The Jews of the gathering night

by Melanie Phillips

The Jews of the gathering night

One of the most agonising and tragic aspects of the current global wave of Jew-hatred is the prominent part played in this by Jews. This is not a new phenomenon. Throughout the centuries of Jewish persecution, from the medieval ‘conversos’ to Karl Marx and beyond, there have always been Jews who, for a variety of reasons, have been ready and willing to advance the agenda of the persecutors of the Jewish people. Today, the west is teeming with their successors – almost always on the left, very often but not always highly secularised and with a tangential or deeply conflicted relationship with their Jewish identity, they are in the forefront of the movement to demonise, delegitimise and destroy Israel. They do it to no other country; only the expression of self-determination of their own people inspires in them such frenzied and obsessive loathing.

Nothing could be more inappropriate than their common soubriquet of ‘self-hating Jews’; on the contrary, they usually love themselves inordinately. What they hate is the Jewish bit of themselves – or to be more precise, everything but that bit of the Jewish bit which enables them falsely to represent Jewish powerlessness as the key characteristic of Jewish peoplehood, about which they generally know next to nothing and which they generally disdain altogether until the chance arrives to dump on it with maximum venom. The fact that they are Jews – however nominally – gives a free pass to the non-Jewish Jew-haters to dress up their bigotry as high-minded conscience, while still others of good will are led to believe the hateful lies and libels about Israel in the misguided belief that, since Jews are giving voice to them, they cannot be an expression of prejudice. The result of all this is that the Arab and Muslim agenda of the destruction of Israel and genocide against the Jews is advanced every time a Jew-hating Jew spews such venom into the public sphere.

On Front Page, David Solway lists some of the examples of this pathology:

The late Harold Pinter won a Nobel Prize, not for his over-rated plays, but for his anti-Israeli (and anti-American) posturing. Equally influential are fellow Jewish anti-Zionists like Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Naomi Klein, Joel Kovel, Tony Judt, Ilan Pappe, Tom Segev, Sara Roy, Henry Siegman, Avrum Burg, Jaqueline Rose and Richard Falk, to mention only a sparse handful, whose denunciation of Israel is so extreme and untextured as to be scarcely distinguishable from antisemitism.

Such apostates do not scruple to trade in apocrypha when indulging their animus against their own people, even when they can be readily exposed. In Fabricating Israeli History, Efraim Karsh has abundantly demonstrated how left-wing Israeli ‘New Historians’ have cooked the documents they work with. The lamentable Naomi Klein falsely accuses Israel of having cynically profited from ‘endless war’ and calls for academic and economic boycotts. Noam Chomsky’s gross fabrications have been outed by Peter Collier. The list goes on... Given the virulent anti-Zionist advocacy of so many prominent Jewish self-haters, one remains skeptical of ever achieving collective assent or reasonable consensus. Masking the syndrome of self-contempt as a quest for ‘justice,’ these Jewish turncoats seek redemption in a denial of both history and genealogy. Diagnostically speaking, it is not so much a mental illness or clinical aberration we are witnessing, but a sickness in the soul supple enough to contort itself into a spurious idealism, a simulacrum of ideological nobility.

Indeed, one of the most insufferable characteristics of these Jew-hating Jews is that they claim to represent authentic Jewish morality as opposed to the supposed corruption of those principles by Zionism and Israel. They do nothing of the kind. Their claim merely advertises their profound ignorance of Jewish ethics and history, which they so badly misrepresent. They are beneath contempt; and were the situation not so desperate, their rantings would be regarded as of no more consequence than those of any other fringe sectarian groupuscule. But their position in fashionable society means they are lionised by an equally ignorant and bigoted intelligentsia -- with the result that these Jews of the gathering night are significant contributors to the unconscionable agenda of our times.

Tuesday, 27th January 2009

What "Peace Process?"

From the Arabs' point of view, the end of--the goal of--the interminable "Peace Talks," "Peace Negotiations," the "Peace Process" is the dismantling of Israel. They have the patience of all Islamics, outwait, outbreed the "infidel."

From Are We Doomed?
by Rebecca Bynum

[quote]

Here, I must echo the sentiments in the words of Richard L. Rubenstein who wrote*:

“As I read the moral indictments of Israel for its alleged human-rights abuses of the Palestinian people by so many of the mainline Protestant denominations and other seemingly well-intentioned individuals and groups, I have the feeling that they are either unaware of or unwilling to confront the true complexity of the struggle between Jews and Muslims over the Jewish presence in any part of Palestine, a presence that radical Muslims characterize as “a crime that must be erased.”[12] At times, I also have a darker thought. The men and women who write boycott and divestiture resolutions for denominational approval are, for the most part, highly educated products of some of our best seminaries and universities. Could it be that they see the destruction of Israel as their “final solution” to the problem of achieving peace in the Middle East?”

http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/46575/sec_id/46575

________________________________________
*My Grandmother’s Paper Bag by Richard L. Rubenstein
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/43200/sec_id/43200#_edn12#_edn12

[12] Osama bin Laden, “Why We Are Fighting You,” Letter to America, in Raymond Ibrahim, ed., The Al Qaeda Reader (New York: Broadway Books, 2008), p. 198.
_________________________________________

ADDENDUM

Via Tundra Tabloids: Daniel Pipes: The Obama Administration Wants to Jump Start the 'War Process' Again.......

Comes this article

Peace Process or War Process? By Daniel Pipes
http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36378

Put a (sour) cherry on top of this cake, with . . .

The summit of the absurd: Middle East process without peace

Obama vs. The People by Sultan Knish

Picture from Sultan Knish's
How the Battle of Obamacare was Won

Obama vs. The People
from Sultan Knish . . .

Obama is falling and contrary to what anyone might have expected, it was not the marginalized Republican party under the inept leadership of Michael Steele or its stable of Congressional Republicans providing nothing but token opposition, who gave him that big push. While the official Republican leadership sat in the corner, information flew back and forth between bloggers, activists and talk... Continue . . .

Why Are Jews Liberals? (from Israel Commentary)

Why Are Jews Liberals? (Truly, a Must Read)
Redacted from a fascinating Symposium in COMMENTARY September 2009

From Israel Commentary
Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman

NORMAN PODHORETZ HAS BEEN WRITING for COMMENTARY for 57 years, was its editor in chief for 35 years, and was its editor at large for 14 more. In his 12th book, COMMENTARY’S venerable lion of disputation addresses the question he says he is asked more frequently than any other by his fellow conservatives, Why Are Jews Liberals? In a dispassionate effort to answer the question honestly, Podhoretz traverses the history of the Jewish people, from the Romans through the evolving views of the Catholic Church and Christianity in general, the Enlightenment, the rise of 19th-century nationalism, and the totalitarian calamities of the 20th century.

He demonstrates that throughout the past two millennia, the scattered Diaspora found its only succor and support from Universalist ideas that, because of their universalism, were placed on the port side of the ideological divide. It is for this reason, he argues, that American Jews have been the only definable well-to-do cohort over the past 44) years that has not moved to the Right. That has not occurred even though the evolution of the American Right has been in a frankly philo-Semitic direction—and among whose ranks come the most ardent non-Jewish supporters of the state of Israel in the world.

To note the publication of this month, COMMENTARY has asked six notable American Jewish thinkers to reflect on its themes. Their contributions appear on the following pages, in reverse alphabetical order. The six illustrious contributors are David Wolpe, Jonathan D. Sarna, Michael Medved, William Kristol, Jeff Jacoby and David Gelernter.

William Kristol, editor in chief of the Weekly Standard, as usual, in a short quote from his article, says it all. "G-d only knows." Of the six articles, the one I found most reasonable and inclusive and to which all Jews should easily relate is that by Jeff Jacoby. It is reproduced below. However, I strongly recommend obtaining COMMENTARY September 2009 and reading all six contributors. They are all brilliant and have many insightful things to say. jsk

I WILLIAM KRISTOL

HOW DO JEWS remain liberals? G-d only knows. Why has He chosen to allow Jews to stay mindlessly attached to a liberalism that is no longer beneficial or sympathetic to them? Why has He chosen to harden Jewish hearts against conservatism increasingly welcoming to Jews and supportive of the Jewish state? Perhaps there are questions that simply can’t be answered by unassisted human reason.

Norman Podhoretz has made a valiant attempt to answer these questions. But, at the end of the day, and at the end of his fascinating and illuminating book, one is left still shaking one’s head. Indeed, Norman is left shaking his head - first at the fact that liberalism has become the religion of American Jews. Then, shaking at the further fact that “they can remain loyal to it even though it conflicts in substance with the Torah of Judaism at so many points, and even though it is also at variance with the most basic of all Jewish interests - the survival of the Jewish people?’


II JEFF JACOBY

LIKE Norman Podhoretz, I am often asked by non-Jewish conservatives why American Jews cling so tenaciously to the Left and vote so consistently for Democrats, and like him I believe the answer to that question is theological: liberalism has superseded Judaism as the religion of most American Jews. Unlike Podhoretz, however, I cannot personally remember a time when this ardent liberalism seemed a sensible response to American Jewish life. Nor did I take it in with my mother’s milk.

One of my earliest political memories is of accompanying my father to the polls early on Election Day in November 1968. It was the first time I had seen the inside of a voting booth, and my father let me pull the lever for Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic presidential candidate.

When I described this adventure to my mother after returning home, she told me that she would be going later that day to cast her own vote—for Richard Nixon. At a young age, therefore, I absorbed the lesson that Jews need not vote in lockstep and that voting for a Republican was as normal as voting for a Democrat. Most American Jews, on the other hand, seem to have learned from an early age that to be Jewish is to be a liberal Democrat, no matter what. No matter that anti-Semitism today makes its home primarily on the Left, while in most quarters of the Right, hostility toward Jews has been anathematized.

No matter that, Israel’s worst enemies congregate with leftists, while its staunchest defenders tend to be resolute conservatives. No matter that Republicans support the Jewish state by far larger margins than Democrats do. No matter that on a host of issues—homosexuality, abortion, capital punishment, racial preferences, public prayer – “the Torah” of contemporary liberalism, as Podhoretz calls it, diverges sharply from the Torah of Judaism. As Why Are Jews Liberals convincingly and depressingly demonstrates, the loyalty of American Jews to the Left has been unaffected by the failure of the Left to reciprocate that loyalty

The Jewish predilection for ill-advised political choices isn’t new. The Bible describes the yearning of the ancient Israelites for a king and God’s warning that monarchy would bring them despotism and misery. Appoint a king, God has the prophet Samuel tell the people, and he will seize your sons and daughters, your fields and vineyards. “He will take a tenth of your flocks and you yourselves will become his servants. Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day?’ His warning fell on deaf ears: “Nevertheless, the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel, and they said, ‘No, but there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations.’”

The longing to “be like all the nations” is a recurring motif in Jewish history. Included are Baal worshipers in the time of the prophets, Judean Hellenists in the Chanukah story, 19th-century assimilationist Jewish socialists enthralled by man’s classless Utopia, modem post-Zionists in quest of a non-Jewish Israel. Down through the ages, in one way or another, innumerable Jews have fought or fled from Jewish “otherness” and embraced ways of life or beliefs that promised to make them less distinctive. Given the cruelty and violence to which Jews were so often subjected, it is not surprising that many would seek to shed or neutralize their Jewishness.

Even in America, a haven of security and prosperity without parallel in the long Jewish Diaspora, many Jews wanted nothing to do with the old Jewish identity. There are stories, perhaps apocryphal, of Jewish men throwing their tefillin into the ocean as the ship bringing them to America came within sight of New York Harbor. “Because tefillin were something for the Old World,” explains a character in Dara Horn’s acclaimed 2002 novel, In the Image, “and herein the New World, they didn’t need them anymore.”

Apocryphal or not, there is no disputing that countless European Jewish immigrants to the Goldina medina—the “golden land”—took advantage of their new circumstances to cast off the old faith or their children did, or their grandchildren. As a result, Jews today are the least religious community in the United States. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, only 16 percent of Jews attend religious services at least once a week, compared with 39 percent of Americans generally. Just 31 percent say religion is “very important” in their lives (vs. 56 percent of Americans).

Such data led Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s chief rabbi, to quote a comment made by the late Hasidic troubadour Shlomo Carlebach, after a lifetime of visiting American campuses: “Ask students what they are. If someone gets up and says, I’m a Catholic, I know that’s a Catholic. If someone says, I’m a Protestant; I know that’s a Protestant. If someone gets up and says, I’m just a human being, I know that’s a Jew.” (sick, sick, sick) jsk

“Just-a-human-being” liberalism, secular and universalist—there is the dead end into which the flight from Jewish separateness has led so many American Jews. To call it a dead end is not to deny its allure. Much of liberalism’s appeal lay in making Jews feel good about themselves, secure in the conviction that they were part of a broad and enlightened mainstream. Liberalism freed them from the charge of parochial self-interest that had so often been leveled against Jews. It replaced the ancient, sometimes difficult burden of chosenness—the Jewish mission to live by God’s law and bring the world to ethical monotheism—with a more palatable and popular commitment to equality, tolerance, and “social justice.”

To be sure, loyalty to the Democratic party came naturally to Jews, with their inherited memories of a Europe in which emancipation had been a project of the Left and where reactionary anti-Semites had (usually) attacked from the Right. As Norman Podhoretz writes, that loyalty understandably intensified during World War II, when the most lethal enemy in Jewish history was ultimately destroyed by an alliance led by, a liberal Democrat named Franklin Roosevelt.

But, liberal Democrats no longer lead such alliances, and they heatedly oppose those who do. The Soviet Union was defeated not by Jimmy Carter, who urged his countrymen to shed their inordinate fear of Communism,” but by Ronald Reagan, who labeled the USSR an “evil empire” and was denounced by the Left as a warmonger. Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act. But, it was George W. Bush who carried out that liberation and in the face of scathing liberal hostility. Republicans constitute the party that sees the current conflict against global Jihadists as the decisive struggle of our time, while the few Democrats who express that view as Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman can testify are scorned by their party’s liberal base.

FDR and Harry Truman are long gone, and so too is the muscular Democratic liberalism that defeated Adolph Hitler and that brought the Holocaust to an end. To deal with the would-be Hitters of our era—Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Jew-hating mullahs in Iran— today’s Democrats counsel pacifism, appeasement and endless negotiation. These days it is the Right that calls for strong and decisive action against the enemies of the free world. Today the beleaguered Jewish state’s most unshakable American allies are Republican and conservative. Yet American Jews remain what they have been for so long: unshakably Democratic and liberal.

This liberalism isn’t rational. It isn’t sensible. It certainly isn’t good for the Jews. But it is, as religions often are, deeply reassuring. It is reassuring for liberal Jews to believe that all people are fundamentally decent and reasonable, and that all disputes can be settled through compromise and conciliation. It is reassuring to believe in a world in which nothing is ever solved by war, so that military force is unnecessary and expensive weapons systems are wasteful. It is reassuring to believe that America is a secular nation, that God and religion have no place in the public square, and that no debt of gratitude is owed to the Christians who created the extraordinary society in which American Jews have thrived. It is reassuring to believe that crime is caused by guns, that academia is the seat of wisdom, and that humanity’s biggest problem is global warming.

It is reassuring to believe that compassion can be achieved by passing the right laws and that big government can create prosperity It is reassuring to believe that the biblical prescription of Tikkun Olam, healing the world—is a synonym for the liberal agenda and that the liberal agenda flows directly from the teachings of Judaism. Above all, it is reassuring to believe that Jews are no different from anyone else, that they are not called to a unique role in human events, and that the best way to be a good Jew is to be a conscientious citizen of the world. To be liberal, in short, is to be “like all the nations.” It is a seductive and comforting belief, and American Jews are far from the first to embrace it.

JEFF JACOBY is an op-ed columnist for the Boston Globe.



Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)
September 03, 2009


http://www.israel-commentary.org/archives/2009_09.html#001247

To Hell With the United Nations!

Welcome Israel

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

The United Nations is the most pernicious, malevolent, and corrupt organizations on earth. Israel should quit this den of iniquity.

“Praiseworthy is the man who walked not in the counsel of the wicked, and stood not in the path of the sinful, and sat not in the session of scorners” (Psalm 1:1.)

The UN’s Anti-Israel Vendetta

For decades, the United Nations has passed countless resolutions condemning Israel for its actions against the Palestinians, while almost never formally addressing Israel's security concerns and the ongoing campaign of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis. The UN General Assembly has become an international forum for promoting Palestinian statehood and deligitmizing Israel.

Before Oslo, the General Assembly either “condemned" or "deplored" or “censured" or "denounced" Israel 321 times––the Arabs: Zero condemnations. Meanwhile, the Security Council "condemned" or "censured" or "deplored" Israel 49 times; Arab states: Zero.

Israel should cease demeaning itself and vacate this international cesspool. Having a forum at the UN is of dubious value, as is the UN itself. John Bolton, former acting US. Ambassador to the UN, has said “There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States."[a] He also said that "The Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost ten stories today, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."[b]

Fred Fleitz, a former senior adviser to Bolton, exposes UN waste and corruption and the resulting human costs. His book, Peacekeeping Fiascoes of the 1990s provides a comprehensive critical assessment of the UN. Among other debacles, he shows how the failed UN mission in Bosnia led to unmitigated atrocities; how the UN debacle in Somalia emboldened terrorists the world over; how the UN peacekeeping operation in Haiti collapsed, with the billions of dollars squandered on it primarily benefiting Haitian President Jean-Bertrande Aristide. And then there is Iraq and the “oil for food” scam between the UN and Saddam Hussein.

Turning to Iran, it’s obvious the UN will do nothing, and can do nothing, to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program. And judging from the Obama Administration’s policy of appeasing Islam, Iran is close to becoming a nuclear power. It may be months away from producing its first bomb.

For Israel, a nuclear-armed Iran is an existential issue that raises the specter of another holocaust. Israel must therefore take its future into its own hands; it must act unilaterally and choose the moment to attack Iran—as Bolton urged in the Wall Street Journal on December 7, 2007.

Bolton wrote that if Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, the U.S. should aid Israel before, during, and after such an attack. But this was before Obama’s election. Dare Israel pull a fait accompli as it did with the Osiraq reactor in 1981? Dare it wait until Iran deploys the bomb? Bolton would surely say no.

Let us take a closer look at what a nuclear-armed Iran portends not only for Israel, but for Europe and the United States—indeed, for Western civilization. Here, let us consult Robert Baer, a most farseeing and experienced former CIA operative in the Middle East. Last year, in his book The Devil We Know, Baer convincingly argues that Iran, contrary to what most believe, Iran is not a regime of crazies. Its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, head of the Revolutionary Guard, is pursuing a political strategy whose goal is to restore the Persian Empire. Iran’s nuclear weapons program must be viewed in these grandiose terms. As for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he is Khamenei’s subordinate.

Ahmadinejad’s imprecations “Death to America” and “Death the Israel” should not be dismissed as the ranting of a maniac. It is a double entendre. It prompts the naïve to trivialize, hence obscure, Iran’s Machiavellian modus operandi. For the cognoscenti, “Death to America” and “Death the Israel” signify the demise of Christianity and Judaism and the global ascendancy of Islam. Let us take a closer look at the location of Iran, a nation of 70 million people, 90 percent of whom are Shiites, 51 percent Persian, and, on the whole, better educated than most Muslims.

Iran’s strategic location on the Persian Gulf will enable its Revolutionary Guard to turn off the flow of oil on which the West’s survival now depends. Moreover, Iran is rapidly developing a worldwide network of power. Iraq, which is about 60 percent Shia, will succumb to Iran when the Americans leave. Iran is luring Turkey into its orbit, as it did Syria. Iran’s proxy Hezbollah is positioned to control Lebanon. Iran is the main supplier of Hamas, and Iran has eyes on Fatah.

Apparently, Iran has already penetrated the Suez Canal. Iran has sleeper cells throughout Europe, and even in America. Iran is collaborating with anti-American forces in South America. And of course Iran supports countless mosques in the United States that preach jihad against America and the West. If this were not enough, hundreds of millions of Muslims throughout the world support Jihad.

If Iran’s long-range ballistic missiles are tipped with nuclear warheads, Europe, already inundated with more than 50 million Muslims, will be blackmailed into submission. Without Europe and its economy, the American economy will collapse beyond repair. Iran knows this. The U.S. is necessarily Iran’s primary target, but Israel, the Small Satan, comes first. Perhaps Iran will not need to devastate America by exploding an Electro-Magnetic Pulse over Washington to terminate the Great Satan.

Viewed in this light, the United Nations is passé and good riddance. If a new UN is desirable, it should consist solely of the ninety or so states classified as democracies by Freedom House, in which the state is merely the custodian of man’s God-given rights to Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness.

If any country, from both a historical and theological perspective, is qualified to promote the formation of such a United Nations, it is Israel—of course, not the Israel that kowtows to terrorist thugs. I mean an Israel on the way to constructing the Third Temple, when Jerusalem will stand majestically as in the days of King Solomon, attracting nations near and far. Let your heart and soul recall with me the prophecy of Zechariah when


… ten men of every nationality, speaking different languages, shall take hold of every Jew by the corner of his garment and say, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you”


Yes, ten men of every nation—surely they will be nations that abide by the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality, the true catholicism included in the Torah for all humanity. Ten men of every nationality journeying to Jerusalem the City of Peace as well as the City of Truth. But at this point in time, let us not be carried away by tenderness.

For peace and truth to unite and prevail, Israel must first triumph over her enemies—today led by Satanic Iran. Today Israel is waiting for the moment. She knows that the mullahs of Iran are driven by the memory of the Persian Empire. She knows that a nuclear armed Iran in control of the Persian Gulf would ensure Iran’s hegemony over the Middle East and beyond. Israel also knows that she will be the first target; for if Iran controls Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, a billion Muslims will exult in victory, will explode in frenzy and wreak havoc on the world, screaming Allah Akbar!


So Israel will strike first, and this will mark the beginning of a new Middle East, one that hardly anyone dreams of. While Iran is being devastated, the Israel Defense Forces will crush Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah, and Syria. Israel will eliminate the entire terrorist network west of the Jordan River. Countless Arabs will flee from Judea and Samaria as well as from Gaza—as they did after the Six-Day War.


The cruel and cynical peace charade will be over. The mendacity of Lilliputian politicians will be silent. The Lion of Judah will have triumphed. During the aftermath of perhaps two decades, Israel will organize the peace in cooperation with Muslim reformers that will be found throughout Middle East, who have been silenced by the mullahs and dictators. The Seven Noahide Laws of Morality will unite the region. Non-secular constitutional democracies will begin to flourish as outlined in a former paper of mine. The United States will cooperate, but petro-dollars will no longer lubricate its diplomacy.


And so at last, the ethos of jihad will cease to torment mankind, and the people of the Middle East, with the cooperation of a God-inspired Israel, will gain a new birth of freedom.


Happy New Year!


______________________

*Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, September 7, 2008.

How Much Antisemitism is there in Britain? . . . If Any

Antisemitism Embedded in British Culture
Prof. Robert S. Wistrich

Antisemitism has been present in Great Britain for almost a thousand years of recorded history. In the twelfth century, Catholic medieval Britain was a persecutory society, particularly when it came to Jews. It pioneered the blood libel and the church was a leader in instituting cruel legislation and discriminatory conduct toward Jews

More excerpts:

"In the Second World War, Britain was not willing to attempt to rescue the Jews of Europe in any meaningful way. It was not only imperial Realpolitik that made the British close the gates of Palestine. We know that officials in the Colonial and Foreign offices and people in the administration in Palestine were far from immune to antisemitic sentiment while supporting an Arab state after the 1939 White Paper.

"During the war the British government was obsessed by the fear that their fight against Hitler could be construed as a war on behalf of the Jews. To avoid ‘fighting a Jewish war' became a kind of alibi for the British authorities to do almost nothing for the Jews. Britain's solemn commitment to create a Jewish National Home in Palestine was in fact betrayed in the hour of greatest need for European Jewry. This is a serious stain on the British record, which until then had many positive sides."

***

"After 1945-in the three years before the creation of the state of Israel-relations between Britain and the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, reached their lowest point. For example, in 1946 the commander of British Forces in Palestine, Lt. Gen. Evelyn Barker, ordered his men to avoid fraternization with Palestinian Jews and to ‘punish the Jews in the manner this race dislikes as much as any, by hitting them in the pocket, which will demonstrate our disgust for them.'[1] Antisemitism was also very virulent in Britain at that time.

"After the Mandatory Government in Palestine executed members of the Irgun, a Jewish underground organization, the latter reacted by hanging two British sergeants. This led to anti-Jewish riots in 1947 in a number of British cities including Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, and London. No lives were lost, but it was a very nasty time. Britain was far from immune in this postwar period to the kind of antisemitism that existed elsewhere on the European Continent, in the Americas, or the Middle East.

***

James McDonald, the first American ambassador to Israel, who had been actively involved in the refugee issue in the 1930s. In London, on his way to Israel in August 1948, he had a conversation with Bevin. McDonald mentions in his diaries how shocked he was by the antisemitism emanating from the British foreign secretary. It was hatred of Israel, of the United States and, in particular, of the Jews.

***

"During the Second World War, Churchill was in favor of the White Paper and kept it in place, despite his strong condemnation of it in 1939 when in opposition. His wartime actions regarding the Jews were no better than those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which is to say, unimpressive. Nor, after becoming prime minister again in 1951, was Churchill's record on Israel particularly brilliant, though he had the historical vision to understand that Israel's re-creation was a major event in modern history. In expressing its meaning Churchill was at his best."

***

"In the 1970s, I [Robert Solomon Wistrich] was actively involved in such debates when I wrote my doctorate at University College, London. The campus war had heated up and was at full blast in 1975 after the UN ‘Zionism is racism' resolution. There were efforts to ban all Jewish societies on British campuses. This was stopped by a militant and determined campaign. The time was not yet ripe for the brazen antisemitism of the kind we find today in Britain and much of Europe, but it was certainly there beneath the surface.

"In the 1970s, the anti-Zionists in Britain-some of them Jews and expatriate Israelis-were already vilifying Israel as an ‘ethnic cleansing' and ‘racist' state. Even then there were claims that Zionism equals apartheid. Among the most extreme demagogues were Jewish Trotskyites, who were the most vitriolic in their loathing for Zionism."

***

"Trotskyites are organized in the Socialist Workers Party, which was very active in the 1970s. It has become a larger political factor in recent decades. I watched the huge antiwar demonstration in London in February 2003. The two main organizers were the Muslim Association of Britain-close to the Muslim Brotherhood-and the Socialist Workers Party. They formed a Marxist-Islamist alliance against the war in Iraq and on the issue of Palestine-which was a major unifying factor. In my forthcoming book on global antisemitism since 1945 I analyze this ‘Red-Green Axis' at considerable length.

***

"There is also a relatively new party called Respect led by MP George Galloway from Scotland. He was on the left of the Labour Party before he went independent. Galloway at one time received generous assistance from Saddam Hussein and defended him regularly on British television. He has always been a militant anti-Zionist, an antiglobalist, and is ferociously anti-American. The actual name of his Islamist-Marxist movement is a complete misnomer. The Respect Party shows no respect for anyone, much less for Jews or Israel, which it constantly vilifies.

"Galloway is an intellectual lightweight and rabble-rouser. He sees a revolutionary potential in the Muslim immigrants in Britain, a kind of ‘substitute proletariat' that could help revive the lost dreams of international socialism. Being against Israel and America is what brings the far Left and radical Islamists together. They have very little in common on issues such as feminism, attitudes toward homosexuals, or secularism."

***

"Since the Second Intifada, the BBC as well as some major British newspapers have reported daily on Israel in an often tendentious, biased, and one-sided fashion. Under no circumstances will the BBC refer to any act of Hamas or other Palestinian terrorist organizations as terrorism. These killers are always referred to as militants, which has trade-union connotations in Britain. It is the term used when, for instance, shop stewards advocate a factory strike.

"Within the distorted BBC system, the reporting of Israeli civilian fatalities and Palestinian suicide attacks made them seem no more than minor pinpricks compared to the retaliations by Israel, the definitive ‘rogue state.' The BBC invariably disconnects jihadi terrorism from any notion that it is part of a hate culture and the result of ideological indoctrination. The explanation is that these murderous deeds are driven by the relentless, ‘racist actions' of the Israeli government. It is Palestinian misery and oppression that allegedly brings about suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks. I believe this is a false, simplistic, and one-sided account. Terrorism is mentioned without connection to an ideology and the issue of antisemitism in the Arab or Islamic world is virtually nonexistent."

***

"What is interesting is that in Britain, as in much of Europe, the proclaimed antiracism of the left-wing variety often feeds the new antisemitism-which is primarily directed against Israel. Of course, if one suggests that such leftists are antisemites in disguise, they are likely to become enraged and retort that one is ‘playing the antisemitic card.' This has become a codeword for saying, as it were, ‘You are a dishonest, deceitful, manipulative Jew' or a ‘lover of Jews.' Zionists supposedly use the ‘accusation of antisemitism' to distort and silence the fully justified criticism of Israel and its human rights abuses. The word ‘criticism' in this context is misplaced. It is a euphemism or license for the demonization of Israel. And that in turn is a major form of antisemitism in our time."

***

Read the Entire Article at:
Antisemitism Embedded in British Culture
Prof. Robert S. Wistrich
Published June 2008
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=624&PID=0&IID=2214&TTL=Antisemitism_Embedded_in_British_Culture


COMMENTS

I, Leslie White, do not agree with all of Prof. Wistrich's opinions as expressed in this interview with Manfred Gerstenfeld. Specifically, his view regarding the BNP (British Nationalist Party)

. . . the far-Right British National Party sees a climate emerging where it might do better than in the past. The fascists would frankly like to see a Britain without Muslims. On the other hand, they also see eye to eye with many Muslim extremists on issues concerning Israel and the Jews. These British fascists admire Osama bin Laden."

I am still ambivalent about the BNP, unable to give it my full endorsement but aware that there elements in this party who are are not Jew-haters. On the other hand, the BNP is, at this time, the only hope to keep the Islamic invaders of the UK from forcing sharia on the British people and making "this scepetered isle" another Islamic entity.

And . . .

Prof. Wistrich's take on Tony Blair and Gordon Brown ss expressed in his:

"There are exceptions to the anti-Israeli attitude. The most important was former prime minister Tony Blair, who was as sympathetic to Israel as one can reasonably be under the circumstances. The paradox is that, while Blair and his successor Gordon Brown have been pro-Israeli and pro-Jewish, Britain is still one of the leaders of current European antisemitism. That is the sobering reality and it needs to be honestly addressed.

"There is much to be said for the claim that Blair's support for Israel during the Second Lebanon War was the straw that broke the camel's back and brought him down as prime minister. He was undefeated in elections yet had to resign under pressure from his own party. Blair and Brown fit into a line of statesmen who came out of the British Christian tradition, which has a historic affinity with Zionism. These leaders include Arthur Balfour, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Harold Wilson, and Margaret Thatcher-individuals of vision and great political talent. In my opinion they represent the best in the British political tradition.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, their domestic politics aside, are not benefiting Jews in the UK nor the Jewish State of Israel by having been and being soft on the Moslems that are intent on taking over the British Isles and making them into another Islamic outpost in the jihad against Western civilization.

For a possible--and uplifting--scenario of what will become of Israel, read
A Picture of Things to Come
The Trial
by Paul Eidelberg
at
http://thejewinyellow.blogspot.com/2009/09/picture-of-things-to-come.html

A Picture of Things to Come

The Trial

by Paul Eidelberg

Israel is playing a waiting game. She knows that Iran driven by historical memory, overweening pride, and Allah’s cult of hatred, will strike; but Israel will have the warning time required to strike first—and the Jews, victims of the Holocaust, will indeed strike first. This will be the beginning of a new Middle East, that hardly anyone dreams of. Even before Iran is devastated, the Israel Defense Forces will deliver crippling blows to Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah, and Syria. Israel will eliminate the entire terrorist network west of the Jordan River. Countless Arabs will flee from Judea and Samaria as well as from Gaza. The peace charade will be over. The mendacity and puerilities of Lilliputian politicians will be silenced. The Lion of Judah will have triumphed.

CONNECTING THE DOTS ON NETANYAHU‏

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Benjamin Netanyahu has often been called a clever but unprincipled, indeed, unscrupulous, politician. But his skill as an orator as well as his pleasant demeanor obscures the nature of this political animal—and his oratory sometimes trips him.

Let’s go back to the aftermath of the May 1996 election, when nosed out Shimon Peres for the premiership by a mere half a percentage point. To both Jewish and Arab audiences he boasted that no one expected him to (1) accept the Oslo Accords as a basis for the “peace process”; (2) meet with Yasser Arafat; and (3) withdraw from Hebron. Ponder the significance of this unwittingly self-incriminating statement or confession. If no one, in his own words, expected him to take the three steps just mentioned, it follows that Mt. Netanyahu betrayed those who elected him Israel’s Prime Minister!

That he can boast before the nation about his utterly unexpected adherence to the Oslo Accords reveals his contempt for public opinion. It also reveals, in addition to his moral obtuseness, Israel’s undemocratic political culture. But this is not all.

Mr. Netanyahu employed the same kind political deception in the February 2009 election. During the campaign he said nothing about his stand on the “two state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; in other words, he was mum about his position regarding Palestinian state. He knew very well that had he candidly supported Palestinian statehood, he would lose a decisively significant percentage of votes from the nationalist camp. (Bear in mind that his Likud Party won only 27 seats to Kadima’s 28.)

It is in this light that we are to understand his momentous speech of June 14, 2009 at Bar-Ilan University, where, without prior cabinet or Knesset debate, he unilaterally supported the establishment of a Palestinian state in Israel’s heartland, Judea and Samaria. That he again displayed contempt for public opinion was confirmed by a poll commissioned by the Independent Media Review Analysis (IMRA) in August.

● The poll found strong disagreement to Netanyahu's decisions among those who voted for his Likud party in the February 2009 election. Seventy percent of Likud voters said they opposed plans to freeze Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem, while 73 percent said the government should grant authorization to so-called “illegal outposts” instead of seeking to demolish them. This clearly implies that the public overwhelming opposes a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria.

● Pollsters also discovered that despite overwhelming media criticism of Minister Moshe Yaalon, who termed the Peace Now group “a virus,” the public tends to agree with Yaalon's remarks. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed expressed agreement with Yaalon, and said that Peace Now has caused significant damage to the state of Israel. Only 28 percent of those surveyed did not agree that Peace Now has harmed the state.

I have elsewhere said that Netanyahu has replaced Shimon Peres as the eminence grise of Peace Now. He is far more subtle than Peres, hence all the more dangerous.

Finally, the true story of a long pathetic history about to be repeated

(G-d forbid)

From Israel Commentary:

PM Netanyahu & Defense Minister Ehud Barak – A dangerous duo for Israel’s sovereignty and security

By Emanuel A. Winston, Middle East Analyst & Commentator

The Wall St. Journal on August 21st ran an article by Joshua Mitnick "ISRAEL’S BARAK TAKES LEAD IN PEACE TALKS" (1) wherein he describes the wonderful(?!) relationship between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Ehud Barak. What Mitnick ignores is read between the lines for those of us who know them both and their complicated histories. Since the Wall St. Journal is generally no push over for the boys in the Beltway, why the Puff Piece?

Most everyone in Israel and those outside who know the backgrounds of Netanyahu and Barak would describe them in a different way. Ehud Barak was nurtured by the Labor Left as the "Great Hero,” along with receiving medals for special politically inspired missions so that when he left the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), he would be ready for a Labor Left political career. As for Netanyahu, he is often equated with a used car or house siding salesman, too easily manipulated by U.S. interests with a rubbery spine.

Barak was the one who ran out on his Christian Lebanese allies in the middle of the night. He kept it a big secret between him and President Bill Clinton. The ‘deal’ was if he vacated Israel’s vital security zone on the Southern Lebanese border. Clinton would transfer $800 million to the Israeli Left government if Barak abandoned his allies to the incoming Hezb’Allah terrorists. Barak ran out so fast, he left four tanks, long range 120 mm artillery with pallets of shells and more. Bill Clinton never did transfer the promised $800 million!

Some of the Lebanese Christian soldiers managed to escape over the border into Israel where Barak provided less than desirable living quarters and conditions. Barak has left a trail of victims and their broken bones. Few, other than some radical Leftists, trust Barak. Some will recall that - when Barak was Prime Minister, he desperately tried to abandon the most vital high ground of the Golan Heights and surrender it to Syria’s Hafez al Assad - a most dedicated enemy. Then Barak confirmed his Left Liberal credentials when he was PM by trying to give up 97% of the territories to Yassir Arafat who, thankfully, refused - proving that he never wanted a Palestinian State.

As for Bibi, he bent like a green twig during the Wye River Conference, ending up abandoning 80% of Hebron and the surrounding communities to Yassir Arafat and his PLO Terrorists who immediately went to work, sniping and killing the Jews who remained. Who remembers the Muslim Arab Terrorists shooting of the baby Shalhavet Pass, who died in her father’s arms? And more.... How many more do there have to be?

Let’s not forget then and now how the U.S./CIA trained and armed Arafat’s killers in sniping and other terrorist activities. The American General Keith Dayton has been training the remainder of the PLO (now under Arafat’s loyal lieutenants who are now under Mahmoud Abbas) in shooting, maneuvers - as well as arming them with automatic rifles, long-range sniper rifles, side arms and, no doubt, anti-armor weapons. Israeli leaders even allowed in weapons’ carriers, some from Russia, supposedly to use against ‘other’ Terrorists but we know the newly U.S.-trained PLO Army will use them against Israel.

Bibi sports his Jewishness as a badge of shame. (I saw him resist putting on the kippa in his pocket at a fund-raising dinner hosted by observant Jews.) What nation, what religion would give up the burial site of their nation’s founders? Bibi knowingly gave up sovereignty and sanctity over the venerable Burial Cave of the Matriarchs and Patriarchs, "Ma’arat HaMachpelah.” Our ancestral mothers, Sara, Rivka and Leah, and our fore-fathers Avraham, Yitzhak and Ya’acov are buried there. Before 1967 when the IDF liberated all of Eretz Yisrael, the Muslims let the Jews go up only to the 7th step, outside the Tomb.

After the Six Days War of June 1967 liberated all of Eretz Yisrael, including Hebron, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan Heights, the Jews were finally free to pray in all of the Ma’arat HaMachpelah. HOWEVER, the Left Liberal government of Moshe Dayan, ‘et al’ gave away our sovereignty and the sanctity for the Cave by ‘sharing’ it with the Muslims who could have it on ‘their’ days, parts of it to be shared, and we could have it on ‘our’ days.

Remember, Dayan (another Leftist un-Jew) also gave the "keys" to the Temple Mount to the Muslim Wakf who now totally control Temple Mount and are propagating lies that the Jews have no connection to Har HaBayit. The idea of abandoning any and all holy rallying Jewish sites for observant Jews started with David Ben Gurion and continues to this day.

Bibi proved his choice to be an un-Jew by abandoning the sole sovereignty for the heritage of all Jewish people from ancient times and forever. The pressures put upon him by America to do so, do NOT ameliorate his responsibilities for these surrenders at all. We are left with a lack of trust and confidence in Bibi’s ability to resist the world and, especially, American pressure for future abdication of Israeli and Jewish land.

Nevertheless, Bibi again was elected Prime Minister this year and chose Ehud Barak as his Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister, knowing Barak was well beyond the appellation of "Radical Left.” Of course, Bibi tried to get Tzipi Livni first, on direct orders of Arabist State Department but she opted out. The U.S. State Department wanted someone connected to the Olmert government’s appeasement weak psychology. They had ‘secret’ plans to drive the Jews out of Judea and Samaria - and gift all of Jerusalem that Jordan had occupied for 19 years from 1948 to 1967 - the North, South and East of Jerusalem. The State Department wanted an unbroken continuation with the secret negotiations by Olmert-Livni-Barak - forcing Jews out of their inheritance - all the holy sites in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem - and soon - the Golan Heights.

When or IF the Muslims control Judea, Samaria and most (or all) of Jerusalem, none of the rest of Israel - in any borders - will be safe from terrorist attacks. Israel’s water resources will also be at critical risk. Most important, where do they intend to ‘put’ the 500,000 - 600,000 Jewish men, women and children they plan to uproot? In addition, small matter, how and who will pay for that ‘small’ evacuation and re-settlement? Or, don’t we use the word ‘settlement’? Has it become a dirty word?

The Muslim Arabs never wanted a state before the Jews created a Garden of Eden in a desolate land. Since then, the Muslims felt compelled to steal it from the Jews. Those Muslim Arabs now called ‘Palestinians’ came into Eretz Yisrael from all over the Middle East after the Jews made jobs, medical care and a better life for all the people of the Middle East. Of course, none of these historical facts would appear in a puff piece written for the Wall St. Journal by Joshua Mitnick. Not his fault, just a bit of an important history lesson left out - Our History. We Americans should be used to misleading articles as was done - often - for President Barack Hussein Obama but NOT from The Wall St. Journal.

Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman at 08:12 PM Comments (0)
August 26, 2009
http://www.israel-commentary.org/archives/2009_08.html#001244