A Few Odds and Ends

I’m again busier than usual lately, but things don’t stop popping up, so here’s two urgent things to address for the weekend.

First, a piece from our outstanding Jewish kumbayista Richard Silverstein. His post Tzedakah for Peace, from yesterday, is a graphic example of Perchikian use of Jewish precepts to anti-Jewish ends. Tzedakah, as he rightly explains, is the Jewish duty of giving alms to the needy. He adds, again rightly, that the word tzedakah in Hebrew, being derived from the root for “justice”, has not the connotation of doing a favor like the English world “charity” has. So far so good.

But now you would expect the post to end with donation links to organizations that give poor families, widows and orphans the opportunity to be joyful on Shabbat with chicken, wouldn’t you? You’d expect encouragement to donate to people in need of covering onerous loans and mortgages, right? Naaaaah! Silverstein is way above those petty things. Here’s where he says your money should go:

So I hope even though you may have little, that you’ll preserve a small amount to help those who may not have your advantages in this holiday season. The following is a short list of worthy Israeli and Jewish groups promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace which are worthy of your giving. A few years back, I wrote an expanded version of Israeli and Palestinian online peace resources. You may find many more ideas for giving if you visit those posts:

Parent’s Circle
Americans for Peace Now
Israel Policy Forum
Brit Tzedek
Jewish Voice for Peace
Neve Shalom
Jewish Peace Lobby
B’Tselem
New Israel Fund

Forget about those widows who want to make a pleasurable Shabbat for their children with a nice meat meal. For Silverstein, the important thing is to promote the efforts of “peace”, no matter that those organizations, upon checking their websites, are all active in portraying Israel as an oppressive state, thus following, even if not intentionally, the Big Lie of “Zionism = Nazism” which serves as justification for the haters of Israel to murder us (G-d forbid). A donation to those organizations would be not just a waste of money, but far worse: it would be a donation for the spilling of Jewish blood (G-d forbid). Yes, as usual, those who donate to them or encourage such donations are usually well-intentioned and sincere but, as I said time and again, sincerity is not enough.

On the subject of sincerity and donations, a recent news story that shows decisively why extreme caution and scrutiny should be exercised before donating to an organization is the one about the donations sent to Aceh, Indonesia (links: Dhimmi Watch, LGF, Hot Air). Sincere souls in the West donated for the earthquake recovery efforts of Aceh, believing their money would indeed be used in that way, but it ended up funding Islamic oppression, especially of women.

Similarly, but now having gone for so long that it goes unreported, the millions funneled as foreign aid to the “Palestinians” would, if divided equally among them, make each “Palestinian” a Rothschild, but instead have gone partly to the coffers of Abu Mazen and Haniyeh and Souha Antoinette and partly to the purchase of weapons for terrorizing Israel. Again: money not just wasted, but given to an evil cause.

Tzedakah is an obligation. But be sure to give to those who are really in need and will not use it for other, evil purposes: the poor in need of a Sabbath meal, young couples steeped in debts, and kindred things. Leave your politics—and I’m talking of mine here as well—out of it.

Second, a peace on Israel on Daily Kos from (who else?) Shergald, called Happy Hanukkah from Bil’in Palestine, also from yesterday. As usual, Shergald’s words aren’t anything new, he just brings examples from the Israeli Jewish Left to show how Israel still has a “soul” in it that is opposed to the “brutal occupation”. It’s the quotes and comments that count. The Hanukkah ceremony at Bil’in began with the words of Uri Avneri (no introduction needed about him):

“Perhaps it seems strange that we light the candles of a Jewish holiday at this place, but we are standing here on the land of the Maccabees. It is here that they were born and here they started their revolt. The rebellion of the Maccabees is not only a Jewish symbol. Long ago it has become a world-wide symbol of the struggle against oppression, occupation, and injustice. The people of Bil’in are the Maccabees of these days, and the occupation is Antiochus.”

(All emphases mine —ZY)

That’s how Leftists think. They hate traditional religion with a passion, except for using it for their ends. Every particular of a religion is generalized, universalized (“not only a Jewish symbol”), every action and guideline assimilated to the Marxist narrative of the warfare between oppressors and oppressed (“a world-wide symbol of the struggle against oppression, occupation, and injustice”), and the truth turned on its head in the process (“The people of Bil’in are the Maccabees of these days, and the occupation is Antiochus”, on a par with construing the “Palestinians” as David and Israel as Goliath).

Shergald goes on to describe and quote eight activists lighting torches with statements:

“I light this torch for the fighters against occupation and oppression, in the spirit of the Maccabees, who were the sons of this soil!”

We Jews are the sons of this soil, and we are fighting against the occupation of this land by Muslim invaders, and this single Jewish state was set up in the first place as a solution to oppression of the Jews over the ages. If you oppose the right of Jews to inhabit all their promised land, then you are an enemy of the Jewish people.

“I light this candle against injustice and discrimination, in the spirit of the best spiritual leaders of Judaism throughout the ages!”

The best spiritual leaders of Judaism throughout the ages did not support fighting injustice and discrimination by means of suicide martyrdom and the sacrifice of the nation’s women and children. Nor would they regard Israel’s actions today as anything but legitimate self-defense from those who would destroy it (G-d forbid). Turning the other cheek is not a Jewish value.

“I light this candle for human dignity and human rights!”

Human dignity and human rights are the things stripped away entirely from non-Muslims in Islamic countries, as well as from the man in the streets of “worker’s paradises” like Cuba and Venezuela. Not from any citizen of Israel. Human dignity and human rights, however, cannot be given to those who have it in both their words and deeds to eliminate us.

“I light this candle against the settlers who take by force possession of the land that belongs to others, contrary to the Jewish values they profess to honor!”

This land is ours entirely, including the territories taken in 1967. Among Jewish values is belief in G-d and His statements, including His statement that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people and no other. Other nations have the whole of the rest of the world to inhabit.

“I light this candle in honor of the State of Israel within the Green Line, a state of liberty and justice!”

Silly Israeli Leftist, don’t you know the whole of the State of Israel was “born in sin”, and is illegitimate even within its 1949 Armistice borders? The only reason your non-Jewish Leftist and Muslim “friends” are still telling you otherwise is they value you as a useful idiot of theirs. Such a situation can only be temporary.

“I light this candle against the hooligans who cut down Palestinian trees and steal the olives, and who last year destroyed 5000 Palestinian homes, who besmirch the honor of Israel.”

Better you should light the candle against those who, when given all they need to build a prosperous state, destroy what is given to them out of sheer, blind hatred and exchange its greenery for a desert with holes through which weaponry is smuggled. Know what true evil is.

“I light this candle for the love of human beings, wherever they are!”

First human beings for one to love: one’s own offspring. Those who do not love their children, so that they gladly use them as suicide bombs, do not deserve to be accorded the rights of ordinary human beings. They should be killed, and their children taken away from them to be raised in a healthy environment, in order that they may live.

“I light this candle for peace between the two peoples, sons of this country!”

The Jews are the sons of this country, and as long as they keep Torah and Mitzvot, G-d permits, nay, commands them to inhabit the country, which He has given to them as He says in His Torah. No nation is permitted to obstruct the inhabitation of the Land of Israel by the Jews.

Finally, here is something from the comments on that Daily Kos thread, from the honestly, openly anti-Semitic Christopher Day:

Sadly, Gush Shalom’s statement for the fifth candle, made in the spirit of evenhandedness (“I light this candle in honor of the State of Israel within the Green Line, a state of liberty and justice!”) rests on an erasure of the experiences of Palestinians living as second or third-class citizens within the Green Line and self-deception about the viability of the two-state solution implied by the statement given Israel’s massive dependence on the West Bank aquifer for any reasonable prospects of future population or economic growth. The truth is that the “State of Israel within the Green Line” is an imaginary entity, and the actual existing State of Israel is not a state of either liberty or justice for the Palestinians who live on either side of the Green Line.

Hmmmmm. So, Israeli Jewish Peacenik standing against the “Occupation”: do you accept that you’re no better than a West Bank settler even if you live in Tel-Aviv? Christopher Day isn’t in a minority for thinking that way, he’s just in a minority for voicing it publicly. And considering that, just 20 years ago, thinking that way was taboo, but now it’s all the rage, it will not be long before saying it out aloud is perfectly acceptable. If you’re already as good as any West Bank settler in Leftist and Muslim eyes, then you might as well drop the delusion of being in their good books through your anti-settler actions. Take, all of you, your own side in this war for a change. You won’t regret it.

Happy Hanukkah, happy Rosh Chodesh (beginning of the month) and Shabbat Shalom!

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Updated (December 22, 2006, 01:15) to add a sentence to the part about human dignity and to fix typos.