FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

The state of mind of Anders Breivik is beyond understanding for a normal person.  There’s been some discussion as to whether there are ‘signs of mental illness’ in the document that he provided to ‘explain’ himself, but asking the question is ridiculous — clearly there is a big piece missing from his brain, or soul, or whatever. One doesn’t need to be a psychologist to recognize a monster.

It’s probably unavoidable that there will be a few sociopaths like him in our societies. When the pathology is combined with intelligence, energy and resourcefulness, they can be tremendously dangerous. Sometimes they even become the leaders of nations, where they can do thousands of times more damage than Anders Breivik.

But our response to them ought not to be hysteria, but rational thought. And the reactions to Breivik have been anything but rational.

Voices from the Israel-obsessed Left claim that he was working for the Mossad, acting to punish Norway for its support of the Palestinian Arabs. These types are as crazy as Breivik, if somewhat less dangerous.

No, I’m talking about the ‘moderate’ voices in our media, who have pitched themselves into an abyss of illogic in response to this terrorist act.  Illogic — and character assassination.

Here is what the respected columnist Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post (and it will probably appear in my local paper this week):

The monster who admitted slaughtering at least 76 innocent victims in Norway was animated by the same blend of paranoia, xenophobia and alienation that fuels anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States. Yes, it could happen here…

In a 1,500-page screed setting out his philosophy, Breivik referred favorably to the work of several well-known anti-Muslim polemicists in the United States — zealots who usually boast of their influence but now, for some reason, seek to deny it.

Breivik quoted Robert Spencer, a writer who runs a Web site called Jihad Watch, more than 60 times. Spencer is the author of such books as “Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam Is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs,” “Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t” and “The Truth about Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion.”

Robinson has just asserted, without any attempt at proof, that Robert Spencer’s opposition to Islam is based on “paranoia, xenophobia and alienation” which is the “same blend” as that of Breivik. But whether or not you agree with Spencer, who thinks that Islam is inherently expansionist, or with Daniel Pipes (whom Breivik also quoted a few times), who thinks that a radical interpretation of Islam is contending with a more traditional and less confrontational one, these are rational points of view.

They are based on analysis of Islamic writings and statements, and historical and current facts. They may be right or wrong, but they rational. Nobody knows what demons possessed Breivik, but he certainly did not get the idea of “executing traitors” from Spencer.  Robinson’s blazing non sequitur constitutes defamation of Spencer and others.

Nevertheless, Robinson tries to prove that there is a direct connection:

At least one anti-Muslim blogger had the decency to acknowledge feeling “terrible” about being cited in Breivik’s writings. The anonymous “Baron Bodissey,” who runs a Web site called Gates of Vienna, wrote that Breivik “is a monster and deserves just as little pity as he gave to his innocent, unarmed victims.”

Unfortunately, the blogger went on to write that Breivik’s “total lack of respect for human life is not, however, something he can have picked up from me, or from any of the other Islam-critical writers I know. . . . Indeed, the lack of respect for human life is often one of the great shortcomings of Islamic culture that we have consistently pointed out.”

Think about the implications of that last sentence. If Muslims have no respect for human life, why should anyone respect their lives? Or, for that matter, the lives of the government officials who invite Muslims to live among us? Or the lives of the sons and daughters of such traitorous quislings?

The sentence in question says that a lack of respect for human life often — not necessarily, but often — characterizes Islamic culture. And I’m sure that the blogger in question would cite mass terror attacks and suicide bombers as evidence for that.

Now, I wouldn’t make a statement like that, even with the qualifier ‘often’. I would be much more specific about which Muslims I was referring to. Nevertheless, I see the point of it (if you don’t, note the Palestinian attitudes toward terrorism revealed in this survey).

But the leap to the idea that therefore one should not respect their lives, or anyone else’s, is not justified by logic or reason. It is a non-sequitur, not unlike Robinson’s attribution of devilish characteristics to Robert Spencer, and in particular the kind of non-sequitur that a deranged psychopath with murder on his mind might find useful. It was a peg for Breivik to hang his murderous hat on.

Robinson’s statement that the “implications” of the statement he quotes are that murder is justified, along with the accusations that Spencer and others are “prejudiced purveyors of anti-Islam vitriol” constitute an attempt to characterize legitimate political discourse as hate speech and to shut it down.

Robinson is actually relatively mild, compared to some others. But it’s not unexpected. After all, as Rahm Emanuel almost said, a massacre is a terrible thing to waste.

Technorati Tags: Anders Breivik, Eugene Robinson, Norway, terrorism

Anders Breivik (from his manifesto). The badge declares itself a "multiculti traitor hunting permit"

The terrorist attack in Norway that was called “the deadliest attack by a lone gunman anywhere in modern times” was committed by an individual who placed himself in the tradition of Charles Martel and other Christian defenders of Europe. If you can bear it, here is a boring 12-minute video he posted attacking “cultural Marxism,” multiculturalism and Muslims. And here is a 1500-page document in English that he wrote to explain himself (I haven’t read most of it).

Here are some things that are almost certain:

• No Christians anywhere will celebrate his actions and give out sweets in his honor
• Right-wing groups in Europe who are opposed to multiculturalism and worried by what they consider the threat of an Islamic takeover there will nevertheless not claim to ‘understand’ his actions
• He will not turn out to have received funds or other help from any government
• Unlike the 9/11 or the 7/7 attacks, this one does not advance the political objective of its perpetrator

Despite the fact that this is one of the most viciously executed acts of terrorism of recent years — and we’ve had plenty to compare it to — I think it will be entirely ineffective as a political act.

One of the objectives of political terrorism is to draw attention to the grievances of a group or movement. How many departments of Middle East studies have been created in the US since 2001? How much material about Islam appeared in American newspapers before then?

But political terrorism is systematic. It always carries the threat that the latest outrage is only the beginning. It is intended to create a “Stockholm syndrome” effect that paradoxically leads its victims to support the cause of their tormentors. Do you think the Israeli Left would be less strident in its irrational demands for national surrender if it weren’t for the serial murders that have traumatized Jews in the Middle East for the past century or so — the phenomenon called the “Oslo syndrome?”

I do not believe that any group will claim Breivik, nor will there be follow-up attacks. His appropriation of the symbolism of Christianity will evoke revulsion. His terrible action will be seen to be disconnected from any political purpose. It’s as if he murdered nearly 100 people to protest the price of milk.

His action will probably damage the anti-multiculturalist movement in Europe.  Those who want to deny the importance of ideological and religious motivations for Islamic terrorism will say “you see, both sides have crazy sociopaths — the real enemy is extremism and terrorism.”

His manifesto is a disjointed, childish collection of ramblings, some of which make sense and some which do not. It calls for a new Crusade, and points out that the Church granted indulgences for Crusaders in the Eleventh Century. It includes detailed plans for deporting Muslims, protecting Christians in Muslim-majority nations, making body armor, making bombs, obtaining weapons, obtaining nuclear weapons (really), physical training, misleading enemies, fighting techniques, lists of targets and political strategies. It discusses the need for his defense attorney to provide him with a “Justiciar Knight” uniform to be worn at his trial. It also contains chilling descriptions of the tactics that he actually employed in his attack, such as dressing as a police officer.

Despite his ideological obsession, in his vicious, personal terrorist act he doesn’t represent anyone. He is closer to Charles Manson than to Mohammed Atta.

Technorati Tags: Norway, Anders Breivik, terrorism

Ilan Pappé's Middle East peace plan

Renegade Israeli academic Ilan Pappé is one of the most passionate anti-Zionists around. Does it also make you an antisemite if you want to see the Jewish people dead and/or dispersed? Anyway, here’s a few drops of his venom:

…we have to extricate ourselves from the politicians’ grip on our lives. In particular we should not be misled by the power game of politicians. The move to declare Palestine, within 22 percent of its original being, as an independent state at the UN is a charade whether it succeeds or not…

This is another gambit in the power game politicians play which has led us nowhere. When Palestinians solve the issue of representation and the international community exposes Israel for what it is — namely the only racist country in the Middle East — then politics and reality can fuse again.

And slowly and surely we will be able to put back the pieces and create the jigsaw of reconciliation and truth. This must be based on the twofold recognition that a solution has to include all the Palestinians (in the occupied territories, in exile and inside Israel) and has to be based on the construction of a new regime for the whole land of historical Palestine, offering equality and prosperity for all the people who live there now or were expelled from it by force in the last 63 years of Israel’s existence.

Nice. But

• 22% of the “original being” of ‘Palestine’ is exactly nothing. So is 1000%, because there never was a ‘Palestine’, only a bunch of Arabs whose ancestors mostly migrated from Syria or Egypt to take advantage of the development wrought in the land by the hated Zionists.

As Elder of Ziyon tweeted this morning:

How come there are Palestinians with the name al-Masri [Egyptian], al-Hourani [Syrian], al-Turki, al-Hindi – but none named al-Filastini?

Pappé’s insanity is flagrant when he foams, “Israel is the only racist country in the Middle East.” Come on, Ilan: Israel is probably the only non-racist country in the region! Certainly ‘Palestine’, where selling land to Jews is a capital offense and whose ‘President’ has announced that “not one Israeli will remain” after independence, isn’t getting off to a non-racist start.

The best part is his solution: there are about 5 million Arabs living in the Land of Israel, including Israeli citizens and those living in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and East Jerusalem. There are supposedly 9 to 11 million ‘Palestinians’ outside the Land, including the 4.5 million that claim refugee status in the Middle East and expatriates all over the world. So Pappé  wants to ‘construct a new regime’ for these 15 million Arabs along with the 5.8 million Jews that live in Israel today, in the area between the river and the sea. The old one is ‘racist’, so it will have to go.

What a deal! All the land and property there, including nice cars and women will of course be divided fairly among the ‘owners’.

Ilan Pappé actually gave a talk here in Fresno back in 2003, sponsored by the same fair and entirely unbiased academics who are now in charge of Fresno State’s Mideast Studies Department. Pappé now teaches at the University of Exeter in the UK. He was forced to resign from the University of Haifa in 2007 after his disturbed rantings were too much even for the very ‘post-Zionist’ world of Israeli academe, where almost anything is tolerated.

***

Shabbat shalom!

Technorati Tags: Ilan Pappé

Little Zionists celebrate Purim in Kibbutz Sarid, 1930's

You’d think that this doesn’t deserve mention in a newspaper:

Beginning this September, Jewish nursery and kindergarten teachers will be required to open the week with the raising of the Israeli flag and the singing of “Hatikva,” in accordance with new directives issued by the Education Ministry.

The preschool teachers will also be required to teach the children the state symbols once a week. The directives state that by next Independence Day, “All the children will know the words to the national anthem.”

Could anything be less exceptional? This is done in the US and certainly in many other nations.

According to the Education Ministry, the directives will not be implemented in the Arab sector. “We are conducting discussions in the Preschool Department to see how we can adapt [the directives] to this sector,” the ministry said.

Oh — a problem. OK, leave Arab schools out. Israel is a special country where a large part of a large minority identifies with its enemies. That’s a subject for another post. I just hope ‘adapting’ doesn’t mean that they will be allowed to raise a Palestinian flag and sing the Palestinian national anthem, which, by the way, includes this:

With the resolve of the winds and the fire of the guns
And the determination of my nation in the land of struggle
Palestine is my home, Palestine is my fire,
Palestine is my revenge and the land of endurance

But some Israeli Jews are unhappy. The article continues,

“It looks like a competition between members of the Likud to see who can push us faster into the arms of fascism,” said Prof. Gabi Solomon of the University of Haifa, an Israel Prize laureate for education.

“There’s definitely a place for Zionist education for Jews,” Solomon said. “But it has to be balanced by democratic values. We are a Jewish and democratic state and without this balance even the best of intentions sound chauvinistic.”

What?

It is ‘fascism’ to raise the flag and to learn the words to the national anthem? Americans did these things all through WWII and it didn’t make them pro-Hitler — probably the opposite. And how is it anti-democratic — does it take away anyone’s right to vote?

Prof. Solomon thinks that Zionism must be ‘balanced’ by democratic values. But there’s nothing undemocratic (or democratic, for that matter) about Zionism, which is compatible with any form of government that allows Israel to be the state of the Jewish people.

The tension is in the mind of those like Solomon, who appear to think that ‘democracy’ means that each group in a state has an equal voice. It doesn’t. In a democracy, each citizen has a vote, and — with safeguards to ensure the civil rights of minorities — the majority rules.

Israel is a Jewish state with a Jewish flag and national anthem, and that is the way the majority wants it. While Arab residents might prefer otherwise, as long as their civil rights — the right to vote, fair treatment in housing, employment, etc. — are not violated, this does not make it undemocratic.

Israel can be a democratic state that gives equal civil rights to all of its citizens, while still being the state that belongs to the Jewish people and that exists for the Jewish people. For those non-Jews who nevertheless feel diminished or infuriated by living in such a state, they are not required to do so. After all, there are 23 Arab states among 192 other members of the UN to choose from.

Some anti-Zionist Israelis seem to be prepared to resist in a passive-aggressive way:

Y., a kindergarten teacher in the Tel Aviv area, said she didn’t think teachers would implement the directives.

“I’m certain that no teacher will even know about this,” she said. “Even the most diligent teachers read until page 7 of the pamphlet of directives; no one will get to page 11.”

“Even though it obligates us, nobody bothers asking us about it,” she continued. “In any case, I have no way of raising a flag, because I don’t have a flagpole.

“In the past they tried to do something like this and it didn’t go over,” Y. said. “I know that in Binyamina there was a kindergarten that tried something like this two years ago, and the parents just rebelled. They started bringing their kids late in the morning on purpose.”

I can see it now: “Moshe, put your pants on more slowly, do you want to arrive early and become a fascist?”

The new directives are part of a series of initiatives launched by Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar aimed at strengthening pupils’ Jewish and Zionist identity. These have included “adopting” a grave of a fallen soldier, school visits to Hebron and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the Israeli Journey program sponsored by the Bereshit association headed by Rabbi Motti Elon, and expanding visits to Jerusalem, with a stress on the City of David.

Sa’ar has also instructed schools to increase their cooperation with the IDF, and officers are invited to motivate both teachers and pupils.

Last year, the ministry introduced a new subject to the state schools’ curriculum called Jewish Heritage and Culture, taught in grades six through eight for two hours weekly. The class teaches about the Jewish calendar and “the Jewish people’s link to the Land of Israel.”

Why is this necessary? Because in recent years the Israeli educational system has removed material about Jewish history in the land of Israel from the curriculum. After 1993, a succession of left-wing Education Ministers took out references to ancient Israel and even recent wars in order to “educate for peace” (of course the Palestinian Authority developed its educational system to create a generation of haters and even encouraged ‘martyrdom’ for their cause). Emphasis on Jewish history was replaced by a universalistic approach that was more congenial to the Left.

At the same time, propaganda from anti-Zionist sources — the false history of the ‘new historians’, the nakba narrative, even pseudo-scientific arguments that there is no Jewish people — proliferate.

In part as a result, the number of young Israelis avoiding the draft has soared. Intellectual destruction makes possible physical destruction.

There is nothing inherently fascist or wrong with loving one’s country, with identifying with one’s people, and even with valuing them more than other groups. This is a normal human characteristic, which should not be confused with manifestations of excessive particularism like racism or chauvinism. It is not necessary to destroy the former in order to prevent the latter.

Maybe it’s because we live in a world where ethnic and religious hatred is more the rule than the exception — may I point out that this is especially a problem in the Muslim world? — that we go to extremes to try to stamp out any such attitudes among ourselves. The Jewish people has been particularly ‘extremist’ in this regard, in some cases to the point of encouraging national suicide.

Let’s get a grip: raise the flag, sing the national anthem, learn about the history of the Jews in the Land of Israel and the heroism of the Jewish fighters that have made it possible for, finally, there to be one tiny Jewish state.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Zionism, Israeli education

If you haven’t seen this 6-minute video starring Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, it’s worth watching.

He touches on some important points, which I’ll expand into a short history lesson:

There never was an Arab state of ‘Palestine’.  After WWI, the victorious Allies carved up the territory that had been in the possession of the Ottoman empire for about 400 years.  ‘Palestine’ was actually composed of several former Ottoman provinces, and 74% of it was east of the Jordan River.

All of this land was earmarked for Jewish settlement by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which was adopted by the victorious Allies at the San Remo conference in 1920, and made part of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922. In the Mandate, Britain was charged with facilitating the development of a Jewish national home (that didn’t work out too well).

Several Arab countries were created at about the same time, including ‘Transjordan’ — the part of Palestine east of the Jordan, which was given by the British in 1921 to Abdullah, the great-great-grandfather of the present Jordanian king, as a present for his (minimal) support during the war. This was really the first ‘partition’ of Palestine.

In 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution calling for the area from the Jordan to the Mediterranean to be divided into a Jewish and Arab state. Every Arab state and the representatives of the Palestinian Arabs rejected it.

In 1948, when the British Mandate ended, Israel declared a state in ‘Palestine’, and five Arab nations joined with the Palestinian Arabs to try to nip it in the bud. When they failed, armistice talks in 1949 demarcated a line of disengagement — which the Arabs specifically demanded must have no political significance. This line is what everyone calls the “pre-1967 borders.” They are not and never were borders!

After the war, Jordan ‘annexed’ the territories. They called this area the “West Bank.” Before then, it had always been “Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.” But only the UK and Pakistan recognized the annexation.

In 1967, Egypt, Syria and Jordan launched another war to destroy the Jewish state — yes, they ‘launched’ it. Although Israel fired the first shot, even the UN agreed that Israel was not guilty of aggression but fought a defensive war. As everyone knows, Israel conquered Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem in that conflict.

After the war, the Arabs refused (Khartoum, Sept. 1, 1967) to negotiate with Israel, recognize her or allow her to live in peace. And UN Security Council resolution 242 was passed, stating that all nations in the area, including Israel, had a right to “secure and recognized boundaries,” boundaries that were to be negotiated between the parties and not intended to be identical to the 1949 lines (which were neither secure nor recognized).

So now Judea, Samaria and Eastern Jerusalem are called ‘occupied territories’, as if it were like the US occupation of Japan after WWII. But what country was occupied? Not ‘Palestine’, which was not and never had been a country. And not Jordan, which had no legitimate right to be there in the first place.

Danny Ayalon calls them ‘disputed territories’, after the model of so many other places in the world that are claimed by more than one nation. But I wouldn’t go even that far. First, there is no legitimate Palestinian nation to claim them — and even if there were, Israel, the state of the Jewish people, has a prima facie claim on the area from the Mandate.

Note also that settlements are said to be illegal in occupied territory “by the Geneva Convention.” Even if the fourth Geneva Convention (art. 49) — which was intended to prohibit actions like Germany’s forced population transfers during WWII — can be construed to apply to voluntary settlement which does not displace anyone, it certainly cannot apply to territory that is not ‘occupied’ or another country.

Now look at President Obama’s ‘peace’ plan in the light of the above:

He calls for an end to Jewish settlements — in other words, he demands the forcible transfer of a population of as many as 500,000 people against their will from a place where they are legally resident. If this isn’t a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention, I don’t know what is! And to add icing to the cake, a religious criterion is applied to decide who will be deported!

He insists that Israel must withdraw from all of the “West Bank” — with the exception of “mutually agreed swaps.” This implies at best that the 1949 armistice lines determine the absolute size of the state of Israel, since any expansion requires equal compensation. But at worst, if the Arabs refuse to agree to swaps, then the 1949 lines become the borders!

If Obama isn’t aware of history, neither are the Palestinians. Negotiator Saeb Erekat said that Ayalon’s video “expresses open hostility to the Palestinian people.” It’s impossible to understand this in a meaningful historical sense, so I presume it’s based on the “Palestinian narrative” in which their (invented) ancient civilization was dispossessed by European Jews, and that is what is meant by ‘occupation’.

Now that the Palestinian Authority has made it clear that it does not and will not accept the existence of a Jewish state, it’s time for new ideas. Caroline Glick recently suggested that Israel should unilaterally annex all of Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem, including its Arab residents. This idea doesn’t appeal to me (the part about the Arab residents).

But I do think that Israel legitimately can and should annex parts of the territories, in particular those with large Jewish populations, those containing holy places — because otherwise no Jew will set foot in them again — and those necessary for strategic reasons, to create the secure boundaries that the Arabs and Obama wish to deny Israel.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Danny Ayalon, disputed territories