The chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, is right. His reaction to the Anglican synod's call for sanctions against Israel is understandable. Hatred of Judaism - now commonly called anti-semitism - is a virus that has infected Christendom for two millennia. It continues to stalk the world despite its most virulent outbreak in Nazi Germany. It should not be left untreated. For too many it remains the unlearned lesson of the Holocaust. It should haunt decent Christians for generations to come.
The German pope knows that particularly well and is on the battle lines against it. On this issue, nothing divides him from the Archbishop of Canterbury and most other church leaders. If, as some now think, today's Jews are the Muslims - hatred transferred - that simply means there is a battle to maintain our common humanity on more than one front. All collective hatreds poison the body politic.
I say this as the child of a German Jewish-born father who escaped in time. His mother did not. I say it as a half-Jewish German child chased around a British playground in the second world war and taunted with "he's not just a German, he's a Jew". A double insult. But I say this too as a Christian priest who shares the historic guilt of all the churches. All Christians share a bloody inheritance.
If I feel all that in my guts and know it in my head, I cannot stand by and watch the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - one of the world's most dangerous outbreaks of collective hatred - as a dispassionate onlooker. I cannot listen calmly when an Iranian president talks of wiping out Israel. Jewish fears go deep. They are not irrational. But I cannot listen calmly either when a great many citizens of Israel think and speak of Palestinians in the way a great many Germans thought and spoke about Jews when I was one of them and had to flee.
If the Christian in me has good reason to be ashamed, so now does the Jew in me. I passionately believe that Israel has the right, and its people have the right, to live in peace and in secure borders. But I know too that modern Israel was born in terror and made possible in its present Zionist form by killing and a measure of ethnic cleansing. That is history. Tell me of a nation with an innocent history. But the Zionism at the heart of Israeli politics is about the present and the future. It makes me fear for the soul of Israel today and the survival of its children tomorrow.
The Israel characterised by the words of Golda Meir that "there was no such thing as Palestinians ... they did not exist" is an Israel that is inevitably surrounded by enemies and that can only survive militarily and economically as a client state of the world's only superpower, for now. Nor can its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East last for ever. Peace cannot be made by building a wall on Palestinian land that makes the life of the miserably conquered more miserable still. A Palestinian bantustan will be a source of unrest and violence for ever.
I say all this despairing of the Israel I love. Its people are my people. The Palestinians are my neighbours. I wish they had stronger and better leaders. I wish their despairing young people had not been driven to violence. Just as I understand Jewish fears, I understand their despair. Only an Israel that understands that too can change it. And there are Jews in Israel and in the diaspora who know it. Most of them, out of a fear of being thought disloyal, are afraid to say what they know to be true. The state of Israel has become a cruel occupying power. Occupations, when they are resisted, are never benevolent. They morally corrupt the occupier. The brave body of Israeli conscientious objectors are the true inheritors of the prophets of Israel. They are the true patriots. What nation has ever loved its prophets?
But the main objective of my writing today, is to nail the lie that to reject Zionism as it practised today is in effect to be anti-semitic, to be an inheritor of Hitler's racism. That argument, with the Holocaust in the background, is nothing other than moral blackmail. It is highly effective. It condemns many to silence who fear to be thought anti-semitic. They are often the very opposite. They are often people whose heart bleeds at Israel's betrayal of its true heritage.
I began with the recognition that the cancer of anti-semitism has not been cured. Tragically, Israel's policies feed it - and when world Jewry defends Israeli policies right or wrong, then anger turns not only against Israel, but against all Jews. I wish it were mere rhetoric to say that Israeli politics today make a holocaust the day after tomorrow credible. If the whole Muslim world hates Israel, that is no idle speculation. To count on Arab disunity and Muslim sectarian conflict and a permanent American shield is no recipe for long-term security.
There are Israelis who know all that, and there are Jews around the world who know it. In Britain, Jews for Justice for Palestinians organises to give Jewishness a human face. Tell them they are anti-semites and they will laugh bitterly, for the charge hurts deeply and is a lie. Prophets such as Uri Avnery give all this eloquent expression, but are heard by only a few. The media are afraid of a lobby that is quite prepared to do them serious damage.
Yes, of course, there are many who express their solidarity with the Palestinian people. Some are Christians. They deserve respect. If, whether wisely or not, they call for sanctions, that does not make them Jew-haters - not in theory and not in practice. My concern, however, is to express solidarity with the Israel that is not represented by its leaders or popular opinion. Once, in the days of Hitler, there was another Germany represented by those in concentration camps alongside Jews and Gypsies, the martyrs who are celebrated today. There is such an Israel too. Its voices are still free to speak, though often reviled and misunderstood. That Israel has my solidarity, as all Jews have my love and prayers.
Paul Oestreicher was a member of the Church of England's general synod and director of the Centre for International Reconciliation, Coventry Cathedral; he is now a chaplain at the University of Sussex.
Iran's foreign minister denied on Monday that Tehran wanted to see Israel "wiped off the map," saying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been misunderstood.
"Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference, speaking in English, after addressing the European Parliament.
"How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not legally recognize this regime," he said.
...
Mottaki also acknowledged the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany, despite Ahmadinejad saying in December that it was a myth.
He told the parliament's foreign affairs committee, speaking through an interpreter: "Our friends in Europe stress that such a crime has taken place and they have stated certain figures that were actually suffered. We have no argument about that, but what we are saying here is to put right such a horrific event, why should the Muslims pay a price?"
Posts: 6749 | Location: here again | Registered: 12 November 2004
Thank you for that article, Sunrise, that is very informative. Somehow, antisemitism has been around since long before Israel was reinstated but that fact is ignored.
While Mr Oestreicher makes a few good points, the vast majority of what he writes is apologetics. I'm sure that stance endears him to his Christian peers he so desires to be accepted by. Safe in his English institution, he seems to have no awareness of the real threats Israel faces and preaches his armchair gospel of the evil Jews.
I would call Mr Oestreicher a "reactionary leftist", as he seems to think the world would be a better place if Israel disappeared. Like the far-right Hassidim who despise Israel for being a secular state, these leftist academics despise Israel for not being the Messianic Utopian society that only exists as an ideal (The New Jerusalem, etc).
I hope that clears it up for you.
-- The only time we see the middle of the road is as we run from side to side. R.O.Clark
Posts: 3959 | Location: Santa Fe | Registered: 11 June 2003
Thank you for that article, Sunrise, that is very informative. Somehow, antisemitism has been around since long before Israel was reinstated but that fact is ignored.
While Mr Oestreicher makes a few good points, the vast majority of what he writes is apologetics. I'm sure that stance endears him to his Christian peers he so desires to be accepted by. Safe in his English institution, he seems to have no awareness of the real threats Israel faces and preaches his armchair gospel of the evil Jews.
I would call Mr Oestreicher a "reactionary leftist", as he seems to think the world would be a better place if Israel disappeared. Like the far-right Hassidim who despise Israel for being a secular state, these leftist academics despise Israel for not being the Messianic Utopian society that only exists as an ideal (The New Jerusalem, etc).
I hope that clears it up for you.
Opening lines for that article -
quote:
The chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, is right. His reaction to the Anglican synod's call for sanctions against Israel is understandable. Hatred of Judaism - now commonly called anti-semitism - is a virus that has infected Christendom for two millennia. It continues to stalk the world despite its most virulent outbreak in Nazi Germany. It should not be left untreated. For too many it remains the unlearned lesson of the Holocaust. It should haunt decent Christians for generations to come.
Ignored, somehow.
Hope that helps.
Could you post a few of the "apologetics" for me to look at when i get time?
Cheers in advance.
Posts: 6749 | Location: here again | Registered: 12 November 2004
02/27/06 " ICH" -- --Ever since Hamas’s resounding electoral victory on 25 January, Israel and her guardian-ally, the United States, have been rattling their sabers, threatening to punish the Palestinians for electing the Islamic movement instead of the corrupt Fatah group, to run the Palestinian Authority (PA) government.
Israel, a manifestly full-fledged apartheid state, has seriously escalated its institutionalized terror against Palestinian civilians by restricting the movement of individuals and flow of goods and services within the West Bank. Moreover, the Israeli government has decided to permanently stop transferring Palestinian tax revenues to the PA in what is being referred to as “silent induced starvation.”
For its part, the US is just parroting Israeli threats, even without bothering giving even a scant thought to the Palestinian view point.
The latest drivel from Washington came on Friday (23 February) when President Bush said that it was up to Hamas to decide if the next Palestinian government would receive aid from the international community (who elected him to speak on behalf of the international community). Bush, probably the most ignorant President America has ever had, said Hamas would have to recognize Israel, disarm, and accept all agreements reached between Israel and the PA to qualify for aid.
Well, Bush and his money can go to hell. The Palestinian people will not give up their homeland and their rights for a monetary bribe from its tormentors. We will not give up our inalienable right to freedom and justice in return for some financial inducements. A free woman would rather starve to death rather than sell her body to an evil blackmailer. And America and Israel are the evil blackmailers of our times.
Besides, why on earth should the Palestinians recognize Israel in return for nothing? Has Israel recognized Palestine so that Palestine could recognize Israel? Moreover, which Israel does Bush and cohorts want us to recognize? Is it I948-Israel? 1967-Israel? Israel with the West Bank? Israel with the Golan Heights? Israel with the Shaba’a province? Israel with East Jerusalem? Israel west of the Apartheid wall? Or, indeed, Talmudic Israel extending from the Nile to the Euphrates.
How could the Palestinians possibly recognize a state that has no borders? Indeed, Has Israel determined her borders?
More to the point, recognition is exchanged between sovereign sates, not between a state and a fragile, autonomous entity languishing under foreign occupation. The PA is not a state, it is not even a state in the making, given the continued and unmitigated building of Jewish-only colonies in the West Bank, which has effectively killed any real prospect for a viable Palestinian state.
And the “disarm” demand. Well, if Hamas and Fatah were to disarm, then, for heaven’s sake, who would protect Palestinian civilians from the Nazi-like Israeli onslaught? America? We once trusted America to protect our refugees at Sabra and Shatilla near Beirut in 1982, only to see her allow the certified war criminal Ariel Sharon, in concert with Christian militiamen, to slaughter thousands of helpless women and children, very much like the Gestapo and Wehrmacht did in central and Eastern Europe more than sixty years ago.
Furthermore, It is really difficult to comprehend why only one party to the conflict, and specifically the weaker party, is asked to disarm, while Israel, a nuclear power, which also has the US, the only superpower in the world, at her beck and call, is given carte blanche to murder children, assassinate politicians, terrorize innocent civilians, demolish homes, and reduce Palestinian population centers to new, updated brands of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Bergen Belsen.
Indeed, one is prompted to ask whether the Palestinians pose a real threat to Israel, a country that possesses the most formidable military arsenal in the entire Middle East, including some 600 state-of –the –art fighter Jets, some 5000 combat tanks, and thousands of artillery pieces, as well as the estimated 350-400 nuclear bombs and missiles, with all delivery systems.
Is it true that this state feels threatened by the occupied and tormented Palestinians who have a hard time feeding their children and even a harder time reaching their jobs and schools and colleges and hospitals, thanks to these Gestapo-like Jewish roadblocks and checkpoints whose main function is to torment, humiliate and frustrate these helpless people.
And they want us to accept the “past agreements” reached between the PA and Israel. Well, what agreements? The Oslo Accords? Hasn’t Israel killed the Oslo Accords? Does the Oslo Agreement allow Israel to build 280 hateful colonies in the West Bank? Does it allow Israel to build this satanic apartheid wall in the depth of the West Bank?
Besides, are we supposed to accept the Oslo Accords according to whose interpretations? Israel considers the West Bank and East Jerusalem “disputed territories” while the PA consider these territories “occupied” rather than “disputed.” And the Americans and the Europeans refrain from spelling out their respective interpretations, opting rather to ask the rapist and his victim to sort out things among themselves.
And the so-called “roadmap”? Well, will Mr. Bush and all other world leaders be nice enough and tell us clearly and concisely which “roadmap” they expect us to accept? We say that because we are affronted with multiple “roadmaps” not just one “roadmap.”
So, are we supposed to accept the “roadmap” with the fourteen Israeli reservations (each of which is sufficient to corrode document and eviscerate it of substance)? Are we also supposed to accept President Bush’s pledges to Ariel Sharon’s, namely that Jewish settlements in the West Bank ought to be annexed to Israel?
The Americans and the Europeans, if they can demonstrate independence from Israel, must first address these concerns before hectoring the victims to accommodate the morbid whims of their victimizers.
In fact, We suspect, in fact we are certain, that the real motives behind the American-Israeli pressure on Hamas is to push the Palestinians to capitulation to Israeli insolence.
Israel, to begin with, doesn’t need any recognition from Hamas. However, because Hamas is viewed by some international circles as the last Palestinian effort to withstand Israel’s designs to liquidate the Palestinian cause, Israel and the US are effectively trying to push Hamas to the corner in order to demonstrate to the Palestinian people that even Hamas wouldn’t do them any good.
This is the truth about the present Israeli-American discourse. They don’t want a peace settlement based on international law and human rights and UN resolutions, but one that would reflect Israeli hegemony, insolence and bullying.
Indeed, it is this brazen dishonesty on the part of Israel and the US that prevents Hamas and the vast bulk of Palestinians from taking steps toward a possible peaceful settlement with the Zionist state.
Well, Hamas is damn right. The PA recognized Israel in 1993, and what was the result? Did Israel recognize Palestine? Did Israel stop building settlements? Did Israel signal any readiness to give up East Jerusalem or allow the refugees to return home?
Khalid Amayreh, is a Palestinian journalist from Dura near Hebron. He is frequently published in Al-Ahram weekly and Al-Jazeera
Posts: 6749 | Location: here again | Registered: 12 November 2004
Only a fool or a raving Zionist would deny that Israel's policies and are promoting anti-semitism. In this regard, I quote Uri Avnery, higly respected Israeli Jewish writer and former member of the Knesset:
"The Sharon government is a giant laboratory for the growing of the anti-Semitism virus. It exports it to the whole world. Anti-Semitic organizations, which for many years vegetated on the margins of society, rejected and despised, are suddenly growing and flowering. Anti-Semitism, which has hidden itself in shame since World War II, is now riding on a great wave of opposition to Sharon's policy of oppression.
"Sharon's propaganda agents are pouring oil on the flames. Accusing all critics of his policy of being anti-Semites, they brand large communities with this mark. Many good people, who feel no hatred at all towards the Jews, but who detest the persecution of the Palestinians, are now called anti-Semites. Thus the sting is taken out of this word, giving it something approaching respectability.
"The practical upshot: not only does Israel not protect the Jews from anti-Semitism, but quite on the contrary - Israel manufactures and exports the anti-Semitism that threatens Jews around the world." (Manufacturing Anti-Semites, Counterpunch, 2 October 2002: http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery1002.html)
It should also be noted that as pro-Israel advocacy groups in both the U.S. and Canada have discovered through extensive polling and surveys, the more people learn about the Israel/Palestinian conflict, the more pro-Palestinian they become.
Posts: 145 | Location: Canada | Registered: 16 November 2005
Little confused what you mean be "persecution of the Palestinians"?? Why haven't any of the dozens of Arab nations lifted a finger to help them?" Why do they insist on being lazy, destructive and hateful while expecting Israel to be a welfare state and save them from their poverty? And what about the $52 BILLION Arafat had exported to Switzerland he embezzled from his own people?
It don't make no doggon sense... expecting Israel to be responsible for all that.
Unless Jews are Supreme Beings, which I assume is your thesis here.
-- The only time we see the middle of the road is as we run from side to side. R.O.Clark
Posts: 3959 | Location: Santa Fe | Registered: 11 June 2003
It must really make these anti-Israel types hot under the collar to hear Thom say respectful things about Israel like he did today. I suppose they subscribe to the idea that to be "Liberal" means you want Israel to disappear. So it seems odd that not one Arab nation is as liberal, progressive and socialist like Israel. in fact, the vast majority of them are repressive and cruel dictatorships. And yet these "Liberals" defend the right of those dictators to wipe out Israel.
It just illustrates the cognitive dissonance that surrounds the Israel issue.
-- The only time we see the middle of the road is as we run from side to side. R.O.Clark
Posts: 3959 | Location: Santa Fe | Registered: 11 June 2003
Thank you for that article, Sunrise, that is very informative. Somehow, antisemitism has been around since long before Israel was reinstated but that fact is ignored.
While Mr Oestreicher makes a few good points, the vast majority of what he writes is apologetics. I'm sure that stance endears him to his Christian peers he so desires to be accepted by. Safe in his English institution, he seems to have no awareness of the real threats Israel faces and preaches his armchair gospel of the evil Jews.
I would call Mr Oestreicher a "reactionary leftist", as he seems to think the world would be a better place if Israel disappeared. Like the far-right Hassidim who despise Israel for being a secular state, these leftist academics despise Israel for not being the Messianic Utopian society that only exists as an ideal (The New Jerusalem, etc).
I hope that clears it up for you.
Opening lines for that article -
quote:
The chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, is right. His reaction to the Anglican synod's call for sanctions against Israel is understandable. Hatred of Judaism - now commonly called anti-semitism - is a virus that has infected Christendom for two millennia. It continues to stalk the world despite its most virulent outbreak in Nazi Germany. It should not be left untreated. For too many it remains the unlearned lesson of the Holocaust. It should haunt decent Christians for generations to come.
Ignored, somehow.
Hope that helps.
Could you post a few of the "apologetics" for me to look at when i get time?
Cheers in advance.
Posts: 6749 | Location: here again | Registered: 12 November 2004
Transparent Hatchet Jobs The Attacks on Beyond Chutzpah
By NORMAN FINKELSTEIN
The Winter 2006 issue of Middle East Journal ran a scathing review by Professor Marc Saperstein of my book Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history. Saperstein alleged that my book was a "prolonged diatribe," replete with "outrageous ad hominem attacks" and written in the "rhetorical style of the arrogant academic pit bull."
Before directly addressing these criticisms, it merits setting the broader context of Saperstein's review. Readers of MEJ are undoubtedly aware that my publisher, University of California Press, was subject to an unprecedented and highly public campaign by Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard University, reaching up to Governor Schwarzenegger's office, to block publication of my book. UCPress was accordingly at great pains to ensure that my book met the most stringent scholarly (and legal) standards. Numerous editors, libel lawyers and leading scholars in the field from Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States were called upon to render judgment. Having concluded after this extraordinary peer review process that Beyond Chutzpah did indeed make a significant scholarly contribution, and notwithstanding brutal external threats and pressures, UCPress courageously went ahead and published it. The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) subsequently commended UCPress for its principled stand.
Saperstein has now weighed in on Dershowitz's side, expressing puzzlement that UCPress should have committed such an egregious blunder. This judgment in a prestigious academic journal constitutes a grave indictment not only of my own reputation but also that of a respected publisher, distinguished scholars and the main professional organization in the field. Careful and sober scrutiny of the evidence Saperstein adduces is clearly warranted. Should it prove that Saperstein's claims lack merit, it would seem that the responsible gesture of the journal's editors would be to retract their imprimatur from the review.
The central thesis of Beyond Chutzpah is that on crucial dimensions of the Israel-Palestine conflict little (if any) controversy remains among serious scholars and that what passes as controversy in public life is in reality a contrived discourse to deflect criticism of Israeli policy. Paradoxically Saperstein's review, although intended to refute my thesis, lends further weight to it:
(1) To demonstrate that I have misrepresented the conflict's history, Saperstein cites as his one and only example my claim that Israel "ethnically cleansed Palestine in 1948." Not only is this not true, according to Saperstein, but "the fact is the only ethnic cleansing that occurred in 1948 in Palestine was by Arabs of Jews from the West Bank and Gaza" (his emphasis). In my book I cite the research of Ieading Israeli scholars Baruch Kimmerling, Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe. (Each has used the descriptive "ethnic cleansing" in his respective writings on the topic.) An unimpeachably mainstream figure like Shabtai Teveth, who is Ben-Gurion's official biographer, acknowledged long ago that once the Arab armies attacked on 15 May "one may properly speak of expulsion by Israel" of the Palestinians ("Charging Israel With Original Sin," Commentary, September 1989). Indeed one might even cite former Israeli foreign minister and respected historian Shlomo Ben-Ami, who documents in his study Scars of War, Wounds of Peace (Oxford: 2006) that Palestinians were expelled in accordance with the Zionist "philosophy of transfer," which framed Ben-Gurion's "strategic-ideological" vision and "provided a legitimate environment for commanders in the field actively to encourage the eviction of the local population."
Against this wealth of research by leading Israeli scholars across the political spectrum, Saperstein cites not a single academic authority but rather the avowal of an Israeli novelist (Amos Oz). It is, or should be, cause for wonder that such a lone reference passes muster in a serious academic journal as scholarly rebuttal, and that the remarkable claim that no Palestinians--none--were expelled in 1948 passed editorial scrutiny. Will the editors now approve quotation of Leon Uris as a scholarly source? Saperstein can perhaps be excused since his area of expertise is ancient Jewish texts (he's apparently never written professionally on the Israel-Palestine conflict). But how did the explosion of scholarship on the birth of the Palestinian refugee question confuting the novelist's statement escape the notice of MEJ's editors? Saperstein's only other evidence that Palestinians weren't ethnically cleansed is that of the 900,000 Palestinians living in the areas Israel conquered 150,000 managed to remain in situ at war's end. Yet, apart from Holocaust deniers who would argue that Jews weren't subject to a genocide because of the 7,000,000 Jews living in the areas conquered by the Nazis 1,000,000 managed to survive at war's end? (For charity's sake I ignore Saperstein's argument that Israel couldn't have expelled Palestinians from the areas of Palestine it conquered in 1948 because they continued to live in areas of Palestine that Israel didn't conquer.)
Posts: 6749 | Location: here again | Registered: 12 November 2004
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Discussion Community 
Why haven't any of the dozens of Arab nations lifted a finger to help them?" Why do they insist on being lazy, destructive and hateful while expecting Israel to be a welfare state and save them from their poverty? And what about the $52 BILLION Arafat had exported to Switzerland he embezzled from his own people?