Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Hannnuka and the Struggle Against National Suicide
Of all the Jewish holidays, the one that best captures the contemporary
Jewish Zeitgeist, the one that is the most relevant to the current and
possibly 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 more than this, it is the saga of the
heroic struggle of Jewish survivalists (those you would today label
"Zionists") against the assimilationists and self-hating Hellenists of the
second century BCE. Hannuka is less about the battle against the Greeks
than it is about the battle against the predominant assimilationist
paradigm at the time amongst the Jews. It is about the battle against the
anti-survivalists, those who hated themselves for being Jews and so sought
to be progressive and modern and "in", by rejecting and disgracing and
degrading themselves in their struggling AGAINST Jewish survival. In other
words, it is about the battle against the Oslo of Hannuka Past.
At this stage in Jewish history a convergence has occurred between the
main Diaspora Jewish community (in the US) and the Jews of Israel. It is a
convergence towards self-destruction, self-abasement, and
self-elimination. While it takes different forms, in both cases it is
about Jews who are embarrassed because of their being associated and
identified as such by the barbarians. They are ashamed of themselves and
seek to gain acceptance in the Greek world by overtaking the anti-Semites
in attacking their own people. They grovel before the enemies of their
people. They demand that their people abandon their archaic and backward
religion and traditions and values.
History books will recall the second half of the twentieth century as that
era in which the Jews lost their will to survive, first in the Diaspora
and now in Israel. Whether or not Jewish history ends in the next decade
or so depends on the unlikely proposition that the small numbers of
Maccabees still fighting against Hellenism will triumph. They appear to be
losing this war. It is not 200 BCE. One should not take a miraculous
intervention for granted.
In the United States, the dominance of the Jewish Hellenists is in the
form of the assimilationist liberals. These are the Jewish leaders and
organizations who dominate the non-Orthodox segments of American Jewry and
promote the view that all of Judaism can be reduced to the pursuing of
this week's liberal political fads. They practice the "Political
Liberalism as Judaism" form of Hellenistic paganism. They reduce all of
Jewishness to support for the "progressive" agenda of the left wing of the
Democrat Party. They even endorse all forms of politically correct
wackiness - from radical feminism to extremist environmentalism to
affirmative apartheid. They will only support Israel as long as it is
pursuing self-destruction, lest it embarrass them in front of their
progressive gentile friends by defending itself.
In Israel, the country's politics - particularly its cultural/educational
elite and its chattering classes - are now almost entirely dominated by
those motivated by the desire to commit national suicide. These are people
who are ashamed of their country and of their own people. They scorn
themselves the same way that the Hellenized Jews did at the time of the
Maccabees. Like the Hellenized Jews, they are convinced that
traditionalist Jews are reactionary and primitive, and that the greatest
priority is renunciation of Jewish peculiarity and the striving to
assimilate amongst the cosmopolitan progressive Greeks of the world. They
insist that a Seleucid "narrative" should replace their own reactionary
provincial national one.
Israel's universities are by and large the Occupied Territories of these
Jewish Hellenists. The Israeli media is to almost the same extent. Jewish
Hellenists dominate the Israeli military and intelligence services.
Hellenists are rewriting the school curriculum to teach Israeli Jewish
children to despise themselves. Their message is that Jews must feel
ashamed because they are evil and immoral people, while the truly superior
sensitive people are the barbarian anti-Semites. The aim of these
Hellenists is to convince the Jews that the only way they may become
accepted in the world is to conform to paganism, to turn the Temple Mount
over to the barbarians, to stop seeking to exist as an archaic 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 arise. The aim of the Hellenists is the delegitimization of
the Jews as a nation, discrediting the moral position of Jewish
survivalism. They insist over and over that Jews are evil, immoral,
selfish people, who must cease to exist as Jews if they want peace. 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. Under no circumstances should the
Jews seek to defend themselves from the Seleucids, for there is no
military solution to the terror. If the barbarians murder the Jews it is
because the Jews are selfish people and because they have been too
reluctant to abandon their primitive survivalism.
The era of national separateness is over; all must join in the great
Hellenistic politically correct pagan enterprise. The Post-Hasmonean era
is upon us. Dip the latkes in lard.
See also
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546804118&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
2.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/1#2453
Ze'evi Murderer in Jail - What about his Protectors?
25 Kislev 5768, 05 December 07 10:35
by "Back to Sanity" - Arutz 7 Analysts
(IsraelNN.com) At long last the Palestinian assassin of an Israeli cabinet
minister Rehavam Ze'evi has been formally sentenced. Haaretz reports:
"Hamdi Qur'an was convicted of the 2001 murder and other terror
activities. He was taken into Israeli custody in 2006, after international
monitors left the Jericho Prison, where he had been held."
But there is more justice that needs to be done. What about the
"solidarity protesters" who served as human shield for Hamdi Qur'an when
he was being hidden inside the Palestinian Authority offices in Ramallah
by Yassir Arafat? Back when the IDF was attempting to apprehend the
murderer?
Just to remind you, groups of anti-Israel "solidarity protesters"
illegally entered Ramallah in violation of Israeli law and army
regulations in order to prevent IDF forces from apprehending terrorists
being hidden at the time by the PLO in violation of its Oslo obligations.
Among the terrorists being so protected was Hamdi Qur'an.. The "human
shields" protecting him included some Israeli far-leftists.
Among those who illegally interfered with Israel's efforts to apprehend
Qur'an was Neve Gordon, a radically anti-Israel far-leftist lecturer in
political science at Ben Gurion University. Gordon may be best known for
having his anti-Israel articles published on the Neo-Nazi web site of
Ernst Zundel, for his campaign of defamation against his own army
commander, and for his recent shilling on behalf of Neo-Nazi Norman
Finkelstein. Gordon joined anti-Semites and jihadniks in a conference
supporting Finkelstein, where he proliferated anti-Semitic
misrepresentation of the "Zionist Lobby" as an anti-democratic bogeyman.
To right - Gordon as human shield for Qur'an:
Gordon was arrested for his illegal interference with IDf anti-terror
operations. Prof. Alan Dershowitz last year described Gordon thus: "It is
my opinion that Neve Gordon has gotten into bed with neo-Nazis, Holocaust
justice deniers, and anti-Semites. He is a despicable example of a
self-hating Jew and a self-hating Israeli." Officials at Ben Gurion
University have long backed Gordon's anti-Israel and
Solidarity-with-Terrorists activism.
We are wondering - is there room in Qur'an's cell for those who illegally
served as his human shield?
3. David Irving is Promoted and Defended on the "ALEF" Chat List of
Anti-Zionists operating under the auspices of the University of Haifa:
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 17:11:57 -0800
From: tonygreenstein@yahoo.com
To: alef@list.haifa.ac.il
Subject: [alef] David Irving on Strangling Free Speech in Germany &
Austria
Hmm. Yes Irving was respected by the right as a historian and although
I've never read his books it is true that he was considered a capable
historian, albeit one with maverick right-wing views. Churchill's War was
by all accounts his most notable effort. However as the Irving trial
demonstrated, he deliberately mangled and distorted and even falsified his
sources in such as way as to propose that there were never any gas
chambers in Auschwitz and that Hitler was the Jews best friend!
Irving's thesis that Hitler was kept in ignorance of the Final Solution
until at least mid-1933 is not tenable given everything we know about him,
viz. he was the most 'radical' of all the Nazi leaders.
I don't support the criminalisation of those who deny the Nazi holocaust,
though it is understandable that Germany and Austria take that view.
However I can hardly consider it a 'sad day'. There are far, far greater
crimes against liberty than those taken against Nazi apologists and
holocaust deniers, who I think should be treated much like the advocates
of a flat earth. The deportation of thousands of asylum seekers from
European countries back to the countries where we have installed our
dictators seems to me a far greater infringement of liberty. But then
that's something that Irving & co. also support.
Tony G
>>I am not fond of David Irving. If anything, I lament that he was once a
respected historian who has seemingly gone off the deep end. On the other
hand, it is a sad day in Europe when such a man, for whatever self-serving
reasons he may have, is out there defending freedom of speech and the
dangers of limiting it while "liberals" are eager to redefine freedom of
speech as "incitement" and restrict demonstrations.--Miriam
David Irving on Strangling Free Speech in Germany & Austria
http://www.stormfro nt.org/forum/ showthread. php?t=442084
By David Irving / Dec. 2007
The German Government has quietly admitted that over the last twelve
months it prosecuted over 18,000 Germans for offences of "right-wing
extremism," of which only a few hundred involved actual violence: i.e.
they prosecuted over seventeen thousand thought-crimes -- people
unwitting displaying the old swastika emblem, or even worse, National
Socialist ideas, and perhaps even "denying the H."
As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung recently pointed out in a courageous
editorial, most of these new criminal records have been
sprung on ordinary citizens blissfully unaware of the criminality of their
actions and thoughts, because the tame German media are too
cowardly to report any of these cases--even the major trials like those
involving the revisionists Ernst Zundel and Germar Rudolf.
These absurd laws themselves are protected by fresh layers of other, even
more absurd, laws making it impossible even for court-appointed
attorneys to provide an adequate and conscientious defence to those
accused under the thought-crime laws. Any German or Austrian lawyer
who does, can be-and frequently is-himself ordered arrested by the judge,
for having associated himself with these criminal thoughts and
deeds. Zundel's court-appointed defence attorney Sylvia Stolz made herself
unpopular with the prosecutor for "hampering the
prosecution, " and is now to be prosecuted for so hampering. Go figure, as
the Americans say.
More than once my chosen Austrian lawyer, Dr Herbert Schaller, arrived in
the Vienna prison with fresh horror tales from Zundel's
Mannheim courtroom--the judge Meinerzhagen had warned him that if he asked
certain questions of the court, or made certain defence
motions, he too would be arrested.
I remember that in January 1993, when I was tried in Munich under
Germany's laws for the suppression of free speech, one of my three
lawyers turned up apologetically on the morning of the hearing apologizing
that he could not continue to act for me, as the Munich
Bar Association had threatened him with dismissal--i. e. the end of his
career--if he did. He showed me their actual letter.
I was fined thirty thousand deutschmarks, around twenty thousand dollars,
for uttering a single sentence which the Polish authorities
now belatedly admit was true.
I NOTICED when I was in Viennese prison that the jailhouse, built to hold
eight hundred malfeasors, currently held 1,400 inmates, a
quarter of them Blacks. It was a tight fit but it was possible, provided
we did not all breathe at the same time.
This morning I have received a letter from Frau K., an elderly Viennese
lady in her nineties. Exercising what is the constitutional
right of every citizen in most other countries, on September 27 of last
year she had written a personal letter to the President of
Austria, one Herbert Fischer-a small, straw-haired gentleman of even
smaller character and endowed with all the intellect and bearing of
Lady Chatterley's gardener-to protest against my arrest, trial, and
imprisonment. "What D. I. said was right," she wrote in one passage
of this incriminating letter.
She received no presidential reply? Right.--She heard no more? Wrong.
On March 8 the Austrian criminal authorities sent her a letter fining her
the sum of 200 euros under penalty of jail for having
written these seditious words to their august president. No trial, no
hearing, no defence--no lawyer would have dared to defend her anyway.
This is the new Europe, coming soon to a jailhouse near us. I for one
shall do my damndest to prevent it.
____________ ______
4. Using Israeli courts to suppress free speech:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/7593
See also
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546804395&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
5. Poor Babies: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3468843,00.html
6. The Hero of Palestine: http://pmw.org.il/bulletins_dec2007.htm
7. Labor Party in Despair! Reason enough to celebrate!
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3479091,00.html
8. Latest from the Anarcho-fascists:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1196834825438&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
9. Join the Neo-Hasmonean Front!:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546804205&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
10. ZOA Response to Peace Now regarding Fatah Constitution
From: Zionist Organization of America
To:
June Walker, Chair
Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice-Chair
Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations
633 Third Avenue, 21st Floor
New York, NY 10017
5 December, 2007
Dear Ms. Walker & Mr. Hoenlein,
Americans For Peace Now (Peace Now) has recently sent a letter to the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization criticizing
ZOA's resolution asking the Conference of Presidents to call upon the
Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas to rescind portions of
the Fatah Constitution.
The Fatah Constitution contains 10 horrific clauses,
of which we provide here a sample of three which call for 1). Israel's
demolition; 2). the use of terrorism as an essential element in the
strategy to obtain that objective; and 3). rejection of any negotiated
solution as a matter of principle:
. (Article 12) "Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of
Zionist economic, political, military, and cultural existence."
. (Article 19) "Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and
the
Palestinian Arab People's armed revolution is a decisive factor in the
liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle
will not cease until the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is
completely liberated."
. (Article 22) "Opposing any political solution offered as an
alternative to demolishing the Zionist occupation in Palestine."
Peace Now questions the existence of such a document and we shall deal
with
each of its arguments in turn:
It claims that it was unable to find such a document in either Arabic or
English and that the quotations from the Fatah Constitution that we
provided
are "thus far unsubstantiated" but if, however, such a document does
exist,
the accuracy of the English version found online "cannot be confirmed."
It claims that it is unaware of the mechanism for the Fatah Constitution's
amendment and that experts on Palestinian legal affairs and Fatah senior
members were unable to provide one.
Assuming, however, that all this could be clarified, Peace Now expressed
"serious reservations about the timing and motivations behind this
resolution" and urges the Conference against "indulging those elements in
the Conference that prefer to look for new pretexts to thwart Israel's
peace
efforts."
.
1. The Fatah Constitution (1964) is the document laying out the mission of
the organization co-founded by Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. The
complete
text of the Fatah Constitution is available on at least five websites,
including in the Arabic original at
http://web.archive.org/web/20070206152937/www.fateh.net/public/a_constitution/index.htm
and in English at
http://web.archive.org/web/20070607150221/www.fateh.net/e_public/constitution.htm.
The Fatah Constitution can also be found in English translation on diverse
websites, including on MidEast Web; Israeli/Palestinian ProCon.org; the
Ariel Center for Policy Research; and the Israel/Palestine Center for
Policy
Research . The translations offered by these sites do not substantively
differ from the one we used in our resolution. Far from being
unsubstantiated, the quotations we provided from the Fatah Constitution
are
confirmed by a number of sources. Nor were the Constitution's contents a
matter of dispute until ZOA made its call for Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah to
show seriousness to the cause of peace by abrogating this pro-terror,
anti-Israel document.
Peace Now mentions that the Constitution dates from the mid-1960s,
implying
that it is old, obscure and thus of no practical relevance, yet it is
surely
obvious that most countries in the world have constitutions ranging in
ages
from several decades to several centuries. No-one would claim that these
documents are irrelevant or somehow lack force today.
2. We are not surprised that senior members of Fatah, which has engaged
since Oslo in the double game of asserting to credulous Westerners that
they
accept Israel while reaffirming to their own constituents in Arabic their
continuing fidelity to eventually demolishing Israel, were unable to
enlighten Peace Now on the procedures or mechanism for revoking the Fatah
Constitution. However, whether these procedures are simple or complex, it
is
clearly something only Fatah and its leadership can and must do.
3. Peace Now casts aspersions on ZOA's motives in bringing the truth about
the Fatah Constitution to the Conference's notice and accuses us of
looking
for "pretexts to thwart Israel's peace efforts." But this is surely a case
of shooting the messenger. We did not invent Fatah's Constitution or
Fatah's
record, which Peace Now evidently has such difficulty acknowledging and
confronting. Moreover, this is the most appropriate time for Fatah to
abrogate its murderous Constitution, before Israel has undertaken more
concessions which would entail more security risks endangering the lives
of
Israelis. There is never an inappropriate time for Fatah to do this. We
ask
Conference members to judge Fatah's record for themselves.
Under Abbas and Fatah, there has been no PA action to jail terrorists and
dismantle their organizations. Indeed, Abbas explicitly ruled out doing
that, contrary to Oslo and the Roadmap. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades,
which
has carried out the lion's share of recent terror attacks, is actually
part
of Fatah. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is on the U.S. terrorism list.
Moreover, U.S. aid and arms to Abbas' Fatah have ended up in Hamas' hands;
Abbas has called Hamas "an integral part of the Palestinian people." The
other week, he actually met with Hamas officials and promised to engage in
further talks if Hamas cedes control of Gaza.
Even worse has occurred since the Annapolis meeting. Abbas himself has
reiterated Palestinian rejection of Israel as a Jewish state and said that
he will try to form an alliance with Hamas ( Jerusalem Post, December 1,
2007); PA officials have sworn to fight alongside Hamas if Israel
intervenes
in Gaza to deal with the incessant terrorism emanating from there
(Jerusalem
Post , November 29, 2007); PA TV has displayed a map from which Israel is
erased (Palestinian Media Watch, November 28, 2007) and a senior PA
official
has argued that all Palestinians jailed for murdering Israelis must be
released as they are engaged in legitimate "resistance" and are not acting
contrary to the peace process (Independent Media Review Analysis, December
2, 2007).
Abbas has not condemned terrorist acts against Israelis as a crime, merely
as a public relations nuisance that harms the Palestinian cause. He has
praised terrorists as "heroes" (Age [Melbourne], January 3, 2005),"
declared
that "Allah loves the martyr" (Wall Street Journal , January 5, 2005),
says
"our rifles are aimed at the occupation," (Jerusalem Post, January 11,
2007)
and that "it is our duty to implement the principles of Yasser Arafat" (
Haaretz, January 3, 2005). Abbas has supplemented these anti-peace words
with deeds, approving legislation mandating payments to the families of
suicide bombers (Israel National News, December 11, 2005); calling for a
political partnership with Hamas (Jerusalem Post, February 5, 2007).and
endorsing last year the "Prisoners Plan" and the Hamas/Mecca agreement
which
called for more violence against Israel.
Under Abbas-Fatah rule, the PA has not ended the incitement to hatred and
murder that suffuses the PA media, mosques, schools and youth camps. Abbas
himself revealed - to an Arab audience - the subterfuge of PA-Fatah policy
when he told a PA TV audience in October 2006 that, while a PA government
had to diplomatically recognize Israel in order to obtain any concession
from it, "It is not required of Hamas, or of Fatah, or of the Popular
Front
to recognize Israel" (Palestinian Media Watch, October 5, 2006). Is Peace
Now aware of this revealing disclosure? If so, on what basis do they urge
no
action to hold Fatah accountable?
Peace Now claims that the Conference would be supporting Israel's
democratically elected government in its efforts to engage Abbas by
discarding efforts to get Fatah to change its Constitution. We answer that
no harm will come to Israel's diplomacy by pressuring Fatah to take this
long overdue step. On the contrary, such pressure, by highlighting Fatah's
true nature and the difficulties this poses for peace, ultimately assists
Israel and strengthens its hand. Clearly, Israel would be pleased by Fatah
abrogating this document and such a development ought to be welcomed by
everyone interested in peace.
Contrary to the make-believe world of Peace Now, there is both need and
urgency to pressure Abbas and Fatah into renouncing the Fatah Constitution
and acting, at long last, on their basic obligations to end terrorism and
the incitement to hatred and murder that feeds it. We would have thought
that an organization like Peace Now, professing such deep interest in
peace,
would work for obtaining the essential conditions of peace-making. We note
that Amoz Oz, a noted supporter of the Peace Now in Israel, wrote just
before the ill-fated Oslo process began that:
WHAT if they cheat? What if they take whatever we give them and demand
even
more, still exercising violence and terror? . Once peace comes, Israeli
doves, more than other Israelis, must assume a clear-cut "hawkish"
attitude
concerning the duty of the future Palestinian regime to live by the letter
and the spirit of its obligations . If the Palestinians want to hold onto
Gaza and Jericho, eventually assuming power in other parts of the occupied
territories, they will have to prove to us, to themselves and to the whole
world, that they have abandoned violence and terror, that they are capable
of suppressing their fanatics, that they are renouncing the destructive
Palestinian Charter and withdrawing from what they used to call "the right
of return." They will also have to show that they are willing to tolerate
in
their midst a minority of Israelis who may choose to live where there is
no
Israeli government.
The ZOA urges the Conference to proceed in the best interests of Israel
and
put the ZOA's resolution to a vote.
Yours sincerely,
Morton A. Klein
National President
Daniel Mandel, PhD
Director
Center for Middle East Policy
