Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Oxford U. holds a "Debate" on Whether Israel should be Destroyed
1. Tutu as a Tumtum (moron, although in the Talmud TUMTUM means something
else)
Tutu: man of peace?
by Edward Alexander --- Special to The Daily
05/06/2002
For 81 years, this university has awarded no honorary degrees. Breaking
with tradition to honor Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu dishonors the
University. Administration spokesmen have praised Tutu as "a man of
peace." Is he?
In an April speech in Boston, Tutu praised his own courage in repeating
the usual slanders against the state of Israel: "People are scared in
[the United States] to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is
powerful -- very powerful. Well, so what? Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin
... were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust."
Beautiful and touching words -- but familiar ones to those conversant
with Tutu's long record of hostility to Jews, Judaism and Israel. In
1989, Tutu stood before the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem to the
millions of dead Jews murdered by Hitler and prayed for the murderers
while haranguing the descendants of their victims. "We pray for those
who made it happen, help us to forgive them and help us so that we in
our turn will not make others suffer." This, he said, was his "message"
to the Israeli children and grandchildren of the dead.
Moral obtuseness, mean spite and monstrous arrogance don't produce sound
ethics and theology. Members of an injured group are not licensed, even
by the most unctuous of preachers, to forgive on behalf of the whole
group. Forgiveness issues from God alone. The forgiveness Tutu offers
the Nazis is truly pitiless because it forgets the victims, blurs over
suffering and drowns the past.
Tutu has always been far less moved by the actuality of what the Nazis
did ("the gas chambers," he once wrote, "made for a neater death" than
apartheid resettlement policies) than by the potentiality of what, in
his jaundiced view, Israelis might do. His speeches returned obsessively
to licentious equations between South Africa's system and Jewish
practices, past and present. "The Jews," he stated in 1984, "thought
they had a monopoly on God" and "Jesus was angry that they could shut
out other human beings." He has repeatedly declared that "whether Jews
like it or not, they are a peculiar people. They can't ever hope to be
judged by the same standards which are used for other people."
Certainly Tutu has never judged Jews by the standards he uses for other
peoples. That is why he now thinks they should passively allow
themselves to be blown up at holy places like Passover seders or secular
ones like pizza parlors and not strike back at their murderers. His
double standard may explain an otherwise mysterious feature of his
anti-Israel rhetoric. He once asked, "How it was possible that the Jews,
who had suffered so much persecution, could oppress other people?" In
other words, Jews, according to Tutu, have a duty to behave particularly
well because they have suffered so much persecution. The mad corollary
of this proposition is that descendants of those who have not been
persecuted do not have a special duty to behave well, and descendants of
the persecutors themselves can be excused altogether for behavior it
would be hard to excuse in other people.
This perverted logic may explain not only Tutu's decision to pray for
Nazis while berating descendants of their victims but also his
passionate attachment to Yasser Arafat, who is both the biological
relative and spiritual descendant of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Arab
leader who assisted Hitler in the destruction of European Jewry.
Rabbinical tradition, however, provides a simpler explanation of Tutu's
eagerness to "forgive" the Nazis while excoriating the descendants of
their victims: "Whoever is merciful to the cruel," the rabbis warn,
"will end by being indifferent to the innocent."
Edward Alexander is a UW professor of English.
2. For those concerned about the religious roots of anti-Semitism, do not
overlook the possibilities of atheism in generating it:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3457718,00.html
3. Bleeding hearts have a new cause. You know, the same bleeding hearts
who are never bothered when Arabs mass murder Jews:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1191257206620&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
4. Amanpour Gives Equal Time to Christian and Jewish "Terrorism" :
God's Jewish Warriors . CNN's Abomination
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=3&x_outlet=14&x_article=1354
5. Free speech on campus, huh?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=AA2468F8-0FB9-451C-A5D0-8CDE85533972
6. Dividing Jerusalem?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=876D651D-4A2B-4CF9-A821-451D2AD15374
7. Kibbutzniks vote for capitalism with their feet:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/910301.html
8. From the British blogosphere:
October 09, 2007
The Oxford Union prides itself on being "the world's most
prestigious debating society." On October 23, 2007 its Middle
East Debate will examine the motion: "This House Believes
that One State is the Only Solution to the Israel-Palestine
Conflict."
Speaking in favour will be Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe and Ghada
Karmi. Opposing them will be Peter Tatchell, Lord Trimble and
Norman Finkelstein.
Let's take a look at the ghastly bunch on the proposition
side.
- Avi Shlaim consorts with Paul Eisen and Daniel McGowan.
Eisen has said: "I do not say that there were no gas chambers
at Auschwitz, but I have looked at both sides and the weight
of the evidence to suggest there weren't any is compelling."
He sends out emails headlined, "Why I Support Ernst Zundel."
Daniel McGowan writes articles published on Ernst Zundel's
official website asking: "Is it really `beyond international
discourse' to question the efficacy and the forensic evidence
of homicidal gas chambers?"
- Ilan Pappe has this to say about Hamas: "I support Hamas in
its resistance against the Israeli occupation though I
disagree with their political ideology." Well, that's good of
him.
- Ghada Karmi has publicly described Jewish immigrants to
Israel as "aliens", "'complicated', 'very difficult to deal
with', and they were bringing 'their miserable lives' with
them"
As Alexandra Simonon reports: "She said quite plainly that
'when you see a Jew', he or she is likely to be a Zionist
anyway, so one should not bother with all that nonsense about
the difference between Judaism and Zionism." So much for only
attacking "Zionists."
But that's just the proposing side. Surely the Oxford Union,
that bastion of fair and open debate, will have chosen some
unflinching supporters of Israel to balance this motley
collection of bigots and fanatics? Of course not! If one side
includes virulent enemies of Israel and supporters of
terrorists and anti-Semites, then so must the other.
That's why the opposing side includes the notorious Norman
Finkelstein. In his book The Holocaust Industry he referred
to Jewish leaders as "caricatures straight from the pages of
Der Stuermer and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion." On his
website, he called Deborah Lipstadt the "Elsie the Cow Chair
in Judeo-Yenta Studies." He also referred to the Nobel Peace
Prize winner and Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel as the
"resident clown of the Holocaust circus." Is it any wonder
that Zundel's wife praised Finkelstein's book and referred to
him as "a Jewish David Irving"?
Holocaust historian Daniel Goldhagen - another target of
Finkelstein's insults - writes that he has made a career out
of such tactics as likening Jewish supporters of Israel to
the Gestapo. If Finkelstein is speaking against the motion,
would it be uncharitable of me to suggest that this debate is
a cynical charade?
But suppose you're a paying member of the Oxford Union and
you decide to skip this "debate." You can always go and hear
David Icke on November 7. This is the man who believes that
"the Rothschild cabal" are seeking "global control" - the
(Chamishite) man who writes:
I strongly believe that a small Jewish clique
which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people
worked with non-Jews to create the First World
War, the Russian Revolution, and the Second World
War. This Jewish/non-Jewish Elite used the First
World War to secure the Balfour Declaration and
the principle of the Jewish State of Israel (for
which, given the genetic history of most Jewish
people, there is absolutely no justification on
historical grounds or any other). They then
dominated the Versailles Peace Conference and
created the circumstances which made the Second
World War inevitable. They financed Hitler to
power in 1933 and made the funds available for
his rearmament.
Oxford students do have other choices. They can go and hear
Al Sharpton on November 8. As the author Edward Alexander
reminds us
(http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2001999939_alexander09.html):
[Al Sharpton] incited anti-Jewish violence in the
Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in 1991 and in
Harlem in 1995. In the latter incident he
encouraged the explicitly anti-Semitic boycott
and picketing of a Jewish-owned store named
"Freddy's." Eight employees of the store were
killed in a fire started by one of Sharpton's
followers.
The Oxford Union - "The World's Most Prestigious Debating
Society" indeed.
Posted by david t at October 9, 2007 06:09 PM
http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2007/10/09/lets_have_a_mass_debate.php
9. Britain today is holding a debate over a Justice Ministry proposal to
criminalize "hate speech" against homosexuality. So someone who says, "I
think homosexuality is a form of behavior disorder" or "I think homosexual
acs are immoral" would be guilty of a crime. The Bible would be hate
literature and possibly banned as such.
You realize what this means?
If passed, anti-Semitism will be the only remaining form of hate speech
that is not a hate crime or illegal in the UK or even or not even frowned
upon at Oxford, on the BBC and in the New Statesman!!!
