Empty advice

According to the statement of Simon Wiesenthal Center’s mission, it “confronts anti-Semitism, hate and terrorism, promotes human rights and dignity, stands with Israel, defends the safety of Jews worldwide, and teaches the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations”. None of these goals appear to be served by the recent article by Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman* in New York Daily News (June 27, 2013). The article justly rebukes the Obama administration (Sec’y Kerry) for wasting money and effort on trying to engage the corrupt Palestinian Authority. It also proposes to “empower those who want to live in peace”. That might have been a smart advice, except none of “those” is named in the article. None, that is, unless one counts “a mother of two martyred sons” who laments PA’s economic incompetence, and a sheikh who would vote for Hamas “tomorrow”, given a chance. Apart from outrageously calling the dead terrorists martyrs with no quotation marks or explanation of what this “martyrdom” means for Israelis, even more disconcerting is that the authors refer to that sheikh as a “pragmatist” just because he wants “the basic social services” – this is after the thousands of rockets that have been fired from Gaza where the peaceful “pragmatists” of the sheikh’s kind won.

It is true that the PA is no peace partner and is corrupt, but the article’s advice is vacuous as it neither proposes any valid alternative nor tells the truth: there are no “peace partners” for Israel. In fact, none is needed or possible. There can be no partnership between the aggressors and the aggressed, just as no partnership can exist between the murderer and his victim. What is needed is that the Arab aggressors who have waged the war against Israel for as long as it has existed – the irredentists who do not agree to that existence in any shape or form – stop their war and their antisemitic poisoning of their children’s minds. Nobody among the Palestinian Arabs is known to have the political will, stature, and means for ensuring that. This needs to be clearly understood, and a good start for that would be calling terrorist murderers terrorists rather than “martyrs”, and using the correct geographic names Judea and Samaria rather than the meaningless and ahistoric “West Bank” that Jordan invented during its illegal occupation of the land to render not only the territory but even toponymy Judenrein. Without that understanding, the efforts and money will continue being wasted in pursuit of mirages. 

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*Cooper is associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Brackman, a historian, is a consultant to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/kerry-challenge-empower-palestinians-article-1.1384187#ixzz2XvrBUxdZ

Antisemitism by other means: Lecturing against the Jewish state*

I went to Michael Sfard's lecture** with a heavy heart. Why would I be hesitant about listening to this young and famous Israeli lawyer? Because of his fame's source: Sfard is what is called a "Human Rights Lawyer". In other words, so that nobody gets confused, his clients are mainly Palestinian Arabs. The human rights of the Jews are not under his purview, unless those Jews, like he has eventually done himself,  refuse to serve in the Israel Defense Forces or are otherwise anti-Israel. He defends Arabs' rights - but surely not from fellow Arabs. For instance, not from the Palestinian Authority, which sentences to death those who sell land to a Jew, an act of "national treason", and whose courts sentence journalists to jail for "insulting" Mahmoud Abbas by a cartoon on Facebook. As Sfard informed the audience, the PA has merely "the power of a city council", executions notwithstanding. 

Why did I go then? To ask the question that had long preoccupied me: why would somebody choose to defend members of an enemy population - against his own state that protects him and has been under attack from that population for as long as his state existed? The population whose leaders have been financiers, planners and perpetrators of terror, where murder of innocent Jews and Americans is celebrated and schools and stadiums are named after the murderers, where the murderers' families are congratulated and their enormous portraits adorn city walls. I prefaced my question by saying that as a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, it was particularly strange for me to hear that in the "oppressive" Jewish state it was usually sufficient for a Palestinian Arab to petition the court with a help of a lawyer in order to get a satisfactory solution to his or her problems.  I also briefly reminded Sfard of the Arab violent animosity towards the Jews that had long preceded the re-creation of Israel, the history that included Amin al Husseini, a major Nazi collaborator and Arafat's and Abbas's hero. 

The response was striking. Sfard said, deliberately and clearly expecting the audience's reaction, "I don't care about history." I too thought there would be a reaction. I thought, this educated audience , albeit visibly sympathetic to the speaker, would now rise in disbelief and indignation. After all, shouldn't they all have been familiar with George Santayana's maxim, "Those who forget history are destined to repeat it"? One does not need to be an historian to understand how dangerous that forgetfulness would be - for the Jews in particular. Some aspects of our rich history are better to stay in history - but we keep being promised their genocidal repetition, by the likes of the Arab League at the creation of Israel, Nasser in 1967, and Ahmadinejad these days. Alas, no objection arose from the future and present lawyers. On the contrary, Sfard was applauded - especially when he said that he did not believe in the Jewish state. That prompted me to interject, "How about 'Judenstaat'?" No, he did not know what it was, the title of the foundation of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl's book "The Jewish State". Of course, Sfard's not believing in the Jewish state leaves him not believing in the state he lives in, created as "a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel", according to the Israeli Declaration of Independence of 1948. It seems when people don't care about history, they don't care about the present reality either.

It is really hard to briefly summarize Sfard's talk, misinformation by both omission and commission. As usual, it started with the terminology. Long gone are the times when the disputed territories were called Judea and Samaria in general parlance. Those historic names have been ethnically cleansed into the meaningless "West Bank", adopted from Jordan that  illegally occupied those lands from 1949 to 1967. It is also forgotten that Jordan annexed Judea and Samaria to its own east bank  - of the Jordan river, which is, interestingly, the Jewish name, appropriated also by the Arab state created by Britain's fiat in Eretz Israel, which was entrusted by the League of Nations to the UK for the "close settlement by Jews on the land". Amazingly, the UK had no trouble recognizing annexation of Judea and Samaria by Jordan, which captured that territory in a war of aggression. Even "West Bank", however, is too neutral for Sfard, who prefers calling it "Occupation". According to him, Israel began to "colonize" that land in the 1970's. Never mind that Israelis only by then had restored Jewish access to the heartland of  the Land of Israel, including the old city of Jerusalem with its Western Wall and Temple Mount, the most sacred site for the Jews. While no law except Jordanian ever prohibited Jewish settlement on that land, the world had no qualms when Jordanians murdered and expelled Jews from there. This is how east Jerusalem was turned into the "Arab East Jerusalem"  of today's media. Never mind that this part of town until the 20th century was the only Jerusalem, with a Jewish majority there until the Jordanian murderous invasion in 1948. It is also through bloody pogroms that Hebron, the first capital of ancient Israel, and other parts of Eretz Israel became Judenfrei "Arab cities". If, as is often repeated, the territory cannot be obtained in conquest, why should this rule start being implemented with Jews who captured it in a defensive war, and not with Muslims, who took it in aggression from Crusaders, who took it from Muslims, who took it from the Roman Empire that violently took it from the Jews and exiled them from their land? Let alone the many contemporary examples of the land captured in the defensive war and kept, like  the Kuril Islands or Sudetenland. But Sfard does not care about history.

His main problem is the security barrier. He misnames it "separation wall" - despite the fact that the wall is less than three percent of this largely chain link fence. Never did he mention that the only reason for the construction of the fence that began in 2002 was the terror war that Israel's "peace partners" headed by Arafat started in 2000, after he rejected another Israeli proposal that would create an Arab state. Only in 2002, before construction started, terrorists from the territories murdered 457 Israelis. Already in 2006, before the construction of the fence was finished, the number dropped to 10, and to no fatalities in 2012. Sfard does not care about security -  he derisively calls it a "Jewish obsession". His only focus is his clients' inconvenience, as he shares their conviction that Israel's goal for the barrier is land grab. He lamented that while discussing changes in the "separation wall"  route, the main concern of the Israeli officials was security. Needless to say, the "oppressor" did change the route as per Sfard's petition, and he tells the truly horrific story how an Israeli officer thanked him for letting know about the inconvenience to Arab farmers, since remedied. In fact, Sfard intimated, the evil authorities satisfy his clients' grievances even without any court rulings, "in a shadow of the court". Why? Because, to his satisfaction, they are "willing to barter land for legitimacy. Legitimacy is in very short supply." Just how much legitimacy of the Unites States depends on the route of its security barrier built on its Mexican border - with no terrorist threat?

There is no doubt in Sfard's mind that Israel is oppressor in regard to the Arab population of Judea and Samaria. Never mind that this oppression has resulted in the immense growth in the Arabs' longevity, education, and living standard that is higher than in the surrounding Arab countries. Never mind that no military would be needed in Judea and Samaria, or in entire Israel for that matter, if there were no constant and thousands of times realized threat of death from the Arab population. The threat that is maintained by the incessant antisemitic and anti-Israel brain-washing that Arabs undergo from the beginning of their lives. 

As to the question I asked Sfard, I still do not know the answer. The phenomenon of a Jew crossing to the enemy side, while rare, is not new, however. It used to require apostasy, and the apostate could become an inquisitor burning Jews at stake, or a blood libeler, inciting lethal pogroms. Nothing as dramatic as apostasy is needed nowadays, when religion has largely become for many merely a slightly embarrassing tradition - at least, among the progressive intelligentsia. Today's secular apostates merely defend those who attack the Jewish state's security measures that not only protect Israelis - Jews and Arabs alike - but also obviate the need for military action and casualties that would inevitably result from it, if terror acts were not prevented. Sfard did not see it that way, all the lynchings of random Jewish victims who fell into Arab hands, terrorist suicidal massacres and other murders notwithstanding. A possible motivation used to be the apostate's conflict with the community, or the desire to break from the persecuted minority. These days, all it takes is to become a "Human Rights" lawyer like Sfard. In Israel, this ecological niche is unique enough to avoid competition with other lawyers, kept out of it by their conscience. In that rarefied niche, even a mediocrity can earn his bread and butter - perhaps, with caviar and international travel on top.

I do not know why this annual lecture cycle has been renamed from The Martin Luther King Lecture to Lawyering For Social Change, but I think Dr. King would be happy that his name is no longer associated with it. The "social change" it stands for is not consistent with his vision of Israel, so dramatically different from Sfard's: "Israel is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security, and that security must be a reality.” Peace through security is exactly the human right that Sfard the "Human Rights Lawyer" denies his compatriots and, ultimately, his Arab clients as well. As for the Pitt law students, they were denied truth, and for their $25 education credits for this “lawyering” lecture received not education, but anti-Israel ideological indoctrination. 

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*The published version of this entry is in  The Jewish Chronicle, titled "Michael Sfard: 'I Don't Care About History'". There is also a prior entry in this blog, related to Sfard, "Champion Of Displacement".
** “Can the Occupier Provide Justice? The Dilemmas of Human Rights Litigation in Israeli Courts,”  7 p.m. March 28 in the Teplitz Memorial Moot Courtroom of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, 3900 Forbes Ave..

"Grandfather was...", Or Obama's faith

Why is so little attention paid to the choice of vice-president? Unless, that is, this is somebody of whom the left entertainment business can make a bogey like it was made of Palin. Why is there only one debate between the VP candidates, when even on the memory of the present generation the VP has become a POTUS twice? Moreover, aren't they supposed to be a team, in consultation with each other? I would suggest then that the debates should be conducted between the candidate POTUS-VP teams, with the same question answered by both in the couple, first by the prospective POTUSes and then by VPs, with the latter then being able to show their ability to contribute and, if needed, to replace the president. To be sure, the inability would also manifest. Perhaps at some point the debate rules will be so changed. No rules, however, need to be changed in order to discuss the president's convictions. Here we go, with no segue.

I don't care what religion anybody professes, if any, as long as that anybody leaves mine alone. One would think that this criterion should leave me indifferent to the issue of Obama's faith and religiosity. Shouldn't Obama's religion, anyway, concern only those firmly assigned to the category of wingnuts, in the company of "birthers", those certified paranoids who keep pointing out that Obama was listed as "born in Kenya" until after the start of his first presidential campaign? Shouldn't Madonna only  be allowed to call him a "black Muslim in the White House" without raising an outcry? Obama himself has emphatically called himself a Christian, attended a church for 20 years, and held a Reverend from that church as a member of his family until he was told he should not anymore (can happen to anybody). That's what he is then, right?

It seems, however, that the hypothesis of Obama's Islam is viewed as offensive by the Democrats and the media not only because of all  the above, but also because it has been considered to be detrimental to his candidacy - despite his handlers' supposed view of Islam as a religion at least equal to Christianity. Sometimes the stridency of insistence on Obama's Christianity is reminiscent of Clinton's "I-did-not-have-sexual-relations-with-that-woman". Even mentioning his second name is considered an affront, as if it were something shameful and "Barack" were not a Muslim name as well. I have been reprimanded by an Obama faithful for using his three initials, as if that was any different from FDR, JFK or LBJ. A progressive colleague of mine prefers "BO" instead, which is, I think, a real insult. Is it Islamophobia among Democrats, including Obama himself? I can't see any other possible reason for these consistent attempts to dissociate Obama from Islam. Be it as it may, apparently, nobody has been ready to celebrate the first Muslim-born President (in Islam, one is a Muslim if born to a Muslim father) - at least, as much as the first "black" president was celebrated (even though Morgan Freeman says Obama is not "black" - and Freeman should know). 

Do I then smell hypocrisy in Obama's declaration that "part of [his] responsibility as President of the United States [is] to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear" - a promise he has made to no other religion? Not to Christianity in Islamic countries, where conversion to it is punished by death, and Christians are persecuted into extinction, as they are in Egypt and in the "Palestinian" territories. Not to Judaism in both the realm of institutionally antisemitic Islam and in some Christian countries where the Jews are still routinely maligned as hell's spawn. Can you imagine Obama traveling to Jerusalem and telling Israelis that it is his responsibility to fight against antisemitism everywhere? It is hard to imagine him traveling to Jerusalem at all,  the city he called the undivided capital of Israel in front of a Jewish audience - just before he took his words back when no longer facing it. Now nobody in his entire administration can find Israel's capital on the map.  

It is this smell of hypocrisy that drives me wingnuts about Obama's beliefs - that and some concrete facts. For instance, if one is to believe Obama's memoirs, a barber once asked him, upon learning his name, “Barack, huh. You a Muslim?”. To which Barack Hussein gave a rather evasive response, "Grandfather was". The question was not about his grandfather, and he did not say "yes" or "no". Or did he? Hardly any curious barber would be satisfied by this response. 

Then the reader of "The Dreams..." learns that the "Muslim faith" was in Obama's mind "linked with the Nation of Islam". Nowhere in the book that has any negative connotation, while "the much-admired success of the Nation of Islam in turning around the lives of drug addicts and criminals" is noted more than once. He "would occasionally pick up the paper from these unfailingly polite men, in part out of sympathy to their heavy suits in the summer, their thin coats in winter; or sometimes because my attention was caught by the sensational, tabloid-style headlines (CAUCASIAN WOMAN ADMITS: WHITES ARE THE DEVIL)" - but that "sensational, tabloid-style" is the extent of his criticism of the fascist movement. I can't imagine how such a headline could catch anyone's attention, unless it evoked interest rather than disgust. It is then not surprising he got no criticism - until forced to have it - for the man "who helped introduce [him] to [his] Christian faith", another fascist. The latter quote suggests that before Wright's "introduction" he had no such faith. Whether that was the case, and whether he was a Muslim or tabula rasa in that regard, I can't know for sure, but I do surmise that Christianity was more promising in his political  "mind" of an aspiring "community organizer" than Islam, his obvious alternative choice.

What kind of Christianity - is a different matter. As it happens, the religion of Rev. Wright, Obama's spiritual father who baptized Obama's children and connected him to the black community, was such as to give Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to Farrakhan  - because, in Wright's view, the antisemitic leader of the Nation of Islam "truly epitomized greatness." The award was a year before Obama's election and his abandonment of the Trinity Church under the campaign's pressure. That award must have been part of what Obama called "the much-admired success" of the Muslim faith. Indeed, in many ways, the odious "Christianity" of Wright and the "Islam" of Farrakhan, the fellow antisemites and racists, are alike. It would be an insult to everybody's intelligence to insist that Obama was unaware of that similarity and the mutual sympathies between Wright and Farrakhan, just as it is unlikely he had not heard anything truly revolting throughout the 20 years of his attendance of Wright's sermons.

One would think, however, that by the election time Obama had found out that the Nation of Islam's Islam was a bit different from historic Islam, however diverse that historic one still is. Perhaps that "link" was weakened, but not Obama's with Islam. When the time came for his foreign affairs, he declared "A New Beginning" for the relations between the US and... not another country, as one would think appropriate in those affairs, but with Islam, supposedly a religion. Now, that makes Islam a polity, doesn't it? His first TV interview was with Al-Arabiya, and in it he addressed "the Muslim world" - an entity that exists only in the minds of those who think that Islam unites countries and separates them from the other countries, a split into the world of Islam and the world of "disbelief", a familiar structure of Dar ul Islam and Dar ul Harb, the realm of Islam and the realm of war. Whereas in fact there is no "world of Islam" among the eternally conflicting "Islamic" countries and groups and tribes within them, Obama's declaration of America's reconciliation with the "Islamic world" creates that world in full accordance with Muslim mythology.

Then, of course, came the much-discussed Cairo speech, in the Al-Azhar University, "a beacon of Islamic learning" as the president, ostensibly knowledgeable of that learning, referred to the place. That's the same place whose Grand Imam, Tantawi, legitimized suicidal terror and wrote a 700-page book on antisemitic Islamic exegesis. His death in 2010 was lamented by Obama, as spoken of in his spokesman Gibbs's statement. It is this murderous source of "Islamic learning" who "graciously hosted President Obama last June in Cairo". Sure, Obama did admonish somebody anonymous in that Cairo speech that "Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews [which is done any time when the Jews are mentioned in a mosque] -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve." Bad memories, you see - as if the "peace process" has not resulted in hundreds of terror murders and is not by itself a war negating peace. 

Then Obama negated that admonishment anyway by equating terror and wars that Israel has been subjected to since before its reestablishment in 1948 with "the pain of dislocation of the Palestinian people" they "have endured" for "more than 60 years", that is, since 1948. No word about how those dislocated came to be dislocated, and what "occupation" he means that he speaks of in the very next sentence. There was no occupation "more than 60 years ago" - unless Obama agrees with the "Palestinian" narrative of "Naqba", whereby it is the very existence of Israel that is the occupation. To Obama, Israelis and Arabs are just "two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive," even though it is only for the "Palestinian people" that the situation is "intolerable" in his view. To Obama, the war waged by Arabs and Islam against Israel is nothing more than finger-pointing - "for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought about by Israel’s founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond." In his opinion, to see this conflict from the Israeli side is as wrong as seeing it from the Arab side and means to "be blind to the truth". What is Obama's truth? Simple: forget who the aggressor is and meet the "aspirations of both sides... through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security". Never mind that even in the poisonous internationally doctored prescription for that, "land for peace", Israel's part is "land". Peace is denied by the Arabs, regardless of how much land Israel is willing to give up.

While paying lip service to the need for the "Palestinian Authority" to "develop its capacity to govern" (Abbas's capacity to govern should have expired in January 2009), he demands that "Israelis must acknowledge [Palestine's right to exist] just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's" - as if that "right" of "Palestine" has not been asserted by Israel since Rabin. If Obama thinks that acknowledgment is still lacking, just as the Arabs do, nothing can convince him it's not. It is all the same to him that "privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away" and that "many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state" (obviously, not privately). Aside from the question about how he could penetrate the private thoughts of "many Muslims" - how exactly can one compare the alleged private thoughts and the official position of the Israeli governments? Another question is why those thoughts are still "private" - despite all the Osloism and "peace process". The response is, of course, that those who might have such thoughts run the risk of being murdered by the "many Muslims" if they make those thoughts public. To Obama, it is "continued Israeli settlements... construction" that  "violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace" - not the continued Arab terror, incitement, the official glorification of "martyrs", and the fact that the articles calling for the annihilation of Israel have never been removed from the "Palestinian" ruling Charter, despite the "peace process". Sure, Obama said that "Palestinians must abandon violence", but in the very next sentence he calls it "resistance", exactly what terror is called by Fatah, Hamas, Hizballah and all other terrorists and terrorism supporters. He is concerned that this "resistance" will not succeed "through violence and killing"  - not about that "Palestinians" have no right to that "resistance", moral or otherwise. This is exactly what is expected from the pupil of the antisemites and Israel-haters Rev. Wright, Rashid Khalidi, and Edward Said.

Just as he whitewashes terror by calling it "resistance", he whitewashes Islam by using the standard lie that "The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent is as -- it is as if he has killed all mankind.  (Applause.)  And the Holy Koran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.  (Applause.)" As other disingenuous apologists of Islam, he does not give the complete quote of this Koran 5:32 verse, 

"Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors." 

There is a teaching, but it is Jewish, indeed found in the Talmud. It is referred to as a Jewish belief in the Koran, which is "holy" only to the Muslims. Nowhere is it seen that Islam accepts this belief despite all the applause of the Al-Azhar audience. What sounds much more genuine is another statement of Obama's that caused applause, the one expressing his pride that "the United States government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it". One wonders why the US government does not yet punish those who interfere with the "right of women and girls" to wear burqa - in fact, it wages a war against people who "protect" that right, in Afghanistan, wasting, as it were, the lives of young Americans.

In the end, it does not matter whether Obama's choice is antisemitic Islam or Wright's racist version of Christianity, the "black liberation theology". Both are terrible. What matters is Obama's position on the concrete issues that is defined by his ideology. This position, in which the perfectly legal building construction is equal to murder, Israel is called to return to the pre-1967 "borders" with no tangible obligation on the part of Arabs, and Jerusalem is no longer Israel's capital. This is the position where America's enemies are to be mollified and promised "more flexibility", while America's friends are to be let into the White House clandestinely, if at all, and maligned behind their backs.  It is of no interest what Obama's grandfather's faith was. His grandson's is no good, whatever its name.

Champion of displacement

Nobody is going to be surprised that today’s article in The New York Times, “A Champion for the Displaced in Israel”, is not about hundreds of thousands of Jews who were “displaced” (expelled and murdered) by Arab pogrom mobs throughout the Middle East, ethnically cleansing it of the ancient population that preceded Arab invaders by many centuries. These Jews and their descendants constitute half of the Israeli Jewish population, and have never been compensated for their losses. No, in the inverted world of the Times, the “displaced” in Israel are Arabs, the descendants of those invaders. It is unclear what exactly makes them to qualify for that status: the only people mentioned there who are displaced and whose homes are demolished are the Jews, Israelis, the Natives of the Land of Israel, who are given the preposterous misnomer of “settlers”. And the “champion” of those Arabs, whose only geopolitical dream is to displace the Jews from any piece of land, is a Jewish lawyer, Michael Sfard.

Usually, when a person raised in the Jewish culture (or a culture based on the Jewish values) takes an enemy’s side, it requires inversion of values and shedding of morality. When a lawyer in a democracy defends a murderer, he does not need to be on the murderer’s side to perform his duties. The murderer represents only himself even if he is a gang member. It is different when a lawyer takes upon himself the defense of a group against another group and does that consistently, especially when the group – in its overwhelming majority – is an enemy of the group to which the lawyer himself belongs. And not just any enemy. With some enemies, compromise can be and has been reached, but the Palestinian Arabs have given no sign of that possibility. They are self-proclaimed enemies of Israel. Their goal, at best, is Israel’s eradication, and at worst, the world-wide genocide of the Jews. It is symbolic that the name for the country they want to replace Israel is “Palestine”, the very same name that was invented by Hadrian the Roman emperor to eradicate the notion of Judea and the Jews from the same land. His wish has in part been fulfilled already, as the historic name of Judea has been virtually replaced by the nonsensical “West Bank”, an invention of Jordan that illegally occupied the land until 1967. Whereas the occupation ended, and the Jordanian annexation of the land had never been recognized by the world (with the notable exceptions of the UK and Pakistan), the name has stuck to the degree that somebody’s use of the original and true names, Judea and Samaria, is now viewed as a tell-tale sign of “right-wing” extremism. According to the article, those are just the “Biblical names” – and who cares about the Bible in our enlightened times. Obviously, since “right” is associated with fascism, it is easy to make the next step and accuse the Jews of nazism, a calumny that is so popular nowadays among antisemites in general and in the Muslim world in particular.

Sfard pathetically juxtaposes himself with the Soviet dissidents, expressing his satisfaction that he does his subversive work unmolested in a democracy. Soviet dissidents, which now have to defend the right of the Jews to live on the Land of Israel against him, have risked their lives for the Jews to be able to live in Eretz Israel, while he abuses Israel's legal system to ethnically cleanse it of the Jews. He is not "an enemy of the right" – he is an enemy of those who stand for what is right. He is the enemy's collaborationist. Along with other deluded or immoral people whom he defends, like the draft dodgers in Israel, he is adored by the likes of the NY Times and BBC, well known for their anti-Israel bias, and despised by the Israelis. Don’t expect this “defender of human rights” to defend the rights of the “settlers” – in his book, they are not listed as humans. Morally displaced, he is indeed a champion – of the displacement of Jews. No wonder that he has Gandhi's portrait on the wall - the "likeness" of a man who advised the Jews to comply with Hitler's plans.

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April 2013. - A follow-up to this entry, in response to Sfard's talk at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, is at "Antisemitism By Other Means: Lecturing Against The Jewish State", and, a shorter version, in The Jewish Chronicle, "Michael Sfard: 'I Don't Care About History'".

Genocidal redefinitions

To be able to murder, to kill not in defense but on purpose, the murderer redefines his victim from a fellow creature into an alien, who  either threatens, or a tool providing sadistic pleasure denoting total power, or both. Nazis redefined the Jews into aliens, adding  biological subhumanity to the usual Christian depiction of the Jews as accursed for deicide and thus inherently and hereditarily evil. Even a small part of the Jewish "blood" was an intolerable threat to them. A Jewish child was a mortal danger to the mighty German nation. Genocidal Islam similarly redefines the Jews on  both biological and spiritual levels into descendants of pigs and monkeys, into which Allah turned Jews as their punishment. To reconcile with continuous Jewish existence, Allah has scripturally promised the Muslims that they would eventually murder every single Jew before ushering in the end of days. As genocide has become a desired goal, Muslims have redefined for themselves the notion of the martyr from one who is murdered for his religion to one who murders because of it. The loss of the terrorist's own life in the process is incidental, because it is redefined into life eternal, as long as the earthly life was lost while murdering Jews. Allah, "most compassionate, most merciful", has taken upon himself the personal torture of "unbelievers", giving a whole new meaning to compassion. Muslims have also redefined the notion of the "prophet". Muhammad, "the Seal of the Prophets", has prophecized nothing but murder, conquest, subjugation, and rape, which he himself indulged in. Islam means "submission", and not merely as the literal translation of the word. It means the strict hierarchy of both physical and spiritual submissions: the man to Allah (read, to whoever wields power under this name), the woman to the man (who is legally worth twice the woman), the Jew (or any "infidel") to any Muslim. Any violation of this hierarchy is punishable - often by death: conversion from Islam, woman's disobedience, Jewish independence.  

The Muslim murderers act from the pragmatic, rather than lofty spiritual, viewpoint, targeting civilians - children, women, the elderly - rather than soldiers. They know that these random murders produce a greater demoralizing impact than a death of a soldier, horrible as it is. A soldier's work is to risk his life, and he dies fighting even if it was in his sleep. Children and women, civilians, are not expected to live their life at the same kind of risk. They are not fighting. Children are supposed to be pampered, not tortured to death. Their parents and relatives are supposed to see them grow, not bury and grieve forever. This is exactly why the murderers choose to kill civilians, transforming everyday life into the expectation of death, thinking they will crash the people's spirit because everybody will be touched by death. The murderers cannot appreciate that they deal with the Jewish spirit, indomitable, inoculated by the millennia of murder and torture by the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, English, Spanish, French, Germans, Poles, Russians, Ukranians, Latvians, Lithuanians - the list can go on. Israelis rank 7th on Gallup's "happiness index" (life as a whole), just below the Netherlands (was above in 2011) and the happy Scandinavians, and higher than the UK, Germany and France. Even in Sderot, under almost ten years of incessant rocket bombardment,  only about a third of the population suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, a number comparable with that in trained combat troops - except that for the children of Sderot there is no "post" in "post-traumatic". The stress has never stopped. 

In all these innumerable slaughters, from a single person to the millions of the Shoah, the reasons have been the same: irrational hatred toward the Jews, to the very name of the Jews regardless of how different it is in different languages, and the permissibility of murdering a Jew, whatever ideology is applied - Christian, Nazi or Muslim. A Jewish baby, impaled on a Cossack's spear or a Nazi's bayonet or having his throat slashed by a Muslim, can be nothing to the murderer but a representation of the name, with all the hate that was connected to the sound and letters of this name by the murderers' parents, teachers, friends, imams and priests. The Poles who tortured to death, beheaded, dismembered, raped, and burned alive hundreds of their Jewish neighbors in the village of Jedwabne, 71 years ago this week, were led only by the name, made hateful to them by the myth of deicide justifying an utter removal of civilizational boundaries on behavior, even those that command humane slaughter of animals. They were driven by the same genocidal hate as their compatriots in many other towns and in Kielce, already after the war, when Nazis could no longer be claimed as the real enforcers of the genocide for their voluntary helpers to hide behind. Whether at the blood libel's pretext, as in Kielce, or at the Nazis' welcome permission, it was the common folk that committed those atrocities. 

Poles would never call their neighbors "Poles of Mosaic persuasion", nor would the Russians call the Jews "Russians". In fact, the Russian language distinguishes between the ethnic Russians and those whose citizenship is Russian. The former are called by the noun "Russkiy" (sing. masculine; "Russkaya", sing. fem.; "Russkiye", plural), which is also the adjective that means belonging to the Russian nation, the meaning of "nationality" in Russia. Those who are citizens of Russia but do not belong to the Russian nation are called semi-informally "Rossiyanin", i.e., only belonging to (but not "in") Rossiya-Russia rather than being of Russia like the language, which is "Russkiy". The Jews would always be alien in Russia or elsewhere in East Europe, under the fickle protection of the state, which, along with the church, would keep the hate fire going.  The East Europeans' condoning and participating in the genocide is not canceled by some Poles' and Russians' having risked their lives to save Jews, and by the fact that millions of ethnic Poles and Russians themselves were murdered by the Germans. Bulgaria, a country relatively recently liberated from Islamic yoke, was the only exception during WW2 where the church authority intervened on Jewish behalf. But we Jews coming from East Europe are now called "Poles" and "Russians" by the naive Americans and Israelis, who have a very vague notion of ethnicity.

Islam, in its foundational scripture, openly justifies the same treatment of the Jews as that allotted to them by the Nazi Germans and their many European helpers. The editor of Der Stuermer was the only non-governmental Nazi hanged in Nuremberg, executed for his speech. If not for his inhuman efforts, there would perhaps be fewer "willing executioners" (by Goldhagen's term), although it's just as likely that somebody else would have happily and as efficiently replaced him. The multitude of the Muslim Streichers, however, - from Muhammad the "prophet" himself to today's imams - are not only unpunished, but threaten the rest of the world with punishment, this time by nuclear fire. The Iranian mullahs, who head the whole branch of Islam, Shi'a, have promised to exterminate Israel - before they get to defeat the Great Satan, the US. The leaders of Sunni Islam, the other main branch of the "religion of peace", have many times called for the bloody "liberation of Palestine", celebrating terror, and blessing and glorifying the murderers. Nevertheless, nobody prosecutes their ongoing crimes against humanity, the very same for which Streicher was executed by the Allies. On the contrary, it is Israelis who are being demonized by the "world community" when they try to defend themselves - even when the defense is as passive as a fence separating the murderers from their desired prey. The same world community -  a generation back - not only cared nothing about the Jews murdered wholesale, but participated in that murder - by commission or omission. There are still old murderers that survive - but the slaughter of Jews has had no break. It seems nothing can invoke the world's outrage when Jews are slaughtered - not pregnant Tali Hatuel and her four lttle daughters killed point-blank by head shots. Not two-month old Shalhevet Pass, killed by an Arab sniper's shot in the head. Not the Fogel family, with three children aged from three months to 11 years and both parents, butchered by Arabs in their beds. No number of Jewish deaths can overcome the world's serenity - until this calm is broken into a million of screaming media pieces when the Jews attempt to hold the murderers at arm's length of checkpoints, delaying their reaching their final destinations. Unfortunately, those among whom the murderers live are also slowed down when they want to cross to the territory of Israel they hate so much but keep coming to.

The Fogel family slaughter was not viewed as worth mentioning by the leading news agencies like BBC. The priority was too low. Iran's promise to exterminate Israel is not viewed as a violation of the UN charter incompatible with membership. It's considered innocuous rhetoric, unworthy mentioning in negotiations. Jews building a house on their ancestral land, which nobody but them can legitimately claim, are called "settlers", like the British who came to colonize America. In fact, in contrast to those British, whom nobody has since been expecting to leave, the Jewish "settlers", the Natives of the land, are expected to give up their houses and orchards they grew on that land the first time in millennia - give it all up to the descendants of Arab conquerors whose names indicate their origins from Egypt, Syria, or other places subjugated by those invaders.  The Jews are not to get anything in return - except, perhaps, for another fake promise of "peace", that is of the end of terror murders that otherwise are viewed as legitimate by the world. "Palestine" is redefined from the Roman name invented to replace Judea - into the name of a future Arab state, with Arabs automatically attaining a new avatar - from the land they stole from Jews and Christians to the name they usurped. The whole world supports creation of the 23rd Arab state, despite terror that Arabs conduct under the pretense of desperately needing that state, all offers for which they have rejected. One wonders how many states would support the single Jewish state in 1948 if any Jews, for the sake of their national idea, blew themselves up in a British market and shot British children.   

No human treatment norm has been viewed by the Christian and Muslim world as fully applicable to the Jews - that is by the Christians who only recently have started changing their perception of the Jews as devil's inhuman kindred, and by the Muslims who do not consider even their own women human. Unless this changes, until civilized humanity rectifies and consistently applies its terms and definitions, our species' definition as human is false. We have a long way to go before "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Leviticus 19:18), as the Torah commands to humans.

9-11: Tears, no fury...

On the first anniversary of 9-11, I wrote, "On this day, a year after the fanatic Muslim—predominantly Saudi—attack on the American soil, it seems that the affect expressed by the administration as well as the American media has largely been that of teary frustration and pain, not unlike the 'why me?' feelings experienced and expressed by anybody in grief. There has been little anger, let alone fury, in words or facial expressions of the nation’s leadership; instead, there is a lot of solemnity, quivering lips, and—especially initially—calls for reconciliation with Islam that was translated by the President as 'peace' instead of 'submission'. The mighty thunder of the only great power left on Earth, which all terrorists in the world—from Arafat who donated his poisonous blood to injured Americans, to Saudi financiers of terror—braced themselves for, has never come. The mosques, planted in the US and everywhere in the world by the Saudis to teach hatred in preparation for the whole world to become Dar-ul-Islam, the 'abode of Islam', are still churning out brain-washed fanatics ready to die while killing unnumbered 'kaffirs' regardless of their age and sex. Arafat has just recently become undesired in the administration’s eyes, but still remains the 'leader of the Palestinian people' instead of being recategorized into the oldest living terror chieftain. The 'Palestinian' state is still discussed as a desirable goal, while the majority of its potential citizens support continued murder of innocent Israelis. The administration is still trying to convince Arabs that they should support an attack against Iraq, while even its European continental allies, faithful to their familiar tactic of appeasing the murderer, deny their support. And American airlines, ready to risk passengers’ lives in fear of offending “Middle Eastern” guests, waste the effort of their security personnel, incompetent as it is, on checking the underwear of grandmothers in wheelchairs for explosive nail clippers they could hide there.”


What has changed since? Arafat's poisonous blood has eventually killed him. The portrait of that brigand now decorates the office of his comrade-in-arms, Abbas, who is going to ask the UN for recognizing "Palestine" - a nonexistent state with an imaginary president: Abbas's "term", for what it's worth, ended in January 2009. Another US president has just declared now, "I’ve made it clear that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam." Never mind that this statement is irrelevant grandiloquence or worse - a chronic delusion: if militant Islam is at war with the United States as it is, so is the United States with Islam, however unwillingly. It would indeed make sense to say, "We do not want to be at war...", but it would make no difference. 


Yes, it is difficult to identify the enemy: the wars have been between nation-states for a long time. Those wars are "normal", I guess. It seems insane and abnormally regressive to speak in terms of religious wars. In fact, however, there is no need for it, nor would it be correct. This is not a religious war not only because the United States does not represent a religion in conflict with another. It is not religious because there is nothing in Islam relevant to a religion that concerns the non-Muslim world. Does it really matter to anybody but devout Muslims that they believe in having a deity by the name of Allah, who used to have three daughters  - until, that is, that information in the Koran was abrogated in the Koran? What is of concern to the non-Muslim world is Islam as a political ideology: the Koranic claim on the entire Earth and humanity, to be brought into submission to Islam. By force and terror or by dawa, Islamic indoctrination. 


There is nothing truly unfamiliar in this sort of war that is neither religious nor against a nation-state. The Western world has never come into a direct conflict with Soviet Communism - only with its numerous and weakly connected proxies who would kick their Soviet advisers out as soon as they were sure of attaining necessary power. Nonetheless, if it were a direct conflict, it would be an ideological one. The war with Nazism was an ideological war: even though the Germans were a "master race", that notion included, in their eyes, at least the Nordic nations. Also, their allies - Nordic or not - would benefit from Nazi victories. The Nazis were not worried much about the Semitic origins of the Arabs, or the Slavic origins of their SS divisions "Galizien" and "Handschar", organized from Orthodox Ukranians, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks - the latter with the able help of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al Husseini, Arafat's relative. What mattered to Germans was those troops' zeal in exterminating the Jews, the Gypsies, and the enemies of Nazism. It's easy to forget that it was indeed Nazism and fascism that the world fought against in that war - because it is so much easier to identify the noun, Germany, and forget the adjective, Nazi, or just mean it as synonymous with Germans at the time but not now. Obviously, what's changed is not the nation - inasmuch as nations have continuity. It is the ideology that has dramatically changed. Even though we may conveniently think that it was Germany that was defeated, it was, in fact, Nazism, which had taken possession of the minds of Germans, like Islam has taken possession of the minds of Arabs and many others.


It is the we-are-not-at-war-with-Islam-religion-of-peace attitude of a teary Bush that first portended today's situation, when, after Taliban has been defeated, it is still on the verge of return, when Saddam's Iraq has become Iran's Iraq with a Koran-based constitution, when "friendly" dictators are being replaced with Muslim Brotherhood, and Turkey of Ataturk has become Turkey of a new Islamic sultan, Erdogan. It is a bit like leaving Mein Kampf as the foundation of social thought in Germany after Nazi defeat. The same intentional blindness is expressed in Obama's nonsense that "Those who attacked us on 9/11 wanted to drive a wedge between the United States and the world." What about those who attacked England on 7/7 and Spain on 3/11?  Are they also about "wedges"? Or are all these terror attacks by Muslims different, as the world perceives terror against Israel? With Israel, it's always Israel's fault - it's all "occupation", even though it's the same terror that tortured Israel before 1967 and any "occupation". What is so hard for the West to understand in that it's not because of "occupation", land, or any particular grievances? It would be good if it was: if we were the reason, we could and should be able remove it. No, we are not, and we can't. It is because Islam has finally gained sufficient strength to resume violent jihad bequeathed to Muslims by Muhammad, or Allah if you will: "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war" (Koran 9:5). Not enough strength to wage a war using armies and battles, but enough to blow up trains and restaurants, demolish buildings symbolic of non-Muslim might with thousands of the infidels inside, and shoot point-blank and cut throats of Jewish babies. It is cynical if not downright dishonest of the US president to claim that "people across the Middle East and North Africa are showing that the surest path to justice and dignity is the moral force of nonviolence". Those unnamed "people", aka Arabs, have shown nothing of the kind: ask Israeli diplomats who have just fled from Cairo, or Lara Logan, raped in the Tahrir square, a symbol of Egyptian newly acquired "freedom".  It is still tears for those who perished on 9/11 - not fury at those who murdered them - that dominate the 9/11 affect. America's post-9/11 wars, delimited by time and not by victories, are indeed not with Islam. That's why they will not prevent terror, a stratagem in the war Islam wages on humanity.

Dreams from the Smartniks

Perhaps this can be of interest to those who like linguistic trivia. There is a mildly derogatory word in Russian, умник (pronounced "oomnik"), which can be translated as "smartnik", something like smartypants. It recognizes a possibility that somebody can be smart but not really wise. I am talking about the attention that the latest "rapture" story has received. I don't mean the media - hardly any source of the "news" missed the story. I am talking about Facebook, where some of my Facebook friends - doctors and professors - to the very presumed "world's end" - just could not keep from expressing their derision for the "morons", competing for a better disparaging joke. Now, I could readily understand the educated crowd's interest to this  story, had it raised interest to cognitive dissonance, research in which started by Leon Festinger from a similar story. But no, apart from using the benighted "morons" to celebrate their own incomparably higher intelligence, my educated friends evinced no other motivations for investing their considerable time and effort into this "fun" of observing a banal inconsequential illusion.

Am I not doing the same now, but on the account of my friends? I really would not care, were it not in such contrast with the lack of attention to what may really result in the world's end, jihadist Islam, which has just been supported by the American president. Obama called for Israel to return to the "1967 lines", a euphemism for the Auschwitz borders of the 1949 armistice lines. If indeed the future borders were the 1967 lines, Israel would have full control of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and Sinai. In addition, as per Obama's diktat, Israel has to ensure that the "Palestinian" state is contiguous, thus Israel should cut itself, relinquishing its own contiguity. As usual, Obama did not mention anything tangible from "Palestinians" or other Arabs, except for unspecified "provisions" that "must also be robust enough to prevent a resurgence of terrorism, to stop the infiltration of weapons, and to provide effective border security". If such provisions were anywhere in the cards, would he himself  put the "profound and legitimate questions for Israel:  How can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognize your right to exist?" Doesn't it require deep cognitive dissonance of the president, who recognizes the impossibility of such negotiations, to demand these negotiations from Israel exactly when Fatah has openly joined openly genocidal Hamas? What "credible answer to that question" could these bandits in principle give? It is to these joined terrorist gangs that Obama wants Israel to make known the "territorial outlines of their state".

As usual, Obama draws false parallels between Arab terrorist murderers and Israelis who defend themselves from terror, between the victims of terrorist slaughter and Arab civilian casualties of anti-terror response that result from the terrorists' hiding behind civilians' backs. (It's hard to use military terms like "civilians", considering that the terrorists do not wear a military uniform either). He equates "suspicions and hostilities" for both sides of the "conflict" - the same "conflict" as illustrated in the video above. He equates the "issues of territory [for Arabs] and security [for Israel]", when anybody with any cognition understands that a territory cannot be taken back when security is violated. Let alone the simple fact that Israel's security is incompatible with the ruling charters of both PLO and Hamas, this incompatibility is embedded in the Koran, and no security for Israel can be guaranteed by any duplicitous verbiage of Abbas. This "president" of no country has just lied again about the history of the Arab "plight", mentioning nothing about their refusal to create their state, starting from 1947 

and many times since, as playing some role in that "the Palestinian state" is "long overdue". As Obama said, "Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist". "Palestinians" - whether Abbas's "authority", whose maps have no Israel on them, or Hamas with its call for exterminating the Jews in their entirety - have given no sign they they are stopping that denial. How then does that "never" play along with any "1967 lines"?

I find cognitive dissonance of those waiting for yesterday's rapture a healthy relief compared with delusions of Obama and his smartnik peace-mongering incompetent pro-Arab ideologues. The rapture gevalt will be forgotten tomorrow. Obama's nasty arm-twisting rewards terror and calls for more of it.

A perfect metaphor

This is what happens (or finally should) when Israel reaches its limits of patience:

Some time after

Let's just think for a moment what would happen if the "Palestinian" state were created as a result of current talks. Besides a couple of new Nobel peace prizes. Let's think of the "best-case" scenario, when the "refugee" problem is solved (I put the word in quotes because few if any of those people are actual refugees), the borders are mutually agreed on, and Jerusalem is not an issue. The disemboweled Israel has finally conducted another ethnic cleansing of its own loyal citizens, depriving them of their homes, land and life they have invested into their fields, vineyards and the Zionist idea. There is nobody left with whom that idea would have any physical traction anymore. The Judenrein Judea and Samaria emerge as "Palestine", named after the ancient enemies of Jews who never lived on that territory. Plishtim, as their Hebrew name was, the Philistines, whose name has come to stand for rude and uncultured ignoramuses, 3,000 years ago occupied part of the Mediterranean coast and had nothing to do with the Arabs. Mahmoud Abbas is enthroned as the President - finally, not of some "Authority" but a state. He has a new kunya perhaps, Abu Filastiniya. He sits in Ramallah, or even Jerusalem - behind the presidential desk under the portrait of the great Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, aka Yasser Arafat. Al-Husseini is also the name of Arafat's revered relative, Haj Amin, a good friend of Hitler and Eichmann and the first leader of "Palestinians". Wikipedia lists "Yasser" within that long train of names, but Arafat took it only when he studied in a university in Cairo. In Cairo he was also born, that great "Palestinian", who adopted the tale of his Jerusalem birth under the direction of his KGB handlers. But I digress.

Now, the "Palestine" of this sweet dream is surely a democratic state. That is, if Abbas, or whoever may dethrone him, does not decide to become a life-term president, which any other self-appointed Arab leader would do, especially given support of his multiple American-taught "security" forces. Is Gaza with its Hamas government part of that state? Hamas's Charter does not allow it to recognize or conduct negotiations with Israel. Thus, whether Gaza is not in that state, or is accepted as an entity within it, it has nothing to do with any agreements. How long will it take for an independent Gaza to start lobbing rockets at Israel again? Alternatively, how long will it take for Hamas to be elected to rule over the united "Palestine" and denounce these fabulous "peace" agreements or simply disregard them? Even before that, what will force Abbas to prevent murders of Israelis committed by "his" citizenry, if he is naming city squares after the terrorist murderers? As happened after the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, it will be immensely more difficult for Israel to protect itself against terror, capture terrorists, or retaliate, if Israeli troops are not deployed in "Palestine" anymore. How long will it take for its terror gangs to get equipped with weaponry readily provided via Jordan, which would likely soon become united with its long-suffering brethren into a terrorist fuehrer-led democracy, getting rid of that old import from Mecca, the Hashemites? There will be people willing to remind Abdullah of his father's Black September and of his own stripping them of their long-held Jordanian citizenship and rights. Whatever illusions may have existed before Israel's self-defeats in South Lebanon and Gaza, following the same pattern again is madness. Don't tell me how well it worked with buying peace from Egypt - does anybody doubt that only Israel's strength has protected it?

Squeezed tightly between the terror states of Jordistine and Hizballon, with the antisemitic "international community" guaranteeing "peace", that is, Israel's non-response to terror attacks for which those states would always have plausible if absurd deniability - with whom will Israel negotiate away the rest of its minuscule land? This time, for safe conduct?

PS to "What peace?"

Sometimes, in trying to be laconic, precision is sacrificed. To be sure, the description of the EU as "Arab-appeasing" in the prior post does not mean that it is not "traditionally antisemitic" as Russia or the Muslim-dominated UN. This point has just been illustrated by the EU's Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, a Belgian, who noted that, regardless of religiosity,“Lay Jews also share the same belief that they are  right. So it is not easy to have, even with moderate Jews, a rational  discussion about what is actually happening in the Middle East.” Upon hearing some concerns, he explained that his comments were wrongly interpreted as antisemitic, and he regretted that. He did not think it would be offensive - and the EU’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton did not either. She too was confident that he "did not intend any offense" - why, indeed, antisemitism should be offensive, especially in Europe? At the same time, she was "encouraged by the positive outcome of the launch of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority." No surprise, considering that the only "outcome of the launch" has been the murder of four Jews (five; one of the women was pregnant) and severe wounding of another one. Seven orphans. I hate to think what can make Catherine Ashton happy.

What peace?

Another "Peace talks" charade has just started. Charade, because it makes no sense. Peace talks assume there is a war and there are warring sides, states. One cannot call "war" attempts of a terror gang (PLO, Fatah, Hamas, etc.) to kill Israelis and blackmail them into accepting the Arabs' desire to destroy Israel.

There is no war. There is continuous unrest and terror acts of the Arabs, which are ideologically motivated and can cease only if the ideology has no support. A nationalist ideology could be satisfied by attaining statehood if that ideology included the idea of Israel as a Jewish state. It does not seem to, as it is not a truly nationalist ideology. This ideology, from the start, has been focused not on the creation of a state but on the elimination of Israel. PLO was founded in 1964, before any "occupation" excuse for its terror. If Arabs had a goal of creating a state, they would have done that by now, taking one of the many opportunities they have had and rejected. The Islamic ideology, both embedded in the Palestinian Arab "nationalism" or in its pure Hamas form, in general predominant, does not allow a Jewish state at all, inasmuch as "Palestine" is Islamic waqf. There is nobody on either Fatah or Hamas side both capable and willing to suppress either ideology. Any "peace" they may achieve will consist, as usual, of Israel's irreversible tangible concessions and reversible and non-enforceable empty Arab promises. Non-agreement is fraught with Arab violence. Agreement is fraught with Israeli losses and Arab violence. I'd be happy if proven wrong.

Suppose, however, that this is a war. Isn't it the same war wherefore the Oslo accords were supposed to bring peace? That was the only justification for reimporting the career terrorist Arafat and his coterie, Abbas included. Evidently, it has not worked, if "peace talks" are needed again, after Oslo and all the rest of later talks. What would make anybody think it will work this time?

Oslo accords as well as all the later "peace" negotiations with terrorists have failed for the same reason as the most famous negotiations of this kind, Munich 1938. The "land for peace" principle did not work then and only stoked Hitler's ambitions. That should have been enough to condemn and forget this approach, particularly when dealing with spiritual descendants of Hitler. Instead, it is history that has been forgotten.

Finally, Abbas does not represent even the "Palestinian authority" (that's why he mentioned PLO and only PLO in his speech) and is nobody's "president" as of January 2009. Hamas holds sway over Gaza and over the minds of Arabs in Judea and Samaria. Both Hamas and Abbas's Fatah are terror groups committed to Israel's destruction. The way they compete for hearts and minds is by indiscriminately killing Jews. Those, however, are just small details for "peacemakers" of the Quartet, traditionally antisemitic Russia and the UN, the Arab-appeasing EU, and the US of Reverend Wright's capable pupil.

Maimonides and the Gazans

A respectable blogger, William Jacobson (Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion), has recently noted that he was right predicting that lifting the Gaza blockade would be detrimental to Hamas because it would take away the need in a source of its business - the tunnel trade. Indeed, now that the blockade is lifted, it is reported that "Hamas panicked". I disagreed, however. Although there may be some revenue difficulties because of a drop (likely temporary) in the tunnel traffic, the key personnel is unlikely to suffer. Although that personnel may be interested in revenue, the main goal of Hamas in its volatile environment is  maintaining its hold on power. It is power that makes Hamas's income possible. That power is always under threat - not only from the "moderate" terrorists of Fatah, but also from the less prominent jihad warriors always yelping on the periphery and waiting for their turn.

It may well be that lifting the blockade slightly diminishes a source of Hamas's income, but in that part of the world it is symbolic victories that matter most. Symbolically, lifting the blockage is Hamas's, Turkish Islamic and leftist victory, ultimately helping Hamas. Besides, I am sure that the US help to Gaza will take care of any fiscal shortfall for Hamas. See, "Obama described the situation in Gaza as 'unsustainable'." Naturally, he promised to sustain the Hamas electorate with an infusion of $400 million. This is because, in the endless wisdom of the White House, the terror-supporting Gazan people "deserve a better life and expanded opportunities". The UK government has also squeezed its pockets to promise "an extra £19m in aid" - not that it has not given anything before. The poor philistines can always count on generous donations. In fact, they receive the greatest amount of international aid of any entity in the world. We should not also underestimate the help from Hamas's brothers in faith, Iran, Syria, and other anti-imperialist donors. Terror and jihad have been a lucrative business ever since Muhammad started it from Medina.

But let's get back to the more reliable source of income for the work-loving Gazan population that prefers destroying hothouses (which used to provide a quarter of produce in Israel and were given to Gazans free) to growing vegetables. Namely, the alms, a.k.a. international aid. Aid is charity, one of the commandments in Judaism. The Hebrew word is tzedakah, translated as righteousness, clearly an important issue for a religious person. Rambam, which is the Hebrew acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, known to Gentiles as Maimonides, the great Jewish lawmaker and Torah commentator, considered eight gradations of tzedakah, called Maimonides' Ladder. The rungs of the ladder are viewed from the perspective of the charity's worth to the giver's righteousness (obviously, it is the giver who is righteous, not the taker) - they are levels of giving, but the scale is the usefulness to the taker. Donations are good, but better if the donor is anonymous, to an unknown recipient, before being asked, particularly via a public fund. The highest rung, however, is a rehabilitating kind of charity, such as an interest-free loan that would allow an individual to stand on his own feet. Clearly, of all forms of charity, this is the best to the recipient. By contrast, the worst must be a charity that deprives the individual of initiative, of incentives to improve, ultimately of the future, and makes him feel humiliated.

This, worst, is the kind of charity that is served to the Arabs of Gaza and of Judea and Samaria. The kind of charity that requires no accountability or work, allowing the Arab leaders to steal as much they wish, and their subjects to enjoy their miserable lives, exercising their "idleness, uncertainty and despair". With the feeling of humiliation whipped up by the leaders to support the crowd's rage they could channel to their benefit. Misled by Hamas's "victory" in lifting the blockade to allow more handouts in. Always blaming Jews for this parasitic existence, while supported in that murderous self-pity by the New York Times and world media, "flotillas" and "human rights" organizations, governments and intelligentsia. Murderous, because that self-imposed and artificial beggar status and humiliation are translated into rockets targeting Jewish kindergartens and suicidal murderers' bombs in Jewish discotheques. 

Parasites lose their organs, as they lose their need in them. Professional beggars, if not lacking extremities, frequently pretend they do - it's easier for them to be disabled than to lose their income. The endless unconditional charity, with no accountability and no need to make something of themselves, exploits "the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen" (John Stuart Mill, "The Principles of Political Economy"). Disabling and killing Arabs softly by charity just to prove that Jews (a.k.a. Israelis) are bad, the world prepares "Palestinians" for another explosion under the guidance of their chosen jihad chieftains - leading them from spiritual death to "work accidents" to Israel's inevitable response to banditry and terror. 

July 19, 2010. - The shockingly "unsustainable"  situation in Gaza has just reached a new level of "uncertainty and despair" with opening a luxury mall. Please urge President Obama not to procrastinate with his life-supporting donation of $400 million, lest "Israeli men's trousers at an attractive price" are not affordable to some Gazan sufferer. 

July 20, 2010. - What a horrible thing - to be right so often. Reena Ninan, the Fox News reporter covering Israel (with dirt), has just reported about that mall (some "news"), and  commented that salaries may be too low to afford everybody  in Gaza to buy everything in this mall.  A young round-faced Gazan man (clear signs of starvation) was on hand to authoritatively confirm the hardships. I couldn't hold my tears. Considering that salaries in Gaza are paid by Hamas, there is no doubt where you and our generous President should urgently send money.