FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

The always-pungent Melanie Phillips writes,

At a time when Iran is building its genocide bomb against Israel, when Arab children are being indoctrinated in medieval and Nazi Jew-hatred, when similar blood libels and deranged ‘Jewish conspiracy’ theories are now rampant throughout a ‘civilised’ world which will accordingly look the other way should the rockets start falling on Tel Aviv or Haifa, it is hideous beyond measure that some Jews (including Israelis on the left too) should themselves be lining up behind such forces of evil, providing them with the cynical and spurious camouflage of ‘Jewish conscience’ to enable them to do their infernal business.

She’s thinking, in part, of the hecklers from Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) who tried to disrupt PM Netanyahu’s speech at the Jewish Federation’s General Assembly today. She continues,

Alas, it was ever thus. Most tragically, throughout the history of anti-Jewish persecution there have always been Jews who volunteered to do the Jew-haters’ dirty work for them. Like Jew-hatred itself, what we are seeing in the [Jews for Injustice Against Jews] is merely yet another mutation — of the racial treachery that has centuries-old blood on its hands.

For once I don’t agree with Ms. Phillips. I don’t think it was ever thus. I’m sure its possible to dig up a few Jewish Nazis, and there are those malshinim* that are mentioned  in our daily liturgy, but the wholesale abandonment of the Jewish people and their homeland by so many who are by some definition Jewish is unprecedented.

In fact, it would probably be correct to say that the anti-Zionist movements in the US and the UK are led by Jews as much or more so than by Arabs (a great deal of the money comes from Arab sources, but the public face of the movement is mostly Jewish).

Maybe the reason is that in, say, 1938, the Nazis weren’t exactly accepting of Jews who were willing to come over to their side. Today’s Nazis have learned how useful it is to have a chorus of fools who are prepared to say “As a Jew… [insert slander here].” So they are happy to let them join the dark side and receive their psychic ‘get out of Auschwitz free’ cards. All in the name of peace, justice, human rights and even, as Phillips notes, “Jewish conscience”.

JVP was recently added to the ADL’s list of the top ten anti-Israel groups in America. They have the distinction of being the only ‘Jewish’ group to make the cut.

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* Malshinim originally referred to ‘slanderers’ or informers who betrayed forbidden Jewish worship to the Romans. The shmonesreh prayer which is said three times daily on weekdays includes a request to frustrate their designs (literally, “for the slanderers, shall there be no hope.”)

Technorati Tags: Israel, malshinim, Jews, Jewish Voice for Peace

Another kind of  war of attrition

Friday I wrote about the construction — rather destruction — that’s taken place over the past decades on the Temple Mount, and is going on right now.

In answering a reader’s email, I realized something important: this and many other incidents are part of a pattern which represents a theme of the Israeli-Arab conflict that doesn’t get much attention.

It’s this: the Arabs haven’t been able to roll back time before 1948 by war or diplomacy — although they continue to try — so they are doing it piecemeal, by simply taking what they want. Here are some examples to add to the de facto loss of Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount:

• Some areas of Jerusalem are becoming no-go areas for Jewish Israelis.  Read a horrifying story about how several young people barely escaped with their lives here.
• Crime and banditry are being used to try to expel Jewish farmers from the Negev and the Galilee.
• Palestinian Arabs destroy forests to get control of state lands with the help of foreigners and Israeli extremists.

It’s ironic that so much emphasis is placed on construction within existing Jewish towns and neighborhoods across the Green Line as creating ‘facts on the ground’, when Palestinian Arabs in and out of Israel are creating ‘facts’ every day, just by committing crimes.

And concerning the Temple Mount and the Old City:

How can we let these places slip away, not only because of their importance to Jewish culture — not just ‘religious’ Jewish culture — but because of the blood that was paid for them in 1967?

Israelis enter the Old City by the Lions Gate, 1967 (illustration: Judah Rosenthal)

If Americans Knew department

Just to make sure that everyone understands who Israel is dealing with in Gaza, here are some recent remarks from Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders:

Al Qassam website (Gaza) — Senior leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zahar says Jews were kicked out by France, Britain, Russia and Germany “because they betrayed, stole and corrupted these countries.”

The Jews will soon be expelled from Palestine that same way they were kicked out by France, Britain, Belgium, Russia and Germany, Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar said over the weekend…

Meanwhile, Ramadan Shallah, leader of Islamic Jihad, called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to step down for abandoning the armed struggle against Israel. Shallah was speaking in Damascus on the 23rd anniversary of the establishment of his group.

“The negotiations [with Israel] have ended and there’s no alternative to jihad and resistance,” Shallah said. “The present leadership of the Palestinian Authority is not authorized to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians. If Mahmoud Abbas can’t adopt the option of Yasser Arafat resistance, we recommend another option which is more honorable: to quit and sit at home.”

The Islamic Jihad leader said that “Palestine is all ours and we won’t give up one inch of it. We won’t participate in or accept any settlement that limits our rights only to the 1967 borders.”

If you haven’t already, make sure to check out the Hamas covenant here.

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The AP plays fast and loose

This morning, an AP dispatch written by Diaa Haddad appeared in my local newspaper, the Fresno Bee. Here is how it began:

JERUSALEM – A string of Israeli governments has helped cement the Jewish presence in Arab areas of Jerusalem by selling or leasing property to settler groups at bargain prices, court documents released Sunday show. [from Google cache]

When I searched Google for it, I found that had been replaced with an entirely different story, one about Israeli plans to build new homes in East Jerusalem.  The original was still present in Google’s cache, where it will probably be available for a week or so.

The same item appeared in the Jerusalem Post, where the first paragraph read as follows:

JERUSALEM — The Israeli government sold or leased property in the pre-1967 Jordanian-controlled Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem to Israeli settlers at exceptionally low prices, helping them cement a Jewish presence there, court documents published in English on Sunday show.

I don’t know if the AP revised the item or the Post did, although I suspect the latter. This is because the areas in question had Jewish residents before 1948, when they were driven out by force when the Jordanian Army ethnically cleansed the areas they occupied.

Guess what? Nothing’s changed since 1948, except that this time Israel is expected to kick the Jews out. The story continues,

…if borders are agreed on, a small number of Israelis in a few dozen buildings on the Palestinian side would not likely scuttle implementation of a peace accord. Israel removed 8,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 when it withdrew.

It is naturally assumed that Jews (not ‘Israelis’) will have to move if they live on the ‘Palestinian’ side. Of course Israel would never dream of expelling Arabs living on the Israeli side — can you imagine the outcry from the UN, the EU, the Obama Administration, Ha’aretz, etc. if such were suggested?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jerusalem, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Jerusalem, AP

Here’s yet another story (h/t: Israpundit) about the probable destruction of artifacts which may have immeasurable historical and religious significance to the Jewish people by the Islamic Waqf which controls the Temple Mount:

The High Court ruled against the Israel Law Center this week in a petition aimed at stopping the destruction of Jewish artifacts dating back to the Temple era. The court ruled that the destruction cannot be stopped using private prosecution. In addition to rejecting the private case against the Islamic Wakf Authority on the Temple Mount, the High Court rejected the Israel Law Center’s demand that the attorney general be ordered to take action against the Temple Mount destruction.

It’s shocking and infuriating to think that this has been going on for years:

[A local resident] said that Waqf attempts to conceal the work but that it is not hard to see what is happening these days on the Temple Mount. “The Waqf works are constant, we see tractors going to and fro carrying earth. The work is taking place near the Dome of the Rock, exactly in the place between where our Holy Temple’s courtyard and the Altar used to stand. The Waqf claims they are doing pavement work there, or so they advertise in the news sites, but in practice they surrounded themselves in white burlap and we see there is scaffolding. I suppose that for paving works there should be no need for scaffolding.”

In 1999, the Waqf excavated an area of the Temple Mount referred to as ‘Solomon’s Stables’ to build a new mosque. They refused to permit archeaological supervision of the construction work. Here’s what happened, as described by an Israeli archaeologist to a Christian audience:

“In November 1999, the Islamic authorities carried out a huge excavation of [the part of the Temple Mount known as Solomon’s Stable],” [Prof. Gabriel Barkay of the Hebrew University] said. “They built a modern entrance to the building instead of the existing entrance, and they dug a huge pit with the help of bulldozers and 300 [dump trucks] that removed the dirt from the earthen fills of this spot.”

Barkay showed pictures of tractors demolishing structures dating to the Twelfth Century Crusades. The demolition went on without any regulation or archaeological supervision, he said. Builders at the Temple Mount took many of the ancient stones from earlier Jewish buildings and cut them down to make modern stones.

“Who knows how many inscriptions we lost in this way?” Barkay said. “Who knows how many decorated stones were defaced in this manner? The earth was saturated with ancient materials, and it was dumped in the Kidron Valley to the east of the Temple Mount.”

Many of the Jewish and Christian artifacts dating to the Crusades and to the first and second temples were covered up, destroyed or removed. In view of these developments, Barkay began to act…

“We began a project of collecting the dirt from the dumping areas. We moved the piles of dirt to a well-protected area,” he recounted. “We covered them with plastic sheets. Each pile was marked with the exact place of origin and exact depth we could estimate from which it came…”

“This effort already yielded some scores of coins,” he said. “We have coins from the 12th century, the 19th century, up to the first century B.C. We have some second-century B.C. Antonian coins. We have some Herodian coins.”

Among the other things, the team found a Christian charm bearing the image of John the Baptist with an infant Jesus and the Jordan River in the background. They found an alabaster dish from the Persian Period and an ivory comb from the Second Temple period. Though much had already been lost, the substance of what they are finding is encouraging amid the delicate and unfortunate situation.

Here is a photo of the Solomon’s Stables construction activity. Compare this to the care with which archaeologists work!

Unsupervised construction activity on the Temple Mount, 1999

There is a political context. Yasser Arafat often insisted that there was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. For example,

Arafat made the allegation during the July 2000 Camp David talks, according to U.S. envoy Dennis Ross, who was present when Arafat spoke. Ross has now revealed: “He did offer one new idea, which was that the Temple didn’t exist in Jerusalem, that it was in Nablus.” (Jerusalem Post, May 15, 2002)

Here is a snippet from a 2001 interview with the Palestinian Authority-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, ‘Ikrima Sabri:

Sabri: There is not [even] the smallest indication of the existence of a Jewish temple on this place in the past. In the whole city, there is not even a single stone indicating Jewish History. Our right, on the other hand, is very clear. This place belongs to us for 1500 years. Even when it was conquered by the Crusaders, it remained Al-Aqsa, and we got it back soon afterwards. The Jews do not even know exactly where their temple stood. Therefore, we do not accept that they have any rights, underneath the surface or above it.

Die Welt: It is agreed among archeologists that the Wailing-Wall is part of the foundation of Herod’s temple. The Bible and other antique sources report about this place in detail. Why can’t you respect the Jewish connection to this place?

Sabri: It is the art of the Jews to deceive the world. But they can’t do it to us. There is not a single stone in the Wailing-Wall relating to Jewish History. The Jews cannot legitimately claim this wall, neither religiously nor historically. The Committee of the League of Nations recommended in 1930, to allow the Jews to pray there, in order to keep them quiet. But by no means did it acknowledge that the wall belongs to them.

It’s understandable that Israelis are certain that one of the objectives of the Waqf is to deliberately erase evidence of Jewish provenance by destroying artifacts.

The 1967 decision to leave the control of the Temple Mount in the hands of the Waqf surprised even the Arabs, who assumed that the Israeli conquest of the area was, er, a conquest. Some think that this was the biggest mistake an Israeli government has made since 1948 (another candidate is the decision to accept Arafat’s PLO as the ‘legitimate representative of the Palestinian people’ in the Oslo negotiations).

There is a reason that the Waqf is allowed to get away with doing construction work in an area of such sensitivity without supervision: in a word, fear. Fear of ‘Muslim rage’, easily turned on by the Waqf and Palestinian religious leaders, as illustrated by the riots surrounding the Israeli attempt to repair the damaged Mughrabi gate.

Israel’s supreme court has apparently decided to continue the policy, which amounts to a de facto abdication of sovereignty over the heart of Jerusalem and the most important site in Judaism.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs, Temple Mount, Waqf

— Good morning Mr. President!

— Morning, Pete. What’s happening today?

— Well, your calendar says “election over, screw Zionists…”

— Oh, right. The Zionists. Well, tell them that they have to get out of ‘Arab East Jerusalem’. Don’t they know that ‘settlements are illegal under international law’ and that ‘the Palestinians want East Jerusalem for the capital of their state’?

— Great sound bites, sir!

— Thanks, I’ve been reading the New York Times and listening to NPR. By the way, we have to do something about illegal immigration.

— Illegal immigration? That hasn’t been one of your issues…

— Just look outside! Look at all of those people milling around!

— Er, those are newly-elected Republican Congresspeople, sir. They’re checking out the offices.

— Oh. Too bad we can’t deport them. Look at that guy over there… he looks like some kind of leader.

— Yes sir, that’s Eric Cantor, he’s Majority Whip now.

— Cantor… sounds like a Zionist.

— Yes sir, I’m afraid he is.

— Well, let’s get going on our work. Have that annoying woman at State tell that Bubbi or Bibi or whatever that… what’s that?

— There’s an Islamic delegation waiting to see you, sir. They say it’s important. They say that we can’t stay here…

— Can’t stay in the White House? Are they crazy?

— They say it’s a mosque, sir. They say it’s always been a mosque.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Israel, Mosque, Eric Cantor