‘Palestinians’ and Turks go to France — to honor terrorists?

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
French police officers at rally site in Paris. BBC reports that about 2000 police and 1350 soldiers will be present for the massive rally that will be held today.

French police officers at rally site in Paris. BBC reports that about 2000 police and 1350 soldiers will be present for the massive rally that will be held today.

News item:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will attend a mass national rally in Paris on Sunday to pay tribute to the 17 victims of Islamist attacks there this week, including four people killed at a Jewish supermarket, a diplomatic source said.

Abbas will be joined by many world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the rally which is expected to draw more than a million people.

Ahead of the rally, Abbas is slated to meet with French President Francois Hollande. …

The anti-terror rally Sunday afternoon is expected to draw some 30 world leaders, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, Jordan’s King Abdullah and Turkish prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

The hypocrisy, cynicism and sheer reality inversion that the ‘Palestinian’ leader is capable of is beyond belief, not to mention inducing nausea at a time like this.

To whom will Abbas pay tribute? Certainly not the Charlie Hebdo victims, since there is no press freedom in the Palestinian Authority, where one can be jailed for ‘liking’ a Facebook post or insulting the President.

And it’s unlikely that he wishes to honor the Jewish victims of the attack on the kosher market, because he regularly treats the terrorist murderers of Jews in Israel as heroes of the Palestinian movement and pays them generously.

So he must be going to honor the dead terrorists. There’s simply no other possibility, unless of course he wants an opportunity to thank Hollande for his vote at the UN Security Council to trash previous UNSC (242, etc.) resolutions and international treaties (Oslo). That favor certainly improved Franco-Islamic relations, didn’t it, M. Hollande?

It is also absurd that Turkey, which supports Hamas, provides sanctuary for its terrorist operatives (including the planner of the kidnap/murder of three Jewish teens in July), and may soon become the headquarters of its leader Khaled Meshaal, should pretend to show solidarity with terror victims.

Turkey is also a difficult neighborhood for journalists, where dozens were harassed, assaulted or fired for coverage of anti-regime demonstrations or corruption.

Abbas and Davutoglu will be in good company, though. The anti-Jewish French ‘comedian’ Dieudonné M’bala M’bala has announced that he, too, will be present.

Posted in Terrorism | 2 Comments

Doing the math about Muslim violence

Posted on January 10, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
Muslim political correctness

Courtesy Bosch Fawstin http://fawstin.blogspot.co.il/

After all, if one in six people in the world is a Muslim, it would mean that five out of six are not. Right? So if there were no inordinate affinity of Islam for violence/terrorism, Muslim acts of terrorism should be one-fifth of those of non-Muslim terrorism – i.e. if Islam had no greater propensity for terrorism, one would have to expect non-Muslim acts of terrorism to be five times (!) those perpetrated by Muslims. — Martin Sherman

But they aren’t. Consider that the overwhelming majority of terrorist acts in recent decades (where ‘terrorism’ means violence committed against civilian populations for political purposes) have been perpetrated by Muslims. If you include violence by Muslims against other Muslims, the imbalance is even worse.

And if you look at a list of ongoing armed conflicts, you will see that every one of the five major conflicts (10,000 or more deaths per year) involves Muslims, as do 5 out of 8 of the ‘smaller’ ones (1000 to 9,999 deaths per year).

The sheer numbers are stunning. Read Sherman’s article or look at this chart.

Sherman also explains that the usual ‘explanations’, like blaming colonialism, don’t hold water. Many of the most violent Muslim societies have never been colonized (or underwent a relatively short period of colonial rule), and many non-Muslim groups that were — Hindus, for example — have far lower levels of violence.

It’s not just Arabs, either. Disparate places like Nigeria, Thailand and the Philippines have recently seen horrendous Islamic terrorism.

And it’s more than terrorism and war. It includes draconian punishments for minor crimes (as well as criminalization of blasphemy, apostasy, homosexuality, etc.), violent misogyny and slavery.

You don’t need to analyze the Qur’an or even poll Muslims (although polls consistently show that a large fraction of Muslims approve of terrorism and other forms of violence unacceptable in the West). Simple arithmetic is all you need to see that there is something wrong with Muslim cultures that has given rise to the propensity for violence.

That doesn’t mean that it is justified to assume that a particular Muslim is violent. It doesn’t mean that some Muslims aren’t horrified by the violence (Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is). But it does mean (for example) that those who oppose unrestricted Muslim immigration in Europe, who are concerned about Muslim proselytizing in US prisons, or who favor airport profiling of Muslims, are not necessarily bigots.

They are just able to do the math.

Posted in Islam, Terrorism | 3 Comments

What it will take to preserve civilization

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

 

President George W. Bush speaks to Congress, Sept. 20, 2001. He said the right things, but failed to do them.

President George W. Bush speaks to Congress, Sept. 20, 2001. He said the right things, but failed to do them.

Yesterday’s post may have exhibited some frustration on my part.

As well it might! Since at least 2001 the Western world has been in a life-and-death struggle with the movement that brought us yesterday’s bloodbath in Paris, as well as countless less publicized atrocities (less publicized because they took place in Nigeria, Iraq or Syria to people the West doesn’t care about as much, although they were often worse). Despite everything, there is still no unified effort to fight back in the name of civilization.

President Bush made all the right noises after 9/11. On Sept. 21, he addressed a joint session of Congress, saying in part,

We will direct every resource at our command — every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war — to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network. …

We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place until there is no refuge or no rest.

And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.

From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. …

This is not, however, just America’s fight. And what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s fight. This is civilization’s fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.

We ask every nation to join us.

We will ask and we will need the help of police forces, intelligence service and banking systems around the world. …

Unfortunately, the US didn’t do what Bush promised. Bush’s coalition didn’t catch Bin Laden in Afghanistan and then unnecessarily invaded Iraq, compounding the error by taking the country apart and handing it over to the Shiite militias, strengthening Iran and provoking the vicious civil war that gave birth to Da’esh, the “Islamic State.” Its counter-terrorism activities focused narrowly on Al Qaeda, ignoring the greater (albeit longer-range) threats from Iran and Hizballah. Resources were squandered on “homeland security” that was meaningless.

And then came Obama, who took the side of the Islamic radicals of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, tried to form an alliance with Iran (in pursuit of which he is permitting the regime to acquire nuclear weapons), allowed himself to be deterred from following through on his threats against mass-murderer Bashar al-Assad, and carried out a consistent policy to create a terrorist state next to Israel’s population centers. Israel, the strongest force standing against the jihad in the region!

In the meantime, a form of Orwellian doublespeak has been enforced in America, where it has been made unacceptable to speak about the Islamic roots of the terrorism that is daily killing dozens of people around the globe. Political correctness is more important than a straight answer, and official pronouncements seem to be made underwater.

“But what can we do? We can’t fight all 1.5 billion Muslims.” As if we needed to!

Most of those 1.5 million Muslims don’t care about ideology or politics, or even much about religion. Most of them live barely above the subsistence level, and others who have better lives aren’t interested in losing them. Radical Islam is not a grassroots movement, despite what their leaders would like us to think. Jihadists are assembled, paid, equipped and led by governments, organizations of all kinds, and elites.

What we, the civilized world, needs to do is to focus. To learn to understand the nature of the beast that we are confronting. To chart the organizations that support it, name the leaders, determine the governments and factions that provide its nourishment. And then we have to crush those organizations, kill the leaders and elites, and overthrow those governments.

This would require an allocation of resources up front, in the intelligence phase. There would have to be unprecedented agreement between the targets of the jihad, an ability to work together despite their differences (think of the Allies in WWII). There would have to be a unity of purpose, an understanding of what has to be done and why.

I am pessimistic that the unity of purpose can be found. Europe is still committed to the ideal of multiculturalism that is eating its heart out while it pretends that nothing is the matter, like the Spartan boy who stole the fox. America is immeasurably weaker today than it was in 2001, thanks to Bush’s bumbling and Obama’s ignorance and ideological obtuseness.

In addition, it would take a leader, someone like Winston Churchill, someone who could take the very hard decisions that would be needed while still retaining the vision of justice, tolerance, freedom and openness that characterize the ideal Western society that is, after all, the ultimate goal.

Probably the leadership will have to come from America, despite its weaknesses and despite the ideological drift toward a European-like impotence. I must admit that I don’t see it on the horizon.

It would be a struggle, but — by orders of magnitude — nothing like the struggle to defeat the Axis in WWII. Even so, I don’t know if the West has the fortitude for it.

I will be watching with vital interest from here, the front line in the war.

Posted in Islam, Terrorism | 5 Comments

The Charlie Hebdo massacre

Posted on January 7, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

News item:

Twelve people were killed when at least three gunmen stormed the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris Wednesday and opened fire on employees with Kalashnikov rifles and RPGs. …

Video images on the website of public broadcaster France Televisions showed two gunmen in black at a crossroads who appeared to fire down one of the streets. A cry of “Allahu akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great”— could be heard among the gunshots.

The extremist Islamic State group has threatened to attack France, and minutes before the attack Charlie Hebdo had tweeted a satirical cartoon of that extremist group’s leader giving New Year’s wishes. The cartoon entitled “Still No Attacks in France” had a caricature of an extremist fighter saying “Just wait — we have until the end of January to present our New Year’s wishes.”


12 murdered, magazine staff and several policemen. The obviously well-trained and very professional terrorists, who spoke perfect French, escaped.

Islamist terrorists finish off wounded policeman.

Islamist terrorists finish off wounded policeman.

Windshield of police car. The terrorists were not amateurs.

Windshield of police car. The terrorists were not amateurs.

Will anyone in Europe dare to express themselves publicly in a way that will arouse (the very easily-aroused) Muslim rage again? I doubt it (thank goodness that in Israel we can draw whatever cartoons we want. We can’t make them want to murder us any more than they already do).

Now we will begin to hear the condemnations around the world. I hope officials will be able to keep themselves from urging ‘restraint’, and from talking about how these gunmen besmirched ‘true Islam’. We’ve heard more than enough of this.

But whatever they say won’t count for much unless there is effective action taken against the sources of incitement. Just as one can’t draw a cartoon that, according to their definition, insults Islam, we, the civilized world, should define language that we will not permit. Close the mosques, deport or imprison the instigators, kill the terrorists. They claim that they are oppressed? Show them what real oppression looks like. Give them terror for terror.

And although I don’t want to inject my own concerns into this too much, perhaps they could support us in Israel who are facing the same — identical — barbarian horde, instead of falling over themselves to create a new nest of terrorists next door to us.

Unfortunately, I do not have a fresh take on this. I don’t have any original ideas. I think, though, that ‘modern’ approaches fail when you are dealing with this kind of subhuman behavior.

“But that will make us like them,” is the response. Possibly, but if we allow them to overrun us, what’s the difference?

Posted in Terrorism | 5 Comments

Nothing but a pack of cards

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

‘Let the jury consider their verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first—verdict afterwards.’

‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. ‘The idea of having the sentence first!’

‘Hold your tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple.

‘I won’t!’ said Alice.

Off with her head!’ the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

‘Who cares for you?’ said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) ‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’

— Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Ch. 12 (h/t Lise)

The recent actions by the PLO in joining the International Criminal Court (ICC) and threatening to prosecute IDF personnel and Israeli leaders for war crimes seems to have generated several kinds of response.

One is that the ICC doesn’t work the way the Arabs would like it to, and this is yet another empty threat. The US calls it “counterproductive.”

Another is that Israel should hurry up and investigate the IDF itself (and probably punish some scapegoats) before the international community does.

There is even an argument that the PLO believes a) that the move will help Bibi and right-wing candidates in Israel’s elections, and b) they think this would be good for them in the international PR arena.

The ICC itself has no enforcement powers and procedural issues would take years before anyone could be convicted of anything. The court’s legitimacy has been damaged (at least in the eyes of anyone who is not Israel-obsessed) by the way the Arabs slipped a specifically anti-Israel clause into its founding statute. Anything that Israel can be accused of doing has been done ten times over by other nations, with impunity; and both Hamas and the PLO are champion war criminals.

Nevertheless, Israel can’t expect fair play from international institutions dominated by its enemies. ICC proceedings, even long before any trial could occur, will be the propaganda gift that never stops giving for the PLO and Hamas. And I don’t want to think about the damage that could occur here if Israel’s own legal establishment decides to investigate IDF conduct.

Israel should not cooperate with any ICC investigations, any more than it is with the UN Human Rights Council’s outrageously biased Schabas Commission.

Ironically, while the PLO has directly violated the Oslo Accords by its unilateral moves — including this one — it continues to assert its rights under Oslo, such as the right to receive tax money collected on its behalf by Israel (some of which Israel has cut off in response to the ICC bid).

Although it mixes its plausibly deniable terrorism with diplomacy, the PLO is no less an enemy of Israel than Hamas. Israel needs to start thinking seriously of an alternative way to maintain the necessary security control of Judea and Samaria without the Palestinian Authority (PA), the PLO ‘government’ set up by Oslo. Ambassador Alan Baker has argued that the PLO has abrogated the Oslo accords by its unilateral actions, and Israel is no longer bound by their provisions. Since the PA is an interim authority set up by Oslo, its existence is no longer justified. It should disappear (and so should the PLO).

Finally, I would like to see Israel more assertive with the so-called “international community.” Israel has technology which is available nowhere else, it has (or will have, if domestic political insanity can be overcome) large reserves of natural gas, and — last, but not least — is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Surely they can be made to understand that it is in their interest to be on our side.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs | 2 Comments

Will Israel reject the Oslo Syndrome?

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
Image from campaign of Jewish Home party candidate Naftali Bennett

Image from campaign of Jewish Home party candidate Naftali Bennett

‘Oslo Syndrome’ is a phrase coined by historian and psychoanalyst Kenneth Levin, who wrote a book called The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege (Smith & Kraus, 2005). It is related to the so-called ‘Stockholm Syndrome‘ in which hostages come to identify with their captors, but is a specific response of Jews to Jew-hatred (the name ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ comes from a 1973 bank robbery/hostage situation that took place near Stockholm. ‘Oslo Syndrome’, of course, relates to the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO).

I wrote about the Oslo Syndrome several years ago, but insofar as it continues to be epidemic among Jews, I decided to revisit the topic.

So what is it? It is a psychological defense mechanism adopted by Jews in response to persecution and Jew-hatred. A Jew displaying the syndrome a) comes to believe the accusations of Jewish culpability of the Jew-haters, and b) also believes that it is in his power to mitigate their hatred by becoming a better person by their standards.

Such a Jew may assimilate, reject Judaism or (especially) Zionism, or even become part of the forces persecuting Jews or attacking Israel, because he subconsciously believes that this will protect him from their wrath. This is illogical and has been proven false many times, but the subconscious need not be rational.

This is one of the explanations for the attraction of Jews to anti-Israel organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, etc. These Jews often issue embarrassing mea culpas which remind me of the ‘struggle sessions‘ of the Chinese Cultural Revolution or Soviet show trials. Because of the deep-seated emotional motivation — in a word, fear — the syndrome sufferer can’t easily be persuaded by facts and logic. He will often take refuge in the mindless repetition of buzzwords like ‘occupation’, ‘apartheid’ and ‘racism’.

They also tend to viscerally object to expressions of Jewish particularism. They find nationalism, armies and borders abhorrent, and are attracted to multicultural, universalist and humanistic ideas. If we say often enough that all cultures — including the ‘Palestinian’ one that finds political expression in the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc. — deserve respect, that we should take down the security barrier and end conscription to the IDF, that we understand their ‘right’ to ‘resist occupation’ (sometimes expressed with meat cleavers and firebombs), then they won’t kill us. Right?

Levin provides powerful and shocking examples of how Oslo Syndrome delusional Jews fought attempts to save Jews during the Holocaust (from my 2011 article):

For example, Levin notes that the New York Times, under direct orders from its (Jewish) publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, published only one story during the war relating to the Holocaust on page one above the fold: one which reported as true a State Department claim in the Fall of 1943 that 580,000 Jewish refugees had entered the country (the true number was about 21,000). The story had the immediate effect of short-circuiting support for a Rescue Resolution in Congress, at least until other sources revealed that the State Department numbers were false.

Perhaps even worse, the philosopher Martin Buber, whose own butt was safely in Jerusalem (he escaped from Germany in 1938), published an article in 1944 which called for a binational state and said  that levels of Jewish immigration must be determined in agreement with Palestinian Arabs (who of course wanted it to be zero and whose leadership collaborated with the Nazis). So although he professed admiration for the spirituality of the Jews of Eastern Europe, Buber preferred to leave their bodies in the hands of Hitler!

Indeed, all through the 1930’s, as David Ben Gurion frantically tried to create a united front to maximize Jewish immigration to Palestine from Europe — where he clearly saw that there was no future — he was fought tooth and nail by Jews like Buber, Felix Warburg and Judah Magnes, all of whom felt that a Jewish majority would be disastrous (it would lead to antisemitism, be unjust, etc.).

How many Jews could have been saved but for the obstructions placed by Jewish anti-Zionists? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? We don’t know, of course.

Israeli politician Naftali Bennett has built his campaign around the rejection of the Oslo Syndrome (as well as the spirit of the disastrous Oslo Accords). “Stop apologizing,” he says in his TV commercials and Internet ads. The subtext is that we should stop accepting the false and defamatory Arab narrative in which we are guilty of stealing their land, murdering their children, maintaining an apartheid state and even committing genocide against them.

Bennett is aiming directly at the Israeli Left, some of whose members have internalized the Arab point of view so well that they are better slanderers than the Arabs themselves. A recent article and book by Ari Shavit in which he invented a massacre is one example. And here is another particularly bald-faced one, in response to Bennett, from the inimitable Gideon Levy. One wonders why he doesn’t cut his own throat to save the Arabs the trouble.

To Levy and Shavit, we are guilty, guilty, guilty. The antidote to a mild case of the syndrome is simply to study history, but when someone is as far gone as they are, they are incapable of seeing the truth no matter how clearly it is presented.

Has the time finally come, after the long detour that began in 1993, that an appeal to Jewish pride and patriotism will appeal to younger Israelis, who will replace the nihilistic Left with leaders like Bennett, Tzipi Hotovely, Ayelet Shaked, Ronen Shoval, and others?

We’ll see.

Posted in Israeli Politics, Jew Hatred, Zionism | 3 Comments

My personal Kishinev

Posted on December 27, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal

You probably heard about the 11-year old girl who was critically burned on Thursday when the car she was riding in was struck by a firebomb thrown by an Arab terrorist. And you certainly know about the attack on the Kehilat Bnei Torah synagogue in Jerusalem in which four worshipers and a policeman were brutally murdered. You probably know about the several incidents in which Arabs drove their vehicles into groups of Jews, including one in which a 3-month old baby and a tourist from Ecuador were murdered, and another in which the driver got out and ran back to his not-yet-dead victim and cut her throat.

If you follow these things, you may also know that Jews are afraid to go to the historic Mount of Olives Cemetery in Jerusalem because of continued violent attacks on buses, cars and people. You may also have heard about the daily rock-throwing attacks on the light rail in Jerusalem, against Jewish-driven cars on the roads in Judea and Samaria, the acid thrown on a Jewish family, etc. I could go on. And on.

The horror of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom was a turning point for many Jews, including Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Jew-hatred was finally seen to be implacable and a permanent feature of Diaspora life, and only a complete separation from the haters by the establishment of a Jewish state and the relocation of the Jewish people to it could be a permanent solution.

I think the firebomb incident was my own personal Kishinev experience. Now there is a Jewish state, but the problem of hatred-spawned violence against Jews has not ended, even here.

There is a simple reason for that: we allow it.

The Palestinian Arab leadership and its official media as well as their legions of social media propagandists incite murder every day. They pay the salaries of incarcerated murderers, treat released terrorists as heroes, and call for violent action against Jews, sometimes in remarkably ugly ways. We don’t stop them. We could, but we don’t.

We could stop the terror on the roads of Judea and Samaria. When an Arab village harbors terrorists, we could destroy it. But because we are afraid of being accused of ‘collective punishment’ by the less-than-objective UN, EU and Obama Administration, we don’t.

We don’t believe that Arab populations can be forced to move when they breed and support terrorism. We take seriously the idea of removing Jews from their homes — and do it, in Gush Katif and Amona — but expelling an Arab would be a violation of his human rights, another nakba. We talk about destroying the homes of terrorists, but rarely do it.

We don’t have a death penalty for terrorist murder. Instead, we keep the murderers in jail until their supporters kidnap a Jew, and then we ransom the Jew by releasing them, sometimes in a ratio of 1027 terrorists to one Jew. The terrorists go home to a victory parade and then go back to trying to kill Jews.

The Zionist imperative is to preserve the Jewish state in order to preserve the Jewish people. That is our highest priority — not to try to live up to the hypocritical and cynical double standards set by people in Brussels or Washington who would just as soon see the Jewish people gone anyway.

We need to change the way we are fighting the long war that we are in, because today we are losing. We are losing Judea and Samaria, we are losing eastern Jerusalem, and we are losing the Galilee and the Negev. Soon it will be impossible for a Jew to drive even in Kfar Saba without an armored vehicle. And after that?

The solution is not to talk to them about ‘peace’. They have given us their answer with their firebombs and meat cleavers, their cars and their knives, as well as their words. How many times do they have to show us their intentions before we get it?

Do we, civilized people, understand what it means to be in a struggle with barbarians? Do we understand that the choices are victory or the end of our state, death and dispersal? But we seem to care more about Arab rights than our own right to exist.

We are at a turning point. We need to choose between victory and destruction. There are no other alternatives.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Jew Hatred, Terrorism, Zionism | 1 Comment

Why not a Jewish state?

Posted on December 26, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal

The Knesset won’t be voting on any serious legislation until after the election, but one’s attitude toward the proposed Jewish State Law (literally, the ‘National Law’)  remains a hot topic. The law, which I discussed in detail here, attempts to give legal expression to the “Jewish” aspect of the “Jewish and democratic state” that is promised by Israel’s Declaration of Independence.

The problem — at least for me it is a problem — is that many who oppose the law oppose it because they simply don’t want Israel to be ‘Jewish’ in any meaningful sense. For example, take this:

Israel has an identity problem. Is it a Jewish state that provides legal and material preferences for citizens of Jewish ancestry? Or is it a secular nation-state, but one that happens to be rooted in Jewish culture and the Hebrew language? For more than six decades Israeli politicians have maintained a useful ambiguity about this deeply existential question. But no longer.

The writer, Kai Bird, an American biographer and novelist, goes on to argue that there is an “Israeli” culture based on the Hebrew language and culture that has little to do with religion, and that

In reality, Israel is a multiethnic, vibrant and largely secular society. This is clearly not a tragedy. It is actually what most of the country’s original Zionist founding fathers envisioned — a new, modern state in ancient Palestine where those Jews who so desired could become citizens of a nation like any other modern nation-state. “Israelis” would be seen not as members of the Jewish Diaspora, but citizens of their own state.

His ideal Israel seems to be a smaller, Hebrew-speaking version of Oregon or California. I am certain that this was not the intent of most of the original Zionists, and I think that even most secular Israelis would disagree with him.

Bird doesn’t mention the Jewish people, as such. He refers to Jewish citizens of Israel, meaning those that practice the Jewish religion or who have ancestors that did. For him, it is an argument against a Jewish state that some Jews are secular. In this he seems to agree with Mahmoud Abbas, who insists that there is no Jewish people, only a religion (of course Abbas thinks there is a ‘Palestinian people’). And this is the reason that he doesn’t see the point of a Jewish state.

The intent of a Jewish state is not that there will be “material and legal advantages” to Jewish citizens. Indeed, the democratic aspect of the state, which is mentioned in the declaration of independence is meant to eliminate such advantages. Israel tries very hard to provide full civil rights to all of its citizens, something that can be difficult in a place that often becomes a battlefield (and something that I suspect Israel does better than the great majority of the world’s nations).

There is one great exception, the Law of Return. Is it not unfair to allow Jews to become citizens of this desirable state simply by asking, when the descendents of Arab refugees and African economic migrants are kept out? Bird doesn’t discuss this, but I am sure that it is one of the advantages he refers to.

This is precisely the crux of the matter. Herzl and Nordau (and later, Jabotinsky, Begin and Ben-Gurion) understood that the primary reason for being of a Jewish state was that it be a national home for the Jewish nation, a place where all Jews belonged, which could serve as a refuge from the Jew-hatred that they understood could never be eliminated outside of a Jewish state. If there is one “advantage” provided to Jews, it is that no matter where they live they have the option to go to Israel.

Although the Hebrew language serves as a unifying principle, the technology, culture and economy are impressive, the nightlife in Tel Aviv unmatched, these are not part of the essence of the State of Israel. There could be (and Herzl envisioned) a Jewish state where the people spoke German, or one in which all the citizens were secular. But the fact that it is the nation-state of the Jewish people is essential. And this requires the distinction between civil rights and national rights that Bird elides.

The Law of Return and the Jewish character of the national symbols of the state of Israel are what make Israel a Jewish state, along with the close cultural connections to Judaism, even for secular Jewish citizens. If these were attenuated — which is precisely what the proposed law is trying to prevent — then Israel would soon disappear, swallowed up in the Muslim Middle East that surrounds it.

Bird suggests that a Jewish state would be a “theocracy.” He ignores the fact that Israel has been a Jewish state in fact for 67 years without becoming a theocracy, and passing a law that says “Jewish law shall serve as a source of inspiration for the Knesset” will hardly make it so.

He seems to disdain Judaism, calling it “mere religiosity.” Yes, Israel is a place where Judaism flourishes — there is a synagogue on every street corner, it seems. But why not? Israel does not place obstacles in the path of any other faith; there are also mosques, churches and the Baha’i Temple. In how many countries outside of Israel and the United States can Jews practice their religion safely today?

In fact, one wonders why Bird wrote about Israel at all, since he is an American by birth who lives in Peru. If he opposes theocratic states he could have written about Iran, Saudi Arabia, or the Islamic State. Why didn’t he complain that the established church of Norway is the Evangelical Lutheran Church and it is supported by the state, and “inhabitants professing it are bound to bring up their children the same?” If he dislikes nationalism, why didn’t he write about Hungary, whose constitution begins “We the people of the Hungarian nation…?”

The world is full of national states, states that have established religions (Israel does not), even states that exclude certain ethnic or religious groups. It is full of undemocratic kingdoms and dictatorships.

What is so special about the Jewish people having a state? And why do so many want to deny it to them?

Posted in Zionism | 1 Comment