Wednesday, February 18, 2009
The Silence of the Feminists over the Beheading
was planning to remove Israeli supermodel Bar Rafaeli from its swimsuit
edition and replace her with photos of me in my undershirt are not true.
2. Jewish Self-Hatred for Dummies
By David Solway
FrontPageMagazine.com | 2/18/2009
'the heirs
of Hasmoneans lay with trembling knees
concealed and cowering.the sons of the Maccabees
crammed by scores in all the santuaries of their shame.'
Chaim Nachman Bialik, The City of Slaughter
As what Israelis call the matzav, the .situation,. continues to darken and
both Jews in general and Israelis in particular confront the growing storm
of antisemitism throughout the world, the question must be posed: Why are
Jews.not all, of course, but a truly disconcerting number.so prone to turn
against themselves and make common cause with those who, given the chance,
would delight in their extermination? Why suppress the core of their
identity, their defining essence, and encrust it over with a
self-simulacrum that falsifies their nature? As if one could indemnify
oneself against oneself. As if, to quote Horace Kallen, one could change
one.s grandfather.
Are they not cowering in .the sanctuaries of their shame. while at the
same time strutting at the podium of their adversaries? Have they
interiorized the antisemite.s evaluation of their presumed unworthiness?
Is this the real meaning of .assimilation,. the absorption into the plasm
of Jewish cultural and intellectual life of a microbial pathogen? Most
such Jews, of course, profess not to be anti-Jewish but .only.
anti-Zionist, unaware that so facile a distinction puts them squarely in
the camp of those who are anti-Jewish and would like nothing better than
to see the Jewish community either deprivileged or rendered desolate.
These are Jews who have used whatever means at their disposal to attack
the very country that was founded to provide them with shelter in
adversity, believing instead that Israel is the greatest obstacle to their
dream of seamless assimilation. It is Israel, they feel, that stands in
the way of their desire for acceptance by provoking the world.s undiluted
animosity, and it is Israel, therefore, that must be resisted, denounced,
contained and defeated. The sequel would then presumably lead to harmony
and perfect integration into their host societies. Mired in illusion, they
are unaware that History is not on their side.
Let us call these perjurious specimens Theobald-Jews. According to the
Benedictine monk Thomas of Monmouth in his The Life and Miracles of St.
William of Norwich (1173), it was an apostate Jew, a certain Theobald,
who, swore that Jews had killed twelve-year old William, a tanner.s
apprentice, to fulfill their .Passover blood ritual. in the fateful year
of 1144.the first recorded such episode in a long line of murderous
defamations.
As a matter of interest, the paradigm of ritual-murder accusation goes
back at least to 40 B.C.E. when, as we read in the Contra Apion of Flavius
Josephus, the antisemitic grammarian Apion accused the Jews of Alexandria
of slaughtering a Greek man, .lying upon a bed in the temple,. for the
purposes of ritual cannibalism. .How is it possible,. Josephus asks, .that
the entrails of one man should be sufficient for so many thousands of Jews
to taste, as Apion pretends?. But antisemitic logic has never been
especially profound or intelligible. .It is a great shame,. Josephus
concludes, .for a grammarian not to be able to write a true history.. But
the shame is shared by many.
The blood libel as such, however, seems to be a medieval Christian
invention, fostered with the help of those who were, or were once, part of
the Jewish community itself. Apostate Jews were at the source of many of
the blood libels in the medieval period and, mutatis mutandis, they are
still with us today. Witness Italian-Jewish historian Ariel Toaff who, in
Bloody Passover: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders, speculates that
there might have been some truth to the accusations that the Italian Jews
of Trent committed acts of human butchery in 1475 in order to make their
passover matzot with the blood of Christian children.
In effectively offering their own up to sacrifice, this lurid sept of
anti-Zionist Jews are only participating in the latest form the ancient
blood libel has taken. We see this metaphorical transfer at work today in
Gaza where, from the grotesque standpoint of the Theobald-Jew, Israel is
indiscriminately shedding blood to feed its appetite for conquest and
spoliation. Indeed, aligning his sense of canting outrage with the greater
anti-Zionist polemic, .Theobald. has convinced himself that Israel, as it
were, bakes Palestinian blood into its daily diet.
If we were only dealing with a mere scattering of Jews who have adopted so
invidious a position, the situation would be manageable. But the world is
brimming with Theobald-Jews ready to betray their own people to serve what
they regard as their advantage, or the need for acceptance, or as an
expression of their own self-loathing, and in the process cater to the
ammoniac hatred of the current brood of crypto-antisemites posing as
anti-Zionists. .These words.observe, the words of a converted Jew.we
reckon to be all the truer,. wrote Thomas of Monmouth, .in that we
received them as uttered by one who was a converted enemy..
In today.s world, of course, conversion is no longer necessary; compliance
will do. The value of the turncoat is well understood by the anti-Israel
organizations which co-opt him or her. A timely example has just been
afforded by the pro-boycott, anti-Zionist University and College Union in
the U.K., which has created a Facebook page in order to build, according
to its spokesman Mike Cushman, an international network of .anti-Zionist
Jews to support Palestinian resistance and seed new Jewish anti-Zionist
organizing.. The apostate Jew, the apikoros or .wicked son,. who confers
legitimacy on the vengeful campaign against Jewish interests or the state
of Israel, is the antisemite.s most effective weapon. Even the word
.antisemitism. was coined by an apostate, the half-Jew William Marr whose
1879 pamphlet, The Victory of Judaism over Germanism, launched the modern
antisemitic movement in the West.
An act of psychic displacement has taken hold in the Jewish soul,
variously leading it to shrink in self-abasement, to retire into the shell
of subdued anonymity, to do everything in its power not to call attention
to itself, to suffer indignities quietly, to suspect its own motivations
and to accept the scriptures of a demonic inquisition. The culmination of
these prodigies of self-denial is the well-attested tendency of the
insecure and self-doubting Jewish soul to turn about and attack itself,
like an immune system gone awry.
Millennia of social and cultural quarantine must have their effect on the
sensibility of a people, producing a creature who is always in danger of
becoming reflexively disenchanted or of contracting that wasting disease
which Ruth Wisse in Jews and Power has called .the veneration of political
weakness.. Only the strong survive themselves. One thinks of that
memorable scene in novelist Paul Scott.s Raj series, in which a scorpion,
trapped in a ring of fire, coils up with the heat and appears to sting
itself with its own lethal tail. Analogously, surrounded by the flames of
enmity, misprision and commination, the self-reviling Jew shrivels back
upon himself, the autonomic convulsion of an ailing and enervated soul.
But he goes even further, anticipating his own demise by
self-administering the piq.re de gr.ce, doing the work of his tormentors
as if in agreement with their salvos of defilement and vilification. He
may even delude himself into believing that the high conception of justice
inherent in the Jewish faith requires him to decry the Zionist enterprise
which is its flickering and terrestrial embodiment, if not to renounce
that very faith itself. By a bizarre act of metaphysical commutation, the
self-despising Jew becomes the antisemite.s loyal deputy, assuming
liability for the world.s mortal caricature of him and willing his own
eclipse.
It.s a kind of solution, after all.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Solway is the award-winning author of over twenty-five books of
poetry, criticism, educational theory, and travel. He is a contributor to
magazines as varied as the Atlantic, the Sewanee Review, Books in Canada,
and the Partisan Review. His most recent book is The Big Lie: On Terror,
Antisemitism, and Identity.
3. Following up on the previous post on Jordan, the queen of Jordan has
issued a call for donations to UNRWA, which finances the Gazans, including
the Hamas, because they are supposedly short of wampum needed for
"humanitarian needs." Evidently, the Queen herself, who sits on a queen's
fortune, has not donated any money, although claims she donated blood to
teh Gazans during the recent campaign there against the Hamas.
4. Apologizing for anti-communism?
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=B10C1C0D-47D2-419E-B4D5-885A9701BFA7
5. The silence of the feminists over the beheading in Buffalo:
From the wall st journal
Don't Look NOW Man allegedly beheads wife. Feminists shrug.
By JAMES TARANTO
Last week the National Organization for Women issued a press release on an
important topic:
The recent arrest of R&B star Chris Brown, who reportedly assaulted and
threatened singer Rihanna, preventing her participation in the Grammys,
has brought the ever-present issue of violence against women into the
public spotlight once again."Everyone is talking about this case because
it involves two popular recording artists, but the sad reality is that
domestic violence and dating violence happen every day, even among young
teens, and the impact is both far-reaching and under-reported," said
Gandy.We actually had not heard of Chris Brown or Rihanna, but we're
willing to take NOW's word for it that they're popular. Gandy certainly
has a point, though: Domestic violence is a big problem, and one that
affects not only celebrity-Americans. Just surveying recent news articles,
one can find lots of shocking cases involving the less well known.
Here's an example from suburban Buffalo, N.Y., reported in the Buffalo
News:
Orchard Park police are investigating a particularly gruesome killing, the
beheading of a woman, after her husband--an influential member of the
local Muslim community--reported her death to police Thursday.Police
identified the victim as Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37. Detectives have charged her
husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with second-degree murder."He came to the
police station at 6:20 p.m. [Thursday] and told us that she was dead,"
Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz said late this morning. . .
."Obviously, this is the worst form of domestic violence possible," Erie
County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said today.CNN reported
yesterday that police say Mr. Hassan has confessed.
NOW's statement on Mrs. Hassan's beheading was short and to the point: .
James Taranto on NOW and domestic violence.
There is an irony to this story that goes unremarked by NOW: As the
Buffalo News explains, "Muzzammil Hassan is the founder and chief
executive officer of Bridges TV, which he launched in 2004, amid hopes
that it would help portray Muslims in a more positive light."
Those who portray Muslims in a negative light often point out that Islamic
culture tends to treat women unfairly, even brutally. If Mr. Hassan
beheaded his wife, it may have the effect of perpetuating the very
stereotypes he hoped to combat.
The Associated Press reports from Murietta, Calif., on another shocking
domestic-violence case:
A self-proclaimed polygamist was sentenced Friday to seven consecutive
life prison terms for torturing seven of his 19 children, abusing four
others and imprisoning two of his three wives.Mansa Musa Muhummed, 55,
also was sentenced to additional terms totaling 16 years and eight months
by Riverside County Superior Court Judge F. Paul Dickerson III, who said
Muhummed's treatment of his family amounted to "a reign of terror over
defenseless children."This report from New York's Daily News is appalling
too:
Mohammed Fagirad, 30, a vice consul at the Afghanistan Consulate,
brutalized his wife inside their Flushing home from about 8:30 a.m.
Wednesday until nearly midnight, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown
said.During the attack, Fagirad bit, slapped, choked and beat the
22-year-old woman with a belt, pushed her down a flight of stairs and sat
on her chest, prosecutors said.At one point, prosecutors said, Fagirad
threw his wife up against a wall, held her there by the neck and then let
her drop to the floor, where he beat her with a belt.Fagirad told police
his "wife was a dog and he was going to treat her like a dog," prosecutors
said.Here are NOW's statements on the Muhummed and Fagirad cases, in their
entirety and edited only for spelling and punctuation: .
Hey, come to think of it, when Gandy complains that people don't care
about domestic violence when it doesn't involve celebrities, she speaks
from direct knowledge.
6. The first casualty of war: Truth
Feb. 16, 2009
, THE JERUSALEM POST
Which is the greater factor in getting consumers of news to believe that
"1,300 Palestinians, most of them civilians" were killed during Operation
Cast Lead? Intrinsic anti-Israel bias - or a high degree of gullibility to
manipulative international media coverage?
Put another way, do you have to be anti-Israel to believe Palestinian
lies, or is Palestinian mendacity so well-constructed, so plausible, and
so well disseminated by collaborative media outlets like Al Jazeera that
even well-meaning people can't help but believe the worst of Israel?
These questions are prompted by some significant reporting in Monday's
Jerusalem Post ("Int'l community was duped by Hamas's false civilian death
toll figures, IDF claims").
Even well-regarded Palestinian pressure groups have been claiming that
Israel killed 895 civilians in the Gaza fighting. Operating on the basis
of such "data," coupled with a poisoned wellspring of antipathy against
the Jewish state, Mahmoud Abbas has been making the case for indicting
Israeli cabinet ministers and military officers for international war
crimes.
Pro-Palestinian campaigners allege that two-thirds of the Arab fatalities
were civilian. The IDF insists that no more than a third of the dead were
civilians - and not a one was targeted intentionally. So instead of "1,300
killed, most of them civilians," we now have reason to believe, based on
the IDF's methodical analysis of 1,200 of the Palestinian fatalities thus
far identified by name, that 580 were combatants and 300 non-combatants.
Of these 300, two were female suicide bombers, and some others were
related to terrorists such as Nizar Rayyan, a top Hamas gunman who
insisted that his family join him in the hereafter.
"The first casualty when war comes is truth," said US senator Hiram Warren
Johnson.
Take, for instance, Arab eyewitness accounts of the number killed at the
Jabalya UN School on January 6 - some 40 dead, maybe 15 of them women and
children. The IDF says the actual figure is 12 killed, nine of them Hamas
operatives.
With time, perhaps, the names and true identities of each and every one of
the Gaza dead - including the 320 as yet unclassified - will be
determined.
One point is indisputable: Despite the best efforts of both sides, the IDF
wound up killing more Palestinians unintentionally than the Palestinians
killed Israeli civilians on purpose. This is known as
"disproportionality."
Israeli officials, given bitter experiences such as Jenin in 2002, when a
grossly false narrative of massacre and massed killing was disseminated by
Palestinian officials, should have long since internalized the imperative
to try to ascertain the number and nature of Palestinian dead in real
time.
But while the figure "1,300 Palestinians killed, most/many of them
civilians" is now embedded in the public consciousness, it is emphatically
not too late to try to set the record straight.
Atrocity stories are nothing new. The British have been charged with using
them to create popular outrage during the Boer War. The allies used them
against Germany during World War I - which, incidentally, allowed the real
Nazi atrocities during WWII to be dismissed long into the Holocaust.
Nowadays, it matters what masses of uninformed or ill-informed people far
removed from the Arab-Israel conflict think. Dry statistics released so
belatedly will win Israel no PR credit in a world of 24/7 satellite news
channels and real-time blogging. Nevertheless, the fact that an Israeli
narrative is finally out there is significant. Perhaps responsible news
outlets will want to reexamine some of their original reporting, along
with the assumption that "most" of the dead were non-combatants.
Palestinian propaganda is insidious because those being manipulated are
oblivious to what is happening. Chaotic images of casualties being hurried
to hospitals, gut-wrenching funerals and swaths of shattered buildings
create an overarching "reality." Against this, Israel's pleadings that the
Palestinians are culpable for the destruction, and that the above images
lack context, scarcely resonate.
Despite six decades of intransigence and a virtual copyright on airline
hijackings and suicide bombings, the Palestinians have created a popular
"brand" for themselves by parlaying their self-inflicted victimization
into a battering ram against Israel.
Disseminators of news should have learned better than to take Palestinian
death-toll claims at face value, least of all when sourced directly or
indirectly from the Hamas-run government of Gaza.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com
/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304799578&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
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