Ray Cook - As I See It

Israel, Zionism and the Media

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Shana Tova 5773

16/09/2012 / / 1 Comment

Wishing all my readers a healthy and prosperous New Year whatever your religious affiliation or none.

Sorry I have not posted for a while, which may be a relief to some.

I have had a busy few months with my community responsibilities.

It’s not as if nothing is going on, is it?

Some recent highlights:

  • Wild accusations of Mossad involvement in the Lac D’Annecy shootings
  • Hannan Ashrawi denies Jews expelled from Arab lands are refugees, thus, at the same time, accidentally confirming that Palestinians refugees aren’t refugees.
  • BBC to show a Panorama programme on the night of Rosh HaShonah about the Price Tag movement in Israel and the Territories
  • The genocidal megalomaniac Iranian President Ahmadinejad will be speaking at the UN this month
    Will Israel bomb Iran or not?
  • Ongoing BDS with Habima, BatSheva, an Israeli store in Brighton, the Co-op, the TUC
  • Rachel Corrie decision
  • Supporters of the religion of peace riot, kill and burn because some idiot Egyptian Copt ex-pat with a grudge claiming to be an Israeli Jew posts a ludicrously amateurish video on YouTube insulting the Prophet which hardly any of the rioters will even have seen
  • Worrying developments at the Church of England Synod re EAPPI

Having survived two Manchester Jewish stores this morning thronged with last-minute Yom Tov shoppers and Tesco to boot, I am sure that I shall return in 5773 ready to take on anyone and any thing.

 

C of E ignores violence against Christians whilst slating Israel

05/08/2012 / / 12 Comments

Stuart Palmer (haifadiarist.blogspot.co.uk) has recently responded to a letter on the Church of England Newspaper to a letter writer who blames the ills of the Palestinians completely on Israel.

Stuart has been kind enough to allow me to reproduce his letter.

I thought this letter makes a number of points the C of E and, indeed, all Christians who are so quick to blame Israel for everything bad about the Middle East East conflict.

Sirs,

Re Jeremy Moodey’s analysis “A Question of Bias on Israel-Palestine”, it is beyond belief that the writer can lay the blame 100% on the side of Israel. I do wonder whether he has ever visited the region and sat down to have coffee with the Palestinian youth in Bethlehem or Jerusalem. It may surprise him to know that they are supportive of Israel and would prefer to be part of the Israel success story rather than the dictatorial, fragmented and corrupt Palestinian Authority.

And while Moodey is making the case for the Palestinians, he does not seem to care what is happening to the adherents of his own Christian religion in the area.

a)        The war on Christianity and its adherents rages on in the Muslim world. In March alone, Saudi Arabia’s highest Islamic law authority decreed that churches in the region must be destroyed; jihadis in Nigeria said they “are going to put into action new efforts to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping their women”; American teachers in the Middle East were murdered for talking about Christianity; churches were banned or bombed, and nuns terrorized by knife-wielding Muslim mobs. Christians continue to be attacked, arrested, imprisoned, and killed for allegedly “blaspheming” Islam’s prophet Muhammad; former Muslims continue to be attacked, arrested, imprisoned, and killed for converting to Christianity.

To understand why all this persecution is virtually unknown in the West, consider the mainstream media’s well-documented biases: also in March alone, the New York Times ran a virulently anti-Catholic ad, but refused to publish a near identical ad directed at Islam; the BBC admitted it will mock Jesus but never Muhammad; and U.S. sitcoms were exposed for bashing Christianity, but never Islam

b)        Dozens of Gaza Christians staged a rare public protest this month, claiming two congregants were forcibly converted to Islam and were being held against their will. The small but noisy demonstration showed the increasingly desperate situation facing the tiny minority. Protesters banged on a church bell and chanted, “With our spirit, with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Jesus.”

Since the Islamic militant Hamas seized power five years ago, Christians have felt increasingly embattled, but have mostly kept silent. There are growing fears among Gaza Christians that their rapidly shrinking community could disappear through emigration and conversions.

Their numbers appear to have shrunk from some 3,500 to about 1,500 in recent years, according to community estimates. They are a tiny minority among 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza, most conservative Muslims. “If things remain like this, there’ll be no Christians left in Gaza,” said Huda Al-Amash, mother of one of the converts.

c)        From a Christian friend in the UK in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, she wrote that:  “I, for one, am not prepared to fund the activities of such as Dr Dinnen or the Synod whilst they embark on an unjustified crusade, out of all proportion in comparison to so many urgent issues in the world, against this legitimate, democratic country. Israel makes no claims to be perfect, like ourselves, they make mistakes. However, it is a country  which subscribes to the same sets of values and rights as ourselves, and is a beacon in an area of the world which is full of ‘despots, tinpots and crackpots’ and deniers of equal human rights for women, homosexuals and those of different faiths. 

Hence my decision to terminate my standing order. I suspect that there are many other Christians who share my opinions but most worryingly, also many more who do not fully know the facts but take their cue from the Church’s stance. Unfortunately this misguided stance is yet another example of the Church concentrating on the wrong issues and smacks of moral cowardice, dubious motives and delusion. I for one find it extremely depressing”.

Meanwhile the Christian community in Israel is flourishing, a testament to the open society in which we live, but, of which, Mr Moodey is totally ignorant or perhaps chooses to ignore. Let him come and visit the most multi cultural city in Israel – Haifa – and see for himself.

The 2012 Olympic opening ceremony in London – a Guide for the Perplexed

30/07/2012 / / 2 Comments

The ceremony was a complete triumph for Danny Boyle, his team, the performers and participants and everyone in the UK. Well done to all. This was a moment of pride in a time of worry and concern.

The negatives: carpers and critics have pointed out a Utopian view of Britain, a socialist agenda and a paean to multiculturalism. All this may be true. Yes, the ceremony did not tell us about the problems with the NHS, the railways, housing or social unrest. Please tell me any Olympic ceremony in the past which dwelt on the negatives.

The Olympics is not just a big athletics meeting as Peter Hitchens has written in his inimitable lugubrious and Scrooge-like style. It is a festival of the human family. Flawed, yes, nevertheless it aspires to show us the best of ourselves and to make us feel good about who we are and what we can be. We all know the negative aspects of human behaviour and these are very much on show at the Olympics. So what’s the harm in trying to inject some inspiration, some honest sentiment, national pride?

Israel: I have already written about the IOC’s refusal to remember the 40th anniversary of the murder of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches and a German policeman at the Munich Olympics in 1972. This omission was highlighted by a brief silence for the dead of all conflicts and a fitting tribute to the victims of the 7/7 London bombings which occurred the day after the Olympic bid was won.

One view is that if this had been commemorated it could have resulted in the walk out of Arab and Muslim states and protests at the ceremony itself. So best not to highlight Israel’s isolation. I don’t agree: if there are still people on this planet who believe that kidnapping, hostage-taking and murder and the desecration of the Olympic ideal are not a heinous crime, whatever the excuse or motivation, then the countries that those people represent should be banned from competition.

The Lebanese judo players requested a barrier be placed between them and the Israeli team at their practice venue before the games. A Tunisian competitor who was scheduled to compete against an Israeli has developed a mystery affliction and withdrawn. Indeed, I expect the Israelis to find that many Muslim and Arab competitors are afflicted not by a mystery disease but an ancient and, apparently, incurable one – Jew Hatred. What other country now or in the past has had to put up with this nonsense. The IOC should act against countries which will not compete with Israelis or anyone else on political grounds. I seem to recall that the two Koreas once played a World Cup match and so did the two Germanies before reunification. Iraq played Iran, too, at football.

Only Israel is so monstrous a nation that to even make eye contact with its nationals is enough to afflict your immune system.

But back to the ceremony.

What I really loved about it was that it catered more for the Brits than outsiders. It was full of references and in-jokes which would have completely baffled all but the most serious Anglophiles (or should that be Brittanophiles?). It was the quirky, British TV comedy aspect of it and the fact that we ‘got it’ and others wouldn’t that made it special.

They said Bejing could not be bettered. What Boyle did was not to try to compete with what was essentially a high-tech extravaganza. He completely changed the paradigm; indeed, he subverted the whole accepted notion of what an opening ceremony should be.

For me the highlight came early. Sir Kenneth Branagh emerged from a horse-driven London omnibus as Isambard (which the BBC commentator strangely pronounced ‘Eisembard’) Kingdom Brunel (what a glorious unBritish name that is) replete with signature cigar and stovepipe hat. The look on Branagh’s face was a mixture of pride, self-esteem and wonder. He proceeded to the grass mound at centre of the stadium and declaimed in the best traditions of British Shakespearean theatre:

‘Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again’

Branagh’s rendition, especially those last nine words, was spine-tingling. I’ve listened to it four times already and it never fails to send shivers down my spine.

Branagh’s choice as Brunel was masterful and his performance perfection. These are the words of Caliban in Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’. The conflation of Brunel as Caliban was strange, but worked. Better Caliban than the Taliban, you might say.

In this context it is a whimsical reference and welcome to the British Isles, even, perhaps its weather. It is, essentially, an invitation to behold a dream sequence, a journey of the imagination which we are about to encounter. And surely the Olympics contain that sense of awe and wonder, fear and trepidation which pass so quickly and become as if a dream of remembered common experience. This was a brilliant and deeply moving moment accompanied by the soaring music of Elgar (Nimrod from the Enigma Variations) – who else. Kitsch? Of course, but wonderful kitsch.

Perhaps, only those of us with a true British nervous system could be moved by this combustive association of Bard, engineer par excellence and imperial music-making.

Other highlights were the unique participation of the Queen in the humour of the opening. Arriving by parachute, apparently, with Daniel Craig in his James Bond persona. Rowan Atkinson and the Chariots of Fire sequence with an ageing Mr Bean hamming it up in true Brit fashion.

I can understand criticism of the NHS sequence where Mary Poppins and Nanny McPhee seem to have taken over Great Ormond Street. A clever conflation again of the JM Barrie Peter Pan legacy, the world of children’s books (even JK Rowling put in an appearance) and those NHS antics. The NHS sequence would be anathema to Americans who can’t understand how or why the State should provide something for nothing. And there are many in this country who would agree. But the NHS is a major presence in the lives of the British, for better or for worse and a cornerstone of post War Socialist Britain which even the Tories have pledged to support. Yet, it does seem a little strange to make it part of an Olympic opening ceremony.

I could have done without Sir Paul McCartney. Love him as I do, he is now past his singing sell-by date as he demonstrated at the Diamond Jubilee.

I urge you to replay this ceremony and pause the action frequently to appreciate the richness of texture and the multitude of cultural references woven into the tapestry of the production:

Wind in the Willows, Eastenders, a glimpse of Olympic medallists of bygone years, Pink Floyd, Fawlty Towers and, gloriously, the Rugby Union national teams woven into the national songs of the constituent elements of the United Kingdom.

And then the gobsmackingly awesome forging of the Olympic rings and the Up Helly Aa finale of flame lighting adding a certain Niebelung feel to the occasion which is not inappropriate given the country’s Germanic, Celtic and pagan roots. Even the uprooting of the tree on the replica Glastonbury Tor had a whiff of Yggdrasil about it. It all came perilously close to Nuernberg in the 1930s but kept enough distance to keep such thoughts in the background.

Now then. Shami Chakrabarti. WTF! Never mind, the surreal experience of Shami, Ban Ki Moon and Muhammad Ali in the same shot made it all worthwhile.

I love the atmosphere at these games. I love the Benny Hill music amid the soft porn sand pit that is the Beach Volleyball arena on the hallowed ground of Horse Guards Parade. I love waking up to see archery at my old stamping ground of Lords Cricket Ground and I love the sheer incongruity of an Olympic cycle race through West London. I love the Americans not understanding it all and insisting on renaming things such as The Tower Bridge.

It’s bonkers, it’s charming it’s the Olympics as an end of pier show but it’s British and it makes you proud.

IOC sides with terror against dignifying and commemorating murdered athletes

27/07/2012 / / 0 Comments

In the 1970’s Black September hijacked aircraft and blew them up.

In the 21st century their successors in the form of the Palestinian Authority/Fatah has hijacked the memory of the 11 Israeli athletes murdered in 1972.

Despite the support of many people and organisations the IOC has cravenly demurred from just one minute of silence to remember 11 dead Olympians who came to Munich in 1972 to celebrate the true meaning of the Olympic ideal: that is, for the youth of the world to gather in peace and harmony, where national rivalries and disputes and hatreds are put aside and to compete in a celebration of youth, the human spirit and global fraternity.

That spirit was cruelly murdered by a disgusting bunch of terrorists who then, as now, represented a movement that has no regard for human life or dignity, especially if that life is Israeli and, more specifically, Jewish.

Just 27 years after the end of the Holocaust, Palestinians whose Grand Mufti had been an inspiration to Hitler and who promised to help him wipe out Jews in Palestine, with total disregard for the Olympic ideal, held hostage and then killed Israeli athletes and coaches.

The intention was to kidnap and hold hostage in order to force the Israelis to release more than 200 prisoners and the Germans to release the  leaders of the notorious Baader-Meinhof  ‘Red Army faction’.

The terrorists who survived were later released as a result of the hijacking of a Lufthansa aircraft in 1977 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another Fatah group closely associated to today’s Palestinian Authority leaders including Mahmoud Abbas who it is claimed funded the massacre 40 years ago.

So how fitting is it, then, that that same Abbas should endorse a thank you letter, a billet-doux to Jacques Rogge, President of the IOC for not holding a ‘racist minute of silence’.

Palestinian Media Watch reports:

The Palestinian Authority is against the moment of silence at the Olympics to commemorate the Israeli athletes murdered at the Munich Olympics in 1972. According to the headline in the official PA daily, “Sports are meant for peace, not for racism.”

According to Jibril Rajoub, President of the Palestinian Olympic Committee:

“Sports are meant for peace, not for racism… Sports are a bridge to love, interconnection, and spreading of peace among nations; it must not be a cause of division and spreading of racism between them [nations].”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 25, 2012]

These words appeared in a letter sent by Rajoub to the President of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge. The letter ”expressed appreciation for [Rogge’s] position, who opposed the Israeli position, which demanded a moment’s silence at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London.”

How can anything be more obscene, more morally repugnant, more of an inversion of all norms of civilised behaviour than actually calling it a racist act for the world to commemorate the killings of Jews by racists.

The real reason the PA does not want the Minute of Silence is that they actually applaud and revere the terrorists who committed the act. They are national heroes.

How can there ever be peace and reconciliation with people who hold such vile views. Better to shut up. Instead they actually congratulate the IOC in their brazen dirt-rubbing, self-satisfied, vainglorious smugness.

Why congratulate? Because this actually is the act of hijack; it says ‘look world, what we did is OK because the IOC are on our side. The Jews can go to hell. Those murders were a victory. You don’t cry over dead Jews’.

So Rogge and his cowardly Olympic cabal are now complicit in that massacre by association. It’s not good enough that he held his miserable minute of silence in front of 50 people at the signing of the Olympic Truce. Some Truce. Some chutzpah!

Despite this, earlier today, the Zionist Federation held a 15 minute ceremony which was webcast and attracted much attention on Twitter. Last week an initiative in Hackney brought the Mayor of London and several dignitaries to the Arthaus for a moving ceremony and unveiling of a plaque.

40 years later, little has changed. Israeli Jews are still murdered in Europe; Burgas last week being a case in point. But in those years Israel has moved in world public perception from plucky little David, a victim, to a perpetrator who can hardly be surprised when it is attacked for its ‘crimes’.  That crime is the crime of existence.

Let’s hope the Olympics are a great success. But don’t be fooled. The Palestinian team is there to further its attempt to be recognised without negotiation. It’s there not because it cares for its athletes or the Olympic ideal; it’s just another means to further its political objectives, delegitimise Israel and demonise Jews.

Mayer Hersh and the Pain of Remembrance

24/07/2012 / / 1 Comment

This week Holocaust survivor Mayer Hersh received an honorary degree, a Doctor of Education from Edge Hill University.

This was a fitting tribute to his dedication over many years to tell the story of his own experience of the Holocaust.

I attended a ceremony at Whitefield Synagogue in Manchester.

When it was Mayer’s turn to be called to reading desk there was an unforgettable moment when Chazan Muller and the choir sang a beautiful ‘yamod, literally, ‘stand up’, the usual formula for calling someone to the reading of the Torah. The entire congregation stood and clapped as Mayer was escorted to the bimah, now a stooped figure who needs a wheelchair to get about.

It seems that the years of abuse at the hands of his Nazi oppressors are finally catching up with him.

After the service several of the people he has inspired, Jews and non-Jews, spoke movingly about the work he has done for the last 30 years.

A video of Mayer’s receiving of his DEd. can be be seen in the first 30 minutes of the video at the end of this post.

I have known Mayer for about 20 years and I cherish that friendship. We even found that we are ‘landsleit‘ with my family coming from his home town.

I have previously written about a particular meeting with Mayer which is typical of the great man. You can read that here (My Friend, Dr Mengele). I said then that Mayer is a great man; as his physical stature shrinks, his moral stature seems to increase year by year.

Mayer says:

“Recalling and telling my story is painful, but nevertheless I treasure the opportunity to do so because in so doing I am able to cherish and preserve the memory of my family and community; the pain of remembrance is my only link to them.”

When the last survivor has gone, we must all continue this ‘pain of remembrance’ on their behalf – for all time.

 

Is the synod EAPPI with this?

18/07/2012 / / 0 Comments

In response to the recent vote in the General Synod of the Church of England to support closer ties with EAPPI (Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel),  I was involved in writing this response on behalf of the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester and Region which was subsequently sent to Christian magazines as an open letter:

The Jewish Representative Council  of Greater Manchester and Region  expresses  its great disappointment  at the result of  the vote in the General Synod to support EAPPI (the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel).

Whereas it is perfectly legitimate for any Church or religious body to question or criticise the actions of the UK government or any foreign  government for that matter, as a question of conscience, it is alarming in the extreme to see the established Church of England support an organisation which itself associates with individuals and organisations whose motivation is not that of human rights or religious conscience, but of demonization and deligitimisation of the State of Israel.

This  was reflected in the tone and content of some of  the speeches made at the Synod. The debate at Synod  was littered with references to ‘powerful lobbies’, the money expended by the Jewish community, ‘Jewish sounding names’ and the actions of the community ‘bringing shame on the memory of victims of the Holocaust’.

This is deeply offensive and raises serious questions about the motivation of those behind the motion.

The content of the EAPPI website  itself is rife with uncontextualised allegations, witness and declaration whilst giving but lip service to balance, historical perspectives and disputed legalities.

The Church of England would do well, if not better, to concentrate its efforts, and lead on the parlous situation of Christian communities in the Palestinian Arab Territories and throughout the Middle East where they are subject to attack, abuse, dispossession, forced conversions, expulsion and murder not at the hands of Jews but of Muslims.

It should be noted that Israel is the only country in the Middle East whose Christian community is growing.

Our Council  which only last week joined in the celebrations connected with  the establishment  of the Council of Christians and Jews 70 years ago  will continue its interfaith work with the Church of England in Manchester with whom it has strong and highly valued ties; but this relationship has been severely damaged by this vote.

We especially thank the Bishop of Manchester Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch for his opposition to the motion and  for his deep understanding of the real issues.

I have emphasised the area under discussion but I believe this topic merits more than one blog post.

I read today in YnetNews

The Orthodox Christian Church in the Gaza Strip is claiming that a group of armed Islamists kidnapped five Christian Palestinians, a young man and a mother and her three daughters, to force them to convert to Islam.

In a statement, the church said that “the dangerous Islamist movement is trying to convince Christian men and women to convert to Islam, destroying Christian families and the Christian presence in the Gaza Strip.”

The church refused to divulge the name of the Islamist group it accused of these attempts.

The head of the Gaza church claimed that one of the Christians was abducted on Saturday after he had been heavily pressured to convert to Islam and had been prevented from seeing his family. According to the leader, the young man’s parents filed a police complaint, but the police did nothing after learning that the person behind the alleged kidnappers was a senior cleric identified with Hamas.

This reinforces my emphasised text above written before this story. All over the Arab world and within the Palestinian Authority Christians are under attack. In Bethlehem they are leaving or being forced out not by Israelis but by Muslims who intimidate them and appropriate property; in Egypt the Copts have been under attack. In Syria; in Iraq the Christian population is all but gone after centuries. Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post reviewed the situation last year.

So where is the EAPPI equivalent in these countries? Where are the Synod resolutions? What is the Church doing about it? Which governments are they protesting to? Which NGO’s have they set up to investigate?

As usual, it’s only Israel and the Jews who are subject to a level of scrutiny Israel alone in the Middle East would tolerate.

Meanwhile the in Israel the Christian community is the only one in the Middle East that is growing and the only one that feels safe and whose religious rights and practices are protected not just by law but in fact.

I make a point about Jewish refugees from Arab lands

17/07/2012 / / 5 Comments

For months now a particular pro-Palestinian website has directly linked to an image on my website.

The image was of a UK and an Israeli flag and used to illustrate an article, on this other website, about the decision of the UK government to tighten up the universal jurisdiction rules which were being abused to issue arrests for Israeli lawmakers and military visiting the UK.

I just deleted the image so that a blank space would replace the flag image.

Then, after so many months, still linking to my site, I decided to strike a blow for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab lands who were expelled over a decade for no other reason than they were Jews in a spiteful ‘revenge’  for the creation of the State of Israel.

Of course, where would these refugees go? Many to Israel. Thus the Arab countries were hoist by their own petard, as it were and now it was my time to do a little hoisting of my own.

So I recreated the image I had deleted but this time it carried a message: “Between 1947 and 1958 900,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries because they were Jews”; beneath is the Israeli flag.

So far, it’s still there.

I wonder how long it will remain.

I guess you might call it self-hacking on their part.

But then, those uprooted Palestinians are the only refugees in history whose numbers have increased over time and who are granted that status in perpetuity and uniquely.

Meanwhile the 900,000 Jews have settled and got on with their lives building a future for their families having left behind their property, memories and dead relatives who lived in their former host countries for centuries.

Nothing speaks more eloquently of the need for a Jewish homeland than those who would deprive us of one.

So, as I was saying about valuing life, valuing death…

13/06/2012 / / 0 Comments

I recently posted a blog about the Palestinian death cult masquerading as ‘resistance’.

The very next day Challah Hu Akbar broke a story about a Palestinian Kindergarten in Gaza which promotes this particular form of resistance.

This story soon spread like wildfire across the Net invoking predictable reactions on both sides.

What was instructive was contrast between the outrage of people I would call ‘right-thinking’ and the apologists for this particular form of child abuse who, of course, blamed it on Israel and even accused Israelis and their supporters of being hypocrites because Israel teaches its children to behave the same way to Palestinians – apparently.

First, here’s the very brief article from Challah Hu Akbar:

The following photos were taken at a recent graduation ceremony at a Gaza City kindergarten.

According to the director of the kindergarten, they have this every year during the graduation ceremony.

 One of the children is quoted as saying “When I grow up I will be working in Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades, and I will resist the Zionist enemy and fire rockets at it until I die a martyr.” The same child says that he loves “the resistance” and hopes to “kill” Zionists.

Here’s just one image:

Let me remind you – this is a kindergarten.

This story was taken up by YNet News

Here’s a flavour of that article:

One child, Hamza, said “When I grow up I’ll join Islamic Jihad and the al-Quds Brigades. I’ll fight the Zionist enemy and fire missiles at it until I die as a shahid and join my father in heaven.

“I love the resistance and the martyrs and Palestine, and I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing,” he said.

During the ceremony the children “demonst


rated” how Israel treats Palestinian prisoners. In the display, handcuffed children depicting inmates were placed in cages, with an “Israeli guard” standing nearby.

Another child depicting an Israeli prison guard placed the head of a “Palestinian prisoner” in a bucket of water to demonstrate how Palestinian prisoners are “tortured” in Israel.

“At every kindergarten graduation ceremony we focus on the children to represent the role of struggling and resistance in the way of Allah so they will grow up to love the resistance and serve the cause of Palestine and Holy Jihad, as well as to make them leaders and fighters to defend the holy soil of Palestine,” one of the teachers said.   

מדמים חייל שמטביע עצור פלסטיני

Most instructive were some of the comments.  Here goes – get the sick bag ready.

Jarda from the Czech republic said:

They are right

You stole their land, you expelled them from their homes. They are right to hate you. I wish them good luck in their fight against intruders.

MO from ‘Palestine’:

What are the kids in Israel doing in their KG? how to make a pizza????
Don’t beleive that 🙂
Hee guys … you are pressing the people in Gaza like a lemon from all sites … what do expect??? 

Marwan, Tel Aviv ‘Palestine’

so how is this different from what settlers teach their kids

oh come now! who do you think you’re kidding with such reports?! we all know that hate & racism are taught in israeli schools 24/7 and everyday of the year! it’s even in every page of the curriculum! so stop trying to fool the world with such lame propaganda stunts… we won’t teach our children to love those who wanna enslave and murder them!

So you see, how hatred justifies the most appalling moral depravity. But this is not ordinary hatred; it is a perverted religious death cult so obscene that it its adherents and apologists have to invent an even greater depravity to justify it resulting in a downward spiral of unimaginable dehumanisation not just of the ‘enemy’ but the self and a society.

You cannot argue or rationalise this kind of nihilism which feeds on itself.

As I continued to read Rabbi Israel Meir Lau’s great memoir, Out of the Depths, today I came across the final words of Hitler’s will written before he committed suicide in the bunker:

Above all I charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to scrupulous observance of the laws of race and to merciless opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.

Did not Hitler put uniforms on children and indoctrinate them in Jew-hatred?

 

Israel, Palestine, valuing life, valuing death

06/06/2012 / / 3 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of hearing Rabbi Israel Meir Lau speak at the official opening of the new King David High School in Manchester.

I had heard him on three previous occasions, the first in Birkenau in 1998. You can see a snippet of that speech in the video I posted of the March of the Living here. Rabbi Lau, now Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, mesmerised his audience at King David with a vivid account of his experiences after liberation from Buchenwald concentration camp. He was 8 years old and was at a young persons convalescent camp near Paris.

I won’t rehearse the story here. I suggest you do what I did and that is to buy his memoir ‘Out of the Depths’.

Almost every page contains a heart-rending story, an amazing life-saving incident, a tearful memory. You gasp, you cry with every line and the unfolding of his amazing story.

I was struck at the beginning of the book where Rabbi Lau describes one of the many occasions where his life was saved by what appeared to be a providential hand.

The story I have in mind is heart-breaking and unbearable. Rabbi Lau describes how, as a 7 year old, he was to be placed on a transport with his mother whilst his older brother Naphtali was separated with the men of working age.

Rabbinit Lau knew that she and the women and children were destined for death, whereas those who could work had a chance, at least, for life.

With a mother’s desire to see her child live she literally threw ‘Lulek’ at his brother in order to save him, knowing full well that it was unlikely she would see either of them again. She took the agonising decision to separate herself from her little boy and face almost certain death alone so that he might live.

Her instinct was to do anything she could to save her son.

How different, I thought, when reading this, from those mothers in Gaza and Jenin and across the Palestinian territories who do the exact opposite. Instead of saving their sons and daughters they encourage them to strap suicide belts to their bodies and detonate them in Israel. Then they celebrate their son or daughter as a martyr and rejoice at the deaths their child has caused.

Not all Palestinian mothers think this way, of course, but many, many do.

At the heart of the conflict with its many nuances and complexities lies this awful truth.

The Jewish experience means that we embrace life and mourn loss and regret the killing of innocents – their are always those who do not fit that generalisation, but it is largely and overwhelmingly the case; the Palestinian experience has taught them to embrace death and martydom and exult in its consequences – another generalisation but very often true.

Am Yisrael Chai

 

 

 

Julian Barnes and the truth of history

05/06/2012 / / 0 Comments

I have just finished reading Julian Barnes ‘The History of the World in 10½ Chapters‘.

I am currently doing my thing of finding an author I like and then gorging myself on the complete oeuvre.

The book is amusing and thought-provoking and, ultimately, eschatological.

And the end of the ½ chapter, which is titled ‘Parenthesis’, I was struck by a tidbit, a wee morsel of prose which struck a chord about the two parallel narratives with regard to Israel and the Palestinians which I’ll come to shortly.

This dual narrative is familiar to those involved in hasbara and defending Israel and I came face to face with the ‘other side’ on Twitter recently. A guy called Zbigniew was rather annoyed that I was tweeting the good news of the failure of the BDS brigade to stop the performance of Habima, the Israeli national theatre, at the Globe theatre in London where they performed The Merchant of Venice on two consecutive nights.

I have written previously about the shameful attempt by a group of luvvies who should know better to have Habima banned and the disgusting singling out of Israel just because Habima has played in settlements in Judea and Samaria/West Bank. It is, therefore seen as somehow complicit in the counter-narrative of colonialism, land-stealing and general oppression.

Zbigniew told me that Israel was to be ‘loathed’ and when challenged about which other contries he loathed he placed Israel in a group with Syria, Libya and Zimbabwe.

What I will, for the sake of shorthand, call the pro-Pal narrative always sees the conflict as one of good (Pals) against evil (Israel, or more precisely – Jews). Any wrongdoing by an Israeli or group of Israelis confirms them in their demonisation and hatred of Israel.

This is how Z tweeted:

“I think every right minded person should be concerned about Israel and what is happening…”

“does the expulsion and mistreatment of Palestinians not concern you? chants of Death to arabs?”

“Attacks on Arabs by (illegal) settlers, racism towards the african communities? Israel should be loathed!”

Of course, if you want to cherry-pick specific incidents, ignore history, and even fail to ask yourself questions like “why did these (mainly Muslim) Africans come to Israel in the first place rather than Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt etc.” then you will continue to see Israel and the conflict in this myopic and polarised way.

Such views never consider the actions of the other protagonists because you have already decided their cause is just and so whatever Israel does, even the patently good things, always have a malign intent or are dismissed as propaganda or irrelevant, or impossible without US dollars.

So here is the quote from Barnes which I believe so succinctly tells us about why hasbara is not working; historical truth is going the same way as moral relativism:

We all know that objective truth is not attainable, that when some event occurs we shall have a multiplicity of subjective truths which we assess and then fabulate into history, into some God-eyed version of what really happened. This God-eyed version is a fake – a charming, impossible fake… But while we know this, we must still believe that objective truth is obtainable; or we must believe that it is 99 per cent obtainable; or if we can’t believe this we must believe that 43 per cent objective truth is better than 41 per cent. We must do so, because if we don’t we’re lost, we fall into beguiling relativity, we value one liar’s version as much as another liar’s, we throw up our hands at the puzzle of it all, we admit that the victor has the right not just to the spoils but also to the truth.

Too many people – luvvies in the UK, Israelis in Israel, left-wingers and the whole motley crew of dillusionals – are throwing up their hands and then prostrating themselves before the god of fashionable and deluded ‘truth’ that tells them it’s all Israel’s fault and if Israel changed its policies all would be right with the world.

Yet all they do is to give succour to the loathers and haters who have their single cyclopean historical eye put out but then claim, nevertheless, that they can see more clearly.

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