Monday, April 19, 2010
Israel at 62
1. Zionism's Greatest Achievement, by Steven Plaut
(reposting)
In some ways it is a depressing period in Jewish history. The American Jewish Diaspora community, or at least the non-Orthodox bulk therein, is in the process of committing cultural/national/religious suicide. Most American Jews are indifferent to their Jewishness; intermarriage is close to and may be above 50 percent; and the dominant "religion" of the American non-Orthodox Jews is the pseudo-religion of Liberalism-as-Judaism, its chief tenet being that Judaism is nothing more nor less than the political agenda of American Liberals. The Reform movement, the Deconstructionist Reconstructionists and many Conservatives (as in Conservative synagogues) are simply religious liberals, with political liberalism as their dogma.
The "defense" organizations, American Jewish Congress, Bnai Brith, et al, are also largely devoted to the practice of political liberalism as pseudo-religion.
And then we have the chattering classes in Israel - the media and intelligentsia and literati - devoted to seeing Israel weakened and dismembered through the Oslo process of national suicide.
In these days of frustration, I think there is one idea that we should bear in mind. And that is that the Zionist movement has many fantastic accomplishments under its belt, one of the most important of which is that Zionism forced a major change in the nature and expression of anti-Semitism.
Not that anti-Semites are really any different when they hide behind the mask of anti-Zionism. These are the same gutter bigots, the same people who refuse to acknowledge that Jews are humans, that Jews are entitled to rights and equality. But they have been forced to express their bigotry differently.
This should be obvious any time you observe the campus anti-Semites of the Left, the Arab fascists and the self-hating leftist Jewish Uncle Toms demonstrating against Israel.
For centuries, the slogans of the anti-Semites were that Jews were racially inferior, intellectually inferior, cowards, money-grubbers, killers of God, sub-humans. But observe the main slogan of anti-Semites today: The Jews are mean. They are mean to the poor Palestinians.
Ooooh, soooo mean.
What a marvelous transformation! The main calumny thrown at the Jews is that they are bullies, meanies. What greater accomplishment of Zionism could be imagined?
Of course, this does not mean that the anti-Semites really think that the Jews are mean or cruel to the "poor" Palestinians. The anti-Zionists do not give a damn about the Palestinians, and the last thing they care about is Arab human rights. This is why they have absolutely nothing to say about the treatment of Arabs in Arab countries or by the Hamas' Gestapo.
When Saddam Hussein ordered Kuwaiti civilians to be forced to drink gasoline and then had his troops shoot into their bellies to make them explode (to the cheers and laughs of his stormtroopers) there was not a single anti-Zionist who expressed disapproval or concern. The anti-Zionists know perfectly well that Arabs are treated a thousand times better in Israel (and this would be so even if one were to believe all their accusations and allegations of mistreatment) than are Arabs in Arab countries.
The anti-Semites lament supposed Israeli mistreatment of the "poor" Palestinians because they think this is an effective way to delegitimize and undermine the existence of Israel. In other words, they are motivated by hatred of Jews and not by any compassion for Palestinians. They seek to see Israel destroyed, not the Palestinians enfranchised, or rather their only interest in Palestinian enfranchisement is as a tool to endanger Israel's existence. Of the enormous Arab territories of the
Middle East, almost twice the land mass of the United States, the only place where they suddenly are concerned for the welfare and civil rights of Arabs is in Israel. The other Arabs, as far as they're concerned, can go to hell. And if they can accuse Israel of violating Arab civil rights (never mind that their accusations are false and invented) then they can pretend to be compassionate and interested in peace, not gutter bigots who hate Jews.
The anti-Semites have lost their ability to march about and accuse the Jews of ritual murders and similar medieval libels (at least outside the Arab media and Counterpunch magazine). Such things would make them laughable in the West. No one outside the Arab world takes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as anything other than an embarrassment for anti-Zionists. Hence they have seized onto a new propaganda tactic, complaining that the Jews are oh, so mean and cruel - and bullies to boot.
At long last - after two millennia of exile - to be accused of being bullies! To leave the anti-Semites with no more effective weapon than heaping invective upon the mean Jews!
For this one must say a blessing of thanksgiving, a shecheyanu. And often.
2. Some special citations for your attention – just in time for Israel's 62 birthday:
In defending Holocaust Denier Faurisson, MIT professor Noam Chomsky wrote: "I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers or even denial of the Holocaust. Nor would there be anti-Semitic implications, per se, in the claim that the Holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence. I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work."
3. Lizi Sagie, the head of the information section in the far-Left anti-Israel propaganda group B'Tselem, is interviewed and states her political agenda in Hebrew here: http://www.news1.co.il/Archive/003-D-47170-00.html?tag=23-48-32 She claims that Israel is showing its devoted attachment to Nazism and Nazi values. B'Tselem and Sagie are funded by the New Israel Fund. Sagie proposes making peace by means of destroying Israel and then by Jewish women ending all birth of babies so that these babies cannot grow up to be soldiers. Sagie and her gang were among the sources of the "information" used by the Goldstone Report to accuse Israel of "war crimes."
4. The Chamishization of Uri Avnery. The Lord Haw Haw of Israel, Avnery is claiming that Arafat was "murdered" rather than died, and we can all guess who was the murderer:
from http://www.sustainabilitank.info/#14615
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