Sunday, December 31, 2006
Professor at Tel Aviv University identifies the new God of the Jews
1. Auld Lang Zion 2007
Should auld accomplice be forgot,
And never brought to trial?
Should auld Osloids, friend, be forgot,
In days of auld lang Zion?
For betraying auld lang Zion, my dear,
For debasing auld lang Zion.
Should their accomplice be forgot,
In days of auld lang Zion?
We yids hae run aboot the world,
Under fire the whole time.
We've wandered mony a weary foot,
To reach auld lang Zion.
Save auld land Zion, my dear,
Save auld land Zion,
Indict those Oslo blaggards, dear,
For the sake of auld lang Zion!!!
2. To the Tune of "Cheers to the Bus Driver"
Cheers to the Hangman
The Hangman, the Hangman
Cheers to the Hangman
And many more happy returns!
3. Britain's Norman Finkelstein gets out of jail:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881982754&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
4. Talk to Syria through a bomb site:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3344635,00.html
5. The PLO finds a "racist":
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=26168
6. Mikey of Meaning Purges his magazine Stalin style:
http://www.forward.com/articles/founder-retakes-reins-of-liberal-mag-plans-less-i/
7. Leftist "Historian" at Tel Aviv University declares that Money is the
God of the Israelis:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3346135,00.html
8. http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=25876
Selective Outrage: Why Can't Jewish Leaders Speak Truth to Power?
Written by Ruth S. King
Sunday, December 31, 2006
9. December 26, 2006
Jimmy Carter's Book:
An Israeli View
By MICHAEL B. OREN
December 26, 2006; Page A12
Several prominent scholars have taken issue with Jimmy Carter's book
"Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," cataloguing its historical inaccuracies
and lamenting its lack of balance. The journalist Jeffrey Goldberg also
critiqued the book's theological purpose, which, he asserted, was to
"convince American Evangelicals to reconsider their support for Israel."
Mr. Carter indeed seems to have a religious problem with the Jewish state.
His book bewails the fact that Israel is not the reincarnation of ancient
Judea but a modern, largely temporal democracy. "I had long taught lessons
from the Hebrew Scriptures," he recalls telling Prime Minister Golda Meir
during his first tour through the country. "A common historical pattern
was that Israel was punished whenever the leaders turned away from devout
worship of God. I asked if she was concerned about the secular nature of
the Labor government."
He complains about the fact that the kibbutz synagogue he enters is nearly
empty on the sabbath and that the Bibles presented to Israeli soldiers
"was one of the few indications of a religious commitment that I observed
during our visit." But he also reproves contemporary Israelis for
allegedly mistreating the Samaritans -- "the same complaint heard by Jesus
almost two thousand years earlier" -- and for pilfering water from the
Jordan River, "where . . . Jesus had been baptized by John the Baptist."
10. Greeting card for 2007:
http://www.come-and-hear.com/editor/gallows3.jpg
Today Saddam, tomorrow _____________ (fill in names of your favorite
candidates)!!!
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Re-Naqba Now!!
1. Peace Plan = Re-Naqba!
2. Oh, about those "secular rabbis" we posted about the other day. You
know, those yarmulka-less boys and girls practicing Reconstructionism-Lite as
a form of secular "religion" who claim that by pursuing social
justice and Palestinian way of life they are practicing "secular Judaism"?
So just what do we call them? Rabbettes? Rabblings? Rabblets?
Rabbortions? Rabble? Rabba rabba boom bam?
I personally prefer to call them Pesky Wabbettes.
3. The Tannenbaum outrage:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3343840,00.html
4. Another Leftist Israeli Writer for a Second Holocaust:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3344208,00.html
5. See the Choice for Man of the Year selected by Alexander Cockburn
(Neve Gordon's editor):
http://www.reason.com/news/show/117486.html
6. The London Jewish Chronicle finds some Jews to celebrate:
http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m12s114&AId=47991&ATypeId=1&secid=114
7. Post-post-Zionism
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=6801
8. The latest sedition from Peace Now:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=6800
9. Xmas among the pestilinians:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=26157
10. Paper in UK makes Jesus a Palestinian:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3344541,00.html
11. Peanut Brain:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881943132&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Ariel Zilber Shivers their Timbers
(He is not religious by the way.)
Now he is back to give the Left an even bigger dose of them heebie jeebies. As you know the Left wants a new different national anthem, one that does not mention Jews or Judaism. Zilber has composed his OWN alternative national anthem or at least a national protest anthem (http://www.nfc.co.il/archive/001-D-110095-00.html?tag=9-45-23 in Hebrew).
I
t is entitled Yula Yula Yula La
The Hebrew is on the above web site. In Hebrew it rhymes. Here is a rough translation of some of the lyrics:
Let's all sing the song of Yula
We are sick of all those crooks in the government
The missiles are flying about the nation is in a trauma,
The government has not idea of why or what
Yula Yula Yula La
The war breaks out all of a sudden
And the whole government is like Sharon on the upper floor
General Dan Halutz demolished Gush Katif One Two Three
When faced with the Hizbollah in his panties he peed
The Prime Minister received twice the value of his apartment
So he can hang out with his offspring overseas.
The media are a big festival devoted to throwing sand in our eyes
The nation is dying, starving with outstretched hands
They preach morality at us while assigning us the sign of Cain
Now is the time and moment to settle accounts with them
Yula yula yula la
Haim Yavin (TV news talking head) and all his ilk
Go embrace Hassan Nasrallah!
Aharon Barak holds the reins up in his tower of ivory
And Jew appearing before him will emerge guilty
Evicting the Jew from the land of his fathers
The court belongs only to him and his friends
Yula Yula Yula La What will be with us
A court like this we would not even wish on our enemies
(there are several moral stanzas)
2. Several years ago, Yossi Beilin, the godmother of Oslo, started floating the idea for a new form of "secular Rabbi" and "secular religion". The idea would be that people who have no interest in or knowledge of Judaism, people who feel nothing but disdain for Jewish tradition, would invent and practice a new "secular Jewish religion". It would NOT be the sort of Judaism Lite promoted by the Reformies and the Conservatives, which maintains at least some symbols and content from Judaism. Beilin's "secular religion" would consist of promoting socialism, eating bagels and lox, striving for Palestinian statehood, and learning all the dirty words in Yiddish.
Some of the loonier forces in Israel liked the idea and picked it up. This week the first batch of "secular Rabbis" was "ordained" by the "International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism in Jerusalem." Seven men and women, none wearing yarmulke or hat, at least some of whom are heterosexual, were so "ordained".
See http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881948042&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
3. The grandson of Alexander Penn:
A remarkable article was carried in the weekend Haaretz culture section. Unfortunately it can only be read in Hebrew (at http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=804133&contrassID=2&subContrassID=7&sbSubContrassID=0 ) but it is partly similar to this piece in English from the Jerusalem Post about his grandson (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1162378496195 ). Here is the gist:
Alexander Penn was one of Israel's leading poets and songwriters. He was born in 1906 in the steppes of Russia. His father was a descendent of the Baal Shem Tov and his mother was a Swede (not Jewish). He was at first raised by his grandfather, a bear hunter. When the grandfather died, he moved in with his father and converted (although there are some who challenge this). In Russia he was a personal friend of Pasternak and other leading poets. He made aliyah in 1927, knowing no Hebrew. While he was a communist and member of "the party" most of his life, he also was a gifted poet and song writer. He also was unfashionably patriotic for a communist and broke with the party when he wrote a poem denouncing Adbul Gamal Nasser, and resigned from the party after the Six Day War.. Some of Israel's greatest patriotic songs were written by him (for example, "Adama Admati"). (See his bio at http://www.ithl.org.il/author_info.asp?id=198 )
The news piece in question is about Penn's grandson. Growing up in Israel as a WASP (white Ashkenazi Sabara with 'protektzia'), an ultra-secularist and standard left leaning middle class Israeli. He is now a Conservative Rabbi and a political hawk. Dr. Jonathan Fine is a lecturer at the Lauder School of Government in the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and a fellow researcher at the center's Institute of Counterterrorism. He grew up knowing almost nothing about his famous grandfather. (Penn had divorced his wife, and Fine was only in touch with her and her family.)
Fine's went to LA as a counselor in a Reform synagogue summer camp in 1980. He quickly realized that even those Reformies knew far, far more about Judaism than he did. He was just out of the IDF, and the campers included Beverly Hills brats and even the son of Dustin Hoffman. He felt like an idiot at the first Kabbalat Shabbat. When he returned, he studied history at the Hebrew University but also started filling in the blanks in his knowledge of Judaism. He visited yeshivas. He started carrying a prayer book with him, esp in the army.
He fought in the first Lebanese War in 1983. One time he and his fellows literally stepped on a land mine. It did not go off. Miracle?
He traveled and understands that anti-Semitism has nothing to do with "occupation" and that the Arab war against Israel is a war for destruction and genocide. He considers himself a Labor Party guy who woke up from delusions.
He still has a way to go. He repeats the Conservative movement's party line about how homosexuality was only prohibited in the Torah because the Canaanites did it (sure they did!) but today is different because people do it out of love.
He is interesting largely because of who his grandfather was, and in what he may yet become.
4. http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/greenberg122006.php3
(Biblically) illiterate in the Ivy League
By Paul Greenberg
5. More on Neturei Pagans:
http://www.bnaibrith.ca/pdf/NotInOurName.pdf
6. Stalin's Jews (no, not the political science department at Ben Gurion University or the philosophy department at Tel Aviv University):
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3342999,00.html)
(Plocker is a recovering communist, by the way, and not all hius facts are correct here)
7. Holocaust Denial at Peace Now:
Holocaust as alibi for occupation
By Dror Etkes (Peace Now)
Haaretz
Dec. 22, 2006
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/804275.html
8. Goobers Carter is afraid of Alan Dershowitz - Brandeis helping Carter debate with himself:
_http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/12/22/brandeis_g
roup_pursues_carter_visit/_
Brandeis group pursues Carter visit Professors call debate an insult
By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff December 22, 2006
President Jimmy Carter may yet come to Brandeis University to speak about his
controversial new book about Israel -- and even get the stage to himself.
Some professors are planning to craft a new invitation to Carter to give a
lecture without having to debate an opponent.
Last week, the former president told the Globe he declined an invitation to
Brandeis because of the string attached. President Jehuda Reinharz, at a
trustee's suggestion, invited Carter to campus to debate "Palestine: Peace Not
Apartheid" with a vehement critic of the book, Alan Dershowitz, a professor at
Harvard Law School. Carter said Dershowitz knows nothing about the situation
in Palestine.
Several dozen Brandeis professors have been trading e-mails on what could be
done, according to two professors on the e-mail list of left-leaning
faculty.
Patricia Johnston, a professor of classics, said she and many colleagues have
offered to chip in perhaps $100 each to pay for whatever travel and security
costs a Carter visit would entail.
"Who is Alan Dershowitz?" Johnston said. Carter "is the former president of
the United States, who has done so much to further the cause of peace in the
Middle East and elsewhere. It's an insult to suggest that he should have to
defend himself that way."
She said she envisioned Carter giving a traditional speech and taking
audience questions.
Carter's spokeswoman did not return a call yesterday.
Brandeis spokesman Dennis Nealon said the university is and always was open
to Carter coming to campus.
"Jimmy Carter is welcome to speak on the Brandeis campus," he said.
While Reinharz has not invited Carter to speak solo, Nealon said the
administration would work with faculty who wanted to set up a visit. He indicated
that money would probably not be an obstacle.
"I think the administration would be willing to figure out how to pay for
it," he said.
Carter told the Globe last week that he would give the talk for free, if the
university sent a plane to pick him up from Georgia , where he lives .
The saga began about a month ago when the chairman of the faculty senate,
Harry Mairson, wrote to Carter asking whether the former president would be
interested in speaking about his new book, which has raised passions on both
sides of the debate over Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians.
Carter called his friend and former adviser, Stuart Eizenstat, a Brandeis
trustee, to ask whether he should take up the offer. But Eizenstat advised
Carter against accepting the invitation of an individual professor without
knowing the professor's agenda.
Eizenstat proposed the debate to Reinharz instead, because it "would make
this a real academic exercise," he told the Globe last week. "The president of
the university is not in the business of inviting someone, even a former
president, for a book tour."
Since the Globe reported last week that Carter felt unwelcome on the Waltham
campus, people have argued over whether he is unwilling to answer for his
views, or whether Brandeis, which was founded by the American Jewish community,
can't tolerate criticism of Israel.
The latter is a view that some professors hope they can dispel by reviving
the Carter visit.
Faculty members will probably set up a committee to craft an invitation, and
to discuss security, space and cost if Carter accepts, said David Gil,
professor of social policy.
The main organizer of the effort, according to other professors, is Gordon
Fellman, a sociologist who is chairman of Brandeis's program in peace,
conflict, and coexistence studies.
In an e-mail yesterday, Fellman wrote: "Some faculty are talking about trying
to figure out how to invite Carter here. No plan of action yet."
He could not be reached for further comment.
Gil, who lived in Israel for many years, has his own suggestion: Brandeis
should choose Carter's book next year as the work that all incoming freshmen
read over the summer and discuss it during orientation. Carter could visit to
talk with them about it.
Gil also has decided to assign the book in his spring seminar.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Tel Aviv University to declare jailed Murdering Terrorists are "Politial Prisoners"
1. On-campus anti-Israel indoctrination has entered a new phase at Tel
Aviv University. On Jan 8 the Law School at TAU will be conducting a
conference dedicated to the proposition that jailed Arab murderers and
terrorists who have perpetrated mass atrocities against Jewish civilians
are "political prisoners". Co-sponsored by the Law School, the "Minerva
Center" (a far-leftist group pretending to be a human rights watchdog),
and "Adalah", a radical Arab NGO, the conference is titled "Security
Prisoners or Political Prisoners?" and the answer that the conference will
give to that question is obvious from the roster of speakers. It includes
ultra-leftist and anti-Israel extremist Anat Matar (arrested a few months
ago for violently assaulting police
protecting Israel's security wall), Avigdor Feldman, and other leftists.
They will be arguing that the best way to improve Israeli security is to
put hundreds of murderers and terrorists back on the streets.
2. Reprint:
Open Letter To Neturei Karta
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By: Steven Plaut Friday, May 21, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Neturei Karta is a small sect of ultra-Orthodox "Jewish" extremists, best
known for marching arm in arm with Yasir Arafat and endorsing every
anti-Israel terrorist and anti-Semite on the planet as part of its jihad
against
Israel. Neturei Karta is a small sect of ultra-Orthodox "Jewish"
extremists, best
known for marching arm in arm with Yasir Arafat and endorsing every
anti-Israel terrorist and anti-Semite on the planet as part of its jihad
against
Israel.
Neturei Karta (?Guardians of the City? in Aramaic) was created in
1938, mainly by Hungarian Jews, as a breakaway group from the more
mainstream Agudath Israel movement.
The organization openly calls for Israel to be destroyed and openly
supports the
worst genocidal anti-Semites on the planet.
Recently, in response to one of my columns, I received a series of e-
mails from someone associated with the Neturei Karta movement. He and I
carried on a correspondence of sorts for quite a while. Below I have taken
the
essence of the notes I sent him and compiled them into an "open letter."
Dear Sir,
In the Amida prayer, which Jews recite three times every day, there is a
section in which the minim are denounced. The minim were small groups of
treasonous Jews who collaborated with the Roman enemies of the Jewish
people, and the prayer explicitly mentions that these minim were tattlers,
snitches, people who served the anti-Semites of their day as agents, and
worked
against Jewish existence and survival. Since then, of course, the segment
in the
daily prayer has been understood to be a curse in general upon
anti-Semites,
and especially Jewish anti-Semites working against their own people.
I mention all this because I can think of no more apt illustration of a
cult of minim than Neturei Karta. Your cult is nothing more than a
pseudo-Jewish pagan group working against Judaism and in collaboration
with
the worst enemies of the Jews. You would have no problems serving the
Romans or Assyrians if they were still around.
You claim that you are simply opposed to Israel because it is full of
people who trample upon Jewish observance. Well, let me tell you
something.
The most secularist pork-eater on any kibbutz in Israel is halachically
more
Jewish than the "rabbis" in the Neturei Karta cult. Why do I say this?
Because,
as you know, there is a clear halachic rule that says that living in the
Land of
Israel is equivalent to observing all 613 religious commandments or
mitzvot.
All of them ? even the ones reserved for priests and even the ones that
may
only be performed in the Temple (and so may not be performed today).
No, I am not suggesting that living in Eretz Yisrael should be regarded
as a blanket exemption from the observance of all other Jewish religious
precepts. I am simply saying that even someone who observes nothing at
all,
but who lives in Israel, is on a very real level more Jewish than the
"rabbis" of
your minim cult.
When you march in anti-Israel demonstrations alongside anti-Semites,
when you endorse Arafat and his stormtroopers and serve as their public
relations agents, when you support terrorists and excuse mass murders of
Jews,
you are acting as followers of the evil Bil'am, not as sons of Jacob or
disciples
of Abraham.
You say you want Israel destroyed because it was not set up properly,
because the Messiah has not yet come. Do you really think that Israel can
be
destroyed without there also transpiring a second Holocaust? Do you not
realize this is the unavoidable consequence of what you are proposing, and
what the people you are supporting seek?
A ketuba, or marriage contract, that is signed on the Sabbath is still a
valid one and must be respected, even though signing it on the Sabbath is
a
violation of the day. A kohen who marries a divorcee has sinned, because
such
a marriage is prohibited by the Torah, but the marriage must be
acknowledged
and even accepted and honored. It stands.
Whether or not Israel was created properly or at the correct time, the
fact that it exists changes how Jews must behave and requires a certain
amount
of responsibility and arvut ze l'ze, or mutual support and defense, even
from the
most smug, self-righteous pretenders at ultra-religiosity.
Whatever you think about the establishment of Israel, you have no right
to endorse those who seek to destroy it and its Jewish population through
violence. And if you do endorse such people and march with them, you are
collaborators with Haman. You are worse than Dotan and Aviram.
Had you lived in Shushan in Persia in the days of Queen Esther and her
Uncle Mordecai, you would have been marching arm in arm with Haman. After
all, among those Persian Jews were no doubt many who violated the Sabbath
and other religious principles. Neturei Karta would have supported Haman
as a
way to "punish" them.
In Elijah's generation, all but a handful of Jews were acting as pagans.
Strange, but I do not recall Elijah justifying anti-Semites murdering
them.
Indeed, Elijah enthusiastically endorsed the very worst pagan of all, King
Ahab, when the king went on the warpath to kill the enemies of Israel.
The Neturei Karta "rabbis" are not recognized as Torah authorities by
real Torah authorities outside the cult ? not by Sephardic rabbis, not by
Ashkenazic rabbis, not by misnagdim, not by chassidim. In essence,
virtually
all Jews see Neturei Karta as a pathetic minim cult. Can you name a single
rabbi outside Neturei Karta who endorses the view of your own "rabbis"? Of
course you can?t.
So you think collaborating with the worst anti-Semites on the planet,
people who openly endorse genocide of Jews, is better than collaborating
with
misguided Israeli secularists, people who perhaps need to be pulled back
to the
traditions of Israel? You believe that when a Jew sins, he ceases to be a
Jew
and should be murdered? I wonder what books you are reading as
replacements
for the Torah.
You insist the Zionists are the Devil, not the Palestinian terrorists. And
of course, if the Palestinian terrorists are not the Devil, why should
anyone
think the German Nazis were? Since you defend the Palestinians? right to
murder my family ? and, as it happens, my family does not eat pork ? then
what is wrong with the Germans murdering my grandparents?
In the interest of consistency, why not march around in your pro-PLO
parades wearing swastikas? Why not put one on your website?
The Neturei Karta cultists are inverted Bil'ams. Bil'am was ordered to
curse Israel, yet ended up blessing the Tents of Jacob. You are the
reverse. You
are ordered by the Torah to bless Israel, but you curse the Jewish people.
You
have no concept of Jewish solidarity because you are, at best, a
pseudo-Jewish
minim cult.
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/16266/Open_Letter_To_Neturei_Karta.html
3. (taken from various news sources:)
Holocaust denier David Irving won an appeal against his imprisonment in
Austria.
A Vienna court on Wednesday found in favor of an appeal filed by the
British historian, who was arrested during a November 2005 visit to
Austria and sentenced to three years in prison for denying that Nazi
Germany had carried out an organized genocide against European Jewry.
The court agreed to reduce Irving's sentence and admonished him to leave
Austria at the earliest opportunity.
Holocaust denial is a crime in Austria, Hitler's birthplace, and
prosecutors had wanted Irving's prison term extended.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center deplored Wednesday's ruling, saying it would
only encourage Irving and his ilk.
The judge, Ernest Maurer, who freed Irving reportedly has close ties
to a far-right Austrian party. Had Maurer heard the ORIGINAL Irving
suit against Lipstadt, he would have found for Irving. Hmmm, where have
we heard before of a neo-nazi judge openly identifying with and siding
with someone who promotes Holocaust Denial?
Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Austria, as well as in a other
European countries such as Germany and Switzerland, and is punishable by
up to 10 years in prison. Austria's Jewish community called the verdict a
"misjudgement," adding that
Irving's record was far from spotless. On the contrary, Irving was a
prominent "icon of the neo-Nazi scene," the community said in a press
release.
Efraim Zuroff, the head of Jerusalem's Simon Wiesenthal Centre which hunts
down Nazi war criminals, said the court's decision would "only encourage
and strengthen the Holocaust deniers throughout the world".
4. Baker's atrocity:
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/20173/Baker_Report_Dangerously_Naive.html
5. More on the Neturei Pagans:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881938502&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
6.
http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=17405&intcategoryid=4
Is tough love for Israel still love?
Question splits a campus group
By Ben Harris
December 19, 2006
7. The Persecution of AIPAC:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/12/the_rosenweisman_prosecution_a.html
8. Pelting the Neturei Pagans with rotten eggs:
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/231/231161_holocauststorm_rabbi_defends_iran_visit.html
9. Neve Gordon's friends at Counterpunch at last come clean. Israel has
no right to exist:
http://counterpunch.com/whitbeck12212006.html
10. Pestilinian Xmas:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=26144
11. Those "moderate" Egyptians have a new demand:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=26138
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
About that gentleman for whom 450 murderers were set free...
At that time, and in that article, I reported the theory that the civilian held by the Hizbollah and released in the deal, Elhanan Tannenbaum, was in fact a drug smuggler, in Lebanon to buy drugs. In fact, I suggested that Israel might consider releasing some terrorists as a reward for the Hizbollah keeping Tannebaum in captivity. Some people criticized me harshly for that and for reporting the theory when Tannebaum was a fellow Jew who had not been convicted of drug smuggling nor had admitted publicly to it.
Yediot Ahronot today reports {http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3342415,00.html and
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3342404,00.html)
that Tannebaum has now indeed admitted he was in Lebanon as part of a drug smuggling operation. This means that hundreds of terrorists were released, Israeli deterrence was turned into a mockery leading to 4000 katyusha and other missiles landing on Israeli civilians this past summer, and serving as role model for new Olmert capitulations, all because of a now-admitted drug smuggler.
Tannebaum was testifying in a customs smuggling trial for two other criminals and admitted all this in court. Tannenbaum, who personally did more to damage Israel than almost anyone else outside Israeli politics, has not been indicted in Israel for anything.
2. At the risk of ruining your Hannuka, take a careful look at this, which is on the site of one of the main Holocaust Denial web sites:
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/elam.html
It is written by a far leftist Israeli leftist "journalist" living in Switzerland. I make no comments - please read it and form your own impression. This same writer (Elam) recently claimed (not very persuasively) that he was getting "death threats" from some unknown organization in Europe.
3. ABout those patriotic loyal Israeli Arabs:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=26098
4. Ben-Gurion University, Department of Geography and Environmental
Development:
Oren Yiftachel to speak in Ramallah at "End the Occupation" Conference
http://www.ffipp.org/
Yiftachel has devoted much of his academic career to promoting the theory that Israel is a colonial apartheid regime. It is illegal for an Israeli to go to Ramallah. Will Yiftachel be prosecuted? (Yeah, right.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
International Conference: Ending the Occupation and Siege: The Need for
New Coalitions.
Internationals, Palestinians and Israelis Working in Solidarity for a
Complete End of Occupation And Just Peace.
Ramallah, January 5-7, 2007.
First day presentations: Naomi Chazan, Salim Tamari, Oren Yiftachel, Akiva
Eldar, and Eyad El-Sarraj.
Organized by FFIPP-I and Combatants for Peace
5. Soy-Eating Pride Parade Coming to Jerusalem?
http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53425
http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53327
Philistines With Yarmulkes
1.
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/20170/Philistines_With_Yarmulkes.html
Philistines With Yarmulkes
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By: Steven Plaut Wednesday, December 20, 2006
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If Neturei Karta (NK) did not exist, anti-Semites, Islamist
terrorists, and neo-Nazis would have to invent it. In fact, in many ways
NK is little more than an invention of such people (or at least the bulk
of NK funding seems to come from such groups).
The latest fundraising junket by its pseudo-rabbis was to the
Holocaust denial conference in Tehran last week . an action that in effect
granted pseudo-rabbinic approval by the NK cult to the worst Jew-haters
since the 1940.s.
Many in the Jewish community have been comparing NK cult members
to the kapos who collaborated with the concentration camp officers and
other Nazis during World War II. That comparison is improper and insulting
to those who were forced to make unimaginable moral choices by the
horrific conditions of the Shoah.
Neturei Karta members are not collaborating with terrorists and
neo-Nazis out of duress but rather out of an intense sense of
self-indulgence, delight, and amusement. These are quite simply
Philistines with peyos, well-paid underlings of Amalek.
And I am hardly the only one who thinks so. In recent days
Israel.s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger called for members of the
Neturei Karta sect to be excommunicated. He was joined not only by the
national-religious rabbinic organization Save the Nation and Land and by a
group calling itself the Front for National Judaism, but even by members
of the Eida Hachareidit, Israel.s council for ultra-Orthodox groups.
Former Israeli chief rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, himself a Holocaust
survivor, said of Neturei Karta: .It is something completely insane... Is
it conceivable that any Jew, for whatever reason, would support a
Holocaust denier in a generation when people with numbers tattooed on
their arms are still among us? It is an insanity that has no justification
and no explanation..
I have long argued that members of Neturei Karta should not be
called to the Torah in any real synagogue, and now it appears that even
the Satmars have come to share the revulsion felt by most other Torah Jews
toward the NK cult.
Breathes there a normal Jew who can feel anything but revulsion
upon reading the words of one Ahron Cohen, a leader of the NK cult in
Britain, who was quoted this week by the London Sunday Times as saying the
Six Million got what they deserve?
.There is no question that there was a Holocaust and gas
chambers,. Cohen said. .There are too many eyewitnesses. However, our
approach is that when one suffers, the one who perpetrates the suffering
is obviously guilty but he will never succeed if the victim did not
deserve it in one way or another..
Cohen also described Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who has vowed
to destroy Israel and denied the historical reality of the Holocaust, as
.not a man of war. He is a man of peace..
Neturei Karta.s collaboration with the worst enemies of the Jews
did not begin with its pilgrimage to Tehran. NK has collaborated with
Palestinian terrorist for decades and would not hesitate for a moment to
join an anti-Israel coalition led by Osama bin Laden. The Neturei Karta
prescription for the Middle East is for Israel to be destroyed.
The NK cultists oppose all acts of Jewish self-defense (proving
once again how little they know of Torah and Judaism). A Neturei Karta
bumper sticker shows a Jewish boy waving a Palestinian flag with the
slogan .Surrender Is the Torah Solution!.
In 1999 NK members held solidarity meetings with the Afro-fascist
anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. NK members attend the pro-terror, anti-Israel
(and anti-America) rallies of the neo-Stalinist group ANSWER. And Neturei
Karta has been active in promoting the tales invented by neo-Nazis and
anti-Semites about a Jewish neoconservative-Zionist cabal that controls
American foreign policy.
It should be emphasized that the only thing .Jewish. about NK is
the clothing and sidecurls favored by its members, who strike me as
inverted Marranos. The anosim or Marranos in Portugal and Spain passed
themselves off as Christians while secretly living as Jews; NK members
dress like Jews but behave like Philistines. No wonder, then, that in
London many synagogues do not allow NK members entry, or that in 2002 an
American umbrella group comprised of Satmar, Bobov, Belz, Vizhnitz,
Munkacz, Kiryas Joel, Monroe, and others issued a statement sharply
condemning those who openly collaborate with the PLO.
Neturei Karta cult members have always reminded me of Christian
missionaries who know very little about the Bible but make up for their
ignorance with their obsessive aggressiveness. The NK cultists recite a
small number of sentences from the Bible and Talmud, and spin these to any
anti-Semite willing to listen to them to serve as justification for their
treasonous activities. Every anti-Semitic barbarian on earth then
proclaims NK the exemplar of .true Judaism..
Among the NK cultists. favorite pocket phrases is one from Song
of Songs, which they interpret as prohibiting settling in the Land of
Israel until the Messiah comes. They also like to cite a phrase from the
Talmud (Tractate Ketubot, 111a) which they take out of context and which
they think means Jews should never use armed force to establish political
sovereignty within Eretz Yisrael.
Let us be very blunt about this (and Chanukah could not be a
better time for clarifying the point): The Torah affirms the right of the
Jewish people to control all of the Land of Israel. The only legitimate
reasons not to exercise such sovereignty immediately would be the
temporary weakness of the Jews or considerations of realpolitik and
statecraft.
The Maccabees used force to reestablish Jewish sovereignty over
Jewish land. They decidely did not wait for the Messiah, because there is
no such religious obligation to do so. Had the Neturei Karta minim been
around at the time, they would have been making pilgrimages to Antiochus
and accepting cash handouts from the Seleucids. Their banner? .No force
must be used to remove pigs and idols from the Temple until the Messiah
comes!.
While later generations of sages and rabbis regarded some of the
kings who descended from the Hasmoneans as evil, none regarded the
political sovereignty established and maintained by such kings to be
illegitimate. Indeed, even when an Edomite usurper, King Herod, seized the
throne as a Roman satrap, the legitimacy of remaining political autonomy
in Judea was never challenged by the sages.
Even after the destruction of the Second Temple, there were a
series of attempts to reestablish Jewish sovereignty over the Land of
Israel or parts thereof without waiting for any Messiah. Rabbi Akiva
himself led one such movement, and he not only knew perfectly well the
sentence in Song of Songs used by the NK to argue against use of arms, he
himself made the ruling to include Song of Songs in the Jewish Bible.
We are used to thinking of our contemporary Hellenists as
assimilationists, leftists and secular anti-Zionists. But modern paganism
comes in many a disguise . even the disguise of an Orthodox Jew.
2. Chief Labor Party McCarthyist introduces bill to criminalize Judaism:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881929149&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
3. Will he be offered a new position at Ben Gurion University?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=117809
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
The RPG Solution
1. Peace Plan:
I would hereby like to propose equipping all soldiers at West Bank
checkpoints with RPGs. The reason? The call by the Israeli ultra-Left
"Yesh Din" for "internationals", meaning anarcho-fascists and other
anti-Semites from abroad running about in the West Bank, to defy the ban
on such people transporting Palestinians about the West Bank. The ban
went into effect because such "internationals" also tranport murderers,
bombers, guns and bombs.
From
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=yesh+din&itemNo=802736
"The order was issued by GOC Central Command Yair Naveh.
Officials from a few organizations, most of them United Nations groups,
told Haaretz that the issue was under legal review. The order, dated
November 19, is scheduled to take effect on January 19, 2007. In a letter
sent to the international organizations, the Israeli human rights group
Yesh Din - whose volunteers help Palestinians file complaints against
settlers - asked the foreign groups to tell Israeli security authorities
they would not comply with the directive, by which they must obtain
permits to drive Palestinians....Several Israeli organizations, including
the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Machsom Watch and Yesh Din,
have already announced their intention to ignore the order and say they
will not apply for permits."
***
Frankly I think this is all wonderful news, and the criminal behavior and
defiance of the law by these Leftists is a perfect set of grounds for
firing RPG rockets at their vehicles. That will solve one of the peskier
problems in the West Bank once and for all.
2. Neturei Pagans:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881922423&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
3. Isi Leibler proposes:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881922444&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Winning the battle of ideas
By ISI LEIBLER
The Foreign Ministry should pull together expertise from around the Jewish
world to help make Israel's case.
***
The only problem with the idea is that if the Israeli Ministry were really
to run this, it would be devoted to promoring Palestinian statehood, a
return by Israel to its 1949 borders, capitulation to the Hezbollah
demands, and the Saudi "road map".
4. 1993: Shimon Peres: "I am far more worried about the dangers of
infiltration into Israel of cable television than I am about the dangers
of infiltration into Israel of Palestinian terrorists."
2006: Avishai Braverman, Labor Party politician (and past President of Ben
Gurion University, personally responsible for turning BGU into the Bir
Zeit of the Negev), cited in Haaretz Dec 19, 06:
"I am not concerned about the nuclear threat from Iran but rather about
the flight of high-skilled workers from Israel."
(So far, Braverman's main economic plan has been to increase unemployment
in Israel dramatically by raising the minimum wage.)
Monday, December 18, 2006
Neturei Karta - from Out of this World!
1. The Unworldly Neturei Karta
By Steven Plaut
In one of the most remarkable scientific discoveries of all time, a
CD-Rom containing the protocols of a high-level secret meeting of NASA,
the American space agency, has just been leaked to the media. The content
of that meeting is so dramatic that it is likely to change the entire
course of human history.
We bring you the highlights of that meeting as a special service to
our readers:
***********************************************
Commander Nishtikeit, chief of NASA control: I would like to thank all
of you senior military officers and scientists for attending this meeting
today on such short notice. NASA control center has decided to release to
the nation and world information on what may be the most astounding
discovery in all of human history. It seems that ironclad evidence has
now been uncovered of the presence on earth of humanoid cyborgs, that is,
cybernetic robots that look vaguely human but were constructed in a
different galaxy and transported here.
Dr. Trombenick, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: But there have
been urban legends about such things for years. There were numerous
internet reports that the Governor of California and Reverend Al Sharpton
are really cyborgs, but these proved baseless.
Commander Nishtikeit: Yes, we know all about that. But this time we have
absolute proof. It seems a bizarre looking space travel vehicle has
carried cyborgs into our galaxy and has deposited two or three hundred of
them right here on earth.
General Lemeshkeh, US Air Force: What form do these alien contraptions
take?
Commander Nishtikeit: That is the most bizarre part of the story. It
seems the space ship, which looks amazingly like a large flying bagel, had
earlier been beaming up earth images in order to design its cyborgs to
look like earthlings. Its tele-imaging processor was focused on several
neighborhoods on earth, just east of the East River. Yes, all those
people looking for signs of aliens in Roswell, New Mexico, had things
wrong. The aliens just wanted their cyborgs to look just like earthlings
and to be able to pass as humans, so they designed them to look exactly
like ultra-Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn.
Colonel Muttelmessig, US Navy: Are you serious? This is not something
out of an old Woody Allen movie?
Commander Nishtikeit: Absolutely serious! The aliens planted these
cyborgs on earth dressed like Chareidi ultra-Orthodox Jews, in black
coats, with beards and side curls and hats, and called them the Neturei
Karta. It seems they picked that name up from listening to broadcast of
an earthling in Brooklyn referring to someone as a Notorious Karger, but
they botched up the words.
Professor Shikker, Caltech: You mean those Neturei Karta people who have
been protesting in favor of destroying Israel and who even attended the
Holocaust Denial conference in Iran are in reality humanoid cyborgs placed
on earth as part of a devious plan of planetary infiltration?
Commander Nishtikeit: You have put your finger right on it! In a sense,
we all should have realized this much sooner. After all, only a group of
space aliens could have thought that Nazis with Payot, dressed outwardly
as religious Jews, could pull the wool over the eyes of actual humans.
Virtually no Jews on earth even recognize the Neturei Karta as Jews, and
until our discovery the Jews regarded them as some sort of pagan cult in
religious garb. The Neturei Karta members seem to know virtually nothing
about Judaism, other than two or three sentences from the Gemara, which
they cite obsessively out of context to prove that Israel must be
destroyed. A number of terrestrial Rabbis, including Israel.s Ashkenazi
Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, have initiated efforts to excommunicate members
of this pro-terror anti-Semitic Neturei Karta sect. Israeli Rabbis of the
"Save the Nation and Land" group have made a similar call. Former
Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a child Holocaust survivor who is
currently the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv declared, "It is something
completely insane. Is it conceivable that any Jew, for whatever reason,
would support a Holocaust denier in a generation when people with numbers
tattooed on their arms are still among us? It is an insanity that has no
justification and no explanation.. Even the Eida Hareidit, an
anti-Zionist Jerusalem-based council of Hassidic courts and other
religious groups which includes the Neturei Karta, was dramatically harsh
in its condemnation of the cyborgs who went to Iran to sit beneath the
swastikas.
Dr. Trombenick: Is that how you caught on to the alien scheme in the
first place?
Commander Nishtikeit: Well, that was part of it. Now that we know the
truth, we are kicking ourselves for not seeing all the indicators earlier,
showing that the Neturei Karta are really cyborgs from another galaxy.
The Jews on earth quickly realized these were not real Jews, but very few
figured out that they are not even mammals.
Capyain Shvindeldik: But something here is puzzling. If these space
aliens are so technically advanced, how could they have made such a
foolish error as constructing robots for placement on earth that look
outwardly like religious Jews yet behave like Nazis?
Professor Shtiklech, Princeton University: Maybe, in spite of their
ability to undertake inter-galactic travel, they are really not that
bright after all? After all, why would creatures having an electronic GPS
or Galactic Positioning System need to construct all those crop circles in
order to navigate around the Midwest?
Commander Nishtikeit: Well, that is one possibility. Another may be
that their instruments were damaged when the Flying Bagel entered earth's
atmosphere. We have some evidence that the original design for the
cyborgs was for creatures with 6 arms, but their spaceship commander
realized that these would be quickly recognized as frauds because they
would not know on which arms to put tefillin.
Major Shlumperdik, his deputy: They seem to have made other strategic
errors as well. They placed these cyborgs on earth with no visible means
of support. So once earthbound, the cyborgs ran to terrorist
organizations, neo-nazi groups, and Holocaust Denial conferences in order
to raise money to support themselves. One would think that beings from a
superior civilization would have figured out a better cover for their
robots.
Dr. Trombenick: But if they look so much like actual Orthodox Jews, how
can they be distinguished from the real thing?
Commander Nishtikeit: Well, there are several ways. First, when struck
upon the head with a large rolling pin, nothing seems to happen to them.
The pin just bounces off. Their heads seem to be constructed from some
special space alloy into which nothing can permeate. Second, when
looking closely at their scalps, one can see that they used to have three
antennae there, which were somehow surgically removed before the machines
were deposited on earth. In addition, their mid-sections seem to be built
with another special alien alloy. That is why they seem to be the only
ones on earth whose digestive systems are unaffected by eating large
portions of chulent.
General Lemeshkeh: So how should we earthlings communicate or interact
with them and try to make friends?
Major Shlumperdik: Well, there is always that rolling pin idea I
mentioned earlier. But other than that, the best strategy seems to be to
make little tinfoil antennae and glue them on to one's head or hat when
approaching these aliens. You know, to show them that we have no hostile
intentions and want to welcome them on our planet. But then we need to
make clicking space static sounds, demand to be taken to their leader, and
ask them to take us for a tour of their spaceship.
Commander Nishtikeit: I wonder if I can get one of them to teach me how
to program my DVD machine.
(assembly dismissed)
2. "Rabbi" claims Holocaust dead "deserved it"
Maurice Chittenden,
The Sunday Times,
December 17, 2006
A British rabbi who angered fellow Jews by speaking at a "Holocaust
denial" conference in Iran now says millions did die in gas chambers
but may have deserved it.
Ahron Cohen, an Orthodox Jew from Greater Manchester and a leading
member of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta movement, sparked new
controversy on his return from Tehran by suggesting that God would have
saved the victims of the Nazis if they had deserved to live.
Cohen, whose house in Salford was pelted with 1,000 eggs last year
because of his extremist views, told The Sunday Times: .There is no
question that there was a Holocaust and gas chambers. There are too
many eyewitnesses.
.However, our approach is that when one suffers, the one who
perpetrates the suffering is obviously guilty but he will never succeed
if the victim did not deserve it in one way or another.
.We have to look within to improve and try to better ourselves and
remove those characteristics or actions that may have been the cause of
the success of the Holocaust..
Cohen.s trip to Tehran . along with four American rabbis from the same
sect . was paid for by the Iranian foreign ministry, which organised
the conference entitled The Holocaust: A Global Vision. They were
warmly greeted by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, and had
two meetings with him.
Cohen ended his speech to the conference with a prayer .that the
underlying cause of strife and bloodshed in the Middle East, namely the
state known as Israel, be totally and peacefully dissolved..
The rabbi claimed .learned gentlemen from both sides of the fence. were
at the latest conference. They included David Duke, former .imperial
wizard. of the Ku Klux Klan.
Cohen said on his return: .President Ahmadinejad is not a man of war.
He is a man of peace. I have received criticism for meeting him and
attending the conference, but Jewish people are adopting an attitude of
criticism from an emotional point of view, not a logical or sensible
one.
.We know there was a Holocaust. We lived through it. I had relatives
who died in it . . . But in no way must the Holocaust be used to
further the aims of the Zionist concept..
Rabbi Yehuda Brodie, registrar of the Jewish Ecclesiastical Court for
Greater Manchester, said: .Rabbi Cohen has for a long time been
ostracised by the vast majority of Jews for associating with and thus
giving support and legitimacy to the enemies of Israel and the Jewish
nation.
.He represents an insignificant minority. His involvement is a stab in
the heart of the Jewish community and of all decent law-abiding
people..
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2508305,00.html
3.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=fed5e36a-b237-4a23-9c1b-29bac53
14de9
Sunday > December 17 > 2006
Neturei Karta: Israel's Jewish enemy
YONI GOLDSTEIN
National Post
4. Arabs in the Shoah:
http://hnn.us/articles/33041.html
The Nazi Roots of Uri Avnery
What may well be his very best piece yet came out Dec 13, 06 at http://www.nfc.co.il/Archive/003-D-19383-00.html?tag=11-16-47
I am trying to find someone to translate the entire piece but let me give you a synopsis here:
Against the outrage everyone is feeling about the Iranian Holocaust Denial and the growth of neo-nazism around the world, Dahan writes, one must be aware of the nazi roots of Post-Zionism and Israeli leftist anti-Semitism. Such roots go back as far as the 1940s, and then "Canaanite" movement in Israel in the 1950s. The Canaanite movement was a movement of "Post-Judaism" that argued that the new emerging "Israeli" would be a new nationality altogether, composed of ex-Jews and ex-Arabs, with no ties to the Jewish Diaspora, practicing no religion, Hebrew-speaking gentiles of pure Semitic "blood". The movement was popular in the 50s among many clueless Israeli "intellectuals." It never managed to recruit any Arab members.
The leading survivor of the early "Canaanite" movement today is Uri Avnery, a fanatic anti-Zionist and anti-Semite, whose Bash-Israel pro-Hamas articles appear everywhere one can find anti-Semitism, on the Right and the Left. Avnery is a regular on the neo-Stalinist pro-terror Counterpunch web magazine.
What is not well known is that:
Uri Avnery's original name was Helmut Osterman (Dahan at first writes Joseph Osterman but then corrects himself in the talkbacks), born in Germany, and among the two leading figures in the "Canaanites"; and
Avnery/Osterman was an admirer of Nazism.
In 1941, Avnery wrote a pro-Nazi article in the Paris journal "Shem", whose contents were later revealed by the Hebrew University Orientalist Prof. Yehoshua Porat in his book "Shelach V'At B'yado", page 182. Herr Avnery was also fond of using the concept of "Hebrew Blood" in a racial sense, in the same way as Hitler spoke of German Aryan Blood. In those days he was anti-Marxist, although today has no problem with associating himself with Stalinists. Back then he repeatedly expressed admiration for the great job Hitler was doing in remolding and renewing the German nation. Avnery was an open admirer of Nazi propagandist Alfred Rosenberg, adopted the latter's rhetoric, and repeatedly declared that he saw himself as the Hebrew Alfred Rosenberg (which, in a sense, he is). Avnery ran a tiny "journal" called the Struggle, an obvious imitation of the name "Mein Kampf". He ran his own one-man party, whose official salute was a Nazi raised hand.
Avnery in those days advocated creation of a Semitic "race" that would lead the Middle East to greatness when combined with a new Hebraic non-Jewish culture. As such, he advocated the end of the Jewish people as a national entity and expansion of the new race into its "Semitic Lebensraum" (yes, he used that Nazi concept!). He later wrote of his dream for a new and better Hitler emerging, an anti-Nazi Hitler who will lead the struggle for peace and will promote the Palestinian cause (well, at least he got THAT part right!).
Avnery then left for Israel/Palestine. In the 60s he ran a semi-pornographic magazine called "Haolam Hazeh," as the Israeli Larry Flynt. The magazine also did some scandal mongering. Avnery later ran for parliament and got elected by a sort of protest vote, the same sorts of people who otherwise might vote for Homer Simpson or Cher.
[In the 1960s Avnery wrote "Israel without Zionists", the Bible of Israeli self-hating leftism. Ever since, he has been the Reverend Moon of Israel's far-leftist "Post-Zionists" and he runs the small and violently anti-Israel "Gush Shalom" organization. He is friends with Mikey Lerner and appears in Tikkun. When his own mother died, she disinherited him and declared in her will that her son is a traitor.]
Dahan then goes on and discusses how Avnerism has become entrenched among the Hate-Israel far Leftists in Israeli academia, among the "New Historians." Among those he specifically names are Ilan Pappe (Haifa U), Moshe Zimmerman (Hebrew U, and Uri Ram (Ben Gurion U). He cites Prof. Shlomo Aharonson in describing the anti-Semitic ideological foundations of these pseudo-scholars and their need to trivialize and erase all memory of the Holocaust. He describes Ilan Pappe as a Jewish Holocaust Denier (his words), as are, by implication, all those with similar points of view.
The full article is far more detailed. As I say, if I can obtain an English translation, I will post it.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Hannuka among the Hellenists
Hannuka Among the Hellenists
by Steven Plaut
Of all the Jewish holidays, the one that I think best captures the
contemporary Jewish zeitgeist, the one that is the most relevant to the
current (and, if certain trends are not reversed, the last?) chapter in
Jewish history, is Hannuka.
Hannuka is, of course, the story of Jewish national liberation. It is the
story of the military victory of the few against the many, of the
champions of Judaism against the pagan barbarians.
But it is more than this. It is the saga of the heroic struggle of Jewish
survivalists (those one would today label "Zionists") against the
assimilationists and self-hating Hellenists of the second century BCE.
Hannuka is less a story about the battle against the Greeks than it is
about the battle against the predominant assimilationist paradigm at the
time among the Jews. It is about the battle against the anti-survivalists,
those who hated themselves for being Jews, those who seek to be
"progressive", "modern", and "in", through rejecting, abasing, disgracing
and degrading themselves and their people. The Hellenists who fought the
Hasmoneans were struggling against Jewish survival. Sound familiar?
In the United States, the main movement of Hellenistic assimilationism has
been the school of "Political Liberalism as Judaism", the pseudo-religion
that holds that all of Judaism can be reduced to the pursuit of this
week's liberal political fads. But the global avante garde of Jewish
self-hatred these days is the Israeli Left.
The Israeli Left is the main manifestation today of Jewish anti-Semitism.
It not only promotes "plans" and policies designed to end Israel's
existence, increasingly endorsing the one-state, bi-national Rwanda
solution to the "problem" of Israeli national existence, but it also
regularly attacks every symbol and concept of traditional Judaism.
You think I am exaggerating? Well just consider the Op-Ed a few years back
in the Israeli anti-Zionist daily Haaretz, penned by one Yehiam Shorek, a
"historian" who teaches at the Beit Berl College in Israel. Beit Berl is a
college run by the kibbutz movement.
The "historian" Shorek devoted his Haaretz column to proving that the
Maccabees were fascist and racist hooligans, bloodthirsty zealots, and
downright Likudniks. His column was entitled "Bloodthirsty Zealots". His
thesis was that Jews should stop celebrating Hannuka and the exploits of
the Maccabees, and should instead feel sympathy for the poor occupied and
mistreated Greeks and Hellenists.
His article was not a spoof.
The evil Maccabees were plotting to perpetrate population "transfer",
wrote Shorek, that most evil of all crimes in the "minds" of Israel's
fundamentalist Leftists. Population "transfer" is far worse than, say,
mass murdering 2000 Jews after signing with them a series of peace
accords, or turning the West Bank and Gaza over to barbarian fascists to
allow them to carry out such mass murders. Shorek is a member of that same
Fundamentalist Left that will not rest until all Jews have been expelled
from the West Bank and Gaza in an act of ethnic cleansing, and until no
Israeli armed forces are left behind to interfere with the terrorist
activities of the "Palestinians."
Matityahu, the father of Judah Maccabee and his brothers, was a lunatic,
wrote Shorek. He was a warmonger who dragged his country into an
unnecessary "war of choice", one that was not a legitimate "war of
self-defense". (Never mind that there is nothing at all in Judaism that
says Jews should refrain from conquering their lands unless it is part of
a war of self-defense.) The Maccabees were the aggressors, insisted
Shorek. And they suppressed the free speech of those who supported the
Greeks; how undemocratic of them!
Judah Maccabee was guilty of causing many families to lose their loved
ones by leading people to war, wrote Shorek, instead of pursuing some sort
of Hellenistic Oslo appeasement and capitulation, the sort the
"enlightened Left" seeks today to impose upon Israel. All Judah Maccabee
really wanted to do was to Occupy, Occupy, Occupy, insists Shorek. No
better than the West Bank settlers today! And not only that, but Judah and
his hooligans were Orthodox Jews, which every leftist knows must make them
primitive and barbaric; you know, unlike the enlightened Marxist
historians who live on nice kibbutzim or teach at the Beit Berl college.
(If you would like to tell the management of Beit Berl what you think they
should do with Shorek, write daliabk@beitberl.ac.il or Beit Berl College,
Doar Beit Berl, 44905, Israel; Telephone: 972-9-7476333; Fax:
972-9-7454104.)
Unfortunately, Shorek is hardly a lone phenomenon. Israel's anti-Jewish
leftists have been launching similar jihads against every other symbol of
Jewish valor. Masada was a cesspool of non-tolerant fanatics, according to
them. The Bible is a backward document full of fabrications. Schools
should stop teaching it altogether, they demand, and instead teach
something really useful, like the works of Palestinian "poets". Archeology
proves the Bible is nothing but lies and fantasy, they insist. One wag
labeled such people Pentateuch Deniers (intended as a play on "Holocaust
Deniers").
In Israel, the country's politics - particularly its cultural/educational
elite and its chattering classes - are now largely dominated by those
motivated by the desire for their country to commit national suicide. They
scorn themselves, their own country and their own people, the same way
that the Hellenized Jews did at the time of the Maccabees. Many endorse
boycotts of Israel by anti-Semites abroad. Like the Hellenized Jews, they
are convinced that traditionalist Jews are reactionary and primitive, and
that the greatest national priority should be renunciation of Jewish
peculiarity and the striving to assimilate amongst the cosmopolitan
progressive "Greeks" of the world. They are ashamed of their Jewishness
and convinced that the only path to peace is to renounce it. They insist
that a Seleucid "narrative" should replace the Jews' own reactionary
national one.
Israel's universities are by and large the Occupied Territories of these
Hellenists. The Israeli media is to almost the same extent. Hellenists
dominate much of the Israeli military and, somewhat incredibly, the
intelligence services. (It is doubtful the country could have undergone
the Oslo debacle had these intelligence services not operated as lap dogs
for the Beilinized Israeli Left.)
Hellenists have attempted to rewrite the Israeli school curriculum, to
teach Israeli Jewish children to despise themselves. Their message is that
Jews must feel ashamed, because they are mean, selfish, evil and immoral
people. Surely, there would be no anti-Semitism on the planet were not the
Jews such racist and insensitive people.
Their aim is to convince the Jews that the only way they may become
accepted in the world is to adapt to paganism, to stop seeking to exist as
a separate national entity, to commit national suicide. Moreover, their
campaign is aimed at challenging the moral existence of the Jews. They
realize this is the weakest chink in the armor of the Jews. If Jews can be
convinced that they are morally in the wrong, then no Maccabees will
emerge. The aim of the Jewish Hellenists is the delegitimization of the
Jews as a nation, discrediting the moral position of Jewish survivalism.
The message of the contemporary Hellenists is unambiguous: Those who wish
to purify the Temple, who seek pure oil for the Temple lamp, who wish to
evict the barbarians from Jerusalem, are the enemies of peace. The
Maccabees must be arrested for incitement. The Jews must provide Antiochus
with concessions and arms and funds and a Road Map. Under no circumstances
should the Jews seek to defend themselves militarily against the
Seleucids, for there is no military solution to the problem of Seleucid
aggression. If the barbarians murder the Jews, it is because the Jews are
evil, selfish people and because they have been too reluctant to abandon
their primitive survivalism.
If the Israeli anti-Jewish Left has its way, the Post-Hasmonean,
post-survivalist era will be upon us. Dip the latkes in lard.
The Notorious Cartoon (in Aramaic, that translates as Neturei Karta)
1.
Document: Neturei Karta paid off by Arafat
Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special
Studies (C.S.S)
www.intelligence.org.il/eng/sib/9_04/araf_ap17.htm
Allotments of large amounts of money to Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, the "foreign
minister" of the ultra-orthodox, virulently anti-Zionist Jewish sect known
as Neturei Karta. Two extraordinary payments of $25,000 ( January 13,
2002)
and $30,000 ( February 14, 2002), show that Arafat often gave payoffs to
Hirsch.
Arafat uses Rabbi Moshe Hirsch as a tool for propaganda
Among the hundreds of documents (captured from the Muqata during Operation
Defensive Shield) dealing with money allotted by Arafat, two were found
which related to large sums paid to Rabbi Hirsch for "expenses for
activities."
The payments in question, one after an other, were unusually
large ($25,000 on January 13, 2002, and $30,000 on February 14, 2002) and
may indicate that Arafat paid him monthly. It should be noted that the
amounts are significantly larger than those given to other cronies, which
varied between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars.
A meeting between Araf at and Rabbi Moshe Hirsch in Ramallah, December 17,
2001
+ For several years Arafat has had regular meetings with Rabbi Hirsch, who
is known as Neturei Karta's "foreign minister." For Arafat Hirsch serves
as
an indoctrination and propaganda tool which he uses to demonstrate the
cooperation between Palestinians and ultra-Orthodox Jews who hold the same
anti-Zionist world view. Thus his readiness to "invest" unusually large
sums
of money in him.
+ In 1988, when the establishment of a Palestinian state was declared in
Algeria, Palestinian sources stated that Moshe Hirsch would become a
minister in the government in the future state. In a Palestinian Authority
document dated 1995, Rabbi Hirsch was described as "the Minister of Jewish
Affairs." In a speech given by Arafat in the Ramallah-Al Bireh district on
January 28, 2002, he noted the depth of the historical ties between all
the
Semitic religions and gave as an example the fact that Rabbi Moshe Hirsch
was a member of the PLO's National Palestinian Council.
Document 1 - Translation
A payment of $25,000 to Rabbi Moshe Hirsch authorized by Arafat ( January
13, 2002)
[Palestinian seal]
The Palestinian Liberation Organization
Office of the President
Ramallah
January 13, 2002
Receipt
I received the sum of $25,000 (twenty-five thousand dollars) exactly for
expenses for the activities of Rabbi Hirsch. ["Expenses for activities"
was
added in Arafat's own hand, following the example of other documents.]
Done
in accordance with the instructions of [our] brother the president and
commander general.
Name and signature of the recipient
________________________________
[Written by Arafat:]
To be paid
[Signature of Arafat]
January 13, 2002
A payment of $25,000 to Rabbi Moshe Hirsch authorized by Arafat ( January
13, 2002)
Document 1 - Original
www.intelligence.org.il/eng/sib/9_04/araf_ap17.htm
Document 2 - Translation
A payment of $30,000 to Rabbi Moshe Hirsch authorized by Arafat ( February
14, 2002)
[Palestinian seal]
The Palestinian Liberation Organization
Office of the President
Ramallah
February 14, 2002
Receipt
I received the sum of $30,000 (thirty thousand dollars) exactly for
expenses for the activities of Rabbi Hirsch. [The Rabbi's name was written
in by hand.]
Done in accordance with the instructions of [our] brother the president
and
commander general.
Name and signature of the recipient
________________________________
[Written by Arafat:]
To be paid
[Signature of Arafat]
February 14, 2002
A payment of $30,000 to Rabbi Moshe Hirsch authorized by Arafat ( February
14, 2002)
Document 2 -- Original
www.intelligence.org.il/eng/sib/9_04/araf_ap17.htm
Document 3 - Translation
A note from Rabbi Moshe Hirsch addressed to "Abu 'Amar, may he have a long
and happy life, amen!" in which he requests a meeting and reminds Arafat
of
"something," apparently a reference to the receipt of money1
1. The letter was among the documents captured in Operation Defensive
Shield
The Palestine Liberation Organization
The Palestinian National Authority
Office of the President
To brother president Abu 'Amar
(Salutations)
Attached: [A letter for] his honor from Rabbi Hirsch
In re: Request for a meeting with his honor
Contents :
[Rabbi Hirsch] congratulates his honor on [the anniversary of] the
declaration of the founding of the independent state and [on] the month of
Ramadan, and also requests a meeting with his honor.
[Regards]
Gaza , November 18, 2001
The administration for political affairs
[Handwritten note in margin:]
The brothers in public relations
The brothers in the ceremonies (department)
The brothers in security
To be taken care of accordingly
[Three names appear,
two which are illegible and]
Dr. Ramzi
Note : Enclosed within the attached letter was a note written by Rabbi
Hirsch on November 15, 2001, addressed to "Abu 'Amar, may he have a long
and
happy life, amen." In it he congratulates Arafat and the Palestinian
people
on the first anniversary of the declaration of the Palestinian state and
asks to meet with him at the earliest possible opportunity [which in fact
took place on December 17, 2001, see the picture at the beginning of this
posting]. He also mentions something about a messenger who brought him
"something" from Arafat a short time before. It was apparently a reference
to payments brought to him by messenger.
Document 3 - Original (Attached letter)
www.intelligence.org.il/eng/sib/9_04/araf_ap17.htm
Document 4 - Original (Congratulatory note)
www.intelligence.org.il/eng/sib/9_04/araf_ap17.htm
Arafat addressed as "Abu 'Amar, may he have a long and happy life" in
Rabbi
Hirsch's note.
--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
2. http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/20115/Manifesto_For_Survival.html
Manifesto For Survival
By: Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D
3. Nazi Finkelstein to testify in Hamas Trial in Chicago:
Link:
http://marathonpundit.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_marathonpundit_archive.html#116606254745235095
4. Pandering to jihadniks at the University of Haifa:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/799729.html
5. Spoof news (from iconoclast.ca):
BIN LADEN AND SOROS FORM POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE
(Undisclosed Location, Pakistan) -- Osama Bin Laden and Hungarian
billionaire George Soros have announced the merger of MoveOn.org and
Al-Qaeda into a 527 political action committee to be called The Fund for a
Democracy-Free America.
Speaking at a joint press conference yesterday at Bin Laden's rustic
mountaintop retreat in western Pakistan, Soros praised the Al-Qaeda
leader's commitment to defeating the Republican Party in next month's
elections. Soros also stressed the shared values that unite MoveOn.org and
Al-Qaeda. "We both hate America and Israel and all agents of the
International Zionist Conspiracy, such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, the
Duke of Wellington, Grandma Moses and Dwight Eisenhower," said Soros. "So
it made sense to merge our operations and eliminate duplication of effort.
From now on the Democrat Party, Islamofascists and anti-Semites will speak
with one, united voice."
Bin Laden added his agreement with Soros' comments. "Right now, terrorist
branding is the name of the game. It's a win-win situation for all
involved and allows us to leverage our terrorist quotient by a factor of
four. We're currently at a place we want to be synergy-wise."
Details of the Al-Qaeda/MoveOn.org merger have not been completely
revealed. The Iconoclast has learned, however, that all members of
Al-Qaeda will receive 1.85 shares of stock in Soros' "Death to the Zionist
Entity and Her American Lapdogs" hedge fund for each year of membership in
Al-Qaeda. Members of MoveOn.org will receive three wives, two cows and an
option on a camel in exchange for MoveOn.org junk bonds.
William Grim for Iconoclast
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Come to Ipswich!
1. Cordial invitation to all members of the "Women in Black", the
group of communist activists seeking Israel's destruction:
Dear Sisters:
We would like to invite you all to a gathering on behalf of peace and
Palestinian liberation to be held in Ipswich, England. All expenses paid.
Dress casual.
. The Central Committee
.
2. Over the past week, Israel's Minister of Education, Yuli Tamir,
has been promoting a new idea. Tamir, a Beilinite Labor Party leader and
some-time professor at Tel Aviv University, was a founding member of
"Peace Now" (renamed: "peace now and thousands of Kassam and katyusha
rockets right after that").
Tamir wants all textbooks used in Israeli public schools to contain maps
in which Israel's borders are shown as the pre-1967 Green Line, the
"border" described by Abba Eban as Israel's Auschwitz Border. Tamir of
course wants Israel to withdraw to those borders so that it will be easier
for the rockets to land in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
So, being a helpful sort of fella, I wanted to add my own
counter-proposal. Instead of the Green Line, how about if all Israeli
school textbooks show the Biblical borders of Israel, stretching from the
"river of Egypt to the Euphrates", with all of the Bashan and southern
Lebanon in Jewish hands. Perhaps this could offset some of the
brainwashing and North Korean style political indoctrination already
imposed on the school curriculum of Israel's hapless children by the Left.
3. Anyone hear the rumor that next year the Iranians plan to hold their
annual Holocaust Denial conference at Ben Gurion University?
4. When it comes to economic damages to Israel, which is the worst
terrorist organization assaulting the country? If you answered the Hamas,
the Islamic Jihad, the Bovine in Black, or the Hizbollah, you are wrong?
None of the above!
The correct answer is of course the Histadrut, the largest organized crime
family in Israel. A few days back the Histadrut shut down the country
altogether, including the airports.
And what was the cause of the strike?
Well, we need some background here. For decades Israel's local
authorities (municipalities) have been allowed to get away with fiscal
murder. They dish out tax exemptions like hemp at a Tikkun conference.
They hire oodles of public servants, spend money like it is going out of
style, and run up enormous deficits. And then they present the taxpayer,
via the Treasury, with the bills for their bottomless deficits. If the
Treasury balks, they hold mass protests featuring various sad-looking
civil servants who have not been paid their salaries. The Treasury
usually caves in.
Among the worst Deficit-on-Purpose-and-then-Sock-it-to-the-Taxpayer
municipalities are many Arab towns, although the problem is hardly
restricted to them.
Under Netanyahu as Minister of Finance, a number of senior Treasury
officials were appointed who actually cared about the economy and
understood something about economics. The Left will never forgive
Netanyahu for that. Some of these have been refusing to underwrite the
open checks to the municipalities that the latter have grown accustomed to
receiving. So the municipalities paid a pilgrimage visit to the
Histadrut, the trade union federation that had been run by Amir Peretz
before he found a more amusing toy as Minister of Defense.
The Histadrut backs the entitlement of municipalities to run endless
deficits and never to exercise fiscal self-control. SO they called a
general strike to back that entitlement and are threatening new ones.
Meanwhile, very few Israelis have the slightest idea what the whole
business is about. They simply see some elderly women and men sobbing
that they did not get paid for 3 months by their municipality employer
cause of the insensitive and selfish people over in the Treasury, and they
respond like the audience at the Rikki Lake show. Haaretz today reports
in a poll that 73% of Israelis think the Histadrut strikes for the munis
are justified. So it is hardly surprising that many of these same people
can be convinced that Oslo is a peace process.
5. From Tom Gross:
"INVENTING INFORMATION"
Kenneth Stein, a professor of history at Emory University, who has been
associated with Jimmy Carter's Carter Center from its founding (he was
its first executive director, and its first academic fellow) resigned
yesterday saying he was "ashamed" by Carter for putting his name to a
book "based on unvarnished analyses, factual errors, copied materials,
superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments."
Prof. Stein continued "Aside from the one-sided nature of the book,
meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was
the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show
little similarity to points claimed in the book. Being a former President
does not give one a unique privilege to invent information."
6. CARTER IS GUILTY OF MISLEADING THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION
The world according to Carter
By Alan Dershowitz
The New York Sun
November 22, 2006
www.nysun.com/article/43958
7. http://www.slate.com/id/2155277/nav/tap2/
readme
It's Not Apartheid
Jimmy Carter's moronic new book about Israel.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Monday, Dec. 11, 2006, at 9:03 PM ET
In the six decades since the founding of Israel, there have been about one
and a
half new ideas for solving the most intractable problem on the map of the
world.
In fact, ever since Britain's Balfour Declaration (1917) made incompatible
promises to Jews and Arabs struggling over the same tiny plot of land,
most
would-be solutions have counted on an outbreak of good will among the
Middle
East's warring parties. This tradition continues in the Iraq Study Group
report,
which declares, "There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the
United
States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts," as a small
warm-up
for tackling the problem of Iraq.
What a good idea! And then we'll cure cancer, to pave the way for
health-care
reform. Why, of course all of humanity should put down its weapons and
learn to
live together in harmony and siblinghood-most especially in the Holy Land,
birthplace of three great religions (so far). In fact, it is downright
inexplicable that peace and good will have not broken out spontaneously in
the
Middle East, even though this has never happened anywhere else, either.
This is what special commissions are for, even though this agreeably
tough-sounding demand for comprehension directly conflicts with the half
of an
idea mentioned above, which went by the name of "Road Map." It was only
half of
an idea-let's call it a notion-because this notion still depended on
something
close to a change in human nature. But the road map made this seem more
plausible. The notion was that abandoning the melodrama of a comprehensive
settlement and settling for a series of smaller steps over many years
might help
the parties to develop mutual trust. Or at least this was a better bet
than
expecting each side to make a leap of faith into the arms of the other.
Meanwhile, the one full new idea in the Israel-Arab conflict came from
Ariel
Sharon, of all people. This oafish former general who supervised the Sabra
and
Shatila massacres of Palestinians in Lebanon back in 1982, as prime
minister
more recently took up the philosophy of that Robert Frost poem: "Good
fences
make good neighbors." Rather than wait a few million years for evolution
to
purge Israelis and Arabs of their animosity, just keep them apart with a
fence
or a wall and related rules. Yes, of course, the walls and the rules
favored
Israel and were a far greater burden on Arabs than Israelis. But that is
the
kind of thing you can negotiate.
Comes now former President Jimmy Carter with a new best-selling book,
Palestine:
Peace Not Apartheid. It's not clear what he means by using the loaded word
apartheid, since the book makes no attempt to explain it, but the only
reasonable interpretation is that Carter is comparing Israel to the former
white
racist government of South Africa. That is a foolish and unfair
comparison,
unworthy of the man who won-and deserved-the Nobel Peace Prize for
bringing
Israel and Egypt together in the Camp David Accords, and who has lent such
luster to the imaginary office of former president.
I mean, what's the parallel? Apartheid had a philosophical component and a
practical one, both quite bizarre. Philosophically, it was committed to
the
notion of racial superiority. No doubt many Israelis have racist attitudes
toward Arabs, but the official philosophy of the government is quite the
opposite, and sincere efforts are made to, for example, instill
humanitarian and
egalitarian attitudes in children. That is not true, of course, in Arab
countries, where hatred of Jews is a standard part of the curriculum.
The practical component of apartheid involved the creation of phony
nations
called "Bantustans." Black South Africans would be stripped of their
citizenship
and assigned to far-away Bantustans, where often they had never before set
foot.
The goal was a racially pure white South Africa, though the contradiction
with
the need for black labor was never resolved. Here might be a parallel with
Israel, which needs the labor of the Arabs it is currently trying to keep
out.
But in other ways, the implied comparison is backward. To start, no one
has yet
thought to accuse Israel of creating a phony country in finally
acquiescing to
the creation of a Palestinian state. Palestine is no Bantustan. Or if it
is, it
is the creation of Arabs, not Jews. Furthermore, Israel has always had
Arab
citizens. They are Arabs who were living in what became Israel prior to
1948 and
who didn't leave. They are a bit on display, like black conservatives at a
Republican convention. Israel is fortunate that, for whatever reason, most
of
their compatriots fled. No doubt they suffer discrimination. Nevertheless,
they
are citizens with the right to vote and so on. There used to be Jews
living in
Arab nations, but they also fled in 1948 and subsequent years-in numbers
roughly
equivalent to the Arabs who fled Israel. Now there are virtually no Jews
in Arab
countries-even in a moderate Arab country like Jordan. How many Jews do
you
think there will be in the new state of Palestine, when its flag flies
over a
sovereign nation?
And the most tragic difference: Apartheid ended peacefully. This is
largely
thanks to Nelson Mandela, who turned out to be miraculously forgiving. If
Israel
is white South Africa and the Palestinians are supposed to be the blacks,
where
is their Mandela?
Michael Kinsley is American editor of Guardian Unlimited (London) and the
founding editor of Slate.
9. Funding Hamas:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=25976
10. Is Neve Gordon's guru in Tehran?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=25974
Is Norman Finkelstein in Tehran?
By Alan M. Dershowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com December 13, 2006
A neo-Nazi website has published the schedule of speakers at the Iranian
Holocaust denial conference:
Prominent among the speakers in the schedule is assistant professor Norman
Finkelstein of DePaul University. His name appears along with Professor
David Duke of the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management in Ukraine
and other assorted nuts, neo-Nazis, Islamo-fascists, and America- and
Israel-bashers.
It is unclear whether Finkelstein actually attended the conference, since
the identity of many of the attendees has been kept secret, and the media
office at DePaul says it doesn.t know. But Finkelstein certainly fits
comfortably into the hate club, since he has allied himself closely with
the Holocaust denial movement by trivializing the suffering of its victims
and denying that many of them were victims at all. It would be natural
for the rulers of Iran to have invited this Jew-hater to their hatefest.
I don.t know if they did, or if Finkelstein accepted any such invitation.
But the burden is now on him to explain why his name appears in the
schedule and to produce all correspondence with the sponsors of the
conference. It should make interesting reading.
Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard. His most recent book is
Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways (Norton, 2006).
See also http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=25959
11. Jews and genes - from the Wall St Journal:
December 8, 2006
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
Blood Brothers
By EVAN R. GOLDSTEIN
December 8, 2006; Page W15
It all began with a "serendipitous feeling" that hit him while he stumbled
through Auschwitz in 2000. Like most visitors John Haedrich was deeply
moved by what he saw. But this was something different. A kind of
epiphany. Though raised a Christian, for reasons Mr. Haedrich cannot quite
articulate, he began to suspect that he might be Jewish. Gradually, this
hunch became too vital to ignore. He decided to investigate his origins by
taking a DNA test, the results of which confirmed that he had, according
to the test conclusion, "rather populous pedigree of Ashkenazi Polish
Jews."
Though he readily admits to not having the "traditional paperwork," Mr.
Haedrich petitioned the Israeli government for citizenship under the Law
of Return, by which any Jew with at least a single, confirmed Jewish
grandparent can move to Israel. His appeal was denied on grounds that DNA
does not prove Jewish identity. Undeterred, the 44-year-old nursing-home
director from Glendale, Calif., took out advertisements in the Israeli and
American Jewish press pleading his case and established the Jewish by DNA
Research Institute. He hopes the institute will help others who want to
establish their Jewish identity on biological grounds. As "a matter of
principle," Mr. Haedrich will not convert to Judaism because, he insists,
he is already Jewish.
But is he? What exactly does it mean to be a "Jew by DNA"? Is it even
possible to define Jewishness biologically? And after Nazism perverted
similar notions about heredity and race to justify ghastly, mechanized
slaughter, is there something indecent about even posing the question?
"There is no biological marker that is unique to Jewish people," Raphael
Falk, professor emeritus of genetics at Hebrew University tells me. "There
are no markers that can define an individual, man or woman, as a Jew or as
belonging to any other community." A pioneer in the field, Mr. Falk is the
author of a fascinating new book, "Zionism and the Biology of the Jews"
(currently available only in Israel), in which he explores the science,
philosophy and history of various biological theories that have clung to
the Jewish people.
One of Mr. Falk's most provocative themes is how many leading Jewish
figures in the early 20th century embraced the language of race as a tool
of positive self-definition. This was an era when ideas about blood and
heredity enjoyed great intellectual prestige at the leading centers of
scientific inquiry. Both Jews and anti-Semites adopted these terms of
debate. At a press conference at the Hebrew University in 1934 renowned
Hebrew poet Haim Nahman Bialik declared: "I too, like Hitler, believe in
the power of the blood idea."
Many Zionists heralded these biological conceptions of race as objective
evidence of organic peoplehood. And both anti-Semites and Jews subscribed
to the myth of the degenerate Diaspora Jew as having, in the words of one
prominent Russian Zionist, "weak muscles, badly developed respiratory
organs, weak bone structure, slight physical strength, little capacity for
labor." While the anti-Semites warned that the disease-prone Jew presented
a grave threat to the racial vigor of those they lived among, the Jewish
nationalists insisted that a healthy "new Jew" could only be forged in a
Jewish state.
It is critical that these statements be placed in the proper historical
context. Eugenics did not then bear the taint of Nazism. In fact, it was a
"quite respectable scientific branch," according to Mr. Falk -- not least
in America.
In our own time the increasingly widespread use of genetic testing raises
a host of difficult questions about what it means to be a Jew. It seems
that not a day goes by without word of some newly discovered genetic
explanation for who we are physically, morally and spiritually. And it is
now conventional medical wisdom that certain diseases, like breast cancer,
are more common among the Ashkenazim. Some scientists even make the
dubious claim that this imbues Ashkenazi Jews with an inherited advantage
in intelligence.
But these genetic circumstances reflect not Judaism but rather the
relatively isolated history of the people who descend from Ashkenaz -- the
medieval Hebrew name for the vast lands of Central and Eastern Europe from
which Jews were exiled into the Pale of Settlement. The genomes of other
Jews, for instance the Sephardim who originate from the Iberian Peninsula,
reflect their different histories.
As it did to the early Zionists, the reasserting of Jewish distinctiveness
as biological fact may hold some appeal to those who fret about Jewish
continuity. A recent essay in Commentary magazine laments precisely this
erosion of "ethnic cohesiveness." The authors, Steve Cohen and Jack
Wertheimer, despair that American Jews, particularly younger ones, are
forsaking their "tribal" bonds. "American Jews are now regarded, and
appear largely to regard themselves, as part of the undifferentiated mass
of American whites," they write, "not as a distinctive group...."
But there is great peril in such a desire. If we accept that Jewishness
can be transmitted by DNA it would impose upon us a reductive, clinical
Judaism of molecules and genes, rather than texts and arguments.
Mr. Goldstein is contributing editor at Moment magazine.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116555019920944369.html
