FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

By Vic Rosenthal

Kibbutz Degania A, the first kibbutz in Israel (founded in 1910), is being privatized.

I spent nine years (1979-1988) as a kibbutz member. During that period, the kibbutz movements went through great changes, spurred by external economic pressures and internal social ones. They faced very difficult conditions, a period of massive inflation and increased competition from the European Economic community for their agricultural products. It became necessary for the kibbutz to industrialize or die. Such things as when to borrow money and when to pay it back, as well as the Boursa (stock market), went from irrelevant to critical. Mistakes were made, some of them not entirely honest ones. The political revolution in which, for the first time in Israel’s history, the Labor Party, patron of the kibbutz movement, lost office and was replaced by the Likud pulled a rug of subsidies out from under their feet.

(more…)

The Bosnian constitution was created by the Dayton agreement, signed in Paris in 1995 by the US, France, Britain, Russia, Germany. Here are a few excerpts from the constitution:

The Parliamentary Assembly shall have two chambers: the House of Peoples and the House of Representatives.
…
House of Peoples. The House of Peoples shall comprise 15 Delegates, two-thirds from the Federation (including five Croats and five Bosniacs) and one-third from the Republika Srpska (five Serbs).
…
House of Representatives. The House of Representatives shall comprise 42 Members, two-thirds elected from the territory of the Federation, one-third from the territory of the Republika Srpska.
…
Each chamber shall by majority vote adopt its internal rules and select from its members one Serb, one Bosniac, and one Croat to serve as its Chair and Deputy Chairs, with the position of Chair rotating among the three persons selected.
…
The Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina shall consist of three Members: one Bosniac and one Croat, each directly elected from the territory of the Federation, and one Serb directly elected from the territory of the Republika Srpska.

So much for the principle of ethnic neutrality! Now, as a practical matter, a Jew — Jakob Finci, leader of Bosnia’s Jewish community — wishes to run for the Presidency and cannot. He’s asking the European Court of Human Rights to intervene.

In Israel, an Arab could legally become Prime Minister (or President).

Technorati Tags: Bosnia, Jews

He’s Raed Salah, also known as the Sheik of Al-Aqsa. Leader of the “Islamic Movement in Israel”, he insists that Israel has no sovereignty over any part of the Temple Mount, even the Kotel (Western Wall). On Friday, he gave a sermon in which he

…urged supporters to start a third intifada to “save al-Aksa Mosque, free Jerusalem and end the occupation.” In an apparent reference to the resurrected “blood libel” that Jews in medieval times used the blood of Christians to make their Passover matza, he said Israel’s history was drenched with blood. “They want to build their temple at a time when our blood is on their clothes, on their doorsteps, in their food and in their drinks. Our blood has passed from one ‘Terrorist General’ to another ‘Terrorist General,’” the Islamic Movement chief screamed, an apparent reference to the changeover of the Israel Defense Forces’ Chief of Staff earlier in the week. — Israel Insider

Riots followed, unsurprisingly. Salah, an Israeli citizen, has been ordered by a court to stay at least 150 meters from the Temple Mount, but says that he does not accept Israeli authority and intends to violate the order.

Technorati Tags: Salah, Jerusalem, Temple Mount

By Vic Rosenthal

Do we need a peace plan?

We keep hearing about the importance of solving the Arab-Israeli conflict, of the need to come up with a plan for a two-state solution that will provide security for Israelis and nationhood for Palestinians, or even (possibly a bit disingenuously) one for a change in the nature of the state of Israel so that there could be one big state in which Jews and Arabs could live together democratically and happily.

(more…)

The Memri Blog has translated this cartoon from the government controlled Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram:

The top line reads: “Hillary” and “Obama” – A Woman and a Negro are Participating in the Campaign for the American Presidency

…

The bottom: The Religious Man: “This is another sign of the collapse of the Western civilization”

By Vic Rosenthal

Yesterday I wrote about accusations of “hateful” speech by a teacher in an elementary school nearby. The teacher, Randy Ingram, was not in school on Friday and school authorities are “looking into” (they would not use the word ‘investigating’) the allegations, made by ethnic Iranian parents and Kamal Abu-Shamsieh, director of the local Islamic Cultural Center.

(more…)

By Vic Rosenthal

The Fresno Bee reports that a local (Clovis, CA) teacher has been accused of “making anti-Muslim statements” by the director of the local Islamic Cultural center.

(more…)

As everyone knows, the Palestinians have been struggling to stop shooting each other and get back to shooting us. Here’s how the BBC sees it:

The vast majority of Palestinians are desperate for the government to come together smoothly and succeed.

They want to see their leaders form a united front in their confrontation with Israel and the effort to end its occupation of their land.

And even more pressingly, they have been appalled and frightened by the violence in recent months between forces loyal to Hamas and Fatah. — BBC (my emphasis)

Some time ago I wrote about Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, the editor of the Bangladeshi English-language newspaper The Weekly Blitz. Choudhury was to be tried for his life, accused of sedition, treason, espionage and blasphemy. His specific crime was that he attempted to go to Israel to give a speech on interfaith cooperation — apparently anathema in some Muslim circles.

His trial, which was supposed to take place last month, has been put off until February 28. A resolution to urge the government of Bangladesh to drop charges against him has been proposed in the US Congress — H.Res.64 (also here). US readers, please contact your representative and ask him or her to support this resolution!

More details about Choudhury can be found here.

Also, please read the comment from Rabbi Sue Levy.

Technorati Tags: Choudhury, Bangladesh

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has agreed to a Turkish inspection of the construction work at disputed holy site in Jerusalem, the Turkish prime minister said Thursday.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Olmert had shown him photographs of the construction work, but had failed to convince him [my italics] that it would not harm the holy sites there. — YNet (AP)

So the words and photographs presented by the Prime Minister of the sovereign state of Israel, in regard to work being done in Israel’s capital city, were not enough to convince the PM of genocidal Turkey. Inspections are needed. And if the results are not satisfactory, then what?

(more…)

By Vic Rosenthal

A German court on Thursday convicted far-right activist Ernst Zündel of incitement for denying the Holocaust, and sentenced him to the maximum five years in prison.

The 67-year-old, who was deported from Canada in 2005, was convicted on 14 counts of incitement for years of anti-Semitic activities, including denying the Holocaust, a crime in Germany, in documents and on the Internet. — Jerusalem Post

What can one say about a man who wrote a book called The Hitler We Loved and Why?

Possibly that he’s religious, in some sense. What is faith if not an obsessive insistence on maintaining a belief against all reason and logic, and doing one’s best to promulgate it in every possible way?

There are differences, of course, between the Church of Antisemitism and other religious faiths. For example, most organized belief systems generally recognized as religions do not consider bringing harm to a particular group of people a primary goal, and many (but not all) of them actually preach tolerance.

Zündel’s point of view, actually, seems to be a kind of devil worship (where Hitler is the closest thing most secular people have to a devil). Zündel, creative and intelligent, is also unquestionably evil.

Evil is an unfashionable concept these days, but it’s easy to understand it and impossible to deny its reality once you look at people like Zündel. One doesn’t have to be a religious person oneself to see this. And although as an American I place great value on freedom of speech (and of course Zündel’s actions would not be a crime here in the US), I certainly am pleased to see him punished by the Germans, who, like many Jews, learned something about the reality of evil from the war.

I’m convinced that evil is real, objective and not simply a way to characterize ‘the other side’. Creatures like Zündel and Arafat are proof of that.

Technorati Tags: Zundel, Zündel, evil, Holocaust denial, antisemitsm

By Vic Rosenthal

The Jerusalem Post recently conducted a Q&A with Dr. Eilat Mazar, an archaeologist with the Hebrew University and the Shalem Center, about issues concerning the Temple Mount — both what Israel is doing in the vicinity, and what the Waqf has done, and continues to do, on and within the Mount itself.

(more…)