FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Tomorrow the so-called “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” is expected to reach the waters off the Gaza Strip. I am interested in what is in the heads of the ‘progressive activists’ that are on board or that support the goals of this operation.

They claim that it’s  all about ‘humanitarian’ aid to break the ‘siege’ and end the suffering of Gaza residents. It’s remarkably easy to show that there actually is no ‘siege’ and no ‘humanitarian crisis’. A siege is not a siege when the besieger permits 15,000 tons of food, medicine and clothing a week into the besieged area.  And the Hamas rulers of Gaza have options to ameliorate the minimal pressure that is being applied to them. Want the crossings open? Release Gilad Shalit, who’s been held hostage now for almost four years.

Only the very dumb ones believe their own propaganda. The smarter ones would probably admit the above. But they  would say that they are fighting a war against colonialism and racism. They would say that they are fighting on the side of freedom against oppression.

In other words, they are helping Hamas because Hamas represents freedom and opposes racism. Really?

The Western idea of freedom includes such things as freedom of speech, press, and religion. It includes the idea of equality between men and women, fairness to ethnic and religious minorities, gays, etc.

Hamas is violently (and I mean violently) opposed to those freedoms. It also believes that the land of Israel belongs only to Muslims, and that the proper behavior of a Muslim toward a Jew is to kill him (I call that racism, don’t you?)

None of this is hidden; it’s spelled out in the Hamas covenant, which also repeats traditional antisemitic themes.

It’s likely that some of our progressive friends would agree that Hamas is a little primitive, but it’s necessary to work with them in order to stand up for international law, which Israel supposedly violates in multiple ways.

In fact, Hamas  — and the massive anti-Zionist apparatus of delegitimization that’s been constructed over the past few years (financed by Arab money and built by Western ‘progressive’ intellectuals) — are doing their best to abet the violent destruction of a UN member state whose existence is more firmly grounded in international law than many Arab states.

Hamas itself controls Gaza after a violent coup against the Palestinian Authority in which many of its opponents were murdered. Hamas launched murderous suicide bombings to kill Israelis, and fired thousands of rockets into Israel. Insofar as anyone is violating international law, it’s Hamas.

Well, they say, now running out of arguments, “the Jews took the Arabs’ land.” This is a longer story, because you need to talk about the history of the land, the provenance of the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs in it, the various wars and who started them, the opportunities for coexistence and who rejected them, the behavior of the Palestinian and other Arab leadership, and — importantly — the way the Palestinian Arabs express their ‘frustration’ at the presence of Jews in ‘their’ land. But at the end of the day, the simple fact is that a Jewish state in the land of Israel is completely legitimate — and it has a right to defend itself.

What’s left for these ‘progressives’? Just that they really, really hate the Jewish state. They hate the idea that Jews, who are not even proper human beings, would have the audacity to insist on a state, as if they were France or something!

In their confusion they like to make analogies between the Jews of Israel and Nazi Germany, although it was the Palestinian Arabs that collaborated with Hitler. They compare ships that support Hamas to the ships that brought Jewish Holocaust survivors to this same coast before 1948. They like to use the words ‘apartheid’ and  ‘genocide’ to describe Jewish self-defense against murderous terrorism, when it is Hamas that actually advocates apartheid and even genocide. The more absurd the inversion, the more effective it seems to be as a propaganda device.

This mass derangement is caused by hatred. It is an old, old story and the Jews are familiar with it. Our response has finally been to create a Jewish state, like other states. Some may have expected that the simple fact of Israel’s existence would put an end to the hatred, but that was apparently a vain hope. But the state does provide us with a means to defend ourselves against the hate, as it waxes and wanes like a fever from generation to generation.

Today anti-Jewish hate is in a growth phase, and the ‘freedom’ flotilla is another expression of this. But it’s no more an expression of the love of freedom than the Nazi rallies at Nuremberg.

Technorati Tags: Gaza, Freedom Flotilla, Israel, Hamas

News item:

The past year has seen a marked rise of anti-Semitism, increasing over 100 percent throughout the world, the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism of Tel-Aviv University outlined on Sunday, on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day.

According to the institute, violent anti-Semitic attacks, ranging from vandalism and arson against Jewish targets to beatings of Jews, increased in 2009 by a startling percentage. The report underlined the severe increase in anti-Semitic attacks, specifying that 2009 displayed the highest amount of attacks recorded in over 20 years…

The report illustrated that that this year was particularly charged due to international reactions to Operation Cast Lead, which resulted in anti-Jewish demonstrations around the world.

Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress — which sponsored the report — said that the rise of anti-Semitic sentiment in Western Europe can be blamed on forces outside the region.

“This new phenomenon is financed and organized by pro-Islamic, pro-terrorist organizations and states,” Kantor said. [my emphasis]

I was present at a local demonstration at the time of Operation Cast Lead, which illustrated this (on a smaller scale, of course):

• The participants in the demonstration expressed themselves in strongly antisemitic — not just anti-Zionist — ways.
• Although there was no actual violence — it was close at times, but local organizers prevented it — the intent was clearly to frighten and intimidate the small group of counter demonstrators.
• A massive number of demonstrators, who appeared to be mostly high school and college age and of Middle Eastern origin, were brought in from out of town by the organizers.
• This occurred shortly after the start of the operation, and long before the various ‘human rights’ groups and Goldstone produced their tendentious reports.

This demonstration was significantly larger and more confrontational than a similar one held in 2006 during the Second Lebanon War. I expect this trend to continue.

The degree of organization involved in anti-Israel ‘happenings’ of all kinds seems to be increasing. It’s instructive to look at the way the disruption of Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech at UC Irvine was carefully planned and orchestrated by the Muslim Student Union there (and also to note their baldfaced lie that it was ‘spontaneous’). If you haven’t seen the evidence, look at the link above; it’s fascinating.

These organized activities have several purposes:

1. In time of war, to generate immediate pressure on the US administration to step in to protect Israel’s opponents, even if they are terrorist groups like Hamas and Hizballah;
2. In time of peace to erode support for Israel’s self-defense by portraying it as illegitimate;
3. All the time to silence those — like Oren — who can effectively present Israel’s case (absurdly, the Israel-haters insist that it is we who try to silence them!).

I don’t recall where I saw this, but someone recently said that the extreme Left and the extreme Right have actually gotten to the point of coordinating their activities on the one issue that they can agree about — Jews and Israel.

While the more sophisticated Western anti-Zionists have usually been careful to try to express themselves in a way which is not overtly antisemitic — after all, so many of them are Jews — this is not the case among immigrants and students from the Middle East. As a result, antisemites of various stripes are encouraged to join in. As this kind of expression becomes more common, it becomes more mainstream.

Especially in academic environments and among young people, there is a sort of competition for who can express themselves in the most extreme way. This, I think, is because in these cases there are no negative consequences for being an extremist — while it attracts the attention of peers.

There is also the encouragement US anti-Zionists draw from the perception that the US administration is on their side. When the Obama administration treats Israel’s PM like the leader of an enemy, and when suggestions like “Israeli intransigence … was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region” are made by those close to the administration,  the uglier players respond more strongly in their own way.

Here’s my prediction: when the next armed conflict with Hamas or Hizballah occurs — and it is inevitable — we will see a big increase in antisemitism in the US, even outside of traditional hot spots, like universities and cities like San Francisco. I expect that even the local demonstrations here will be more unpleasant.

I expect those American Jews who insist that there is no connection between Jews and Israel — or even blame Israel for antisemitism — to be outraged. I’d like to think that it will be a lesson for them, but probably they’ll draw the wrong conclusions.

Technorati Tags: Israel, antisemitism

Recent anti-Israel propaganda seems, more and more, to be mixed with traditional antisemitic images and themes.

[Louis] Farrakhan, speaking to a crowd of 20,000 followers at Chicago’s United Center on Sunday, said that Obama’s political problems began when he, according to the Chicago Sun Times report, stood up to the Jewish lobby during a White House meeting. When they left the White House, his problems began,” Farrakhan said, adding that “the Zionists are in control of the Congress.”

Minister Farrakhan also referred to the U.S. president’s chief economical advisors, Timothy Geithner, Henry Paulson and Larry Summers, asking “Who does he have around him? The people from Goldman Sachs.” [Geithner and Paulson are not Jewish -- ed.] The leader of the Nation of Islam added that “bloodsuckers of the poor” were rewarded with a bailout…

Further on in his address, Farrakhan also reiterated his claims that the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was “an inside thing…”

At one point during his address, Farrakhan implied that the validity of Holocaust records should be open to debate. “[You] can’t even engage in constructive argument over the veracity of the figures of the Holocaust. We know something happened, sure, but you can’t talk about [it]. In certain cities in Europe they arrest you and put you in prison for denying such.”

“There’s not a vote that the pro-Israeli lobby wants that doesn’t get bipartisan support,” Farrakhan said. “Why? Because the Israeli lobby controls the government of the United States of America.” — Ha’aretz

There’s more, but you get the idea. He hits all the buttons. Abe Foxman of the ADL criticized Farrakhan harshly, saying

Louis Farrakhan is at it again … After his near-silence on Jews over the last several years, we thought Minister Farrakhan had put his long history of anti-Semitism and racism behind him, or at least had held his views in check. Apparently, that was wishful thinking. Once again he is clearly comfortable with putting his bigotry on display, unfettered and unhidden for his supporters and the world to see.

Farrakhan isn’t the only one who finds himself “comfortable” expressing antisemitic views today:

Israel lodged a formal complaint with Spain on Sunday, charging certain individuals in Spanish schools of promoting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel ideas among young children. The letter comes after Israel’s ambassador to Spain, Rafi Shotz, recently received dozens of anti-Semitic postcards from Spanish elementary school students.

The postcards bore statements including “Jews kill for money,” “Leave the country to the Palestinians” and “Go somewhere where they will accept you.” A Foreign Ministry official said the handwriting appears typical of children six to nine years old. — Ha’aretz

How adorable. “Now children, today we are going to do a special project and write to those bloodthirsty Zionist pigs and tell them to go to Hell.”

Keeping to the program of mixing anti-Zionist sentiments with antisemitic imagery, here’s a picture displayed this week in an anti-Israel exhibition in Cologne, Germany:

Antisemitic imagery in Cologne, Germany

There really does seem to be an increase in antisemitic expression lately. Antisemitic websites are flush with visitors. Here are a pair of examples:

Alexa statistics for stormfront.org

Alexa statistics for rense.com

What’s going on? It’s clear that the economic meltdown and the Gaza war have been seized upon by antisemites as proof of Jewish turpitude, but the sudden jump in the middle of 2009 is strange. Operation Cast Lead seems to have no immediate effect; compare, for example, Al Jazeera:

Alexa statistics for aljazeera.net

The huge peak around January, of course, was the war.  Now look at some anti-Zionist sites:

Alexa statistics for electronicintifada.net

Here we see the same peak at the time of the war; but look also at the strong growth starting around the middle of the year.

“Mondoweiss” is one of my ‘favorite’ sites because it lives on the interface between anti-Zionism and antisemitism (and, of course, its owners are of Jewish extraction):

Alexa statistics for mondoweiss.net

Wow! he didn’t even move the needle until June. What happened?

So what do I conclude from this highly non-rigorous ‘research’? Not a lot:

• There is an increase in antisemitic expression recently, and it is closely associated with anti-Zionism.
• Something seems to have energized the antisemites (yes, I include “mondoweiss” in that category) around June 2008. Suggestions?
• Anti-Zionist sites are becoming more popular.
• If you write a good blog that nobody reads, don’t look at Alexa.

Technorati Tags: antisemitism, anti-Zionism

President Roosevelt meets King Ibn Saud in 1945, on the deck of the USS Quincy. Palestine was the subject of discussion.

Recently while reading “A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel” by Allis and Ronald Radosh (a Hanukah gift from my wife, thank you!) I was struck yet again by the stubborn refusal of the Arab nations during that period — not just the Palestinian Arabs, but Ibn Saud, the Syrians, Iraqis, Egyptians, etc. –  to consider any kind of compromise on Jewish immigration into Palestine (not to mention a Jewish state). This despite the fact that there was clearly enough room and resources in the area to support both Jews and Arabs, and although the Jewish presence had already improved economic conditions greatly, even leading to an increase in the Arab population.

As everyone knows, their refusal to compromise ultimately led to war, and a much worse end result for the Palestinian Arabs. And the cynical use of the Arab refugees as a weapon against Israel by the Arab leadership from 1948 to today constitutes one of the most massive violations of human rights since WWII. What a scandal it would be if it weren’t for the remarkably twisted perceptions of those organizations concerned with human rights!

Arab opposition to Jewish immigration actually began at the beginning of the 20th century. It was usually expressed by saying that the Jews would ‘take over’ although the Arabs themselves had not been in charge for centuries. And  partition proposals which would have limited Jewish sovereignty to small parts of Palestine were violently rejected.

Today, sixty-one years after the founding of the state and (roughly) 120 years since the beginning of the Zionist enterprise, Arab opposition to it is probably stronger than ever. Even the fact that two Arab states have signed peace agreements with Israel does not disprove this — in practice the ‘peace’ is as cold as possible, antisemitic incitement continues, and only massive American bribes keep it in force.

The non-Palestinian Arabs often cite their concern for the condition of the Palestinian Arabs as the reason for their hostility. But Palestinian Arabs — refugees or guest worksers — are treated like dirt in Arab countries. Add to this the perpetuation of the refugees’ misery and the lack of financial support for the Palestinian Authority from Arab sources, and this explanation falls apart.

Sometimes they claim that the problem is due to ‘the occupation’. Since their vicious and violent hostility goes back before 1967, indeed before 1948, this can only mean that Jews are ‘occupying’ space where the Arabs would prefer them not to be.

An argument made by Ibn Saud in 1945 and often heard today is this: the European Jews were mistreated by Germans and other Europeans; why should Arabs pay the price?

Roosevelt and Truman in turn were surprised by his vehemence. Ibn Saud even suggested that he would go to war for Palestine, despite the fact that there was no common border. And the ‘price’ for letting more Jews in would not have been high — actually it could have been mutually beneficial for Jews and Arabs — if the Arabs had not been so hostile.

The argument is worse today. One embarrassing problem is that the hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries who ended up in Israel were mistreated — OK, brutalized, robbed and kicked out — by Arabs. If you ignore the relatively recent Russian immigrants, a majority of Israelis fall into this category.

So what is the explanation?  I propose a thought experiment.

Suppose instead of Zionist Jews, the migrants had been, say, Kurds, or Shiite Muslims. There’s plenty of ethnic-religious  unpleasantness to go around in the Arab world; do you think that the degree of hostility, the persistence of the struggle, the way the whole world has gotten tied up in it — would it be the same?

I don’t think so either.

Ibn Saud expressed his point of view quite clearly to Ambassador William Eddy in 1945, when he said that the Jews were “accursed in the Koran as enemies of the Muslims until the end of the world” [Radosh, p.24]. His descendant, the present King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, is said to have responded with an antisemitic diatribe when President Obama asked that Saudi Arabia make some gesture in response to concessions made by Israel to the Palestinians.

I think that the explanation for the persistence and viciousness of the conflict lies here, in the historic enmity between Muhammad and the Jews. This comes out clearly and explicitly in the founding document of the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas. And it explains why anti-Zionist hatred seems to go along with with devotion to Islam.

This doesn’t bode very well for a solution, does it?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jews, Arabs

All four of my grandparents emigrated from the Ukraine in the beginning of the 20th century. They came to America because they heard that it was a land of opportunity where Jews weren’t restricted to where they could live or what kind of work they could do; but mainly they left the Ukraine because they were sick and tired of periodic murderous pogroms in which Jews were brutalized and murdered while the authorities stood by or even took part. Many of these pogroms were incited by ‘blood libels’, accusations that Jews killed Christians, usually children, for their blood.

Well, guess what. Although there are far fewer Jews living there today than in 1900-1914, the descendants of the antisemitic pogromists are still at it.

Stories appearing on several Ukrainian Web sites claim Israel has brought around some 25,000 Ukrainian children into the country over the past two years in order to harvest their organs.

The claim, which was made by a Ukrainian philosophy professor and author at a pseudo-academic conference in Kiev five days ago, is the latest expression of a wave of anti-Semitism in the country. It comes a few months after a Swedish tabloid ran an article alleging that Israel Defense Forces soldiers have killed Palestinian civilians for their organs.  — Ha’aretz

The organ-harvesting story  — which the Swedish government, like the Ukrainian authorities in 1905, refused to condemn –  has spread around the world.

But this isn’t the first time something like this happened, or even the tenth. According to one list, blood libels against Jews have been propagated since the year 38 CE, and examples can be found up to 2009.

An artist's conception of the death of Simon of Trent at the hands of Jews in 1475

The Swedish story is not the only modern-day blood libel. The Goldstone report is full of them, unsubstantiated (because they are false) stories of crimes committed by Jews against non-Jews for the worst motives. Indeed, the Palestinians have developed a whole industry dedicated to creating them.

It’s interesting that the historical blood libels were usually aimed not at individual Jews, but rather at the Jewish community — which was invariably punished collectively.  In the Simon of Trent case, the entire Jewish community was tortured until seventeen ‘confessed’ to the crime. In the Kishniev pogrom of 1903, also incited by a blood libel, anti-Jewish rioting spanned three days with the entire Jewish quarter destroyed, almost 50 dead and hundreds injured.

Today’s blood libels are also aimed at the Jewish community, but today the world Jewish community has crystallized as the Jewish state, Israel. So the Swedish blood libel and the new Ukrainian version target the IDF and the state of Israel directly.

Now… please explain it to me again: exactly what is the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jews, blood libel, antisemitism, anti-Zionism

News item:

A British diplomat has criticized the appointment of two leading Jewish academics to the UK’s Iraq Inquiry panel, stating it may upset the balance of the inquiry.

Sir Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, told The Independent newspaper this week that the appointment of Sir Martin Gilbert, the renowned Holocaust historian and Winston Churchill biographer, and Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies and vice-principal of King’s College London, would be seen as “ammunition” that could be used to call the inquiry a “whitewash.”

Miles said the two academics were Jewish and that Gilbert was an active Zionist. He also said they were both strong supporters of former prime minister Tony Blair and the Iraq war…

“It is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available,” he added. “Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced.”

There you go. In regard to any issue which even tangentially touches on Israel, Jews are suspect. I recall someone saying, “when I read a letter to the editor about the Middle East, I immediately look to see if the writer has a Jewish name.” Then I presume she discounts whatever was in the letter. As I wrote yesterday in a different context,

Eloquence, logic, and appeal to facts are irrelevant today. Only the point of view [and apparently the religion/ethnicity of the speaker] matters.

The world is tired of hearing the Jews complain, just as they were tired of them before, during and immediately after WWII. I suppose Miles would prefer the panel to be made up entirely of former ambassadors to Arab countries. Then nobody could call it a ‘whitewash’.

I’ve noticed this myself recently. People who can’t respond to my arguments say that we should ‘agree to disagree’, meaning “just be quiet, of course you think the way you do, you’re Jewish.”

For some reason the fact that there are plenty of anti-Zionist Jews around — including famous ones like Noam Chomsky, Tony Judt, et al — doesn’t seem to make a difference. Jewishness only seems to affect the soundness of one’s arguments when one is pro-Israel.

Indeed, when a Jew or Jewish organization attacks Israel, the same people cheer. After all, if even Jews like Philip Weiss,  Norman Finkelstein or Ilan Pappé think that Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide against the Palestinians, then it must be true.

But poor Sir Martin Gilbert just can’t help being biased!

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iraq War, Oliver Miles, Martin Gilbert