FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Dear Muslim Public Affairs Council of the UK:

I am shocked and insulted to not have been included on your list of American Islamophobes. There is no doubt in my mind that I should appear in Category 1, “The Seed Planters”, along with those such as Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, and Steven Emerson, to whom you attribute what you believe to be the most evil possible motivation: Zionism, which even precedes religious bigotry, greed, and racism on your list of evil motivations.

My suggestion for you, is that first you read “Zionism — what it is and isn’t” so that you can use the word correctly and stop appearing to be antisemitic fools (I don’t think you can actually stop being such, but appearances are important).

Next, if you want to reduce “Islamophobia”, you can do something about UK Muslims like these:

UK Muslims protest cartoons

Finally, you can learn that “Islamophobia” (which properly should mean ‘fear of Islam’ and not ‘prejudice against or hatred of Muslims’ as you use it), is almost entirely a reaction to the violent and often murderous behavior of some Muslims — and to the approval granted that behavior by most Muslims.

You can’t have it both ways — you can’t reject Western values of free expression and tolerance, and then accuse those who point this out of racism or bigotry.

If you can’t do any of this, then please put me on your list, along with Lewis, Pipes, and Emerson. I’d be in good company.

Technorati Tags: Islamophobia, MPACUK

This morning, NPR featured a story about how the Palestinian economy is being ruined by ‘the occupation’. Checkpoints and roadblocks, Israeli restrictions on where Palestinians can build roads, etc., have made economic development impossible. The Palestinians are miserable and it’s Israel’s fault.

One might think from the report that the checkpoints, etc., have been there since the beginning of the occupation in 1967. But of course this isn’t true. Most of these were put into place as a direct result of the upsurge in terrorism that began in 2000 with the beginning of Arafat’s intifada.

These impediments wouldn’t be there if they weren’t necessary. Does the Israeli government enjoy the constant condemnation in the press and the UN? Wouldn’t it like to make the Bush administration happy? Does the average Israeli male under the age of 40 open his mailbox and say “great news — I’ll be away from my family and my job for 30 days so I can harass Palestinians at checkpoints”? Although pro-Palestinians scream when I say it, all they have to do is stop terrorism and these will go away.

Now let’s look at the Palestinian economy. Much money has been given to the Palestinians over the years for development of infrastructure for a state and an economy. In the days of Arafat it went mostly into his and his friends’ Swiss bank accounts, or was used to purchase weapons and explosives. Although Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayad seems to be committed to development, the Fatah organization is still a confederation of gangs and clans who allocate funds according to nepotic principles. Even money which is allocated ‘legitimately’ mostly goes to support the ‘security’ forces, the army which the PA would like to build to confront Israel (oops — “fight terrorism”).

And this is the West Bank. In Gaza, Hamas receives large amounts of funding from Iran and other supporters, and spends it on stockpiling arms and building fortifications. The rocket business is booming! But a large part of Gazans’ income came from workers who crossed into Israel, and this has been ended as a result of terrorism — especially including attacks on the very border crossings that they used, forcing them to be closed. And a discussion of Gaza would not be complete without mentioning the greenhouses built by the expelled Jewish settlers, which were purchased by Jewish donors in the US and turned over to the Palestinians — and then torn to pieces by them.

Another aspect of the Palestinian economy in both the West Bank and Gaza is the ‘refugee economy’. There are about 1.7 million Arabs who claim refugee status living in Gaza and the West Bank. They receive aid from UNRWA, the huge organization created by the UN to maintain the refugee population. UNRWA has 27,000 employees, almost all ‘refugees’, and 10,000 of them work at its Gaza headquarters.

UNRWA’s focus on nurturing the refugee population, helping it learn the official Palestinian irredentist ideology and preventing any solution of the refugee problem other than ‘return’ is illustrative of the real reason that there is no functioning Palestinian economy, despite everything that has been poured into it:

The primary goal of the Palestinian leadership, from the Mufti through Arafat and including the present leaders of Fatah and Hamas has never been the welfare of Palestinians. First priority has always been the destruction of Israel and the removal of the Jewish presence from ‘their’ land. And as we’ve seen in the case of the refugees, they have always been prepared to sacrifice their people to advance this goal.

Technorati Tags: Palestinian economy, West Bank, Gaza, Israel

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Union for Reform Judaism’s (URJ) Religious Action Center has been a subject of my posts in the past. For example, last December he sent around a solicitation for funds to members of URJ congregations in which he listed the greatest challenges facing us as Supreme Court nominations, civil rights protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people, climate change, the international health care crisis, and finally the Middle East conflict.

Without denying the seriousness of the other ‘challenges’, it seemed strange that a solicitation from a Jewish organization would put the life-and-death struggle of Israel last, and not even mention resurgent worldwide antisemitism. I also felt that his preferred approach to the Israeli-Arab conflict — “U.S. efforts to help craft a two-state solution” — was the worst possible that wasn’t explicitly pro-Arab.

Now Rabbi Saperstein has promulgated his ‘Ten Commandments’ for the use and abuse of religion in politics, by candidates and religious organizations. Most are unexceptionable, like not imperiling a congregation’s nonprofit tax status by endorsing a particular candidate. But here is the one that I found interesting:

Thou shalt not offer an explanation to the electorate about how your religious beliefs shape or alter your views on the issues. “It is all right for candidates to refer to their religious values as having an influence, but candidates should never base a policy position only on religious beliefs. Then it becomes a faith statement.”

What he seems to be saying is that a purely religious belief — or a moral principle that is based on it — is by definition not a legitimate premise in a sound argument. A “faith statement” for Saperstein is something subjective, a matter of taste like “I like spaghetti” which doesn’t necessarily apply to anyone else.

Indeed, although he allows for ‘influence’ I suspect that he would find a candidate’s statement that his Catholic background influenced him to oppose abortion unacceptable; ‘influence’ is probably allowed only in statements like “my religious background influenced me to be honest”.

In other words, for Saperstein, religion is not an acceptable source for the moral principles that guide our reasoning about moral questions, although religious training or belief can help create a person’s character.

But obviously everyone that ever makes moral decisions has such principles. Saperstein obviously has them himself, or he wouldn’t be able to see the need for gay rights, for example. He just doesn’t want them to come from religion.

So where can they come from? I am guessing that the answer is USH: Unexamined Secular Humanism, the moral philosophy actually held by many Reform Jews and liberal Protestants (my wife calls it “the niceness religion”). Here are some principles of USH, chosen at random and by all means not exhaustive:

• Happiness is good, pain is bad
• Limiting anyone’s freedom is bad, unless it’s necessary for the overriding social good
• Every human is of equal value
• Humans are basically good; conflicts are caused by insufficient knowledge or education

You get the idea. USH is a moral system, a collection of premises that can be the basis of a moral argument. But there are other moral systems — an Orthodox Jew might choose the Shulchan Aruch, for example — and there is nothing especially privileged about USH. But the fact that it is unexamined means that its practitioners often do not understand this, and they can be quite doctrinaire and even self-righteous — like Rabbi Saperstein.

Technorati Tags: Rabbi David Saperstein, Reform Judaism, USH