FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

I recently wrote about Ariel Toaff, the Bar Ilan scholar who wrote a book suggesting that the medieval blood libels against Jews might have had some basis in fact.

Now he has suspend distribution of his book to “re-edit the passages which comprised the basis of the distortions and falsehoods that have been published in the media.” Apparently it hadn’t occurred to him that what he wrote could have been used for nefarious purposes.

Of course one can argue that antisemites will distort anything, but still it’s remarkable that in today’s climate he would have missed this.

Now, of course, we’ll hear that the ‘Jewish lobby’ has ‘silenced’ him.

Technorati Tags: Toaff, antisemitism

By Vic Rosenthal

The families of kidnapped IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev met with Pope Benedict XVI today, the Jerusalem Post reports. The Pope was said to be sympathetic, but of course he has little or no influence on Hezbollah. Why would they care what the ‘crusaders’ think?

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From today’s Jerusalem Post:

Palestinians hurled a Molotov cocktail at an Israeli vehicle near Hirbet a-Dir, south of Bethlehem - and hit a Palestinian vehicle instead, wounding one of the passengers.

The wounded man received first aid from IDF soldiers at the scene.

By Vic Rosenthal

The older and farther removed from the academic world that I get, the more I am astonished by the irresponsibility, bias, and sheer ignorance that categorizes it.

Take Brandeis University (please).

Counting Albert Einstein as one of its founders and Abbie Hoffman, Angela Davis, and Jack Abramoff as alumni, Brandeis has

…incurred a sorry record when it comes to Israel in recent years - staging [the] “Voices of Palestine” exhibit, hiring [Natana] DeLong-Bas and [Khalil] Shikaki, granting an honorary degree to the anti-Zionist playwright Tony Kushner, appointing the muddled Prof. Shai Feldman (POL) to head the Crown Center, permitting an Islamist (Qumar-ul Huda) to serve as its Muslim chaplain and setting up the Brandeis-Al-Quds University study-abroad connection. — Daniel Pipes

Now Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz has displayed his ignorance, bias, or both by calling both Pipes and Norman Finkelstein “weapons of mass destruction”. Poor Pipes is justifiably insulted (read his whole article here) by being lumped together with the disreputable Finkelstein, and irritated by Brandeis’ action in suspending Pipes’ planned appearance there.

Having read both Pipes and Finkelstein and heard Pipes speak, I must agree that Reinharz is far off-base. I do find the visceral negative response to Pipes in academic, left-wing, and Muslim circles to be interesting. The guy is a careful scholar, very competent in his field, and not at all a wild-eyed radical. He has never, as far as I know, written anything in praise of Baruch Goldstein or suggested forced transfer as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I do expect that he votes Republican, but even that doesn’t justify the reception he receives.

I’m afraid that it’s simply his message, which often uncovers the “unclothed emperors” in the academic world, and which exposes radical Islam for the aggressive Jihadism that it is.

Technorati Tags: Daniel Pipes, Jehuda Reinharz, Brandeis

By Dvar Dea

Dvar Dea is a student in Israel. More of his work can be found on his site, ActiveZionism. I’m very pleased to be able to publish this. It also appears with additional commentary here.

How many people know there was a pogrom against the Jews of Tzfat in 1834? How many know that it was far worse than the famous massacre of the Jews of Hebron in 1929? It lasted for 33 horrific days.

I suspect few people know the first fact, and even fewer, if any, know the second. I only discovered it after some research.

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A Palestinian man who allegedly foiled a suicide attack inside Israel was killed in Ramallah on Monday by gunmen belonging to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party.

“The collaborator was executed after he confessed that he had been recruited by the Israeli authorities on December 17, 2002,” said a statement issued by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah’s armed wing…

Last month a Palestinian man from the Gaza Strip, who allegedly passed on information to the Israeli security forces about Palestinian terrorist groups responsible for Kassam rocket attacks on Israel, was arrested by PA security forces loyal to Abbas…

The man, who has been accused of “collaboration” with the Shin Bet, has confessed and will be brought to trial soon on charges of “high treason,” the source said. If convicted, he will face the death penalty. — Jerusalem Post

Now, let’s see…this is the moderate faction to whom the US has just given $86 million.

Update [14 Feb 1642 PST]: The US Congress has frozen the funding, in view of the signing of the unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas. The money was to have been transferred in a few days. Damn, they were all going to get new SUV’s, too.

Technorati Tags: Fatah, Abbas

What possible reason, for example, could there be for the Palestinian Authority, together with UNRWA and the Arab world, to maintain “refugee camps” in the Gaza Strip? Israel, after all, has withdrawn completely from Gaza, including dismantling settlements and even moving cemeteries. — Editorial in today’s Jerusalem Post

And why is the West paying for a special support system for Palestinian ‘refugees’, entirely different from that of any other refugees, which actively prevents their resettlement and promotes poverty, terrorism, and war?

Read the editorial here.

By Murray Farber

Murray Farber is a retired reporter and editor living in Fresno.

Reading Arthur Frommer’s online tour guide of Israel, you will find a reference to “the beautiful horticultural community of Nes Ammim, populated by Christians from many nations.” Say what? Christians?

Yes! And it is a wonderful story, as I learned when I visited there in 1974 and met Christine Pilon; but the community may now have a cloudy future in today’s troubled times. I still remember Mrs. Pilon’s deeply religious outlook as a member of the Dutch Reformed Church and her benevolent smile, as well as a lean attractive appearance that made her look less than her actual fifties. As we walked the grounds of this 275-acre collective community, (similar to a kibbutz) 15 miles north of Haifa, we were surrounded by magnificent flowers.

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A friend asked:

1. How many times per year do Muslims rage?

2. Is any other group so full of rage?

3. What evokes rage? Cartoons, renovation, scarves, Jews on the Temple Mount, etc.

4. What issues do not evoke rage: corruption, teenage suicide bombers, oppression of women, vendetta, honor killings, shooting of children, beheadings, attacks on tourists, internecine war, permanent refuge camps, loss of livelihood, disgraceful distribution of wealth, diversion of aid money, lack of social services, high illiteracy rate, tyrannical governments, reneging on agreements, press censorship (sometimes violent), preventing fire fighters from saving children, religious intolerance (including Muslim to Muslim), hate and suicide education, morals police, death fatwas against writers, inciting of Israeli retaliation, etc.

Technorati Tags: Islam

On one side, we have the Iranian regime, which is denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map” while racing to develop the physical means of doing so. On the other side, we have what is, in effect, international silence in response, coupled with growing willingness to discuss Israel’s existence as a mistake, an anachronism, or a provocation. — Natan Sharansky

When Sharansky finally got out of the Soviet Union and came to Israel, I was in the midst of reserve duty, in a cold and rainy place. Some of my fellow miluimniks, also immigrants from the USSR, watched him appear on television and commented “big Zionist, wait till they stick him here”. I don’t know whether he got to my old unit, but Sharansky has proven to be a big Zionist in the best possible sense.

Read Sharansky’s discussion of the new antisemitism and his practical program to combat it.

Technorati Tags: antisemitism, Sharansky

Here’s what the Biblical Archaeology Society says:

…in the early 1990s, Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat took over control of the Waqf, and a systematic destruction of any vestige of Jewish presence on the Mount was begun. Arafat claimed that there never was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, an opinion often referred to as “Temple Denial.”

During the ten-year “reign” of Arafat on the Temple Mount, and in the years since his death, numerous unauthorized and archaeologically unsupervised construction projects have been carried out.

In 1996 the Waqf began converting the underground area of the Mount popularly known as Solomon’s Stables into a large mosque. It has bulldozed parts of the top of the mount to make way for “open” mosques, cleaned ancient cisterns, paved over ancient areas, damaged an ancient wall, dug a trench for a utility line, and removed thousands of tons of “debris,” from the site, dumping it in the Kidron valley.

They’ve also employed a huge electric saw to cut up ancient stones from the Temple Mount, destroying any historical evidence the stones may have offered. An analysis in the early 1990s found that the Waqf had committed more than 35 violations of Israeli antiquities law on the site.

Despite the fact that religious Jews as well as archaeologists have complained, the Israeli government has done nothing to stop the desecration of Judaism’s holiest site, out of fear of arousing Arab passions.

Read the article by Hershel Shanks of the BAS here. It’s infuriating.

Technorati Tags: Temple Mount, Waqf, Archaeology

No recognition, no end to terrorism, and no peace.

GAZA (Reuters) - The Palestinian unity government which will be formed under an agreement reached in Saudi Arabia will not recognize Israel, a political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on Saturday.

“The issue of recognition was not addressed at all (in Mecca),” Ahmed Youssef said. “In the platform of the new government there will be no sign of recognition (of Israel), regardless of the pressures the United States and the Quartet would exert,” he said.

The rain of Kassam missiles from Gaza hasn’t abated either.