Will Hamas’s New “Culture War” Acknowledge Its Historic Ties to Nazism?
Comment by Ted Belman
Dershowitz does an invaluable service by bringing forth the details about the connection of the Palestinian leadership to Hitler and the holocaust.Unfortunately he concludes with this sentence,
Hamas still takes that position. Perhaps their new “culture war” will finally cause them to reconsider—and to accept the two state solution.
Its wrong on two basis. First why does he limit his comment to Hamas. The Fatah charter still provides for the destruction of Israel and Fatah has killed far more Jews than has Hamas. He doesn’t bother to argue why he limits it to Hamas. Secondly, hell will freeze over before Hamas will accept a permanent two-state solution and end of conflict agreement. The same goes for Fatah.
Alan Dershowitz, HUDSON NY
Hamas, the terrorist organization that specializes in targeting civilians, has now decided, according to a New York Times headline, to shift “from rockets to culture war” in an effort to garner public support for its cause. Part of its ongoing public relations campaign is to portray the Israelis as the “new Nazis” and the Palestinians as the “new Jews.” In order to bring about this transformation, it must engage in a form of Holocaust denial that erases the historical record of widespread Palestinian complicity with the “old Nazis” in perpetrating the real Holocaust. It has become an important part of the mantra of Hamas supporters that neither the Palestinians people nor its leadership played any role in the Holocaust. Listen to Mohammad Ahmadinejad talking to students at Columbia University:
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If [the Holocaust] is a reality, we need to still question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for it or not. After all, it happened in Europe. The Palestinian people had no role to play in it. So why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price of an event they had nothing to do with?…The Palestinian people didn’t commit any crime. They had no role to play in World War II. They were living with the Jewish communities and the Christian communities in peace at the time.
The conclusion that is supposed to follow from this “fact” is that the establishment of Israel in the wake of the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people was unfair to the Palestinians. Central to this claim is that neither the Palestinian people nor their leadership bore any responsibility for the Holocaust, and if any reparations are owed the Jewish people, it is from Germany and not from the Palestinians. The propounders of this historical argument suggest that the West created the Jewish state out of guilt over the Holocaust. It might have been understandable if a portion of Germany (or Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, France, Austria, or other collaborator nations) had been allocated for a Jewish homeland—but why Palestine? Palestine, according to this claim, was as much a “victim” as were the Jews.
I hear this argument on university campuses around the United States, and even more so in Europe.
The truth is that the Palestinian leadership, supported by the Palestinian masses, played a significant role in Hitler’s Holocaust.
The official leader of the Palestinians, Haj Amin al-Husseini, spent the war years in Berlin with Hitler, serving as a consultant on the Jewish question. He was taken on a tour of Auschwitz and expressed support for the mass murder of European Jews. He also sought to “solve the problems of the Jewish element in Palestine and other Arab countries” by employing “the same method” being used “in the Axis countries.” He would not be satisfied with the Jewish residents of Palestine—many of whom were descendants of Sephardic Jews who had lived there for hundreds, even thousands, of years—remaining as a minority in a Muslim state. Like Hitler, he wanted to be rid of “every last Jew.” As Husseini wrote in his memoirs, “Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: ‘The Jews are yours.’”
The mufti was apparently planning to return to Palestine in the event of a German victory and to construct a death camp, modeled after Auschwitz, near Nablus. Husseini incited his pro-Nazi followers with the words “Arise, O sons of Arabia. Fight for your sacred rights. Slaughter Jews wherever you find them. Their spilled blood pleases Allah, our history and religion. That will save our honor.”
Not only did Husseini exhort his followers to murder the Jews; he also took an active role in trying to bring about that result. For example, in 1944, a German-Arab commando unit, under Husseini’s command, parachuted into Palestine and with the intention of poisoning Tel Aviv’s wells.
Husseini also helped to inspire a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq and helped to organize thousands of Muslims in the Balkans into military units known as Handselar divisions, which carried out atrocities against Yugoslav Jews, Serbs, and Gypsies. After a meeting with Hitler, he recorded the following in his diary:
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The Mufti: “The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends…. They were therefore prepared to cooperate with Germany with all their hearts and stood ready to participate in a war, not only negatively by the commission of acts of sabotage and the instigation of revolutions, but also positively by the formation of an Arab Legion. In this struggle, the Arabs were striving for the independence and the unity of Palestine, Syria and Iraq….”
Hitler: “Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well. Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. The moment that Germany’s tank divisions and air squadrons had made their appearance south of the Caucasus, the public appeal requested by the Grand Mufti could go out to the Arab world.”
Hitler assured Husseini about how he would be regarded following a Nazi victory and “the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere.” In that hour, the mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations that he had secretly prepared.
Husseini’s significant contributions to the Holocaust were multifold: first, he pleaded with Hitler to exterminate European Jewry and advised the Nazis on how to do so; second, he visited Auschwitz and urged Eichmann and Himmler to accelerate the pace of the mass murder; third, he personally stopped 4,000 children, accompanied by 500 adults, from leaving Europe and had them sent to Auschwitz and gassed; fourth, he prevented another two thousand Jews from leaving Romania for Palestine and one thousand from leaving Hungary for Palestine, who were subsequently sent to death camps; fifth, he organized the killing of 12,600 Bosnian Jews by Muslims, whom he recruited to the Waffen-SS Nazi-Bosnian division. He was also one of the few non-Germans who was made privy to the Nazi extermination while it was taking place. It was in his official capacity as the leader of the Palestinian people and its official representative that he made his pact with Hitler, spent the war years in Berlin, and worked actively with Eichmann, Himmler, von Ribbentrop, and Hitler himself to “accelerate” the final solution by exterminating the Jews of Europe and laying plans to exterminate the Jews of Palestine.
Not only did the Grand Mufti play a significant role in the murder of European Jewry, he sought to replicate the genocide against the Jews in Israel during the war that produced a so-called Nakba. The war started by the Palestinians against the Jews in 1947, and the war started by the Arab states in 1948 against the new state of Israel, were both genocidal wars. Their goal was not merely the ethnic cleansing of the Jews from the area but their total annihilation. The leaders said so and the actions of their subordinates reflected this genocidal goal. They were aided in their efforts by Nazi soldiers—former SS and Gestapo members—who had been given asylum from war crime prosecution in Egypt and who had been recruited by the grand mufti to complete Hitler’s work.
It is also fair to say that Husseini’s pro-Nazi sympathies and support were widespread among his Palestinian followers, who regarded him as a hero even after the war and the disclosure of his role in Nazi atrocities. The notorious photograph of Husseini and Hitler, together in Berlin, was proudly displayed in many Palestinian homes, even after Husseini’s activities in the Holocaust became widely known and praised among Palestinians.
Husseini is still regarded by many as “the George Washington” of the Palestinian people, and if the Palestinians were to get a state of their own, he would be honored as our founding father is. He was their hero, despite—more likely, because of—his active role in the genocide against the Jewish people, which he openly supported and assisted. According to Husseini’s biographer, “Large parts of the Arab world shared [Husseini’s] sympathy with Nazi Germany during the Second World War…. Haj Amin’s popularity among the Palestinian Arabs and within the Arab states actually increased more than ever during his period with the Nazis.”
In 1948, the National Palestinian Council elected Husseini as its president, even though he was a wanted war criminal living in exile in Egypt. Indeed, Husseini is still revered today among many Palestinians as a national hero. Yasser Arafat, in an interview conducted in 2002 and reprinted in the Palestinian daily Al-Quds on August 2, 2002, called Husseini “our hero,” referring to the Palestinian people. Arafat also boasted of being “one of his troops,” even though he knew Husseini was “considered an ally of Nazis.” Today many Palestinians in East Jerusalem want to turn his home into a shrine. (Ironically, it is this home that was bought by a Jew to build the controversial Jewish housing development in East Jerusalem.)
It is a myth, therefore—another myth perpetrated by Iran’s mythmaker-in-chief as well as by Hamas and by many on the hard left who seek to demonize Israel—that the Palestinians played “no role” in the Holocaust. Considering the active support by the Palestinian leadership and masses for the losing side of a genocidal war, it was more than fair for the United Nations to offer them a state of their own on more than half of the arable land of the British mandate.
The Palestinians rejected that offer and several since because they wanted there not to be a Jewish state more than they wanted their own state. That was Husseini’s position. Hamas still takes that position. Perhaps their new “culture war” will finally cause them to reconsider—and to accept the two state solution.
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A Broader Historical Perspective of the Israel v. Arab and Palestinian Ongoing War - Western Democratic Blunders in the Aftermath of WWI
Dershowitz like other authorities writing to make the point of a Palestinian connection with the Nazis begin with noting that the official leader of the Arabs in the British Mandate of Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husseini was an ally of Hitler as regards Hitler’s final solution for the Jews.
One needs to go further back in time to explain what enabled that moment in history to come to pass and why though Hitler and al-Husseini are long gone, that which enabled that moment in history to arrive, is still very much a part of what is happening today between Western powers and the Middle East, the Middle East and Israel and what role Western powers are playing in that ongoing war between Israel and the Arabs/Palestinians and other Middle Eastern nations most particularly, Iran.
It is going back in that history of the Middle East and in particular, the Islamic religiously inspired hatred of Christians and Jews and especially Jews, that one can understand the basis for Arab Jew hatred, why that Arab Jew hatred began to rise in the late 19th century, why it culminated in Al-Husseini’s alliance with Hitler and why that intractable Jew hatred remains to this day amongst the Arabs, those Arabs recently re-named Palestinians and many sectors of the Muslim world.
Going back in history also reveals that the ongoing war between Israel and the Arabs and Palestinians is part of the larger ongoing, but more subtle, but no less threatening war that continues to this day between the Muslim Middle East and the Western democracies.
As regards the history of Islam and the Islamic world, it began in the desert of what is now Saudi Arabia and with sword wielding Islamic fanatics fired by a religiously inspired belief in an Islamic manifest destiny to rule the world, Islam and its followers surged out of the desert to ultimately acquire territory under its dominion until Islamic expansion was stopped at what has come to be known as the Gates of Vienna in a battle that ended September 11th, 1683.
Thereafter the Ottoman or Turkish Empire held ground, but was stagnating as Europeans surged ahead of the Islamic world on many levels including science, technology, modern governance and in general sophistication.
Stagnation weakened the Ottoman Empire and it had begun to lose its hold on territory won, such as in the Balkans where Greece was the first Balkan nation to overthrow Ottoman domination.
In what may have been seen as a last ditch effort by the Turkish Caliphate presumably to regain its strength and influence, the Ottoman’s joined with the Central Powers consisting of the German Empire, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Bulgaria to wage WWI against the allied forces.
The Central Powers lost that war and so too did the Muslim Ottoman empire.
Due to Western democracies seeing opportunities and needs to advance their interests in the Middle East, a lack of understanding of Islam and its dominant influence on the Muslim psyche and a new world perspective that democratic ideology brought, the allied Western democracies made a collosal mistake that they are paying for to this day.
It is Israel however that the Western democracies now are seeking to have pay the greatest price for that blunder.
With victory in WWI in hand, the opportunity was there on a golden plate for Christian Europe to regain territory and influence lost to the Ottomans over the centuries. They ignored that, thinking they could better deal with the Muslim Middle East if they broke up the Ottoman empire into small, separate and distinct nations where citizens of each Muslim nation would, like in Western democratic nations, owe their allegience to their respective leaders and not to one overarching national leader.
Thus it was thought, even though the many Muslim nations the Western democracies created would be totalitarian states antithetical in so many fundamental ways to Western democracies, the Ottoman empire or Middle Eastern Muslim world would be kept from ever rising again as great power and Western democracies would have and hold in perpetuity, the upper hand.
On certain matters of course, the Muslim nations did act much the same as Western democracies wherein national leaders looked to their own interests and their citizens saw themselves as citizens or nationals of their own nation.
What the Western democracies failed to understand as earlier stated was the nature and power of the religion of Islam on the Muslims of the Middle East and in particular, how Middle Eastern Muslims saw themselves, how they saw themselves vis a vis the rest of the world, how they viewed themselves in relation to their traditional enemies, the Christians and Jews and how deeply felt were their religious and cultural Islamic tenets and beliefs as regards the Islamic manifest destiny of ruling the world and as part of that, to regain for Islam, that territory that had been lost to Islam.
In these respects, Muslim thinking was not a matter of being nationalistic, but a matter of being part of something much larger and important then themselves. That something was and remains the greater Muslim community or ummah in which unity of Islamic belief and aspirations transcend national boundaries. Muslim national leaders however have ensured that on those matters aforesaid, national beliefs and goals reflect the beliefs and goals shared by the great Muslim ummah.
These and other gross miscalculations, which have been explained in the most exquisite detail in countless writings by historians, political scientists, economists and sociologists are what enabled the Muslim Middle Eastern world to hold fast to those Islamic religious, political, social and cultural beliefs so antithetical to Western culture including the intractable hatred of Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims which culminated in the Arabs of the British Palestine mandate led by al-Husseini, allying with Hitler.
That alliance between the Arabs and Hitler during WWII and the lethal pogroms by the Arabs against the Jews in Palestine since the late 19th century until the creation of Israel after WWII were tolerated in the main by Western powers and Britain in particular that had charge of the Palestinian mandate, because they too were afflicted by anti-semitism.
It was that anti-semitism combined with seeing interests lying with the mega millions of Arabs and not the small number of Palestinian Jews, that led Britain to give away the large majority of their mandate first destined for the Jews for their own state, to the Arabs in the region which territorial giveaway became named Transjordan and later Jordan.
It was the UNGA Partition Resolution and then Israel’s acceptance of that resolution to declare itself a state that was the fuel that brought the fires of Arab Jew hatred to full flame leading to the first failed Arab genocidal war against the Jews of Israel. That flame has burned hot ever since, with other Arab genocidal flare ups failing. That Jew hatred still burns fiercely throughout the Middle East including within the hearts and minds of the vast majority of Palestinians.
In conclusion, while the Western nations have reined in much of their antisemitism, they have made themselves over the past 90 years even more vulnerable to the Muslim Middle East in terms of needing the co-operation of the Muslim Middle East in order to advance their own best interests.
To gain that co-operation, the Western powers are turning a blind eye to Arab/Palestinian/Muslim hatreds of Jews and Christians, in part to appease Middle Eastern Muslims and in part due to their inability to control, influence or effect change in the views, policies and positions of Muslim nations as regards Israel and Western democracies.
That inability can be traced back to the collosal blunders of the Western allied powers in dealing with the Middle Eastern world in the aftermath of WWI.
Israel is now bearing a disproportionate brunt of those terrible miscalculations made about 90 years ago, but Western nations are not left unscathed. Regardless of what happens to Israel, Western nations will suffer more in future once the day arrives which we appear to be inexorably moving towards, when the proverbial clash of civilizations will be fully upon us.
Comment by Bill Narvey — July 28, 2009 @ 8:38 pm
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Narvey:
Extremely well stated. you might have added that the Israeli leadership has not been forceful enough in resisting being thrown under the bus by our so-called American friends.
Comment by israel lives — July 29, 2009 @ 4:21 am
Assuming that anti-Israeli sentiment all over the Western (civilized) nations, is for most just another form of antisemitism your conclusions are therefore found wanting in fact. According to ADL and others antisemitism in the west approximates Europe and N. America at levels more or less what they were in 1938. With the Current economic world recession all of the closet politically correct Jew Haters are starting to be heard and seen on thousands of Blogs and in the media. Almost all unopposed by Jews and gentile supporters of Jews.
Jews seem to be not just asleep to what is happening they appear to be close to being comatose
21. Hearken to this, foolish people without understanding; they have eyes yet they see not, they have ears yet they hear not.
Jeremiah 5:21
2. “Son of man, you are dwelling in the midst of a rebellious house, who have eyes to see but do not see, who have ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious house. Yechezkel - Ezekiel - Chapter 12:2
What might a Jewish Prophet say today about the Jews?
Comment by yamit82 — July 29, 2009 @ 12:54 pm
The gentleman in post 7 pops up as often as a chronic case of diarrhea, and is equally unwelcome.
Comment by lattke pechechkin — July 29, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
lattke
Maybe by you but not by me. Better to spend your time adding to the discussion than making ad hominum attacks
om someone who’s knowledge exceeds most.
Comment by Ted Belman — July 29, 2009 @ 2:36 pm
Guess you mean me? Well if that’s a problem for you then you are free to exercise your freedom of choice. I hope you are smart enough to understand what I am saying.
Comment by yamit82 — July 29, 2009 @ 2:54 pm
Yamit,your assumption is unwarranted.
You say:
Western democratic nations are moved by self interest. To be sure there are some in every Western government who might rightly be accused of anti-Israel sentiment and in some cases anti-semitism. Overall however, these governments are moved more, if not completely by self interest.
The same can be said of Muslim Middle Eastern governments, however in their case racist Jew/Israel hatred is an expression of their self interest as well.
Included in my article is the following which bears on this:
That Yamit is how I see things.
Secondly, you state:
There is no doubt there is still evidence of anti-semitism in Western democracies, but to make the statement that it has reach 1938 levels, is preposterous. I will believe what my own eyes and ears tell me and not what ADL and some other frantic people say they see and hear.
Being too quick to characterize some point of anti-Jewish/Israel view as anti-semitic, just because it seems it might be in the anti-semitic ballpark or be in the town with an anti-semitic ball park is foolishly counterproductive.
Doing so plays right into the hands of anti-semites who claim that all Jews will always call anything negative said of Israel or Jews as anti-semitic.
I am not suggesting that Jews hold their tongues when someone makes an anti-Jewish/Israel statement. I am saying however that one should be darn sure when calling someone anti-semitic for their views that the shoe really fits.
Just as our sympathies lies with Jews and Israel, there are many whose sympathies lie with the Palestinians. There is nothing wrong with that. Being for someone or something, does not necessarily mean that what prompts that sympathy is antipathy for the other.
Where things are wrong is when the statements made by either side for Israel or for the Palestinians crosses the line from words of support for their favorite to maliciously demonizing the other with false accusations. Doing that crosses the line and those who engage in it, from either side must be called on it.
If calling a pro-Palestinian advocate a Jew hating racist, be sure the shoe fits. When it doesn’t, there are many other words and characterizations that can be used to attack such person’s views.
Indiscriminate accusations of anti-semitism, cheapens the word and undermines the force of that accusation.
The internet has opened a vast, seemingly limitless cyberworld that countless people and organizations have used to get their message out, from politics to economics, to social issues and to sell the world on their idea or product.
There is just too much out there to respond to specifically.
Jews it seems still suffer from a shtetle mentality and pay undue heed to political correctness. Indeed the point has been made by myself and many others that Jewish organizations are drowning in political correctness.
I concur with you Yamit on your concerns with pro-Israel/Jewish advocacy.
My view has always been that Jews must rid themselves of their shtetle mentality and should cast aside the rules of political correctness for the rules of being polite, but correct and even foresake politeness when the situation calls for it.
Comment by Bill Narvey — July 29, 2009 @ 3:48 pm
Narvey:
http://www.antisemitism.org.il/eng/struggle/
07-05-2009 / United States
USA - Survey: Jews are blamed for economic crisis
Neil Malhotra and Yotam Margalit
A survey conducted by the Boston Review in its May/June issue shows that nearly 25% of American non-Jews blame “the Jews” a moderate amount or more for the financial crisis.
Furthermore, a total of 38.4% of the non-Jews in the U.S. attribute at least some level of blame to the group.
Possibly most significant of all were the subconscious antisemitic tendencies revealed based on the way the questions were phrased to different groups.
Neil Malhotra, Assistant Professor of Political Economy in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and Dr. Yotam Margalit of Stanford University, conducted the study. It was part of a survey of 2,768 American adults exploring responses and antisemitic sentiments vis-à-vis the economic collapse.
They found that Democrats were significantly more prone to blaming Jews than Republicans: while 32% of Democrats accorded at least moderate blame, compared to only 18.4% of Republicans.
The researchers carried out a fascinating experiment in the course of the study. The goal was to see what happens when Wall Street corruption is explicitly associated with Jewish financiers such as Bernard Madoff; would that affect people’s views on bailing out big business?
To address this question, they randomly assigned national survey participants to one of three groups. All three were prompted with a one-paragraph news report that briefly described the Madoff scandal, and were then asked their views about providing government tax breaks to big business in order to spur job creation.
The text of the paragraph about Madoff had slight differences for the three groups: The first group was told that Madoff is an “American investor” who contributed to “educational charities,” the second group was told that he is a “Jewish-American investor” who contributed to “educational charities,” and the third group was told that Madoff is an “American investor” who contributed to “Jewish educational charities.”
The findings were “revealing and disturbing,” the researchers wrote. Those people who were told explicitly that Madoff is Jewish were almost twice as likely to oppose the tax cuts to big business. While only 10% those who were given no information about his Jewishness said they opposed tax cuts for big business, over 17% of those who were told that Madoff is Jewish opposed the gestures to big business. “This difference is highly significant in statistical terms,” the researchers conclude.
To complete the picture, the “middle” group – those who were told that Madoff was an American who gave to Jewish charities – produced a 14% opposition rate.
When Jewish respondents were assigned to the three groups, they had “the exact same policy preferences in all three groups,” wrote Margalit and Malhotra. Nor were there any differences between the groups on other proposals that did not deal with the business sector, but rather with federal support for state governments or with tax breaks for the middle class.
The researchers noted that the greater tendency among Democrats than Republicans to blame Jews is “somewhat surprising, given the presumed higher degree of racial tolerance among liberals, and the fact that Jews are a central part of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition.
Sorting the results according to level of education provided another interesting finding: 18.3% of those with at least a bachelor’s degree blamed the Jews a moderate amount or more, while 27.3% of those lacking a 4-year degree did so. Yet, these numbers were basically reversed – as they were in the case of the Democrats and Republicans - when asked about the culpability of individuals who took out loans they could not afford.
“Crises often have the potential to stoke fears and resentment,” the researchers conclude, “and the current economic collapse is likely no exception. Therefore, we must take heed of prejudice and bigotry that have already started to sink roots in the United States… The media ought to bear these findings in mind in their coverage of financial scandals such as the Madoff scam. In most cases, religious and ethnic affiliations have nothing to do with the subject at hand, and such references, explicit or implied, ought, then, to be avoided.”
Source: http://bostonreview.net/
10-02-2009 /
Europe - 31 percent of European blame Jews for financial crisis
http://www.antisemitism.org.il/eng/events/38516/Europe_-_31_percent_of_European_blame_Jews_for_financial_crisis
A new survey of seven countries across Europe shows millions continue to believe the classical anti-Semitic canards that have persistently pursued Jews through the centuries.
The findings released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) revealed that nearly half of the Europeans surveyed believe Jews are not loyal to their country and more than one-third believe they have “too much power” in business and finance.
Attitudes Toward Jews in Seven European Countries an opinion survey of 3,500 adults – 500 in each of the seven European countries – Austria, France, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom – conducted December 1, 2008 – January 13, 2009, found 31% of the respondents across Europe blame Jews in the financial industry for the current global economic crisis.
Overall, 40% of Europeans in the countries polled believe that Jews have too much power in the business world, with more than half of Hungarian, Spanish and Polish respondents agreeing with that statement.
The findings were similar to those of a 2007 ADL survey that found significant percentages of Europeans continue to believe in some of the most pernicious antisemitic stereotypes.
Read the reports from Canada also:
I rest my case on the facts as I have them and not on what I would like to believe or not. I will go further and say that in all probability the stats in all of these reports are much lower than what actually is. The definitions used are too narrow and based mostly on older stereotypes and not the more modern politically correct versions which include surrogate Jews and surrogate objects of antisemitism. As the worlds economic troubles deepen and they will expect to to a Malthusian rise in Jew hatred and scapegoating all over the world. No amount of PR however focused and factual can overcome irrational behavior and thinking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RVswj8WuBI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-q9RRWPKFE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwM2pfG6pgs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fahfinQb0w8&NR=1
Tonight begins the fast of the 9th of Av, may it be our last and that next year we will rejoice with song and dance.
Comment by yamit82 — July 29, 2009 @ 5:06 pm
I don’t know this person and I don’t consider myself anti-Semitic.
Why an attack like this is beyond me.
Comment by rongrand — July 29, 2009 @ 6:10 pm
Ron, I accept you for what you say you are. From all appearences you are a very nice person with a compassionate heart and a deep belief in the Torah (old testament). Israel Lives, says the truth in that historically the Catholics in Europe were directly guilty of mass murders of Jews because, at first, they believed that Jews controlled the wealth in Europe and because they blamed the Jews on the death of Jesus. After time, they needed no excuse to hate the Jews. In the advent of America, much of that hate followed the migration and is still infestating to this day.
Ron, pay no attention to what others say about you. I regard you as a friend.
Comment by Ed D — July 29, 2009 @ 6:38 pm
Yamit, your statistical references provide the proof of what I understand the situation is as regards anti-Israel/Jewish sentiment in Western democracies. With the rise of anti-semitism throughout Western democracies, I have been making increasingly urgent calls on Jewish organizations to:
But for a bit of a response from one organization that carries on as it has in the face of a growing threat, the other organizations have not even acknowledged my letters.
In Canada however, I have noted that B’Nai Brith’s statements on a number of issues have become increasingly strong and unequivocal. Perhaps they are listening, but don’t have the time to engage me or they have been on their own coming to the same conclusions I have.
Still, the evidence you cite does not suggest that anti-semitism has reached the critical mass and tipping point levels in 1938.
The causes of this rise in anti-semitism and anti-Israel sentiment cannot just be laid at the doorsteps of those churches that have not rid themselves of the stain of anti-semitism, such as the United Church of Canada that is now putting forth another boycott Israel resolution for a vote in August, 2009.
Anti-Israel sentiment, which I see as a precurser to anti-semitism is understandable given that the primarily liberal media has kept Israel in the forefront of the public’s eye, both in North America and the EU. Much of that reporting as singled out Israel for condemnation.
The ecomomic recession that has hit the EU and America especially is causing all sorts of grief and fears amongst the people. It is only natural that people will look to blame someone for the situation.
The public is not nearly as uninformed as they were years ago. As regards the issue of oil, the public knows it is being hit with higher fuel costs for their cars, their planes and their heating oil. The public also knows that the OPEC nations have leverage on them both here and in the EU in that regard. They also know that the OPEC nations, like the whole of the Muslim Middle East single out Israel for demonization and blame for the instability of the Middle East.
It takes no genius to know that many in the public and indeed their leaders will seek to ameliorate the situation for themselves by trying to appease the Muslim Middle East by calling on Israel to give the Muslim Middle East and the Palestinians more and more in the hope that the price of greater stability in the Middle East will ultimately be reached and will translate into lower fuel costs at home.
Add to that, Pres. Obama by his singling out Israel as being to blame for the peace process not advancing, his sympathies for the Palestinians and his completely ignoring the real cause being intractable Jew/Israel hatred of the Arabs/Palestinians and their rejection of Israel’s right to exist, leads many to suspend their own good judgment and accept that he is right. The liberal media fosters that same view in the way they present their news and opinion, which amounts to advocacy journalism.
Amidst America’s economic crisis, it does not help Jews that some of the liberal media reported directly or indirectly that Bernie Maddoff is Jewish, which was picked up by the many anti-Israel blogs to make anti-Jewish hay out of.
What I see in the growing anti-Israel sentiments here and in the EU are mostly pre-cursers to full blown anti-semitism.
If Jewish and friends of Israel/Jews groups do not take the kind of stance to this growing threat that I have suggested, things will only continue to get worse and what you say is the case now, which I reject, will become the case.
There is some sign that the level of Jewish support for Pres. Obama is falling from its previous high of 80% as Jewish leaders who made statements of support for Pres. Obama immediately following his White House conference with them, are backing off those statements and again expressing concerns that led Pres. Obama to invite them to the White House in the first place.
This may be a positive sign of things to come.
Thx for the video on Tisha B’Av and the activism of Nadia Matar, leader of Women in Green.
The growth of such kind of pro-Israel activism will only serve to highlight further the growing distance between Israel’s perception of her own best interests and those of Pres. Obama.
Further, the more forceful that activism is, the more likely diaspora Jewry will be forced to respond. Given the seeming growing concerns at least within the American Jewish community with Pres. Obama’s policies vis a vis Israel, the likelihood is American Jewry will become more supportive of Israel and advocate that much more strenuously against Pres. Obama’s thinking, positions, policies and actions.
Comment by Bill Narvey — July 29, 2009 @ 7:09 pm
Israel lives-apologize to Rongrand. There is nothing in Ron’s writings to justify your accusation that he is anti-semitic.
The Vatican/Catholic Church is much to blame for antisemitism. That church has been trying to eradicate antisemitism from the minds of her followers. Vatican II in the 1960’s was a small, but for the Church, a major step in that direction.
The Vatican and the Catholic Church have made further strides in that regard, but the consensus is they have to try harder, much harder for they still have a long way to go to eliminate the roots of Christian antisemtism. Catholics such as Ron contribute to doing just that.
Comment by Bill Narvey — July 29, 2009 @ 7:17 pm
Ron you and I are past any religious disputes and I believe we have become friends here with a degree of understanding one to another. In the past week some, I call them at best subversives have entered this site. I don’t know them personally or figuratively and am not at all happy as to how they have addresses you. Unless they archived they have no context and I believe it is not only a disservice to your person but also that which you stand for. I called you friend and hope you are not put off by some of the comments by that jerk who ever he is. Stay kool.
Comment by yamit82 — July 29, 2009 @ 7:52 pm
Yamit and Bill - Thanks
Comment by rongrand — July 29, 2009 @ 8:14 pm
Thanks Ed D
Comment by rongrand — July 29, 2009 @ 8:15 pm
What is this- menage a quatre?
Comment by chucky — July 29, 2009 @ 10:06 pm
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