It wasn’t a Muslim


It wasn’t a Muslim

http://www.takeourworldback.com/itwasntmuslims.htm

With
a peer-reviewed scientific journal having published "loaded gun" (i.e.
unreacted nano-thermite) evidence finally proving beyond doubt that World
Trade Center Buildings 1, 2 and 7 were brought down in a series of controlled
demolitions
, here are a few more facts to consider.

It wasn’t

Muslims in an Afghan cave
who had access to
highly energetic nano-thermites;
it was the US
military
and government scientists such as

those connected with NIST
.

It wasn’t Muslims who ran a
construction company
that was

awarded a $124 million contract
for construction of the Naval Sea Systems
Command (NAVSEA) headquarters in
Washington, DC
, which
oversees
the

Indian Head Naval Surface Warfare Center
(NSWC-IH), which was described
during the 1990s as the "National
Center for Energetics
", the

military’s term for "explosives work"
, and as of 1999-2000 the "only
reliable source of aluminum nanopowders in the United States
"; it was
Tom Leppert who was
CEO of
Turner Construction
as

of 9/11/01
, and who

even writes parts of Presidential speeches
.

It wasn’t Muslims who ran a
construction company
that had

supervised the 2000 demolition of the Seattle Kingdome
, participated in the
post
9/11 collection and disposal of the steel wreckage
of the WTC towers, and
carried out extensive renovations throughout the World Trade Center complex
right up to the morning of 9/11 including
fireproofing
upgrades
on
the
floors that
were
struck by planes
and subsequently "failed", when
the
steel had already been certified
to
ASTM E119 by Universal Laboratories, and,
in tests
sponsored by NIST on corresponding floor assemblies
subjected to
greater
heat exposure
and protected with less fireproofing than

was the case at the WTC
, the test specimens "were
able to sustain the maximum design load
" without collapsing for as long as
the tests were run (2 to 3 1/2 hours); it was Tom
Leppert
who was
CEO of
Turner Construction
as

of 9/11/01
and
received a Torch of Conscience award from the
American Jewish
Congress
.

It wasn’t Muslims who
trained their
cameras on the World Trade Center Towers prior to the first aircraft impact
,
who danced and
celebrated
with high fives
prior to the
second impact as most onlookers still believed it had been a terrible accident

rather than terrorism, and who were caught with
foreign passports,
$4,700 in cash
hidden in a sock,
maps
highlighting certain places in the city, and a van that tested positive for
traces of explosives
; it was

Israelis Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner, and Omer
Marmari
, several of whom have been
confirmed
as Mossad agents
, as part of their job in "documenting
the event
".

It wasn’t Muslims who were caught on 9/11/01

operating in teams
with
vans full of explosives
, including one team who

attempted to blow up
the

George Washington Bridge
with a
truck packed
with tons of explosives
, and another who

blew up a van between 6th and 7th on King Street
with a mural painted

of a remote controlled airplane diving into New York and blowing up
; it was
Israelis,
which is why the authorities did their best to

ignore and bury these reports
which included a

suspected van bomb driven into the WTC basement
and exploded to weaken the
structure.

It wasn’t Muslims who were caught shortly after midnight on May 7, 2002 very
close to the

Whidbey Island Naval Air Station
, Oak Harbor, Wash., (where the Navy
conducts explosive
ordnance training
for
bomb
disposal mobile units
to the consternation of local marine life)
with a rental truck
that tested positive for TNT and RDX plastic explosives
; it was
Israelis whose
cover story was of "delivering furniture" but regarded by authorities as dubious
because of the early morning hour, and the authorities’ subsequent claim that
the dog’s reaction and initial tests for explosives were wrong is

so full of holes
that it merely demonstrates

the power of the Israeli lobby
.

It wasn’t Muslims who were
in New
York on 9/11
and

in London on the morning of the 7/7 attacks
; it was

Benjamin Netanyahu
and
Rudy Giuliani.

It wasn’t Muslims who received advance warning of the London 7/7 attacks; it
was

Benjamin Netanyahu
and
the Mossad.

It wasn’t Muslims who provided
two hours’ advance
warning of an attack on the World Trade Center
via an instant messaging
company based in Herzliya; it was
Israelis.

It wasn’t a Muslim who
fled the US on
September 14, 2001
; it was Dominick Suter of "Urban
Moving Systems
" who
fled to
Israel
.

It wasn’t

over a hundred
Muslims who, from around

January 2000 to September 2001
, posed as "art students"
and attempted to penetrate US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) offices and other
federal buildings including
36 sensitive
Department of Defense (DoD) sites
, were caught with diagrams of the interior
of federal buildings and photographs of federal agents and often evaded security
by entering through back doors or parking garages, and even

visited the homes of senior federal officials
but not those of their
neighbors; it was
Israelis
, none of whom were "art students" but many of whom had backgrounds
in Israeli military intelligence. Not surprisingly, the Press went for a limited
hangout by trying to pretend the Israelis were merely shadowing "Arab hijackers"
and either failed to pass on information, or "it
was not treated seriously
", the old canard about "intelligence
failure
". The operations of the Israeli fake "art students" is

well documented
, including plenty of names and even descriptions. An
unusually large number of these Israelis were located in Irving, Dallas, TX
(p.23, previous link), which is

about ten miles
west of
Tom
Leppert’s Alva Court home
, which is
barely more than a mile north of the
Dallas home that George W. Bush moved into after leaving office.

It isn’t Muslim countries that have a massive
spy ring in the USA
capable of tapping
into much of the telecoms network
and using information obtained to blackmail Americans;
it is
Israel.

It wasn’t Muslims who received advance warning on Monday September 10, 2001,
against flying the next day; it was San Francisco Mayor
Willie Brown,
and a group of

top Pentagon officials
.

It wasn’t Muslims who
acquired a
99-year lease
on the World Trade Center’s
Twin Towers, Buildings Four and
Five and approximately 400,000 square feet of retail space
, and insured for billions of dollars against terror attacks a mere six weeks before terror attacks did in fact occur,
and then employed (to press for the insurance claim) a ‘structural engineer‘ who
misleadingly
asserts that
steel loses half its strength at "400 degrees";
it was
– in a deal negotiated by

Lewis Eisenberg
of the Port Authority –

Benjamin Netanyahu’s (and Ariel Sharon’s and Ehud Barak’s) friend
Larry
Silverstein and his partner
Australian billionaire and "Holocaust survivor"
Frank Lowy
who fought "in the
Jewish underground", was embroiled in a high-level bank corruption
scandal
with Israeli Premier

Ehud Olmert
and found to be
making
payments to Lord (Michael Abraham) Levy
who was
arrested several
times
in relation to a "cash for honors" scandal, Levy being a "tennis
partner" and advisor of
Tony Blair.

It isn’t Muslims who have a reputation for

perpetrating arson scams in order to claim off insurance companies
as
evidenced by any colloquial use of the term "Muslim lightning"; it is Jews as
evidenced by the recognized term "Jewish
lightning
".

It wasn’t Muslims who normally breakfasted at
the Windows on the
World restaurant
on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower, but by
some bizarre coincidence did not happen to be there on 9/11 and were thus spared
the fate of occupants on that tragic day (none
of whom escaped from the floors above the aircraft impact
at 8:46 AM); it
was Larry Silverstein who was

spared due to having a "dermatologist’s appointment"
, an event
which also spared his two
children who worked at Silverstein Properties.

It wasn’t a Muslim who
went on TV within hours of the attacks
to tell everyone that "It… certainly has the fingerprints of somebody like bin
Laden" and the World Trade Center had collapsed because of "the velocity of the
plane" and "intense heat probably weakened the structure as well", and who
reportedly on that very day advised the White House to take Cipro, an effective antibiotic
against anthrax,
seven days before the commencement of an anthrax letters terror
campaign
targeted at

Democratic U.S. Senators
and

news media offices
, who
on 9/11/01 was
a managing director of the crisis and consequence management group at Kroll Associates
, who

was an advisor to the Council of Foreign Relations
(CFR) regarding
"epidemiological surveillance" and
national security advisor at
the National Institute of Health
(NIH), and who
gave his ‘friend’
John O’Neill a job as Head Of Security at the World Trade Center
; it was
Jerome Hauer.

It wasn’t Muslims who carried out a terror campaign mailing
letters containing anthrax spores
that had their electrostatic charge altered so that they would disperse more
readily
, anthrax that

was traced to the weapons grade Ames strain originating at the US Army Medical
Research Institute for Infectious Diseases
(USAMRIID)
at Fort Detrick,
neither was it the FBI’s
final "suspect"
Roman Catholic Bruce
Ivins
, who, unlike the true perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, had no motive
to target news media and Opposition Senators and thereby scare them into
uncritical acceptance of the "Arab hijackers" conspiracy theory. Ivins died of

an overdose and alleged "suicide" in July 2008
after the FBI gave up
attempting to pin the blame on Steven Hatfill because
there was
not a scintilla of evidence against him
; a
logical suspect is Philip M. Zack
who left Fort Detrick under a cloud in December 1991 after having headed
a clique
calling itself the "Camel Club" that was racially harassing Egyptian-born Dr.
Ayaad Assaad
. Zack was found by a 1992 inquiry to have been
caught
on surveillance camera being let into a Fort Detrick lab building at 8:40 p.m.
on Jan. 23, 1992
apparently by Dr. Marian Rippy, a lab pathologist and close
friend of Zack. The inquiry also found someone had been in a lab late at
night secretly conducting unauthorised research, evidently on anthrax believed
to include the Ames strain. Nearly ten years on, during the week between 9/11
and the commencement of the anthrax campaign,
the FBI received an
anonymous letter attempting to frame Dr. Assaad as a "bioterrorist"
.
The
anthrax letters seemed

contrived so as to appear to have been written by a Muslim
, and
a New York Times writer told of
a "Mr. Z." who
failed some FBI polygraph tests and was once caught with a girlfriend at Fort Detrick "surrounded only by blushing germs"
.

It wasn’t a Muslim who was claimed to have been killed on the alleged
American Airlines "Flight 77", to have

lived at Silver Spring, Maryland
(as did

a certain
Rabbi Dr.
Dov
Zakheim
), and to have worked on top-secret "deep-black"
projects at the

Indian Head Naval Surface Warfare Center
(NSWC-IH), a "renowned
leader in energetics
" which operates an "Energetics Manufacturing Technology
Center", carries out "advanced
research in energetic systems
" and "absorbed the function of the closed

Naval Ordnance Laboratory
, formerly in White Oak, MD" which is a couple
miles from Silver Spring; it was

William E. Caswell
.

It wasn’t Muslims who were claimed to have been killed on the alleged "Flight
77" and who worked for government or defense, particularly the Navy; it was

John Yamnicky
who, strangely, for the first time
did not tell his
daughter that he was going on trave
l, and who, like

William Caswell
, had worked for the Navy on top-secret "black" projects.
Others included

Charles Burlingame
, a former Navy fighter pilot who used to work in the
section of the Pentagon that was hit and who had formulated a response for the
eventuality of an airliner being flown into the Pentagon and whose daughter
Wendy subsequently died in a "suspicious
fire
" at a 50-story high-rise in New Jersey in December 2006,

Wilson "Bud" Flagg
, a retired American Airlines pilot and Navy Admiral,

Stanley Hall
, an expert in anti-radar technology and a director of program management at Raytheon,

Bryan Jack
, a senior executive and top budget analyst who worked at the
Pentagon,

Chandler Keller
, a Boeing propulsion engineer,
Dong
Lee
, a Boeing engineer who worked for their Integrated Defense Systems and
who had worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) for 14 years,

Barbara Olson
, CNN commentator and wife of the US Solicitor General who
claimed to have received cell phone calls from "Flight 77",

Ruben Ornedo
, a Boeing propulsion / satellite communications engineer,

Robert Penniger
, an electrical engineer with BAE Systems, and another dozen
alleged "Flight 77 passengers" who were linked to defense and government who, we
are told, all just
happened to be on
this
unusually low
occupancy
flight. These people, well loved and
respected
as honest, decent heroes, are the very sort of characters whose
work could have been horrifically exploited without their knowledge, and whom
the 9/11 perpetrators would need to eliminate to prevent them speaking out after
the attacks.

It wasn’t Muslims who profited by
speculating on airline and
insurance stocks in advance of 9/11
; it was Israelis.

It wasn’t Muslims who concocted a hoax about
pork-swilling,
money-eschewing,

celibate
, truthful,
courageous,
pro-animal rights,
"devout Jews" who were "suicide hijackers / pilots",
almost
half of whom
later turned up
alive and
well
; it was Jews who concocted a hoax about
drinking,
gambling,

strip joint-frequenting
,
womanizing, "devout Muslims"
who were "suicide hijackers / pilots",

almost half of whom
later turned up
alive and well.

It wasn’t a Muslim who was a former unit team leader in an elite special forces unit
and whose father was a senior aide, secretary and pallbearer to a man who in 1937 was commander of the Irgun Tzvai Leumi, a
Jewish terrorist organization responsible for atrocities such as the King David Hotel bombing;
it was

Benjamin Netanyahu
.

It wasn’t a Muslim who was the mentor of Benjamin Netanyahu’s
father Benzion and who wrote a
column in the Revisionist Zionist magazine Doar Hayom under the title
"From the Notebook of a Fascist",
praising Mussolini and referring to
one-time commander of the Irgun

Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky
as "our Duce";
it was Abba Ahimeir the
founder of
Revisionist Maximalism, a Jewish fascist ideology
.

It wasn’t Muslim
terrorists who plotted to assassinate British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin
;
it was

Jewish terrorists
.

It wasn’t Muslims who orchestrated, and whose operatives were
caught red-handed
in, a failed false-flag terrorist
campaign in Egypt
; it was

Israel
.

It wasn’t Muslims who
attacked the USS Liberty
killing 34 Americans, and had the US President saying "I
don’t give a damn if every man drowns and the ship sinks. I don’t want to
embarrass our allies
"; it was
Israel.

It wasn’t Muslims who were
evacuated
"apparently due to a specific security threat" in advance of the Amman, Jordan terror
attacks
on
November 9, 2005 (9/11 by Israeli and European calendars), which
included a blast at the Radisson hotel
that was known to have emanated from a
bomb hidden in a false ceiling
, even though the official story held that
it was really the work of "suicide bombers" and
therefore by some
bizarre coincidence the ceiling bomb must have been placed there previously by someone
else; it
was Israelis who were evacuated in advance of these attacks
in which
there
were no Jewish casualties, most of the dead were Jordanian Sunni Muslims, two
Israeli casualties were both Arabs, and five Palestinians died
including
Major-General Bashir Nafeh, the head of military intelligence in the West Bank.

It wasn’t Muslims who were
caught and arrested
inside the Mexican Congress chamber on October 10, 2001
in possession of
guns, grenades, dynamite, detonators and wiring while posing as "press
photographers"; it was
Mossad agent
Salvador Guersson Smecke and Israeli illegal immigrant Saur Ben Zvi
at the
very time that Zionists would obtain maximum benefit from a false-flag terror
attack that would mobilize support for the war on "Muslim
terrorists
" in Afghanistan that had been

launched only three days previously
.

It wasn’t Muslims who were convicted and jailed for six months in 2004 for
fraudulently attempting to
obtain a New Zealand passport in the name of a tetraplegic man
;
it was

Mossad agents Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara
who were seeking to create a false
identity for Zev Barkan.

It wasn’t Muslims who claimed to know the identity of "suicide hijackers"
Abdulaziz al-Omari and Saeed al-Ghamdi when, since

individuals with the exact same names and other personal details such as birth
date, place and occupation subsequently turned up alive and well
, the
population of Saudi Arabia
in 1975 was 7,180,000
and even given a high annual birth rate of
30 per 1,000
and ignoring infant mortality the daily birth rate was only 590 and so it is
highly improbable that individuals would share the exact same name, birth date,
place and occupation, al-Omari’s

passport had been stolen in 1995
when his apartment was burgled in Denver,
Colorado (a
state where Mossad agents have been active
), and only utter cretins would
steal the identities of people with a different appearance but having

their exact same name, place, date of birth and occupation
, ergo those
hypothetical "suicide hijackers" would have had entirely different names; it was
the FBI who published a list claiming that the 9/11 perpetrators included
Abdulaziz al-Omari and Saeed al-Ghamdi in addition to
several
others who had turned up alive and well
, and even though the FBI admitted
that some hijackers may have used stolen identities and that
there is "no
legal proof to prove the identities of the suicidal hijackers
," they denied
having misidentified the alleged "suicide hijackers" and refused to change

the names, photographs or backgrounds on their list
– albeit obfuscating and
trying to cover themselves by including multiple spellings and aliases.

It wasn’t Muslims who were behind
a
failed coup in Turkey
; it was crypto-Jew and Mossad agent pseudo-Rabbi

Tuncay Guney
, who

fled to Canada
in 2004, and who
in 2001
lived in New Jersey towns
that were centers of activity for

Mossad Urban Moving Systems operatives
.

It wasn’t Muslims who set up an "al
Qaeda cell
" in Palestine;
it was the
Israeli Mossad
.

It wasn’t Muslims who had established a reputation for having the capability to stage false-flag terror attacks,
i.e., to target U.S. forces and make it look like the act of a third party, prior to 9/11;
it was the Mossad.

It wasn’t a Muslim who

infiltrated the Pentagon and betrayed his country of birth
by selling
classified documents to another country that were then traded to the USSR; it
was convicted spy
Jonathan Pollard
whose
treachery
resulted in stolen nuclear secrets being

passed on to the USSR with Israel as the paying intermediary
.

It wasn’t Muslims who were running an exercise commencing at 9:00 a.m. on the
morning of 9/11 involving a plane crashing into a tower; it was

officials at the National
Reconnaissance Office, Chantilly, VA
.

It wasn’t a Muslim who, in response to the question "Do the orders still
stand
?" regarding the response – or more precisely, the
lack of response – to an aircraft
that was rapidly homing in on the Pentagon and ten miles out after both of the Twin Towers had already
been hit by planes more than half an hour
previously
, whipped his neck around and replied "Of course the orders
still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?"; it was
Dick Cheney.

It wasn’t a Muslim who was CEO of a company that made
remote control "Flight Termination Systems" that could electronically hijack in-flight aircraft
and steer them into targets by means of a "Command Transmitter System";
it was Rabbi Dov Zakheim.

It wasn’t a Muslim who, well aware that a percentage of trillions of dollars
is still hundreds of billions of dollars,
took a
position as Comptroller of the Pentagon in May 2001
when it was already
public knowledge that
the
Pentagon’s accounting systems were in complete disarray
with $6.9 trillion
of "adjustments" having been required in an attempt to make the figures add up,
and with no receipts for $2.3 trillion of these hard to track changes on
non-integrated computer systems and antiquated paperwork that could be readily
taken out by a missile or plane strike on the relevant auditing section at the
Pentagon, and who subsequently

delivered a commemorative sermon on the Pentagon lawn to hundreds of
co-religionists from 40 countries six months after
such a terror strike did
in fact occur

killing at least 34 budget analysts / accountants / financial experts
; it
was
Rabbi Dov Zakheim.

It wasn’t a Muslim who was

at a breakfast meeting with Donald Rumsfeld when the first plane hit the WTC
,
and was at the Army Navy Country Club "when
the plane that hit the Pentagon came right over the top of the Army Navy Club
and bounced down the hill and hit the side of the Pentagon
"; it was
Thomas E. White, who
is linked to the Enron
fraud
, who participated in

JINSA
trips to Israel, e.g.
with his wife
Susan in 1997
, and who was
sworn in as
Secretary of the Army
on May 31, 2001 which is
27 days after George W Bush
appointed Rabbi Dov Zakheim as
Undersecretary
of Defense and Comptroller of the Pentagon
, both
White and
Zakheim having
been placed by Bush at the Pentagon where

more than $2 trillion of transactions
had no receipts and Pentagon finances
were vulnerable to a "terror attack" that would target

the appropriate auditing section

It

wasn’t Muslims
who
in
2000 co-authored a document
which called for a "new Pearl Harbor";
it was Roger Barnett, Alvin Bernstein, Stephen Cambone, Eliot Cohen, Devon
Gaffney Cross, Thomas Donnelly, David Epstein, David Fautua, Dan Goure, Donald
Kagan, Fred Kagan, Robert Kagan, Robert Killebrew, William Kristol, Mark Lagon,
James Lasswell, I. Lewis Libby, Robert Martinage, Phil Meilinger, Mackubin
Owens, Steve Rosen, Gary Schmitt, Abram Shulsky, Michael Vickers, Barry Watts,
Paul Wolfowitz, and Rabbi Dov Zakheim.

It wasn’t Muslims who had a motive for employing a "Flight
Termination System
" to take control of EgyptAir
Flight 990 – a Boeing 767 –
on October 31, 1999 (after a bizarre coincidence in which "air
crash victims grief counselor
" Ed McLaughlin of the Family Enterprise
Institute was the
only person
to board the ill-fated plane in Los Angeles and get off at New
York), send it plunging into the Atlantic 60 miles south of Nantucket killing
all 217 on board, none of whom were Israelis but
33 of the casualties were
Egyptian army officers
including two Air Force brigadier generals and two
army major generals, and promote the concept of "Muslim
suicide pilots
" to a gullible public; it was Jews who would have needed to
conduct a trial run of electronically hijacking in-flight
Boeing
aircraft for their imminent false-flag terror operation that was to be blamed on
"Muslim suicide pilots / hijackers", with the EgyptAir Flight 990 "inquiry"
being

overseen by Zionist Jew Bernard Loeb
who had

Jewish translators
transcribe the cockpit recordings, and the FBI conducting
a

character assassination to smear
the alleged "suicidal" co-pilot.

It wasn’t Muslims who wrote in 1998 of a
"transforming event" rather like
"Pearl Harbor"
; it was
John Deutsch
, Ashton
Carter
and Philip
Zelikow
.

It

wasn’t a Muslim
who served as
Executive Director
of the 9/11 Commission
, whose expertise and job entailed
the creation
and maintenance of public myths or "presumptions"
, and who
confirmed that the Iraq
war had been for Israel’s benefit
; it was Philip Zelikow.

It wasn’t Muslims who published a paper in 1996 entitled
A Clean Break: A New
Strategy for Securing the Realm
, which mentioned "removing
Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq
" and introduced the concept of pre-emptive
strikes for which some phony

pretext
such as halting drug money or striking counterfeiting infrastructure
or "weapons of mass destruction" could be devised that Americans would
sympathise with; it was The Institute
for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies
(IASPS) of Jerusalem and
Washington which,
for new Israeli
Premier Benjamin Netanyahu
, discussed
how such a
policy would benefit Israel
.

It wasn’t a Muslim who, in a 1995 book, predicted that "if
the West doesn’t wake up to the suicidal nature of militant Islam, the next
thing you will see is militant Islam is bringing down the World Trade Center
";
it was Benjamin Netanyahu.

It wasn’t Muslim security officials who, in 1991, inspected the garage of a
Muslim shipping company in the World Trade Center and

concluded that the WTC garage was vulnerable to a car bomb
, two years before
the WTC
garage was in fact hit by a car bomb and the FBI were aware of the plot yet let
it go ahead
killing six people and injuring more
than a thousand, and ten years before the WTC was demolished

one week after the very same shipping company had moved out of the WTC
; it was
Israeli security officials and an
Israeli
shipping company
.

It wasn’t Muslims who

paid Ali al-Jarrah more than $300,000 for services rendered
, i.e., posing as
a "supporter" of the Palestinian cause while betraying his country to an enemy
state, and who was a cousin of Ziad al-Jarrah who was alleged to be one of
nineteen 9/11 "suicide hijackers"; it was Israel that paid this

Mossad asset
.

It wasn’t Muslims who 1) broadcast the pilot episode on March 4, 2001 of
The Lone
Gunmen
TV series, an episode about
a plot by a secret cabal
within the US government to electronically hijack by remote control a Boeing

heading for Boston and

divert it to crash into the World Trade Center
2) said in the aftermath of
the 9/11 attacks that no one had
ever conceived of aircraft being used by terrorists as missiles
to target
buildings; it was 1) Fox TV, owned by
Rupert Murdoch,
a

long-time friend of Benjamin Netanyahu
2)
National
Security Adviser
Condoleezza
Rice
/ acting Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff
General
Richard Myers
/ President
George W. Bush /
Vice President

Dick Cheney
/ White House spokesman
Ari
Fleischer
.

It wasn’t a Muslim who
said he’d seen
the (first) plane hit the (North) Tower
and reckoned it must have been "one
terrible pilot" and "a horrible accident"
before
going into a classroom and subsequently being informed of the second impact

when the first impact was not broadcast live on TV;
it was
George W. Bush
.

.

MOST DISTURBING


Most Disturbing

 

 

Recently, in my letter About Anti
Semitism
http://tinyurl.com/yz4ggpo
, I mentioned that I
came across very disturbing publications. They are articles and statements by
Rabbis, imbued with a racism so sordid, that it reminds of the gloomy dark-ages
from which mankind had been distancing itself in past centuries.

 

I was left in a state of shock and
disbelief, and as I searched a little more, what I discovered and read, was
swelling from bad to worse, leaving me physically sick, nauseated and in an
utter state of disgust, shivering for days.

 

This may be difficult to read, but
please make the effort to look into it

“There
are two different and distinct entities: the human being, and the Jew who
is part of G-d”

..

“We
are a G-dly people, we have G-dly souls. Our place is in Heaven, in fact higher
than Heaven because Heaven is also a created place, and we are a part of G-d”

“The world wants leadership and who are they going to
look to for moral leadership if not the Jews?”

….

“We are to treat other Jews as Divine beings, because
that’s what they are”

(quotes by Rabbi Manis Friedman)

Please, see the
complete post with extended quotes in pdf attachment in the Web-page below


Is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism?


Is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism?

http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2008/07/is-anti-zionism-anti-semitism.html

From: Lawrence of Cyberia Blog

I wrote the following as a comment on a post of the same name at My Left Wing.
I’m reproducing it here because it is also a suitable response to
readers who email from time to time with questions along the lines of
"How can criticizing a Jewish state not be anti-semitic?"*:

I think this post misses the point entirely about
why people can be anti-Zionist but not anti-semitic. And it misses the
point because you start off from a strawman argument. Specifically this
misrepresentation of why people might be opposed to Zionism:

What anti-Zionism says is that despite
this, despite the millions dead, it was a moral abomination for Jewish
people to gather in their traditional home for purposes of
self-defense, and self-determination. In other words, after one-third
of the entire Jewish population was wiped off the planet for reasons of
"race," the Jews are racists for organizing in their own defense.

I’m sure there are anti-semites who are anti-Zionist, but the logic
that you’ve ascribe to anti-Zionism as a whole is fallacious. That’s
not what anti-Zionism says. It’s what YOU say in order to put words
into the mouths of anti-Zionists so that you can make your argument.
You’re not really writing about why anti-Zionism is anti-semitic.
You’re writing about how, from the perspective of someone who accepts
the principles of Zionism, regards Zionism as the normative way of
looking at Israeli-Palestinian relations (and I would say this is the
dominant paradigm is American discourse on Israel), and has really put
no time or energy into considering whether there might be logical,
rational, non-hateful reasons for opposing political Zionism as it has
played out in the creation and history of the state of Israel, then
anti-Zionism can be made to look like anti-semitism.

But to do that you’ve had to gloss over the the key point –
the same key point that Zionism has always glossed over: the fact that
Palestine had a pre-existing population, 95% of whom (at the time of
the first aliyah) happened to be not Jewish, but Muslim and Christian.
You imply that the terrible things that Israel has done to the
Palestinians are due to bad decisions by various Israeli governments,
but that’s not true. Palestinians have to be expelled, excluded or at
least disenfranchised if you are to create a Jewish state in Palestine,
because they happen to form the natural majority there. Expelling
hundreds of thousands of them in 1948, and denying equality today to
those who remain and whose high birth-rate once again is making them
the majority even without the return of the refugees, is simply what
you have to do if you are to create a "Jewish and democratic state" in
a land where most people happen not to be Jewish.

You ignore this point, and suggest that what people are
objecting to is the Jewishness of the people who created Israel, when
really there is another logical explanation. Perhaps what people are
objecting to is the creation of a self-identified sectarian state that
is designed to be a home for one group of people, in a land where
another – majority – people already lives, and where that new state can
be created only through the dispossession and displacement of the
preexisting population. Can you really not imagine that people might
object to Zionism because they do not believe that the right of one
group to create a Jewish state in Palestine overrides the right of
another group not to be expelled or disenfranchised? Or that this
opposition is not based on the Jewishness of one of the parties
involved, but on the underlying morality of expelling one group from
their homes to create a new home for another group? From this
perspective, the Jewishness of one of the parties is incidental: it
would not be more acceptable if the people involved were creating a
Hindu, Buddhist or Martian state in Palestine. The opposition is not
about Jewishness, it is essentially about whether a Palestinian is an
equal human being to anyone else. It is an affirmation that despite
what that early champion of Zionism, Lord Balfour, claimed,
Palestinians are not "700,000 negroes whose views we do not intend to
consult on this matter"**, but are fully equal human beings whose right
not to be forcibly dispossessed is in no way inferior to the right of
Zionism to create a "Jewish and democratic state" that by its very
definition cannot give full equality to Palestine’s non-Jewish majority
without ceasing to exist.

(And to use the argument that this displacement of the
Palestinians can be justified by the Holocaust is, from a Palestinian,
Arab, Muslim or other non-Zionist perspective, not a mitigating factor.
It is actually an aggravating factor. Because not only are Palestinians
"negroes" whose rights can be ignored whenever they conflict with
Zionism, but they can now be ignored because of the Nazi genocide of
European Jewry, for which the Palestinians were not themselves
responsible. This is a double whammy of inequality).

If it
helps diffuse some of the rancor that dogs discussion of the I/P
conflict, think of it this way. Most people in the world were opposed
to white rule in South Africa. They weren’t opposed because they were
"anti-White". When the international community had to decide whether
Afrikaners had a right to national self-determination in South Africa,
where Afrikaner dominance could be established only by the
dispossession, displacement and oppression of the existing indigenous
majority and maintained only through the apartheid system of
government, it decided overwhelmingly that South Africa had no right to
exist as a "white and democratic" state. Outside of the immediate
coterie of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, it was self-evident
that the right of one ethnic group to exclusive self-determination did
not outweigh the right of everybody else to equality. The Afrikaners’
self-determination had to be achieved within the context of their South
African nationality, which they share with fellow South Africans of all
races and religions. It would have been absurd to suggest that
anti-apartheid campaigners acted as they did because they were
prejudiced against Afrikaners and therefore opposed to the principle of
self-determination for Afrikaners. Collectively, they were motivated
not by animosity toward Afrikaners, but by the belief that – in a land
where other people live too – exclusive self-determination for one
group impinges unacceptably on the rights of all the others. The
absence of any suggestion that this might be a similar motivation for
people who oppose Zionism, rather than the Jewishness of the people who
benefit from it – is a huge omission.

As for your point that there have historically been prominent
Zionists (you mention Martin Buber) who favored a cooperative
relationship with the Palestinians – well that’s certainly true. But
Martin Buber was not a dominant founding father of the Jewish state. So
what does it matter in practice that some individual Zionists were
genuinely tolerant of Palestinians, respectful of their rights and
troubled (as Buber was) about the morality of creating a Palestinian
population in exile in order to solve the plight of a Jewish population
in exile, if theirs was not the outlook that predominated on the
ground? The dominant founding fathers of the Jewish state were people
like Herzl and Ben Gurion, whose dominant brand of Zionism was based on
the premise that the Palestinian population could be "spirited away
across the border", that the Arab majority had to be reduced to no more
than 15% of the population and saw nothing wrong with the "transfer"
out of Palestine of the existing population. I’m not sure how relevant
it is to cite examples of less exclusivist Zionists when the Zionism of
the real world is one that created (and maintains) a Jewish majority in
Israel by the forced exclusion of a large part of the non-Jewish
population.

In fact I think that referring to the existence of
Zionists who had problems with a Zionism that relied on transfer to
create a more ethnically-homogeneous state, actually undermines the
argument that people who oppose Zionism as it exists on the ground do
so because they don’t like Jewish people. It relies on a faulty logic
that says the only possible vehicle of Jewish nationalism and
self-determination is the Ben Gurion kind of Zionism that created the
current state of Israel, and that as this is the only possible
expression of Jewish self-determination then people who criticize it
must do so out of anti-semitism. But the Zionism of Martin Buber for
example, or cultural Zionists like Ahad Ha’am and then Judah Magnes, or
modern post-Zionists like Avrum Burg, shows that Zionism at the point
of a gun is not the only possible expression of Jewish nationalism; and
that even among some Jewish Zionists there was always an understanding
that realizing Jewish self-determination by creating a "Jewish state"
in Palestine raised legitimate moral (and practical) concerns, which
led them to try to think of ways that Jewish self-determination and
nationalism might be realized without requiring the expulsion or
destruction of the existing people and culture in Palestine.

Overall, I would say the problem is that the old one-liner,
"Earthquake in Peru: is it good for the Jews?", is meant to be a joke,
but you treat it as if it is the baseline for how everybody is allowed
to think of Zionism. You have no right to assume that if people oppose
anything that involves Jewish people it must be because their
anti-semitism is showing through. Yet in the way you have
(mis)represented the motivations of anti-Zionists, you did just that.
You don’t consider that there can be perfectly legitimate opposition to
Zionism from both Jews and non-Jews that arises not from anti-semitism
– not from anything to do with Jewishness at all – but from the belief
that it is problematic to create a state for one group of people in a
land that already has a people and a culture, which will have to be
destroyed to create a Jewish state there. This destruction is not, as
you suggest, the result of some bad decisions by successive Israeli
governments, its is simply the only way to create a Jewish state in
Palestine. I disagree fundamentally with Benny Morris, but when he
identified the central issue of the conflict as the need to break
(Palestinian) eggs so that you can make the (Israeli) omelet he was at
least being honest enough to say out loud the unpalatable reality that
most people who speak about I/P issues from a Zionist POV simply
ignore: the Palestinians refused and still refuse to give their consent
to a project that requires they take the part of the eggs in someone
else’s omelet.

You are talking about Zionism in the partial, one-sided way
we are used to hearing it discussed in U.S. discourse. It is only about
Jewishness and anti-Semitism, in which Palestinians have a walk-on
"humanitarian" part (when you make your obligatory nod to their
suffering, which you attribute to bad government decisions). What is
completely missing from your discussion of Zionism is any sense that
the Palestinian people are equal players in this scenario, whose
individual human rights and collective national rights are as deserving
of respect as anybody else’s, and who might just have a right to
self-determination that does not involve having created in their midst
and against their will an ethnic/religious-based state that by its very
nature requires their own majority status to be diminished or denied.
By glossing over what political Zionism did and does – and absolutely
had to do – in order to create and maintain a "Jewish and democratic
state" in a land where the natural majority was (and is) not Jewish,
you are simply finding a more wordy way of treating Palestine as "a
land without a people for a people without a land".

* Yes, I know my email response time is awful and the backlog in my inbox is atrocious. Tell me about it.

** Hence the title of the earlier post in which I identified Palestinian equal rights as the key issue in the I/P conflict: Palestinians Are Nobody’s Negroes.

About anti Semitism


This letter was my
response to a Jewish friend (supporter of
Palestine), who got upset upon hearing severe criticism,
disdain and sarcasm against “
israel” and “israelis”

 He felt that people as they criticise “israel” should not forget the “humanity” of “israelis”,
he also felt that this was a typical behaviour of anti Semitism which caused
him to feel angry and frightened

 ************************************

 About anti Semitism

 

Talking about anti-Semitism,
and the accusation of anti-Semitism, is to many people a very sensitive issue, nevertheless,
I feel the need to highlight some points:

As a Palestinian and as
a Muslim, with first hand experience of racism, whether here in UK or in
occupied Palestine, I do understand what it means to be subjugated to it; thus,
I deeply empathise with those who suffer from the menace of racism and
discrimination, those who are abused verbally, physically, emotionally, or
otherwise for no other reason than the fact that they are “different”

And I also do understand
the awful feeling and dreadful sensation of being subjugated to subtle racist
looks or remarks, only felt by you and not the people around you

However, I do see a
huge difference between a racist remark directed at a person or a group for
their beliefs, race, or whatever that which makes them different, and between a
snarl, a sneer or sarcasm against an occupying criminal entity called
“israel” and its people for their CRIMES

One must not fail to
distinguish between the rage and fury caused by watching helplessly for decades
the grim unstoppable crimes go unpunished year after year, and the racist blind
hatred that might still exist among a tiny minority who, by nature, would be
hating anything and anyone who is different anyway

Furthermore, this occupying
entity called “
israel” (a word that I myself detest to even pronounce
and generally avoid to use) is not a theoretical being, nor does it operate in
a vacuum; it’s neither an abstract concept nor a conjectural void

It’s an entity run by
PEOPLE

PEOPLE who make decisions,

PEOPLE who elect politicians

PEOPLE who ALL
serve in a barbaric army

PEOPLE who foster
racist beliefs, attitudes and actions

PEOPLE who invaded
others’ land, dispossessed them, and forcibly occupied it

PEOPLE who imprison
children and shoot babies hearts

PEOPLE who destroy
world heritage

PEOPLE who steal water,
land, sea and sky

PEOPLE who kill hope, life,
beauty and smiles

PEOPLE who build their
colonies on the blood and ruins of another people

It is an entity of
PEOPLE, 94% of whom voted for the attack on Gaza

It is an entity of
PEOPLE, 71% of whom want U.S. to strike Iran

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/860903.html

It is an entity of
PEOPLE who violated ALL neighbouring countries

It is an entity of
PEOPLE who live on a STOLEN land for over six decades, with no signs of
shame, remorse, awakening of conscience, or willingness to neither admit nor
right the wrongs they’ve committed

Every normal person
with some compassion, would make a grimace of disgust and revulsion when
hearing about such an entity or such a people who commit such
despicable horrors

Now, I find it
difficult to be persuaded that such a reaction to such horrific crimes -when
hearing the name “
israel” or “israeli”- is an act of racism (anti-Semitism)


On another note; we –
Palestinians- do not have any responsibility whatsoever for the crime of the holocaust,
nor do we carry the burden of European racism against Jewish people

 Furthermore, I do not see a difference between
any kind of racism including racism directed against Jewish people known as
anti-Semitism. If we accept racism against Jewish people as being different,
then it implies that we accept the racist absurdity of “Jewish exceptionalism”.
Racism is racism, many causes same consequences

 Thus, I do not see the suffering of  Jewish people (horrible as it was) as a unique
kind of suffering which must be revered and viewed as essentially and
fundamentally different from other human suffering; the same way that I do not
see our suffering as Palestinians as unique or different from any other

 Questions come
pounding:

Why is it that we –Palestinians-
are constantly reminded of the horrors of the holocaust, when we had nothing to
do with it?

Why is it that we
Palestinians, are to suffer the same fate as the victims of the holocaust by
the hands of those who brag worldwide to act for “never again”?

Why would the UN want
to enforce the study of the history of the oppressors and occupiers -holocaust-
upon children languishing in refugee camps –who themselves along with their
parents, and grand parents were victims of ethnic cleansing, planed and
executed by those whom they are supposed to feel sympathy with?

Why is it that we are
persistently bogged down by the fixation on anti-Semitism, while for sixty
years (a century rather)
, we are the ones who are relentlessly suffering
from a most vile evil racism (ethnic cleansing gradually becoming a form of
“final solution”) perpetrated by a whole population of racist zionists?

(with all honesty, I
must tell you that some times I imagine it would’ve been easier and less
painful to us to be gassed and killed immediately rather than this policy of
excruciating slow death that we have been going through for over a century)

How could the world
keep asking us to recognise the “humanity” of a settler, who comes with his
wife and children armed to his teeth, and at gun point evicts a Palestinian
family, throws their entire belongings out, and moves in?

What kind of “humanity”
is this?

And most importantly, why
is it that we are continuously been asked to feel compassion towards our
tormenters who relentlessly murder and humiliate us, who attempt to annihilate
us and our history and why, to what purpose, are we asked to feel their “humanity”,
while their knife still piercing deep in our hearts?

Finally, I cannot speak
on behalf of all the Palestinians, but as for myself, I must admit, the recent
Gaza events was the last straw that broke the camel’s back; before that, I used
to think that there is hope, those PEOPLE would wake up to their “humanity” one
day, and regret the evil that they’ve done, unfortunately, the more I see of
them, the more I realise that this hope and dream was an illusion

Over the past few
years, I have been reading and debating with many of those “soft” zionists in
the so called “peace camps”, all I found is an extremely arrogant groups of
people, who are incapable of recognising, admitting, or willing to rectify the
crimes they’ve done.

 They are only interested in “peace” to protect
their interests
and to further secure their grip hold on the stolen land

Moreover, very
recently, and by sheer accident, I stumbled across some honorific information
that reveals the severity of decay of morality and lack of humanity amongst those
RACIST zionists – whose ideological bigotry and chauvinism surpasses
all other- that left me in a state of shock for days; crying, shaking,
suffocating with palpitations and suffering from severe panic attacks. I hope
and pray that I would be one day soon, able to write about the awful reality
that caused so much anguish, distress, shocked my very foundation and
traumatized my essence

   Undoubtedly, the world community should
leave it to the victims to decide how to deal with those criminals in the
future. Only the victims can investigate the fragile alleys of forgiveness or
punishment. The victims should have the last say irrespective of what their
judgment might be, they should not be vilified, indicted or moralized with, for
they have suffered more than enough

The emergence of forgiveness
and reconciliation requires certain conditions:

1)    
Stopping the crime

2)    
admitting of guilt

3)    
 asking for pardon

4)    
 and rectifying the wrong

None of these
conditions are ever considered as an option amongst that mighty sick racist
society

As for me, I have no
authority to talk in the name of all Palestinians, but I can state with all
honesty, I DO NOT wish the zionist murderers, those of whom were directly or
indirectly involved in massacres, theft of land, subjugation and oppression, to
remain in Palestine after its liberation from the occupier.  –except of
course for the very few good people amongst them, as no soul should carry the
liability of another- I do not wish the invader, occupier and criminal racists
to stay in Palestine, the land that they incessantly raped, destroyed and
disfigured, nor do I desire them to be my neighbours

They have shown no
respect, no appreciation, and no love to this land or to her people

They do not deserve to
live there

But these are only my own
feelings, and I know that the decision is not mine.

More on anti Semitism

There
are some more points that I would like to draw attention to:

1)
“israel” calls itself a
Jewish state,
and claims to be acting for all Jewish people, by Jewish people.  It is
still enjoying the moral
and financial support of the majority of Jewish communities world wide.
The absence of a huge uproar of denunciation and disassociation by the
majority of world Jewry,
makes it hard for people not to blame zionist  Jews who live outside occupied
Palestine for their guilt of complicity, active alliance or passive complacency by either silence or
aiding and sustaining the criminals 

 2) “israel”
still enjoys the protection of the “Security Council” with its US vetoes on any
UN resolution sanctioning “israel’s” endless list of ongoing crimes and
infractions of international law, and the "israeli" criminals still roam with
impunity, free from prosecution by any jurisdiction . This intolerable
situation inevitably
foments further rage and fury against the double standard
and special treatment granted to the Jewish state

3)
The excessive use of the term “anti Semitism”:

a)
by zionist Jews, accusing all non zionist

b)
by soft zionists Jews, accusing anti zionists Jews

c)
by anti zionists Jews, accusing fellow anti zionists Jews and also non Jews of anti-Semitism
as soon as they dare to examine Judaism with critical eye, criticising some
aspects of it, some beliefs, attitudes or behaviours

 All this has participated in creating a sense
of repression of freedom of expression, and undoubtedly also a sense of being subjected
to what feels like
intimidation and thought control

 It has also diluted the meaning of the word Anti-Semitism, making it practically devoid of any signification. It is now used ad nauseam, ad absurdum, reduced to a simple rhetorical trick, slapped in the face of anything and anyone,
as soon as there is the slightest inspection of facts. The word has
lost its
effectiveness to expose a form of racism, i am afraid. The more we hear
it used inappropriately,  the more indifference its  further future
usage will raise. Worse, it may even -God forbid- contribute to a form
of blow-back   …the story of the boy who cried wolf is only
too familiar

So,
a sincere advice from a heart that cares, to all my Jewish friends who are
really interested in preventing the re-emergence of  real “anti Semitism”, and to those “israelis”
with some humanity left; I would say:

1)
Instead of wasting time searching for the "humanity" within
"israeli" criminals,  focus your energy on fighting and revealing
“israeli” crimes
and exposing its inhumanity

2)
Disassociate your selves completely from such an entity and proclaim
this annulment loud and clear

3)
Let go of the idea that anti Semitism is a “special” case of racism; treat all
racism with the same degree of unambiguous condemnation

4)
Try to look at the situation from the standpoint of non Jewish people, who will
not accept or understand the insistence on the uniqueness of the Jewish
suffering, whereas the world has seen since the end of WW2 the massacres of
millions and millions of non Jews.  The world is inflamed by hatred
against Muslims, not against Jews.

5)
With love in my heart, with sincere and and pure feelings, I would appeal to
you to look inwards and search for reasons, as to why  you
feel that the world should accept racism against you as somehow worse or
different, and as to why you feel that your suffering is unique and
unlike others’ , because this is not how the world sees it. All suffering has
the same value to those who go through it, and all racism has the same
consequences and must be ostracized with the same ferociousness

6)
Those of us who are involved in the support of Palestinian cause are inevitably
going to be accused of anti Semitism, that does not make us in any shape or
form anti-Semites, for we know very well that we are not; hence, false labels,
and bogus allegations should not frighten or deter us, distract us or hinder
our determination of doing what we think is right

7)
And finally, please, do not freak out when people point out to certain aspects of
Judaism and the Jewish culture that they might not like or find incompatible
with humanity, equality, or fairness, after all this has always been accepted by other religions, belief-systems and cultures, and this is what freedom of thought and freedom of
speech are all about, people have the right to look at different ideologies, scrutinize
them, criticise them and sieve out what appears to be hindering the human moral
development, as long as all this is done in a non offensive manner, without
slander or abuse, but rather in a respectful, academic, genuine and
good-intentional search for truth

PS:

I know that what I have said might appear too
strong, unfamiliar, or painful to hear, but I can only speak of what’s in my
heart, as I believe that only through openness and honesty that trust can be
built

We have a saying in Arabic; “sadeequka man sadaqak,
wassaddaqak”  

صديقك من صدَقك و صدّقك

“Your true friend is that who is honest
with you and who believes you

Arabic word for honesty: sidq

And for friend: sadeeq

Both friend and honesty share the
same root: sa-da-qa= told the truth

 

My love as always

nahida

*****************************************************

 

The Israel Project’s Secret Hasbara Handbook Exposed


The Israel Project’s Secret Hasbara Handbook Exposed

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23044.htm

By: Richard Silverstein

July 13, 2009 "FDL" — 
I
magine
for a moment you’re a general about to embark on a decisive military
campaign and your intelligence service secures a copy of your
opponent’s entire campaign strategy. You open it and you see his battle
plans laid out before you, key forces, weaponry, lines of attack,
points of weaknesses, etc. You suddenly understand just how weak his
forces are and precisely how to mercilessly attack and eviscerate him.
The plan makes you understand that his forces are largely based on
artifice and sham. It gives you confidence that you are entirely on the
right course and tells you how to stay on that course. Victory is
assured, your enemy’s defeat certain.

Douglas Bloomfield and Newsweek have done pretty close to that against the Israel lobby. Specifically, they’ve exposed a secret hasbara handbook written for The Israel Project by star Republican marketer, Frank Luntz.

The oddly-named Global Language Dictionary
(pdf) is a veritable goldmine of arguments, strategy, tactics. At 116
pages, it’s not for the faint of heart. But anyone who wants to get
inside the head of the Israel lobby must read this document. I know my
enthusiasm will mark me as a real I-P wonk, but this is the real deal
and worth spending some time parsing and deconstructing.

The
first thing to say is that the entire document is a pathetic piece of
propaganda. While it ostensibly is addressed to TIP’s leaders and
advises them how to shape a pro-Israel message when they lobby
Congress, the media and other critical power brokers, the entire thing
reeks of desperation and a lost cause.

It
goes without saying that the arguments offered are not only devoid of
truth, they’re devoid of rigor or credibility. There is literally no
substance to the claims offered on Israel’s behalf. It’s an empty
exercise in every sense of the word. Reading this makes you realize
that the entire Israel lobby edifice is a house of cards.

Perhaps
I’m letting my shock at the shabbiness of the Dictionary get the better
of me and overstating the case it reveals against the Lobby. After all,
any political network that exists for six decades and achieves as much
as this one has doesn’t topple overnight. But I’ll just have to let you
be the judge.

One aspect of this I find extraordinary and entirely dubious is the choice of the Republican campaign pollster Frank Luntz
to write this report. This indicates, as I’ve always maintained, that
the Lobby is totally tone deaf to the political environment. We have a
democratic president and two Houses of Congress under Democratic
control for the first time in a few decades. Pragmatic liberalism is
ascendant. Neo-conservatism and Bushian Republicanism are in retreat.
And who does TIP chose to make the case for Israel? A right-wing
Republican spinmeister. Remarkable. But one thing I must say is that
this is a good sign for our side. If our opponents are as wooden as
they appear, then they will topple themselves without needing much help
from us. The first chapter, 25 Rules for Effective Communication opens with:

The
first step to winning trust and friends for Israel is showing that you
care about peace for BOTH Israelis and Palestinians and, in particular,
a better future for every child. Indeed, the sequence of your
conversation is critical and you must start with empathy for BOTH sides
first. Open your conversation with strong proven messages such as:

“Israel
is committed to a better future for everyone – Israelis and
Palestinians alike. Israel wants the pain and suffering to end, and is
committed to working with the Palestinians toward a peaceful,
diplomatic solution where both sides can have a better future. Let this
be a time of hope and opportunity for both the Israeli and the
Palestinian people.”

The
first thing we learn is that this passage, as with everything else
printed in the handbook, is empty meaningless drivel. It’s a perfect
example of political three-card monty in which there appears to be a
card which isn’t there at all. It’s all a sham. There is no substance.
The rhetoric here is even worse than that offered by spokespeople like
Mark Regev on behalf of the Israeli government.

In
the following passage, we can see that Luntz has lifted shamelessly
lifted arguments from MEMRI and former Mossad officer, Itamar Marcus’
Palestine Media Watch. Others before me have demolished these tawdry
arguments, but it’s instructive to read the lies and distortions that
TIP instructs its representatives to parrot. Throughout, the document
drips noblesse oblige and fake concern for Palestinian children:

“As
a matter of principle, we believe that it is a basic right of children
to be raised without hate. We ask the Palestinian leadership to end the
culture of hate in Palestinian schools, 300 of which are named for
suicide bombers. Palestinian leaders should take textbooks out of
classrooms that show maps of the Middle East without Israel and that
glorify terrorism.”

As a matter
of principle, children should not be raised to want to kill others or
themselves. Yet, day after day, Palestinian leadership pushes a culture
of hate that encourages even small children to become suicide bombers.

Iran-backed
Hamas’s public television in Gaza uses Sesame Street–type programming
to glorify suicide bombers. As a matter of principle, no child should
be abused in such a way. Palestinian children deserve better.”

As
a matter of principle I believe that no child (Israeli or Palestinian)
should be raised in fear that their mother, father, sister, brother,
grandmother or grandfather could be killed for no other reason than
they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and a
frightened, trigger hungry 18 year army recruit decides to make an
example of them.

As
for maps, before Frank Luntz or Itamar Marcus make their specious
claims about Palestinian textbooks, I’d like them to show me a single
Israeli textbook that features a map of Palestine. You will certainly
find Judea and Samaria. But will you find any acknowledgment of the
millions of Palestinians who live in the Territories?

Further,
the arguments are entirely dated. Suicide bombings were a serious
phenomenon in years past. But Palestinian militants have largely
abandoned this tactic, at least in part due to its unpopularity among
average Palestinians. You certainly wouldn’t know this from Frank
Luntz’s agitprop. It’s like he’s living in a time warp and its still
the first Intifada (circa 2000).

Clearly
differentiate between the Palestinian people and Hamas. There is an
immediate and clear distinction between the empathy Americans feel for
the Palestinians and the scorn they direct at Palestinian leadership.
Hamas is a terrorist organization – Americans get that already. But if
it sounds like you are attacking the Palestinian people (even though they elected Hamas) rather than their leadership, you will lose public support.

Another
characteristic of the Dictionary is the dubious distinctions it draws,
as in this example. There is no way to distinguish between the
Palestinian people and their leadership. In effect, the passage
concedes the illogic of its argument with this phrase: "even though
they elected Hamas." Of course they elected Hamas. That’s precisely the
point. They had an election and chose who they wanted to represent
them. So for the lobby to say they sympathize with Palestinians, but
not with the leaders they chose is an empty statement.

Yet another example of noblesse oblige (and it’s entirely dubious to claim that these words "work"):


WORDS THAT WORK

We
know that the Palestinians deserve leaders who will care about the well
being of their people, and who do not simply take hundreds of millions
of dollars in assistance from America and Europe, put them in Swiss
bank accounts, and use them to support terror instead of peace. The
Palestinians need books, not bombs. They want roads, not rockets.”

Clearly
passages like this are designed to score debate points but are entirely
devoid of accuracy. The claims of embezzlement, of course, go back to
the days when Yasir Arafat ran things and tolerated rampant Fatah
corruption. But Arafat has been dead for lo these many years. Someone
ought to roll over and tell Tchaichovsky and Frank Luntz the news.

As
for Palestinians wanting roads, they do. They’d like some of those
wonderful Israeli bypass roads that run directly through former
Palestinian farmland and whisk settlers from their settlement homes to
their jobs inside Israel proper. The same apartheid roads which are
off-limits to Palestinians.

One thing you’ve got to give Luntz, he’s not above stealing ideas from anyone, even Israeli peace activists (see italics):


MORE WORDS THAT WORK

“The obstacles on the road to a peaceful and prosperous Middle East are many. Israel recognizes that peace is made with one’s adversaries, not with one’s friends. But
peace can only be made with adversaries who want to make peace with
you. Terrorist organizations like Iran-backed Hezbollah, Hamas, and
Islamic Jihad are, by definition, opposed to peaceful co-existence, and
determined to prevent reconciliation. I ask you, how do you negotiate
with those who want you dead?”

There
is an amazing insularity in the arguments presented here, with
absolutely no conception that Palestinians feel precisely the same
emotions as Israelis. In other words, they too ask how and why they
should negotiate with a state of Israel that would just as soon kill
them as live with them in peace.

More obliviousness, with no awareness of the dark irony of this statement:

“We
may disagree about politics…But there is one fundamental principle
that all peoples from all parts of the globe will agree on: civilized
people do not target innocent women and children for death.”

Do
I hear any concern here for the "innocent women and children" of Gaza
who were slaughtered in their hundreds during the Gaza war? No, of
course not.

Of course, there is unintentionally comic discourse:


Don’t pretend that Israel is without mistakes or fault.
It’s not true and no one believes it. Pretending Israel is free from
errors does not pass the smell test. It will only make your listeners
question the veracity of everything else you say.

Admit
Israel make mistakes. Don’t specify them. Change the subject as quickly
as possible and hope no one notices what you’ve just conceded. And then
point out how much more guilty the Palestinians are than the Israelis
for the conflict.

Use humility.
“I know that in trying to defend its children and citizens from
terrorists that Israel has accidentally hurt innocent people. I know
it, and I’m sorry for it. But what can Israel do to defend itself? If
America had given up land for peace – and that land had been used for
launching rockets at America, what would America do?

Use
fake humility. Pretend that Israel is the U.S. and that there has been
no Occupation and no injustice perpetrated against Palestinians.
Pretend their lands have not been stolen. Pretend they have not been
turned into refugees in the hundreds of thousands. Pretend that Israel
has a right to expect Palestinians to behave like Canadians or
Mexicans, who have not had a border dispute with the U.S. in 150 years.

Here
is more fakery in the guise of concern. And note the conflation of
American Jews with Israelis as if we are them (a little identity
confusion?):


WORDS THAT WORK

“Are Israelis perfect? No. Do we make mistakes? Yes. But we want a better future, and we are working towards it.

And
we want Palestinians to have a better future as well. They deserve a
government that will eliminate the terror not only because it will make
my children safer—but also because it will make their children more
prosperous. When the terror ends, Israel will no longer need to have
challenging checkpoints to inspect goods and people. When the terror
ends we will no longer need a security fence.”

There is virtually no terror on the West Bank, yet 500 checkpoints remain there. Why? Tell me why, Mr. Luntz.

If there is a money quote in this document that reveals that the lobby is now running scared it is this:

We’re at a time in history when Jews in general (and Israelis in particular) are no longer perceived as the persecuted people. In fact, among American and European audiences—sophisticated, educated, opinionated, non-Jewish audiences—Israelis are often seen as the occupiers and the aggressors.
With that kind of baggage, it is critical that messages from the
pro-Israel spokespeople not come across as supercilious or
condescending.

More unintended irony:


WORDS THAT DON’T WORK

“We are prepared to allow them to build……”

If the Palestinians are to be seen as a trusted partner on the path to peace, they must not be subordinated, in perception or in practice, by the Israelis.

What is the Occupation if not "subordination" personified??

Here’s right back at ya, buddy:


WORDS THAT DO WORK

“Achieving
peaceful relationships requires the leadership…of both sides. And so
we ask the Palestinians … Stop using the language of incitement. Stop
using the language of violence. Stop using the language of threats. You
won’t achieve peace if your military leadership talks about war. You
won’t achieve peace if people talk about pushing others to the sea or
to the desert.”

Israel’s
military and political leaders speak the language of violence,
incitement and war virtually every day. No acknowledgment of that, of
course, by Luntz. As for "pushing Jews into the sea," I haven’t read a
real live Palestinian resident of the Occupied Territories make such a
statement in several decades. So this argument is circa 1970 or so.
Nice try though, Frank.

“Israelis know what it is like to live their lives with the daily threat of terrorism.

As do Palestinians.


Remind people – again and again – that Israel wants peace. Reason One: If Americans see no hope for peace—if they only see a continuation of a 2,000-year-long episode of “Family Feud”—Americans will not want their government to spend tax dollars or their President’s clout on helping Israel.

Bingo.
Here Luntz inadvertently speaks the truth. Israel wants peace in the
same vague way that a 13 year-old girl may want to be whoever the teen
idol of the moment happens to be. Israel has no plan. No means of
getting to peace. So to say that Israel wants peace is, once again,
meaningless. And the fear lurking in the hearts of the lobby is that
some day Israel will be exposed and Americans will abandon it because
they will come to understand that whatever Israel may claim it wants,
there will never be peace under terms acceptable to Israel. That will
be a day of reckoning that the lobby wants to avoid at all costs.

The Hasbara Booklet: Just lie.


The Hasbara Booklet: Just lie.

http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/07/15/the-hasbara-booklet-just-lie/

By Guest Post • Jul 15th, 2009 at 7:17 • Category: Analysis, Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Education, Hasbara Deconstruction Site, Israel, Newswire, Palestine, Religion, Zionism

WRITTEN BY IBRAHIM IBN YUSUF
(photo from The Israel Project Photo Contest)
The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary
is a Hasbara booklet written by a Dr. Frank Luntz that adds on to a
rich but unsuccessful literature existing in the field. Why
unsuccessful? Let’s quote from the author’s introduction:

I wrote my first Language
Dictionary for The Israel Project in 2003. Since that time, Israel has
had three Prime Ministers, several stalled peace initiatives, found
itself the victim of attack from its northern and southern borders, and
has suffered greatly in the court of public opinion.

Memo to him: the problem is not with his previous booklets, it’s with Israel.

Anyway, here’s the full text (CLICK ON FULL SCREEN TO ENLARGE, THEN ON CLOSE TO RETURN TO THIS BLOG):

The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary

I see favorably the publication of these hasbara materials inasmuch
as they prove that Zionists don’t actually believe that the world’s
negative view of Israel has anything to do with irrational antisemitism
(otherwise they wouldn’t waste their time trying to convince anyone).
Other than that, I expect them to be professionally made and factually
accurate. So that I did two searches on subjects the "hasbarization" of
which I was curious about.

First, I typed in LOYALTY OATH on the search box. I was surprised to
find no result. Mr. Liberman’s initiative that Israeli Arabs should
take a loyalty oath or be stripped of their citizenship is something an
Israel advocate would be asked about, but this booklet offers no
recipee to fend the questioner off.

Next, I typed in SETTLEMENTS. I did get a full chapter devoted to
them. After listing a few somewhat dated arguments, on p. 63 we get the
formula that summarizes it all:

WORDS THAT WORK
Israel does not talk about dismantling Arab settlements within Israel.
In a democratic society, Jews and Arabs should be able to live
side-by-side in peace. Nobody ever says Israeli territory has to be
free from Arabs. One should ask the Palestinian leadership why they
always demand land that is free from Jews.

Note the terminology shift currently under way. Just like a few
years ago the Jewish immigrants to Israel were suddenly turned into
refugees, and voilà, the
Palestinian refugees were wiped out from the debate, because they
cancelled out with the Jewish refugees, the Arab towns of Israel are
now being termed settlements, and voilà,
there’s no injustice at all: Jewish settlements in the West Bank cancel
out with Arab settlements in Israel. I denounce the Israeli checkpoints
between Jericho and Ramallah, but why do I say nothing about the
checkpoints set up by Arab falafel vendors on the roads of Tel Aviv?

That aside, the Words That Work include something that is not
terminological at all, but which is simply a bare-faced lie, namely
that the Palestinian leadership "always demand land that is free from
Jews."

Up to a very recent time, no one talked about Jews remaining in the
West Bank under a two-state solution. Everyone understood that Israeli
Jews are deeply and unabashedly racist,
and, in order to avoid living under Arab rule, they would be prepared
to accept the unthinkable: higher taxes in Israel proper. Only very
recently has the Hasbara community begun to claim the human right not
to be uprooted from where you went to grab someone else’s land in the
first place. So that the Palestinian leadership had had nothing to say
on the issue, because it was not a subject of debate.

Until now. But on Saturday, 4 July 2009, at the Aspen Institute’s
Aspen Ideas Festival, in, of all places, Aspen, Colorado, Palestinian
primer minister Saleem Fayyad was for the first time ever asked about
his views on the subject. His answer:

“In fact the kind of state that we want to have, that we
aspire to have, is one that would definitely espouse high values of
tolerance, co-existence, mutual respect and deference to all cultures,
religions. No discrimination whatsoever, on any basis whatsoever.

“Jews to the extent they choose to stay and live in the state of
Palestine will enjoy those rights and certainly will not enjoy any less
rights than Israeli Arabs enjoy now in the state of Israel.”

The Zionists went immediately ballistic. They took to the cyberspace
to say, zillions of times "if you believe this I have a bridge in
Brooklyn to sell to you." Others were more straightforward:

don’t listen to them! DO NOT BELIEVE THEM!! the arabs
are very capable of lying and then making life miserable for the
Israelis. and than it might be too late..and they can make horrible
laws too. they have ruled Jews before.

Why were they so furious? Because finally Fayyad had learned the
Israeli technique of making offers that the other side can’t take, so
as to appear as very generous when the offer is actually meaningless.

But the Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary chose to ignore this Palestinian display of smartness, and instead instructed the Hasbara gang to lie about it.

Not that the Hasbara gang didn’t know that lying is the approach to take when apologizing for Israel, mind you.

The Future of Palestine


Future of Palestine

 

We,
the Palestinians, cannot accept any solution that does not address the
MAJOR issues in this lopsided “conflict,” those major issues are:

 

1)       We are equal in our humanity therefore should be treated equally

 

2)      We have been wronged; our rights, our land and our identity have been robbed from us and must be given back

 

3)      Jews
are neither an ethnic group nor a special people, they have no
privilege over us or any other human being, and hence, they cannot
claim ownership of
Palestine simply because of their Jewishness

 

How
could the world expect the Palestinians to recognise Israel’s right to
exist as a Jewish state, when in fact that is not only killing the
dream of every Palestinian refugee of returning home, but it also gives
a precedence to a unique situation.

 

It
exempts the Jewish people from being treated like the rest of humanity,
as based on their Jewishness alone, they demand special treatment,
preference, and exemptions from all the laws that bind the rest of
humanity:

 

They demand to take over someone else’s land for a claim that this right is given to them by God

 

They demand to have superiority over another group of people who don’t share their Jewishness

 

They
demand that the world should acknowledge their right to go back 3000
years in time based on a claim that some people who share their faith
in Judaism had lived in Palestine in antiquity, yet they are horrified
that we ask to go back to our homes from which we were driven out 40 or
60 years ago!

 

A cousin of mine, who is Palestinian of course but was working as a teacher in occupied/ stolen Palestine (the zionist entity that some call “israel”)

 

My
cousin was trying to be friendly to a Jewish teacher, so he said to
him: “you know, we are both cousins, we are all children of the same
grandfather, we must find a way of living together in peace”

 

The reply of his colleague was chilling

He
said: “yes indeed we are cousins, but you must remember that you are
the children of Hagar, the slave woman, and we are the children of
Sara, the free woman; therefore, you must realize that you the
Palestinians, will be forever our slaves”

 

This nauseating mentality IS the root of the problem in Palestine:

 

This supremacist attitude

This arrogance

This contempt of the other

This superiority complex

 

 

Firstly:
they justify their attack and occupation of the already inhabited land
of Palestine by a claim of a God-given right made exclusively to the
Jewish people

 

Secondly:
they see themselves superior with the false claims such as being God’s
chosen people or being light unto the nations or of making the desert
bloom

 

Thirdly: they want to preserve a Pure Jewish state at all costs; even if that means dismissing the rights of all others

 

Fourthly:
they, unlike any other nation, are getting away with every violation of
human rights imaginable without ever being held accountable for their
crimes

 

Are we ever going to see a change of attitude within this community?

 

It’s only through a real alteration of the Zionists’ mind-set that a solution could become possible

 

We, the Palestinians, we can compromise, we can negotiate, we can share, we can give much, but ONE thing, and ONE thing only, that we CANNOT negotiate, nor compromise, and that is our HUMANITY

 

We might be able to forgive the zionists, and move on

 

We might be able to share our land even with previous enemies

 

But what we will never be able to do is accept them as our superiors

 

Nor would we welcome them while they are still committing their crimes of murder, theft and oppression

 

Reconciliation is only possible with a revolutionary change of attitude within the Zionist community

 

And that’s is not up to us to do

 

The ball is in their court now, and has always been

 

It’s up to the Jewish people themselves who live in occupied Palestine to work on that change, if they want to spare themselves God’s justice

 

People
can take oppression for so long, but there comes a time when a
threshold is reached, then things could literally change overnight

 

Their might will not protect them then

 

What will, is what they’ve managed to preserve of their humanity

 

As for those who wonder about Hamas:

It would be helpful if you have a look at this scholarly article on Hamas by Khalid Amayreh

 

http://xpis.ps/Uploadarticles/89articles%20Hamas-Debates-the-Future-monograph.pdf

 

As
with regards to violence and attacks on civilians, Hamas is not proud
to kill any innocent person, it has continuously offered cease-fire and
a complete halt of attacks on civilians but that was ALWAYS rejected by
israel

 

Hamas offers to renew cease-fire with Israel

Friday, June 16, 2006

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/15/hamas.ceasefire/index.html

 

 

Israel rejects Gaza cease-fire offer

Sep 21, 2007

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1189411457380&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

 

 

Ehud Olmert rejects Hamas’ offer of cease-fire in Gaza Strip

23/12/2007

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/937196.html

 

Olmert rejects Hamas cease-fire offer

Tue., December 25, 2007

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/937511.html

 

 

ISRAEL REJECTS HAMAS CEASE-FIRE OFFER AS HUMANITARIAN CRISIS DEEPENS IN GAZA

April 25, 2008

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0425/p99s01-duts.html

 

 

Israel rejects Hamas cease-fire offer as humanitarian crisis deepens in Gaza

Fri Apr 25 08

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080425/wl_csm/odu0425

 

 

Coming to the point of israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state I would say:

 

To
start with; there is no country/ government/ system/ regime on earth
that demands the right to exist and makes that demand “holy” and
unquestionable

 

Yet again, israel,
with its self-proclaimed righteousness and with the virtue of its
special-ness, feels entitled to ask those whom she robbed them of their
homes, of their dignity, and of homeland to recognise her right to
steal and thrive at cost of their genocide and ethnic cleansing!

 

Israel feels no shame in demanding to be recognized as a racist entity (as a Jewish state)

 

Israel
feels no shame in demanding to exist at the expense of hundreds of
annihilated villages, hundreds of thousands of corpses, and millions of
homeless refugees

 

Israel feels no shame in demanding the right to build its nation on the destruction of another

 

Israel
feels no shame in expanding what she acquired by sheer brutality at the
cost of devastated landscapes and ruined ancient alleyways

 

Israel
feels no shame in demanding that the world should adore its glory at
the melody of weeping widows and howling of terrified little ones

 

Hamas and the Jewish state:

 

Our
problem – as Palestinians- is not with the Jewish people nor is it with
Judaism; our problem is with the injustice inflected upon us for almost
a century now.

 

For no crime (except being Palestinians) we were made to be the sacrificial lamb of Europe’s sins, we paid the price for Hitler’s crimes against the Jewish people.

 

Neither
Hamas nor any Palestinian would have any problem getting along with any
ethnic or religious group of people. As Muslims we’ve done that for
centuries. In fact the golden age for the Jewish people was when they
lived under Islamic rule and as they escaped the inquisitions of
Europe to find refuge and protection in Muslim lands.

 

But,
we have serious problems with ethnic cleansing, injustice, oppression,
racism, fascism, tyranny, and the claim of superiority of one nation
over another.

 

Unless these issues are justly addressed and resolved, our world would remain in turmoil.

 

Hamas
are constantly been asked to recognize “Israel’s right to exist as a
Jewish state”; but no one seemed bothered with the fact that “Israel”
never recognized “Palestine” or the Palestinians’ right to exist on
their own land. No one seems to be bothered with the fact that “
Israel” hasn’t and never had any defined borders that they want us to recognize.

 

But most importantly no one seemed to question the morality and ethical grounds on which “Israel” was founded.

 

Israel
not only has no right to exist as a Jewish state (for the apparent
racism that’s embedded in this definition) but also has no right to
exist as a state and a political system. Period.

 

Reasons:

 

 firstly:

 

The moral and ethical grounds upon which “Israel” was founded are extremely problematic: 

 

a) When the Zionists adopted Palestine as a home land for all the Jewish people they ignored the fact that Palestine had already its own native Palestinian inhabitants, with a very small Jewish minority of 2.5%.

 

b)
The early Jewish refugees did not come with a friendly attitude with
intentions to live in peace with the native Inhabitants of
Palestine, but rather with the mentality of colonising and ethnically cleansing of the natives.

 

 

c)
They did not come with olive branches in their hands; rather they came
with tanks and machine guns, they engaged in extensive terror attacks
on the native Palestinians, they were building their armed forces ever
since until it became the fourth most powerful state in the world today.

 

d) The natives were never asked and their opinions were dismissed by those powers who decided to give away Palestine -which the don’t own-

 

e) Israel’s recognition as a state (by the United Nations and the International community) was conditional to Israel abiding by UN resolutions <b>including the right of return</b> of Palestinians; which were never implemented by Israel.

 

 Secondly:

 

The
continuous existence of such a state (as defined by the hegemony of one
particular group “the Jewish” over the rest of its citizens) is
deplorable logically, legally, and morally:

 

a)  Logically unacceptable;

 as by definition “”Israel
is a Jewish state; in order to maintain its exclusive “Jewishness” it
denies millions of exiled Palestinians their basic human right; namely
the right of return to their homes and their families.

 

b)  Legally unacceptable;

for
the inability of this entity to comply by the conditions laid out by
the international community, and inability to abide by any UN
resolution.

 

c)  Morally unacceptable;

 for
the fact that since its inception over the past 60 years, this entity
managed to prove to the world time and again the decay of its moral
fibre; as it sank deeply in the abyss of wickedness and inhumanity.,
through displaying her acts of terror, cruelty, and ruthlessness with
no shame or remorse.

 

The
continuous existence of such a state is morally questionable; as by
definition “”Israel” is a Jewish state; in order to maintain its
exclusive “Jewishness” it denies millions of exiled Palestinians the
right of return to their homes and their families ignoring their basic
human rights.

 

When Hitler called for a purely Arian state the world got up in arms against such an exclusive racists regime.

 

How
can such a state demand the right be recognized and to be secured when
the very foundation on which it was established are immoral? How such a
state should continue to exist when by its very definition it is
insular, exclusive, aggressive and racist?

 

What
I as a Palestinians would like to see is an all inclusive state of
Palestine, on the whole land of historic Palestine, a state for all its
citizens, where all races, religions living side by side on equal
grounds.

 

A
state with no walls between its peoples; where no one is denied their
basic human rights for their religious or non-religious beliefs, no one
is denied justice for their race; no one is prevented from returning to
their homes on the basis of their ethnicity. If that should mean an end
to a racist exclusive Jewish state so be it.

(by the way the Jewish state is NOT the Jewish people)

 

And if I may speak as a mother, seeing my beloved Palestine divided is like seeing my baby chopped in half!

It
pains me enormously, I would rather accept to share my baby with an
impostor mother, who claims my baby as hers, rather than having him
sliced into two pieces

.

“Revoking Israel’s UN Membership.”


"Revoking Israel’s UN Membership."

http://windowintopalestine.blogspot.com/2008/12/revoking-israels-un-membership.html

Excellent article written by two Swedes calling for the revocation of
Israel’s UN Membership. Snorre Lindquist is a Swedish Architect of,
among other things, the House of Culture in front of the Nativity
Church in Bethlehem on the West Bank. — Lasse Wilhelmson is a
commentator on the situation in the Middle East, and is a member of a
local government in Sweden for 23 years, four of which in an executive
position. Lasse Wilhelmson is of Jewish origin and an internet friend.
The other writer’s origin in no known by me but that fact should be
irrelevant.

Ed CorriganStockholm — The
Gaza Strip is now the largest concentration camp in the world. The
situation grows steadily more insufferable for the 1.5 million
Palestinians who live there. Deliveries of food, medicine and fuel are
made difficult or stopped altogether. Child malnutrition is increasing.
Water supplies and drainage have ceased to function. Children die for
lack of healthcare. Tunnels to Egypt, dug by hand, are the only
breathing space. Journalists and diplomats are denied entry. Israel is
planning more military efforts. The Palestinians in Gaza are now to be
starved into surrender and become an Egyptian problem.

The UN
should use the word apartheid in connection with Israel and consider
sanctions with the former South Africa serving as a model. Miguel
dةscoto Brockman, president of the UN General Assembly, conveyed this
message at a meeting on November 24th 2008 with the UN General
Secretary Ban Ki-moon present.

The 1976 Nobel peace prize
laureate, Mairead McGuire from Ireland, recently suggested a popular
movement demanding that the UN revoke Israel’s membership. The
international community now needs to put tangible pressure on Israel in
order to stop its war crimes.

Not once, during the past 60
years, has Israel shown any intention of living up to the requirements
stipulated by the UN, in connection with the country’s membership in
1948, namely that the Palestinians who had been evicted from their
homes should be allowed to return at the earliest possible opportunity.
Moreover, Israel holds the hardly flattering world record of ignoring
UN resolutions.

It can be questioned from the aspect of human
rights legislation whether Israel is a legitimate state. Established
practice between states usually requires borders that are legally
maintained and a constitution, neither of which Israel has. These
requirements are also named in the UN resolution (181) Partition Plan
for Palestine, approved by the General Assembly in November 1947. The
plan was accepted by the Zionists Jews in Palestine but rejected for
excellent reasons as unjust by the Arab states. Only decisions made by
the UN Security Council are mandatory. Later on, Israel unilaterally
laid claim to a considerably larger portion of land than that suggested
by the UN.

The eviction of eighty per cent of the Palestinians
who lived west of the 1947 armistice line, and Israel’s refusal to
allow them to return is the human rights argument for expelling Israel
from the UN. Not only has Israel played the Partition Plan false but
has, by its actions, thwarted the grounds – fragile from the start –
for its UN membership.

Israel makes use of various strategies to
achieve its goals, the same goals as for over a hundred years ago: As
few and as well controlled and weakened Palestinians as possible in
areas as small as possible between the Mediterranean and the River
Jordan. And to try and get acceptance worldwide for the theft of land
that is vital to the “state” that calls itself “Jewish and democratic”.
This obviously bears no similarity to a peace process.

Why does
nobody ever comment on the fact that Israel’s prime minister never
misses an opportunity to harp on about how important it is that the
rest of the world and the Palestinians recognise Israel, not as a
democratic country for all its citizens, but as a “Jewish state”?

What
would we have said if South Africa’s Prime Minister, in a similar way,
had demanded recognition of South Africa as a “white and democratic
state”, thus de facto accepting the racist apartheid system that
allowed non-whites to be classified as lesser human beings?

In
the article The end of Zionism, published in the Guardian on September
the 15th 2003 the Jewish dissident and former speaker of Knesset,
Avraham Burg wrote:

“Diaspora Jews for whom Israel is a central
pillar of their identity must pay heed and speak out … We cannot keep a
Palestinian majority under an Israeli boot and at the same time think
ourselves the only democracy in the Middle East. There cannot be
democracy without equal rights for all who live here, Arab as well as
Jew … The prime minister should present the choices forthrightly:
Jewish racism or democracy.”

No support can be found in The UN
recommendation concerning a Jewish and a Palestinian state for unequal
rights for the citizens of each country. Neither is there any
indication as to how a “Jewish” state could become Jewish. There is
support, however, for the intention that demographic conditions should
be held intact at partition. Interpreting into the text an intention
concerning characteristics of a “Jewish state” tailored to the ideology
of Zionism is wholly in contradiction with the text of the resolution.

Even
the Balfour Declaration, which entirely lacks human rights status,
notes that the Jewish national home in Palestine should in no way
encroach upon the rights of the Palestinians. Neither did US President
Truman recognise Israel as a Jewish state. On the contrary, he ruled
out precisely that formulation before making his decision to recognise
Israel.

Thus, the legitimacy of a “Jewish state” so urgently
sought by Israel lacks support in international documents that concern
the building of the state. Israel’s government is, of course, fully
aware of this. Why else would it keep on searching for this recognition?

The
UN should now embark on a boycott of the apartheid state of Israel and,
with the threat of expulsion from the UN, demand that Israel allows the
evicted Palestinian refugees to return in accordance with the UN
resolutions 194 and 3236.

With this done, meaningful peace talks
can proceed and various solutions be reached for co-habitation with
equal rights for all people between the Mediterranean and the River
Jordan. No such solution can be compatible with the preservation of a
Jewish apartheid state.

– Snorre Lindquist is a Swedish
Architect of, among other things, the House of Culture in front of the
Nativity Church in Bethlehem on the West Bank. — Lasse Wilhelmson is a
commentator on the situation in the Middle East, and is a member of a
local government in Sweden for 23 years, four of which in an executive
position

UN’s "Security Council" won’t revoke "israel’s" UN membership

http://palestinian.ning.com/forum/topics/uns-security-council-wont

By Exilem

An article by Snorre Linquist and Lasse Wilhelmson calling for the
Revocation of “israel’s” membership in the UN, has been recently posted
here in PM, by Telma
.
http://palestinian.ning.com/forum/topics/revoking-israels-un-member…

Israel’s UN membership should have never happened in the first place,
given that they are in breach with every fundamental charter principles
of the organization. Today’s transnational web of corruption and
coercion does not exclude the UN, its members, and its core. This call
of revocation is therefor merely symbolic, but has the merit to raise
the question, and to arouse the dulled down mindless public opinion. It
is the right thing to do, but it simply "ain’t gonna happen".

a few excerpts of the UN CHARTER
(emphasis mine)

in Article 3, Chapter II, MEMBERSHIP:
" 1. Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states
which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in
the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out
these obligations."

in Article 5:
"A Member of the United Nations against which preventive or enforcement action has been taken by the Security Council may
be suspended from the exercise of the rights and privileges of
membership by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the
Security Council
. The exercise of these rights and privileges may be restored by the Security Council."

in Article 6:
"A Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council. "

in UN SECURITY COUNCIL’s Membership page:
"The Security Council is composed of five permanent members
— China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States

and ten non-permament members…"
— Burkina Faso, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Lybian AJ, and Croatia. The 2
years term expires for Belgium, Indonesia, Italy, Panama and south
Africa, and will be replaced in January 2009 by Austria, Japan, Mexico
and Turkey

in RULES OF PROCEDURE:
"Each Council member has one vote. … Decisions on substantive matters require nine votes, including the concurring votes of all five permanent members. This is the rule of "great Power unanimity", often referred to as the "veto" power"

in Article 39, Chapter VII: Action with respect to
THREATS and BREACHES TO the PEACE, and ACTS of AGGRESSION
"The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations…"

The governments of USA, France and United Kingdom, that is 3 out of
the 5 permanent members of the "Security Council" (what a misnomer) are
literally political offsprings of the occupying, terrorizing,
war-mongering, aggressing entity called "israel"
, and will not
engage in "nine votes, including the concurring votes of all five
permanent members" to sanction their zionist owner, to the contrary,
they diligently vote to promote the zionist owner and given this
context, the following short Article 49 has chilling implications.

Article 49
"The Members of the United Nations shall join in affording mutual
assistance in carrying out the measures decided upon by the Security
Council"

The worm is in the can.

We must face the reality, such propositions and reflections about UN
membership of "israel" are necessary, but they do not have the
detonating energy to free us from the growing internment walls
gradually suffocating humanity. The Zionist entity has hijacked the
system and we have the choice: either we create a tangible movement
destined to tear apart every arcane of their biocidal and ubiquitous
power web and we re-install a civilized system, OR we just give up and
offer our unconditional submission to the World Zionist Order
Organization

For me, the latter is not an option.

A letter from Paul Grenville


Dear Nahida

I just read your piece, "You want a solution" so I have got one Palestinian perspective. I am English, born in 1956. I have never been to Palestine. But I know enough history to know that it was my nation who marched into Palestine in 1917 and gave a huge boost to the Zionist colonization which eventually made you homeless and stateless. This is my piece, below. It is on the site. I agree with your piece. It is better than mine. Ethically speaking, the Israeli state is a simple case of theft, murder and genocide. But it has only been partially "successful", unlike the American state, also founded as a result of the theft of land and the genocide of many indigenous peoples. So there is hope.

Just some questions. How can the "Zionist occupiers" give back the land and rebuild all the 500 destroyed villages and still live there? They will never never do this. I do not think the Zionists want a solution, as in peace. I think they can live with war, with torture, with genocide, and with the wall. I think they have to leave. They will only leave when things become too uncomfortable for them politically. This can only happen when the America stops financing its little colony. The defeat of Zionism will lead to an exodus of Zionists from the country. Jews who remain will not be Zionists. Palestinians will start to come home. There will be justice.

Then another question: who are the occupiers? 90% of the Jews who went to Palestine before 1948 were Europeans. They form most of the Zionist establishment today. After 1948 they recruited all the Arab Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Russian Jews, and so on. These are all profiting from the theft of Palestinian land and resources but mostly they are not the ruling class, the political Zionist elite. Today Jews can live anywhere in the world, free of persecution. There was never any need for a Jewish state: even today only 40% of the world’s Jews live there. The Nazi genocide of the Jews was a moment of history, a consequence of fascism. Did the European gypsys, also murdered by the Nazis in their concentration camps, get a state of their own?

I have just finished reading Hakim Kaneenah’s book "A doctor in the Galilee: the life and struggle of a Palestinian in Israel". I highly recommend it. He shows just what is possible for the Palestinians living right in the heart of the occupation state, in the Galilee. He also shows all the methods by which the Israeli state keeps the Palestinians in subjection, and how much collaboration is going on.

I shall keep my promise never to visit Israel. Being a tourist in a country signifies that you agree with what goes on there, and especially in the case of Israel, with its sickening worldwide media campaign, and a worldwide movement on its side,

with best wishes,  Paul Grenville                            

===                      


DSC00859 

I shall visit Israel

 

I shall visit Israel when the olive trees are in bloom

 

I shall visit Israel when Arabs can marry Jews

 

I shall visit Israel when the fabrication of history has stopped

 

I shall visit Israel when Torah Jews are no longer beaten up in the streets of Jerusalem for reminding their fellows of the commands of Moses –

 

Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not bear false witness

 

I shall visit Israel when the speaking of Arabic in certain neighbourhoods no longer causes heads to turn

 

I shall visit Israel when the learning of Arabic is mandatory in school

 

I shall visit Israel when Arab and Jewish children all go to the same schools

 

But will it still be Israel?

 

I shall visit Israel when the 7 million refugees’ descendants have a country they can call their own

 

I shall visit Israel when the invaders have left or those who remain have made peace with the invaded (not the other way about)

 

I shall visit Israel when West Bank settlers have gone and no longer shoot to kill the natives as a patriotic duty

 

I shall visit Israel when the shooting of children has stopped

 

I shall visit Israel when the spirit of Fanon has moved the peoples to withdraw this dagger from the Arab breast

 

I shall visit Israel when the people of the Pale have fled to Europe as their colony collapses

 

I shall visit Israel when the hands of Generals and Rabbis are no longer choking the throat of Palestine

 

I shall visit Israel when the Wall has been torn down and all the other walls have gone

 

I shall visit Israel when the house demolitions have ceased

 

I shall visit Israel when to be born Palestinian is not a reason to be humiliated and spurned, hunted and spied upon

 

But will it still be Israel?

 

I shall visit Israel when Jews have stopped arriving from far away and calling it their land

 

I shall visit Israel when the expulsions of Palestinians have stopped

 

I shall visit Israel when Gaza is no longer the cruel laboratory experiment in slow genocide that it is today

 

I shall visit Israel when her planes have stopped bombing and strafing towns in Gaza and terrifying the people at night with sonic booms

 

I shall visit Israel when the Lebanon and Gaza have ceased to be testing grounds for bodies blackened and deformed beyond recognition by new weapons

 

I shall visit Israel when Israel has ceased to invade her neighbours on the slightest of pretexts and cause devastation

 

I shall visit Israel when 11,870 Palestinian prisoners and 51 Palestinian MPs have been released from jail and pardoned for acts or words of resistance

 

Against a state that for 60 years has been taking their country by force of arms, terror and the law of the powerful

 

I shall visit Israel when the routine practice of torture has stopped

 

But will it still be Israel?

 

I shall visit Israel when Lieberman has left the country

 

I shall visit Israel when the illegal villages have been made legal

 

I shall visit Israel when the Bedouin of the Negev are free to live as they wish

 

I shall visit Israel when Arab towns and villages have been granted the same status and funding as Jewish ones

 

I shall visit Israel when the land has been shared by all Semites

 

I shall visit Israel when the rich white Jews no longer freely water the lawns of their villas in Tel-Aviv,

 

Those on the West Bank have to buy their drinking water and the people of Gaza have nothing safe to drink at all

 

But will it still be Israel?

 

I shall visit Israel when the people of Gaza reach a great white city North of Jaffa, raise the flag and live there

 

I shall visit Israel when Al-Quds has become the capital

 

I shall visit Israel when the Jewish state has become an unhappy memory

 

I shall visit Israel when Nazi war crimes against the Jews are no longer the excuse for every imaginable cruelty in a land to which they came as uninvited guests and remained as conquerors…

 

I shall visit Israel when the name of Israel no longer causes fear and hatred of the Jews

 

Because Israel has vanished from the page of time

 

When these conditions prevail

 

I shall be happy to visit Palestine when the olive trees are in bloom

Paul Grenville  July 2008

 

A Genuine Peace Movement Cannot be Zionist


 
 
 
A Genuine Peace Movement Cannot be Zionist
 
 
 
August 19, 2008
 
By Jason Kunin
 
 

"Radical simply means ‘grasping things at the root.’" – Angela Davis

 

It’s common practice among those of us outside Israel who have been frustrated by the hostility and intimidation we encounter whenever we voice criticism of Israel to point to the fact that there is greater freedom to criticize Israel in Israel. "Look at the critical articles published in Ha’aretz," we will say. "Look at the Israeli peace movement. Look at Peace Now and Gush Shalom." Tactically, this is a useful point to make in an argument. I know because I’ve used it myself.

The truth is, unfortunately, that this much vaunted criticism within Israel – by the liberal media, by the so-called Israeli Left – is overwhelmingly inclined to blame the oppression of Palestinians merely on specific leaders or policies. Uri Avnery, for example, the founder of Gush Shalom and one of the most far-left public figures in Israel, writes a regular syndicated column in which he blasts the brutality of this or that general, the cruelty of this or that politician, the unfairness of this or that law. He’s often quite incisive and witty. Avnery, like most of the Israeli left, is a Zionist – a critical one, to be sure, but a Zionist nonetheless who believes that a good movement has been corrupted by bad leaders and who periodically scans the horizon for the leader who can finally set Israel on its righteous path. [1]

Israeli violence and oppression, however, is rooted not simply in a few laws or politicians, but in the ideological foundations of the state itself. The problem, in short, is Zionism. Any opposition to Israel rooted in Zionism can only seek to mitigate Israeli apartheid and racism, not end it, because apartheid and racism are what Zionism – and by extension, the Israeli state – are all about. Zionism is rooted in the fundamental premise that the state be a Jewish state and that it occupy the physical space of an ancient Arab Christian and Muslim culture. Because it is impossible to achieve these two goals simultaneously without violence and racist oppression, you cannot have a genuine peace movement that is Zionist.

 

In mainstream Jewish circles, hardly anyone self-identifies as a "Zionist" anymore, though almost everyone is. Today, it’s probably more common to hear words like "Zionist" and "Zionism" used by Palestinian solidarity activists than it is by "supporters of Israel," a newer preferred term for a Zionist. "Supporting Israel," however that gets understood, is simply for many a natural function of being Jewish, whereas the term Zionism, even if it amounts to the same thing, makes supporting Israel sound rather ideological. Which of course it is.

One of the functions of ideology, as Marxists have long argued, is to embed beliefs that support a particular set of power relations into "common sense" so that they become invisible. Antonio Gramsci called this "hegemony." When a theory or system of beliefs passes into a reflexive pattern of thought, it has transformed into ideology, and this is exactly what has happened to Zionism. To be called a Zionist is somewhat like being called "white man" if you happen to be a white man: you may acknowledge the accuracy of the description but resist the "politicization" of a position you regard as neutral.

Support for Israel, of course, is not neutral, and in order to begin to undo the damage that such support has caused over the past century, the first order of business is not just to name it, but to expose its ideological nature. Like whiteness, it is wrapped up in positions of power and privilege that white Jews, like me, don’t often acknowledge we have. Yet for those of us who truly wish to see an end to the destruction of Palestine and its people, it is not enough to protest merely what Israel does, because what Israel does is an extension of what Israel is – namely, a Zionist state.

Zionist ideology informed Israel’s creation, guided the foundation of its bureaucratic institutions, set the terms for its relations with its neighbours, and established a sophisticated global network of organizations, campus clubs, and schools to sustain and perpetuate Zionist ideas in Jewish communities and beyond. It continues to guide the state violence that has created one of the world’s largest and longest human rights catastrophes. True, many people on the Zionist left try to identify a moment in Israel’s past when this "Jewish liberation movement" turned into something terrible. For some it was the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. For others, such as those in the Peace Now movement, it was the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. For still others, those with a more radical analysis, the problems go back to 1948, or even, as Hannah Arendt argued, to the 1942 Zionist Congress that shut down for good all discussion of a bi-national Jewish-Arab state. Indeed, there are still a few purists with a knowledge of Zionist history who idealize the "cultural" and bi-national Zionism of Hebrew University founder Judah Magnes and the philosopher Martin Buber. Yet the fact is, despite liberal fantasies that try to locate some primal moment in Zionist history when the movement was still pure and good, Zionism is and always has been a fundamentally racist movement shaped by the most violent and oppressive ideological forces of the nineteenth century. It is a testament to the racism of even the most enlightened Zionists – the ones who supposedly promoted Jewish-Arab cooperation – that Judah Magnes referred to Arabs as "half savage" [2], and Martin Buber lived after 1948 in the confiscated house of Edward Said’s family, despite their letters imploring its return.

 

 

To understand the basis of Zionism, it is important to start not in the 1890s with Theodore Herzl and the Dreyfus trial – the point of origin from which Zionist history usually begins – but about a century earlier, to the flourishing of Romanticism in Germany and Europe in general. Rejecting the supremacy of reason that had governed European thought during the neo-classical age, the Romantics emphasized the centrality of emotion, irrationality, and spirit. (Many were borderline mystics, fascinated by the supernatural and Eastern religions.) Against the backdrop of an emerging Industrial Revolution, which precipitated the emptying of Europe’s countrysides and the swelling of its cities, poets, philosophers, and intellectuals began to romanticize the vanishing peasantry and contemplate the "divinity" of nature. Those who tilled the soil and worked the land were viewed as closer to nature, and therefore closer to divinity and spirit. Blut und Boden, or "Blood and Soil," was a term that emerged in Germany by the late nineteenth century with the emergence of Romantic Nationalism, which held that nation states derive their legitimacy as a natural consequence of the organic unity of the people and the land. Blut und Boden eventually became a slogan of the Nazi party, popularized in the 1930s by race theorist Richard Walther Darré. [3]

Meanwhile, as the nineteenth century progressed, European imperialism and the colonization of "the darker nations" flourished. African slavery was still widespread, and even where it was outlawed retained enormous legitimacy among the ruling classes. Successive generations of physical and sexual exploitation of African slaves, mind you, had introduced the "problem" of miscegenation – a problem because light or white-skinned slaves threatened to unravel the fiction of race. Jews, newly emancipated from their medieval ghettos and "passing" for gentiles, posed a similar challenge to the racialized social order. Science, however, rose to the occasion, and soon the best scientific minds of the day produced a highly elaborate and eminently respectable science of race that persisted until the early twentieth century. This racial science had some interesting things to say about Jews, which in turn were absorbed into Zionism.

Racial science was predicated on comparative biology and depended upon observable difference, which was not always evident among the pale Ashkenazi Jews of Europe. Jewish physiognomy was scrutinized for signs of "blackness" and darkened in representation. In art and literature of the nineteenth century, the Jew’s "exotic" features were exaggerated or made more pronounced. The hair was black (or red, to symbolize the devil), the eyes dark, the complexion swarthy. The physiognomist Johann Caspar Lavatar wrote of the Jews’ "short, black, curly hair, their brown skin colour" [4]. In The Races of Men (1850), Robert Knox described Jewish physignomy as having "an African look" [5]. During the Middle Ages, Christian art had always emphasized the metaphorical blackness of the Jew – the black synagogue would be juxtaposed against the white church, for example – but racial science tried to make this metaphorical blackness into a literal blackness that was inscribed in the biology of the Jew. In both Jews and Africans, blackness was further associated with diseases, such a congenital syphilis, which would also be the marker of moral degeneracy.

The problem was that many European Jews simply didn’t look black. Many had fair hair, light eyes, and Slavic or Nordic features. Here’s where another nineteenth century science, sexology, came in to shore up racial science. Sexology, a now antiquated discipline that was established by people like Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis, established a "scientific" basis for normative sexuality in men – aggressive, strong, heterosexual – and a "degenerate" sexuality – passive, weak, homosexual – that was soon widely associated with the Jew (who was usually configured as male). Jews were seen as prone to "neurasthenia," a condition "discovered" by the physician George M. Beard in which the finite "nerve force" of the body is depleted resulting in weakness, lethargy, fatigue, paleness, and stunted sexual development. Neurathenia, which mirrored Krafft-Ebing’s masturbatory illness, was believed by Beard to be brought on by "over-civilization." It was a by-product of the increased pace and technology of industrialized society, and was confined exclusively to "highly evolved" races. It was frequently associated with "superior intellect." Sandar Gilman, who has made a career writing about racial science, notes that in medical literature of this period there was a virtual "interchangeability of the image of the neurasthenic and the Jew" [6].

Jewish accomplishment was thus made the marker of sexual dysfunction and racial degeneracy. The Jew was unathletic, a bookworm, a sissy, a degenerate (and probably a homosexual). A creature of the city, the Jew had no connection to the soil – from which sprang life and energy and health – and thus had no connection to or place in the gentile national body. The Jew was deracinated and therefore diseased and degenerate. In was in these terms that European anti-Semitism, which would soon turn so deadly, was framed.

Zionism was nurtured in this intellectual climate, and it accepted virtually all of these premises. Zionism concurred with the anti-Semites and scientific racism (as it later became known) that yes, the Jew was deracinated and weak and degenerate and "over-civilized." To reverse this degeneracy, Jews needed to connect with the soil from which they sprang, the Biblical heartland and birthplace of the Jewish people. (Never mind that, as Paul Kriwaczek notes in his recent book Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation, many of the Jewish people of Europe were descended from gentile European converts [7].) "Blood and Soil" is as central a concept in Zionism as it was in Nazi fascism. The confluence of racial science, nineteenth-century sexology, and Zionism was embodied in the physician Max Nordau, an early and prominent leader in the Zionist movement who openly hoped that Zionism would create of a new race of "muscle Jews" that would revive the degenerate Jewish race. Martin Englander, another prominent early Zionist, wrote in The Evident Most Frequent Appearances of Illness in the Jewish Race (1902) that Jews’ disposition to neurasthenia was cultural, the result of "over-exertion of the brain" [8] caused by two thousand years of diasporic struggle.

So at root, Zionism is not just racist, but anti-Semitic as well, and it was rightly perceived as offensive by the vast majority of European Jews when it first emerged. Religious Jews, of course, rejected Zionism on Talmudic grounds – there could be no Jewish state until the Messiah – but Zionism was also heartily rejected by secular Jews, who were still largely committed to the Enlightment project and were put off by Zionism’s assertion that they were eternal strangers in their nations. Jews they may have been, but they were also Europeans who had contributed to their societies, valued European culture, and had little interest in relocating to a strange and "primitive" new land where life would be hard. Opinion, of course, would change with the rise of Nazism. By the end of the Second World War, the surviving Jews of Europe had almost universally adopted the Zionist narrative.

 

In Philip Roth’s short story "The Conversion of the Jews," the young protagonist, Ozzie Freedman, complains about his mother’s response to a plane crash. Scouring through the published list of victims, she finds eight Jewish names, and "because of the eight she said the plane crash was a ‘tragedy’" [9]. Roth here pokes fun at a tendency among Jews to focus only on Jewish suffering, though he also captures in a nutshell Zionism’s approach to Jewish history.

Naturally, Jewish history should focus on Jewish suffering, as well as Jewish triumph and other matters concerning Jews. That is, after all, the point of Jewish history, and there are valid reasons for why we need it. In recent years, post-modern theories have challenged "grand narratives" of history as partial and selective and traditionally serving the interests of power, all of which is true. For several decades, historians have attempted to correct the distortions of "official" historical narratives by writing specialized histories of marginalized peoples, such as women, workers, people of colour, and LGBT people. The purpose of such histories is to reinsert a people or social class back into a historical narrative that has excluded them and to see their contributions to a history that, through the very inclusion of their narratives, is changed and broadened. Jewish history has done and should do the same thing.

The Zionist narrative, however, has opposite aims. Because it is underwritten by a belief that Jews are eternal outsiders everywhere but in the Biblical homeland, a Zionist framing of history minimizes Jews’ connection to their societies, thus removing them from history. Jewish suffering during the Holocaust – which, it should be emphasized, was immense and not to be minimized – takes on a different meaning when it is divorced from its the larger context. There is no disputing the murder of millions of European Jews during the Second World War, just as there is no disputing the fact that they were killed simply because they were Jews, even if they did not self-identify as Jews. These are incontrovertible facts. But how different the facts take on meaning when you say, "the Nazis killed three million Polish Jews" than when you say, "six million Poles – about 22% of the population – were killed by the Nazis, half of whom were Jews." To frame facts in this way, however, is to risk being accused of "minimizing" the Holocaust, though one could easily argue the opposite, that it enlarges the tragedy. The Zionist narrative of the Holocaust, unfortunately, discourages Jewish acknowledgement or identification with the suffering of others (unless, as in the case of the Kurds or Darfur, it happens to coincide with U.S. and Israeli interests). Many Jews, for example, are unaware that the Israeli government refuses to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Back in the eighties, a cross erected near Auschwitz on the site of a Carmelite convent to commemorate the hundreds of thousands of Christians who died there was relentlessly opposed by Jewish groups, who insisted the camp remain a symbol of Jewish suffering exclusively, for if Auschwitz were anything but an exclusively tragedy, it would undermine the argument for an exclusively Jewish state. (Auschwitz, we should remember, is the first stop on the "March of the Living," a Zionist program that follows the visit with a trip to Israel.) Even no less a person than Elie Weisel, the famed Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, has opposed the inclusion of a Romani memorial in the U.S. Holocaust museum, though the Nazi campaign against them – the Porajmos, as they call it – was equally devastating proportionally. Indeed, unlike the Jews of Europe today, the Roma still face pre-Nazi levels of oppression. In Italy they have even been reghettoized.

Zionists argue that the Holocaust proved correct Theodore Herzl’s thesis that no matter how well they assimilated into European society, Jews would always be regarded with contempt and were always in danger of being stripped of their recently won rights and killed. Yet a basic fact that hardly seems to need mentioning yet which rarely does get mentioned is that the Holocaust spread only to those countries under Nazi occupation. The Holocaust did not happen in England, for example. And while it is true that anti-Semitism was rampant throughout Europe and that the Nazis found no shortage of eager collaborators among the nations they occupied, Jews only lost their rights and lives under the rule of one nation, Nazi Germany. The Holocaust, in short, was a Nazi phenomenon, not a universally European one. Though Daniel Goldhagen has tried his best to prove that almost all Europeans were "willing executioners" to Hitler, few professional historians regard either his thesis or his argument with much credibility. As Hannah Arendt pointed out in both Eichmann in Jerusalem and in her magisterial study of anti-Semitism in The Origins of Totalitarianism, the Holocaust was an inconsistent affair that varied from country to country, "taking almost as many shapes and appearances as there existed countries in Europe" [10]. In Bulgaria, for example, the population overwhelmingly defied Nazi-imposed anti-Semitic laws so that by the time the Red Army liberated the country in 1944, "not a single Bulgaria Jew had been deported or died an unnatural death" [11]. In Denmark, 8,000 Danish Jews were transported by sea to safety in Sweden in what is one of the most remarkable rescue operations initiated by ordinary people. Even the vicious Vichy regime in France, which had few qualms about turning over to the Nazis Jewish refugees from other countries, made efforts to give comparative protection to its own French Jews. So to say that the Holocaust proves that a violent anti-Semitism lies like a sleeping dog beneath the surface of all gentile nations is an oversimplification and distortion of history. Zionism, however, only retains its credibility if all gentiles are closet anti-Semites.

"If it is true that mankind has insisted on murdering Jews for more than two thousand years," Hannah Arendt argued, "then Jew-killing is a normal, and even human occupation and Jew-hatred is justified beyond the need of argument" [12]. Arendt warned that this "thesis of eternal antisemitism" was dangerous and would "absolve Jew-haters" of their crimes [13]. And yet this belief in eternal anti-Semitism is what informs the political program of Zionism and justifies the need for a Jewish state to protect Jews from the next round of anti-Semitic violence that will surely come. As Arendt noted about Israeli attutides toward the Holocaust during the Eichmann trial, "In the eyes of Jews…the catastrophe that had befallen them under Hitler…appeared not as the most recent of crimes, the unprecedented crime of genocide, but, on the contrary, as the oldest crime they knew and remembered" [14]. Certainly, this is how history appears if, like the mother in Philip Roth’s "Conversion of the Jews," your focus is only on the tragedies that befall the Jews. Jewish persecutions, however, have always taken place in the context of other persecutions. The Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492, to take one example, was a catastrophe, though so was the Muslim expulsion that followed in 1497. The violent transfer and expulsion of populations, to say nothing of persecutions, were, alas, among the terrible but not uncommon features of the rule of kings during the period in which the Jews of Europe experienced their worst treatment. Mahmood Mamdani offers an even broader perspective on the Holocaust when he notes that the Nazi intent to destroy the Jewish people as a whole was "unique – but only in Europe" [15] and that, in fact, "the first genocide of the twentieth century was the German annihilation of the Herero people in South West Africa in 1904" [16]. Indeed, as Sven Lindquist points out in The History of Bombing, one of the things that made Hitler so monstrous was that he fought a "civilized war" as if it were a "colonial war," and European powers had traditionally made distinctions between the two. ("Civilized wars" follow the laws of war. "Colonial wars" do not and often see the extermination of "lower races" as a biological necessity.) This has implications for how we understand the annihilation of European Jewry as well. Summarizing Lindquist, Mamdani writes:

The Nazi plan…was to weed out some 10 million Russians, with the remainder kept

alive as a slave labor force under German occupation. When the mass murder of

European Jews began, the great Jewish populations were not in Germany but in

Poland and Rusia, where they made up 10 percent of the total population and up to 40

percent of the urban population ‘in just those areas Hitler was after.’ [17]

No people on earth who have survived as a people as long as the Jews have enjoyed an absolute and uninterrupted protection from persecution. Yet this is precisely what Zionism demands as the right of all Jews. Moreover, it argues that this eternal safety can only be safeguarded by an exclusively Jewish state and a regional monopoly on nuclear weapons – ironically, conditions that guarantee a state of perpetual war. One hears often how Israelis long to be considered just a "normal" state. Yet the model of "normality" that Zionism looks to is the nineteenth century imperial state, with all of its fascist trappings, such as the belief in "Blood and Soil," the promotion of a muscular national character, and the mythology of an exclusionary national identify based on a common racial/ethnic background. As the rise of Nazism resulted in the Jews of Europe being stripped of the privileges of "whiteness," which anti-Semitism defined in contrast to the Jew, emigration to Palestine under the Zionist project allowed Jews to regain their whiteness, which in this new context was defined against the indigenous Arab – but only if a colonial relationship were maintained. A whiteness that is defined through its dominant position vis-s-vis darker-skinned people is also part of the "normality" that Israel craves because it is based on the "normality" of whiteness in imperial Europe.

Zionists did not immigrate to Israel to be neighbours. They had no interest or intention of learning the local language or contributing to the local culture, as one normally would when moving to another country. Zionism, rather, was predicated on taking over the land and replacing the local culture, not fitting into it. And yet Zionist history refuses to interpret Arab resistance to Jewish immigration during the Holocaust as resistance to this colonial project, not hostility to Jews per se. Nonetheless, pointing to Arab complicity in the Holocaust serves the myth of eternal anti-Semitism and justifies not only the need for a heavily militarized Jewish state but also the on-going brutal treatment of the indigenous people of Palestine.

As for the actions of the Zionist leadership during the actual Holocaust, much has been written about their efforts to prevent other countries from taking in Jewish refugees of Europe, lest the availability of potential immigrants to Palestine be depleted. The World Zionist Organization, for example, boycotted a thirty-one nation conference held in France in 1938 that was convened to discuss the problem of Jewish refugees. As Ben- Gurion said, "If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by Transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would chose the second." More extreme Zionist factions, such as Irgun, actually tried to form an alliance the Nazi government. The young Zionist who wrote the letter making the proposal, the man who noted the "common interests" that existed between the Zionists in Palestine and the Nazis government, was the future Prime Minister of Israel Yizhak Shamir. [18]

 

Liberal Zionists – and I would say that most Jews today are probably liberal Zionists – believe that there exists a solution to the conflicting national projects of Jews and Palestinians: a two-state solution. Like the oft-cited "critics" one finds in Israel, liberal Zionists may openly dislike one or another Israeli leader – maybe Sharon, maybe Netanyahu – support the creation of a Palestinian state, and occasionally even express sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians. If you ask them why such a two-state solution has not yet come into being, they may blame Palestinian leaders for "never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity," as Abba Eban once obnoxiously remarked, or they may, if they’re really liberal, blame the Jewish settlers for holding the Israeli government hostage. Regardless of why liberal Zionists believe a two-state solution has not yet come into being, they will all share a belief that Israel’s leaders have consistently sought peace.

Where does such blind faith come from? Partly from the fact that it’s true. Israel’s leaders, in fact, have consistently sought peace – on their terms! Since 1948, they have sought peace with their neighbouring Arab states – provided they accepted Israel’s regional supremacy and were willing to drop completely the subject of the Palestinians (which would include any compensation or financial assistance to countries that have taken in Palestinian refugees). They have also sought peace with the Palestinians – but provided they relinquish any claims to their land, forget their history, and, preferably, disappear off the face of the earth. True, since the first Intifada, Israel has taken a more moderate stand and has genuinely sought peace through the creation of a Palestinian state – provided that such as state be completely demilitarized, split into reservations, confined to a minimal amount of the most worthless land, governed by a puppet police state that will do its bidding, and produces for the rest of its existence not a single individual who will engage in any act of resistance. Any Palestinian leader unwilling or unable to meet these expectations has been declared by Israeli leaders as an unsuitable "partner for peace," and they have likely believed it in all sincerity. This is because, if you buy into the Zionist project and its thesis of eternal anti-Semitism – which entails that another Holocaust could erupt at any moment – it is impossible to conceive of any compromise that does not simultaneously preserve a strong Jewish state and ensure the weakness of everyone else, lest they become the next Nazi Germany. It is impossible as well to conceive of any solution that does not allow Israel to retain its status as a "white" nation – remember, this is the model of "normality" that Israel seeks – and therefore any settlement that would see Israel become part of the Middle East is precluded. (Israel’s soccer team, not surprisingly, plays in the European league.)

Liberal Zionists who insist that a two-state solution along the 1967 borders is a reasonable compromise are really only in disagreement with hard-line Zionists over how much stolen Palestinian land should be kept for Jews’ exclusive use. And since few liberal Zionists, because they are Zionists, are willing to concede the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and there can be no true justice – and therefore no guaranteed peace – without the right of return, two-state Zionism will always be a dead end. Moreover, two-state Zionism is ideologically unprepared to accept the reality that the settlements and settler roads have made a genuine two-state solution possible, leaving only the options of a one-state solution or eternal apartheid. If all you buy into of Zionism is the thesis of eternal anti-Semitism, you will always opt for the latter before the former, for you will be unable to compromise the so-called "security" guaranteed by a Jewish state.

For those who have grown up with Zionism programmed into them from birth, there are simply certain places that the mind cannot go. For this reason, Zionism is the greatest obstacle to peace. Challenging it, unfortunately, is no easy feat since it has become an integral part of all Jewish community life everywhere. The Jewish school, the Jewish camp, the Jewish campus clubs, the Jewish day care, the local Jewish community center, even the shul – in all of these places one absorbs Zionist ideology through osmosis. Unless you belong to one of the anti-Zionist ultra-orthodox sects such as Neturei Karta, to reject Zionism is to tear yourself apart from the connection to friends, family, and Jewish life. Increasingly, there are small anti-Zionist Jewish spaces opening up, and though they are marginal and not always accessible, their importance should be underestimated. Only if there exists the ability to participate as an anti-Zionist and a Jew in some sort of Jewish life will the risk associated with breaking from Zionism diminish. And only by rejecting Zionism can we who are Jewish break free from the trap we have created for ourselves, the trap of a Jewish state.

 

Jason Kunin is a Toronto teacher.  He can be reached at jkunin@rogers.com.

 

 

[1] See, for example, Avnery’s cautiously optimistic column on the election of Amir Peretz as Labour leader. (http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/22362). From the vantage point of Perez’s brief but brutal reign as defense minister during the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, this is a good example too of how misplaced Avnery’s hopefulness was and always is.

[2] Letter to Felix Warburg, Sept. 7, 1929. Reprinted in Wrestling With Zion: Progressive Jewish Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Ed. Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon. (New York: Grove Press, 2003.)

[3] The definitive scholarship on the continuity between German Romanticism and German fascism has been done by George L. Mosse. See in particular his landmark study The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964).

[4] Quoted in Sander L. Gilman, The Visibility of Jews in the Diaspora: Body Imagery and Its Cultural Context. (Syracuse: Syracuse University, 1992): 7.

[5] Ibid., 7.

[6] Sander L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness. (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985): 156.

[7] Paul Kriwaczek notes many historical instances of gentile conversion to Judaism in European history. He writes, "It should come as little surprise that the missionary efforts to bring lost Jews back to the Torah should spill over into the Christian and pagan world, and that Judaism should attract proselytes among the Slavs. Jewish-owned slaves, while they were still legally allowed, had good reason to convert, for they might thereby gain their freedom. But there were also many who found that the spiritual wealth of the Jews, as well as their worldly success, offered greater rewards than their own Christian lifestyle." Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation. (London: Phoenix, 2005): 120-121.

[8] Quoted in Difference and Pathology, 156-57.

[9] Philip Roth. "The Conversion of the Jews." Goodbye, Columbus. Toronto: Bantam, 1986): 102.

[10] Hannah Arendt. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. (New York: Penguin, 1992): 154.

[11] Ibid., 188.

[12] Hannah Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarianism. ( A Harvest Book: San Diego, 1976): 7.

[13] Ibid., 8.

[14] Eichmann in Jerusalem, 267.

[15] Mahmood Mamdani. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. New York: Doubleday, 2005): 7.

[16] Ibid., 8.

[17] Quoted in Mamdani, 7.

[18] For a more complete account of Zionist collaboration with the Nazis, see Lenni Brenner, 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis. (New Jersey: Barricade Books, 2002).

Implications for a two-state solution

Zionism’s Use of the Holocaust

The Origins of Zionism

Zionism as Ideology

The problem is not Israel, it’s Zionism

 

 

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