all that demand world-wide Tax-payers income?
It can possibly be part of negotiations after 28 pages. Rebuilding and damage of World Trade center was extremely expensive (including war expenses).
I just got this video-link as well in reference to prior post:
Having refuges allows for urban and economic development. Why are they not taking care of folks – how long will all that demand world-wide Tax-payers income?
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/24/how_liberals_invented_segregation_the_real_history_of_race_equality_and_our_founding_fathers/
I think this article adds to the better understanding of National/Racial discriminations..
Aaron’s propaganda video and Kata’s propaganda video are essentially propagating the same information.
I have read reports the new State of Israel in 1948 wanted all the Jews of the Middle East Nations to come populate the new State since the Palestinians were still the majority of the people in the Land of Palestine.
I tend to believe there is some Truth to this report of Naeim Giladi, an Iraqi Jew, who claims Zionist terrorists were committing false flag attacks in the neighbouring Arab states to instill and incite fear in Jews to compel them to flee to the newly re-created State of Israel.
This is part of the intro to his record and his personal experience of those turbulent Times: I write this article for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews;
http://www.inminds.com/jews-of-iraq.html
The Hannibal Doctrine and the Samson Option come to mind
Ray,
I have studied load of heresies. I in fact can reliably determine (for myself) what are public (civil) as well as ecclesiastical heresies.
With that, I am not propagandist. I am very flexible person.
Whatever is illegal propaganda or not – I did not go about that! That is for propaganda makers and takers to go about.
The video-link addresed specific (limited) fact:
Having refuges allows for urban and economic development. Why are they not taking care of folks – how long will all that demand world-wide Tax-payers income?
Kata, I’m as sure you did not produce that video any more than Aaron made the one he posted. Different graphics and images, but essentially saying the same thing. I watched them both.
Here’s another propaganda video.
One more propaganda video. This is an ex-Israeli Jew now living in Amsterdam, appealing to Israelis to open their eyes to what is happening in Israel.
It was inevitable that the word ‘fascism’ would ignite some passions. I flinched myself till I did the 2 searches – Israel and fascism, plus US and fascism. This supplied more reading than I could allot time. Opinions are rampant in that direction and with that designated word usage. It was very useful to be alerted to this seemingly extreme point of view – much more common than one would guess.
As to Jabotinsky, it is important to read much more of his writings and history – at the minimum ‘The Iron Wall, Nov 4, 1923. Yes, he speaks of not evicting the Arabs in his plan to forcibly colonize Palestine and Transjordan. I’m guessing that if he could transfer them elsewhere in the Arab World, he might not label it an expulsion. His writings always refer to Eretz Israel which would also include Lebanon and parts of Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia besides all of Palestine. Included in this essay, besides the quote of Ira’s, is ‘Our peace mongers are trying to persuade us that Arabs are either fools, whom we can deceive by masking our real aims, or that they are corrupt and can be bribed to abandon to us their claim to priority in Palestine – in return for cultural and economic advantages.’ The ‘Iron Wall’ was to keep Jews separate from any and all others in this proposed ethnically pure nation. Jabotinsky also thought that the Italians should copyright the word ‘fascism’ and that might be a good idea. His fascination with Mussolini has been cited frequently and his regional aims seem consistent with totalitarianism. Also, he was writing during the British Mandate period and died before WW2. He was named Commander in Chief of the Irgun in 1935. If he proposed a democratic society, I have not discovered it in any writings.
This Jabotinsky reference reminded of when Bernie said he is neutral regarding Israel/Palestine and is 100% pro Israel. That’s a suspicious proposition!
IN 1993 and !995, the PLO cited their position on 242. It was originally Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon involved in the discussion, if I have it correct. Also, the French version uses the word ‘des’ in front of territories and this was also considered a legal document. Nations can refuse to obey UN Resolutions, however, and thus far it has not affected their membership.
Addendum: Richard, The reason that I try to limit comments to the subject presented – to concur, disagree, expand, contract or whatever, aspiring to the civil and impersonal, is because I joined a debating society in the 10th grade and we learned the basic principles of discourse, debate, and dialogue. Maybe this is an unrealistic academic level to impose on a comment section, as they consistently fail in the most rudimentary of ways. Whether in the 10th grade, grad school, or teaching a few courses in colleges, I found the same rules served me well. But some people won’t use relevant and civil guidelines unless forced to do so. If this continues, including religious drivel, we’re doomed – which is the motive.
I would also insist that people use their legal names. Why hide? Or maybe they should…….
The reality, Prof. Falk, is that nearly a million Jews living in Arab countries lost everything they had in a reign of terror initiated by the Arab nation as such while attacking the State of Israel with the declared aim of destroying it. It may be convenient for you to separate the two bodies of displaced persons – Arabs and Jews – but they were created by the same conflict and constitute a de facto exchange of populations no different from the exchange of populations that occurred in the war between India and Pakistan in 1948.
You eagerness to place the most extreme labels on Israel’s actions while whitewashing acts of barbaric Arab terrorism as somehow comparable to the operations of the French and Dutch partisans in World War II calls into question for me your entire posture as a moral arbiter.
At least my friend Howard chose to give a proper introduction to the video you guy’s chose to label “propaganda”:
This is so well done and worth the 4 minutes. For those of you who have known this for years, the exact numbers are still very interesting. Please pass this on.
I have always found it amazing that the wealthy Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia will spend billions each year building mosques in Germany (80 this year) and paying the Saudi trained Wahabist/ Salafist/ radical imams of these institutions but will not spend a penny resettling these Palestinian Professional refugees within their own borders. Just look at Jordan whose population is over 80% “Palestinian” and they have never been granted citizenship. OK to work in the Victoria Secret factory in Jordan but not Arab enough to be granted citizenship. Remember that in 1922 Sir Winston Churchill gave Transjordan to the Hashemites to guard Mecca and Medina. However, they were driven out by the Saudis. Chaim Weizmann, the first Israeli President agreed to give 80% of the mandate land of the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the Jordanians in return for a written agreement to take care of the displaced Palestinians. Today Jordan is 83% Palestinian but they are still refugees without citizenship status.
With the recent holiday of Passover, it is important to remember the nefarious Grand Mufti of Jerusalem whose hatred of Jews was the prime incitement of the 1920 Passover riots in Jerusalem where many Jews were slaughtered. On April 4, 1920 during Passover in Jerusalem an Arab mob was whipped into a frenzy in the Nebi Musa mosque east of Jerusalem and for four days terrorized the residents of the old city, killing six Jews and injuring 200 others. The British were aware in advance of the attacks and stood by doing nothing to protect the Jews. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who organized the defense of the Jewish quarter was arrested by the British and sentenced to a long prison term (but was soon released). This attack in 1920 signaled the beginning of organized Palestinian terror with its epicenter in the mosques. The first such clandestine organization was the Black Hand led by Syrian born Al- Qassam advocating for violent struggle to oust the British and eliminate the Jews, making way for a Greater Syria. Qassam was finally killed by the Brits. However, his example served as a role model… terror under the cloak of religion and recruiting from the lower class. This formula was replicated 60 years later by Hamas ( charter of 1983) to kill in the name of god. His influence was so widespread hence the naming of the infamous rockets which rain down on Israelis to this day (Qassam rockets) and the Al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas.
To appease the Arabs in 1921 Amin Al-Husseini was appointed by the British to the highest Muslim position in the land (the British were financially strapped after WWI) . Churchill was the Colonial Minister at the time for British Mandate Palestine. When the newly appointed Mufti asked Churchill to nullify the 1917 Balfour Declaration advocating the creation of a Jewish state in BM Palestine, Churchill flatly refused, stating that the 3000 years of Jewish presence in Jerusalem and the surrounding area made it logical fro this to be the Jewish homeland. With these words he echoes the declaration of Napoleon Bonaparte who, in 1799, after conquering the region of Acre, stated that the entire should be administered by the Jews, citing their 3000 years of continuous presence in this region. And let us not forget that On June 30, 1922 a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress in Washington DC endorsed a “ mandate for Palestine”, confirming the right of Jews to settle anywhere they choose between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. From the River to the Sea really meant something different back then. This is the core legacy of support which our current president somehow fails to recall but will hopefully be better upheld by the next administration.
Another interesting tidbit….
“ Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect Israels right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the greatest outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality. I solemnly pledge to do my utmost to uphold the fair name of the Jews, because bigotry in any form is an affront to us all.”
Martin Luther King…. March 25, 1968 ( a few weeks before he was murdered at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis)
Howard Novick MD
Lake Placid
Why Jews Fled the Arab Countries
by Ya’akov Meron
Middle East Quarterly
September 1995, pp. 47-55
Send
http://www.meforum.org/263/why-jews-fled-the-arab-countries
Why Jews Fled the Arab Countries
by Ya’akov Meron
Middle East Quarterly
September 1995, pp. 47-55
COORDINATING A PROGRAM OF EXPULSION
In a key address before the Political Committee of the U.N. General Assembly on November 14, 1947, just five days before that body voted on the partition plan for Palestine, Heykal Pasha, an Egyptian delegate, made the following key statement in connection with that plan:
The United Nations . . . should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might endanger a million Jews living in the Moslem countries. Partition of Palestine might create in those countries an anti-Semitism even more difficult to root out than the anti-Semitism which the Allies were trying to eradicate in Germany. . . If the United Nations decides to partition Palestine, it might be responsible for the massacre of a large number of Jews.
Heykal Pasha then elaborated on his threat:
A million Jews live in peace in Egypt [and other Muslim countries] and enjoy all rights of citizenship. They have no desire to emigrate to Palestine. However, if a Jewish State were established, nobody could prevent disorders. Riots would break out in Palestine, would spread through all the Arab states and might lead to a war between two races.1
Heykal Pasha’s thinly veiled threats of “grave disorders,” “massacre,” “riots,” and “war between two races” did not at the time go unnoticed by Jews;2 for them, it had the same ring as the proposition made six years earlier by the Palestinian leader Hajj Amin al-Husayni to Hitler of a “final solution” for the Jews of Arab countries, including Palestine. But the statement appears to have made no lasting impression, to the point that a historian of the Jews in Egypt has described Heykal Pasha as “a well-known liberal.”3
Particularly noteworthy is that although Heykal Pasha spoke at the United Nations in his capacity as a representative of Egypt, he continuously mentioned the Jews “in other Muslim countries” and “all the Arab states,” suggesting a level of coordination among the Arab governments. Indeed, four days after his statement, Iraq’s Foreign Minister Fadil Jamali declared at the United Nations that “interreligious prejudice and hatred” would bring about a great deterioration in the Arab-Jewish relationship in Iraq and in the Arab world at large,4 thereby reinforcing the impression that Heykal Pasha was talking not just on behalf of Egypt but for all the independent Arab states. Further confirmation came several days later, after the General Assembly had decided in favor of partitioning Palestine, when, “following orders issued by the Arab League,”5 Muslims engaged in outrages against Jews living in Aden and Aleppo.6
Another indication that Arab rulers coordinated the expulsion of Jews from their terrorites comes from a Beirut meeting one and a half years later of senior diplomats from all the Arab States. By this time, March 1949, the Arab states had already lost the first Arab-Israeli war; they now used this defeat to justify an expulsion that had been officially proclaimed before the war even began. As reported in a Syrian newspaper, “If Israel should oppose the return of the Arab refugees to their homes, the Arab governments will expel the Jews living in their countries.”7
According to Walid Khalidi, perhaps the leading Palestinian nationalist historian and a highly reputable source, “The Arabs held their ground throughout the period from November 1947 to March 1948. Up to March 1, not one single Arab village had been vacated by its inhabitants, and the number of people leaving the mixed towns was insignificant.”8 The mass departure from Palestine of 590,000 Arabs began only in April 1948; yet , Heykal Pasha had publicly and very formally announced a program to expel Jews from Arab countries fully five months earlier.
To understand how and when the expulsion of Jews from the Arab countries was actually carried out, we look at the Iraqi case in some detail, then others more breifly.
IRAQ
As mentioned above, the Iraqi authorities openly and formally identified themselves with Heykal Pasha’s threats just four days after he uttered them. Foreign Minister Jamali addressed the United Nations in this manner:
The masses in the Arab world cannot be restrained. The Arab-Jewish relationship in the Arab world will greatly deteriorate. . . . Harmony prevails among Muslems, Christians and Jews [in Iraq]. But any injustice imposed upon the Arabs of Palestine will disturb the harmony among Jews and non-Jews in Iraq; it will breed interreligious prejudice and hatred.9
By “the masses in the Arab world,” Jamali in fact meant his own government, which soon took a series of steps, including anti-Semitic legislation, against its Jewish population. This began with a 1948 amendment to the Penal Code of Baghdad, adding Zionism to other ideologies and behavior (communism, anarchism, and immorality) whose propagation constituted a punishable offense. Laws in 1950 and 1951 the deprived Jews of their Iraqi nationality and their property in Iraq, respectively.10
At times, Iraqi politicians candidly acknowledged that they wanted to expel their Jewish population for reasons of their own, having nothing to do with retaliation for the Palestinian exodus. Perhaps the most interesting incident took place at the tail end of the Israeli war of independence, in late January or early February 1949, when Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Sa’id described a plan to expel Jews from Iraq to Alec Kirkbride, then the British ambassador at Amman, and Samir El-Rifa’i, head of the Jordanian government. Kirkbride recounts that Nuri
Came out with the astounding proposition that a convoy of Iraqi Jews should be brought over in army lorries escorted by armoured cars, taken to the Jordanian-Israeli frontier, and forced to cross the line. Quite apart from the certainty that the Israelis would not consent to receive deportees in that manner, the passage of Jews through Jordan would almost certainly have touched off serious trouble amongst the very disgruntled Arab refugees who were crowded into the country. Either the Iraqi guards would have had to shoot other Arabs to protect the lives of their charges. . .
Samir and I were flabbergasted and our faces must have shown our feelings. . . .
I replied, at once, that the matter at issue was no concern of His Majesty’s Government. Samir refused his assent as politely as possible but Nuri lost his temper at being rebuffed and he said: “So, you do not want to do it, do you?” Samir snapped back: “Of course I do not want to be party to such a crime.” Nuri thereupon exploded with rage and I began to wonder what the head of the diplomatic mission would do if two Prime Ministers came to blows in his study. We then broke up in disorder, but I got them out of the house whilst preserving a minimum of propriety.11
Nuri probably chose the British embassy in Amman as the site at which to disclose his plan to the head of the Jordanian government because high-ranking British officials had often spoken of the need to exchange Palestinian Arab and Arab Jewish populations,12 and he most likely expected British understanding of, it not support for, his scheme.
Similarly, when Nuri visited Jerusalem on January 13, 1951, he met ‘Arif al-‘Arif, the Palestinian leader who served as Jordan’s district commissioner for Jerusalem. ‘Arif asked Nuri to hold up the departure of Jews from Iraq “until the problem of Palestine and of the refugees had been solved,” or at least “for one or two years.” Nuri refused to do so. Revealingly, his reasons bore only on considerations of internal Iraqi policy:
The Jews have always been a source of evil and harm to Iraq. They are spies. They have sold their property in Iraq, they have no land among us that they can cultivate. How therefore can they live? What will they do if they stay in Iraq? No, no my friend, it is better for us to be rid of them as long as we are able to do so.13
Nuri candidly acknowledges here that he wanted the Jews out of Iraq, and never mind what consequences their exodus might have for the future of the Palestinian Arabs.
In conversation with foreign diplomats, however, Nuri presented the expulsion of Iraq’s Jews in a very different light-as an exchange of population. On no less than six occasions in 1949, he made this point with foreigners.
(1) In talks with the U.N. Reconciliation Commission in Baghdad on February 18, 1949 (in other words, even before the Beirut meeting of Arab diplomats in March 1949, when the Arab states coordinated their stand on the matter), he threatened harm to the Jews: “Iraq has thus far been able to protect its 160,000 Jews but . . . unless conditions improve and unless Jews now demonstrated their good faith with deeds not words Iraq might be helpless to prevent spontaneous action by its people.”14
(2) To an American diplomat in Baghdad on May 8, 1949, Nuri mentioned his idea of a “voluntary exchange on pro rata basis of Iraqi Jews for Pal[estinian] Arabs,” adding the threat that “firebrand Iraqis might take matters into [their] own hands and cause untold misery to thousands [of] innocent persons.”15
(3) On August 8, 1949, he raised with an official of the British Foreign Office the idea of “an exchange of population.”16
(4) On September 29, 1949, a member of the British embassy in Baghdad reported Nuri’s wish “to force an exchange of population under U.N. supervision and the transfer of 100,000 Jews beyond Iraq in exchange for the Arab refugees who had already left the territory in Israeli hands.”17
(5) On October 14, 1949, Nuri spoke with U.N. officials about the exchange of “100,000 Baghdad Jews and 80,000 other Jews in Iraq for [an] equivalent number [of] urban Arab Palestinian refugees.”18
(6) To the Clapp Mission in 1949,19 Nuri presented the Jewish expulsion from Iraq as part of a population exchange.20
This (and other evidence) leads to the conclusion that while the Iraqi government sought to present the explusion of Jews as a crowd-driven retaliatory act for the exodus of the Arab refugees from Palestine, it in fact had a full-fledged plan in place before the Arab refugee problem even came into existence.
This interpretation resolves a number of historical questions. It explains the origins of the otherwise mysterious legislation in 1950 depriving Jews of their Iraqi nationality. For example, Shlomo Hillel cannot understand how this complete reversal of the Iraqi attitudes happened, and suggests that Nuri Sa’id did not really intend immediately to apply the law.21 This author respectfully disagrees: take into account the U.N. declarations, the anti-Jewish legislation, and the government persecution of Jews, and it becomes clear that the deprivation of Iraqi nationality was but another step in a plan of expulsion.
The Iraqi plan of expulsion also explains the bombing of the Mas’uda Shem Tob Synagogue in Baghdad on January 14, 1951, as Jews were registering there to emigrate to Israel. Zionists have been accused of causing the violence in the hopes of spurring the Jews to leave Iraq, an accusation whose truth so eminent an authority as Elie Kedourie has said “must remain an open question.”22 But knowing of the authorities’ expulsion plan suggests that not Zionists but Muslim Iraqis were behind the incident . That an Iraqi army officer arrested for throwing the bomb belonged to the opposition Istiqlal Party points to that faction’s responsibility.23
OTHER ARAB COUNTRIES
Similar patterns of Jewish exodus existed in other Arabic-speaking countries, including Yemen, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Algeria and Jordan.
Yemen. Yemeni persecution of Jews prompted a trickle of Jewish emigration to Palestine from the third quarter of the nineteenth century on. Heykal Pasha’s speech merely added momentum to the longstanding Yemeni policy of discrimination against and degradation of Jews, based on a particularly pedantic interpretation of the Islamic law. A bribe from the American Joint Distribution Committee to Yemen’s ruler, Imam Ahmad ibn Yahya, led to his agreeing to the mass exodus of Jews to Israel in 1949-50 by airplane via Aden, an operation known as “On Eagle’s Wings” (or, in journalistic lore, “Magic Carpet”). The Jews of Yemen, relying on their own means, suffering losses of life and deprivations, traversed the desert to Aden by foot and on donkeys. There, the Jewish Agency lodged them in camps and eventually boarded them onto planes that took them to Israel. In this way, some 50,000 Yemeni Jews reached Israel during the two-year period.
We lack information about the Yemeni government’s decision-making process. But this case provides the clearest example of Jews’ being persecuted and expelled for reasons having to do with Islamic law.
Libya. In Libya, as in Yemen, the exodus of the Jews began even before Heykal Pahsa’s declaration at the United Nations. Attacks on Jewish quarters in Tripoli and other cities occurred in 1945, leading to a death toll the British put at 130 Jews.24 In other words, Jews began leaving Libya three years before the establishment of Israel and seven years before Libya gained independence. Their departure turned into a mass exodus as soon as Israel gained independence and the gates opened to Libyan Jewry. As in Iraq, internal policy appears to be the reason both for the Jews’ expulsion and for later rhetoric inviting them back.
Syria. In Syria, too, the majority of Jews departed before independence in 1946, and long before Heykal Pasha’s statement and the establishment of Israel. As in Yemen and Libya, crude pressure on the Jews of Syria-such as the 1947 pogrom in Aleppo and the rape and murder of four Jewish girls who allegedly tried to smuggle themselves out of Syria-caused a substantial emigration.
While Syria is distinguished from other Arab countries by the fact that its legislation does not manifest discrimination against Jews, Heykal Pasha’s policy was indeed applied there, too. The government seized control of Jewish property in Syria on the basis of emergency legislation and gave it to Arab refugees. Thus, Palestinians were settled in Damascus’s Jewish ghetto, while the Alliance Israélite Universelle School, finished 1n 1939, became a school for Palestinian children. A diplomat at the French embassy in Damascus intervened with the Syrian authorities about this school and was told that the Syrian Jews had to provide room for the Arab refugees, the latter having been expelled by their Palestinian co-religionists.25
Egypt. In some cases, the execution of the Arab plan of expulsion extended over a period much longer than that of the military hostilities. In Egypt, the expulsion reached its climax only after the overthrow of the monarchy by disgruntled army officers back from the Palestinian battlefield. In Algeria, which did not attain independence until 1962, the expulsion took place later yet.
Jews in Egypt faced acute problems in the 1940s but these did not set their mass departure in motion. Rioting against Jews occurred in November1945, then resumed in June-November 1948,26 the latter time inspired by the war with Israel. An amendment to the Egyptian Companies Law dated July 29, 1947, required that 40 percent of a company’s directors and 75 percent of its employees be Egyptian nationals, causing the dismissal and livelihood of many Jews, 85 percent of whom did not possess Egyptian nationality.27 A letter to the editor of Akhir Sa’a in 1948 offers some insight into the predicament of Egyptian Jews:
It would seem that most people in Egypt are unaware of the fact that among Egyptian Muslisms there are some who have white skin. Every time I board a tram I hear people pointing at me with a finger and saying “Jew,” “Jew.” I have been beaten more than once because of this. For that reason I humbly beg that my picture (enclosed) be published with the explanation that I am not Jewish and that my name is Adham Mustafa Galeb.28
This testimony rather directly refutes the fine rhetoric of Heykal Pasha about Jews’ enjoying “all rights of citizenship.”
Cairo was slow in carrying out the plan proclaimed by its own diplomat, Heykal Pasha; only during and after the Suez Crisis of 1956 did Egyptian Jews leave in substantial numbers. At that time, the Egyptian Nationality Law was amended to prohibit “Zionists” from holding Egyptian nationality,29 Army Order no. 4 then confiscated property of individuals and associations;30 and supervision, imprisonment, or expulsion followed. The amendment to the Nationality Law of 1956 defined the term Zionism as “not a religion but the spiritual and material bond between those defined as Zionists and Israel.”31 A furthur ministerial decree in 1958 indicates that all Jews between the ages of ten and sixty-five leaving Egypt would be added to the list of persons prohibited from reentering the country.32 Clearly, these decrees had little to do with the Arab refugees of a decade earlier.
Algeria. In Algeria, no significant Jewish emigration occurred until the summer of 1961, and then nearly the entire population was gone within the year.33 Algeria’s independence from France was the key event here; Jews were no longer welcome after the French depature. The Algerian Nationality Code of 1963 made this clear by granting Algerian nationality as a right only to those inhabitants whose fathers and paternal grandfathers had Muslim personal status in Algeria.34 In other words, although the National Liberation Front in Algeria was known for its slogan “A Democratic Secular State,” it adhered to strictly religious criteria in granting nationality.
Jordan. No Jews lived in Transjordan in 1946 (when it became an independent state), as a result of Winston Churchill’s 1921 decision in favor of “preserving [the] Arab character” of Transjordan35 and the resulting British policy forbidding Jews from settling there. Legislation passed in 1954 declared that only non-Jews coming from the former British Mandate of Palestine were entitled to Jordanian citizenship.36 What is so striking about Jordan is that although it lacked a Jewish population, it still shared in the general Arab trend of excluding Jews. Further, it actively discriminated against Lebanese and Syrian Jews.37
SILENCE, DENUNCIATION, AND ACCEPTANCE
A strange silence prevails over the expulsion of the Jews from Arab countries. Out of fifteen books (mainly autobiographies) written by Iraqi politicians and other public figures, only two make any reference to the farhud,38 the Iraqi pogrom of 1941 that first shook feelings among the Jews for the land of their very ancient residence and was the first step in their leaving the country. In his memoirs, Tawfiq as-Suwaydi, head of the Iraqi government and the man with whom the agreement to transport Jews from Baghdad to Israel by air was reached, “does not recall, if only by way of a mere hint, the actual departure of the Jewish communities from his country.”39
On the Israeli side, the establishment did little to break the silence about the dire circumstances of the Jewish exodus from Arab countries.40 Quite the contrary, the romantic “magic carpet” image for the migration from Yemen and the “Ezra and Nehemiah Operation” name attached to the Iraqi migration stress the positive, glossing over the unhappy circumstances of the Arab expulsions. Jean-Peirre Péroncel-Hugoz, a Frence orientalist and journalist at Le Monde, notes with surprise “that Israel only very rarely emphasizes the fact that a part if its population left property and space it legitimately owned in the Arab countries of its origin.”41
Palestinians are the only Arabs vocally to denounce the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries. This began in January 1951 with a telegram from ‘Aarif to the Arab Legue after he failed in his efforts to persuade Nuri to stop the exit of Jews from Iraq. “Were every area of Arab land where Jews reside to retain the Jews and their property as a pledge, two problems would easily be solved, that of Palestine generally and that of the refugees in particular.”42 Along these lines, the Palestinian National Covenant calls for sending the Jews back to their lands of origin. Nabil Hga’th, Yasir Arafat’s advisor, twenty years ago drew attention to the invitation that the Sudan and Libya sent to “their” Jews to return, and called upon the Arab states to legislate a kind of “Law of Return” for Jews of Arab origins.43
Remarkably, some Palestinians have come to see Jewish sovereignty in Israel in terms of a population exchange, and as the necessary price to be paid for the Arab expulsions. ‘Isam as-Sirtawi, who participated in some well-known terrorist operations but later excelled in seeking contact with the Israelis, told Ha-‘Olam Ha-zé editor Uri Avneir that he gave up terrorism against Israel and instead began promoting negotiations when he realized that Israel serves as the asylum for Jews expelled from Arab countries; and that there is no going back along that path.44 Sabri Jiryis, director of the Institute of Palestine Studies in Beirut, enumerated in 1975 the factors leading to the establishment of the State of Israel. The Arab states had much to do with this, for they expelled the Jews “in a most ugly fashion, and after confiscating their possessions or taking control thereof at the lowest price.” These Jews then
Participated in the reinforcement of Israel, its strengthening and fortification to the degree we see it as present. . . . There is no need to say that the problem of those Jews and their passage to Israel is not merely theoretical, at least from the viewpoint of the Palestinian problem. Clearly, Israel will raise the question in all serious negotiation that may in time be conducted over the rights of the Palestinians. . . . Israel’s arguments take approximately the following form: “It is true that we Israelis brought about the exodus of the Arabs from their land in the war of 1948 . . . and that we took control of their property. In return however you Arabs caused the expulsion of a like number of Jews from Arab countries since 1948 until today. Most of these went to Israel after you seized control of their property in one way or another. What happened, therefore, is merely a kind of ‘population and property transfer,’ the consequences of which both sides have to bear. Thus Israel gathers in the Jews from Arab countries and the Arab countries are obliged in turn to settle the Palestinians within their own borders and work towards a solution of the problem”. Israel will undoubtedly advance these claims in the first real debate over the Palestinian problem.45
In brief, ‘Arif, Sirtawi, and Jiryis recognize that the expulsion of a million Jews from the Arab countries renders the return of Arab refugees infeasible. This realization is compounded by the fact that almost half a century has elapsed since the beginning of the refugee problem, both Arab and Jewish, within the Arab-Israeli conflict. Those individuals to be involved in any future rehabilitation program will mostly be heirs, and even grandchildren, of the original refugees.
CONCLUSION
Accounts of the late 1940s widely assume that the Arab exodus occurred first, followed by the Jewish expulsion. Kirkbride refers to “a decision of the Iraqi government to retaliate for the expulsion of Arab refugees from Palestine by forcing the majority of the Jewish population of Iraq to go to Israel.”46 In Libya, too, there is a similar tendency to associate the uprooting of the Jewish community with the establishment of the State of Israel. “Jews,” John Wright argues, “were forced out of Libya as a result of events leading up and following the foundation of the State of Israel in May 1948.”47
But these accounts oversimplify the actual sequence of events: as we have seen, in a good many cases, Jews were forced out well before the Palestinian exodus. As ‘Arif, Sirtawi, and Jiryis acknowledge, the Arab states contributed substantially to the Palestinians’ present predicament. A recognition of the full wrong done to the Jews of the Arab countries should put to rest Palestinian claims for restitution by Israel. As Péroncel-Hugoz correctly points out, the Jews “left property and space [they] legitimately owned” in the Middle East. In coming to Israel, then these Jews brought with them certain rights.
This information not only straightens out the sequence of events fifty years ago but it refutes exorbitant claims made in the name of Palestinians. A recognition of the true nature of those events represents the best chance for a swift resolution of the Palestinian refugee question today. With so many issues that will have a lasting effect on the future of their populations awaiting the attention of Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, this is one case where the two sides would do well to let history stand and call it even.
1 U.N. General Assembly, Second Session, Official Records, Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, Summary Records of Meetings, Lake Success, N.Y., Sept. 25-Nov. 15, 1947, p. 185. The original language of this statement is French, so we have altered the U.N’s English translation to bring it into harmony with the equally official French text.
2 For example, Emile Najjar, the last president of the Egyptian Zionist Federation and a future Israeli diplomat, pointed out Heykal Pasha’s remarks in a lecture delivered in Paris at the Centre d’Etudes de Politique Etrangére on Dec. 20, 1947.
3 Gurdron Krämer, “Aliyatah u-shki’atah shel Kehilat Kahir,” Pe’amim, Spring 1981, pp. 28-30-34.
4 U.N. General Assembly, Second Session, Official Records, Verbatim Record of the Plenary Meeting, vol. II, 110th-128th meetings, Lake Success, N.Y., Sept. 16-Nov. 29, 1947, p. 1391.
5 H.J. Cohen, The Jews of the Middle East, 1860-1972 (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1973), p. 67.
6 Daniel Pipes, Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) p. 57, records 75 victims of the Aleppo massacre.
7 Al-Kifah, Mar. 28, 1949, quoted Shlomo Hillel, Ruah Kadim (Jerusalem: ‘Idanim, 1985) p. 244. This book is available in English as Operation Babylon, trans. Ina Friedman (New York: Doubleday, 1987).
8 Walid Khalidi, “Plan Dalet, Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine,” Middle East Forum, Nov. 1961, p. 27.
9 U.N. General Assembly, Second Session, Official Records, Verbatim Record of the Plenary Meeting, p. 1391.
10 Cohen, Jews of the Middle East, pp. 29-35: Hillel, Ruah Kadim, pp. 135-42.
11 Sir Alec Kirkbride, From the Wings: Amman Memoirs, 1947-1951 (London: Frank Cass, 1976), pp. 115-16.
12 For example, the colonial secretary spoke of this to the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations in 1937. League of Nations, Minutes of the 32d (Extraordinary Sessions of the permanent Mandates Commission, Geneva, July 30-Aug. 18, 1932, p. 21; Hugh dalton, Memoirs: The Fatal Years, 1931-1945 (London: Frederick Muller, Ltd., 1957) pp. 426-427.
13 ‘Arif al-‘Arif, An-Nakba, 1947-1955, vol. 4 (Sidon and Beirut: Al-Maktaba al-‘Asriya, 1960) p. 893.
14 Telegram from the American embassy in Damascus to Washington, D.C., Feb. 21, 1949. I am grateful to Ron Zweig for making this and other U.S. government telegrams available to me.
15 Telegram from the American embassy in Baghdad to Washington, D.C., May 9, 1949.
16 Moshe Gat, A Jewish Community in Crisis: The Exodus from Iraq, 1948-1951 (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1989), p. 40.
17 Hillel, Ruah Kadim, p. 245.
18 Telegram from the American embassy in Baghdad to Washington, D.C., Oct. 15, 1949.
19 Formally, the Economic Survey Mission, a U.N. effort headed by the Tennessee Valley Authority chairman, Gordon R. Clapp, which led to the establishment of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
20 Information related to the author on Dec. 12, 1990, by Paul Marc Henry, secretary to the Clapp Mission (and later French ambassador to Lebanon).
21 Hillel, Ruah Kadim, p. 224.
22 Elie Kedourie, The Chatham Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), p. 449n. 72.
23 Gat, Jewish Community in Crisis, pp. 151-52. An Israeli court has confirmed that Zionists were not behind the explosion: Barukh Nadel, an Israeli journalist, wrote that Israel’s emissaries in Iraq were involved in this crime. In 1980, Mordekhaï Ben- Porat, a former member of parliament (and later a government minister) who had played a major role in organizing the mass immigration of Jews from Iraq to Israel, brought a libel suit against Nadel. Ben-Porat produced the results of an inquiry by the Israeli secret services in 1951, which concluded that none of the Israeli emissaries was involved in the crime. The defendant retracted his allegations and the case was closed. See Ma’ariv, Dec. 7, 1981.
24 John Wright, Libya: A Modern History (Baltimore, Md.: The John Hopkins University Press, 1982), p. 75n. 1; “The Jewish Case before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine as presented by the Jewish Agency for Palestine” (Jerusalem: Publishing Department of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, 1947), pp. 392-94.
25 The French diplomat (whose name is no longer known) told this in the early 1950s to Eugene Weill, secretary-general of the Alliance Israélite Universelle; Mr. Weill repeated it to the author in the early 1970s.
26 Cohen, Jews of the Middle East, pp. 49-51.
27 Ibid., p. 88; Shimon Shamir, The Jewis of Egypt (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987), pp. 33-67.
28 Published originally in Akhir Sa’a, then translated into French as part of a newspaper survey in La Bourse Egyptienne of July 22, 1948; cited in Yehudiya Masriya, Les Jufis en Egypte (Geneva: Editions de l’Avenir, 1971), p. 54.
29 Law no. 391 of 1956, section 1(a). See Al-Waqa ‘i’ al-Misriya, no. 93 repeated (1), Nov. 30, 1956.
30 Egyptian Official Gazette, no. 88 repeated (1) of Nov. 1, 1957.
31 “Egyptian Nationality,” in Revue Egyptienne de Droit International, vol. 12 (1956), pp. 80,87.
32 Egyptian Official Gazette no. 31, Apr. 15, 1958.
33 For a compelling account of how the “very old and well-established ” Jewish community of one Algerian town, Ghardaia, “could be blasted loose from its deep and ancient roots almost overnight, and could be shattered so completely,” see the compelling account by Lloyd Cabot Briggs and Norina Lami Guéde, No More For Ever; A Saharan Jewish Town (Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum, 1964).
34 See section 34 of the Algerian Nationality Code, Law no. 63-69 of Mar. 27, 1963 p. 306; also cited in Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord 1973, pp. 806-14.
35 Quoted in Aaron S. Klieman, Foundations of British Policy in the Arab World: The Cairo Conference of 1921 (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), p. 230.
36 Section 3(3) of Jordanian Nationality Law no. 6 of 1954, recorded in Al-Jarida ar-Rasmiya, no. 1171, Feb. 16, 1954, p. 105.
37 Anti-Jewish discrimination appears in order no. 1282 of July 1, 1957 (attributed to the Official Gazette of Jordan, no. 1282 by the Collection of Laws and Regulations [in Arabic], vol. 1 issued by the Jordanian Bar, Amman, 1957, p. 186), which exempts Syrian nationals from showing their passports on entering or leaving Jordan. They may use any other identifying document provided that “they are not Jews.” The same discriminatory legislation against Jews from Lebanon appears in Majmu’at al-Qawanin wa’l-Anzima, vol. 1 (Amman: Jordanian Bar, 1966), p. 188
38 Yehuda Tagar “Ha-Farhud bi-Ktavim be-‘Aravit me’et Medina’im u-Mehabrim ‘Iraqiyim,”Pe’amim, Summer 1981, pp. 38-45.
39 Hillel, Ruah Kadim, p. 285.
40 Mordekhaï Ben-Porat is one exception,: at the end of 1975, he established the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries. He also spoke up on this topic in the Israeli parliament (see, for example, Divrei ha-Knesset, vol. 72, Jan. 1, 1975, p. 1112).
41 Jean-Pierre Péroncel-Hugoz, Une Croix sur le Liban (Paris: Lieu Commun, 1984), p. 114. The issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries is likely to grow in importance as many of their number reach the forefront of public life in Israel. In the imd-1980s, for example, the chief of staff of the Israel army, the parliamentary speaker, the minister of justice, the minister of energy, and the minister of health all were of Iraqi origin. The secretary-general of the Histadrut (the labor federation) was born in Yemen. The deputy prime minister and the minister of the interior were born in Morocco. The countries of the Arab League have by now an impressive representation in the government of Israel.
42 ‘Arif, Al-Nakba, p. 894.
43 Jeune Afrique, July 4, 1975; Ma’ariv, July 3, 1975.
44 Kol Ha’ir, Oct. 30, 1986.
45 An-Nahar, May 15, 1975.
46 Kirkbride, From the Wings, p. 115.
47 Wright, Libya, p. 75n 1.
Ya’akov Meron holds a doctorate in law from the Faculté de Droit de Paris and is an authority on Islamic law and the law of Arab countries. He was a member of the Israeli delegation to negotiate the peace treaty with Egypt and to solve the Taba issue.
Re Iraq, what Meron doesn’t get into, is that anti-Jewish agitation and persecution had been renewed with Iraqi independence in 1932 and the increasing Nazi influence there (including the serialization of Mein Kampf in a daily newspaper), highlighted by the Farhud pogrom of 1941 (179 Jews killed, 586 Jewish businesses looted and 12,000 Jews pillaged in 911 buildings). And by the way, I have never heard Iraq, from the 1930s right up to Saddam Hussein, ever referred to as a fascist country here, and that is a curious omission on a website where so much time and energy is devoted to “proving” that Israel is.
It wasn’t until after WWI, the rules of war, invasion and occupation were codified. Fascism was not not part of the everyday lexicon until after the Fascists came to power between the Great wars.
Moses the Lawgiver did not enter the Promised Land. If the Law led to the Promised Land, after 4000 years of the Rule of Law, this world should be there by now. The Promised Land is a Spiritual reality the Faithful experience passing through the maze of people in this material world.
The Biblical record of Joshua’s actions in conquering the material land of Canaan would be called a Genocide these days. It’s too late to apply such terms to historical realities.
Repeatedly stated, none of this exit history addresses the scapegoating of the Palestinians. Scapegoat, meaning a person[s] bearing the blame for the sins, shortcomings of others. Biblical origin, placing the sins of the people upon a goat. Now it’s upon people.
There is nothing in law, philosophy, ethics, nor justice which condones this. The closest might be the ancient Athenians who practiced androlepsia. This is where you seize a kinsman of the offender, whose national relationship to the offender made it seem equitable, and punish him/them as retribution/retorsion/reprisal etc. This exists in religion – not in international law nor common decency. It exists in religion be it in Leviticus or Genesis. Example: God makes women suffer in childbirth, in perpetuity, because Eve ate that apple which symbolized knowledge. Fortunately, Queen Victoria differed.
As to the cheap shots regarding Palestinian refugees, Israel has received enough subsidies/weaponry, since its inception, from the US, world philanthropy, and German reparations to conquer/destroy Palestine and build a powerful nation. Yes, Conquer: which means to overcome and control [an enemy or territory] by force. And Israel is currently not finished and requesting a considerable raise to continue. Why shouldn’t they? The most they will receive is a formal version of tut tut. And no stopping their allowance. No getting kicked out of school.
Fred, this is where we disagree to the point I have to challenge your distorted revision of History.
It is FACT, it was Israel that started the military hostilities of the 1967 war beyond verbal bluster. The Israeli descision makers had already decided the combined Arab forces were no mach for the IDF.
Israel started the 1967 war hostilities and blames it on the Arabs.
There is absolutely nothing in the Bible or the Jewish religion remotely related to the refugee problem, not Eve, not childbirth, not sin, not goats not retribution, not reprisal. The causes of the refugee problem are easily ascertainable. The Arabs attacked the State of Israel with the declared aim of destroying it. As a result of this war a de facto exchange of populations occurred. To a certain extent Jews expelled Arabs and to a certain extent Arabs expelled Jews. To a certain extent Jews fled from Arab countries and to a certain extent Arabs fled from the Jewish state. Each side took up positions behind armistice lines and remained there in an unresolved conflict and continuing state of war which had created new demographic realities. The Arabs then initiated a new war in 1967, as a result of which the West Bank was occupied, specifically after an unprovoked and indiscriminate attack on Israel by Jordan. There is not a word of the above that you will not find confirmed by the Arabs themselves, from their motives and intentions in 1948 to Hussein’s explanation of his attack in 1967.
Prof. Falk, you are being willfully unfair. It is perfectly legitimate to label as nonsense still another allegation that some kind of biblical craziness guides the Jewish responses to Arab attacks and to suggest that Laurie’s disparaging manner of talking about the Jewish religion, which is any case irrelevant here, reveals hostility to it, which she herself frankly admits.
I have asked you repeatedly to refrain from disparaging remarks about
those who write comments and about the website, but you ignore my guidelines.
You are dogmatic and arrogant toward those who disagree with your opinions.
I will not tolerate this kind of commentary on this blog site. As I have suggested
to you many times the blogosphere has many websites that would find your style
and substance congenial. Why did you and your friends abandon your vow to
go elsewhere, which I thought was a good idea.
“It is perfectly legitimate to label as nonsense still another allegation that some kind of biblical craziness guides the Jewish responses to Arab attacks”
How do you balance this with with Aaron’s comment downstream? “All land Israel currently controls was promised to it by both Hashem”
Dear ray, as you surely must understand by now, that is the Orthodox Jewish view, not the view of the army, the government, the Zionist movement or the secular population. It is Laurie who is implying that it is crazy with her goats and all the rest. I am pointing out to people who can’t let go of the notion that the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel is religious that the claim is based on the fact that the Land of Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish people, its culture, its language and its national consciousness, pretty much in the same way that Greece is the birthplace of the Greeks.
Fred, surely you must understand and recognize by now when the Israeli government subsidizes home building in the occupied territories, it is operating and implementing the Biblical Vision of Greater Israel a Theocratic State.
When the Israeli government subsidizes various Temple Mount groups, it is facilitating the Zionist Vision of having total Sovereignty over Palestine and beyond according to the Bible even if the current generation of Jews in Israel don’t believe in the God of the Jews.
I don’t see how Laurie’s characterization of my remarks as “cheap shots” is any different from my characterization of her remarks as nonsense or hostile. You are again employing a double standard, to which your only reply can be, If you don’t like it, go elsewhere, to which my reply is, Gladly, but as long as you permit the vilification of Jews in a public forum I will respond.
Richard, it seems the young lady you spoke with reported in this article is not alone in her perception of rising Fascism in Israel. This header appears in The Jerusalem Post this am.
‘IDF general in bombshell speech: Israel today shows signs of 1930s Germany’
‘It’s scary to see horrifying developments that took place in Europe begin to unfold here,’ Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan said during a Holocaust Remembrance speech.
The comments unleashed a torrent of criticism against Golan on social media, with Twitter users accusing the deputy chief of staff of “forgetting the lessons of the Holocaust.”
“The Holocaust should bring us to ponder our public lives and, furthermore, it must lead anyone who is capable of taking public responsibility to do so,” Golan said. “Because if there is one thing that is scary in remembering the Holocaust, it is noticing horrific processes which developed in Europe – particularly in Germany – 70, 80, and 90 years ago, and finding remnants of that here among us in the year 2016.”
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/IDF-general-in-bombshell-speech-Israel-today-shows-signs-of-1930s-Germany-453142
It is clear that the existence of ‘fascism’ is a matter of interpretation and judgment, and is an ideological designation
used for societies whose identity is essentially Western. It doesn’t fit naturally elsewhere. Israel and Zionism has self-identified
as ‘Western’ and thus it is natural to regard its insistence on being a Jewish state and one where the army/security forces maintain
a political order that oppresses systematically another people (ethnicity and religion) that raises a concern about a drift toward
fascism. The general is an important weathervane, exhibiting apprehensions at the highest level of political prestige and authority,
but the ability to do this is itself ‘non-fascist’ as it exhibits at least some political space for dissent and opposition.
Fred,
I disagree with you. Since when was Israel maintaining an occupation?
All land Israel currently controls was promised to it by both Hashem and for the Atheists who don’t believe what the Koran and Bibles state, the British.
Furthermore, the last time there was any sovereign there he was a Jewish King, not a “Palestinian”. To be even more precise he was a Judean Jewish King.
Since then they were all “occupiers” until we restored our homeland in 1948.
So when you are back in the home that was stolen from you for over 2000 years I hardly see that as an occupation.
I see that as a restoration of stolen property!
Are you that afraid of my reply, Prof Falk? You don’t like to be challenged, do you, even politely, when all is said and done.
You are being silly. I have explained that I do not want this blog site to be dominated
by this bickering about a single cluster of issues. This is the basic point.
Beyond this, we are too far apart to engage in any useful exchange of views. I view the
statement by the general on the anniversary of the Holocaust of great significance, and you
discount it by pointing to the silence of the majority of Israeli military officers. To speak
out provocatively, as did this general, is a courageous act of this individual, and rather than
be dismissed and derided, it should be taken as a warning about the drift of Israeli society
that many of us, far less qualified to comment, also observe. It is your shortsighted privilege
to refuse such warnings, but to expect others to be swayed by such an argument is to be quite naive.
As you must know, it is only the rare individual that steps forth to rebuke the group, especially
in a society such as Israel where ideological conformity is so strong, especially among the IDF upper
echelons.
Being “far less qualified to comment” than the general has never prevented you from going far beyond anything the general thought to say and using language so violent that occasionally you even backtrack a step or two (as with the Nazi business). And somehow you have never deferred to and promoted the opposing views of dozens if not hundreds of other “authorities” concerning whom you are also “less qualified to comment,” so I think it would be fair to say that the only reason you are promoting the general is because he is giving you what you are looking for. And what exactly are you “observing” other than newspaper headlines and left-wing polemics that enables you to gage the mood, atmosphere, leanings, tendencies or anything else about Israeli society?
I can understand why you have been afraid to debate people like Alan Dershowitz in forums that do not permit you to use the delete button or run and hide when the holes in your reasoning and knowledge are exposed. Certainly the reason is not that your positions are too far apart, for debates are not negotiations aimed at reaching agreement but a presentation and thrashing out of conflicting views before the public and have a respected place in Western political culture despite your fear of them. Whether or not I am silly, you are certainly dishonest in your manner of representing your own motives and intentions, but I can see that these become so entangled in your rhetorical devices that conveivably they deceive even you.
Note: My ‘cheap shot’ reference was to the 2 videos regarding Palestinian refugees. The first one is from ‘Prager University’ which is not a college but a blog. All the ‘courses’ take 5 minutes and claim to give you complete info in the designated category. There is no claim that it is an accredited school of any sort but is revealed to be Prager’s conservative views. The second video by Danny Ayalon is nearly identical to the first. Admittedly, I would use the term cheap shot, and much worse, elsewhere in this comment section but the reference was specific in this particular case.
For Israel supporters to deride Palestinians regarding refugee funding is a supreme challenge to word selection. Mine was very mild considering the ultimate hypocrisy,
debased individuals?
Richard, I’m disappointed to see you deleted Fred’s comment about the Israeli General being a minority view among Israeli Generals. Maybe a majority of Israel Generals see the same warning signs, but dare not say it Publicly to protect their careers.
I was equally disappointed to see you deleted my comment in reply to Fred revising history, by saying the Arabs started the ’67 war, when it was Israel that started the military hostilities no matter how much it is spun otherwise.
Fred should reconsider his view of the General, even though his is one point of view, he could be right and the majority could be wrong. This real possibility of the way life is comes from the Jewish tradition in the Tanahk.
It is the record of the kings of Israel and Judah having a summit meeting to decide going to war or not. The kings summoned all the Prophets of God to tell them if God was with them in the war or not? ALL 400 prophets of God were unanimous in telling the kings God was with them in the war.
It was one individual, just like the General, to inject some realism into the mix.
Even though it cost him the rest of his life in prison, Micaiah, the True Prophet of God said to the kings, ‘I saw the Lord asking his Heavenly Host, who will entice the King of Israel to come up to battle so he may die? And one said this, and another said that, and another said, ´I will put a lying spirit in the mouth of all the prophets of Israel.´ The Lord God of Israel said, ¨Do it!¨
1 Kings 22 & 2 Chronicles 18
The king of Israel died in the battle that night.
Ray: I don’t want this web site to be dominated by arguments that lead no where. It
is obvious to me that when a single general spoke out in this manner that his words deserved
to be heeded, and likely strike raw nerves.
You can imagine how a Hamas dissident would be viewed by Zionist if he condemned the language of the Hamas
Covenant..
Thanks for your consistently humane commentary.
Richard
I agree with the essence of Richard’s new article on selecting the Secretary-General of the United Nations. I’ve wrestled with the same thoughts and perceptions of the S-G of the UN for a while. Unless Fred, Aaron, Ira or Harvey have strenuous objections to this report in Haaretz Today, we can move on.
‘The IDF General Who Challenged Netanyahu’s Suffocating Holocaust Analogies’
By pointing to intolerant trends in Israeli society, the deputy army commander deviated from the accepted script of Jews as eternal victims.
I’ve never met the IDF Deputy Chief of Staff with the quintessentially Israeli name Yair Golan, so it’s hard for me to tell whether he’s brave or stupid or possibly both. Golan spent much of his military career in elite paratrooper units and participated in every major IDF campaign since the 1982 war, including house to house combat against Palestinian terrorists as the head of an infantry brigade in the 2002 Operation Defensive Shield, so I suppose his courage is self-evident, though battlefield daring doesn’t always include courage of convictions as well.
Golan’s foolhardiness has become obvious since his bracing Holocaust Day speech on Wednesday at Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak, in which he refrained from casting Israeli society as an eternal victim but warned against the increasing intolerance that could turn it into a potential perpetrator as well. I am assuming that Golan knew that his words would be made public, that he was cognizant of the tremors of shock they would send throughout Israel and parts of the Jewish world, especially on such a sensitive day, and that he was fully aware that within the space of a few hours he would become public enemy no. 1 for Israeli right wingers and self-styled Jewish patriots abroad. If he didn’t know, he’s an idiot, if he did and went ahead nonetheless then he’s a fool, career-wise at least, but more of a hero as well.
Within minutes of Golan’s speech, the right wing spin machine leaped into action, inflating his words, taking them out of context, blowing them up to diabolical proportions. Rather than challenging Golan’s assertion that disturbing trends in Israeli society evoke associations to Germany and Europe in the 1930’s, which is what he actually said, his words were twisted to suggest that he had compared the IDF to the Wehrmacht, Israel to the Nazis and Palestinians, by logical extension, to persecuted Jews about to be carted off to concentration camps. With the ground thus prepared, politicians started piling up on Golan, accusing him of defiling his own IDF, defaming the state and aiding and abetting BDS. The self-induced mass hysteria quickly turned into a virtual witch-hunt, which I can only assume Golan was also prepared for, because it is part and parcel of the ominous trends that he was warning against.
Once again, it was left to Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to defend the honor of the IDF against hotheaded right wing politicians, as he had in the recent public storm that followed the Hebron killing of a wounded terrorist by an IDF medic. Along with President Reuben Rivlin, Ya’alon is one of the last Israeli politicians who still believe that hawkishness and continued occupation do not have to contradict democracy and a commitment to the rule of law. It is a position that has always been fiercely contested by the left but is now increasingly rejected by the right, for diametrically-opposed reasons: universal human rights and democratic principles are increasingly viewed and portrayed by right wing leaders as subversive concepts used by Israel’s enemies to weaken its hold on its historic homeland. That also sounds familiar to students of mid-twentieth century Europe, but let’s skip that for now.
Golan’s main message, as Netanyahu probably knows, was that the kind of inflamed nationalistic rumble that erupted from the demonstrations in favor of Sgt. Elor Azaria, the soldier who shot the terrorist – which Netanyahu, at best, did nothing to quell – were ugly and dangerous and, yes, reminiscent of darker times. That such rallies, as well as statements made by irresponsible politicians, carry an implicit and often explicit message that killing Palestinian terrorists, no matter what the circumstances, is not only excusable but also desirable (and they’re all terrorists in the end, as everyone knows). And that the IDF’s anachronistic efforts to cling to its old-time leftist and defeatist values of “purity of arms” and to adhere as much as possible to the commonly accepted laws of war and rules of engagement have no place in today’s all-out battle to the death against Israel’s enemies.
In that sense, Golan’s greater sin may have been his direct challenge to the world view presented by Netanyahu himself a few hours earlier at the official Holocaust Day ceremony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Netanyahu, of course, is the last person on earth who can object to comparisons between the Holocaust and the present because they are his number one rhetorical weapon of choice, as he amply demonstrated during last year’s debate over the Iran (Munich) nuclear deal concluded by Obama (Chamberlain) with ayatollahs (Nazis) in Tehran (Berlin). But for Netanyahu and, alas, for most Israelis and Jews, Holocaust analogies can only be a one way street: Israelis and Jews are always cast as the victims, no matter what the circumstances, while the rest of the world, whatever its grievance might be, is trying to finish what Hitler, Himmler and Goering had started.
Gas chambers or not, atomic weapons or not, Netanyahu has embedded Israelis in a world in which they are no more masters of their fate than the Jews of Ghetto Bialystok or Ghetto Lvov, a universe in which the village is always burning and the carving knife is eternally on Israel’s neck. It is a suffocating, essentially anti-Zionist message in which the establishment of the state of Israel has done nothing to change the basic condition of the Jews. It depicts a world of danger and darkness, devoid of light or hope, in which Israel is repeatedly abandoned by its duplicitous friends and unfaithful allies, in which Jews around the world are perennially on the lookout for an upcoming pogrom, in which anti-Semitism has somehow broken out once again as a plague for no rhyme or reason, in which even naive college students on American campuses who support a boycott to protest the occupation are an existential danger, in which the only hope for survival lay in eternal vigilance against external enemies and internal backstabbers. It is a world in which the Final Solution is always on the table, a world of perennial conflict between good and evil, a world in which there is no room for mercy, remorse or weak-kneed illusions of peace. Just as it was back then.
By painting such a one-sided world, Netanyahu helps himself, politically, of course, but he also makes it easier for Israelis to feel justified and virtuous. He absolves them of the need for retrospection or for looking in the mirror. He enables them to deny reality and to fail to connect the dots, even if the evidence is under their noses. Just as Israelis – as well as most American Jews, by the way – have mastered the art of ignoring half a century of occupation “beyond the mountains of darkness” and just as they have repressed memories of their blatant indifference to the carnage and casualties in Gaza in 2014, so they are now capable of overlooking the repeated and often well-documented pattern of Palestinian assailants who are killed despite posing no danger, as well as the increasing public displays of dangerous racism and even genocidal agitation in the streets, in football stadiums and, perhaps most ominously, on social media.
There are thousands if not tens of thousands of Israelis who call for ejecting, raping and murdering Palestinians, leftists and even plain old critics of the government, on an almost daily basis. The cry “Death to the Arabs” which reverberates in radical right wing demonstrations as well as football fields has become so routine that no one seems to notice anymore. Just this past Sunday, a gang of 40-50 football thugs assaulted Nadwa Jabber, an Israeli-Arab teacher in a mixed school devoted to coexistence, when she was in her car with her two young daughters outside the Jerusalem shopping mall. “Here are some Arabs,” they shouted, surrounding Jabber, who had stopped at red light, blocking her way, pounding on her car and screaming racist taunts and insults. “It was 15 minutes of pure terror,” she said.
That didn’t seem to bother Netanyahu or his ministers too much. There was no public outcry or demands that steps be taken. But when a senior army officer with a proven battle record and a history of tough and uncompromising aggressiveness towards terrorists accurately points out, as a child in the Emperor’s New Clothes, that such incidents are reminiscent of attitudes towards Jews in Berlin in the 1930’s, as they surely are, that’s when Netanyahu, his ministers and, frankly, most of public opinion – that’s when they become enraged. That’s when they feel a red line has been crossed. That’s when they demand immediate action, or else.
Chemi Shalev
Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.718231
Fred, as to how I use my Time, living my 73rd year and having Faith in the God of Abraham living TODAY, I have all the Time in this world and the next. It doesn’t matter what you or others think. I am already living in the Eternal Sabbath in my own reality.
Even secular people know the implications of ‘Armageddon.’ They may not know Armageddon was derived from Har Megiddo during the occupation of Judea and Samaria in Palestine 2000 years ago.
Har Megiddo/Armageddon still exists as a physical place, but is now located in Israel recreated from the Bible after an absence of some 2800 years and this discussion is still over the occupation of Judea and Samaria in Palestine these 2000 years later.
I read The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz daily to keep informed about the developing trend lines.
Also, this Public Record and more, is part of my personal history. Even though it’s 40 years later, current news events are the Revelation of the unfolding details of the General Vision.
Now Fred, there you go again, displaying your nastiness under the false veneer of civility.
Taking your words, “I would sincerely like to know”, when I give a sincere reply, you resort to insults and disparaging remarks.
You are not aware of anything about my life over here to say I’m treated like a lunatic. This is just your Jewish superiority complex/arrogance showing through.
Not my problem if you don’t believe what anyone can read in the September 13, 1976 KANSAS CITY TIMES report above. Having no editorial control over what appeared, I thought it was cool they chose to publish on the 13th Day of September 40 years ago. With the 13 jersey I was wearing, it could be a sign I’m in sync with the Day.
Thinking I was such a lunatic, the KANSAS CITY TIMES, published a follow up story on ALL SOULS DAY, November 2, 1976. A local radio talk show had me in the studio over a dozen times because the people were calling the station wanting me back on.
You probably didn’t see where it is recorded, I was warning of ““idea being put out subtly and deceptively” by the government that we have to get prepared for a war with Russia.”
It’s taken all this Time, but that Prophecy then applies to the current unresolved issues between the US and Russia as both sides are flexing their military muscles these days, not always reported in the news media.
Jewish, Christian and Muslim religion all claim the number 7 is associated with God. In 1983, 7 years later to the month, the made for TV movie ‘The Day After’ appeared, based on KANSAS CITY being destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. The movie could have been made in any city.
That movie ends with the same frame as the picture of me THE KANSAS CITY TIMES used in the ALL SOULS DAY, November 2, 1976 record 7 years earlier, standing under the words at the base of the Liberty Memorial destroyed in the movie 9 seconds into the video clip.
In FACT, as I was active and highly visible at that 1976 Republican Convention, the Secret Service protecting the President called me out of a crowd for questioning. Instead of questioning me in some room, they led me to stand at the podium of the President of the United States on a Secret Service restricted balcony as thousands of Republicans below and ABC, CBS, & NBC were broadcasting live expecting the President to be standing there. Having the image shown in the newspaper record above, I dare say no other person having such a revolutionary image stood any Presidential podium before or since.
.
Just so you might possible believe your own eyes, Fred, here is the other KANSAS CITY TIME record.
Obviously, I had nothing to do with all these facts coming together, so I have no illusions or delusions about myself. The Eternal Sabbath is when the human understands it is God that does the works lest anyone should boast or think of themselves as being better or superior to any other.
You might imagine my surprise when the Secret Service Agent, questioning me face to face standing at the President’s podium, asked me, after about a dozen questions, if I was Jesus Christ? I had no illusions about that then or now, and in a nanosecond answered, NO. Who are you then? A Prophet? was the next question Never entered my mind prior to unexpectedly finding myself in that unusual situation. I know now it was God who led me there.
What are the chances of the same frame, from newspaper to movie 7 years later?
Richard,
I read with amazement your characterization of Israel as a society “where ideological conformity is strong”. Israel has lots of traits—some good, some bad. But ideological conformity is not one of them. To the contrary, it is one of the most argumentative societies on the face of the earth, although arguments are conducted with words, not bullets and swords.
Debates over key issues, such as treatment of the Palestinians and territorial expansion, are largely ignored on this blog, either because of ignorance or a desire to portray Israelis as being monolithically committed to objectional policies. But these debates rage on in the daily papers, television, coffee houses, family dining room tables, and in the Knesset, which often makes the Republican Candidates’ debate look like a socialites’ tea party.
Regarding ideological conformity among “the IDF upper echelons”: generals everywhere tend to be ideologically monolithic, at least outwardly. In fact, high ranking members of Israel’s security-establishment are often more openly critical of official policy than are their counterparts elsewhere. You and I saw “The Gatekeepers” in the same movie theater, so you assuredly remember that six former chiefs of Shabak, Israel’s FBI in charge of maintaining order in the Occupied Territory, condemned the way in which the Occupation is being imposed. This freedom of expression is the strongest safeguard against any tendencies toward fascism.
One other matter. I didn’t get to read Fred Slotnik’s comment before you deleted it, so I don’t know if there was anything else in it you found offensive. But Fred’s pointing out the majority of Israel’s generals disagreed with their colleague on the issue of fascism is not a valid reason for censoring the comment. Stating the truth—and Fred’s comment reports the truth—does not “dismiss” or “deride” either the general’s judgment, or his courage in stating it. That judgment should be left to the reader. And isn’t it the moderator’s responsibility to do whatever he can to insure that his readers receive the facts from which to draw their judgments.
In this instance, censorship serves not to promote civility, as you claim, but to convey a false reality.
It was very surprising to me to research the word ‘fascism’ and learn how prevalent the term has become when describing authoritarianism in the US and Israel. Richard’s essay does not make pronouncements on this word usage but asks why it’s become so common – albeit his words are often/usually twisted to fit hasbara guidelines.
At first uncertain, I am now firmly convinced that it is an inappropriate usage – albeit too far gone to change. Fascismo is an Italian brand name and a Fascista is a member of the Fascist Party, There are no gradations; one is or is not. In the same way one is not somewhat Ku Klux Klanish, Mormonish, Black Pantherist or ISISish. These are autocratic groups that do not tolerate dissent. One does not pick and choose among the dictates.
Italian has two more recent words – ‘neofascismo’ and ‘neonazismo’ which are questioned in definition of minimizing or denying the real meaning of the terms. Justifiably so…..
Fascism is a political movement that exalts nation, and often race, above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader , severe economic and social regimentation and forcible suppression of any/all opposition. There are no moderate Fascists. Understandably, there are fears about the societal variables that precede the formation of totalitarian regimes, but they need a precise description.
Also, there are a significant number of retired Israeli military who are very critical of Israel.
The Council for Peace and Security. aka the Peace and Security Association, has over 1000 ex IDF military who speak out candidly regarding warring actions and peaceful solutions. Although not easy to find in English, a video exists of Major General [res] Nati Sharony an Executive Board Member of the P&S Association, on October 6, 2015. The video lasts an hour and nine minutes but is well worth the time spent. It’s extremely risky for both current military and nontenured professors to speak candidly when in disagreement with their administrations. General Yair Golan is a hero – especially considering his rank, and he may inspire others to follow his lead. There will be repercussions and he’s willing to risk them. In Nov of 2014, 100 retired and reservist generals presented Netanyahu with a signed document expressing their insistence on a solution regarding Palestine. These types of actions are more common than people realize.
Ostracism from tyrannical clusters or individuals is cause for personal/collective self-respect and serves as a membership validation into groupings of worthy/honorable humanity. Keep it coming, Dr. Richard Falk. Those with a regard for universal morality/justice also have a high regard for you and your kind – may they increase……
It’s more than risky for men in uniform to make political statements; it’s impermissible. That is true in all democracies, for obvious reasons. It is also impermissible for teachers to make political statements in their classrooms, and that is primarily what they are attacked for. Your idea that 1,000 of this or that in a country of 8 million people and an army of hundreds of thousands including reservists is indicative of one thing or another is not in the least bit true in a country with as diverse a range of political views as Israel. Insofar as you are trying to celebrate views that more or less accord with Meretz, what they represent is about 4% of Israel’s voters, and even they don’t try to delegitimize Israel in the way that you do.
What you are noting, Fred, is the drift of Israeli politics further and further to the right. In any
such political community when someone speaks against the oppressive trend he is almost certain to be
isolated. In my view, the Jewish prophets exemplify the tradition of speaking truth to power, much in
the spirit of the speech of the general of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
This ‘creature’ recognizes reality when he sees it.
It is no longer satisfactory for Israel wanting to be recognized as Israel. It now wants to be recognized as a ‘Jewish’ State, to re-enforce the Jewish ‘superiority’ complex.
If the Truth hurts, it’s not because it’s necessarily anti-Semitic Jew hatred, Fred.
You are the most militant hasbara poster defending the Jewish State from all criticism, using the standard blanket charge of ‘Jew hatred’.
Good to see the discussion in this article about the IDF General seeing signs of Fascism in Israel is now entering Israeli politics in a bigger way, and will play itself out. As the Haaretz article above speculated, his career is now in danger.
‘Opposition leaders rip Netanyahu for ‘hypocrisy’ in attacking general’
Prime minister’s public admonition of Maj. Gen. Yair Golan is ‘outrageous,’ Herzog says; Meretz head says it takes a ‘Holocaust cheapener’ to know one………………………….
http://www.timesofisrael.com/opposition-leaders-rip-netanyahu-for-hypocrisy-in-attacking-general/
In the US, the Uniform Code of Military Justice applies not only to those on active duty but those retired as well. Article 88 addresses ‘contempt’ shown not only to ranking military but throughout the civilian leadership as well – even at the state level. I think it’s Article 2 that cites application to the retired as well. Many are just purged from the military quietly – some 197 officers in the past 5 years who crossed Obama. It’s a serious risk. Many people might do so for their own self/group interest but not for others suffering from injustice. Those who do so are very special people.
It would be interesting to know if any group of high ranking military has ever amassed for peace and justice as they have in Israel, and to what extent they are in defiance of military law. Also a very effective deterrent is selective media regarding those who take such action. The Israeli Council For Peace and Security [retired colonels and generals of the IDF] made explicit their view in early 1980’s that Israel’s security did not depend on the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and, indeed, that holding these territories with their 1.7 million hostile inhabitants [at that time] might be detrimental to security. It is explained why this was concluded. Who reported this? A few like Everett Mendelsohn in a book entitled A Compassionate Peace which he prepared for the Quakers. The book is lauded on the back cover by Philip Klutznick, President Emeritus, of the World Jewish Congress. When Gen Matti Peled spoke in San Francisco, 1987, it was a bit daunting to attend – required considerable police protection. The Peleds are symbolic of the ultimate in human allocentrism.
A reminder; the racist segregationists in the southern US were the overwhelming majority.
Every protest of the kind you are alluding to is publicized to the hilt in the Israeli media. You have absolutely no knowledge or understanding of Israeli public life other than what you are picking up from English-language sources. That isn’t good enough.
The debate over whether the occupation is good or bad for security is a military issue that can be and has been argued on either side. Saying this one or that one “says” is not an argument and does not prove a point.
The occupation will end when the Palestinians return to the negotiating table and demonstrate their willingness to live in peace with Israel.
Your last line exhibits the extreme one-sidedness of your views, and why discussion seems
like a waste of time. To act as if Israel under Netanyahu is prepared to negotiate in good
faith is a bit of a stretch, and you at least admit this. The PA has been consistently willing
to negotiate if Israel agree to suspend settlement expansion, widely viewed as an unlawful practice.
Israel suspended building in the settlements for 10 months in the past and it didn’t bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table. You are very naive if you think building a kindergarten or fifty housing units in this or that settlement is the issue.
Your assertion that it is pointless to debate this issue because my understanding of what is preventing peace differs considerably from yours and your characterizing it as “extreme” reveals the same arrogance that you are in the habit of accusing me of, as if your own views were not extreme and one-sided. I can only repeat that you are not reading the Middle East correctly.
Nonsense Aaron! Here’s Netanyahu boasting how he derailed OSLO. Israel violated it with impunity all the Time. What can the Palestinians do with sticks and stones while Israel has Apache helicopters, Jet fighters, tanks and artillery.
This view of yours is delusional Fred; “The occupation will end when the Palestinians return to the negotiating table and demonstrate their willingness to live in peace with Israel.”
No matter how you spin it, the world is waking up to see, Israel wants more Palestinian land, not Peace.
It BS to say Israel stands for Peace without preconditions while it builds preconditions on the very ground that is the purpose of Peace negotiations.
Your position is the Palestinians have nothing to negotiate or offer Israel while Israel holds all the cards economically and militarily, so they should just roll over and play dead as Israel expands on their land. Only in your dreams!!
Fred, it is only half True when you believe Israel suspended building in the settlements for 10 months.
Israel did not stop construction that was already underway, and did not stop new settlement building in Arab East Jerusalem.
Ray, not even half, as suspending an unlawful activity is hardly a concession, and during
the negotiations it was Israel, not Palestine, that was encroaching further and further on
the two-state expectation of two states enjoying equal sovereign rights and status.
Your final sentence here is typical, using dogmatic language to describe a reality
that is at best ambiguous.
The tactic of labeling as dogmatic every assertion that I make when every assertion that you make is no less dogmatic doesn’t really play. I have absolutely never encountered a hint in anything you have written alleging anything other than Israel’s absolute and complete guilt in everything that pertains to the conflict over the last 150 years.
Not that I mind in the least but phrases like “This view of yours is delusional” or “It is BS to say” does not strike me as especially polite and certainly characterizes the tone of Israel’s “critics” and may even be said to be natural in the heat of debate, so once again you are employing a double standard.