Absurd!

The idea of the “Palestinian nation” is inseparable from the plan to eliminate the Jewish State (God forbid). It is therefore not possible to be both pro-Israel and pro-“Palestine” at the same time, even though many of those who claim to be so are just deceived, not malicious.

The name, “Palestine” was given by the Roman emperor Hadrian, in order to sever the connection of the Jews with their land. His empire is now nothing but a lengthy chapter in the page of time, and he who understands will understand.

The Banality of Moral Generalities

The title is obviously an allusion to Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase, “The Banality of Evil”, which she said regarding Adolf Eichmann after seeing him sit inside the glass box in his trial. Arendt, together with Orwell and a host of others, is one of the post-WWII thinkers on morality whose pronouncements have the distinction of being quoted extensively on political blogs on all areas of the political compass. This fact illustrates two notable points: 1) The practical uselessness of moral generalities; 2) The grip that Nazism, or more accurately its aftereffects, has on people today, particularly on their moral judgments.

A writer whose deep and clear thinking about totalitarianism is invaluable, yet does not guard against the possibility of inverting the good and the evil.

I will begin with the second point. That Nazism was evil is one of the few points of concensus extant between Right and Left today (not the Muslims, however—for much of the Muslim world, Hitler was a divine emissary who didn’t finish his job). But this concensus is of no utility in reaching a concensus in moral judgment, for each side uses Hitler and the Nazis for its portrayal of what is wrong with the other side. Hitler was an atheist, a Christian, a pagan, a homosexual, a vegetarian, a harborer of sympathy with Islam, a scientific fundamentalist, a cloudy-eyed mystic, a corporatist, a socialist, a Luddite, a techno-utopianist—you name it, the allegation has been supported by selected quotes of his and used as ammunition against the other side, as in, “Hitler was X, therefore X is evil”. Much as I loathe Godwin’s Law as an easy pretext for silencing arguments (a feature it has in common with the term, “troll”), it is not difficult for me to understand why there came a need for that law to be formulated: comparison to Nazism and Hitler is such a lazy way to win the argument.

Orwell’s 1984 can be used by conservatives against the creeping socialist totalitarianism of the European Union, but also by the progressives against anti-terrorism measures (foremostly the PATRIOT Act). Pastor Niemöller’s “First they came for the Jews…” is now the paradigm of “speaking against evil, speaking truth to power”—equally useful for supporting cartoonists who draw disparaging images of Mohammed, and for bolstering one’s fiery insistence on comparing Zionists to Nazis. And anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan described the rank and file functionaries sustaining the “capitalist war machine” as “little Eichmanns”, which Ward Churchill, a university professor of honorable Native American pedigree—the ancient and most noble Wannabi Tribe—was only too eager to take in describing the people who jumped to their deaths from the windows of the burning World Trade Center towers. I think the case for the bankruptcy of moral generalities is one of the easiest to make.

Those generalities are the Cliff’s Notes and fast food of morality today: they alleviate people of the hard work of making judgments on a case-by-case basis, by giving them catch-alls. The generalities are conclusively proven to be useless by the fact that they are postdictive rather than predictive—it is not from them that one comes to make his moral pronouncement, but the opposite, one first has his moral conviction and then uses the generalities in order to give weight to them. An anti-Islam activist publishing a book exposing Islam and an anti-Zionist academic publishing a book “exposing the all-pervading influence of the Israel lobby” can both quote Orwell’s, “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” to hammer home the moral rectitude of their endeavors, but it was not Orwell’s quote that led them to it. Conversely, moral generalities stemming from the aftereffects of Nazism can be used to nip sane and vital measures in the bud. None other than the branding of activities for stopping the Islamization of Europe as “racism” is the best example of that today. Nazism as a viable force is long gone, but it looks as if ideologues on all locations on the political compass are still in the thick of fighting it.

Analogies as guidelines and aids for clarity are good and useful, and I have made them myself quite a few times. But like wine, they can be harmful unless taken in moderation—morally deleterious if one sinks into them, if one is immersed in them to such an extent that he can no longer distinguish between the analogy and the real. In the view of how so many political bloggers tend to wallow deep in historical comparisons (not necessarily to Nazism—the Left’s favorite is the Vietnam War), I often feel like quoting that classic line from Spaceballs: “We’re at now now”. Yes, there are historical similarities galore (not least of which the repeat of 1930-ish appeasement), but the present, it must not be forgotten, still speaks in a voice of its own, with things that are not exact repetitions of what took place in the past. Even if the Leftist is right in comparing the rhetoric of some right-wingers (for example, my own calls for mass expulsion of the Muslims from within and near all non-Muslim states) to words from 70 years ago, the comparison does not cement his argument, for the situation is not what it was 70 years ago. The Leftist may compare the Israeli security barrier to the Berlin Wall, using the coinage “Apartheid Wall” to make his point, but that entire analogy comes to nothing in the face of the situational reality, the reality that the Berlin Wall was erected to keep people in whereas the Israeli security barrier is there to keep suicide-terrorists out.

I have emphasized the word, “situational”. This word, especially when part of the term, “situational ethics”, has gotten a bad reputation, and undeservedly. Undeservedly, because that reputation stems from a serious misconception: that “situational ethics” and “moral relativism” are synonymous. Not only are they not synonymous, but also, Jewish law is based on the former while being most emphatically in opposition to the other. I don’t know when the misconception started—it seems to me that the pivotal point for it was when, in the 17th century, King James’ translators committed the error of translating Exodus 20:12 as “Thou shalt not kill”, instead of the correct “Thou shalt not murder”. Did they make that choice because they wanted to prove God speaks only in moral absolutes? Maybe. Whatever the case, that may well have been the beginning of the downward slide of the reputation of situational ethics, ethics that are the mainstay of traditional, orthodox Torah legislation. Ethics which, if they came back to be applied today, could haul us out from the moral quagmire and every-man’s-land of generalities. An antidote to generalities through casuistry.

“Casuistry”. Yet another term whose reputation has declined over the ages. In this case, the decline is partly deserved, but its extension to morality is not. Deriding casuistry in philosophy is appropriate: as philosophy deals in generalities, going into particulars only in attempt to generalize overarching truths from them, the use of casuistry (case-by-case determination and analogical extension) in it is an exercise in futility. Casuistry in philosophy was once as damaging to it as postmodernism is now. But the world of morality is different. It is different because, while philosophy treats the universe as a giant abstraction to be made sense of, morality deals with a multitude of entities and ever-changing realities. Far from being damaging, casuistry in morality is the only sustainable method, for, as my above survey of the effects of confining oneself to moral generalities shows, generalities are useless in capturing all the permutations.

Yes, there are guidelines in Judaism. “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’—that is a great rule in the Torah”, says Rabbi Akiva. I did not say guidelines are useless, only that guidelines alone are such. Guidelines are vital in order to maintain the spirit of the law. Comprised of decrees alone, a system of law could easily degenerate into a bureaucratic code, followed spiritlessly without regard to conscience. The Second Temple, our sages tell us, was destroyed because the Jews ruled according to the Judgment of Torah—according to it alone, the letter of the law alone, turning God’s Law into a technical manual, without ever walking the extra mile to accommodate the calls of conscience. Had they paid heed to the guidelines, that could have been prevented. The guidelines are the watchdog of the spirit of the law.

But that was the problem then, while now we have the opposite problem: moral guidelines are either used alone or, if accompanied by case-by-case laws, the guidelines are invariably used to support the laws rather than to correct them. So the sentiment of the day is either, “Leave out all those laws, all you need in order to lead a clean life is a few guidelines”, or “You should do as this law says, because it is according to the guidelines”. Of the first position I have given many examples in this post. The second position underlies the calls (from the anti-Establishment hippies, no less!) to respect laws when they are in accordance with their principles, such as laws criminalizing “hate speech”. Or witness how the Leftists use the generality, “No peace without justice”, in order to invoke the United Nations and international law when calling for the Jewish State to capitulate to the demands of the “Palestinians”, while castigating the same United Nations and the same international law when they think it is being “subverted by corporate America’s interests”. This is where the death of moral casuistry leads.

Moral generalities are such a pitfall that they can lead even to heresy. Take the aforementioned mistranslation, “Thou shalt not kill”. From even a cursory reading of the first book of the Bible, it is easy to see God has killed, and killed many. Thus, in the name of warding off situational ethics, you get a God who doesn’t keep His own word. With the correct translation, “Thou shalt not murder”, this is rectified. Oh, but you say it makes God’s ethics situational? So what? There is an idea here that many people today are either ignorant or unaccepting of: “Situational ethics” and “moral relativism” are not synonymous terms. When this truth is understood, it changes everything. And I mean everything. It changes your moral view of the world into something saner, and something—dare I say it?—much more reality-based.

For example, if you are shackled to the generality that mass expulsion is an evil act, absolutely, unequivocally, irrevocably, with no room for debate, then you are liable to get into a situation where you cannot employ the only means that could possibly save you from a life of serfdom (at best). But under casuist law, you can evaluate criteria according to which mass expulsion is good or evil. We can thus distinguish between those who wish to keep their fishbowl free of piranha (good) and those who want their fishbowl to have only one type of fish, their own type (bad). This way the moral generality that sweeps both under the rubric of “racism” (“Evil, evil, evil! And don’t you dare to even think otherwise!” /moonbat off) is kept at bay, and in its stead comes a judgment that is much more cognizant of the facts at hand. This is just one example of how the casuist view changes everything.

Jewish law strives to cover everything, just as HaShem is the creator of all things. The Halachah, in contrast to the Aggadah (Jewish lore; of which our sages say, “From reading it, you get to know the One who said and the world came to be”), deals in cases everywhere, from the individual’s first actions upon waking up in the morning to the laws of statecraft, laws which are only now, after 2,000 years of statelessness, in the process of being reactivated. Halachic debate from the Talmud onward is about covering all the possible cases, much as a programmer, even after having designed his program with the best of forethought (“guidelines”), still has to spend time tracking bugs (“cases”). Casuistry does not always lead to a unanimous verdict; however, unlike generalities, even multiple decrees take the facts at hand into account. This has special merit today, in guarding against the misapplication of generalities to situations where they are not appropriate.

(An aside: To the argument, “Halachah, as you describe it, as an all-encompassing law, sounds just like Islamic shariah law”, my answer is, “The original author is not to be blamed for cheap imitations others make of his work”.)

I can still quote Arendt and Orwell if I so wish. However, my political readings of just the past year alone make one thing clear to me: they are not a sound basis for deriving moral decisions. My choice will therefore be the tried, true, traditional Jewish one: the case-by-case morality of the halachah. God created His world complex and full of variations, therefore His law too, though absolute (indeed the only absolute and authoritative source of law there is), is complex, taking into account the situation in front of us.

Zionism: An Integral Part of Judaism

When I first heard of the canard that Zionism is a 19th-century movement, I was shocked. Time has passed since then, but to hear Jewish nationalism framed as a “White Colonial Settler Movement”, and more seriously, that Jewish nationalism as a whole had no existence before the 19th century, still shakes my nerves, and it is only my knowledge of humanity’s inclination toward evil thoughts that fills me with the understanding of how people can believe such an egregious lie, an understanding without which I would probably have joined the Human Extinction Movement long ago, out of sheer despair of humanity.

That is because one does not have to be a religious, Orthodox Jew, or even with a thorough Biblical education, in order to be utterly dumbstruck by the idea that Jewish nationalism dates from the 19th century and no earlier. There is not a single Jewish child in Israel, even from the most anti-religious family, who has not imbibed the historical connection of the Jews to the Land of Israel together with its mother’s milk. Secular Zionist historiography de-emphasized the 2,000 years of exile, but regarding even that, it never denied the yearning of Jews throughout that entire period, in prayer and song, for returning to the Land of Israel—Jewish nationalism. I, like all my friends, both from the past and now, knew that the Jewish nation had its nationalism, its well-developed and canonized nationalism, back when the ancestors of both the Ishmaelite imperialists and the British boycott-proposers were still bands of loosely-related tribesmen. To hear now that Jewish nationalism is recent, a stepping on the 19th-century bandwagon, and that at least half of the Jews in Israel have no connection to the land, and to top it all the denial of the centrality of Jerusalem (Zion) in Judaism! Diabolical.

For 2,000 years that Jews were absent from the Land of Israel, the land did not cease to form an integral part of their day-to-day, religion-dictated lives.

A Jew would wake up in his morning and don the tephillin (phylacteries). Immediately after putting them on, he would read Exodus 13:1–16, which deals with HaShem’s commands to the Israelites to be carried out once they have entered the Land of Israel. That is Zionism. “The land of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, which He swore unto thy fathers to give thee”, it is written there (verse 5)—giving the Israelites land currently inhabited by other nations. I guess the left-wingers are now going to call for hauling God to the International Court at The Hague…

Each day, he would say the Sh’ma in the morning prayer, in the evening prayer and before going to sleep. In the Sh’ma, Deuteronomy 11:13–21 brings the message that doing HaShem’s word is necessary if the Israelites are to say on the Land of Israel. Numbers 15:37–41 speaks of the deliverance of the Jews from the land of Egypt. Stressing the historical Jewish connection to the Land of Israel—that is Zionism.

The heart of each daily prayer (morning, afternoon and evening) is the Sh’moneh Esreh (Hebrew for “eighteen”; it contains 19 blessings, because one was added during days of hardship under the Romans). Just before it, the Jew says the portion, “Ga’al Yisrael”, meaning “Savior of Israel”, where God is praised for bringing our forefathers out of Egypt and into the Land of Israel. That is Zionism.

In the Sh’moneh Esreh itself, here is one of the blessings:

Blow a great shofar to our liberty, and raise a banner to assemble our exiles, and assemble us speedily from the four corners of the earth to our land.

For 2,000 years, Jews have prayed for being assembled back to the Land of Israel. Most of the time they did not believe it was a call to action, but never did they abandon the view that the Land of Israel is the Jews’ only homeland! That is Jewish nationalism.

Here is another blessing from the Sh’moneh Esreh:

And to Jerusalem Your city may You return speedily, and may You dwell in it as You have spoken; and build it soon in our days an eternal building, and prepare the throne of David Your servant speedily in it.

2,000 years of praying to return to Jerusalem as our capital, and for rebuilding the Temple in it, no matter what any other people had built on top of its ruins in order to cover its Jewish history. Jerusalem is Zion. That is Zionism.

Neither were mundane activities free of Jewish nationalism. After eating a meal, a Jew would say Birkat Ha-Mazon, the Blessing of the Nourishment, one of whose passages is the following:

We thank You, HaShem our God, that You have given to our fathers as inheritance a pleasured, good and large land, and that You have brought us out of Egypt, out of the house of slaves.

Given the Land of Israel as inheritance. Brought out of Egypt to it. Jewish nationalistic ideas dating to the time of the Babylonian Talmud, when the Roman Empire was still at its height.

Another passage from Birkat Ha-Mazon:

The Merciful—He will break the yoke from over our necks and He will lead us upstanding to our land.

Yes, long before the “Spring of Nations” in Europe in 1848, this indisputable expression of nationalism had been recited daily by Jews everywhere.

There is more from the prayer-book than I can list here. There is the Passover Haggadah with its famous “Next Year in Jerusalem!” (famous, therefore all the sharper a condemnation of those who deny the antiquity of Jewish nationalism), and the recurrent comparisons, made during the Jewish marriage ceremony, of marriage to the re-inhabitation of the Land of Israel and the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

The Jew is commanded to study the Torah. The Written Torah itself is full to brimming with the connection of the Israelites to the Land of Israel, and has many mitzvot that cannot be carried out on any other land (but don’t expect the world to show consideration for that; only those who are ready to blow things up in a temper tantrum get their wishes aplenty, such as a foot-washing basin in every Western university). The Oral Torah and the rabbinical commentaries are not lacking either:

The Holy One, Blessed Is He, will in future assemble all of Israel from the four corners of the earth; like that gardener who plants from bed to bed, so will the Holy One, Blessed Is He, plant them from an impure land to a pure land. (Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer, 19; 1st century CE)

Again the idea that all the Jews will one day return to the Land of Israel. Zionism.

And here is a commentary explaining why the king Omri, otherwise remembered as a bad king in Jewish tradition, was given the favor of ruling the Kingdom of Israel:

For what did Omri win the kingdom? For his adding one town in the Land of Israel, as it is said: “And he bought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver; and he built on the hill, and called the name of the city which he built, after the name of Shemer, the owner of the hill, Samaria”. (Sanhedrin, 102, p. 2)

For building a new Israelite town! For acting to make the Land of Israel more inhabited with Israelites! That king was more Zionist than the crop of weak, world-praise-craving and Jewish-settlement-destroying “leaders” the state of Israel has now.

From the day-to-day life of rabbis in the Land of Israel at the end of the 2nd century CE:

Rabbi Hiyya the Great and Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta were walking in the valley of Arbel and saw the light of dawnbreak. Said Rabbi Hiyya the Great to Rabbi Shimon: “Such is the deliverance of Israel: at first it is little by little, but the more it goes the more it gets stronger”. (Yerushalmi, Brachot, 81, Halachah 1)

A foreshadowing of the Zionist movement that came to be in the 19th century: starting with a trickle, then ending up as a magnificent edifice. And the anti-Zionists dare to imply that Zionism arose in the 19th century from scratch.

And finally, lest you think Jewish nationalism is all confined to the realm of prayers and blessings and dreams, here is a halachah (Jewish religious edict, meaning that it is a requirement for Jews to go by) regarding Jews who reside in the Land of Israel:

It is prohibited to go out from the Land of Israel to outside the land, ever, except for studying Torah or marrying a woman or saving from the Gentiles; and he [who goes out for those reasons] must return to the land [after that]. And so too [if] he goes out for trade, he must return [afterward]. But to go out of the land and reside abroad is prohibited. (Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, Chazon Ish’s addendum of Laws Dependent on the Land of Israel, 42).

The background here is fascinating: Kitzur Shulchan Aruch is an abridged form of the Shulchan Aruch, the comprehensive codex of Jewish law compiled by Rabbi Yosef Karo in the 16th century CE. Because the Kitzur is an abridged form, this halachah does not appear in the original, the version by Rabbi Shlomo Ganzfried from the 19th century. It, along with all the injunctions pertaining to the Land of Israel, was added by the Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Avraham Yeshaiah Karelitz (1878–1953; also known as the Chazon Ish), when he saw the number of Jews residing in the Land of Israel had become considerable.

It is fascinating for two reasons: first and obvious is that the Shulchan Aruch predates the modern Zionist movement by three centuries; second is that Rabbi Karelitz was an Ultra-Orthodox rabbi at a time when the Zionist movement and traditional Judaism were in a great clash, and the Ultra-Orthodox universally considered them irreconcilable (still the view held by Neturei Karta; it is a testimony of our times that the NK’s are now pariahs in the Jewish world. Blessed is this nation that can overcome internal strife). And yet, if you were to read this halachah before someone who didn’t know, without giving him that background, he would think it a piece of Zionist legislation. Again, the inherent, integral Zionism of Judaism is demonstrated.

This survey was brief, very brief; you could spend long months cataloging all the Jewish nationalist rules and sentiments in the traditional, orthodox sources of Judaism. With such a great amount of material, even a Jew of secular upbringing gets the idea that Jewish nationalism is ancient. Now you now why I—why most Jews—find it shocking to hear that we are “colonialists” on the Land of Israel, and that there is another nation that deserves to be called its “indigenous people”.

What is our enemies’ answer to such a mountainous corpus of evidence? The Muslims usually turn to accuse us of what they specialize in: forgery, fabrication and revisionism. They, believers in the wildest of conspiracy theories, are beyond reason; there is no choice—not just for us but for all non-Muslims—but to fight them, for they know no other language. Their sympathizers in the West, mainly the Marxists, are sometimes a little better—at least they couch their Zionism Denial with intellectually-sounding arguments.

Some of them try to play God, saying we’re not worthy of returning to the land of our forefathers (strange, then, that HaShem let the modern Zionist movement pass through all the hurdles, not least of which was the war with five Arab armies in 1948–9). Others try to invoke the Torah against us, usually plagiarizing the Neturei Karta, and always arguing that “Thou shalt not steal” means the whole setting up of the Jewish state on expense of “the indigenous Palestinians” was a violation of the Torah. They conveniently overlook the many parts in the Torah where God tells the Israelites to take the land from the Canaanites, and by force at that. One wonders if they’d act as advocates for Esau in his case against Jacob, who “stole” his birthright.

But the argument from the Left I have encountered with increasing frequency over the last few years is the argument that Jews of European origin are not ancestral Jews at all—our old friend the Khazaria Hypothesis. Those ever-moral people, ostensibly so intent on making racism history, think Jewishness is a racial matter, a genetic matter, something dependent on DNA. Do they not know that that argument still leaves millions of Israeli Jews who are (according to their twisted, profoundly racist view) eligible to “Semitic inheritance”? I think they probably do, but they maintain that argument nevertheless, because it supports their entire house of cards: Ashkenazis are not real Jews but converted Khazars; Zionism in the 19th century was started by Ashkenazi Jews; therefore Zionism is a European, non-white, non-Semitic colonialist movement, on a par with the French colonization of Algeria. The enthusiasm which Leftists take to show how non-white Jews suffer discrimination in the state of Israel (something that’s been history for about 30 years now) lends support to my theory. The idyllic portrayal of past Jewish–Muslim relations is another lynchpin here, implying that Zionism was foisted upon unwilling Jews in all the Muslim countries.

The quotes above, when presented before an anti-Zionist, can serve as litmus test, to check if he holds his position out of mere ignorance—which is no sin per se, only the refusal to educate oneself is—or out of a vested interest. Those who keep their Post-Colonial hypothesis, of Zionism being a 19th-century white colonial settler movement, even after being presented those quotes, are the latter. Here is the difference between those who are “pro-Palestinian but also pro-Israel” and those who are anti-Israel.

Sentimentally, it is possible to be both pro-Israel and pro-“Palestinian” at the same time; in practice, it is not. What I mean is: when people say, “I’m both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine”, they are usually telling the truth, their sincere stance. But what they do not know is that they have been duped—that there is no concept of a “Palestinian nation” apart from the plan to destroy the Jewish state (God forbid).

You saw that sampling of quotes of above. Now try compiling a similar sampling for the much-touted “Palestinian nation”. I’ve seen attempts at that, and they go like this: the love of the “Palestinians” for olive trees; the Arabic script; the Al Aqsa mosque; a few cartoon characters like Handala; the kefiyyeh; and resistance, resistance and more resistance. No list of “Palestinian” kings. No scriptural quotations about the significance of this land, except some damning passages in the Koran saying Allah has given this land to the Jews (one day, HaShem willing, this will be Ishmael’s way off his high horse, and on to repentance), and Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in that book. Not a single demonstration of how, before the 20th century, the Arabs of the Land of Israel differed markedly from those of Syria, for example, or how they could be considered a group of any cohesion at all. My brief collection of quotes from Jewish sources has made it patently clear that there is no other homeland for the Jews than the Land of Israel; the “Palestinians”, in contrast, have failed to even begin making such a case. And if “Palestinians” are strangers in other Arab lands, this is for the same reason that Iraqi refugees today are shunned in Syria: Arab society is a hypertribal one, to the point of insane xenophobia toward anyone outside one’s own tribe.

And if, God forbid, the “Palestinian” dream were to come true, with the demise of the hated Zionist entity, what would be of the “Palestinian nation”? It would be absorbed into the larger body, that of the Arab nation or (more likely today, now that pan-Arabism has fallen out of fashion) the Islamic collective, the ummah, like water dropped out of a bucket into the sea. The fact is, the idea of the “Palestinian nation”, from the early 20th century onward, has been maintained only for its usefulness as a tool against the Jews returning to their land. As a tool for contesting the historical connection of the Jews to the Land of Israel. And how well it has worked. So well that even good-intentioned people have quaffed the Kool-Aid cup.

I have coined the term, “Zionism Denial”. If more Jews had eyes to see the present, instead of being stuck in past paradigms, they would lessen their obsession with the Holocaust, Holocaust Denial and imprisoning Holocaust Deniers, and wake up to the far more dangerous fact of Zionism Denial, this denial of the connection of the Jews to the Land of Israel, this twisted idea that the Jews are colonial invaders while the “Palestinians” are the indigenous people of the land. Oh, I do not disagree that Holocaust Denial is malicious, offensive, preposterous and a sin against truth; but, unlike Zionism Denial, it is not life-threatening. Remember: Jew-hatred is dangerous only when it is in a form acceptable in polite, cultured society. Holocaust Deniers are condemned universally, even on far-Left, anti-Zionist sites like CounterPunch. Zionism Denial, on the other hand, is all but acceptable—acceptable, moral, progressive, enlightened.

Zionism Denial is, whether intentionally or not, incitement to murder of Jews (God forbid). By construing the Jews of present-day Israel as colonials, the “Palestinians” are given the moral right to murder Jews, be it even tacitly. Tom Paulin’s statement, that the “Brooklyn-born Jewish settlers” (again the angle of, “white colonial invader robbing the indigenous brown people”) in Judea, Samaria and Gaza “should be shot dead” (God forbid), because “they are Nazis, racists”, is an instance of saying out aloud what a lot of people who have bought into the “Palestinian nation” narrative think in their hearts. And even Paulin was being reserved, because today this sentiment is no longer confined to the 1967 territories.

Forget David Irving. Forget Ernst Zundel. Leave them all, they’re just distractions. Turn your eyes onto Desmond Tutu, onto Jimmy Carter, onto Bill and Kate Christison, and onto all the rest of those who not only adhere to, but also preach to the world, the Big Lie of Zionism Denial, the fiction, fakery, fraud, forgery and fabrication of the “Palestinian nation”, and its accompanying false narrative of Zionism as “a 19th-century European, White colonial settler Blut und Boden nationalism”.

The Holocaust is applicable today in one thing: it has taught us that such a horror can happen. It has taught us, then, that we must never, ever take threats lightly. How many of us would have given everything to go back in time and make all effort to forestall the Holocaust that was? That isn’t possible, but it is possible to act now, against a gathering of clouds that looks mighty similar. Consider the Muslims who call for a full application of “The Right of Return” (70 percent of all the “Palestinians”, according to Ali Abunimah’s latest screed) as Nazis, and the non-Muslims who support that as Nazi-sympathizers. Treat the callers for boycotts of Israel as equivalents of Tom Paulin in support for the murder of Jews (God forbid). And, more and more as the means become more plentiful, do everything to silence the opposition to Zionism. Maimonides described the Messianic Age as one that differs from all others in only one thing: the absence of subjugation, meaning the Jews are totally free to lead the Jewish life. The goal, then, implied by the deeply Zionist Maimonides himself (one need only read his writings regarding the future sovereignty of the Jews on the Land of Israel—an example of Jewish nationalism dating from the 13th century), is that there be no contest to the idea that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jews, by divine right and ancient historical connection, and that their laws are the only acceptable laws for the land to be governed by.

Since the source and powerhouse of all opposition to this claim and idea and goal comes from the “Palestinian nation” narrative, it is clear that the great Jewish war of this age is the war against Zionism Denial. It is the war of minds for the Jewish moral right to the Land of Israel (even by force if need be, as it was in the case of the Canaanites) and against the Fakestinian Fraud. The first historical recording of the name of Israel by another nation is Pharaoh Merneptah’s Stele, saying, “Israel has been wiped out, its seed is no more”; it encapsulates the reality that all the various kinds of anti-Jewish theories, whether the Protocols or Zionism Denial, never had a chance against the truth, which is protected by a mountain of evidence, but were there only for that purpose, expressed in the words of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh and a modern Muslim Iranian president, that Israel be wiped out, God forbid. Our ancient nationalism cannot be compromised even just a little, for the purpose behind the present assault on it is nothing less than total.

Jewish Reaction to Hatred: Right and Wrong

The greatest mistake, made by Jews thoughout all ages: the assumption that the friendship of those who hate us can be won by “dispelling the stereotypes”. Click image to view full size.

Those who love us will love us even more when we act like Jews. Those who hate us will keep hating us no matter how much of our Jewishness (whether the garb or tenets of the mind like Jewish exceptionalism) we shed in order to win their favor.

“HaShem will give strength unto His people; HaShem will bless His people with peace.” (Psalm 29:11)

Selling Expulsionism to the Public

Two years after the uprooting of the Jewish inhabitations in the Gaza region, bringing us Kassam rockets and not bringing us the “legitimacy in the eyes of the world” that had been hoped for, and one year after the war with Hizbullah in Lebanon, again the aftermath of withdrawing for the sake of peace, and again a case of an unsympathetic world (“Disproportionate response!”), the Jewish public, in Israel at least, and I presume much of it in the Diaspora also, is marked by a change: disbelief in the capability of concessions and treaties to secure peace for Israel. Only those who put the blindfolds of kumbayism and self-flagellation on their eyes refuse to change their view.

However, the change, for most Jews, has not been complete. Thanks be to God, they are now clear of the irrational belief in the magical properties of pieces of paper, but they have not yet come to the solution; they are stuck in the limbo of knowing what the way is not but not knowing what the way is.

Such has been my experience of talking with old friends of mine, good and feeling Jews who, like me, have let reality be their guide and left the unfounded belief that the other side wants peace other than on its own, Israel-free (God forbid), terms. “What’s going to happen, then?” I ask. The answer is the same every time: “I don’t know. We’ll just have to fight it on, slogging it for years and years, indefinitely, until something gives”. That reply saddens me no end. The Torah-based view goes against such thinking, and offers the way out. Those friends of mine, still secular Jews, have gotten out of the mindset of moonbattery that breeds irrational pacifism—God be thanked for that! But without the traditional Jewish view (a view that even among religious Jews has been dimmed by the long years of exile and its thought-imprints), the only alternative to Leftist irrationality they have is the non-alternative of, “War Without End”.

That is an un-Jewish view. “War Without End”, or in God’s phrasing, “And by thy sword shalt thou live” (Genesis 27:40), is the “blessing” given to the wayward sons, to Ishmael and Esau, while Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (peace be upon them) were promised peace. For the descendants of Ishmael and Esau, war is the end; for the descendants of Jacob, war is but the means, for defending themselves and for claiming that which HaShem has given them, while a peaceful existence is the end. HaShem did not lead our forefathers out of Egypt in order to be at war without end against the Canaanites and other indigenous peoples of the Land of Israel; and now neither, it is not our fate to be deadlocked with war against the Muslims, the spiritual descendants of Ishmael, but to enjoy lasting peace in the Land of Israel. Then as now, the way to that peace is simple: the threat to Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel must be physically removed, by driving it away, by expelling them all, en masse. The failure of any prospect of reaching a negotiated peace agreement with the Muslims means war, but not war without end, but war just until there is no contest to the idea that the Land of Israel is under Jewish rule.

But I talked of my secular Jewish friends. Having friends and family who are not yet religious, even though—thanks be to God, again and again—much more sympathetic toward religion than they ever were in the post-Zionist, postmodern 1990’s, I know that it is prudent, for the sake of averting all possibility of internecine warfare, to go with HaShem’s pace in reaching out to them, and not to alienate our brothers and sisters by any form of pushiness. Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Hacohen Kook (ZT"L) foretold that the holiness of the Land of Israel would bring all the Jews back to the Torah; it is wonderfully happening right now, so let us not ruin it by the mean-spirited disparagement that characterized that ugly decade. For myself, I take it as a call to sell expulsionism to the Jewish public with a slightly more secular appearance. Quoting Numbers 33:50–56 may be enough for me, but I will for the time being avoid it when addressing our secular Jewish brothers and sisters (with one exception which I will come to later). The key point is to show that expulsionism is by no means the exclusive idea of a few religious fanatics—to show that expulsionism makes a tremendous amount of pragmatic sense, as well as sense even from a secular-idealistic point of view.

I will now address the most common objections to expulsionism, and after that, lay out the clearest benefits. The objections are:

• It is inhumane.
• It will wreak psychological havoc on our soldiers.
• It is contrary to international law, constituting a war crime.
• It will make Israel a pariah in the world.
• It will confirm the allegation of our enemies that we are robbers.
• It is racism, or ethnocratic action at the very least.
• It is contrary to Jewish values.

The benefits are:

• A clean, non-genocidal solution.
• It will free all or nearly all the huge resources Israel currently devotes to defense, both internal and external.
• The resultant permanent peace will attract foreign investors in droves.
• It will be the first step toward world peace, by being a dazzling show to the Muslims worldwide that jihad doesn’t pay.

And now the elaborations. On the objections:

“It is inhumane.” It is inhumane, from the secular-idealistic point of view, to force more than a million men, women and children to move en masse. For the contention that is not a thing to be wished upon anyone, there is no argument here; but as with the dentist’s infliction of some (indisputably real) pain in order to prevent more pain later, this is a step that has to be taken, for we live in the real world. The real world, the reality before our eyes, which so many Jews have in the course of the last seven years commendably acknowledged, shows that it would infinitely more inhumane to leave the “Palestinians” where they are.

Reality bears witness that the “Palestinians” are a failed society: with their poisoning of their children’s minds with the heritage of suicide-“martyrdom”, with such role models as a Mickey Mouse lookalike preaching Islamic supremacism, a killer bee that engages in cruelty toward animals in the zoo and the routine use of children’s cartoons in the service of hateful agendas, their society goes beyond the vaunted, Left-admired resistance and into the Nazi-style territory of nurturing hatred toward the enemy for the purpose of liquidation. To enable the staying of this failed society on this soil, whether by giving them what they want (concessions) or through endless war, is inhumane—it is to condemn countless children to a life of education to death.

“Palestinian” demonstrators showing support of Saddam Hussein, on November 6, 2006. Note the egg-thrower at the front.

This is a society that does not want to improve itself; a society that prefers to destroy greenhouses rather than use them productively, a society that drowns in excrement because it has used its sewage pipes for making Kassam rockets, a society that keeps living in “refugee camps” just to gain propaganda benefits against the Jews. There can be no crueler act than to let them stay here. Driving them away could prompt soul-searching, leading to self-improvement; the status quo, in contrast, means a reward for their self-destructive mode of living, and an incentive to continue their death-worshiping way.

From a Hamas summer camp activity for children, on July 5, 2007. Note the egg-thrower with the Carlsberg t-shirt on the right. If the self-portrait they sell to the world, of them as “starving, crushed under the Zionist occupation”, is a fraud, what else could they be fabricating?

Mass expulsion would be unpleasant, just as disciplining a spoiled child who loves to wallow in self-pity, does nothing to improve himself and conditions his happiness on being top of the class is unpleasant. Unpleasant, and the most humane and loving thing to do.

Second objection: “It will wreak psychological havoc on our soldiers.” Possibly, but that would be a one-time event, instead of the current, continuous state. Anti-“occupation” Israeli Leftist activists say the assignment of our boys to the checkpoints and to “Palestinian” centers of population is having a deleterious effect on their psyche. They say the necessity of being callous toward pregnant women at the checkpoints, for example, or being brutal toward children, take their toll on Israeli Jewish society later when those soldiers finish their army service. Granting that for the sake of the argument: this is one of the best pragmatic arguments for expelling all the Muslims from the Land of Israel. It does away both with the old concessionism, for conceding our lands to the Muslims will only move the “brutality” further inside (there were no checkpoints until the suicide-bombings within the 1949 Armistice Line borders took place), and with the newer “War Without End” view, which is a hopeless vision of psychological deterioration.

Mass expulsion may or may not damage our soldiers’ psyche, but no more so than the damage they are already undergoing under the present regime. Any damage done will be offset by the fact of having ended the status quo of necessary callousness, thus restoring the mental health that our would-be Freuds so crave.

Third objection: “It is contrary to international law, constituting a war crime.” This is a valid objection, but it assumes a priori that international law is the highest standard. Even without reference to the Torah (which I take to be the highest standard), international law is nothing such—survival trumps international law every time. Just as states have no moral right to exist if they do not stand up to their job of providing protection to their citizens, so too international law is null and void if it opens the gates of victory to our enemies.

International law, as currently written, has the effect that the enemy need only hide among its women and children in order to be victorious, for it criminalizes retaliation when such a situation arises. This enables a ragtag bunch of guerrillas like Al Qaeda in Iraq to do serious damage to US troops, and more importantly to US public opinion, despite the US being the best army in the world.

Of which Captain Mifune (of The Matrix) would say, “You just handed them their victory on a silver platter”.

Either international law is substantially rewritten, so as not to serve as an enabler of Islamic imperialism, or there is no choice but to ignore it. For the issue of mass expulsion, the chief relevance here is that such war crimes as are often decried by the Mainstream Media, foremostly collateral damage, can be brought to an end by expelling all potential sources of insurgency and terrorism. Since there is no way of distinguishing between active jihadists and Muslims who are just supporters, the only clean way to end this is by expelling them all.

Fourth objection: “It will make Israel a pariah in the world.” It already is one, and becoming more so with each concession, each humanitarian act and each reprieve we make. If the world is capable of regarding the painful uprooting of all Jewish inhabitants from the Gaza region as “a ploy to make Gaza a free-fire zone” or “a move to strengthen the West Bank settlements”, then it ought to be perfectly clear that its attitude toward us is independent of our actions. Whatever we do, the intransigence of our Muslim enemies always means we would have to maintain our peaceful lives, even survival, by actions that cannot end with just a few stones shifted slightly. We can learn from the Lebanon War of 2006 that even our clearly defensive actions can be turned to be acts of aggression in world opinion, thanks in no small part to the lack of compunction the Muslims have against using the lives of their own women and children as propaganda-money. From that, we can conclude that even a last-ditch defensive war of the Tel-Aviv region against an attack by all 57 Muslim states (God forbid) could be turned into aggression on our part. The Jew is always called to fight fair, as we all know.

Survival trumps world opinion just as it trumps international law. To be a global pariah but alive is better than to be a slaughtered sheep eulogized by that same world. In addition to this obvious truth, it is reasonable to believe that the worldwide condemnation, though strong, will be relatively short, to be replaced by praise at showing all the non-Muslim world the right way forward (see elaboration on that later, under “Benefits”).

Fifth objection: “It will confirm the allegation of our enemies that we are robbers.” Again, we already are such in their eyes. The idea that not just the taking of territories in the 1967 Six-Day War, but the very founding of the State of Israel in 1947–9 “on expense of the indigenous Palestinian population”, is a grievous wrong that needs righting has taken a strong foothold in the West over the last seven years, and it can only get worse, no matter what we do to improve our image. In enquiring for the answer to the question (an exilic question, a question that goes against everything that the founders of Secular Zionism, Herzl and Pinsker of blessed memory, stood for), “What can we do in order that the world may be pleased with us?”, we increasingly find out that the answer is, “Give up everything”. Increasingly, the world can be seen to demand nothing less than the transformation of Israel into “a state of all its citizens”, in which an influx of millions of “Palestinians” by the application of their hereditary “Right of Return” would give them the majority they need to turn Jewish life in the Land of Israel to be like Jewish life has been in the Diaspora (both Christian and Islamic) for 2,000 years. (And that is the best-case scenario.)

No Jew who has bowed to the reality of the failure of negotiated peace could possibly agree to the vision of Israel being turned into “a state of all its citizens”, that which Steven Plaut calls “The Rwanda Solution”. Even Uri Avnery, moonbatty as he may be, likens the proposal of the One-State Solution to a swimmer wishing to try his hand at crossing the Atlantic after repeated failures at crossing the La Manche channel. Since the One-State Solution is the demand that is taking hold in the world, a demand that is fast becoming the only way to “get right” with the world, to “atone for our primal sin”, then it follows that we will stay robbers in the eyes of the world no matter what we do. Again, we have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Robbers though we may well be considered after the mass expulsion, we will be alive and enjoying lasting peace, while currently we are both considered robbers (because of the “primal sin” of “robbing the lands of the indigenous Palestinians in 1947–9”, see above) and suffering under the yoke of the Islamic terrorist threat.

Sixth objection: “It is racism, or ethnocratic action at the very least.” It is not racism, because Judaism is not based on race. Judaism is an ethnicity that spans multiple races (compare an Ashkenazi with a Yemenite Jew for proof). It is an ethnocratic action; assumed a priori here is that ethnocratic controls are automatically a bad thing. As the situation in the whole world shows, the lack of ethnocratic controls is the cause of the deterioration of conditions in formerly peaceful countries, by virtue of cultural breakdown. Even in a melting-pot society like that of the USA, policy had always been ethnocratic, because the immigrants were strongly encouraged to assimilate to the norms of the host society; now, on the US–Mexico border, the abandonment of that demand has led to the situation of anarchy there. An ethnicity, unlike a race, does not demand conformity of inborn traits; it demands only homogeneity in cultural and social values. Today’s lack of insistence on that homogeneity, which is comparable to letting cannibals into a Western country without demanding that they leave their dietary habits, is the source of havoc in the Western world.

Israel, as the Jewish state, is founded on Jewish values (far stronger than the connection of the USA to Christian values). The demand is not that all people in Israel be Jewish; the demand is, however, that they not undermine the Jewish character of the state, just as cannibals cannot (in a normal world) stay in a Western country if they keep to their traditional cuisine from the homeland. The Muslims, even within the 1949 Armistice Line territories, refuse to recognize Israel as the Jewish state, therefore cannot be allowed to stay. Any self-respecting nation would think that way—ethnocratic controls are not “the fruit of bigotry”, they are the stop-gap of a healthy society against the multicultural slide toward anarchy! Cultural homogeneity is not based on “hatred of the other”, but on the simple human observation that, without shared cultural values, a society cannot stand. Immigration is a privilege, predicated on acceptance of the host culture; once accepted, it would be wrong not to naturalize the immigrant. But if the immigrant refuses to accept the host culture, then he should be deported. Mass expulsion stems from the same issue.

Seventh objection: “It is contrary to Jewish values.” Here it is that I can bring passages from the Torah, such as the oft-mentioned Numbers 33:50–56; for, once the question of Jewish values is brought up, what is better than verses from the Torah in order to make the point? As the passage shows, mass expulsion is not contrary to Jewish values. It applies only to the Land of Israel, not to the whole world (thus refuting the charge that Judaism is a Nazi-like supremacist ideology), and it is definitely not contrary to Jewish values, not “a blot on Jewishness” as detractors say. Beyond the specifics, there is a more general point here, that Jewish values are much more down-to-earth than many people think. The high-flown doctrines of “not hurting any living being, not even a fly” belong to other religions; Judaism, while being most vehemently against violence for the sake of violence and cruelty for the sake of cruelty, commands doing the utmost for the sake of self-defense. It is a Jewish value to be merciful to those who deserve mercy; to be merciful to those who do not, such as those who raise their children to be suicide-bombers, is contrary to Jewish values. Among Jewish values is to withhold all mercy from those who you know will not show mercy to you.

Judaism raises peace above all else, even saying that Peace (“Shalom”) is one of God’s names, but Judaism does not necessarily agree with the methods of attaining peace that certain non-Jewish ideologies hold. Once it has been clearly understood that concessions to the enemy’s demands only lead to a state of less peace, it is contrary to Jewish values to do anything but wage war on that enemy. Mass expulsion, because it brings the promise of lasting peace, is currently the most Jewish thing to do.

Here end the answers to the objections. Now to the benefits:

A clean, non-genocidal solution. The problem is the massive support that the active jihadists enjoy among the Muslim populace. Some have wrung their hands in despair, saying, “So what are we going to do—kill them all?” Mass expulsion is the alternative that both takes care of the problem and solves it in the most humane way possible under such circumstances. No atrocities, no Killing Fields, no sliding to the abyss of World War II days.

Second benefit: It will free all or nearly all the huge resources Israel currently devotes to defense, both internal and external. One of the objections Israeli Jews used to have (and a small number still have) to the settlements in the 1967 territories was the allocation of resources for defending them. Land concessions do not free those resources, they just move them to tighter borders. With our without the 1967 territories, the reality of having to open your bag and pass through a metal detector at the entrance to every public place in all of Israel is there. With all the Muslims expelled, all these costly and intrusive defense measures will be rendered needless, for there would then be no terrorist threat. The money could then really be used for better things, just as the former advocates of withdrawal had called for.

Third benefit: The resultant permanent peace will attract foreign investors in droves. The dreamer Shimon Peres had always envisioned how Israel, when in a state of peace resulting from conceding lands to all its neighbors, would become the Monaco of the Middle East, a magnet for foreign investors. He was right in the sense that investors are attracted by a state of peace and repelled by the prospect of impending war. It follows, then, that the lasting peace achieved through mass expulsion would bring about the vision which Peres, because of his misconceived means, could not fulfill.

Fourth benefit: It will be the first step toward world peace, by being a dazzling show to the Muslims worldwide that jihad doesn’t pay. After the initial cries of condemnation have subsided, the world will see that, despite all reservations, mass expulsion works. The world has forgotten how the mass expulsion of the Sudeten Germans in 1945 has made that region a non-news region ever since, and has to be reminded of it. In all the world, our actions could well spark a flurry of second thoughts about mass expulsion or deportation. Finally, there is a chance that a reformation of Islam for the better could be kick-started, for there is nothing that fuels the worldwide jihad more than the conviction that jihad pays, a conviction currently fed daily by acts of concession, whether in land or in culture, toward the Muslims on the part of non-Muslim leaders everywhere.

Here end the benefits as well. As you can see, this whole exposition has been sparing and pointed in its use of religion-based arguments; the pragmatic arguments for mass expulsion are strong enough as they are. I hope this will lead people to reconsider their stance, despite years of cultural-Marxist indoctrination to regard such a proposal as the most heinous crime. In any case, some years from now there might not be a choice in the matter.

Beyond Offense

Via Elder of Ziyon I came to the article, You have the right to feel offended, by Judea Pearl, father of Daniel Pearl (HY"D). Like Elder, I think the article makes some good points yet don’t agree with everything. The reason I see it fit to write a whole post about this article is that I have a fundamental disagreement with it—a difference of opinion about its very root thesis, not just about its specifics.

Professor Pearl rightly tells of the vile slurs that the anti-Zionists heap on us, though he mars his point by saying, “Zionophobia is no less revolting than Islamophobia” (because a phobia is an irrational fear, a fear not founded in fact; Zionism is accused of being a Jewish plot to rule the world, which has no basis in fact, while Islam’s goal of world domination is expounded clearly in the canon of the religion, and stated unabashedly by multitudes of Muslims worldwide). He observantly points out the offense of the libel of portraying Zionism as something that was created in 19th-century Europe from scratch:

Some claim that Zionism is not entitled to such defense, since “Zionism is a political movement, not a religion”, or “Zionism is a recent phenomenon, a product of 19th century European nationalism”.

These claimants know little about Jewish history or Jewish identity or how Jewish history and identity were shaped for centuries by the Zionist idea of the “return of the exiles”. They certainly have not read the Mishna, or Nahum Sokolov’s "History of Zionism (1600–1919)" or my grandfather’s siddur (e.g., Veholichenu Kommemiut Leartsenu—“and thou shall walk us in sovereignty to our country” [Birkat Hamazon]).

That is an act of historical negationism more dangerous than any Holocaust Denial, and cultural theft every bit as pernicious as New Age appropriations of indigenous customs. Pearl is to be praised for raising this issue, which is far too often neglected by those who would rather focus on outdated and nearly impotent threats such as the classical anti-Semitism of the White Aryan Nations. But I opine that the central weakness in Pearl’s article lies in the following quote:

We, as Jews, have been grossly negligent in permitting the dehumanization of Israel to become socially acceptable in certain circles of society, especially on college campuses. Our silence, natural resilience to insults and general reluctance to confront colleagues and friends have contributed significantly to the Orwellianization of campus vocabulary and the legitimization of the unacceptable. Most of our assailants are even unaware of the shivers that go down our spines with utterances such as “apartheid Israeli regime” or “brutal Israeli occupation”. [Both emphases mine. —ZY]

I have said it before, that the problem with talking about “being offended” is that it shifts the discussion from objective (even if debatable) realities into subjective feelings. Once feelings are brought into the mix, there is no possibility for discussion, and there is no end to the demands that could be made. “This offends me” is not a good basis for either discussion or action. Schoolkids beat each other up because of swear-words, until they grow out of it (not a very common occurrence in our age of “self-esteem”, but I digress), while grown-ups use their “feeling of being offended” as the basis for litigation, for the defamation lawsuits that are the blight of Western civilization today. And let us not forget the masters of overreacting at feelings of offense, the Muslims—“Mohammed Cartoons”, and not another word needs to be added.

Once, I stumbled upon a provocative photo of a tzitzit wrapped around bare female legs. I was offended. More than once, I have read the anti-Zionist abuse on left-wing sites like Daily Kos. I am offended, no question about it, but more than I am offended, I am distressed. There is a world of difference between my reaction to that tasteless photo and the anti-Zionist libels. I can dismiss the former with a retort in my head, saying, “Grow up, already”, while I cannot react in such a way to the latter. Why? It has everything to do with the distinction between swear-words and death threats.

I support free speech and open discourse nearly absolutely. Even Holocaust Denial, as well as the anti-Zionist vitriol I read on lefty websites. But while things that are merely offensive, blasphemous photos and other such equivalents of schoolkids’ swear-words, can be shrugged off as people’s misuse of their right to free speech, the anti-Zionist sentiments cannot, for they are the equivalents of death threats. I support the right of the anti-Zionists to say what they say, but as with death threats, I hold that there should be consequences for saying them.

Look at this choice collection of comments from the article Boycott Movement Targets Israel by George Bisharat, on Common Dreams. First:

Takamine2002 August 15th, 2007 6:42 pm

why do we allow dual citizenship, dual nationality passport holders to hold political office in the USA?

Second:

jaalle August 15th, 2007 7:35 pm

Israel is a blot on the collective conscience of Mankind. […]

Third:

citizen1 August 15th, 2007 10:11 pm

It’s about time. Israels [sic] is a racist and genocidal country. I never, ever buy anything from Israel. [Your computer is probably powered by a chip that is the fruit of both Israeli research and production. —ZY]

But you know what? No one ever talks about the other Israeli occupied territory, which is the US Congress.

Fourth, and definitely the winner (of the Golden Swastika Medal):

truthteller August 15th, 2007 10:39 pm

Citizen1;

How right you are. The entire leadership of the U. S. Congress is full of sops for Zionism, both parties. They go to the annual AIPAC convention to perform acts of contrition to their masters and beg for more funds to continue in office to support more of OUR tax dollars going to Israel. It is past high time to call for an end to ALL U. S. government support (military and financial) to the Zionist fascist state of Israel. We support genocide against the Palestinian people every bit as wrong as what white European settlers did to native Americans.

Maybe by cutting off Israel’s sources of funding and arms their neighbors will finally have a chance to drive all of them into the sea where they belong. [Emphasis mine. —ZY]

These comments are typical of every thread on Common Dreams, Huffington Post, TruthDig and other such sites that discusses the Israel/“Palestine” conflict. So it’s not that I’m surprised by those comments—take them as vindication for Judea Pearl’s observation that the dehumanization of Israel and Zionism has become all but acceptable.

Do I find the comments offensive? Extremely. But that’s not the point. Not the point at all! The point is that the comments are dangerous. They’re one with the genocidal comments of Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah (may they both go to hell soon, amen) in saying that it is right and just to kill Jews (God forbid).

The entire portrayal of Zionism as a “19th-century European White Colonial Settler Movement” is not just an offense, a smear, a swear-word writ as an intellectual thesis—it is a death threat. It says, “You Jews have no right to be on that land, and the human race will be better off when the Palestinians wipe you out there”. It is a underhanded, acceptable-sounding way of expressing agreement with the Hamas Charter: “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. […] The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished […]” [Emphasis mine. —ZY]

Hamas logo. Supporting the “Palestinian Right of Return” means supporting their genocidal goal, even if that’s not the intention.

Let us stop treating anti-Zionism as an offense, as something that hurts our feelings, and start treating it for the threat to our lives that it is. I support the right of the anti-Zionists to say what they say; I call for a future, truly Jewish administration to bring them to justice for that, to the hangman’s noose. To treat anti-Zionism as a matter of offense feeds the global fashion of elevating subjective feelings above objective reality—the core of the very postmodernism, multiculturalism and Political Correctness that is being used as a club against Zionism in particular, and by the Muslims against non-Islamic states in general. If framed as a matter of guarding our lives instead, it both achieves the benefit of countering the threat of this latest form of Jew-hatred and avoids doing the damage of giving strength to the Legal Jihad of the Muslims against the West.

It’s not about our feelings, it’s about our lives. “Rise up early to kill him who rises up to kill you”, said our sages of blessed memory.

Presentation

I made a presentation, “Anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism”, explaining why the equation is not only appropriate, but in fact anti-Zionism is the form of Jew-hatred in our day and age. The presentation uses Tom Paulin’s (may he go to hell soon, amen) quotes for the illustration of the “New Anti-Semitism”; Paulin differs from many of his fellow Leftist Israel-haters only in that he speaks out those thoughts. Having viewed the problem, I then offer an unoriginal (decades-old, but people would rather die than be labeled, “racist”) proposal for solutions.

The files for the presentation are hosted here. Because of bandwidth issues on the host, only about 4 megabytes can be downloaded at any given hour, so the presentation may not be available when you click the link. But it will be later, and I think it’s worth it.

A slide from the presentation.

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Oh, and about my blog: I just don’t know. I feel like I’ve covered just about everything. As my latest posts show, as well as this presentation, I’ve passed on to making my points more visually. Blogger doesn’t provide for hosting presentation files (or any binaries apart from images, for that matter), therefore I have to use other venues.

Still worth looking at: one of my recent comments on Gates of Vienna ended up as a post there (August 10, 2007). My thanks to Baron Bodissey and Dymphna.

EOB

Picture a comment like the following in a thread in Guardian’s Comment is free:

The only truly just two state solution and the best chance for a lasting peace in the region, is for some region in an unimportant and currently uninhabited part of the world to be recognized as the de facto Jewish State and for all the Zionist settlers currently occupying Palestinian land in the West Bank and within the Green Line to bequeath it immediately to its rightful owners and resettle in that new homeland. Of course, the world is not fair, so—barring a sudden and miraculous change of mindset on the part of the Palestinians and Israelis—this will never happen and the Zionists will eventually get the West Bank and Gaza one day.

What would be the reactions? A meager contigent of pro-Israel commenters protesting such a statement, eclipsed by a thick slew of pro-“Palestine” commenters commending it as a just and fair solution, a necessary proposal if there is to be “just and lasting peace” in the Middle East, and in the world as a whole.

The actual comment, by “deronda”, on the thread One option: two states, from July 16, 2007, is this:

The only truly just two state solution and the best chance for a lasting peace in the region, is for Jordan to be recognized as the fato [sic] Palestinian State and for all the Arab squatters currently occupying Jewish land in Judea, Samaria and Gaza to bequeth [sic] it immediately to its rightful owners and resettle in Jordan. Of course, the world is not fair, so—barring a sudden and miraculous change of mindset on the part of the Palestinians and Israelis—this will never happen and the Arabs will eventually get Judea and Samaria one day.

And here are some of the reactions. By commenter “Yesterday”:

Deronda’s talk of ‘the Arab squatters currently occupying Jewish land in Judea, Samaria and Gaza’ sounds very much like the way the Nazis talked about Jews in Europe. I don’t think Israel needs friends like Deronda.

And by “Highbury”:

This is the kind of racist b******t that produced the ethnic cleasnsing [sic] and theft of Palestinian property.

And by “GrandOldMan”:

@Deronda: Well others have already torn into him and it’s a bit late to add my voice, but just for the record, I too find his statements omn [sic] this thread to be grossly offensive, patronising and racist towards the palestinians.

And the clincher, by “Shachtman”:

Deronda : Shut up please.

While a comment by “Lakeside”, similar to my hypothetical turn-around of the comment by “deronda”, has so far not been given such treatment:

If America invaded England and decided to split it in to two, will we ever accept it? After all its thanks to the British that we have/had the black slavery in the world and the issue of the Aborignies in Austrailia [sic].

So would it be just for Enland [sic] to be invaded and carved up to make room for the Aborignies [sic] or the Blacks? Lets say give Liverpool to the English and the rest of the country can go to the blacks or aborignies [sic]?

We Brits would never accept that and so similarly the Palestinians can not be robbed of what is theres [sic]. The fact is jews, christinas [sic], and Muslims all lived in harmony in the land of Palestine till the illegal state of Israel was created or should i say planted by the British, since when its only been a river of blood.

The land belongs to the Palestinians.
Its the Palestinians who have lost most life.
Its the Palestinians who need justice and this will only come via a single state soloution [sic]. If the British government or the Amerians [sic] have a problem with it then let them create an England Israel or an American Israel.

They should give London to the Jews or let them have TEXAS and get rid of the real problem.

A simple answer for a simple problem- Give back to the Palestinians what is theres [sic].

At most, the reaction to “Lakeside” would be that his proposal is impracticable—cannot be carried out right now, is not the most pragmatic course to take, needs refinement, and other objections in that vein. Objections to “Lakeside” from morality, like saying his proposal is unjust or inhumane, would be rare, made only by those who are in the class of “deronda”, and subsequently shouted down like his comment.

As one of the right-wing columnists of Yediot Achronot (either Uri Elitzur or Uri Orbach, I don’t remember which of the two) said: a Jew who says publicly to the world that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jews by right is called an “extremist” and “fanatic”, while a “Palestinian” who demands a Judea, Samaria and Gaza emptied of all Jews, but just agrees to postpone the discussion on the “Right of Return” to a later date, is hailed as a “moderate”.

Now for some more, some relevant arguments. From Howard Jacobson on the British boycotts of Israel, via Engage:

On this occasion, though—a meeting called to oppose the proposed academic boycott of Israel—I felt I had to depart from the principles of my profession because academics in this country had departed from theirs. You don’t silence other voices if you’re a scholar, that’s where I stand. You don’t, if you’re a thinker and a teacher, remove from the unending conversation of the mind those of whom you happen, rightly or wrongly, to disapprove.

[…]

[…] Those in favour of excommunication weren’t removing Israeli voices in the sense of gagging or silencing them, they were simply refusing to listen to them. […]

[…]

Most of what Socrates did was listen. No longer to listen is no longer to engage in the dialogue of thought. […]

Indeed. The boycotts can be summed up in that quoted comment on Grauniad Ciff by “Shachtman”: “Deronda: Shut up please”. In other words: Shut up, we don’t want to hear your view; we want to hear only the view that portrays the “Palestinians” as the indigenous people of the land, and Zionism as a colonialist movement started with the nefarious intent of robbing the indigenous of their land.

1400 CE: It is justified to kill Jews because they are well-poisoners. 1850 CE: It is justified to kill Jews because they’re an inferior race infecting the pure Aryan gene pool. 2000 CE: It is justified to kill Jews, uh sorry, I meant Zionists, because they’re racist, Nazi-like settlers dispossessing an indigenous people, starving them with blockades and locking them inside bantustans. As always, it isn’t about merely saying bad things about the Jews—it’s about making an acceptable justification for murdering us (G-d forbid). That is the issue. That is why I sound the battle-cry, “To the Islamonazis and their Leftist enablers no quarter!”

Fact one: the other side isn’t interested in listening.
Fact two: today’s libel is every bit as dangerous to us as the libels of the past.

I don’t know what’s the use. As long as the other side is willing to listen, even if just a little, then it’s all worthwhile. But the eyes can see it is not so. And if they aren’t interested in listening, there’s no way of making them, short of reaching the state that many of them accuse us of having long achieved, namely control of the media. We don’t, of course—that’s why Israel’s targeted incursions in Lebanon last year got us a global opinion hailstorm, while the Lebanese army’s horrific, indiscriminate offensives against the “Palestinians” in their camps haven’t gotten so much as a squeak from the mainstream media channels.

I feel I can’t say anything of more use than I’ve already said. I’m preaching to the choir, the other side won’t listen, the arguments go in circles, reading the enemy’s libels just fills me with rage, and to top it all, my financial situation isn’t good right now.

Dialogue is closed, as per the other side’s insistence. They have asked, and soon, if HaShem wills it, they will receive, a new model of interaction wherein a combative and unapologetic Jewish State of Israel, headed by Torah-believing leaders, will hunt the anti-Zionist enemies of Israel just as Simon Wiesenthal hunted Nazis, and bring them before the Sanhedrin to be accorded justice. I for one would love to see people like Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu end up the same as Saddam Hussein. As it is written:

Let the saints exult in glory; let them sing for joy upon their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand; to execute vengeance upon the nations, and chastisements upon the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the judgment written; He is the glory of all His saints. Hallelujah. (Psalm 149:5–9)

Make our enemies tremble, O HaShem! Destroy them all!

Seder Olam

“Out with the family!”, said the revolutionaries.
“We don’t need need that old-fashioned establishment
That unenlightened men did create.”
So in the revolutionaries’ new utopia
Was born a new, very extended family—the state.

“Out with patriarchy!”, said the radical feminists.
“Women must do away with this tool of male rule,
Forged for the control of men over each woman’s life.”
So in the rad-feminists’ new utopia
Women were liberated, doing the work of both husband and wife.

“Out with class distinctions!”, said the Marxists.
“Exploitation by the rich is the source of all woe.”
So in the Leninspired new utopia
A thin stratum of fat cats took post, and were called the Politbüro.

“Out with religion!”, said the hardcore atheists.
“Religion is the source of all bloodshed and wars,
Undebatable, the desire of despots all.”
So in the fanatical secularists’ new utopia,
Secular religions, such as earth-worship, held people in thrall.

“Out with nationalism!”, said the internationalists.
“Mankind’s division into nations should be finished,
For it does all enmity between humans hatch.”
So in the internationalists’ new utopia,
Support was pledged for new “indigenous peoples”
Created by colonials of old from scratch.

“Out with fascism!”, said the Liberals.
“Creeping authoritarianism is the plague of our time,
Demanding constant vigilance for every hole in the dam.”
So in the Liberal-Leftists’ new utopia,
All aid and comfort was given to fascistic Islam.

“Out with the old, in the new!”, said the Progressives.
“Change is inevitable, you cannot that path abort.”
So in the Progressives’ new utopia,
Life returned to be what it once was:
Solitary, nasty, brutish and short.

“A book of myths, irrelevant in our age”, so we were told.
But to HaShem is the last word:
Truth eternal ceases not being so by being old.
To believe in a literal Adam and Eve there is no need;
But of the changeless verities of human nature one should ever take heed.
There is no escape! Every attempt to rebel has only led to different forms of the same.
So come and let us reason together, and hear the word of His Holy Name.

(“Seder Olam” is Hebrew for “Order of the World”.)

Beyond Chutzpah

While kids in Sderot have to run down to shelters and study in fortified rooms (“Ah, but those are primitive weapons compared to the Zionist Military Machine that’s doing a genocide on the Palestinians! And it’s the least you deserve for 60 years of stealing their land!” /moonbat), the University and College Union of Britain has decided to support the “Palestinian” struggle for their against the independence of the Jewish State by calling for a boycott of Israeli academics (thank you, Ilan Kapo).

This is just another of the many “I Just Wanna Break Something” moments I’ve had lately. But I don’t break anything in reality (that’s something I leave to the Muslims and their moonbat allies); a few minutes at the punching bag, and then a little of doing something useful. Here’s something useful:

Entitled, “Beyond Chutzpah”, with no apologies at all to Einsatzgruppenoberkommandant Norman Finkelstein. Click image to view full size.

Psalms 2 and 83 are the best for those moments. Read ’em, pray ’em (the Psalms) and G-d will smite ’em (our enemies), amen ken yehi ratzon!

The One and Only Argument

From the Midrash:

[There are] three places [about] which the nations of the world cannot oppress Israel, saying, “You have them stolen in your hands”. They are these: the cave of Machpelah, the Temple and Joseph’s Tomb.

The cave of Machpelah, as it is written: “And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron; and Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver […]” (Genesis 23:16)

The Temple, as it is written: “So David gave to Ornan for the place […] shekels of gold […]” (Chronicles I 21:25)

Joseph’s Tomb, as it is said: “And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in the parcel of ground which Jacob bought […]” (Joshua 24:32)

Bereshit Rabbah 79:7

Our dear sister Melanie Phillips has lately posted three diary entries appealing for Israel’s legitimacy (read that again: appealing for Israel’s legitimacy!) from the point of view of international law: The war against Israel (14), from May 22, 2007; Occupation? No, legal entitlement, from May 23, 2007; and Israel and international law. These are truly great posts, bringing out the best in ammunition against those who haul the state of Israel to the court of international law to defend itself there. I agree with her that those documents should be disseminated as widely as possible. However, I am a Torah-based realist rather than an “incorrigible optimist” (her words in the first link), so I have little hope that that would sway world opinion to our favor en masse.

I have read far too many Daily Kos Israel/“Palestine” diaries to be in the dark as to the reactions of those who hate us. Regularly in those diaries, Jewish and non-Jewish posters and commenters standing up for Israel in the court of international law have appealed to similar documents. May HaShem bless them all! But the counter-arguments have been just as regular, and they are these:

1. No one, be it a colonial empire like Britain or an international organization like the United Nation, had the right to give the lands of one nation (the Jews) to another (the “Palestinians”). (Those who idolize the UN say about the 1947 Partition Plan that it was the UN’s single great mistake.)
2. The few lands that the Zionist settlers had bought from the Arabs until 1947 do not make for the dispossession of 1947–9.

“Is there a thing whereof it is said: ‘See, this is new’?”, says King Solomon (Ecclestiastes 1:10). In the above midrash we see our sages conducting an experiment—giving a nod to human (now “international”) law: the Cave of Machpelah, the Temple and Joseph’s Tomb belong to us according to human law, for they are bought territories. How has the experiment fared? What has become of those places now?

The cave of Machpelah now serves as a Muslim mosque, where Jews wishing to visit Sarah’s tomb do so at their great peril; the Temple is covered by a golden dome of Islamic denial of Jewish history; and Joseph’s Tomb, having for long been “historically revised” to be a Muslim sheikh’s mausoleum, is now in ruins, destroyed by the Muslims when given it as the first territory of their “Palestinian Authority” (oxymoron), just as the synagogues and l’havdil greenhouses of Gaza were destroyed once they were given those lands.

So what happened to our sages’ phrasing, “Cannot oppress Israel”? Were they naïve? Perish the thought. Do we not all know of the “can” of permission, the “can” of justice and moral right? “After I took you to the movies yesterday, you can’t steal from the cookie jar”—this is the “can’t” of the World of Ought, not that of the World of Is. The kid is clearly physically capable of illicitly sneaking to the cookie jar, opening it and taking a few of the cookies. The mother meant to say that it was not just, not right, not fitting, that the kid do so after such a favor as she had done to him the day before. So too goes for the Muslims who desecrated the Cave of Machpelah, the Temple and Joseph’s Tomb: it is not their physical capability to desecrate those sites that our sages denied, but their being morally justified in doing so.

This is the small morsel of appeal to international law our sages have given to the accusers of Israel. This is the test of justice, the test to check if they are truly beholden to international law, or if they only use it as a club to beat the nation of Israel with, to be discarded when no longer serving that purpose. And they have failed! Failed! Totally failed! Just like the Daily Kos anti-Israel diarists and commenters who, after a barrage of appeals against Israel in the court of international law, all of a sudden tread that same international law underfoot when one of the pro-Israel diarists or commenters uses it to appeal for Israel.

That is where I disagree with my beloved sister Melanie Phillips: “The vilification of Israel is a prejudice which is not susceptible to reason” (from the first link again), the point with which she begs to differ, is exactly that which I hold. There are those who can be swayed by the appeals for Israel from the standpoint of international law, but they are of the type of the evenhanded posters on Daily Kos, not of the type of the obsessive Israel-bashers there, those who refer to all Islamic terrorism (and not just against Israel) as “blowback”.

Jew-hatred is HaShem’s institution for keeping His nation separate from the others and close to Him. In order to refute that proposition, bromides such as “I’m NOT anti-Semitic! Criticism of Israel’s policies does not equal anti-Semitism!” will not do; it is necessary to refute the truth of the Torah for that, and mere denial won’t fly here any more than did the refusal of the inquisitors to look inside Galileo’s telescope. “A fanatic is one who won’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”, said Winston Churchill; the obsession the world has with Israel (rather than with countless true instances of injustice, oppression, apartheid and human rights violations), and the world’s unwillingness to think any good of Israel, to yield to any of the arguments for Israel’s favor, bespeaks fanaticism, not something that can be remedied by a handful of reasoned debates and appeal to human sensibilities and international law. Are the pundits of today any wiser than the writer of Bereshit Rabbah? No way that can be so. Therefore, do not put your trust in reasoning with our haters.

I have never seen anyone change his position by virtue of the preponderance of the evidence; if you show me someone who appears to have done so, I will show you someone who was already on the way to changing his position, and the presented evidence was just the final nudge he needed in order to do so, to rationalize it. In truth, conversion does not consist in going where the evidence leads, but in a change of heart first, which then leads to “fresh evaluation of the evidence”, or in more honest language: rationalization.

It is not a total waste of time; HaShem bless Melanie Phillips and all others who provide people with the nudge they need to cross the river onto the other side. However, I do not delude myself that mere arguments can change the situation of the world to our favor; there is too much of the error of, “My power and the might of my hand” (Deuteronomy 8:17) in this way of thinking. It denies G-d’s control over this whole state of affairs, the fact that with Him it began and that by His hand it will end. Those who hate us will not be turned by any argument; they will die in their obstinacy, G-d will destroy them all in the end, through the descendant of King David, who wrote:

1 A Song, a Psalm of Asaph.
2 O God, keep not Thou silence; hold not Thy peace, and be not still, O God.
3 For, lo, Thine enemies are in an uproar; and they that hate Thee have lifted up the head.
4 They hold crafty converse against Thy people, and take counsel against Thy treasured ones.
5 They have said: ‘Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.’
6 For they have consulted together with one consent; against Thee do they make a covenant;
7 The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites; Moab, and the Hagrites;
8 Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;
9 Assyria also is joined with them; they have been an arm to the children of Lot. Selah
10 Do Thou unto them as unto Midian; as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the brook Kishon;
11 Who were destroyed at En-dor; they became as dung for the earth.
12 Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, and like Zebah and Zalmunna all their princes;
13 Who said: ‘Let us take to ourselves in possession the habitations of God.’
14 O my God, make them like the whirling dust; as stubble before the wind.
15 As the fire that burneth the forest, and as the flame that setteth the mountains ablaze;
16 So pursue them with Thy tempest, and affright them with Thy storm.
17 Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek Thy name, O LORD.
18 Let them be ashamed and affrighted for ever; yea, let them be abashed and perish;
19 That they may know that it is Thou alone whose name is the LORD,
the Most High over all the earth.

The gentleness and human sensibility exemplified by the midrash with which I started the post has not been reciprocated. Very well: it will be King David’s way instead. That is inevitable; but may it be favorable to HaShem Yitbarach, by virtue of Bnei Yisrael’s return to the Torah that is happening as we speak, to bring us David’s seed speedily in our days, amen and amen.