Nurit Greenger
As time progresses, I am becoming a clear minded thinker that the Arabs, calling themselves "Palestinians" are in fact an extension of the Nazis, acting along Nazi ideology. Therefore, I am not going to be polite and from time to time will use the political correct word and c all them Palinazis.
To those "believers," who still think that these Arab-"Palestinians" will ever be able to reform, wake up, they will not. When their children are born, the first thing they are taught is to hate and kill Jews and with the vile hate for Jews and Israel that is taught at their schools, the Arab-"Palestinians" make sure that their new generations are as bad, or even worse than those kind of terrorists preceding them. This kind of continuation of genocidal society has one goal in mind, to annihilate the state of Israel and the six million Jews living there.
With the insidious incitement on the Arab-"Palestinians" street and their Nazi ideology, how can they reform? Reform to what? Only yesterday, one 'Palinazi' man broke through an Israeli security barrier managed to arrive at a night club full with gusts, in south Tel Aviv, and with a knife in hand he tried killing as many Jews (youth) as possible; luckily he managed to "only" injure eight Israelis before he was apprehended. What makes a young Arab man wanting to kill Jews is how he was brought up. We do not see Israelis being Jewish jihadists.
Only three days ago the "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas said: 'We won't recognize Israel as Jewish state; the Arab-"Palestinian" leader is defiant ahead of his UN statehood bid, urges international community to back off-get off his back; don’t order us to recognize a Jewish state,' he said along his emboldened audacity.
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's, Foreign Minister says that the world must tell Abbas his state cannot and will not come at Israel's expense. (At Israel's peril!) - http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4114446,00.html
Indeed, the international community needs to back off and end all funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Abbas. The world needs to know that these savages, genocidal Arab-"Palestinians" have one track mind: destroying Israel in any way they can, and we will not allow them to achieve their goal.
The still "believers" Jews, who think there is a solution, I say, demand change. Since they will not, rather expect Israel to conceded, again and again, we must wake these foolish Jews up. We all need to expect them to get behind the drive of cutting the aid and political support to the Arab-"Palestinians". They need to be forced to be educated, as their deliberate ignorance has evil roots. There is no excuse to not knowing the nature of the Arab-"Palestinians" when there is no better source than the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). But because these "believers" choose to have no idea what the PA is up to and what it is really all about they appear to be simply dumb. In the information age one cannot avoid information that is readily available, unless one wants to simply be the Hear, See, Speak, No Evil one!
The rest of us, who choose to be more informed thus see clear, we need to take the next step and flood our representatives in Washington with phone calls and e-mails and demand defunding the PA and a complete end to Hamas. We need to expect that the United States expresses its full approval for Israel to decimate Hamas, the same way the US is busy eradicating al-Qaeda.
We need to take action not just write and speak of the wrongs.
We have many tools in our hands. We can teach all facts of real history and why Eretz Yisrael belongs to the Jews only. Not surprising, even people who understand that the PA are jihadists have no idea how deep rooted are their lies, distortion and anti-Israel rhetoric.
My friends, Israel must also take much bolder actions. The Zionist mission is still alive and has not been completed. Here it is worthwhile reciting what Zionism is:
“A movement founded by the Viennese Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl, who, in his 1896 book Der Judenstaat - The Jewish State - argued that the best way of avoiding anti-Semitism in Europe was to create an independent Jewish state in Palestine, Biblically known as Zion-Tzyion. Zionism was named after Mount Zion, in Jerusalem, a symbol of the Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel from time immemorial, culminated in the birth of the modern State of Israel, in 1948. One can go further and simply define Zionism as the return of the, forever persecuted and discriminated, Jews to their homeland of over 3000 years.
Zionism equals Jewish Pride, which, unfortunately, and at their own and other Jews' peril, some Jews do not possess yet.
It is the Jews' rightful law to live like any other nation, in secured borders and in total peace, real peace. Unfortunately, Israel and Jews are not there yet, thus Israel has not yet achieved it full independence. Because, not at the fault of the Jews, since her inception Israel had to fight and is still fighting, now more than ever, for its existence.
Today, six decades after the actual founding of a Jewish state, Zionism continues to be the guiding nationalist movement of the majority of Jews around the world who believe in, support and identify with the State of Israel. Zionism, the national aspiration of the Jewish people to a homeland, is to the Jewish people what the Founding of the United States and its Constitution to the American people, and the liberation movements of Africa and Asia have been to their peoples.
History has demonstrated the need to ensure Jewish security through such a Homeland. The re-establishment of Jewish Sovereignty in Israel, after centuries of struggle to overcome foreign conquest and exile, is a vindication of the fundamental concepts of the equality of nations and of self-determination. To question the Jewish people's right to national existence and freedom is not only to deny to the Jewish people the right accorded to every other people on this globe, but it is also to deny the central precepts of the United Nations.
Therefore, Zionism and the Zionistic movement will continue indefinitely.
If only Israel had a better education curriculum that had not shied away from nationalism, Zionism and the real purpose of the State of Israel, there would have never been "Peace Now," or the like, organizations, founded by the misguided and those who have deep antipathy, and mind you they are Jews, to Israel's being.
Sadly, Israelis were and are lied to from elementary to high school, even while serving in the IDF and when attending university.
There is a 100 page book that every Israeli attending high school should be compelled to read, 'History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression', Author David Meir-Levi - http://www.amazon.com/History-Upside-Down-Palestinian-Aggression/dp/1594031924
Do we have to wait until the book gets translated into Hebrew to help raising a future Jewish generation that is no long confused? The Palinazis are not confused, why should Jews be confused?
By end of high school years, now eligible to vote, most Israeli kids should know that their knowledge must not be dominated by Jewish history that is upside down; they must not be turned into self hating Jews, self hating Israelis, as it appears to be happening right now. The new Israeli generations must know that the roots of Arab-"Palestinian" fascism are very deep and dangerous to their existence and it is a total myth, that must be vigorously refuted, that the State of Israel is an aggressor.
The Education system in Israeli should get started with the right teaching and right away, putting this information into the required curriculum. There is too much division in Israel, borne of total ignorance. We must see the Israeli perfidious Left wing fade into oblivion, thus making David Meir-Levi 100 page book required reading.
All Jews have a stake in State of Israel, which they must protect, cherish and defend! Without Israel we, Jews, will have no dignity whatsoever and our lives will, once again be at the mercy of others and we know where that has lead us thus far. It is only because of Israel that all of us Jews, can continue living, as Jews, anywhere we choose. And this does not hold truth any longer, as we see Europe filling up its ant-Semitist bags again while on the Arab countries the anti-Semitism bags are overflowing.
We must strengthen Israel so she can allow us, Jew, to stand strong anywhere we live. Strong Israel is a strong Jewish Nation and I will go as far to say with string Israel there will be a safer and better world.
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Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
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קובץ: למען האמת, הערבים הם השלוחה של הנאצים וכך גם הערבים, שקוראים לעצמם "פלסטינים".ישראל צריכה לשנות את היחס שלה וכיוון החינוך על מנת לשרוד.
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"פלסטין" ערבית סותרת ציונות
אוגוסט 30 2011 – ל' באב 5771
נורית גרינגר
ככל שהזמן מתקדם, נעשה לי ברור ביותר שהערבים, המכנים את עצמם "פלסטינים" הם למעשה שלוחה של הנאצים, הפועלים לאורך האידיאולוגיה הנאצית. לכן, אני לא מתכוונת להיות מנומסת ומדי פעם אשתמש במילה הפוליטית הנכונה ואקרא להם פאלינאצים.
לאלה "המאמינים", שעדיין חושבים כי הערבים-"פלסטינים" יוכלו אי פעם להשתנות לטובה, תתעוררו, הם לא ישתנו. כשילדיהם נולדים, הדבר הראשון שהם לומדים הוא לשנוא ולהרוג יהודים ועם שנאת עוול ליהודים וישראל שהם לומדים בבתי הספר שלהם, הערבים-"פלסטינים" מוודאים שהדורות הבאים שלהם יהיו גרועים כמו, או אפילו גרועים יותר מדור המחבלים שקדם להם. לסוג זה של המשכיות של חברה רצחנית ושואתית יש רק מטרה אחת, שהיא להשמיד את מדינת ישראל ואת ששת מיליוני היהודים המתגוררים בה.
עם ההסתה המסכנת ברחוב הערבי-"פלסטיני" והאידיאולוגיה הנאצית שלהם, איך הם יכולים לעבור שינוי לטובה? רפורמה-שינוי למה?
רק אתמול, אדם 'פאלינאצי' אחד פרץ דרך מחסום ביטחון ישראלי, הגיע עד למועדון עמוס באורחים, בדרום תל אביב, ועם סכין ביד הוא ניסה להרוג כמה שיותר יהודים (נוער). למרבה המזל הוא הצליח לפגוע "רק" בשמונה ישראלים לפני שנעצר. מה שגורם לצעיר ערבי לרצות להרוג יהודים זה איך שהוא גדל. אנחנו לא רואים ישראלים שהם ג'יהאדיסטים יהודים.
רק לפני שלושה ימים אבו מאזן-עבאס "המתון" אמר: "לא נכיר בישראל כמדינה יהודית." המנהיג של הערבים-"פלסטינים" מתריס לקראת בקשתו מהאו"ם למדינה שלו וקורא לקהילה הבינלאומית לסגת-לרדת מגבו. אל תתנו לנו פקודות להכיר במדינה יהודית, "הוא אמר לאורך החוצפה המתחזקת שלו.
אביגדור ליברמן, שר החוץ של ישראל, אומר שהעולם חייב לומר לעבאס שהמדינה שלו לא תוכל ולא תבוא על חשבון מדינת ישראל. (תוך סיכון של ישראל!)
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4114446,00.html
אכן, הקהילה הבינלאומית צריכה לסגת ולסים קץ למימון הרשות הפלסטנית (רש"פ) ועבאס. העולם צריך לדעת שלערבים-"פלסטינים" הפראים והשואתיים האלה יש רק מסלול מוח אחד: להשמיד את ישראל בכל דרך שהם יכולים, ואנחנו לא נאפשר להם להשיג את מטרתם.
ליהודים שעדיין "מאמינים" וחושבים שיש פתרון, אני אומרת, דירשו שינוי. היות והם לא ידרשו שינוי, ויצפו שישראל תוותר, שוב ושוב, אנחנו חייבים לעורר יהודים טיפשים אלה. כולנו צריכים לצפות מהם להצטרף לדרישה לקצץ את הסיוע והתמיכה הפוליטית לערבים-"פלסטינים". צריך לאלץ אותם ללמוד, כי לבורות המכוונת שלהם יש שורשים רעים. אין שום תירוץ לא לדעת את טבעם של הערבים-"פלסטינים" כאשר אין מקור טוב יותר מאשר 'פלסטיניין מידייה ווטץ'. אבל בגלל ש-"המאמינים" האלה בוחרים שלא יהיה להם מושג מה שהרשות הפלסטינית מתכננת ומה אופייה האמיתי נראה שהם פשוט מטופשים. בעידן המידע לא ניתן למנוע מידע זמין, אלא אם כן אחד פשוט רוצה להיות הלא שומע, רואה, מדבר, על עוול.
לשאר, הבוחרים להיות מלומדים ומעודכנים ועם כך רואים בברור, אנחנו צריכים לעשות את הצעד הבא ולהציף את הנציגים שלנו בוושינגטון בשיחות טלפון ודואר אלקטרוני ולדרוש לסים קץ למימון הרשות הפלסטינית ולשים סוף מוחלט לחמאס, באותה דרך שארה"ב עסוקה בביעור אל קאעידה.
אנחנו צריכים לפעול ולא רק לכתוב ולדבר על העוולות.
יש בידינו כלים רבים. אנחנו יכולים ללמד את כל העובדות של ההיסטוריה האמיתית ומדוע ארץ ישראל שייכת ליהודים בלבד. לא מפתיע, גם האנשים שמבינים כי הרשות הפלסטינית הם ג'יהאדיסטים אין לי מושג כמה עמוק מושרשים השקרים שלהם, העיוות ורטוריקת השינאה שלהם כנגד ישראל.
חברי, גם ישראל צריכה לנקוט בפעולות נועזות יותר. המשימה הציונית היא עדיין בחיים ולא הושלמה. כאן כדאי להסביר שנית מה היא ציונות:
"תנועה שהוקמה על ידי העיתונאי היהודי-ווינאי תיאודור הרצל, אשר, בשנת 1896, בספרו מדינת היהודים, טען כי הדרך הטובה ביותר לימנוע אנטישמיות באירופה היא ליצור מדינה יהודית עצמאית בפלסטין, הידועה במקרא בשם ציון. השם ציונות בא מהשם של הר ציון, בירושלים, סמל של המולדת היהודית בארץ ישראל מקדמת דנא, שהגיע לשיא בהולדת מדינת ישראל המודרנית, בשנת 1948. אפשר להמשיך הלאה ופשוט להגדיר את הציונות כחזרת היהודים שלנצח נרדפו והופלו, לארצם של מעל ל-3000 שנים.
הציונות שווה לגאווה היהודית, אשר, למרבה הצער ועם סיכון עצמי ושל שאר היהודים, לחלק מהיהודים אין עדיין.
זה החוק הראוי שהיהודים יוכלו לחיות כמו כל אומה אחרת, בגבולות מאובטחים ובשלום מוחלט, שלום אמיתי. למרבה הצער, ישראל ויהודים הם עדיין לא הגיעו לשם, ולכן ישראל עדיין לא השיגה עצמאות מלאה. כי, לא באשם היהודים, מאז היווסדה ישראל אולצה להילחם ועדיין היא נלחמת, עכשיו יותר מתמיד, על קיומה.
היום, שישה עשורים לאחר הקמתה בפועל של המדינה יהודית, ציונות ממשיכה להיות התנועה הלאומנית המנחה של רוב היהודים בעולם המאמינים ב-, תומכים ומזדהים עם מדינת ישראל. הציונות, שהיא השאיפה הלאומית של העם היהודי למולדת, היא לעם היהודי מה שהמייסדים של ארצות הברית והחוקה שלה הם לעם האמריקאי, ותנועות השחרור באפריקה ובאסיה הן לעמיהם.
ההיסטוריה הוכיחה את הצורך להבטיח ביטחון יהודי במולדת יהודית כזו. הקמתה מחדש של ריבונות יהודית בארץ ישראל, לאחר מאות שנים של מאבק להתגבר על כיבוש של זרים וגלות, היא הצידוק של מושגי יסוד של שוויון בין העמים והגדרה עצמית. שאילתת זכותו של העם היהודי לקיום לאומי וחופש היא לא רק להכחיש לעם היהודי את זכותו שניתנת לכל עם אחר על פני כדור הארץ הזה, אבל זו גם הכחשה של כל הכללים המרכזיים של האומות המאוחדות.
לפיכך, הציונות והתנועה הציונית ימשיכו לנצח.
אם רק לישראל היתה תוכנית לימודים טובה יותר שלא נרתעת מלאומיות, ציונות והמטרה האמיתית של מדינת ישראל, לא היה מעולם האירגון "שלום עכשיו", או ארגונים דומים, שנוסדו על ידי המוטעים ואילו שיש להם סלידה עמוקה, אם לא אכפת לכם יהודים, לקיומה של מדינת ישראל.
למרבה הצער, משקרים לישראלים מבית הספר היסודי ועד התיכון, גם בעת שירותם בצה"ל, וכאשר הם לומדים באוניברסיטה.
יש ספר של 100 עמודים, שכל ישראלי בית ספר תיכון יביב חייב לקרוא, 'היסטוריה הפוכה: שורשי הפשיזם הפלסטיני והמיתוס של התוקפנות הישראלית', הסופר דוד מאיר לוי –
http://www.amazon.com/History-Upside-Down-Palestinian-Aggression/dp/1594031924
האם אנחנו צריכים לחכות עד שהספר יתורגם לעברית כדי לעזור לגדל דור עתיד יהודי שהוא כבר לא מבולבל? הפאלינאצים הם לא מבולבלים, למה שהיהודים יהיו מבולבלים?
עם סיום הית הספר התיכון, ועכשיו עם זכות הצבעה, רוב הילדים הישראלים צריכים לדעת כי הידע שלהם לא חייב להיות נשלט על ידי מידע על היסטוריה יהודית הפוכה. הם לא צריכים להפוך ליהודים עם שנאה עצמית, ישראלים עם שנאה עצמית, כפי שהתופעה היא עכשיו. הדורות הישראלים החדשים צריכים לדעת ששורשי הפשיזם הערבי-"פלסטני" הם עמוקים מאוד ומסוכנים לקיומם וזה מיתוס מוחלט, שחייבים להפריך בתוקף, שמדינת ישראל היא התוקפן.
מערכת החינוך הישראלית צריכה להתחיל ללמד את המידע הנכון ומיד, וליישם את המידע הזה לתוך תוכנית הלימודים הנדרשת. ישנה מחלוקת רבה מדי בישראל, שנולדה מבורות מוחלטת. אנחנו חייבים לראות שהשמאל הישראלי הבוגדני יעלם לתהום הנשייה, ובכך צריך לעשות את ספר של 100 עמודים שכתב דוד מאיר לוי, ספר קריאה חובה.
לכל היהודים יש אינטרס במדינת ישראל, שהם חייבים להגן ולהוקיר! ללא ישראל, לנו, היהודים, לא יהיה כל כבוד שהוא וחיינו יהיו, שוב, נתונים לחסדיהם של אחרים ואנחנו יודעים לאן שזה הוביל אותנו עד כה. זה רק בגלל מדינת ישראל שיהודים יכולים להמשיך לחיות כיהודים, בכל מקום שאנו בוחרים. וכיום זה אינו מחזיק עוד את האמת, כפי שאנו רואים באירופה, ששוב ממלאת את שקי האנטישמיות שלה ובמדינות ערב שקי האנטישמיות עולים על גדותיהם.
אנחנו חייבים לחזק את ישראל כדי שהיא תוכל לאפשר לנו, היהודים, לעמוד איתן בכל מקום בו אנו חיים. ישראל חזקה היא עם יהודי חזק ואני אלך צעד נוסף לומר עם ישראל חזקה יהיה עולם בטוח וטוב יותר.
הפניה:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Logic vs. Larry Derfner
Fresnozionism
Larry Derfner, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, has published an article in his personal blog which argues, simply, that Palestinian terrorism against Israel is justified.
Unlike many pro-terrorism writers who prefer to make their points by appeal to emotion, Derfner presents his immoral conclusion as the result of an apparently rational argument.
As a logician, I see myself as a bullsh*t detective. I do my job by exposing unstated assumptions, as well as analyzing inferences for validity, finding hidden equivocations, etc. Sometimes just exposing the skeleton of the argument is enough to show its unsoundness. Here is Derfner’s blog post, and here is his argument as I paraphrase it:
1) ‘The occupation’ is unjust and is seriously harming the Palestinians.
2) Israel will not end the occupation on its own.
3) A nation “living under hostile rule” has a right of self-defense.
4) Palestinian terrorism is therefore justified.
Right now, I am inviting Derfner to respond. Did I read you right, Larry? If not, please tell me which of the above propositions you do not accept. I’m not asking you to respond to my whole post — I know you would have plenty to say. I just want to know if I understand you correctly.
Let’s take these propositions one at a time.
1) ‘The occupation’ is unjust and is seriously harming the Palestinians. To begin with, the concept of ‘the occupation’ is loaded with unstated assumptions. It includes the idea that the 1949 armistice line is a border, and to the east of it is a national entity that belongs to another people, which Israel is occupying. It assumes that Jewish settlements there are illegitimate.
All of the above is a political construction which is by no means beyond question — and many of us question it. The 1949 armistice lines were accepted by no one as borders, and the right of Jews to settle in the area between the river and the sea granted by the Mandate hasn’t been renounced, although it was denied during the 1948-1967 period. Although Israel may make an agreement with the Palestinian Arabs to evacuate some of this area — which is at most ‘disputed’, not occupied — so that a Palestinian state free of Jews may be created in return for recognition and appropriate security guarantees, this hasn’t happened yet (and it isn’t Israel that is preventing it).
So is the presence of Israeli settlements and IDF soldiers in this area ‘unjust’? If you accept that there is nothing illegitimate about Jews living there, and note the historical record of Arab terrorism and pogroms against Jews, from the Hevron massacre to the Fogel murders, then it’s hard to see the injustice of an IDF presence there, or the security fence, checkpoints, etc. Consider also the danger to Israelis west of the armistice line that emanates from the Arab population to the east, and it’s hard to call these things ‘unjust’.
Does this presence ‘harm’ the Palestinians? Probably the opposite if you count things like infant mortality and standard of living — compare them to Arabs living in nearby Egypt, Jordan and Syria — but I will grant that they are harmed psychically by the frustration of their desire to have a state (we’ll leave aside the racist nature of the state that they want).
Yes, the security measures are onerous, and even ‘harmful’ to some extent. But they are in direct proportion to terrorism, and the Palestinians can control them by controlling terrorism.
It is also fundamentally dishonest of Derfner to use the word ‘occupation’ to mean ‘occupation of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem’, when the Palestinians use it to refer to any Jewish state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. For one thing, Derfner implies that a withdrawal to the Green Line would satisfy the Arabs. Probably the major part of the Palestinians’ psychic pain comes from their narrative of the loss of pre-1967 Israel, not the Israeli presence in the territories. Does Derfner want us to end that ‘occupation’?
2) Israel will not end the occupation on its own. It is true that Israel will not evacuate Judea and Samaria unilaterally. The unstated assumption is that this is simply a ‘land grab’. Leaving aside the argument that it is racist for the Arabs to insist that Jews may not live there, there are good strategic reasons against a unilateral withdrawal without effective security guarantees. It’s not as if Arab intentions are somehow hidden — even the ‘moderate’ Fatah has made it clear that it considers all of ‘historical Palestine’ its property, and that violent ‘resistance to occupation’ is justified as a means to recover it.
Even apart from the historical rights of the Jewish people, a unilateral withdrawal would be suicidal for the Jewish state.
Could this change? Certainly, if the Palestinian authority were prepared to negotiate in good faith on terms and with guarantees that claims against Israel for territory or ‘right of return’ would end. Unless this happens, it is the fault of the Palestinians, not Israel, that there is no Palestinian state.
3) A nation “living under hostile rule” has a right of self-defense. This proposition is based on an understanding of ‘hostile rule’, that does not in any way fit the reality. The analogy is to the situation of Nazi-occupied Poland, in which a foreign power marched into another country, killed its citizens, and established a dictatorial rule for the purpose of exploitation. I realize that these are the exact terms that are used by Palestinians and their supporters, but with all due respect it is complete nonsense.
Zionist settlers came to Ottoman Palestine, did not displace Arab residents, and indeed improved conditions there for all residents, Arab and Jew. They were met by racist and violent resistance to their presence culminating in a war (1948) that was described by Arab leaders as an attempt to kill or expel Jews from Arab land. Later, in 1967, the Arabs yet again fought a war intended to be the end of the Jews in the region, and again they were prevented from committing the genocide that their leaders called for.
Keep in mind that the Arabs initiated the 1967 war and there was no national claimant to the territories more rightful than Israel. Who would it be? The Ottoman Empire? Britain? Jordan? No ‘Palestinian’ entity had ever existed.
So Jewish control of the territories is hardly a ‘hostile rule’ in the same sense as the occupation of Poland, and does not confer a right of self-defense. The hostility, ironically, is primarily on the Arab side!
4) Palestinian terrorism is therefore justified. This proposition is morally abhorrent. The nature of Palestinian terrorism — vicious attacks against the noncombatant population, with special emphasis on children — is of a kind that is never justified, since it is aimed at third parties. The Palestinians choose these targets not only because they are vulnerable, but also because the particular psycho-social disorder that affects them makes cruelty necessary to ‘even the score’. This form of violence is sanctioned, applauded, encouraged and often ordered by the Palestinian leadership.
Israeli actions against Palestinians are for most part defensive or retaliatory, where retaliation attempts to target perpetrators of terrorism with minimal collateral damage.
This proposition would not follow from proposition 3) even if it did imply a right of self-defense in this case, which it doesn’t. Clearly there are ways to ‘resist occupation’ which don’t require firing anti-tank missiles at school buses.
***
To sum up the logical case,
Derfner describes the present situation in an ahistorical and dishonest way.
He blames Israel, when it should be clear that the Palestinians’ lack of a state is due to their refusal to give up the idea that they must possess all of historical Palestine.
He makes a false analogy between the Israeli presence in the territories — which is based on historical rights and legitimate security considerations — and a hostile occupation, and claims that the right of self-defense that would apply in the latter case applies in the former as well.
And finally, he makes a completely unsound leap from a right of self-defense — which doesn’t exist in this case anyway — to a justification of vicious terrorism against noncombatants.
Update [26 Aug 1133 PDT]: Derfner has apologized for his post and taken it down. But he’s still wrong..
Larry Derfner, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, has published an article in his personal blog which argues, simply, that Palestinian terrorism against Israel is justified.
Unlike many pro-terrorism writers who prefer to make their points by appeal to emotion, Derfner presents his immoral conclusion as the result of an apparently rational argument.
As a logician, I see myself as a bullsh*t detective. I do my job by exposing unstated assumptions, as well as analyzing inferences for validity, finding hidden equivocations, etc. Sometimes just exposing the skeleton of the argument is enough to show its unsoundness. Here is Derfner’s blog post, and here is his argument as I paraphrase it:
1) ‘The occupation’ is unjust and is seriously harming the Palestinians.
2) Israel will not end the occupation on its own.
3) A nation “living under hostile rule” has a right of self-defense.
4) Palestinian terrorism is therefore justified.
Right now, I am inviting Derfner to respond. Did I read you right, Larry? If not, please tell me which of the above propositions you do not accept. I’m not asking you to respond to my whole post — I know you would have plenty to say. I just want to know if I understand you correctly.
Let’s take these propositions one at a time.
1) ‘The occupation’ is unjust and is seriously harming the Palestinians. To begin with, the concept of ‘the occupation’ is loaded with unstated assumptions. It includes the idea that the 1949 armistice line is a border, and to the east of it is a national entity that belongs to another people, which Israel is occupying. It assumes that Jewish settlements there are illegitimate.
All of the above is a political construction which is by no means beyond question — and many of us question it. The 1949 armistice lines were accepted by no one as borders, and the right of Jews to settle in the area between the river and the sea granted by the Mandate hasn’t been renounced, although it was denied during the 1948-1967 period. Although Israel may make an agreement with the Palestinian Arabs to evacuate some of this area — which is at most ‘disputed’, not occupied — so that a Palestinian state free of Jews may be created in return for recognition and appropriate security guarantees, this hasn’t happened yet (and it isn’t Israel that is preventing it).
So is the presence of Israeli settlements and IDF soldiers in this area ‘unjust’? If you accept that there is nothing illegitimate about Jews living there, and note the historical record of Arab terrorism and pogroms against Jews, from the Hevron massacre to the Fogel murders, then it’s hard to see the injustice of an IDF presence there, or the security fence, checkpoints, etc. Consider also the danger to Israelis west of the armistice line that emanates from the Arab population to the east, and it’s hard to call these things ‘unjust’.
Does this presence ‘harm’ the Palestinians? Probably the opposite if you count things like infant mortality and standard of living — compare them to Arabs living in nearby Egypt, Jordan and Syria — but I will grant that they are harmed psychically by the frustration of their desire to have a state (we’ll leave aside the racist nature of the state that they want).
Yes, the security measures are onerous, and even ‘harmful’ to some extent. But they are in direct proportion to terrorism, and the Palestinians can control them by controlling terrorism.
It is also fundamentally dishonest of Derfner to use the word ‘occupation’ to mean ‘occupation of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem’, when the Palestinians use it to refer to any Jewish state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. For one thing, Derfner implies that a withdrawal to the Green Line would satisfy the Arabs. Probably the major part of the Palestinians’ psychic pain comes from their narrative of the loss of pre-1967 Israel, not the Israeli presence in the territories. Does Derfner want us to end that ‘occupation’?
2) Israel will not end the occupation on its own. It is true that Israel will not evacuate Judea and Samaria unilaterally. The unstated assumption is that this is simply a ‘land grab’. Leaving aside the argument that it is racist for the Arabs to insist that Jews may not live there, there are good strategic reasons against a unilateral withdrawal without effective security guarantees. It’s not as if Arab intentions are somehow hidden — even the ‘moderate’ Fatah has made it clear that it considers all of ‘historical Palestine’ its property, and that violent ‘resistance to occupation’ is justified as a means to recover it.
Even apart from the historical rights of the Jewish people, a unilateral withdrawal would be suicidal for the Jewish state.
Could this change? Certainly, if the Palestinian authority were prepared to negotiate in good faith on terms and with guarantees that claims against Israel for territory or ‘right of return’ would end. Unless this happens, it is the fault of the Palestinians, not Israel, that there is no Palestinian state.
3) A nation “living under hostile rule” has a right of self-defense. This proposition is based on an understanding of ‘hostile rule’, that does not in any way fit the reality. The analogy is to the situation of Nazi-occupied Poland, in which a foreign power marched into another country, killed its citizens, and established a dictatorial rule for the purpose of exploitation. I realize that these are the exact terms that are used by Palestinians and their supporters, but with all due respect it is complete nonsense.
Zionist settlers came to Ottoman Palestine, did not displace Arab residents, and indeed improved conditions there for all residents, Arab and Jew. They were met by racist and violent resistance to their presence culminating in a war (1948) that was described by Arab leaders as an attempt to kill or expel Jews from Arab land. Later, in 1967, the Arabs yet again fought a war intended to be the end of the Jews in the region, and again they were prevented from committing the genocide that their leaders called for.
Keep in mind that the Arabs initiated the 1967 war and there was no national claimant to the territories more rightful than Israel. Who would it be? The Ottoman Empire? Britain? Jordan? No ‘Palestinian’ entity had ever existed.
So Jewish control of the territories is hardly a ‘hostile rule’ in the same sense as the occupation of Poland, and does not confer a right of self-defense. The hostility, ironically, is primarily on the Arab side!
4) Palestinian terrorism is therefore justified. This proposition is morally abhorrent. The nature of Palestinian terrorism — vicious attacks against the noncombatant population, with special emphasis on children — is of a kind that is never justified, since it is aimed at third parties. The Palestinians choose these targets not only because they are vulnerable, but also because the particular psycho-social disorder that affects them makes cruelty necessary to ‘even the score’. This form of violence is sanctioned, applauded, encouraged and often ordered by the Palestinian leadership.
Israeli actions against Palestinians are for most part defensive or retaliatory, where retaliation attempts to target perpetrators of terrorism with minimal collateral damage.
This proposition would not follow from proposition 3) even if it did imply a right of self-defense in this case, which it doesn’t. Clearly there are ways to ‘resist occupation’ which don’t require firing anti-tank missiles at school buses.
***
To sum up the logical case,
Derfner describes the present situation in an ahistorical and dishonest way.
He blames Israel, when it should be clear that the Palestinians’ lack of a state is due to their refusal to give up the idea that they must possess all of historical Palestine.
He makes a false analogy between the Israeli presence in the territories — which is based on historical rights and legitimate security considerations — and a hostile occupation, and claims that the right of self-defense that would apply in the latter case applies in the former as well.
And finally, he makes a completely unsound leap from a right of self-defense — which doesn’t exist in this case anyway — to a justification of vicious terrorism against noncombatants.
Update [26 Aug 1133 PDT]: Derfner has apologized for his post and taken it down. But he’s still wrong..
Terrorist Alive ‘Thanks to Beinisch’ – MK Katz
NU chairman has no doubt as to how a lone terrorist could have injured 8 security men and emerged alive: court policy is to blame.
by Gil Ronen
The terrorist who went on a rampage in Tel Aviv Sunday night managed to injure eight security men, some seriously, but is still alive and has only light injuries. How did this happen? National Union Chairman MK Yaakov Katz says soldiers and police are simply afraid that the courts will persecute them if they use force against the enemy.
"The fear of Supreme Court President Beinisch has fallen upon the soldiers and policemen of Israel," MK Katz said. "The behavior of the State Attorney's Office and the legal system lately against security guards, policemen, soldiers and officers who staunchly defended the Nation of Israel – and were rewarded by being sent to jail – weakens the security forces," he explained.
"Fear and trembling seize them and in any confrontation between an Arab terrorist murderer and dozens of policemen, soldiers and guards, our men bleed with serious injuries and the Arab murderer emerges unscathed, and is already preparing for his release in the next release deal, so that he can plan the next massacre."
The policy of the State Attorney and legal establishment needs to change, MK Katz said, as the current policy causes a lack of deterrence. "The Arab terrorist murderers know that nothing will happen to them [if they attack] and that they will be able to go back and murder again shortly afterward."
Comment: And the world decries how evil we are-the truth is we have the most powerful judicial system in the world, to the point it over reaches its authority placing our soldiers and police in dangerous and destructive positions.
Thanks Ted Belman
Looking for 'Islamophobia' in All the Usual Places
David Reaboi
Last week the Center for American Progress released the latest in an increasingly desperate series of reports by far-left and Islamist groups attacking my colleagues and me at the Center for Security Policy and others for our work educating Americans about Islamist terrorist threats and exposing the underlying doctrine — Shariah — that motivates them.
In what could be called a “Shariah Defense Lobby,” a growing number of far-left groups have joined ranks with Islamist groups to whitewash and protect the political, legal, military, and religious doctrines of Shariah from scrutiny. This latest report joins previous efforts by the Center for American Progress, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Political Research Associates, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. One of the major goals of these reports — in addition to the glowing coverage they receive on friendly outlets like the Iranian state-run PressTV and Al Jazeera — is to silence all criticism of Islamist aggression, jihadist violence, or Shariah violations of human rights and civil liberties. he premise of “Fear Inc.: The Roots Of the Islamophobia Network In America” is that a shadowy network of activists and experts conspire to “misinform” the American public about jihadist terror. Frustrated by the prevalence of this common-sense concern, far-left and Islamist groups try to explain this by searching for conspiracy, sources of funding, economic arguments, or xenophobia. For the Center for American Progress — a leftist propaganda mill widely recognized to be the Obama White House’s “think tank“ — a cabal of conservative plotters (which, they readily admit, works on a small budget) is responsible for American’s increasing concern about jihadist terrorism and awareness that elements of Shariah pose a threat to our national security.
While this shrill report suggests that millions of Americans have been manipulated into becoming “Islamophobes,” it shows nothing more than the frustration of their authors. While the Center for American Progress conspires to demonize an American public that watches as millions the world over march under the banner of installing Shariah law — complete with its brutal punishments, subjugation of minorities, and obligation to wage jihad — they are clearly losing a battle with reality.
Even without the work of the experts and activists in highlighting the characteristics of this ideology and its dangers, the far-left is hoping their fellow countrymen don’t notice as jihadist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood rally for a Shariah that is straight from the pages of the Center for Security Policy’s book, Shariah: The Threat to America.
Shariah: The Threat to America – and, indeed, much of the work by those vilified in the report, including Steven Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, Robert Spencer, and David Yerushalmi — gives voice to millions of Americans who look at the news and see the sharp end of a worldwide movement, like a storm, touching down in every continent. From the Middle East to Europe and Africa, to Russia, India, and the United States, there exists violence or intimidation in the name of Islam. These disparate engagements are seen by millions of Muslims as campaigns in a war called jihad. For too long, Americans have been told to understand these campaigns as disparate events, triggered by political, territorial, or national grievances.
To understand what’s happening, however, a worthwhile analysis must begin not with those grievances, but must take into account how the belligerents see themselves: their goals, aspirations, how they justify their actions based on their self-enunciated code, Shariah. This is a conversation both the far left and Islamists are desperate to avoid; they have gone on the offensive, unsurprisingly, by labeling their opponents “Islamophobes.”
Rather than look for the predictable “root causes” of economics, xenophobia, conspiracy, and the like that are catnip to the far left and the academy, the Center for American Progress and their fellow travelers in the “Shariah Defense Lobby” could find a more accurate reason for Americans’ increasing concern with Shariah: They could turn on the TV news.
David Reaboi is the Communications Director at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC.
Last week the Center for American Progress released the latest in an increasingly desperate series of reports by far-left and Islamist groups attacking my colleagues and me at the Center for Security Policy and others for our work educating Americans about Islamist terrorist threats and exposing the underlying doctrine — Shariah — that motivates them.
In what could be called a “Shariah Defense Lobby,” a growing number of far-left groups have joined ranks with Islamist groups to whitewash and protect the political, legal, military, and religious doctrines of Shariah from scrutiny. This latest report joins previous efforts by the Center for American Progress, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Political Research Associates, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. One of the major goals of these reports — in addition to the glowing coverage they receive on friendly outlets like the Iranian state-run PressTV and Al Jazeera — is to silence all criticism of Islamist aggression, jihadist violence, or Shariah violations of human rights and civil liberties. he premise of “Fear Inc.: The Roots Of the Islamophobia Network In America” is that a shadowy network of activists and experts conspire to “misinform” the American public about jihadist terror. Frustrated by the prevalence of this common-sense concern, far-left and Islamist groups try to explain this by searching for conspiracy, sources of funding, economic arguments, or xenophobia. For the Center for American Progress — a leftist propaganda mill widely recognized to be the Obama White House’s “think tank“ — a cabal of conservative plotters (which, they readily admit, works on a small budget) is responsible for American’s increasing concern about jihadist terrorism and awareness that elements of Shariah pose a threat to our national security.
While this shrill report suggests that millions of Americans have been manipulated into becoming “Islamophobes,” it shows nothing more than the frustration of their authors. While the Center for American Progress conspires to demonize an American public that watches as millions the world over march under the banner of installing Shariah law — complete with its brutal punishments, subjugation of minorities, and obligation to wage jihad — they are clearly losing a battle with reality.
Even without the work of the experts and activists in highlighting the characteristics of this ideology and its dangers, the far-left is hoping their fellow countrymen don’t notice as jihadist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood rally for a Shariah that is straight from the pages of the Center for Security Policy’s book, Shariah: The Threat to America.
Shariah: The Threat to America – and, indeed, much of the work by those vilified in the report, including Steven Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, Robert Spencer, and David Yerushalmi — gives voice to millions of Americans who look at the news and see the sharp end of a worldwide movement, like a storm, touching down in every continent. From the Middle East to Europe and Africa, to Russia, India, and the United States, there exists violence or intimidation in the name of Islam. These disparate engagements are seen by millions of Muslims as campaigns in a war called jihad. For too long, Americans have been told to understand these campaigns as disparate events, triggered by political, territorial, or national grievances.
To understand what’s happening, however, a worthwhile analysis must begin not with those grievances, but must take into account how the belligerents see themselves: their goals, aspirations, how they justify their actions based on their self-enunciated code, Shariah. This is a conversation both the far left and Islamists are desperate to avoid; they have gone on the offensive, unsurprisingly, by labeling their opponents “Islamophobes.”
Rather than look for the predictable “root causes” of economics, xenophobia, conspiracy, and the like that are catnip to the far left and the academy, the Center for American Progress and their fellow travelers in the “Shariah Defense Lobby” could find a more accurate reason for Americans’ increasing concern with Shariah: They could turn on the TV news.
David Reaboi is the Communications Director at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC.
COP: Two Major Examples of Why We Can’t Trust the Mainstream Media
Ron Radosh
A few not to be missed articles or blogs have appeared in the past few days. The first is by the conservative New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat. Most people, especially those who still buy the print edition, see his regular featured column. But fewer people read his blog, which appears only on the paper’s website, and for that, one usually has to search to find. Two days ago, Douthat wrote about the myth spread by many Democrats and liberals: that conservatives and Republicans want to institute a theocracy in America.
As Douthat points out,
[A] spate of recent articles have linked the Republican presidential candidates to scary-sounding political theologies like “Dominionism” and “Christian Reconstructionism,” and used these links to suggest that Christian extremism is once more on the march.
He wisely notes that
when candidates wear their religion on their sleeve, especially, the press has every right to ask how that faith relates to their political agenda.
But he goes on to caution the media that reporters and writers should not assume that
the most radical figure in a particular community is always the most important one, or the most extreme passage in a particular writer’s work always defines his real-world influence.
Because a column is limited in words, he did not present any examples, aside from referring to outgoing executive editor Bill Keller’s recent article in the paper’s magazine section, as well as the piece by Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker. But he was not able to cite and comment in detail on what in particular was wrong with either of their presentations. Addressing the usual double standard when journalists write about beloved figures on the Left, and how they write about those on the Right, he comments: If you didn’t spend the Jeremiah Wright controversy searching works of black liberation theology for inflammatory evidence of what Obama “really” believed, you probably shouldn’t obsess over the supposed links between Rick Perry and R. J. Rushdoony, the Christian Reconstructionist guru.
Now, on his informal blog, Douthat expands at length in a way he could not in his column. In particular, he dissects Lizza’s highly influential article. One has to realize that the attitude Lizza expresses towards a strong, avowed Christian candidate like Michele Bachmann is going to be picked up and cited by scores of readers, as well as the MSM, as proof that Bachmann is beholden to truly dangerous religious zealots.
First, Douthat acknowledges that Lizza was correct to ask Bachmann to talk to him about influences on her that led to her current outlook and especially to her political beliefs. This is fair ground. After all, many of us did the same when we urged journalists not to ignore the influences on Barack Obama of liberation theology and his own pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Clearly, in Bachmann’s case, as Douthat writes, there is a connection “between her ideological perspective and the particular cluster of evangelical institutions where most of her political education took place.”
But, he adds, Lizza also spent a lot of space linking her — without real evidence — to Francis Schaeffer, a 1970s evangelical activist, theologian, and scholar. Lizza’s point was to create a link between Bachmann and what is called “Dominionism,” the new boogey-man of the Left, which is supposed to take over the nation if someone like Bachmann or Rick Perry become our president.
What Douthat does is tear apart the bulk of Lizza’s conspiracy theorizing, showing that he even gets Schaeffer entirely wrong. As he writes, those beliefs “are a long way from the claim that Christians ‘alone’ are ‘mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns.’ Likewise, it seems rather strange to depict a writer who goes out of his way to critique the Constantinian settlement as a supporter of Christian ‘dominion’ over public life.” Schaeffer was accused by Lizza, for example, of wanting to propose the “violent overthrow” of the U.S. government if the current abortion laws were not overturned . Douthat points out that Schaeffer actually “insisted that ‘the distinction between force and violence is crucial,’ warning Christians considering civil disobedience to remember ‘that overreaction can too easily become the ugly horror of sheer violence.’”
Unlike Lizza, Douthat’s blog gives his readers Schaeffer’s actual views to consider, not a parody of them. The man was closer in thought to Thoreau or Martin Luther King, Jr., than to any advocate of armed terrorism. He notes that most New Yorker readers take Lizza’s article at face value, and since they know nothing about evangelical thought, believe most of what he says. If Bachmann’s mentors are shown to be essentially nutty zealots, then she too must be the same.
He shows that Lizza incorrectly tied her and Schaeffer to a Christian Reconstructionist named R.J. Rushdoony, who really does favor a Christian theocracy, although even Schaeffer dismissed him as an advocate of “bad theology and bad politics alike.” Douthat concludes with this important piece of advice:
Schaeffer’s major contribution to American public life wasn’t any sort of sinister “dominionist” master plan, but rather a much more defensible blueprint for Christian political action: He argued that Christian values were under assault in contemporary American life, that the idea of secular “neutrality” was something of a sham, and that believers had an obligation to be 1) engaged with the culture rather than bunkered against it, and 2) engaged politically on issues (abortion, especially) where fundamental moral truths were at stake. One can dislike this blueprint and disagree with its premises, but its perspective on American politics is no more illiberal than the perspective of, say, the civil rights movement. And the fact that Schaeffer influenced a prominent evangelical politician like Bachmann isn’t nearly as surprising, strange or scary as Lizza’s piece often makes it sound.
The message, then, is simple: Beware of liberal journalists who exaggerate in order to paint candidates with whom they disapprove as religious zealots and moral imbeciles. Their goal is to assure Barack Obama’s re-election, and they will stop at nothing to achieve it.
The second article to which I want to call readers’ attention is that at The American Thinker by Jack Cashill, author of the much discussed thesis that Barack Obama did not write Dreams From My Father, but that the real author was really Bill Ayers.
Now, Cashill provides new evidence, in the form of a previously unseen letter sent by Barack Obama when he was editor of The Harvard Law Review, in response to a post in a local law school newspaper from Jim Chen, now dean at the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. Chen had opposed the Harvard Law School’s policy of affirmative action.
Cashill notes two major finds in the Obama letter. First, our current president admits that he was an affirmative action admission. One must ask: is this one of the reasons the public has not seen the president’s college records?
Second, Cashill proves by his discussion of the grammar used by Obama in the letter that at that time in his life, Obama did not know how to write. Cashill notes the following:
“Since the merits of the Law Review’s selection policy has been the subject of commentary for the last three issues,” wrote Obama, “I’d like to take the time to clarify exactly how our selection process works.”
If Obama were as smart as a fifth-grader, he would know, of course, that “merits … have.” Were there such a thing as a literary Darwin Award, Obama could have won it on this on one sentence alone. He had vindicated Chen in his first ten words.
Although the letter is fewer than a thousand words long, Obama repeats the subject-predicate error at least two more times. In one sentence, he seemingly cannot make up his mind as to which verb option is correct so he tries both: “Approximately half of this first batch is chosen … the other half are selected … “
He then goes on to reproduce one unintelligible paragraph:
Another distinctive Obama flaw is to allow a string of words to float in space. Please note the unanchored phrase in italics at the end of this sentence:
“No editors on the Review will ever know whether any given editor was selected on the basis of grades, writing competition, or affirmative action, and no editors who were selected with affirmative action in mind.” Huh?
The point is simple. Four years later, he completed his book, which has been widely proclaimed to be one of the most well-written presidential memoirs our country has ever seen. Clearly, Barack Obama had a ghost writer, or a great deal of unacknowledged help. Cashill has argued — with circumstantial evidence that will not substitute for many as direct proof — that Bill Ayers was the memoir’s real author. Others may argue in the future that someone else, not Ayers, worked with our current president on the book.
In any case, since Obama has taken full credit and many people voted for him because of the impression they had of Obama from the memoir, the question of authorship is a legitimate issue. Perhaps we will never find out the actual answer. At least, as the folks at Powerline point out, Obama’s letter “reflects a substantial gap between Obama’s office and his abilities.”
Both subjects of my blog today make it more than clear: we can no longer trust a great deal that appears in the mainstream media.
A few not to be missed articles or blogs have appeared in the past few days. The first is by the conservative New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat. Most people, especially those who still buy the print edition, see his regular featured column. But fewer people read his blog, which appears only on the paper’s website, and for that, one usually has to search to find. Two days ago, Douthat wrote about the myth spread by many Democrats and liberals: that conservatives and Republicans want to institute a theocracy in America.
As Douthat points out,
[A] spate of recent articles have linked the Republican presidential candidates to scary-sounding political theologies like “Dominionism” and “Christian Reconstructionism,” and used these links to suggest that Christian extremism is once more on the march.
He wisely notes that
when candidates wear their religion on their sleeve, especially, the press has every right to ask how that faith relates to their political agenda.
But he goes on to caution the media that reporters and writers should not assume that
the most radical figure in a particular community is always the most important one, or the most extreme passage in a particular writer’s work always defines his real-world influence.
Because a column is limited in words, he did not present any examples, aside from referring to outgoing executive editor Bill Keller’s recent article in the paper’s magazine section, as well as the piece by Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker. But he was not able to cite and comment in detail on what in particular was wrong with either of their presentations. Addressing the usual double standard when journalists write about beloved figures on the Left, and how they write about those on the Right, he comments: If you didn’t spend the Jeremiah Wright controversy searching works of black liberation theology for inflammatory evidence of what Obama “really” believed, you probably shouldn’t obsess over the supposed links between Rick Perry and R. J. Rushdoony, the Christian Reconstructionist guru.
Now, on his informal blog, Douthat expands at length in a way he could not in his column. In particular, he dissects Lizza’s highly influential article. One has to realize that the attitude Lizza expresses towards a strong, avowed Christian candidate like Michele Bachmann is going to be picked up and cited by scores of readers, as well as the MSM, as proof that Bachmann is beholden to truly dangerous religious zealots.
First, Douthat acknowledges that Lizza was correct to ask Bachmann to talk to him about influences on her that led to her current outlook and especially to her political beliefs. This is fair ground. After all, many of us did the same when we urged journalists not to ignore the influences on Barack Obama of liberation theology and his own pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Clearly, in Bachmann’s case, as Douthat writes, there is a connection “between her ideological perspective and the particular cluster of evangelical institutions where most of her political education took place.”
But, he adds, Lizza also spent a lot of space linking her — without real evidence — to Francis Schaeffer, a 1970s evangelical activist, theologian, and scholar. Lizza’s point was to create a link between Bachmann and what is called “Dominionism,” the new boogey-man of the Left, which is supposed to take over the nation if someone like Bachmann or Rick Perry become our president.
What Douthat does is tear apart the bulk of Lizza’s conspiracy theorizing, showing that he even gets Schaeffer entirely wrong. As he writes, those beliefs “are a long way from the claim that Christians ‘alone’ are ‘mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns.’ Likewise, it seems rather strange to depict a writer who goes out of his way to critique the Constantinian settlement as a supporter of Christian ‘dominion’ over public life.” Schaeffer was accused by Lizza, for example, of wanting to propose the “violent overthrow” of the U.S. government if the current abortion laws were not overturned . Douthat points out that Schaeffer actually “insisted that ‘the distinction between force and violence is crucial,’ warning Christians considering civil disobedience to remember ‘that overreaction can too easily become the ugly horror of sheer violence.’”
Unlike Lizza, Douthat’s blog gives his readers Schaeffer’s actual views to consider, not a parody of them. The man was closer in thought to Thoreau or Martin Luther King, Jr., than to any advocate of armed terrorism. He notes that most New Yorker readers take Lizza’s article at face value, and since they know nothing about evangelical thought, believe most of what he says. If Bachmann’s mentors are shown to be essentially nutty zealots, then she too must be the same.
He shows that Lizza incorrectly tied her and Schaeffer to a Christian Reconstructionist named R.J. Rushdoony, who really does favor a Christian theocracy, although even Schaeffer dismissed him as an advocate of “bad theology and bad politics alike.” Douthat concludes with this important piece of advice:
Schaeffer’s major contribution to American public life wasn’t any sort of sinister “dominionist” master plan, but rather a much more defensible blueprint for Christian political action: He argued that Christian values were under assault in contemporary American life, that the idea of secular “neutrality” was something of a sham, and that believers had an obligation to be 1) engaged with the culture rather than bunkered against it, and 2) engaged politically on issues (abortion, especially) where fundamental moral truths were at stake. One can dislike this blueprint and disagree with its premises, but its perspective on American politics is no more illiberal than the perspective of, say, the civil rights movement. And the fact that Schaeffer influenced a prominent evangelical politician like Bachmann isn’t nearly as surprising, strange or scary as Lizza’s piece often makes it sound.
The message, then, is simple: Beware of liberal journalists who exaggerate in order to paint candidates with whom they disapprove as religious zealots and moral imbeciles. Their goal is to assure Barack Obama’s re-election, and they will stop at nothing to achieve it.
The second article to which I want to call readers’ attention is that at The American Thinker by Jack Cashill, author of the much discussed thesis that Barack Obama did not write Dreams From My Father, but that the real author was really Bill Ayers.
Now, Cashill provides new evidence, in the form of a previously unseen letter sent by Barack Obama when he was editor of The Harvard Law Review, in response to a post in a local law school newspaper from Jim Chen, now dean at the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. Chen had opposed the Harvard Law School’s policy of affirmative action.
Cashill notes two major finds in the Obama letter. First, our current president admits that he was an affirmative action admission. One must ask: is this one of the reasons the public has not seen the president’s college records?
Second, Cashill proves by his discussion of the grammar used by Obama in the letter that at that time in his life, Obama did not know how to write. Cashill notes the following:
“Since the merits of the Law Review’s selection policy has been the subject of commentary for the last three issues,” wrote Obama, “I’d like to take the time to clarify exactly how our selection process works.”
If Obama were as smart as a fifth-grader, he would know, of course, that “merits … have.” Were there such a thing as a literary Darwin Award, Obama could have won it on this on one sentence alone. He had vindicated Chen in his first ten words.
Although the letter is fewer than a thousand words long, Obama repeats the subject-predicate error at least two more times. In one sentence, he seemingly cannot make up his mind as to which verb option is correct so he tries both: “Approximately half of this first batch is chosen … the other half are selected … “
He then goes on to reproduce one unintelligible paragraph:
Another distinctive Obama flaw is to allow a string of words to float in space. Please note the unanchored phrase in italics at the end of this sentence:
“No editors on the Review will ever know whether any given editor was selected on the basis of grades, writing competition, or affirmative action, and no editors who were selected with affirmative action in mind.” Huh?
The point is simple. Four years later, he completed his book, which has been widely proclaimed to be one of the most well-written presidential memoirs our country has ever seen. Clearly, Barack Obama had a ghost writer, or a great deal of unacknowledged help. Cashill has argued — with circumstantial evidence that will not substitute for many as direct proof — that Bill Ayers was the memoir’s real author. Others may argue in the future that someone else, not Ayers, worked with our current president on the book.
In any case, since Obama has taken full credit and many people voted for him because of the impression they had of Obama from the memoir, the question of authorship is a legitimate issue. Perhaps we will never find out the actual answer. At least, as the folks at Powerline point out, Obama’s letter “reflects a substantial gap between Obama’s office and his abilities.”
Both subjects of my blog today make it more than clear: we can no longer trust a great deal that appears in the mainstream media.
Where's the Islamophobia?
Ed Lasky
The media, academics, activist groups, and a few politicians have promoted the view that Islamophobia is raging across America. The opposition to the location of the 9/11 Mosque, efforts to criticize the adoption of Sharia law in America, attempts to restrict the viewing of the anti-Semitic and anti-American Al Jazeera network on cable stations in America were seen as manifestations of Islamophobia in America. The latest and most reprehensible example of this trend has been the Center for American Progress report that there is a predominantly Jewish-funded effort to stoke prejudice towards Muslims (a report broadcast far and wide by Al Jazeera). So how goes that Islamophobia? The highly-regarded Pew Research Center decided to poll the supposed victims of Islamophobia. The findings? Muslims are very happy in America and with the communities in which they live and work.
From the Jerusalem Post:
With the 10th anniversary of the al-Qaida attacks on New York and the Pentagon approaching, the Pew Research Center found that most Muslims felt ordinary Americans were friendly or neutral toward them.
In contrast to the majority of the general public dissatisfied with the nation's direction, 56 percent of the estimated 2.75 million American Muslims said they are satisfied, the survey showed. Seven out of 10 view President Barack Obama's tenure favorably.
"On a variety of measures, Muslims in America are very content with their own lives and with the communities where they live," Pew researcher Greg Smith said in an interview.
Four out of five Muslim Americans surveyed were satisfied with the way things are going in their lives and rated their communities very positively as places to live.
If Muslim Americans felt discrimination were rampant, would they express contentment and happiness with living in America? Would they be confident about the future of America and their own personal futures? Would they feel that most Americans are friendly or neutral towards them.
Where is the Islamophobia that supposedly is proliferating across America? The charge is merely meant to line the pockets of activist groups and chill any criticism of Muslim actions, however insensitive (the 9/11 Mosque) or questionable (the adoption of aspects of Sharia law) they may be perceived to be by some Americans.
The media, academics, activist groups, and a few politicians have promoted the view that Islamophobia is raging across America. The opposition to the location of the 9/11 Mosque, efforts to criticize the adoption of Sharia law in America, attempts to restrict the viewing of the anti-Semitic and anti-American Al Jazeera network on cable stations in America were seen as manifestations of Islamophobia in America. The latest and most reprehensible example of this trend has been the Center for American Progress report that there is a predominantly Jewish-funded effort to stoke prejudice towards Muslims (a report broadcast far and wide by Al Jazeera). So how goes that Islamophobia? The highly-regarded Pew Research Center decided to poll the supposed victims of Islamophobia. The findings? Muslims are very happy in America and with the communities in which they live and work.
From the Jerusalem Post:
With the 10th anniversary of the al-Qaida attacks on New York and the Pentagon approaching, the Pew Research Center found that most Muslims felt ordinary Americans were friendly or neutral toward them.
In contrast to the majority of the general public dissatisfied with the nation's direction, 56 percent of the estimated 2.75 million American Muslims said they are satisfied, the survey showed. Seven out of 10 view President Barack Obama's tenure favorably.
"On a variety of measures, Muslims in America are very content with their own lives and with the communities where they live," Pew researcher Greg Smith said in an interview.
Four out of five Muslim Americans surveyed were satisfied with the way things are going in their lives and rated their communities very positively as places to live.
If Muslim Americans felt discrimination were rampant, would they express contentment and happiness with living in America? Would they be confident about the future of America and their own personal futures? Would they feel that most Americans are friendly or neutral towards them.
Where is the Islamophobia that supposedly is proliferating across America? The charge is merely meant to line the pockets of activist groups and chill any criticism of Muslim actions, however insensitive (the 9/11 Mosque) or questionable (the adoption of aspects of Sharia law) they may be perceived to be by some Americans.
Assistance lead from abroad
Yisrael Medad
I took a chance Thursday last week in posting, the first, I think, here at the Jerusalem Post, a blog condemning Larry Derfner, although I did not specifically name him which is the best I could do out of courtesy in that most news papers do not permit intra-fighting on their pages. He is now a past employee of the Jerusalem Post.
Many have argued the merits of his dismissal. The main point, though, is that Derfner himself presents a problematic thesis and to quote him, again:
There’s no time for equivocation anymore, if there ever was. The mental and moral paralysis in this country must be broken. Whoever the Palestinians were who killed the eight Israelis near Eilat last week, however vile their ideology was, they were justified to attack. They had the same right to fight for their freedom as any other unfree nation in history ever had.
This wasn’t the first time Derfner engaged the moral, political and utilitarian issues of the use of terror in Zionist history. He was on the path of terror justification for a while. In this article, published on July 28, 2010 he wrote:
It seems to me that if you are going to condemn the Munich Olympics killings and the Coastal Road Massacre, you also have to condemn the King David Hotel bombing and the Bernadotte assassination. By the same token, if you justify or even “understand” Begin’s and Shamir’s violence, you also have to justify or at least understand the violence of Muhammad Oudeh and Dalal Mughrabi. And if you don’t – if violence in the name of your nation’s freedom is what you call heroism, but violence in the name of the enemy nation’s freedom is what you call terrorism – then you have no principles at all. Then the only thing you stand for in this world is the side you happen to have been born on.
For Derfner, what truly irked him was that there was deep within the Zionist soul a
hypocrisy that characterizes Israel’s view of Palestinians [and]… the height of it: The greatest denouncers of Palestinian violence against Israel also tend to be the greatest defenders of pre-state Zionist violence against Britain.
Derfner was upbraided by the head of the Begin Heritage Center, Herzl Makov, who, in his published letter, wrote:
…Derfner proposes an equivalency standard: Their violence today is the same as Jewish violence then…Whereas in the war for liberation against the British Mandatory regime both the Irgun and Lehi avoided civilian casualties to the fullest extent possible, Arab terror – as it does today – exclusively targeted civilians. Whereas the British refused to negotiate, Israel has been negotiating for the past 43 years, to no avail. Whereas Begin, as Irgun commander, always had his fighters warn the British about upcoming actions, the Arabs never do. As these and other elements make clear, there is no comparison. One more point: The Hagana as well as the Palmach also engaged in violence similar to that of the Irgun and Lehi. The loss of lives in such actions was regrettable, but in the war for the establishment of Israel and its liberation from the Mandatory regime, exceptions to the rule occurred. Derfner, however, avoids any mention of this violence perpetrated by the Zionist Left. Was that a personal prejudice?
Two other letter writers made points. Efraim Cohen, a fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, pointed out that
Unfortunately, he totally ignores a critical point: Not all violence is terrorism…Attacks on legitimate military targets are not terrorism, even if they result in unintended civilian casualties…By asserting that one must condemn all violence equally or else “you have no principles at all,” Derfner strips the term “terrorism” of all meaning and consequence.
Jacob Chinitz added
If you want, you can claim that Samson, in pulling down the Philistine temple, was a suicide terrorist. Would Derfner not give him the right to avenge his blinding and humiliation?
In response, Derfner avoided the issues and twisted history, writing
As I wrote, the Etzel planted bombs in Arab markets and other public places, killing scores of civilians. It gave no warnings. Also, as everyone knows, Arab terrorists strike at both military and civilian targets.
He purposefully mixed up two periods of time and two different cases of violence usage as well as, well, yes, justifying Arab terror by claiming they strike at civilian targets when they exclusively attack civilians for that is what terror is.
Derfner, however, now does what all extreme radical leftwingers do – they turn to assistance from abroad. Our local NGOs receive funds from the EU and others and Derfner mobilizes, or his friends did, the very hesitant-about-supporting-Israel Robert Mackay of the New York Times. In his The Lede column today, Mackay includes some untruths. Derfner’s private blog is not shared “with another Israeli journalist” but with Richard Silverstein, considered one of the most vicious and perverted anti-Zionist blogs by a Jew on the Internet although others occasionally publish there. His defense of Amir Mahloul last year was completely unethical. As for repeating Derfner’s claim that he was fired “even after he had published a lengthy apology on his personal Web site”, and I am not sure that apology did precede the firing, anyone who read Derfner’s responses to the glowing comments left by dozens, if not hundreds of supporters, knows that apology was vacuous.
Mackay notes that
“in an e-mail to The Lede on Tuesday, Mr. Derfner reflected: I knew that what I was writing was shocking, I wanted it to be shocking — that was my whole point, I thought that shocking the Israeli public, not by my little blog alone, but as a strategy for the Left — might shake people out of their paralysis. It was sort of a reckless, blind conviction — now I see that that’s one of the dangers, if not THE danger of a personal blog: no editor."
To be generous, one could excuse Derfner’s rantings because of his poor writing ability but then, you would have to ask if he is actually qualified to be a journalist or is he a hack activist in disguise and recall his antics at Ben-Gurion Airport when the flytilla people came in and he got himself detained:
I was there ostensibly as a journalist, and I was scribbling notes, but I felt cowardly not saying anything to these nationalist hooligans, so I started telling them in Hebrew, “What are these people doing?” The woman who wanted them thrown in the garbage said, “They’re hurting us!” I said, “They’re talking,” and the little mob turned on me, a couple of the men raised their fists. The woman told me, “Go back home, get out of here,” I said, “I live here.” The cops mistook me for a demonstrator, put me in the police van, but when I showed them my press card, they let me go.
Mackay, of course, goes on about the Irgun and Lechi, now that Derfner allowed him so bashing. He also quotes another progressive, Dimi Reider, but no right-of center blogger, other than to note Isi Liebler’s op-ed.
The doves have come to roost.
I took a chance Thursday last week in posting, the first, I think, here at the Jerusalem Post, a blog condemning Larry Derfner, although I did not specifically name him which is the best I could do out of courtesy in that most news papers do not permit intra-fighting on their pages. He is now a past employee of the Jerusalem Post.
Many have argued the merits of his dismissal. The main point, though, is that Derfner himself presents a problematic thesis and to quote him, again:
There’s no time for equivocation anymore, if there ever was. The mental and moral paralysis in this country must be broken. Whoever the Palestinians were who killed the eight Israelis near Eilat last week, however vile their ideology was, they were justified to attack. They had the same right to fight for their freedom as any other unfree nation in history ever had.
This wasn’t the first time Derfner engaged the moral, political and utilitarian issues of the use of terror in Zionist history. He was on the path of terror justification for a while. In this article, published on July 28, 2010 he wrote:
It seems to me that if you are going to condemn the Munich Olympics killings and the Coastal Road Massacre, you also have to condemn the King David Hotel bombing and the Bernadotte assassination. By the same token, if you justify or even “understand” Begin’s and Shamir’s violence, you also have to justify or at least understand the violence of Muhammad Oudeh and Dalal Mughrabi. And if you don’t – if violence in the name of your nation’s freedom is what you call heroism, but violence in the name of the enemy nation’s freedom is what you call terrorism – then you have no principles at all. Then the only thing you stand for in this world is the side you happen to have been born on.
For Derfner, what truly irked him was that there was deep within the Zionist soul a
hypocrisy that characterizes Israel’s view of Palestinians [and]… the height of it: The greatest denouncers of Palestinian violence against Israel also tend to be the greatest defenders of pre-state Zionist violence against Britain.
Derfner was upbraided by the head of the Begin Heritage Center, Herzl Makov, who, in his published letter, wrote:
…Derfner proposes an equivalency standard: Their violence today is the same as Jewish violence then…Whereas in the war for liberation against the British Mandatory regime both the Irgun and Lehi avoided civilian casualties to the fullest extent possible, Arab terror – as it does today – exclusively targeted civilians. Whereas the British refused to negotiate, Israel has been negotiating for the past 43 years, to no avail. Whereas Begin, as Irgun commander, always had his fighters warn the British about upcoming actions, the Arabs never do. As these and other elements make clear, there is no comparison. One more point: The Hagana as well as the Palmach also engaged in violence similar to that of the Irgun and Lehi. The loss of lives in such actions was regrettable, but in the war for the establishment of Israel and its liberation from the Mandatory regime, exceptions to the rule occurred. Derfner, however, avoids any mention of this violence perpetrated by the Zionist Left. Was that a personal prejudice?
Two other letter writers made points. Efraim Cohen, a fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, pointed out that
Unfortunately, he totally ignores a critical point: Not all violence is terrorism…Attacks on legitimate military targets are not terrorism, even if they result in unintended civilian casualties…By asserting that one must condemn all violence equally or else “you have no principles at all,” Derfner strips the term “terrorism” of all meaning and consequence.
Jacob Chinitz added
If you want, you can claim that Samson, in pulling down the Philistine temple, was a suicide terrorist. Would Derfner not give him the right to avenge his blinding and humiliation?
In response, Derfner avoided the issues and twisted history, writing
As I wrote, the Etzel planted bombs in Arab markets and other public places, killing scores of civilians. It gave no warnings. Also, as everyone knows, Arab terrorists strike at both military and civilian targets.
He purposefully mixed up two periods of time and two different cases of violence usage as well as, well, yes, justifying Arab terror by claiming they strike at civilian targets when they exclusively attack civilians for that is what terror is.
Derfner, however, now does what all extreme radical leftwingers do – they turn to assistance from abroad. Our local NGOs receive funds from the EU and others and Derfner mobilizes, or his friends did, the very hesitant-about-supporting-Israel Robert Mackay of the New York Times. In his The Lede column today, Mackay includes some untruths. Derfner’s private blog is not shared “with another Israeli journalist” but with Richard Silverstein, considered one of the most vicious and perverted anti-Zionist blogs by a Jew on the Internet although others occasionally publish there. His defense of Amir Mahloul last year was completely unethical. As for repeating Derfner’s claim that he was fired “even after he had published a lengthy apology on his personal Web site”, and I am not sure that apology did precede the firing, anyone who read Derfner’s responses to the glowing comments left by dozens, if not hundreds of supporters, knows that apology was vacuous.
Mackay notes that
“in an e-mail to The Lede on Tuesday, Mr. Derfner reflected: I knew that what I was writing was shocking, I wanted it to be shocking — that was my whole point, I thought that shocking the Israeli public, not by my little blog alone, but as a strategy for the Left — might shake people out of their paralysis. It was sort of a reckless, blind conviction — now I see that that’s one of the dangers, if not THE danger of a personal blog: no editor."
To be generous, one could excuse Derfner’s rantings because of his poor writing ability but then, you would have to ask if he is actually qualified to be a journalist or is he a hack activist in disguise and recall his antics at Ben-Gurion Airport when the flytilla people came in and he got himself detained:
I was there ostensibly as a journalist, and I was scribbling notes, but I felt cowardly not saying anything to these nationalist hooligans, so I started telling them in Hebrew, “What are these people doing?” The woman who wanted them thrown in the garbage said, “They’re hurting us!” I said, “They’re talking,” and the little mob turned on me, a couple of the men raised their fists. The woman told me, “Go back home, get out of here,” I said, “I live here.” The cops mistook me for a demonstrator, put me in the police van, but when I showed them my press card, they let me go.
Mackay, of course, goes on about the Irgun and Lechi, now that Derfner allowed him so bashing. He also quotes another progressive, Dimi Reider, but no right-of center blogger, other than to note Isi Liebler’s op-ed.
The doves have come to roost.
Impediments to Peace
Rabbi Kaufman
In recent days, there have been a number of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. As we consider the implications of this fact and its causes, we must remember that peace could have come multiple times since 2000 at Camp David. The Palestinians have thus far refused to agree to a solution with which Israel could possibly agree to end the conflict and at the moment, the Palestinians refuse even to negotiate at all. Before you argue about what the Israelis have not offered in previous negotiations, let’s just look at the primary issues that have prevented the success of the process. Here are the main stumbling blocks as I see them: 1. Control of the Old City of Jerusalem. The PA insists on the 1967 lines which would put the entire Old City and all of the Holy sites, yes including the Western Wall Plaza, out of the safe reach of Jews for the foreseeable future. This is only one of many problems posed by Palestinian insistence on the 1967 lines regarding Jerusalem.
2. Right of Return. The idea that not only must a future Palestinian state be allowed to accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees from the 1967 conflict, but that Israel must accommodate millions of refugees from the 1949 conflict who are hostile to its very existence is so unreasonable a demand as to be laughable were it not a main goal of the Palestinian side. If Israel is to be a Jewish state, refugees may only be afforded restitution and remain where they are or potentially locate themselves in the Palestinian state.
3. Security. No matter what the resolutions of the issues of borders and refugees might be, if those resolutions jeopardize the security of Israel to such an extent as to threaten its very existence, they are not viable. This is a primary concern around Jerusalem and Ben Gurion Airport.
4. Settlement Blocs. Yes, Israel settled hundreds of thousands of people across the Green Line, but two things must be considered here. First, territorial exchanges could easily adjust the total land area in a future Palestinian state. And second, one might ask why there is an assumption that the Palestinians are entitled to all of the West Bank to begin with? The fact is that the territory which Israel settled was disputed territory, not territory belonging to another nation. No Palestinian state exists now and certainly none existed when Israel took over the territory. Thus, Palestinian national claims to all of the disputed land amount to demands for land for which Israel has potentially a greater legal claim (possession is nine-tenths of the law) in spite of fit throwing at the UN by opponents of Israel.
Israel may well “lose” when the Palestinians go to the floor of the UN General Assembly in September. A significant majority of the members of the UN will almost certainly vote for the Palestinian side. Yet, one must also understand that the game being played is not fair either. Israel is not going to get anything resembling a fair hearing by the vast majority of nations in the UN. It never has, no matter what concessions it has made.
Peace will only be possible when the four issues that I cited above are addressed. No vote in the UN is going to accomplish that. Direct negotiations are the only way. Israel will make concessions, hurtful concessions, to achieve peace. It already has. But it cannot concede those things that would threaten its existence or its primary purpose as a place where Jews may live and thrive in peace and security..
In recent days, there have been a number of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. As we consider the implications of this fact and its causes, we must remember that peace could have come multiple times since 2000 at Camp David. The Palestinians have thus far refused to agree to a solution with which Israel could possibly agree to end the conflict and at the moment, the Palestinians refuse even to negotiate at all. Before you argue about what the Israelis have not offered in previous negotiations, let’s just look at the primary issues that have prevented the success of the process. Here are the main stumbling blocks as I see them: 1. Control of the Old City of Jerusalem. The PA insists on the 1967 lines which would put the entire Old City and all of the Holy sites, yes including the Western Wall Plaza, out of the safe reach of Jews for the foreseeable future. This is only one of many problems posed by Palestinian insistence on the 1967 lines regarding Jerusalem.
2. Right of Return. The idea that not only must a future Palestinian state be allowed to accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees from the 1967 conflict, but that Israel must accommodate millions of refugees from the 1949 conflict who are hostile to its very existence is so unreasonable a demand as to be laughable were it not a main goal of the Palestinian side. If Israel is to be a Jewish state, refugees may only be afforded restitution and remain where they are or potentially locate themselves in the Palestinian state.
3. Security. No matter what the resolutions of the issues of borders and refugees might be, if those resolutions jeopardize the security of Israel to such an extent as to threaten its very existence, they are not viable. This is a primary concern around Jerusalem and Ben Gurion Airport.
4. Settlement Blocs. Yes, Israel settled hundreds of thousands of people across the Green Line, but two things must be considered here. First, territorial exchanges could easily adjust the total land area in a future Palestinian state. And second, one might ask why there is an assumption that the Palestinians are entitled to all of the West Bank to begin with? The fact is that the territory which Israel settled was disputed territory, not territory belonging to another nation. No Palestinian state exists now and certainly none existed when Israel took over the territory. Thus, Palestinian national claims to all of the disputed land amount to demands for land for which Israel has potentially a greater legal claim (possession is nine-tenths of the law) in spite of fit throwing at the UN by opponents of Israel.
Israel may well “lose” when the Palestinians go to the floor of the UN General Assembly in September. A significant majority of the members of the UN will almost certainly vote for the Palestinian side. Yet, one must also understand that the game being played is not fair either. Israel is not going to get anything resembling a fair hearing by the vast majority of nations in the UN. It never has, no matter what concessions it has made.
Peace will only be possible when the four issues that I cited above are addressed. No vote in the UN is going to accomplish that. Direct negotiations are the only way. Israel will make concessions, hurtful concessions, to achieve peace. It already has. But it cannot concede those things that would threaten its existence or its primary purpose as a place where Jews may live and thrive in peace and security..
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Group's Top Ranks Divided Over How To Respond to Campus Demonstrations
Rex Weiner
Los Angeles — As campus protests have continued against Israeli policies towards the Palestinians, and sometimes, against Israel itself, Jewish groups have been at odds over how to distinguish legitimate debate about Israel from anti-Semitism, and beyond that, at what point such protests may arguably constitute a violation of Jewish students’ civil rights.
That debate, it’s now clear, is not just dividing Jewish groups from one another, but some Jewish groups within themselves. It is a division underlined at the American Jewish Committee, where, the Forward has learned, the group’s top executive has recently disavowed his in-house anti-Semitism expert in a manner designed to become public. In an August 9 e-mail to a college instructor active on the issue, AJC executive director David Harris apologized for an open letter by his subordinate, Kenneth Stern, calling the letter “ill-advised.”
In his open letter, coauthored with Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, Stern inveighed against advocates who charge that many anti-Israel protests on campus constitute anti-Semitic harassment in violation of the federal civil rights act.
“Unfortunately,” Harris wrote Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer in Hebrew at the University of California, Santa Cruz, “the AJC’s internal system of checks and balances did not function well in this case.” Harris said of Stern’s open letter, “We…regret the decision to have released it.” Harris also apologized “for Mr. Stern’s failure to reply to your letter.” When asked, Harris agreed to allow Rossman-Benjamin to disseminate his note among her colleagues.
Harris’ rebuke of Stern, a recognized authority on anti-Semitism, is but the latest chapter of the Jewish community’s ongoing debate on how to define if and when anti-Israel advocacy on campus crosses into anti-Semitism and, from there, into a violation of Title VI of the federal civil rights act.
In his open letter on the issue, Stern wrote, with Nelson, “While some of the recent allegations (such as charging pro-Israel Jewish students admission to a university event while allowing others to attend for free) might well raise a claim under Title VI, many others simply seek to silence anti-Israel discourse and speakers. This approach is not only unwarranted under Title VI, it is dangerous.”
Harris declined to comment further to the Forward on his rebuke of this view.
“There is nothing more for us to say,” wrote Kenneth Bandler, AJC Director of Media Relations in an e-mail.
Harris’s note comes in the wake of strong criticism of Stern by groups such as the Zionist Organization of America, whose national president, Morton Klein, decried Stern’s letter as “shocking.” The Harris note was written in reply to an e-mail from Rossman-Benjamin expressing her own “serious concerns” about the AJC’s “endorsement of the AAUP statement.”
In 2009, Rossman-Benjamin filed a lengthy complaint with the U.S. Department of Education alleging that an accumulation of anti-Israel events and protests at UCSC had created an anti-Semitic atmosphere on campus that the administration had failed to address, and that this constituted a violation of Title VI. In response last March, the Education Department launched its first-ever investigation of alleged anti-Semitism on campus as a possible violation of Title VI.
In her e-mail to Harris, Rossman-Benjamin noted a July 29 article on the website of the group American Muslims for Palestine in which AMP’s media and communications director, Kristin Szremski, cited the Stern letter as support for her view that the Title VI claim “is part of a growing trend of stifling of protected political speech on college campuses.”
“Nothing is more damaging or demoralizing to the Jewish people than the public display of Jews attacking one another,” Rossman-Benjamin wrote to Harris.
Stern, a civil rights attorney and one of the founders of a new academic discipline, hate studies, is a co-author of the “Working Definition” of anti-Semitism adopted in 2005 by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. Reached by phone, Stern declined to comment on Harris’s rebuke.
Ethan Felson, vice president and general counsel for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said that debate within the Jewish community over the issue is intense and ongoing. The JCPA, an umbrella group comprising most major national Jewish groups and local Jewish community relations councils, is itself working hard to fashion a consensus, he said. “The guidebook for using Title VI in these circumstances is not ready for prime time,” Felson said.
Jerome Chanes, senior research fellow at CUNY Graduate Center’s Center for Jewish Studies and the author of several books on anti-Semitism, said, “The Harris-Stern split reflects the debate within the Jewish community that’s been going on for decades over the perception of anti-Semitism and the appropriate remedies for it.”
Los Angeles — As campus protests have continued against Israeli policies towards the Palestinians, and sometimes, against Israel itself, Jewish groups have been at odds over how to distinguish legitimate debate about Israel from anti-Semitism, and beyond that, at what point such protests may arguably constitute a violation of Jewish students’ civil rights.
That debate, it’s now clear, is not just dividing Jewish groups from one another, but some Jewish groups within themselves. It is a division underlined at the American Jewish Committee, where, the Forward has learned, the group’s top executive has recently disavowed his in-house anti-Semitism expert in a manner designed to become public. In an August 9 e-mail to a college instructor active on the issue, AJC executive director David Harris apologized for an open letter by his subordinate, Kenneth Stern, calling the letter “ill-advised.”
In his open letter, coauthored with Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, Stern inveighed against advocates who charge that many anti-Israel protests on campus constitute anti-Semitic harassment in violation of the federal civil rights act.
“Unfortunately,” Harris wrote Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer in Hebrew at the University of California, Santa Cruz, “the AJC’s internal system of checks and balances did not function well in this case.” Harris said of Stern’s open letter, “We…regret the decision to have released it.” Harris also apologized “for Mr. Stern’s failure to reply to your letter.” When asked, Harris agreed to allow Rossman-Benjamin to disseminate his note among her colleagues.
Harris’ rebuke of Stern, a recognized authority on anti-Semitism, is but the latest chapter of the Jewish community’s ongoing debate on how to define if and when anti-Israel advocacy on campus crosses into anti-Semitism and, from there, into a violation of Title VI of the federal civil rights act.
In his open letter on the issue, Stern wrote, with Nelson, “While some of the recent allegations (such as charging pro-Israel Jewish students admission to a university event while allowing others to attend for free) might well raise a claim under Title VI, many others simply seek to silence anti-Israel discourse and speakers. This approach is not only unwarranted under Title VI, it is dangerous.”
Harris declined to comment further to the Forward on his rebuke of this view.
“There is nothing more for us to say,” wrote Kenneth Bandler, AJC Director of Media Relations in an e-mail.
Harris’s note comes in the wake of strong criticism of Stern by groups such as the Zionist Organization of America, whose national president, Morton Klein, decried Stern’s letter as “shocking.” The Harris note was written in reply to an e-mail from Rossman-Benjamin expressing her own “serious concerns” about the AJC’s “endorsement of the AAUP statement.”
In 2009, Rossman-Benjamin filed a lengthy complaint with the U.S. Department of Education alleging that an accumulation of anti-Israel events and protests at UCSC had created an anti-Semitic atmosphere on campus that the administration had failed to address, and that this constituted a violation of Title VI. In response last March, the Education Department launched its first-ever investigation of alleged anti-Semitism on campus as a possible violation of Title VI.
In her e-mail to Harris, Rossman-Benjamin noted a July 29 article on the website of the group American Muslims for Palestine in which AMP’s media and communications director, Kristin Szremski, cited the Stern letter as support for her view that the Title VI claim “is part of a growing trend of stifling of protected political speech on college campuses.”
“Nothing is more damaging or demoralizing to the Jewish people than the public display of Jews attacking one another,” Rossman-Benjamin wrote to Harris.
Stern, a civil rights attorney and one of the founders of a new academic discipline, hate studies, is a co-author of the “Working Definition” of anti-Semitism adopted in 2005 by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. Reached by phone, Stern declined to comment on Harris’s rebuke.
Ethan Felson, vice president and general counsel for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said that debate within the Jewish community over the issue is intense and ongoing. The JCPA, an umbrella group comprising most major national Jewish groups and local Jewish community relations councils, is itself working hard to fashion a consensus, he said. “The guidebook for using Title VI in these circumstances is not ready for prime time,” Felson said.
Jerome Chanes, senior research fellow at CUNY Graduate Center’s Center for Jewish Studies and the author of several books on anti-Semitism, said, “The Harris-Stern split reflects the debate within the Jewish community that’s been going on for decades over the perception of anti-Semitism and the appropriate remedies for it.”
Panic Nation
Sultan Knish
As I sit here in the sunken ruins of New York City, breathing oxygen through a two mile straw, and shopping by dispatching orders through a helpful school of fish-- I can't help but think that I should have listened to the media when they told me to panic, run to the stores and pay 40 dollars for batteries, and then listen to every weather update while waiting for the end to come.
But of course none of that actually happened. There are places where hurricanes are dangerous, but the city I live in is not one of them. Aside from a few downed trees, some power loss and a little flooding near the river, the same things that happen every few years, there was nothing to speak of. Nothing except a vast media driven overreaction. Hurricane Irene is just another entry in the non-stop shriek of media driven panic. The news cycle is fed by three main types of stories, salacious gossip, horrible tragedies and panic stories. All three are culturally destructive, but the third is the most insidious because it contains a germ of truth that is inflated to spread panic. Hurricanes are dangerous, so are child molesters and the swine flu-- but they are also elements in a news cycle that is intended to induce a state of permanent panic.
Permanent panic is another word for 'helplessness'. Consume enough panic stories and you begin to feel like your life is out of control. And that is the intended or unintended consequence of the media. People who feel helpless are eager to listen to anyone who promises to help and willing to accept any solution.
Media driven panics agitate the public and encourage politicians to cluelessly leap on the bandwagon with bad policies. Then when the policies fail, the media blasts the politicians, feeding a backlash to a mess that it created. And when the politicians go back to ignoring the problem, they run alarmist stories and the cycle repeats itself.
The common denominators in the media driven panics are reports that assume the worst case scenario with only shallow reporting on the nature of the problem leading to general overreactions, rather than intelligent problem solving.
That's how we decided to strip search everyone getting on a plane, rather than profile likely terrorists, or treat any stranger as a potential child molester. Or why a city where weather kills less people than panhandlers, had to shut down over a hurricane. These overreactions create a siege mentality which shuts down critical thinking and leads people to accept otherwise unacceptable solutions without asking questions.
The media often likes to pretend that it is the voice of reason, investigating and asking the questions that the public doesn't know enough to ask. In reality its chief function is to stop people from asking questions and accept its narrative. Panicked people are less likely to ask questions and more likely to do what they're told.
Questions narrow down a problem and its solution-- which is the opposite of the media's presentation that maximizes the possible danger to everyone by keeping the details as vague as possible. Whether it's bird flu or terrorism-- the two questions that most need to be asked,where is the problem coming from and what is the actual risk go unanswered.
Panic is created when people are told that their survival and the welfare of their families is on the line, but are given little information about the real risk to them or how to deal with the threat. Media driven panic saturates the airwaves, the print media and the internet with empty reporting that emphasizes the scale of the threat, but provides little useful risk assessment information. These gaps are filled in with the usual gimmicks, on the spot reporting, man on the street interviews, which are usually pitched to make the state of panic seem universal.
"It's happening in Denver, it's happening in Atlanta, everything is worried and doesn't know what to do."
The media's own political slant keeps it away from the subject of Islamic terrorism, but even without that it is in its interest to keep the nature of the terrorist threat as vague as possible. White people are a larger and less avoidable threat constellation than Muslims. The media works hard to dissuade us from fearing outsiders-- but it works twice as hard to teach us to fear each other.
The media is a vertical top down messaging apparatus and its vertical dominance is almost unchallenged. The greatest threat to it comes from horizontal messaging, peer to peer, and community to community. The internet has made vertical communications much easier and more competitive which has badly rocked the media's boat. And it has compensated for it with more panic. And when the media panics, everyone else is supposed to panic.
Creating public mistrust within a community or a nation disrupts horizontal communications which helps those who control vertical communications. The less people trust each other, the more they are forced to trust the media. It's why Free floating paranoia is the media's drug of choice. And every broadcast injects into their listeners' ears and eyeballs over and over again.
Even when we aren't being taught to fear each other-- we are being taught to perceive other people as incompetent. Hurricane weather inevitably brings a rash of stories that emphasize how unprepared people are. How weak and stupid-- in contrast to those smart people who listen to the media. It isn't really about the hurricane, it's about modeling behavior by teaching viewers that smart means doing what you're told-- and stupid means refusing to listen to the media. This affects much more than hurricane preparation, it's meant to model a response to any and all events.
Citizen incompetence is one of the media's main narratives which teaches us that most people around us are dumb and barely able to cross the street. Again horizontal communications are being torn down to make way for top down messaging. If other people are stupid, then why listen to them? Much better to listen to the wiser heads in the media instead.
This sense of personal incompetence and group incompetence only strengthens the sense of isolation leaving only one voice in the room. The voice of the radio. The voice of the television. The voice of the press.
So a vast nation is whittled down, isolated and shunted off into the highways of conventional wisdom that everyone is supposed to obey. And always kept on the edge, uncertain of what will come the next day and the day after that. There are always a bewildering array of new threats. The oceans will rise if you don't recycle. Planes will explode if you carry baby milk along. It becomes easier to obey than to resist.
A permanent state of panic strains the nervous system to the breaking point, and pushes people into fight or flight responses, a state that makes lateral thinking difficult. False choices are given. If we don't bail out the banks then the economy will be destroyed. Either we raise the debt ceiling or the economy is destroyed. Either we follow the leader or absolute disaster follows.
It becomes easier to frighten people with a threat, than to have a conversation about our options. But the louder the alarm bells ring, the more the demands for action grow. We must raise the debt ceiling because the consequences are unthinkable. But how can they be unthinkable when the public is never given the chance to think about them-- when any debate or discussion is immediately squashed.
The failure to act immediately is branded as irresponsible. Debate becomes obstruction. Asking questions is a felony. Responsible leaders are told, do things immediately. They don't negotiate or debate. They just leap in. Or else everything is lost.
Obama's rule by executive order is an extension of the same media driven state of emergency, if urgent decisions have to be made right away, there's no time to discuss them. And even when we discuss them, all that we discuss is how terrible it would be if we don't make them. If is only the consequences of not making them that are discussed- never the consequences of not making them. "We have to pass the bill to find out what's in the bill."
Panic bridges the values gap between the media and the public. Panic blinds the people to the growth of incremental change that is drastically altering their way of life. A thousand mini-crises are used as weapons of mass distraction to prevent people from seeing how prices have gone up, morals have gone down and the very idea of what the nation used to be is being destroyed all around them.
Enough distractions and the voters with their antiquated notions of personal freedom and values can be kept at bay, while the country is torn down and rebuilt into a perverted mockery of itself. Enough panic and they will go along with it and even cheer the saviors that are presented to them. The men who will save them from themselves.
A permanent state of panic leads people to welcome anyone who will give them a sense of security no matter how baseless it might be. That was FDR's secret, the New Deal was a disaster, but it promised security. As did Obama's confident smirk-- the confident smirk, voters assumed of a man who knows what he's doing. They found out a little too late that he didn't, but there will be more confident smirkers coming along. And more panics for them to smirk through.
The important questions will go on being unasked, because to ask them would topple the empire of panic and the messiah of the confident smirk. If people began asking and answering those questions for themselves, they would no longer need the media to panic them or the smirkers to give them a sense of security. They would own their birthright again.
In other news, a satanic cult of industrialists is melting the ice floes using incandescent lightbulbs and saturated fats.
The perils of a remilitarized Sinai
Caroline Glick
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com
Will the Egyptian military be permitted to remilitarize the Sinai? Since Palestinian and Egyptian terrorists crossed into Israel from Sinai on August 18 and murdered eight Israelis this has been a central issue under discussion at senior echelons of the government and the IDF.
Under the terms of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, Egypt is prohibited from deploying military forces in the Sinai. Israel must approve any Egyptian military mobilization in the area. Today, Egypt is asking to permanently deploy its forces in the Sinai. Such a move requires an amendment to the treaty.
Supported by the Obama administration, the Egyptians say they need to deploy forces in the Sinai in order to rein in and defeat the jihadist forces now running rampant throughout the peninsula. Aside from attacking Israel, these jihadists have openly challenged Egyptian governmental control over the territory. . So far the Israeli government has given conflicting responses to the Egyptian request. Defense Minister Ehud Barak told The Economist last week that he supports the deployment of Egyptian forces. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday that he would consider such deployment but that Israel should not rush into amending the peace treaty with Egypt.
Saturday Barak tempered his earlier statement, claiming that no decision had been made about Egyptian deployment in the Sinai.
The government's confused statements about Egyptian troop deployments indicate that at a minimum, the government is unsure of the best course of action. This uncertainty owes in large part to confusion about Egypt's intentions.
Egypt's military leaders do have an interest in preventing jihadist attacks on Egyptian installations and other interests in the Sinai. But does that interest translate into an interest in defending Israeli installations and interests? If the interests overlap, then deploying Egyptian forces may be a reasonable option. If Egypt's military leaders view these interests as mutually exclusive, then Israel has no interest in such a deployment.
ISRAEL'S CONFUSION over Egypt's strategic direction and interests echoes its only recently abated confusion over Turkey's strategic direction in the aftermath of the Islamist AKP Party's rise to power in 2002. Following the US's lead, despite Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's hostile rhetoric regarding Israel, Israel continued to believe that he and his government were interested in maintaining Turkey's strategic alliance with Israel. That belief began unraveling with Erdogan's embrace of Hamas in January 2006 and his willingness to turn a blind eye to Iranian use of Turkish territory to transfer arms to Hezbollah during the war in July and August 2006.
Still, due to US support for Erdogan, Israel continued to sell Turkey arms until last year. Israel only recognized that Turkey had transformed itself from a strategic ally into a strategic enemy after Erdogan sponsored the terror flotilla to Gaza in May 2010.
As was the case with Turkey under Erdogan, Israel's confusion over Egypt's intentions has nothing to do with the military rulers' behavior. Like Erdogan, the Egyptian junta isn't sending Israel mixed signals.
Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was never a strategic ally to Israel the way that Turkey was before Erdogan. However, Mubarak believed that maintaining a quiet border with Israel, combating the Muslim Brotherhood and keeping Hamas at arm's length advanced his interests. Mubarak's successors in the junta do not perceive their interests in the same way.
To the contrary, since they overthrew Mubarak in February, the generals ruling Egypt have made clear that their interest in cultivating ties with Israel's enemies — from Iran to the Muslim Brotherhood — far outweighs their interest in maintaining a cooperative relationship with Israel.
From permitting Iranian naval ships to traverse the Suez Canal for the first time in 30 years to opening the border with Hamas-ruled Gaza to its openly hostile and conspiratorial reaction to the August 18 terrorist attack on Israel from the Sinai, there can be little doubt about the trajectory of Egypt's relations with Israel.
BUT JUST as was the case with Turkey — and again, largely because of American pressure — Israel's leaders are wary of accepting that the strategic landscape of our relationship with Egypt has changed radically and that the rules that applied under Mubarak no longer apply.
After Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, terrorists in Gaza and Sinai took down the border. Gaza was immediately flooded with sophisticated armaments. Then-prime minister Ariel Sharon made a deal with Mubarak to deploy Egyptian forces to the Sinai to rebuild the border and man the crossing point at Rafah. While there were problems with the agreement, given the fact that Mubarak shared Israel's interests, the move was not unjustified.
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Today this is not the case. The junta wants to permanently deploy forces to the Sinai and consequently is pushing to amend the treaty. The generals' request comes against the backdrop of populist calls from across Egypt's political spectrum demanding the cancellation of the peace treaty.
If Israel agrees to renegotiate the treaty, it will lower the political cost of a subsequent Egyptian abrogation of the agreement. This is the case because Israel itself will be on record acknowledging that the treaty does not meet its current needs.
Beyond that, there is the nature of the Egyptian military itself, which was exposed during and in the aftermath of the August 18 attack. At a minimum, the Egyptian and Palestinian terrorists who attacked Israel that day did so with no interference from Egyptian forces deployed along the border.
The fact that they shot into Israel from Egyptian military positions indicates that the Egyptian forces on the ground did not simply turn a blind eye to what was happening. Rather, it is reasonable to assume that they lent a helping hand to the terror operatives.
Furthermore, the hostile response of the Egyptian military to Israel's defensive operations to end the terror attack indicates that at a minimum, the higher echelons of the military are not sympathetically disposed towards Israel's right to defend its citizens.
Both the behavior of the forces on the ground and of their commanders in Cairo indicates that if the Egyptian military is permitted to deploy its forces to the Sinai, those forces will not serve any helpful purpose for Israel.
THE MILITARY'S demonstrated antagonism toward Israel, the uncertainty of Egypt's political future, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the hatred of Israel shared by all Egyptian political factions all indicate that Israel will live to regret it if it permits the Egyptian military to mobilize in the Sinai. Not only will Egyptian soldiers not prevent terrorist attacks against Israel, their presence along the border will increase the prospect of war with Egypt.
Egypt's current inaction against anti-Israel terror operatives in the Sinai has already caused the IDF to increase its force levels along the border. If Egypt is permitted to mass its forces in the Sinai, then the IDF will be forced to respond by steeply increasing the size of its force mobilized along the border. And the proximity of the two armies could easily be exploited by Egyptian populist forces to foment war.
In his interview with The Economist, Barak claimed bizarrely, "Sometimes you have to subordinate strategic considerations to tactical needs." It is hard to think of any case in human history when a nation's interests were served by winning a battle and losing a war. And the stakes with Egypt are too high for Israel's leaders to be engaging in such confused and imbecilic thinking.
The dangers emanating from post-Mubarak Egypt are enormous and are only likely to grow. Israel cannot allow its desire for things to be different to cloud its judgment. It must accept the situation for what it is and act accordingly.
‘I’ve Got…Islamophobia!’
P. David Hornik
I tried poring over the new Think Progress report, but it didn’t help. The paranoid delusions kept recurring.
I tried exercise, listening to soft music before going to bed, thinking only pleasant thoughts. And still, late at night, the dreadful fantasies came back.
I went to a doctor in Beersheva. Though he’s known in southern Israel as one of the best in the field, I don’t normally seek out help of that kind; I was pretty desperate.
I was sure that, in his line of work, he’d heard about all sorts of appalling phenomena. Still, some things are almost too shocking and shameful….
Sitting in his office, I sunk my face in my hands, sighed deeply.
Finally I mustered up the courage to say, “I’ve got…Islamophobia.”
I waited for the shock of the word to dissipate. He seemed to be sitting patiently; he seemed able to take it.
I sighed again.
“I have…these fantasies. They wake me up in the middle of the night, and I can’t seem…” He waited patiently.
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I stared stoically forward. “I hear air raid sirens, and I think…they’re shooting at me. Rockets.”
I added, “I hear…booms.”
Finally he spoke, slow, patient, and kind: “Who is shooting at you?”
I sunk my face in my hands again; raked it with my fingers.
“Who? Well…Muslims.”
Again his slow, gentle voice: “From where are they shooting?”
I removed my hands from my face, gazed forward like a grade-school kid who’s been asked a tough question in front of the whole class.
“From Gaza.”
Now we both fell silent. I thought that—with all his experience—this might really be too much for him. We both knew that the people in Gaza were Zen Buddhists
But he said, in the kindest, most patient voice possible, “Islamophobia is a multifactorial phenomenon. We will have to talk about what stresses in your life, or possible unresolved issues from your earlier life, could be making you think that people are shooting rockets at you in the middle of the night. Meanwhile…”
I peered. He was typing diligently into his terminal.
“…I will want you to take these, twice a day. Once in the morning, once in the evening. Before meals.”
It printed out, and he handed me the page with an almost paternal smile.
I took it and—as if, in my emotional state, I had the slightest ability to make out what it said—gazed at it.
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“And if, for the time being, the delusions keep returning,” I heard him say, “I want you to feel free to call me. At any time. Even in the middle of the night.”
Now I looked up at him, genuinely impressed.
“Thank you.”
“Well,” he smiled dismissively, “I might be awake at those hours, too.”
An Open and Wide Tent
JoeSettler at 8/30/2011
For years now, Israel has been under attack by the anti-Semitic BDS movement, their affiliate organizations, their supporters in the Palestinian Authority, and unfortunately their Jewish and Israeli radical left-wing supporters (not to mention those who pretend they are Jewish for the effect). The calls have been to boycott Israeli books, to boycott Israeli academic institutions, to boycott products from the settlements (even those whose companies support hundred and thousands of Arab families), to boycott Israeli investments, and even to boycott companies doing business with Israel.
Israel and the Jews have a terrible habit of not reacting or responding to these attacks. The underlying reasons stem from trying to not rock the boat, hoping the problem will go away, fear, indecision, confused ethics, and often no idea how to even respond – to name just a few explanations
But much of the Jewish people still have an instinctual community self-defense mechanism. They recognize when something has gone too far, when something has crossed the line between being within the tent or without, when an attack has reached a level where if it isn’t responded to it will expand to a level beyond reversal.
The Scottish Whisky Counter-boycott initiated by the Muqata was one such example. That Scottish boycott of Israel was expanding, driven by anti-Semitism, and quite probably part of a larger, more organized attack.
The response to the Scottish boycott among Jewish laymen (though not all Orthodox Jewish leadership I'm embarrassed to say) indicated that they internally felt and understood the threat, and in this case there was a clear action that could be taken in response. And as a result, the Scottish boycott, while not killed, has at least been contained and perhaps even blocked from future expansion.
Boycotts are a tricky thing. The Left loves to call for them against Israel, I would even say that some of our radical Leftists in Israel are the standard-bearers for some of those calls to boycott, but sometimes they bite back and you find yourself on the receiving end.
The Jerusalem Post made a business decision when they decided that keeping Larry Derfner on staff was hurting their bottom line rather than helping it (or even keeping it neutral). While unpopular for a while among certain circles, his expressed opinions weren’t far enough along, until now, to “provoke” a wholesale instinctual community self-defense reaction.
This time, Jerusalem Post subscribers felt that Derfner had stepped outside the very open and wide tent that is within acceptable Jewish opinion and debate, going to a place many Jerusalem Post’s subscriber’s apparently consider as being on the enemy’s side.
I’m not going to discuss which part caused this community response, his statement that he believed that Palestinian terror is “justified”, or the inherent disclosure of his internal narrative where he sees Israel as so evil that it actually led him to this incredible conclusion.
Personally, I see nothing surprising about his statements. It’s clear that this has been his belief for a while. But I would assume that expressing it so openly – despite whatever caveats and stipulations he tried to wrap around it “provoked” many to instinctually respond and demand he be placed outside the camp.
But this whole story raises and creates a number of interesting questions.
One might ask, where are the limits of free speech? But then, no one has actually taken Derfner’s free speech away. He has merely been removed from standing up on someone else’s private soapbox.
One might ask, how far is outside the camp? And that is an interesting question, as Derfner wrote nothing different than what’s regularly written in Haaretz. Though admittedly, most of Haaretz readers outside of Israel don’t identify with the mainstream Israeli narrative (you know what I’m trying to say here) and their readership in Israel is relatively fringe compared to the mainstream Israeli papers (I believe that even the Jerusalem Post prints more copies of their paper than Haaretz). So his views (and Haaretz's) place him (and them) at the same distance as Neturei Karta in so many similar ways.
One might ask, why are some on the radical Left so upset? After all, some of them are the same exact people that support (and introduce) some of these calls to boycott Israel and/or the settlements. Isn’t this how the game works? Or is it only good when it’s going one way? And furthermore, this wasn’t an organized attack like what one sees around the BDS movement and friends, but a natural grass-roots response by the people.
I will leave you with this thought. Boycotts like these are a dangerous game. Yes, this time it was a Leftist who expressed solidarity (or at least understanding) with terrorists and mass murderers, and quite possibly broke various Israeli laws in the process – not that the system will ever investigate him.
But perhaps there is a lesson here.
Perhaps the radical Left in Israel should stop supporting, aiding and demanding boycotts of any parts of Israel or the Jewish people (including calls for no religious Jews in Yafo, for instance). It should obvious to them now that it’s not enjoyable to be on the receiving end of these boycotts, and apparently, when the good Jewish people manage to stand together in solidarity, it’s not on the side of the radical Left.
So how about we call a truce (and not the Gazan version of a cease fire). Stop aiding and abetting in any way, manner, and form the various boycotts and attacks against Israel and your fellow Jews, and perhaps the majority of Jews will see to invite you back into their open and wide tent.
For years now, Israel has been under attack by the anti-Semitic BDS movement, their affiliate organizations, their supporters in the Palestinian Authority, and unfortunately their Jewish and Israeli radical left-wing supporters (not to mention those who pretend they are Jewish for the effect). The calls have been to boycott Israeli books, to boycott Israeli academic institutions, to boycott products from the settlements (even those whose companies support hundred and thousands of Arab families), to boycott Israeli investments, and even to boycott companies doing business with Israel.
Israel and the Jews have a terrible habit of not reacting or responding to these attacks. The underlying reasons stem from trying to not rock the boat, hoping the problem will go away, fear, indecision, confused ethics, and often no idea how to even respond – to name just a few explanations
But much of the Jewish people still have an instinctual community self-defense mechanism. They recognize when something has gone too far, when something has crossed the line between being within the tent or without, when an attack has reached a level where if it isn’t responded to it will expand to a level beyond reversal.
The Scottish Whisky Counter-boycott initiated by the Muqata was one such example. That Scottish boycott of Israel was expanding, driven by anti-Semitism, and quite probably part of a larger, more organized attack.
The response to the Scottish boycott among Jewish laymen (though not all Orthodox Jewish leadership I'm embarrassed to say) indicated that they internally felt and understood the threat, and in this case there was a clear action that could be taken in response. And as a result, the Scottish boycott, while not killed, has at least been contained and perhaps even blocked from future expansion.
Boycotts are a tricky thing. The Left loves to call for them against Israel, I would even say that some of our radical Leftists in Israel are the standard-bearers for some of those calls to boycott, but sometimes they bite back and you find yourself on the receiving end.
The Jerusalem Post made a business decision when they decided that keeping Larry Derfner on staff was hurting their bottom line rather than helping it (or even keeping it neutral). While unpopular for a while among certain circles, his expressed opinions weren’t far enough along, until now, to “provoke” a wholesale instinctual community self-defense reaction.
This time, Jerusalem Post subscribers felt that Derfner had stepped outside the very open and wide tent that is within acceptable Jewish opinion and debate, going to a place many Jerusalem Post’s subscriber’s apparently consider as being on the enemy’s side.
I’m not going to discuss which part caused this community response, his statement that he believed that Palestinian terror is “justified”, or the inherent disclosure of his internal narrative where he sees Israel as so evil that it actually led him to this incredible conclusion.
Personally, I see nothing surprising about his statements. It’s clear that this has been his belief for a while. But I would assume that expressing it so openly – despite whatever caveats and stipulations he tried to wrap around it “provoked” many to instinctually respond and demand he be placed outside the camp.
But this whole story raises and creates a number of interesting questions.
One might ask, where are the limits of free speech? But then, no one has actually taken Derfner’s free speech away. He has merely been removed from standing up on someone else’s private soapbox.
One might ask, how far is outside the camp? And that is an interesting question, as Derfner wrote nothing different than what’s regularly written in Haaretz. Though admittedly, most of Haaretz readers outside of Israel don’t identify with the mainstream Israeli narrative (you know what I’m trying to say here) and their readership in Israel is relatively fringe compared to the mainstream Israeli papers (I believe that even the Jerusalem Post prints more copies of their paper than Haaretz). So his views (and Haaretz's) place him (and them) at the same distance as Neturei Karta in so many similar ways.
One might ask, why are some on the radical Left so upset? After all, some of them are the same exact people that support (and introduce) some of these calls to boycott Israel and/or the settlements. Isn’t this how the game works? Or is it only good when it’s going one way? And furthermore, this wasn’t an organized attack like what one sees around the BDS movement and friends, but a natural grass-roots response by the people.
I will leave you with this thought. Boycotts like these are a dangerous game. Yes, this time it was a Leftist who expressed solidarity (or at least understanding) with terrorists and mass murderers, and quite possibly broke various Israeli laws in the process – not that the system will ever investigate him.
But perhaps there is a lesson here.
Perhaps the radical Left in Israel should stop supporting, aiding and demanding boycotts of any parts of Israel or the Jewish people (including calls for no religious Jews in Yafo, for instance). It should obvious to them now that it’s not enjoyable to be on the receiving end of these boycotts, and apparently, when the good Jewish people manage to stand together in solidarity, it’s not on the side of the radical Left.
So how about we call a truce (and not the Gazan version of a cease fire). Stop aiding and abetting in any way, manner, and form the various boycotts and attacks against Israel and your fellow Jews, and perhaps the majority of Jews will see to invite you back into their open and wide tent.
Assessing Qaddafi
Daniel Pipes
National Review Online
August 30, 2011
http://www.meforum.org/pipes/10095/assessing-qaddafi
The world's longest ruling head of state, Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi (the correct transliteration of his name), would have been ruler of Libya for exactly 42 years on Sept. 1. As he leaves the scene, his wretched reign deserves an appraisal.
On taking power, Qaddafi was one of the most handsome of public figures.
Qaddafi took power at the age of 27 in the waning days of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the immensely influential pan-Arab leader of Egypt, and saw himself as Nasser's acolyte but with a greater ambitions: whereas Nasser dreamed of a single Arab nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf as an end in itself, Qaddafi saw Arab unity as the first step to Muslim unity. Although Qaddafi failed to achieve any sort of unity, and his "Third International Theory" detailed in the 1975 Green Book proved a total bust, he did have an early and marked impact on two major developments. First, he had a key role in the increase in energy prices that began in 1972 and continues to this day. By challenging the international oil companies' control over petroleum production and pricing, he began the transfer of power from Western boardrooms to Middle Eastern palaces. Specifically, the chances Qaddafi successfully took helped bring about the four-fold increase in oil prices of 1973-74.
Second, Qaddafi kicked off what was then known as the Islamic revival and also still continues. At a time when no one else was ready to do so, he proudly and provocatively advanced Islamic causes by applying aspects of Islamic law, calling on Muslims worldwide to do likewise, and assisting any Muslims in conflict with non-Muslims.
Qaddafi's long rule can be divided into four eras. The first and most significant, 1969-86, consisted of frenetic activity on his part, meddling in issues and conflicts from Northern Ireland to the southern Philippines. An incomplete listing would include the near crippling of Jimmy Carter's 1980 re-election campaign by making payments to his brother Billy; declaring political union with Syria; aiding Iran militarily versus Iraq; threatening Malta over oil exploration in contested waters; bribing the Cypriot government to accept a Libyan radio transmitter; sending troops to southern Chad to control the country and unify with it; and helping a Muslim group in Nigeria whose violence left over 100 dead.
Symbolic of his regime's decay, Qaddafi eventually became one of the ugliest public figures.
But these efforts led nowhere. As I wrote in a 1981 assessment, "Not one of Qaddafi's attempts at coups d'état has toppled a government, not one rebellious force has succeeded, no separatists have established a new state, no terrorist campaign has broken a people's resolve, no plan for union has been carried through, and no country save Libya follows the 'third theory.' Qaddafi has reaped bitterness and destruction without attaining any of his goals. Greater futility can scarcely be imagined."
That first era ended with the U.S. bombardment of 1986 in retaliation for the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin, which seemed to affect Qaddafi's psyche. His rabid adventurism dramatically declined, accompanied by a turn toward Africa and an ambition to build weapons of mass destruction. As his presence on the world stage shriveled, he was dismissed as a nut-job.
A third stage began in 2002, when a tamed Qaddafi paid reparations for the Libyan role in the 1988 downing of a Pan Am plane and gave up his nuclear ambitions. Although the fundamentals of his regime remained in place, he became persona grata in Western countries, while the British prime minister and American secretary of state paid their respects to him in Libya.
Arguably, Qaddafi was even uglier in person than this caricature near Misurata.
The fourth and final era began earlier this year, with the Benghazi rebellion, when Qaddafi in retreat reverted to the explicit brutality of his earlier rule, casting aside the carefully constructed image of someone newly paying attention to international expectations. With his regime in the balance, his viciousness and delusion took center stage and the results were devastating, with Libyans in great numbers rejecting him, his family, his regime, and his legacy.
After decades of repression and deceit, Libyans now face the challenge of discarding that foul legacy. They must struggle to free themselves of paranoia, depravity, and contortion. As Andrew Solomon of the New Yorker summed up the problem, Libyans "may recover from the Qaddafis' embezzlement and brutality, but the falseness of life in the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya will take a long time to fade."
Indeed it will.
Mr. Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. © 2011 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
Israel -- an Apartheid State
Dennis Prager
Next month, the UN-sponsored hate-Israel festival known as Durban III takes place. Under the heading "anti-racism," the great bulk of the conference, like Durban I and Durban II, consists of condemning Israel for racism and equating it to an apartheid state.
Of the world's many great lies, this is among the greatest.
How do we know it is a lie? Because when South Africa was an apartheid state, no one accused Israel of being one. Even the UN would have regarded the accusation as absurd.
Israel has nothing in common with an apartheid state, but few people know enough about Israel -- or about apartheid South Africa -- to refute the slander. So let's respond.
First, what is an apartheid state? And does Israel fit that definition?
From 1948 to 1994, South Africa, the country that came up with this term, had an official policy that declared blacks second-class citizens in every aspect of that nation's life. Among many other prohibitions on the country's blacks, they could not vote; could not hold political office; were forced to reside in certain locations; could not marry whites; and couldn't even use the same public restrooms as whites. Not one of those restrictions applies to Arabs living in Israel.
One and a half million Arabs live in Israel, constituting about 20 percent of that country's population. They have the same rights as all other Israeli citizens. They can vote, and they do. They can serve in the Israeli parliament, and they do. They can own property and businesses and work in professions alongside other Israelis, and they do. They can be judges, and they are. Here's one telling example: it was an Arab judge on Israel's Supreme Court who sentenced the former president of Israel -- a Jew -- to jail on a rape charge.
Some other examples of Arabs in Israeli life: Reda Mansour was the youngest ambassador in Israel's history, and is now Consul General at Israel's Atlanta Consulate; Walid Badir is an international soccer star on Israel's national team and captain of one of Tel Aviv's major teams; Rana Raslan is a former Miss Israel; Ishmael Khaldi was until recently the deputy consul of Israel in San Francisco; Khaled Abu Toameh is a major journalist with the Jerusalem Post; Ghaleb Majadele was until recently a Minister in the Israeli Government. They are all Israeli Arabs. Not one is a Jew.
Arabs in Israel live freer lives than Arabs living anywhere in the Arab world. No Arab in any Arab country has the civil rights and personal liberty that Arabs in Israel enjoy.
Now, one might counter: "Yes, Palestinians who live inside Israel have all these rights, but what about the Palestinians who live in what are known as the occupied territories? Aren't they treated differently?"
Yes, of course they are -- they are not citizens of Israel. They are governed by either the Palestinian Authority (Fatah) or by Hamas. The control Israel has over these people's lives is largely manifested when they want to enter Israel. Then they are subjected to long lines and strict searches, because Israel must weed out potential terrorists.
Otherwise, Israel has little control over the day-to-day life of Palestinians and was prepared to have no control in 2000 when it agreed to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state to which it gave 97 percent of the land it had conquered in the 1967 War. The Palestinian response was to unleash an intifada of terror against Israeli civilians.
And what about the security wall that divides Israel and the West Bank? Is that an example of apartheid?
That this is even raised as an issue is remarkable. One might as well mention the security fence between the United States and Mexico as an example of apartheid. There is no difference between the American wall at its southern border and the Israeli wall on its eastern border. Both barriers have been built to keep unwanted people from entering the country.
Israel built its security wall in order to keep terrorists from entering Israel and murdering its citizens. What appears to bother those who work to delegitimize Israel by calling it an apartheid state is that the barrier has worked. The wall separating Israel from the West Bank has probably been the most successful terrorism-prevention program ever enacted.
So why, then, is Israel called an apartheid state?
Because by comparing the freest, most equitable country in the Middle East to the former South Africa, those who seek to Israel's demise hope they can persuade uninformed people that Israel doesn't deserve to exist just as apartheid South Africa didn't deserve to exist.
Yet, the people who know better than anyone else what a lie the apartheid accusation is are Israel's Arabs -- which is why they prefer to live in the Jewish state than in any Arab state.
There are lies, and then there are loathsome lies. "Israel is an apartheid state" falls into the latter category. Its only aim is to hasten the extermination of Israel.
Next month, the UN-sponsored hate-Israel festival known as Durban III takes place. Under the heading "anti-racism," the great bulk of the conference, like Durban I and Durban II, consists of condemning Israel for racism and equating it to an apartheid state.
Of the world's many great lies, this is among the greatest.
How do we know it is a lie? Because when South Africa was an apartheid state, no one accused Israel of being one. Even the UN would have regarded the accusation as absurd.
Israel has nothing in common with an apartheid state, but few people know enough about Israel -- or about apartheid South Africa -- to refute the slander. So let's respond.
First, what is an apartheid state? And does Israel fit that definition?
From 1948 to 1994, South Africa, the country that came up with this term, had an official policy that declared blacks second-class citizens in every aspect of that nation's life. Among many other prohibitions on the country's blacks, they could not vote; could not hold political office; were forced to reside in certain locations; could not marry whites; and couldn't even use the same public restrooms as whites. Not one of those restrictions applies to Arabs living in Israel.
One and a half million Arabs live in Israel, constituting about 20 percent of that country's population. They have the same rights as all other Israeli citizens. They can vote, and they do. They can serve in the Israeli parliament, and they do. They can own property and businesses and work in professions alongside other Israelis, and they do. They can be judges, and they are. Here's one telling example: it was an Arab judge on Israel's Supreme Court who sentenced the former president of Israel -- a Jew -- to jail on a rape charge.
Some other examples of Arabs in Israeli life: Reda Mansour was the youngest ambassador in Israel's history, and is now Consul General at Israel's Atlanta Consulate; Walid Badir is an international soccer star on Israel's national team and captain of one of Tel Aviv's major teams; Rana Raslan is a former Miss Israel; Ishmael Khaldi was until recently the deputy consul of Israel in San Francisco; Khaled Abu Toameh is a major journalist with the Jerusalem Post; Ghaleb Majadele was until recently a Minister in the Israeli Government. They are all Israeli Arabs. Not one is a Jew.
Arabs in Israel live freer lives than Arabs living anywhere in the Arab world. No Arab in any Arab country has the civil rights and personal liberty that Arabs in Israel enjoy.
Now, one might counter: "Yes, Palestinians who live inside Israel have all these rights, but what about the Palestinians who live in what are known as the occupied territories? Aren't they treated differently?"
Yes, of course they are -- they are not citizens of Israel. They are governed by either the Palestinian Authority (Fatah) or by Hamas. The control Israel has over these people's lives is largely manifested when they want to enter Israel. Then they are subjected to long lines and strict searches, because Israel must weed out potential terrorists.
Otherwise, Israel has little control over the day-to-day life of Palestinians and was prepared to have no control in 2000 when it agreed to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state to which it gave 97 percent of the land it had conquered in the 1967 War. The Palestinian response was to unleash an intifada of terror against Israeli civilians.
And what about the security wall that divides Israel and the West Bank? Is that an example of apartheid?
That this is even raised as an issue is remarkable. One might as well mention the security fence between the United States and Mexico as an example of apartheid. There is no difference between the American wall at its southern border and the Israeli wall on its eastern border. Both barriers have been built to keep unwanted people from entering the country.
Israel built its security wall in order to keep terrorists from entering Israel and murdering its citizens. What appears to bother those who work to delegitimize Israel by calling it an apartheid state is that the barrier has worked. The wall separating Israel from the West Bank has probably been the most successful terrorism-prevention program ever enacted.
So why, then, is Israel called an apartheid state?
Because by comparing the freest, most equitable country in the Middle East to the former South Africa, those who seek to Israel's demise hope they can persuade uninformed people that Israel doesn't deserve to exist just as apartheid South Africa didn't deserve to exist.
Yet, the people who know better than anyone else what a lie the apartheid accusation is are Israel's Arabs -- which is why they prefer to live in the Jewish state than in any Arab state.
There are lies, and then there are loathsome lies. "Israel is an apartheid state" falls into the latter category. Its only aim is to hasten the extermination of Israel.
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