I think to myself after reading something in the internet about the midle east

[Guest guest]

I think to myself after reading something in the internet about the midle east, what do you think of the religious persecution in Israel against Vaishnava devotees? Why are there fanatic religious organizations against cults like "Lev La Achim" who take the privilege of hunting down devotees?

 

Yet in the states Jews live nicely and quietly. It isn't fair.

If you read the book of Dhira Govinda Prabhu about "The Druzees and Israel", you will see about this jewish religious groups and how they presecute deevotees.

 

[Guest guest]

Sorry but there Christians suffer too from the religious presecution, see this:

http://www.persecution.org/Countries/israel.html

[theist]

from people dominated by a sectarian understanding of religious and spiritual life?

 

Try having a kirtan in downtown Riyadh sometime. Atheists often look upon religious expression as the "opiate of the masses" and feel justified in trying to stamp it out.

 

Just a solid theoretical understanding of aham brahmasmi would solve this problem but very few are even slightly interested.

[Kulapavana]

here is an article from my earlier thread in "World Review" (religious intolerance not limited to muslims)

 

Source: Haaretz

Published: September 11, 2004 Author: Amiram Barkat

 

The Armenian archbishop in Israel, Nourhan Manougian, was questioned under warning by police yesterday after he slapped a yeshiva student during a procession marking the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem's Old City. The archbishop slapped the student after the latter spat at the cross the Armenians were carrying and at Manougian himself.

 

The incident developed into a brawl during which Manougian's ceremonial medallion, which has been used by Armenian archbishops since the 17th century, broke.

 

The yeshiva student was also detained for questioning.

 

Police are now considering whether to initiate criminal proceedings against the Armenian archbishop and to charge him with assault. Meanwhile, the incident has sparked much anger among the clergy of the small Armenian community in Jerusalem.

 

Religious Jews, among them yeshiva students, customarily spit on the ground as a sign of disgust on seeing the cross. The Armenians, who live adjacent to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, suffer from this phenomenon more than any of the other Christian sects in the Old City.

 

Manougian says he and his colleagues have already learned to live with it. "I no longer get worked up by people who turn around and spit when I pass them by in the street; but to approach in the middle of a religious procession and to spit on the cross in front of all the priests of the sect is humiliation that we are not prepared to accept," he notes.

 

A policeman is customarily posted to guard the Armenians' religious processions, but doesn't generally do anything to prevent the spitting. The Armenians took the matter up with Interior Minister Avraham Poraz some seven months ago, but nothing has been done about till now.

 

"The Israeli government is anti-Christian," Manougian charges. "It cries out in the face of any harm done to Jews all over the world, but is simply not interested at all when we are humiliated on an almost daily basis."

 

Lawmaker Rabbi Michael Melchior (Labor Party) says the phenomenon should be tackled through educational means. "I would expect prominent figures among the religious and ultra-Orthodox sectors, such as the chief rabbis, to denounce this phenomenon," he says

[Guest guest]

I never thougth that jewish, after the holocaust, can have that attitude, really incredible, I can imagine the suffers of the devotees of The Lrod there to preach, INCREDIBLE!

[Guest guest]

NEWLY PROPOSED LEGISLATION TO RESTRICT FREEDOM OF RELIGION IN ISRAEL

 

INTRODUCTION

 

A new legislative initiative has been inaugurated by the Orthodox community in Israel through the agency of Lev Le'Achim, an anti-Christian organization sponsored by Shas. The proposal was drafted by Lev Le'Achim functionaries and is being spearheaded by MK (Member of Knesset) Rabbi Meir Porush, former deputy Minister of Housing in Mr. Netanyahu's Government. MK. Porush claims that he has been able to form a lobby composed of interested MKs from most political parties represented in the House. He is confident that his bill will receive the support of an overwhelming majority and thus pass into law, whether the Government supports the bill or does not. Below is a synopsis of the proposal as co mposed by Lev Le'Achim. It is presently being circulated among Knesset Members in an effort to secure their support.

 

The proposal is prefaced by an exaggerated and inaccurate report which speaks of "unprecedented" and "especially vigorous" missionary efforts "which target the socially and economically weak" in the nation with promises of material and social benefits.

 

It is interesting to note that, under the proposed terms described below, the government of Israel, the Ministers of religion and of Internal Affairs as well as many Rabbis would be liable to prosecution, since the State actively engages in seeking to persuade gentiles living in the land to convert to Judaism. This is especially the case when gentiles are married to Jewish spouses.

 

The language of the proposal is as follows:

 

THE PROPOSED BILL

 

"Anyone convicted of soliciting or persuading another person, even indirectly, to change his religion would be liable 5 years imprisonment. This includes anyone who gives or promises another person a benefit (in any form) in order to persuade him to convert, and any person who agrees to receive such benefit, even if it is through a third party. This 5 year sentence would be doubled to 10 years if:

 

 

a) the one who was persuaded is a minor or a person in need, or

b) the one who was subjected to efforts of persuasion did, in fact, change his religion, or

c) the one doing the soliciting used deceptive or misleading means.

 

"It is immaterial for the purpose of the criminal prison sentence if, in the eyes of the religion or according to the religious testimony of the person persuaded, there is no validity to such a conversion, or if the violation occurred outside of the country, provided that the person whose religion has or was to be changed resides in Israel.

 

"A 3 year sentence of imprisonment would be imposed upon any who solicits for a change of religion through advertisements. A person would be imprisoned for 1 year prison merely for possessing, without lawful justification, such an advertisement.

 

"A 1 year prison sentence would be imposed upon anyone who receives or brings a minor or a needy person to a location in which prayer or other religious activities occur which differ from the religion of the person concerned, and upon anyone who conducts such religious activities.

 

"A minor or needy person will not be allowed into an educational institution, youth hostel or club in Israel that is under the auspices of another religion. "Another religion" is defined as a religion that is not the religion of the religious community to which the individual belongs according to Israeli Law."

 

IMPLICATIONS

 

According to this proposal, any effort to defend one's faith or to propagate would be considered a criminal act. Moreover, the proposal calls upon Israeli legislators to outlaw the activities of the citizens of other countries, even if carried out overseas, thus subjecting potential tourists to prosecution if caught while visiting the country. The proposal further proscribes the visiting of churches for whatever reason, the use of Jewish institutional hospitality by non-Jewish visitors and many other such free activities in a normal society.

 

More could be said of this ridiculous and outrageous proposal, indicative of the measure of freedom that would exist if the rabbis ever succeeded in gaining political control of the country. But the main issue should not be obscured: the bill seeks to outlaw the defense and propagation of religious faith. As such it is the denial of every man's right to decide for himself in matters that have to do with the most personal, most intimate of life issues: the matter of religious conviction. Needless to say, such a bill, if ever passed into law in Israel, will inevitably be applied only with regard to conversions from rabbinic Judaism. Much as the Orthodox community opposes the freedom to propagate the Gospel, it is no less earnest in seeking to "preserve the Jewishness of the State: by persuading gentiles living in the land to convert to Judaism.

 

I am compelled to ask: how can Christians continue to lend their influence and financial support to an Orthodox community which calls for the enactment of such laws? How can some Christians prefer the friendship and fellowship of the religious Orthodox in Israel, who hate the very name of Jesus, while ignoring their fellow believers among the Jews? Why are organizations like Yad Le'Achim, Lev Le'Achim, Yad Sarah, Kfar Shaul and various orthodox schools and institutions in Israel, where the name of Jesus is vilified, supported by Christian bodies while Jewish Christian brethren in Israel are ignored? Brethren things ought not to be!

 

ACTION NEEDED AT THE MOMENT

 

It is not yet time for a public campaign against such proposed legislation in Israel. When the time comes, the Messianic Action Committee (MAC) will call for it and I encourage you then to lend the MAC your full support. The previous campaign against legislation that was directed against freedom of religious expression was immensely effective. Tens of thousands of letters poured into the Israeli Embassies and relevant Minister's offices in the Israeli Government. Senior Israeli politicians were approached and consequently undertook to block the proposed laws. Not all such promises were kept, but both bills died the death they deserve. But the time for such a public outcry has not yet come. Now is the time to pray.

 

If any of our readers have contact with well-placed individuals who might be willing to lend their support in seeking to persuade Israel of the need to remain a true democracy, please inform us of their name, position and contact information (electronic mail is very important, but not enough).

 

Please also pass this information to others. The information you provide will be culled and later serve the MAC in its efforts to stem the tide of autocratic and fundamentalistic Phariseeism in Israel. Again, this information should not at this stage be made available to the wider public. A discreet approach by well placed ndividuals will be far more effective.

 

 

[Guest guest]

The Anti-Missionaries

 

The cultural and religious landscape of Israel is a fascinating mix. Orthodox Judaism is a vibrant world existing alongside secular Israeli society. One of the most interesting groups within the Jewish ultra-Orthodox world is a small group called the pe'ilim or activists. In a world that is divided on almost every matter, there is unity in regards to support of the 'activists' of Yad L'Achim (Hand to the Brethren) and Lev L'Achim (Heart to the Brethren). Yad L'Achim, headed by a Chabad (Lubavitch) rabbi, Rabbi S. Lipshitz, is the veteran anti-missionary organization in Israel with Lev L'Achim, directed by Rabbi Moshe Lachover, a more recent offshoot. These two groups are engaged in a holy war against Christian missionary activities and have been referred to as the 'Orthodox underground.'

 

Yad L'Achim was established shortly after the foundation of the State of Israel and has grown into an organization that today has 17 branches in Israel and several branches in Europe and the United States. In fact, anywhere in Israel where there is a community of ultra-Orthodox Jews, pe'ilim can be found. They claim to have thousands of volunteers in their battle for the souls of the Jewish people. Most Messianic Jews and Christians working in Israel are familiar with Yad L'Achim and Lev L'Achim because of the anti- missionary activities of these organizations. In addition to their fight against 'the Mission,' the two groups work to influence secular Jews to adopt orthodox Jewish lifestyles, and target new immigrants and needy families in an effort to convince them to send their children to religious schools.

 

Relative to their size, the budgets of these organizations are quite large. No figures are available for the past number of years but in 1985 (according to their publications) Yad L'Achim had a yearly budget of $128,000 for their anti-missionary and anti-cult activities. Funding primarily comes from collections taken during the annual Days of Awe - the ten-day period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. During this period, leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis put out a joint communiqué calling every man, woman, and child to give money as 'atonement for their souls' in a special offering to the activist organizations. The sum is fixed yearly and is collected at the mikva'ot (ritual baths) by yeshiva students. All ultra-Orthodox Jews visit the ritual baths at this season. In 1987 the minimum fee was 15 NIS (approximately $5 US) per person. In addition to this, these organizations maintain donation boxes in public places and funds are also collected abroad.

 

The activist organizations co-operate with the Israeli government. They sometimes receive funds from the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and the Ministry of Education. The population registry of the Ministry of the Interior regularly receives reports from Yad L'Achim consisting of lists of suspected missionaries.

 

The anti-missionary organizations make use of young orthodox men who generally are not yet married and have had enough of studying Torah. The clandestine image of these groups has a powerful attraction for these young men. Small cells, that are directly responsible to the organization's headquarters, make up a network of intelligence gatherers. These cells conduct many of the activities and are unrelated to one another. Sometimes the 'activists' go underground and infiltrate Messianic congregations and Christian organizations. They investigate suspected mission personnel, activities, and premises and have been known to break in and cause damage. They sometimes organize demonstrations against individual 'apostates' and disrupt congregational meetings.

 

Another favored activity of the 'activists' is to target individuals through poster campaigns in the cities and areas where they live and work. Posters with photographs and names of well-known or 'dangerous' people are posted with warnings to stay away from them. There have been a number of instances where individuals targeted by Yad L'Achim have lost their jobs due to pressure put on their employers. All publicity, even if negative, provides opportunities to speak about matters of faith and the gospel.

 

The activist organizations are interested in inflating numbers and they regularly exaggerate the size of the Messianic community and the numbers of missionaries working in Israel. In the late 1980's they estimated the number of missionaries (they include in this all believers in Jesus) in Israel at 5,000, while according to a survey of the Messianic congregations that was taken in 1999 (Mishkan, 1999, #30-31, Caspari Center, Jerusalem) the total number of Messianic believers living in Israel was close to 5,000. Their propaganda regularly is in error, with mistakes in names, addresses, and numbers.

 

Although these activist groups are often quite vocal, their actual influence is small. They are a permanent part of the Israeli Ultra-Orthodox landscape and they are violently opposed to the Messianic community. A quotation from one of their protest flyers shows this clearly "...the soul hunters, the missionaries who spend days and nights trying to cause Jewish souls to change their religion. Therefore every Jew, who is required by our Torah to act against conversion, must demand that there be legislation to forbid the activity of the Mission in the land, and must join the struggle in person and in finance."

 

Due to their longstanding relationship with the Israeli government and the current strength of the religious political parties in the ruling coalition, Yad L'Achim has lately been responsible for the development of proposed legislation that would make it illegal for a Messianic Jew to in any way explain his faith. The Messianic community in Israel takes these activities seriously but continues to live life without fear and even makes use of the 'free publicity' provided by the activists of Yad L'Achim and Lev L'Achim.

 

from this site: http://www.caspari.com/newsletter/news01-11.html

[Guest guest]

Well friends!

I only wont to say, sad to live in a world like this.

[Kulapavana]

Source: Chowpatty: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan

Author: Mahatma Gandhi

 

"Let the Jews, who claim to be the chosen race, prove their title by

choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth."

 

--Mahatma Gandhi, Nov. 26, 1938 (full text below)

 

M.K. Gandhi, Towards Lasting Peace, ed. by Anand T. Hingorani (Chowpatty:

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1956)

 

Gandhi on "The Jews," November 26, 1938:

 

Several letters have been received by me asking me to declare my views about

the Arab-Jew question in Palestine, and the persecution of Jews in Germany.

It is not without hesitation that I venture to offer my views on this very

difficult question.

 

My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South

Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends, I

came to learn much of their age-old persecution. They have been the

untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by

Christians and the treatment of untouchables by hindus is very close.

Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of

the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the friendships,

therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my sympathy for the

Jews.

 

But the sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry

for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The

sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews

have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other

peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and

where they earn their livelihood?

 

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the

English, or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews

on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine to-day cannot be justified by

any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the

last war. Surely, it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud

Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews, partly or wholly, as

their national home.

 

The nobler cause would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever

they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the

same sense that Christians born in France are French. If the Jews have no

home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the

other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or, do they want a

double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home

affords a colourable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.

 

But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history.

The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone. And he is

doing it with religious zeal. For, he is propounding a new religion of

exclusive and

militant nationalism, in the name of which any inhumanity becomes an act of

humanity to be rewarded here and hereafter. The crime of an obviously mad

but intrepid youth is being visited upon his whole race with unbelievable

ferocity. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for

humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a

whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war.

A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is, therefore, outside my

horizon or province.

 

But if there can be no war against Germany, even for such a crime as is

being committed against the Jews, surely there can be no alliance with

Germany. How can there be an alliance between a nation which claims to stand

for justice and democracy and one which is the declared enemy of both? Or,

is England drifting towards armed dictatorship and all it means.

 

Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be worked, when

it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as

humanitarianism. It is also showing how hideous, terrible and terrifying it

looks in its nakedness.

 

Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution? Is there a way

to preserve their self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and

forlorn? I submit there is. No person who has faith in a living God need

feel helpless or forlorn. Jehovah of the Jews is a God more personal than

the God of the Christians, the Mussalmans or the Hindus, though, as a matter

of fact, in essence, He is common to all and one without a second and beyond

description. But as the Jews attribute personality to God and believe that

He rules every action of theirs, they ought not to feel helpless. If I were

a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim

Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German might, and challenge

him to shoot me or caste me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or

to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this, I should not wait

for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have

confidence that in the end the rest would were bound to follow my example.

If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he

or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone

will bring them an inner strength and joy, which no number of resolutions of

sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain,

France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can

bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may

even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to

the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be

prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be

turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought

deliverance of the race even at the hands of they tyrant. For to the God

fearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a

waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.

 

It is hardly necessary for me to point out that it is easier for the Jews

than for the Czechs to follow my prescription. And they have in the Indian

Satyagraha campaign in south Africa an exact parallel. There the Indians

occupied precisely the same place that the Jews occupy in Germany. The

persecution had also a religious tinge. President Kruger used to say that

the white Christians were the chosen of God, and Indians were inferior

beings created to serve the Whites. A fundamental clause in the Transvaal

constitution was that there should be no equality between the Whites and the

colored races, including Asiatics. There, too, the Indians were consigned to

ghettos, the same types as those of the Jews in Germany. The Indians, a mere

handful, resorted to Satyagraha without any backing from the world outside

or the Indian Government. Indeed, the British officials tried to dissuade

the Satyagrahis from their contemplated step. World opinion and the Indian

Government came to their aid after eight years of fighting. And that, too,

was by the way of diplomatic pressure, not of a threat of war.

 

But the Jews of Germany can offer Satyagraha under infinitely better

auspices than the Indians of South Africa. The Jews are a compact,

homogenous community in Germany. they are far more gifted than the Indians

of South Africa. And they have organized world opinion behind them. I am

convinced that if someone with courage and vision can arise among them to

lead them in non-violent action, the winter of their despair can in the

twinkling of an eye be turned into the summer of hope. And what has to-day

become a degrading man-hunt can be turned into a calm and determined stand,

offered by un-armed men and women possessing the strength of suffering given

to them by Jehovah. It will be, then, a truly religious resistance offered

against the godless fury of dehumanized man. The German Jews will score a

lasting victory over the German gentiles in the sense that they will have

converted the latter to an appreciation of human dignity. They will have

rendered service to fellow-Germans and proved their title to be the real

Germans as against those who are to-day dragging , however unknowingly, the

German name into the mire.

 

And now, a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are

going about it the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is

not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to

the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it

under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be preformed

with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only

by the good-will of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart.

The same God rules the Arab heart who rules the Jewish heart. They can offer

Satyagraha in front of the Arabs, and offer themselves to be shot or thrown

into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them. they will

find the world opinion in their favor in their religious aspiration. There

are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard

the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-sharers with the

British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them.

 

I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of

non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable

encroachment upon their country. But according to accepted canons of right

and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of

overwhelming odds.

 

Let the Jews, who claim to be the chosen race, prove their title by choosing

the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth. Every

country is their home, including Palestine, not by aggression but by loving

service. A Jewish friend has sent me a book called The Jewish Contribution

to Civilization by Cecil Roth. It gives a record of what the Jews have done

to enrich the world's literature, art, music, drama, science, medicine,

agriculture, etc. Given the will, the Jew can refuse to be treated as the

outcaste of the West, to be despised or patronized. He can command the

attention and respect of the world by being man, the chosen creation of God,

instead of being man, who is fast sinking to the brute and forsaken by God.

They can add to their many contributions the surpassing contribution of

non-violent action.

(end quote) -- Harijan, Nov. 26, 1938

 

[Guest guest]

Is a wonderfull article, really thank you.

[theist]

Yes many good points. I wonder what he would say now after the 67 war and the suicide bombings.

[Kulapavana]

"Yes many good points. I wonder what he would say now after the 67 war and the suicide bombings."

 

very likely he would say: "see? I told you so!" /images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

that was his whole point: that Jews should renounce militant zionism and their "we are the chosen race - this land was given to us by God" mentality. Note the year of the article - 1938. Militant zionism was not a reaction to German atrocities (it predates them by many years) and it already alarmed many people. Now, with the state of Israel blatant disregard for international law and expansionistic policy to achieve "Greater Israel", these issues are even more relevant.

[Guest guest]

The main point here is, that is so dificult to understand that people who suffer by himself "the inquisicion", The pogroms, the holocaust, etc etc after so many persecutions, they, in their country, Israel, continue to persecute others like Christians or devotees Vaishnavas. i think is interesting and, really crazy?

 

[theist]

 

very likely he would say: "see? I told you so!"

 

 

hehe, Ok Ok.

 

But I think he may something to say about the Palestinians also. Many of them have turned into a murder/suicide cult in the name of God. Dressing their little daughters up with toy suicide belts for parades..., MY GOD

[Guest guest]

The interesting point to me is, why the devotees of Krishna never figth against religious persecution?, what is the attitude of the devotees?, to seat and wait?

[Kulapavana]

yes, both sides are sick and deserve each other. neither side has high moral ground.

 

however, the power to change things really is with the Israelis - they are the ones who have the upper hand and physical control over the region. but alas, they are too greedy and will not concede territory or power, so the bloodshed continues...

[theist]

This latest "intifada" by the Palestinians that has lasted four years now came after the Clinton administration was brokering a peace deal that had the Israelis giving up 97% of the demands for returned land etc. But that was broken immediately by the suicide bombings. The PLO never wanted a two state solution they wanted to kill or push all the Israelis out of the area completely.

 

Speaking politically and not religiously I support Israel over the Palestinians without question.

 

Anyway we have our different views and I will respect your right to be wrong on this and let it go. /images/graemlins/wink.gif It's a quagmire.

[Kulapavana]

The Church and Jewish Ideology

 

(Reprinted from SOBRAN’S, May 1999, page 4)

The prevalent Jewish myth today is not the founding myth of Abraham or Moses on Sinai, but the story of Jewish persecution. In our time the Jews are defined less by ancestry than by “anti-Semitism,” which is cited for many purposes, including the legitimation of the state of Israel. Most Zionists no longer claim that God gave the Holy Land to the Jews; instead they contend that the Jewish state is necessary as a haven for world Jewry.

 

According to this modern myth, the Jews are in no way responsible for their own unpopularity from ancient times. What, then, is the source of such persistent hostility to this fundamentally innocent people? Why, the Catholic Church, of course!

 

Many Jewish scholars find the seed of anti-Semitism in the Gospels of Matthew and John, where the Jews are depicted as engineering the Crucifixion, with the assistance of Romans who “know not what they do.” Some Jews have even demanded that the offending passages be deleted from the Scriptures, not realizing (or caring) that Christians regard their holy books as off-limits to human editing. Others persist in blaming Pius XII for failing to condemn Nazism more strongly for its persecution of the Jews of Europe. The Catholic Church in particular has been targeted as the historic matrix of anti-Semitism; and unfortunately, many churchmen have accepted the role of defendant against accusers who will never acquit the Church or drop the case.

 

In recent years the Vatican has tried, as far as possible, to appease Jewish objections. The Second Vatican Council, mindful of Nazi crimes, proclaimed that today’s Jews don’t share the guilt of the Jews who conspired to murder Christ. Pope John Paul II has been especially eager to cultivate good relations with the Jews, even making an unprecedented visit to a Roman synagogue a few years ago. He has gone so far as to name Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List as one of his favorite films — though it contains scenes of nudity and simulated intercourse.

 

In this spirit, the Vatican last year promulgated We Remember, a statement of repentance for the failures of the Church and the mass of Christians during the Holocaust (or Shoah, the Hebrew word that has become current lately). Its theme was that “erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament” have contributed to anti-Semitism; and that the Church, though never a party to persecution, should have done more to oppose the “unspeakable tragedy” of the Shoah, which “can never be forgotten.” The statement also affirmed the Church’s “very close bonds of spiritual kinship with the Jewish people” and the “Hebrew roots of [Catholic] faith.”

 

Many Jews resented the statement’s exculpation of the Church for the Shoah itself. The document distinguished sharply between regrettable Christian attitudes toward the Jews throughout European history (it made no reference to Jewish attitudes toward Christians) and the virulent nationalist and racialist anti-Semitism that arose in the nineteenth century. Predictably, a Jewish historian has rejected this distinction.

 

In an article in the April issue of Commentary, “The Pope, the Church, and the Jews,” Robert S. Wistrich, professor of modern Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, attacks We Remember for defending Pius XII and for minimizing the Church’s guilty role in fostering anti-Semitism through the ages. Wistrich belittles Pius’s efforts to protect Jews as not only insufficient but lacking in “moral courage.” As for the nineteenth-century anti-Semitic ideologies, they “presupposed a cultural framework that had been fashioned by centuries of medieval Christian theology, ecclesiastical policy, and popular religious myth.”

 

This is nothing new for Commentary, which has previously carried articles blaming Christianity itself for the Holocaust. Wistrich doesn’t cite, though he might as well have, the charge of the Jewish scholar Jules Isaac that “the permanent and latent source of anti-Semitism is none other than Christian religious teaching of every description, and the traditional, tendentious interpretation of the Scriptures.” Isaac’s work and influence helped shape the Second Vatican Council’s statement about the Jews.

 

By such reasoning as Wistrich’s, it would be easy to blame the Jews for bringing persecution on themselves. After all, they have been unpopular not only in Christian countries, but in pagan and Muslim lands. Cicero, Tacitus, Juvenal, and other Roman authors inveighed against them. They have repeatedly migrated to Christian countries and have been repeatedly expelled, for reasons that have usually had little to do with theology — though the obscene blasphemies against Christ and his mother in the Talmud, unique in religious literature, besides reflecting oddly on Jewish demands for Christian tolerance and for the cleansing of offensive passages in the Gospels, have done nothing to endear the Jews to Christians.

 

Wistrich mentions none of this. Nor does he mention one of the principal incitements to anti-Semitism in this century: Jewish participation in Communism, with its terrifying persecution of Christians. Where is the corresponding statement of Jewish leaders repudiating and repenting the Jewish role in a cause whose crimes dwarf those of Hitler? Did major Jewish spokesmen or organizations condemn Communism as it devoured tens of millions of Christians? Did a few brave Jews in the Soviet Union and the other Communist-ruled countries act, at personal risk, to shield Christians from arbitrary arrest and murder? Even today, how many Jews condemn Franklin Roosevelt for his fondness for Stalin, as they would condemn him if he had shown the slightest partiality to Hitler?

 

Further, might the Talmudic imprecations against Christ and Christians have helped form the Bolshevik Jews’ anti-Christian animus? Did the Talmud help form the “cultural framework” for the persecution of Christians, and for the eradication of Christian culture in America today? If so, will Jews make an effort to expunge the offending passages from the Talmud? How many rabbis speak of their “spiritual kinship” with Christianity?

 

The answers to these questions are only too obvious. The Jews, with honorable but ineffectual exceptions, judge Christians by a standard that doesn’t seem to apply to themselves. Or rather, their single standard is “Is it good for the Jews?”

 

As shepherd of the Catholic Church, Pius XII was bound to be guided chiefly by the question “Is it good for the Church?” He was not a Jewish leader, after all, but a Catholic one — a somewhat neglected point in these controversies. His first duty was to protect the Church amid the madness of a world war, knowing that its deadliest enemy was not Nazism but Communism (which, with American assistance, conquered several Catholic nations in Eastern Europe by the war’s end). He did what he could to protect Jews and others too, and the most eloquent testimony to his efforts is the conversion of Israel Zolli, chief rabbi of Rome, to Catholicism. Zolli even took the baptismal name Eugenio in honor of Pius, who was born Eugenio Pacelli; he would hardly have done this if he had seen Pius as indifferent to the persecution of Jews.

 

Yet Wistrich complains that “in confronting the Shoah, Pius XII’s chief concern was less with the ongoing annihilation of the Jews than with the interests of the Church.” Think of that: a Pope putting the Church first! Nowadays even the papacy is to be judged in terms of Jewish interests. Self-absorption can go no further.

 

It’s some consolation that even the treacherous Roosevelt is now being criticized for doing too little to save Jewish lives. Jewish critics argue that he might have ordered the bombing of railroads leading to the concentration camps. But the chief effect of such a practice would surely have been to starve the camps’ inmates.

 

The smear of Pius XII — and of the Church — persists, and will no doubt continue indefinitely, in the endless campaign to make Christianity and anti-Semitism synonymous. Wistrich barely acknowledges that the diplomatic Pius may have feared that a more explicit condemnation of Nazism would have backfired not only against the Church, but against the Jews themselves. Besides, if papal condemnations of Communism had failed to deter the persecution of Christians, how could Pius expect papal animadversions against Nazism to be any more efficacious?

 

Even American Jewish groups refrained from denouncing the Shoah during the war, for fear that speaking publicly about it might do more harm than good. This policy of silence has resulted in bitter recriminations between American and European Jews, but it has discouraged few Jews on either continent from blaming Pius for saying too little.

 

The prevalent attitude of Christians toward the Jews has been (and remains) not so much hatred as fear. The Acts of the Apostles tells how the early Church was forced to take various precautions “for fear of the Jews.” Few deny, or doubt, that this is historically accurate; the tolerance recommended to Christians has never been a salient trait of the Jews themselves, when they have held power. On the contrary, the state of Israel is based on an ethnic supremacism that would be roundly condemned as anti-Semitic if it were enforced against Jews by gentiles. Yet most Jews hotly resent any suggestion that Zionism is “racist.” (A United Nations declaration to that effect was eventually repealed in response to American pressure.)

 

In intellectual life, Jews have been brilliantly subversive of the cultures of the natives they have lived amongst. Their tendencies, especially in modern times, have been radical and nihilistic. One thinks of Marx, Freud, and many other shapers of modern thought and authors of reductionist ideologies. Even Einstein, the greatest of Jewish scientists, was, unlike Sir Isaac Newton, no mere contemplator of nature’s laws; he helped inspire the development of nuclear weapons and consistently defended the Soviet Union under Stalin.

 

Jews have generally supported Communism, socialism, liberalism, and secularism; the agenda of major Jewish groups is the .-Christianization of America, using a debased interpretation of the “living Constitution” as their instrument. When the Jewish side of an issue is too unpopular to prevail democratically, the legal arm of Jewry seeks to make the issue a “constitutional” one, appealing to judicial sovereignty to decide it in defiance of the voters. Overwhelming Jewish support for legal abortion illustrates that many Jews hate Christian morality more than they revere Jewish tradition itself. This fanatical antagonism causes anguish to a number of religious, conscientious, and far-sighted Jews, but they, alas, are outside the Jewish mainstream.

 

Today, in American politics, journalism, and ecclesiastical circles, fear of Jewish power is overwhelming. This is most obvious in the dread of incurring the label “anti-Semitic,” in the way Christians shrink from calling this country “a Christian nation” (a phrase that enrages Jews), and in the groveling before Israel that has become a virtual requirement for anyone who aspires to high office. Nobody dares to point out the obvious, that Israel is inimical to the principles Americans profess to share; nearly everyone in public life pretends that Israel is a model democracy and a “reliable ally” of the United States, despite repeated episodes of Israeli spying and betrayal against its chief benefactor. Israel has not only refused to return the documents stolen by Jonathan Pollard; it continues to press the U.S. Government for his release from prison. In fact Israel exemplifies most of the “anti-Semitic stereotypes” of yore: it is exclusivist, belligerent, parasitic, amoral, and underhanded. It feels no obligation to non-Jews, even those who have befriended it.

 

Most Jews regard conversion to Christianity as the ultimate treason to Jewry and resent Christian attempts to convert them; never mind that for Christians, concern for the salvation of souls is the highest charity next to the adoration of God. In Jewish eyes, such charity is next door to persecution. Jews for Jesus, a convert group, is especially execrated among Jews, and in Israel Christian proselytization can be punished by law under various pretexts. (Even giving a copy of the New Testament can be construed as a “bribe.”) Yet Christians, who may not claim a nation of their own, are taxed to support the Jewish state.

 

History is replete with the lesson that a country in which the Jews get the upper hand is in danger. Such was the experience of Europe during Jewish-led Communist revolutions in Russia, Hungary, Romania, and Germany after World War I. Christians knew that Communism — often called “Jewish Bolshevism” — would bring awful persecution with the ultimate goal of the annihilation of Christianity. While the atheistic Soviet regime made war on Christians, murdering tens of thousands of Orthodox priests, it also showed its true colors by making anti-Semitism a capital crime. Countless Jews around the world remained pro-Communist even after Stalin had purged most Jews from positions of power in the Soviet Union.

 

Clearly, it is futile for the Church to try to mollify a hatred so ancient and so deep as the Jewish animus against Christianity. Despite all the sentimental rhetoric to the contrary — such as pious nonsense about “the Judaeo-Christian tradition” — Judaism and Christianity are radically opposed over the most important thing of all: Jesus Christ, who commands us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, and to love our enemies, which does not mean mistaking them for friends.

 

This is not to suggest that true friendship can’t exist between Jews and Christians as individuals. And there is much about the Jews, an immensely talented people, that a Christian can honor and delight in. But any concord based on lies, evasions, and partisan propaganda is false and should be rejected. We Remember is an honorable attempt to vindicate the honor of the Church. If only it had dealt more frankly with the real history of Jewish-Christian relations!

 

 

 

About Author: From 1979 to 1991, Mr. Sobran was a regular commentator on CBS Radio’s “Spectrum” series. He has been a nationally syndicated columnist since 1979, first with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, then with the Universal Press Syndicate, and now with Griffin Internet Syndicate, for which he writes two columns per week, which are later posted on this site. He also writes the weekly column “Washington Watch” for The Wanderer, a weekly Catholic newspaper.

[Guest guest]

Either you "Chozer Betshuva" (become an Orthodox Jew)

Or you return to your physically abusive husband

 

Zeev Shtiglitz, Director of Lev La-Achim Association, This WeekBattered women, who had been taking refuge in a "Lev La-Achim" shelter in Tel-Aviv area, claim to have been forced to become orthodox jews by the Charedi (Ultra Orthodox Jew) activists. One of the women tells that as a condition to her stay in the shelter, she was required to break the relations with her daughters, who were born to an Arab father. Another woman says that she was ordered to color her hair. All of them report that they were not allowed to miss the classes on Jewish religion given by the female rabbi. The shelter operates under the supervision of the Israeli ministry of social affairs, and the women are directed to it by an emergency hotline for battered women. One of the women said this week: "Sometimes I think that it was better to be killed by my husband". Lev-La-Achim's response: "The number of petitions indicates the need to rescue these women from the terrible distress they are in."

By Mariana Olitzky

 

Battered women, sheltering in a shelter in Tel-Aviv area, claim to have been forced to become orthodox Jews in order to get help. The shelter, specialized in dealing with women whose partners are of Arab origin, is managed by a Charedi organization, "Lev La-Achim", and is under the supervision of the Israeli ministry of social affairs. Lev La-Achim organization, which employs activists from the Lithuanian Jewish community, is known as fighting against intermarriage between Jews and Arabs, and as making efforts to bring secular Jews back to religious orthodox life.

Evidences arriving to "Tel-Aviv" newspaper show that women who reached the shelter after being physically abused in their homes and in a distressed psychological state, were forced to commit to maintain a Charedi form of life. Some, who did not meet this requirement, were not allowed to stay in the shelter. Testimonies further indicate that some of the women who were expelled from the shelter, have even returned to the same dangerous surrounding they had escaped from.

 

Anat's story

Anat (all names are fabricated for privacy reasons), daughter of a battered mother, grew up in the north of Israel, and was hanging out on the streets since she was 10. The first man she ever met was an Arab youngster, 8 years older then her.

After a short relationship she become pregnant with his child and married him when she was hardly 18 years old. "The beating started almost immediately", she tells us this week, "when my firstborn son was six months old, it was the first time I went out for a shelter, but my husband located me and convinced me to come back home. But even after I came back, nothing changed".

Anat hoped that baring more children will contribute to her relationship with her husband, but the beating continued even after she gave birth to her fourth child. He was beating her, and she kept silent.

At the end of 2000, after 20 years of marriage, the cycle of silence was broken. According to what she says, her husband found a love letter addressed to their daughter, and went wild.

Anat recalls the moments that lead her to leave home: "My daughter was taken to a house of a relative. At home, my husband took two huge knives in his hands and started to whet them. He yelled at me: "This is your end". I wend upstairs, packed some clothes, took my little boy and ran away to an abandoned warehouse. I applied to an emergency line and I told them I will not leave without my daughter. The police became involved, I issued a complaint, the daughter was located and the hotline notified me that they will arrange a shelter for me. Then someone called me who introduced himself as Zeev Shtiglitz, general manager of Lev La-Achim association, and said that he had a shelter and that someone will come to take us".

Anat, her daughter and son came to the association's shelter, which is operating under the ministry of social affairs in Tel-Aviv. According to Anat, at the very entrance to the shelter, the activists gave them prerequisites about what they should wear and how they should behave. "They forced us to wear skirts and observe Sabbath. My daughter, who was raised in a Muslim surrounding, found it very hatd to accept. I called the hotline again and again, but they told me: ‘Now you are far away from violence, and this is what there is'. At the shelter they were constantly brainwashing me: ‘Your daughter is Jewish, because you are Jewish'. I said, ‘my daughter is old enough to decide what she is, but they were angry about this, and they were mad when she kept on speaking in Arabic with her brother.

"I took the boy to a Jewish school, immediately. He was young and he rapidly adapted. But the daughter, who was a very good student, just before graduation exams, was losing a lot of material. I insisted that they will arrange a school for her. They tried to have her registered to the "Ulpena" (Jewish ourthodox girls' high school). After two months, as I saw nothing is going anywhere, I started to shout and threaten that I will apply a Muslim sect to help me, because the children are Muslim.

"I was very angry, and they told me that they cannot keep on holding me here like that. They explained: "Your daughter meets Arab girl friends and she is in a relationship with an Arab guy, and this will not do". I told them that these are the friends of my daughter and that here, inside the shelter, she observes the rules and Sabbath, but it is impossible to force her to break up with her friends".

Five months after arriving at the shelter, she says, Anat was given a document, carrying the following header: "Conditions for Anat's or her daughter's stay in the Shelter". The condition she was required to sign was, among others: Absolute separation between her and her daughter, so that only one of them can stay in the shelter. The daughter was required to state in court that she is not interested to study in an Arabic school anymore, to break up with her Arabic boyfriend and not to be in touch with any other man. Furthermore, in the document Anat was forbidden to address her husband or her firstborn son, or any other person or authority in the Arabic sector in request for help.

Anat refused to sign, and this is why, as per her, she was requested to leave the shelter. For several months she was wondering between shelters and apartments throughout the country. Her daughter stopped her school studies, and told her mother that she will get married in order to solve their problem. Anat prohibited her daughter to wed, and recently they returned to reside in the center of the country, after being entitled to receive the guaranteed minimal income.

Anat: "I saw my daughter walking the same path I did, and standing in the same place I did 20 years ago, and I didn't want her to do it".

Two weeks ago, because of so many difficulties, especially financial hardhips, the daughter ran away from the rented apartment and returned to her father's, despite the fear for her life. It took Anat more than a week to locate her and contact her with the help of the local police.

Anat: "At her father's she has a furnished room, in a big nice house, there are horses and there are wide open spaces. Here we don't even have a stove, the washing machine doesn't work and my boy has to do his homework on the floor. These days, sometimes I'm not sure I made the right move when I applied for the shelter".

 

Michal's and Ilanit's stories

Michal, a youngster in her twenties, grew up in the south of Israel. "I was living in a neighborhood where there were many girls who went out with Arabs", she says, "and one day I met Omar. I was less than 16 years old and he was 19. After a certain period he told me that he fell in love with me. One day he saw me talk to another man, and started beating me. He let me know that if he will see me talk to another man, he will "take me out". I agreed to be his girlfriend, because back at home things were shitty: My father was a former drug addict, my mom was a housewife.

"Our sexual relations were by force. He entangled me in criminal acts. I was arrested because of things he did, but he threatened me and prohibited me of speaking. I was threatened all the time, and beaten by him regularly. Once he aggressively shut the vehicle door on my legs. Sometimes he would take me to his village and lock me up there. All along this period I was afraid to complain, because I knew what would be the result.

"About a year ago I was contacted by an activist of Lev La-Achim association, who heard my story from a friend. He convinced me to move into a shelter of theirs in the center of the country. He tild me that if I do it my life will change, and he gave me a lot of hope. Of course I agreed immediately.

"I arrived to the meeting with Zeev Shtiglitz, and he brought me to the shelter. There they immediately promised me they will help me build a normal life. Four months have passed and nothing seemed to be moving. At the meantime, Omar started to irritate my little sister, Ilanit. He tried to locate me in any possible way. He started to follow her, waited for her at school, dragged her by her hair into his car, threatened her, tried to run over her, he told her that he hated all my family, and that if he could, he would kill us all one by one. I told Lev La-Achim about what was going on, and they arranged for my sister to stay in the shelter too.

Ilanit: "As soon as I arrived, they decided that I should register to an 'Ulpena' (Jewish religious girls' high school). I objected: ‘what does an Ulpena has to do with me?', but they forced me to visit several religious schools. They kept telling me: "It will be better for you in a boarding school'. In parallel, they told me I have to color my hair, (Ilanit's hair is colored to blond – M.O.), to stop putting on make-up, and to wear skirts and pantys.

"I asked them to stay as I was and to study in a regular school, but they insisted and defined me as ‘non-cooperative'. They were constantly telling me about 'the world to come' and about what will happen if I will continue to behave like this. I believed anything they said, and they really scared me. They said: "You must "Lachzor Betshuva" (become an Orthodox Jew) if you want to stay'.

"After a few months, Ilanit was called for recruitment to the Israeli army, and went back to her parents' house in the south for a few days. As said by her, the shelter refused to take her back, stating that she was already out of danger.

"My stay in the shelter was extended longer and longer", says Michal. "Mainly, they wanted to see if I am willing to become an orthodox Jew. One day I was hanging around the shelter rooms wearing training trousers. The manager caught me. An argument has developed, and at the end they made a staff meeting about the issue, and told me that if I don't agree with their terms I can simply take my things and leave. And with tears in my eyes, I said ok. I took my pocket money (each of the women in the shelter receives a few Shekels per day for her existence), and left".

Michal and Ilanit left the shelter and lived for a short period at Anat's, whom they met in the shelter, and then they moved to the apartment of another girl who was related to the shelter. As they say, about a month ago, Shtiglitz contacted them and told them he had an apartment for them.

Michal: "We went to see it. The apartment was small and ruined. We said we will take it, and he said that Ilanit had to go back to school, demanding that she will go to an orthodox boarding school in Jerusalem. Ilanit refused, and then Zeev forgot the apartment".

Three weeks ago Ilanit and Michal returned to their family in the south. Michal: "now we both sit inside the house and we are afraid even to come down. Omar heard that I'm back, and was hanging around the neighborhood. He hurt a friend of mine. Tomorrow he will see me in the street, drag me to the car and that's it. In Lev La-Achim they let me believe. They shouldn't have given us this hope. Sometimes I prefer that he kills me. This will only happen once, not a continuous fear".

 

Naama's story

Three years ago, 19 year old Naama met a 22 year old Bedouin, who was to become the father of her daughters. "Soon after we met", she says, "I was pregnant and the first daughter was born. We did not get married, obviously it was impossible. I didn't want to be converted to Islam, and he wouldn't even agree to speak about his being converted to Judaism. I lived with him in his village and it was hard for me. He treated me as if I was his wife. There was beating. Every time I ran away to my sister.

"At one occasion when I was in the village, my sister contacted an activist of Lev La-Achim, who contacted me. He told me about other girls in a similar situation, and persuaded me to move into a shelter. He picked me up from my sister's apartment and brought me to the shelter. There they told me: ‘We will put your life in order and everything will be ok – if you cooperate'.

I believed that they could help me out with an apartment, but the days passed and nothing happened. Every time I would approach the employees and ask what about a letter to the Ministry Of Construction and Housing, they would tell me they are working on it. They wanted to register my daughter to a Charedi (Ultra Orthodox Jewish) kindergarten. I didn't want that, and asked them to register her to a regular one. They told me: "Only on your account, including traveling costs". Finally they told me the girl was too young and that I'm not eligible for a kindergarten for her.

"They were holding religious classes with a female rabbi. I tried to avoid them, pretending to be asleep, but they were constantly threatening us that if we don't come to the classes they kick us out. And where could I go with two little girls? I had no choice".

"Three months ago, another girl and I went out, lost our way and came back at two o'clock in the morning. After this incident, I was told to leave. Nothing was done to the other girl, who "met the requirements" to become an orthodox Jew. They even arranged an apartment for her. As for me, they remembered to tell me that I'm eligible for help with the rent only the day I left. Only recently I saw the actual money in the bank account".

Naama returned to the town she came from, contacted the brother of her daughters' father, who rented an apartment for them. The father comes to the apartment almost every day. Naama: "Now he too realizes I have nowhere to go, and the problems will soon be back".

 

[Kulapavana]

Source: The Telegraph

Published: November 21, 2004

 

Powell 'pushed out' by Bush for seeking to rein in Israel

By Charles Laurence in New York and Philip Sherwell

(Filed: 21/11/2004)

 

Colin Powell, the outgoing US secretary of state, was given his marching orders after telling President George W Bush that he wanted greater power to confront Israel over the stalled Middle East peace process.

 

Although Mr Powell's departure was announced on November 15, his letter of resignation was dated November 11, the day he had a meeting with Mr Bush.

 

 

Colin Powell: the president's 'good cop'

According to White House officials, at the meeting Mr Powell was not asked to stay on and gave no hints that he would do so. Briefing reporters later, he referred to "fulsome discussions" - diplomatic code for disagreements.

 

"The clincher came over the Mid-East peace process," said a recently-retired state department official.

 

"Powell thought he could use the credit he had banked as the president's 'good cop' in foreign policy to rein in Ariel Sharon [israel's prime minister] and get the peace process going. He was wrong."

 

Bob Woodward, the veteran Washington reporter who was granted unprecedented access to the first Bush administration for his books Bush At War and Plan Of Attack, said last week that Mr Powell had been "dreaming" if he thought that he could stay on.

 

Vice-president Dick Cheney and his fellow hardliner, John Bolton, an under-secretary of state to Mr Powell, are both understood to have lobbied Mr Bush to replace him.

 

They wanted to make Iran's alleged nuclear bomb aspirations and support for Islamic terror groups the foreign policy priority for the new administration and believed that Mr Powell would back away from a confrontational approach.

 

The two are frustrated that Britain, France and Germany are still seeking a diplomatic deal with Teheran rather than backing an immediate UN Security Council resolution condemning Iran and threatening sanctions.

 

Mr Powell's final pitch to remain in office for at least another year was made during Tony Blair's visit to Washington nine days ago, The Telegraph has learned. Earlier indications had been that he intended to step down after enduring four years of clashes with the office of Mr Cheney and the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld.

 

Friends of Mr Powell later briefed journalists that he had changed his mind because he saw the chance of progress on the peace process and wanted to see through the Iraqi elections.

 

Mr Powell is to be replaced by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser and close confidante of Mr Bush.

 

Mr Bolton's predicted promotion as her deputy is a further signal that the president wants to conduct foreign policy without the "moderating" influence and popular public face of Mr Powell.

 

Prominent neo-conservatives in Washington make no secret of their desire for regime change in Teheran, although few believe that a full-scale military operation is a viable strategy.

 

Instead, the emphasis is on establishing economic sanctions as a means to squeeze the ruling mullahs. There is also the option that the US may tacitly back Israeli air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

 

The overhaul of the CIA under its new director, Porter Goss, a recent Bush appointee, is also intended to remove critics of America's foreign policy.

 

[Guest guest]

Abusing 'Anti-Semitism'

by Ran HaCohen

 

 

 

The eve of the Jewish New Year is an excellent occasion for what Jewish tradition calls Kheshbon Nefesh, or soul-searching on so-called "anti-semitism", which has now become the single most important element of Jewish identity. Jews may believe in God or not, eat pork or not, live in Israel or not, but they are all united by their unlimited belief in anti-semitism.

 

When a Palestinian kills innocent Israeli civilians, it's anti-semitism. When Palestinians attack soldiers of Israel's occupation army in their own village, it's anti-semitism. When the UN General Assembly votes 133 to 4 condemning Israel's decision to murder the elected Palestinian leader, it means that except for the US, Micronesia and Marshal Islands, all other countries on the globe are anti-semitic. Even when a pregnant Palestinian woman is stopped at an Israeli check-point and gives birth in open field, the only lesson to be learnt is that Ha'aretz journalist Gideon Levy – who reported two such cases in the past two weeks, one in which the baby died – is an anti-semite.

 

Anti-semitism is an all-encompassing explanation. Anything unpleasant to anti-Palestinian ears is just another instance of anti-semitism. Jewish consciousness focused on anti-semitism has taken the shape of anti-semitic conspiracy theories, like that of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion: whereas the anti-semitic classic relates every calamity to Jewish conspiracy, Jews relate to anti-semitic conspiracy every criticism of Israel. As we shall see, this is not the only similarity between anti-Palestinianism and anti-semitism.

 

It is high time to say it out loud: in the entire course of Jewish history, since the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BC, there has never been an era blessed with less anti-semitism than ours. There has never been a better time for Jews to live in than our own.

 

Up to just two generations ago, anti-semitism was a legitimate political and cultural attitude in most of the world's leading powers. Anti-semitism was something you could express openly, even be proud of. Disliking Jews was as natural then as detesting cockroaches is today. Nowadays, anti-semitism is a taboo and a criminal offence in every developed country on earth. Even truly anti-semitic groups deny their anti-semitic character, knowing it is politically unacceptable. Unlike earlier centuries, where anti-semitism stood in direct proportion to the number of Jews in the pertinent country and thus constituted a real threat to them, the countries where anti-semitism is still thriving today – mostly poor Muslim countries – are virtually empty of Jews, so that the actual danger to Jews there is minimal; representatives of Muslim communities in the West have to give up their anti-semitism as a precondition for entering the political system.

 

Just a few generations ago – the Holocaust aside for now – Jews were treated as second-class citizens in all major Jewish concentrations. They were denied civic and religious rights almost universally. There were limits on access of Jews to universities and many professions, to public service and to any position of power; sometimes even marrying and making children was dependent on quotas and licences. Such institutionalised discrimination and oppression is not only totally extinct today: it is utterly unimaginable. With one revealing exception (Israel, where non-orthodox religious Jews are discriminated against), Jews enjoy full religious freedom wherever they are. They have full citizenship wherever they live, with full political, civic and human rights like every other citizen. This may sound trivial, but it was not so just a few generations ago and throughout the entire first and second millennia. Repressive regimes have either collapsed, or their Jewish population has left them.

 

Nowadays, an orthodox Jew can run for the most powerful office on earth, the president of the United States (I personally hope he doesn't win). A Jew can be the mayor of Amsterdam in "anti-semitic" Holland, a minister in "anti-semitic" Britain, a leading intellectual in "anti-semitic" France, a president of "anti-semitic" Switzerland, editor-in-chief of a major daily in "anti-semitic" Denmark, or an industrial tycoon in "anti-semitic" Russia. None of this was imaginable a century ago. Jews have free and unlimited access to every institution in every country they live in; Ironically, a converted Jew is even mentioned as a possible successor to the Holy See. At the same time, "anti-semitic" Germany (home to the world's fastest-growing Jewish community) gives Israel three military submarines for free, "anti-semitic" France has proliferated to Israel the nuclear technology for its weapons of mass destruction, and "anti-semitic" Europe has welcomed Israel as a single non-European country to everything from football and basketball leagues to the Eurovision Song Contest, and has granted Israeli universities a special status for scientific fund-raising.

 

The Holocaust has been the greatest catastrophe in Jewish history and among the greatest crimes in human history – but the very fact that these words sound so obvious is a great victory on anti-semitism. The term genocide, coined by a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust (R. Lemkin) and modelled on the genocide of the Jews, has found its way to international legislation and been affirmed as a crime by almost all the countries on earth, including eventually (with a shamefully long delay) the US. The Holocaust has (justly!) become the prototype of genocide, a synonym for Crime against Humanity. There were several other genocides in the 20th century – enough to mention the Armenian genocide by Turks (which preceded and inspired the Holocaust) or the Tutsi genocide by Hutu in Rwanda (which was even more "efficient" than the Holocaust). However, while other genocides are still struggling even to be acknowledged, the Holocaust is the only genocide which is considered unquestionable to the extent that its denial is in some countries a criminal offence. No other genocide even comes close to the 250 memorial museums and research institutes dedicated to the Holocaust around the world, and no other genocide survivors have been financially compensated like the persecuted Jews. In such a world, whoever cries "anti-semitism" twice a day has an extremely heavy burden of proof to shoulder.

 

The State of Israel has always been cynically exploiting allegations of anti-semitism, condemning purported and cooperating with actual anti-semites at will. Last week, to quote just a minor example, when the world was outraged by Italy's monarch Berlusconi's claim that his fascist predecessor Mussolini "had not killed anybody but just sent people to holidays in exile" – which comes fairly close to Holocaust denial – the only official Israeli reaction was that of an unnamed spokesman for the 2nd Minister in the Ministry of Finance, who mumbled that "If the words have been said (!), one can not agree with them, since History speaks for itself" (Ha'aretz 14.9, p.12 bottom). The reason for this ear-deafening outcry is simple: Berlusconi, like most right-wing extremists, has taken a decisive pro-Israel stand in Europe. So let him even deny the Holocaust if he likes, Israel will show understanding. After all, Israel was a closest ally of the most racist regime in the post-WWII era, South Africa's Apartheid: moral considerations have never played any role whatsoever in Israel's politics and diplomacy.

 

On a state level, some may excuse it as Realpolitik. The institutionalised pro-Israel lobby has compromised its integrity to such an extent, that I won't be surprised if, say, the Anti-Defamation League, which cries anti-semitic wolf on a daily basis, now hails the fascist apologist Berlusconi as a distinguished statesman; Actually, precisely this world-record of hypocricy has taken place this very week. Much more disturbing is the intensive resorting to "anti-semitism" claims by Jewish individuals and institutions who do try to maintain a look of integrity.Such claims take many creative forms: for example, some Jews have a morally repulsive pastime of looking for worst cases of oppression – Russian atrocities in Chechnya (whose veterans, by the way, join the Israeli army), Chinese in Tibet – which supposedly "prove" that the media focus on Israel is anti-semitically motivated. As if it were not outrageous enough to be on the shortlist of evil-doers, as if only the gold medal in this satanic competition, but not bronze or silver, is worthy of protest. And I wonder how many of those arm-chair pro-Israel Tibet specialists ever bothered to actually do something to free Tibet, except for exploiting its suffering to distract from Israel's atrocities.

 

The abuse of alleged anti-semitism is morally despicable. It took hundreds of years and millions of victims to turn anti-semitism – a specific case of racism which led historically to genocide – into a taboo. People abusing this taboo in order to support Israel's racist and genocidal policy towards the Palestinians do nothing less than desecrate the memory of those Jewish victims, whose death, from a humanistic perspective, is meaningful only inasmuch as it serves as an eternal warning to the human kind against all kinds of discrimination, racism, and genocide.

 

Moreover, portraying the victimisers as victims – a standard characteristic of anti-Palestinian propaganda – is precisely what anti-semitism has always done: in blood-libels which portrayed defenceless Jewish victims as victimisers of Christian children, or in the ultimate accusation of Christ killing, which abused the persecution of early Christians to legitimate the persecution of Jews once the balance of power changed. Thus, evoking Jewish victims of the past to defend Jewish victimisers of the present –remember that Israel has one of the mightiest armies on earth – is a moral fault on a par with, and embarrassingly similar to, anti-semitism itself.

 

Happy New Year 5764.

 

– Ran HaCohen

 

 

 

[Kulapavana]

Source: The Asian Age India

Published: February 8, 2005 Author: Amulya Ganguli

For Education and Discussion Only. Not for Commercial Use.

 

 

The Holocaust Card

The Asian Age India | Amulya Ganguli

 

It might not be readily admitted, especially in the West, but the sorrow and sympathy for Jews on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Auschwitz death camp could not but have been tempered by the more recent history of the Chosen People.

 

Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm says that he hasn't found it easy to abide by his mother's advice that he "must never do anything … that might suggest that you are ashamed of being a Jew." Hobsbawm acknowledges that although he has "tried to observe it ever since … the strain of doing so is sometimes almost intolerable in the light of the behaviour of the government of Israel." His reference obviously was to the conduct of the Israeli government towards the Palestinians.

 

To be fair, the "intolerable" nature of this behaviour has been noted not only by the Israelis themselves but by some of the very people who are deputed by Tel Aviv to "deal" with the Palestinians — the armed forces. Not long ago, a group of Israeli pilots wrote to their government to say, "We, veteran pilots and active pilots … are opposed to carrying out illegal and immoral attacks of the type carried out by Israel in the (occupied) territories… We, who have been educated to love the state of Israel, refuse to take part in Air Force attacks in civilian population centres. We refuse to continue harming innocent civilians."

 

There have been other conscientious objectors, too, like a group of Army recruits who refused to "expel, destroy, blockade, assassinate, starve and humiliate an entire people." It is obvious, however, that these are no more than isolated voices. There is little doubt that a vast majority of the Israelis, including those of the Left, endorse the government's policy of harming innocent Palestinians and humiliating an entire people.

 

Tel Aviv, of course, justifies its stand on the grounds of terrorist attacks by the Palestinians, but ignores one of the root causes of the terrorist outrages, viz., not only the occupation of the Palestinian land for nearly four decades, but also its (mis)appropriation by the building of vast settlements to house the Jewish population. What Israel is pursuing, therefore, is an old-fashioned policy of colonialism along with a dose of apartheid borrowed from the white supremacists of South Africa by invading someone else's territory and, then, to add insult to injury, excluding the natives from the land because of their race.

 

It is in this kind of an attitude that it is possible to discern a link between the present-day Jews and their earlier tormentors, the Nazis. Just as the latter believed in their innate superiority over the Jews because of their Aryan lineage, the Jews, too, believe that they are the Chosen People to whom God has given the Biblical land of Palestine. This belief has always made the Jews intolerant of the other inhabitants, even if they were the original occupiers.

 

In his A History of the Jews, Paul Johnson says that "there are recurrent hints in the Bible that the Israelites had a feeling of guilt about taking the Cannanites' land," but that did not prevent them from "dispossessing or turning them (the Cannanites) into helots." The parallel with the Palestinians is obvious. What is less obvious is the mental somersault which made the Jews forget their tragic history of centuries of oppression not only in Nazi Germany but virtually throughout their stay in Europe and yet become virulent oppressors themselves the moment they secured a stable foothold in West Asia, courtesy the Big Powers.

 

In doing so, they even borrowed the Nazi habit of regarding the people they have displaced as untermenschen as is evident from Menachem Begin's description of Palestinians as "beasts walking on two legs." The resemblance with the Nazis was noted by none other than Winston Churchill, who told the House of Commons in 1944, "If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins' pistols and our labours for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently in the past."

 

The British minister for Syria and Lebanon at the time, Louis Spears, also found no difference between the rabid nationalism of the Zionists and that of the Nazis. The US President Harry S. Truman shared this view. "The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish," he said. "… when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog."

 

Today, the "new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany," who took over a "land without people" on behalf of a "people without land," are armed with the nuclear bomb. Nor are they shy about using it against the untermenschen. As the Jerusalem Post wrote, "We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible… And we must kill Yasser Arafat."

 

The prescription echoes what Hitler told the British foreign secretary, Lord Halifax (who was earlier Lord Irwin, the Viceroy of India), "Shoot Gandhi, and if that does not suffice to reduce them to submission, shoot a dozen leading members of the Congress; and if that does not suffice, shoot 200 and so on until order is established."

 

Lest this be considered too fanciful, listen to what Barbara Amiel, a director of the Jerusalem Post wrote, "I am increasingly of the terrifying view that this conflict in the Middle East is not amenable to a peaceful solution and can only be solved by the total victory of one side. This means that the Arabs annihilating the Israelis or the Israelis being forced to use every means, not excluding nuclear power, to defend themselves." The threat of a nuclear confrontation may be closer than what the world cares to admit because of the clear hints from both Israel and its mentors in Washington that neither would allow Iran to develop a nuclear capability.

 

It's probably only a toss-up now as to who will do the dirty job — the US or Israel, which "might well decide to act first and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards," as Dick Cheney has warned. If West Asia goes up in flames as a result, the Holocaust card, which Israel has played up now to hide its brutal occupation of Palestine, will lose its value. As Edward Said asked, "How long can … the Holocaust be used … to exempt Israel from arguments and sanctions against it for its behaviour towards the Palestinians?"