How can you be a Somali-loving Minnesotan WASP pastor and embrace Israel?

A Jewish friend writes: Did the world screw up in recognizing a Jewish homeland – Israel – in 1948, or was it wise to do so, creating a place for 6,000,000 Jews to be who otherwise might be causing all kinds of problems in America and Europe?

The establishment of this racial/tribal/religious ethnostate was the last gasp of the European impulse to spread its dominion over the world, which is why real cultural liberals have to hate it.

A Jewish friend says:

I wanted to weigh in on whether having a fractured Arab world benefits Israel.

Before that, I think it is important to distinguish between what constitutes Jewish interests in the United States and Canada from Jewish interests in Western Europe, from Jewish interests in Eastern Europe and Jewish interests in Israel. I am not sure that they are at all the same.

If you study the history of the modern state of Israel as a dispassionate observer, it is pretty clear that it is a colonial state. It was founded and originally populated by Jews primarily from Eastern Europe, later with a large influx from Arab countries. The Jews displaced a native Arab population, that now calls itself Palestinian, but that simply designates the area they are from.

If you believe that God promised the land to the Jews, then none of this makes any difference, but that is not the sort of argument that one makes to people who are not so religiously inclined or sympathetic to that religious view (that is to say Christian Zionists.)

Because Israel has always been in a situation where it has a large restive internal population and until it signed a peace treaty with Egypt, at war not only with its neighbors but with its neighbor’s neighbors, its policies have always been expedient and the country has exploited Arab weakness with superior tactics, but without much of a strategic vision and certainly without attempting to implement any long term strategy for the country’s survival.

Israel benefits from having stability in neighboring countries, if those countries have a government that wants peace with Israel. Egypt is the perfect example of this. It served Israel to have the country have an authoritarian government, be it led by Sadat, Mubarak or no Al-Sissi. Egypt is desperately poor, and unlike Sadat’s predecessor Nasser, these men have not been demagogues seeking to divert frustration over lack of jobs and food into antagonism toward Israel. To go to Egypt’s neighbor, Libya, I don’t think Israel wanted its stability affected. If what happened to Libya happened to Egypt it would be a disaster for Israel. Israel could launch punitive raids on the Islamic fundamentalists, but much better to have the government reign them in and to be held responsible than to have unaccountable militias launch small scale attacks.

Syria and Iraq actually pose different threats to Israel. Both were relatively secular Baathist regimes. In both cases a member of a minority held power, Assad as an Alawite in Syria, Hussein as a Sunni in a Shia majority Iraq. (In fact, only a minority can effectively govern. A majority would snuff out the rights of the minorities, something that those who supported deposing Assad seem to forget.) Israel would much rather have antagonistic regimes be strictly Islamist than be ones that protect the minority. The strict Muslim governments would have less support in the West. Even Obama recognizes this in his willingness to deal with Iran which still has a large population of Christians, and smaller populations of BaHai’s and Jews.

I don’t think Israel thinks it makes any difference in a military senses whether Hussein or Assad are in power. Neither was in a position to militarily threaten Israel. Syria did fight Israel in 1967 and 1973 but its two allies in the 67 war and its one ally in 73 both made peace with Israel. Assad is a realist and knows that by attacking Israel he is signing his own death warrant.

There has been a strain in the Israeli government since at least 1967 that believes that Jordan, which has a majority Palestinian population, should depose its monarchy and become a Palestinian state, but pretty much most Israelis have been happy with the status quo first under King Hussein and now under his son King Abdullah.

I don’t think that if the Arabs weren’t involved in infighting that they would devote their resources to building war machines to challenge Israel or to fight Israel out of solidarity with their Palestinian brothers, but many Israelis would disagree with me.

Israelis have exploited and will continue to exploit factions within the Palestinians when they see if giving them a short term tactical advantage. It has been widely reported and I think accepted that Israel provided material support to Hamas when it first was organized because they wanted to split the Palestinians. Of course, they are not happy with Hamas which has proven to be a pretty intractable and resilient opponent of Israel. But you might want to imagine what it would be like for Israel if the Palestinians both in the West Bank and Gaza and those who are refugees all accepted the PLO as their legitimate government and representative. So in that sense, at least as regards the Palestinians, it serves Israel’s interest to keep them fractious.

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R. Eliyahu Fink Leaves Pacific Jewish Center

Rabbi Fink posts on FB: This coming week (Vayikra) will be my last week as the rabbi of Pacific Jewish Center | The Shul on the Beach. To send us off, the Shul is planning a community luncheon and we would love for you to join us.
When our landlord gave us 60 days notice, it gave us a chance to reevaluate our lives and we decided it was time to move on.
We part ways with the Shul on excellent terms. It’s been an incredibly life-changing 6.5 years and I will always be grateful for the opportunity to have been the rabbi of such a historic shul and special community. I have learned so much about myself and others, but above all, I have built memories, friendships, and relationships that will be a part of me forever. The time has come to move on and we are very excited about the bigger and better things ahead.
The Orthodox Jewish community really does not have anything like The Shul on the Beach. A traditional Orthodox service that is accessible and can appeal to people from all backgrounds and perspectives. A place without judgment and a place of warmth and comfort. A place of conscious living and personal growth. A place where everyone belongs. I have been asked about bringing “The Beach to Beverlywood“ – among other places – and I am eager and excited to accept this challenge.
Thank you to all of who I met at The Shul on the Beach or at our home in Santa Monica. To those of you who hoped to visit or meet at The Shul on the Beach, of course we would love for you to join us the Next Thing. Meanwhile, The Shul on the Internet lives on.
Fittingly, we just completed the Book of *Exodus* with these words:
!חזק חזק ונתחזק

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Hmmm

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Hate Speech Not Banned On Campus

Blog post: In light of all the “shocked, shocked, I tell you” reactions to the video 0f an Oklahoma frat house’s racist chant, I pulled up some other instances of “hate speech” at American universities that somehow passed muster.

None of the people in these cases was in their teens, none was drunk, none was speaking to a private group of like-minded associates, as the Oklahoma boys were.

1. A black activist and visiting professor at North Carolina State University addressed a Howard University Law school panel in 2005 and advocated exterminating all white people on the planet as the only solution to black problems.

2. After the Washington Navy Yard shootings, a tenured professor at the University of Kansas tweeted that he hoped that the next shooting victims would be the sons and daughters of the NRA (National Rifle Association) since, in his view, they were responsible for the Navy Yard massacre.

He was put on indefinite leave, the only one on this list who was punished.

3. In 2012, Dr. Richard Parncutt advocated the death penalty for influential deniers of global warming.

4. In 2001, Mary Daly, a feminist professor at Boston College, advocated an evolutionary process that would result in a drastic reduction in the male population, as the only way to “decontaminate” the world.

5. Pete Singer, renowned bioethicist, argued in a published book thatKilling a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person,” and “Sometimes it is not wrong at all.” Princeton gave him tenure in 1998.

6. The chairwoman of the University of Michigan’s Communications department wrote an oped whose first line was “I hate Republicans.” Further on in the piece, she referred to what she felt as “loathing.”

7. University of Rhode Island history professor Erik Loomis said this about the National Rifle Association’s executive vice-president, Wayne LaPierre: “I want Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick.”

8. Rutgers University professor and poet Amiri Baraka has written, “”I got the extermination blues, jew-boys….” and “We want dagger poems in the slimy bellies of the owner-Jews.”

None of the views expressed above (even number 7, which was surely an actionable threat) received any serious punishment, except no. 2.

However, the next two views did get a swift and severe response from the university:

9. A tenured professor at Marquette University (a Catholic university, mind you) was fired for having criticized a graduate student who refused to allow any opposing view on gay marriage in her classroom.

10. An offer of tenure at the University of Illinois was rescinded after the candidate tweeted angry comments about Israel’s Gaza offensive in the summer of 2014.

So what’s the distinction between the first eight incidents and the last two?

The first eight all conform to the larger goals of the New World Order elites; the last two constitute obstacles to those goals.

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R. Meir Kahane’s Final Book: Revolution Or Referendum

I searched Wiesenthal.com, the website of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, for “Kahane” and found no results.

Rabbi Kahane wrote:

“There must be a police station in every Israeli Arab village if growing Arab nationalism is to be effectively countered.”

These were not the words of some Arab-haling racist, but of the chief of the Israeli police, Davis Kraus testifying before the Knesset Interior Committee on August I, 1989. And Interior Committee chairman Yehoshua Matza adds, “Israel Arabs must be warned that if they continue their militant behavior they will bring on themselves a repetition of the 1948 tragedy.” Strange words for leaders of an Israel that boasts, regularly of Jewish-Arab coexistence.
Or consider what happened at a farewell party for the outgoing head of the Southern Command, Major General Yitzhak Mordechai, on July 30, 1989. In the presence of Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Chief of Staff Dan Shomron and other senior military officers, Haya Samir is invited to sing for the patricians. Samir, the only female Arab who ever served in the army and who was the soloist for the Southern Command entertainment troupe, is General Mordechai’s favorite singer. And so, the generals and officers and Israeli Jews sit back to enjoy their favorite Arab when she bursts into what the papers will later call, “The Intifada song.” In it she speaks of “fate-stricken people,” and “prisoners for execution” and “hungry for justice and chewing hate.”
A number of officers walked out while later a senior officer says: “I am shocked…”
Shocked. I too, but I am shocked that the Israeli general is shocked. For that speaks volumes for the deliberate blindness and refusal to understand anything about the Arabs of Israel. It symbolizes the “plantation” Sabra who smiles tolerantly at “his” Arabs and proclaims them happy content and loyal. One gapes, open-mouthed in awe, at the refusal to understand that the Arabs of Israel hate the Jews who, they believe, stole the land from them. One is stupefied at the inability or unwillingness to grasp the immutable, unbridgeable gap and contradiction between the very concept of a Jewish state and political equality for Arabs within it.
As a corollary to the myth that a Jewish State can also be a western democratic one, giving non-Jews exactly the kinds of equal rights possessed by Jews, is the delusion of “coexistence between Jews and Arabs.” And as part and parcel, of that picture of smiling, handholding Jews and Arabs, is the fiction of Arab loyalty to the State of Israel as transcending their Arabism. Nonsense!
It is not Arabs of the liberated lands, Judea-Samaria-Gaza, who are the ultimate threat, who are the essence of the problem. For those who call themselves “Palestinians,” are not to be found only in the territories. More than 750,000 of them live within the State of Israel-the Jewish State-itself They are the Arabs of Israel, who see themselves as “Palestinians,” who identify with the “Palestinian” people, who hate Israel and who see it as a robber, alien state that sits on a large part of what to them is really “Palestine.”
The Arabs of Israel are the reality of the worst nightmare imaginable for the liberal Jews of Israel (and the world). They exemplify the immutable contradiction between Zionism and a Jewish State on the one hand, and Western democracy and political equality on the other. The Arabs of Israel represent the most terrible threat to the intellectual stability of the western, modern Jew who so desperately created the myth in which he so desperately needed to believe, the myth that Judaism and democracy, Jewishness and Western values, are the same, are compatible, walk hand-in-hand. Of course that is nonsense, and Judaism and the very concept of a Jewish state differ radically totally, from Western civilization’s concept of democracy with its absolute political equality for all, regardless of religion or national background. And of course, that is horrible and a nightmare for the Western Jew. For if it is true that there is a contradiction here, then he must choose-and that is too unbearable. If it is true, then his life has been one huge intellectual lie-and that is anguish too awful to contemplate.
Sad. But it changes nothing. The truth remains. There is a basic, substantive contradiction between Judaism and Western culture, in entire areas of major ideas. And most specifically there is an unbridgeable conflict, utter contradiction, between Zionism, per Se, be it of the most secular or Left kind, and Western democracy.
Modern day Zionism arose in order to create a Jewish State. And a Jewish State was the dream of a people that had suffered unspeakable horrors and persecution as a minority in every land, and who now sought to cast off the role. The Jew no longer trusted the gentile, no longer sought tolerance for himself as a minority He wished to be a majority in his own land. That is Zionism, that is the concept of a Jewish State: A state in which the Jew will always control his own destiny will always be the captain of his own ship. And that can only be when and if the Jew is the majority. And so Zionism demands a permanent Jewish majority.
But that is not Western democracy. Western democracy is based on the concept of the equality of all people, of the right of one person to one vote-regardless of his ethnic, national or religious origin. According to Western democracy if the Arab will sit peacefully and quietly and become the majority, he has the absolute right to vote to shape the country in the way he sees fit, just as the Jews did when they were the majority. He can vote to change the character of Israel from a Jewish state to a Palestinian state, just as the Jews originally characterized it in the manner they saw fit. Under Zionism, of course, this is anathema. There can never be any change in Israel as the Jewish State, no matter what. It can never belong to the Arabs; it belongs to the Jewish people, including those of Boston.
Is there a contradiction between Zionism, Judaism, and a Jewish state on the one hand and Western democracy and equality for all people, on the other? Of course. And it is that terrible contradiction which can never be solved, that drives the schizophrenic Jew into spiritual agony and mental torture.
For years, he attempted to deceive the world, other Jews, himself into believing that democracy was compatible with Zionism. As long as the Arabs were few in numbers and backward, he succeeded. But that is long since gone. The Arab birthrate today is enormous. The mad Jew pays from National Insurance for each Arab baby born (until the age of 18, and one does not know whether to laugh or cry upon reading of the Israeli Bedouin Arab, father of 48 children-from six wiveswho collects 48 checks every month from suicidal Jews).
Meanwhile, Jews have 30,000 abortions a year and, in general, secular Jews have less children than required to regenerate the population, the average in North Tel Aviv’s liberal Ashkenazi area being 1.5 dogs to each child. And one adds to that the fact that Aliyah (immigration to Israel) is a total failure, a myth, with few Jews coming to Israel and many more leaving. (Indeed, the last weapon of Zionism is the US immigration quota. If the gates of America would be opened, hundreds of thousands of Israelis would be clamoring to enter the Golden Land. So much for the success of secular Zionism.)
The question is, what will happen in five years? Ten years? Twenty years? 1-low many Arabs will be living inside the Jewish State of Israel? I-low long will it remain the Jewish State of Israel? Know that already today the Galilee has a majority of Arabs. When one travels in the western Galilee, he is in an area that is more than 70% Arab. When one travels on the Acre-Safed road, except for Carmiel, there is not one sizeable Jewish settlement. The western Galilee is “Palestine”. Indeed, northern Israel, touching on Lebanon and Syria, is Israel’s budding Northern Ireland.
And what of the Triangle? Just behind the Israeli coastal plain, wherein live nearly Mo-third of Israel’s Jews, lies the Triangle. Just 10 kilometers from the coast, behind such Jewish cities as Petach Tikva and Kfar Saba and Ra’anana and Netanya and Herzylia, lies a total Arab mass. Towns and cities like Baka-alGarbia, Tayba, Tira, Kfar Kassem, the Wadi Ara area with its city of Um-alFaham (where the fundamentalist Moslems hold sway). More than 200,000 Israeli Arabs controlling the hinterland of the Israeli coast line.
And so, the fraud of the frenetic liberal-left axis. “Give up the territories so that we can have a Jewish Israel.” Aside from the obvious question to this “racist,” liberalleft cry, i.e.: “In a democratic humanist’s mind, what is the difference if the Arabs or Jews are the majority,” there is also the fraud that is blatant. Assuming that we do give up Judea-Samaria-Gaza-what does that gain us? Twenty years? For by then the Galilee and the Triangle will pose the same demographic threat as the territories do today. What do we do then? Give up the Galilee?
The Triangle? Shall we be left with a Jewish state on both sides of Tel Aviv’s Yarkon River? The Arabs of Israel wait, give birth, and hate. Let us end the nonsense of the myth of the “good Arab”.
Let us end the contempt of the Jew for the Arab that lies in the very question: “But are there no good Arabs?” How much contempt and shallowness lie in that absurd question! ‘Are there no good Arabs?” Of course, there are good Arabs. They are all good Arabs. The problem with liberal and leftist Jews is that they have not the slightest idea what a “good” Arab is. A good Arab is exactly like a good Jew. A good Jew is one who believes that Israel belongs to the Jewish people. Now you know what a good Arab is; yes, one who believes that it belongs to the Arab people. Why is the liberal Jew so obtuse? Clearly because he is too terrified to see the truth.
For years we deceived ourselves. For years, Jews would raise money at breakfasts, luncheons, dinners or suppers, by listening to some UJA or JNF functionary (or perhaps even an Israeli Cabinet Minister) proclaim: “We came to the land, found a desert and turned it into a garden” And Jews choked up and wrote checks in honor of the chalutzim (the pioneers) and others who drained swamps and cleared the wasteland. But if one were to attempt to tell that to an Arab, the latter would surely reply: “True. But it was my desert. Now it is your garden.”
How unpleasant, how unsettling, how agonizing to even semi-thinkers! But true. For years, the contempt of Jewish leftists and liberals for Arabs was stupefying. The myth of the happy Israeli Arab, so much better off than the Arabs of Iraq or Egypt. We have given them electricity and indoor toilets and now they sit happily Grateful. Loving us. What contempt! Is there one person with a shred of respect for himself who believes that Arabs will trade their national pride for electricity or indoor toilets? Not by bread alone does the Arab live. He is proud; he is a nationalist: and he believes that Jews are thieves-who stole his land. Is there one normal Jew who believes that there is even one Israeli Arab who enjoys living in a state that is called the “Jewish State?” The number of Arabs who enjoy that is exactly equal to the number of Jews who would enjoy it if America ever became a Christian State.
And is there even one Arab who enjoys singing his national anthem, Hatikva, with the words, “the soul of a Jew yearning”? How this speaks to him! And when it concludes with, “the hope of 2,000 years,” does the Arab break down and remember how his ancestors waited 2,000 years for the Jew to come home? Or does Hatikva mean “the dream”, and it was certainly that for the Jews. But for the Arab it was a nightmare. And on Independence Day in Israel, do Arabs rush happily into the streets to celebrate their defeat?
And yet, the terrified and shallow Jew persisted all these years in wishing to believe this nonsense. Either because he was too shallow to see the truth, or too frightened to wish to face it.
To believe that two people, both of whom claim title, ownership and sovereignty over a land, can live together without violence and bloodshed, is to fly in the face of reality All over the world national, ethnic, religious and language differences divide peoples and lead to war and bloodshed. In Northern Ireland, in Sri Lanka, in India, in Bulgaria, in Iraq, in the Philippines, in Senegal, in Tibet, in Spain, in Corsica, in Belgium, in tens of other places throughout the world, people who differ only in ethnicity or religion or language, are at each other’s throats. But liberals and leftists would have us believe that Jews and Arabs who differ in religion, national background, language, culture-everything-can share the land. Jews can live with Arabs who cannot live with themselves – Madness!
The truth is that the Arabs of Israel call themselves Palestinians, hate Israel, and wait for the moment of truth. Not only is their population growth enormous (even as entire cities like Acre, Jaffa, Lydda, Ramie, lower Haifa, become Arab) but thanks to the mad Jew, the Arab today is qualitatively different from his father and grandfather. From 110,000 mostly illiterate Arabs in 1948, thanks to the insanity of the Jews, there are now 750,000 educated ones. And one listens to the Cabinet Ministers and Knesset Members boasting of the educational progress they have given the Arabs, and we know that we are in the hands of madmen. We are proud that we have educated them? We beam at the thought that 4,000 Arabs study in Israel’s universities? Have we become total cretins? Who will be leaders of the PLO tomorrow if not the educated ones? Is it not obvious to all but the dullest of dullards that the revolution never comes from the numb and the dumb but rather from the educated? With our own hands and money (from the American Friends of Hebrew University or Tel Aviv U. or Haifa U. or Ben Gurion U.) we are creating the intellectual and political leaders who will attempt to wipe us out, Mind-boggling!

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Michael Douglas Probes The Mysteries Of The Universe

Michael writes for the LATimes.com:

Dylan’s experience reminded me of my first encounter with anti-Semitism, in high school. A friend saw someone Jewish walk by, and with no provocation he confidently told me: “Michael, all Jews cheat in business.”

Where on earth would anyone get the idea that Jews are dishonest in business? Why is the word ‘Jew’ synonymous with dishonesty for hundreds of millions of people? Bizarre.

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A People That Shall Dwell Alone

A friend says: I finished Kevin MacDonald‘s A People That Shall Dwell Alone. I had no idea that Haredim hated red haired dudes so much!

He wrote it in early 90s, and does not / did not see or foretell how massive Jewish – Gentile marriage would be among non-Haredi Jews. He also failed to understand that the rising demo of Jews, the Haredim, are incapable of lording over gentiles because they raise their kids to be incapable of interacting with the broader culture, denying them even Mexican level education

There is a quote or two that I found funny. Haredi men with red hair say it is hard to find a mate because red hair is said to not look Jewish.
Also, this sentence that I jotted down: “In looking at photographs of groups of Haredim one is struck by their almost clone-like degree of phenotypic resemblance.”
Yup to that. Especially the girls. They all look like sisters or first cousins. Because often they are the product of highly consanguineous marriages.
These people will go the way of Jews living in Muslim lands. Impoverished and viewed with disgust by the broader culture, even if they are not persecuted for their beliefs (far from it).
In NY, these kids leave school barely knowing what a 10 year old Mexican knows, apart from Toyreh.

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Are you reading too many books by straight white men?

Chaim Amalek writes:

Reading this article (in part) led me to a new acronym that all of you should learn, as the ***** who control our culture are certain to seize upon it: “QUILTBAG- QUILTBAG is an acronym. It stands for Queer/Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender/Transsexual, Bisexual, Allied/Asexual, Gay/Genderqueer. It is meant to be a more inclusive term than GLBT/LGBT and to be more pronounceable (and memorable) than some of the other variations or extensions on the GLBT/LGBT abbreviation.” (The Queer Dictionary)

“The main characters… will be part of the QUILTBAG, neuro-diverse, disabled, from non-Western cultures, people of color, or in some other way not the typical straight, white, cis-gendered, able-bodied characters we see all over the place.” – from a Kirkus Reviews synopsis of an SFF anthology…

If Chaim Amalek were starting all over, this is where he would plant the pole of his flag.

Straight white Christian men need to establish their own publishing houses.

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University Of Washington’s Simpson Center Puts Israel In The Dock

Edward Alexander writes:

“In the modern world, the Jew has perpetually been on trial; still today the Jew is on trial, in the person of the Israeli – and this modern trial of the Jew, this trial which never ends, begins with the trial of Shylock.”

– Philip Roth, Operation Shylock (1993)

Although we live in a new Dark Age in which millions of people are assaulted daily with some version of the argument that the misfortunes of the world are to be explained in terms of “Israel,” the University of Washington’s Simpson Center has decided to add its two cents worth of calumny with a “research cluster” entitled “Palestine and the Public Sphere.”

Its first featured speaker is Omar Barghouti, a stalwart of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to expel Israel from the family of nations; its three UW “faculty contacts” – Sandra Silberstein, Eva Cherniavsky, and Anis Bawarshi – are all (like Simpson director Kathleen Woodward) English professors.

The allegations against Israel brought by academic boycotters are countless, and make the tiny country – that “[expletive] little country,” as a French diplomat who unzipped his mouth in public said some years ago – guilty of every evil on the planet with the exception of avian flu. But let us examine their favorite one: Israel is an “apartheid” state. According to the Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, “All academic exchanges with Israeli academics…have the effect of normalizing Israel and its politics of occupation and apartheid.”

On every American campus that deems itself “progressive” there is an Israel Apartheid Week each spring. For days on end the self-declared friends of the human species spew fire and vitriol at the Jewish state and call for its elimination, so that the globe may be Judenstaatrein (purified of a Jewish state).

There have never been apartheid laws in Israel. Jews and Arabs use the same buses, clinics, government offices, theaters, restaurants, soccer fields, and beaches. (Did I fail to mention universities in my list? Here is Mr. Barghouti to remind me: his academic institution of choice for pursuing a Master’s degree in philosophy was Tel Aviv University, of the nation he paints as irredeemably biased.)

All citizens of Israel, regardless of religion or ethnic origin, are equal before the law. That law accords full political, civil, and human rights to all people, including the more than one million Arab citizens, some of whom serve in the Israeli parliament and cabinet. Israel is also the only country in the world to have sought out and brought to its shores, entirely on its own initiative, tens of thousands of black Africans for purposes other than slavery, granting them full citizenship. There is, to be sure, extreme and murderous racial and religious discrimination in the Middle East – have BDSers assessed the causes of the 130,000 killed and 20 million refugees from nearby Syria? – so much so that Israel is nearly the only state in the region where “apartheid” is not practiced in some form.

The Simpson Center has for many years been zealous in sponsoring or co-sponsoring peripatetic Israel-haters. In 2008, in an act of depraved malevolence, Simpson marked Israel’s 60th birthday by bringing to campus, with help from the Graduate School, Norman Finkelstein, the dream-Jew of the world’s anti-Semites, and Yitzhak Laor, a second-tier Israeli poet who specializes in depicting his country as the devil’s experiment station.

Lest there be any doubt about where Woodward’s Simpson Center stands in relation to the campaign to demonize Israel, it shamelessly recommends, as its model of scholarship in this area for “depth, tenor, and thoughtfulness,” the scandalous tract by yet another English professor, Jacqueline Rose, called The Question of Zion. A critic of the psychoanalytic persuasion, Rose has put Zionism on the couch in a way that gives some support to those who claim that psychoanalysis is the disease it purports to cure. She depicts mass murderers as “people driven to extremes,” rhapsodizes about bonding with Islamist fanatics, lashes out against “those wishing to denigrate suicide bombers and their culture.”

“Appalled at what the Israeli nation perpetrated in my name,” Rose wishes to live “in a world in which we did not have to be ashamed of shame” and looks forward to curing her shame-sickness by destroying its cause: Israel. The book’s level of scholarship is exemplified in the following sentence: “It was the same Paris performance of Wagner. . .that inspired Herzl to write Der Judenstaat [the Jewish State], and Hitler Mein Kampf.” (Is there a normally attentive junior high school student who would not laugh at this historical absurdity?)

Careful observers of the organizations that strive to demonize Israel will notice the frequency with which they trot out what Kafka called “Display Jews” like Rose. One hesitates to call such Jews self-haters because so many of them are sick with self-love. They become Jews by virtue of the (much-advertised) fact that they are not Zionists.

Perhaps a cautionary and charitable note of warning, especially to the English professors among them, is in order. Stoking the fires of Jew-hatred is a risky business because the flames quickly get out of control. Jew-haters are notoriously poor at distinguishing between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews. Like poor Cinna, the unfortunate poet in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar who is mistaken by the “firebrands” come to avenge their murdered emperor, insisting that he is not “Cinna the conspirator,” they will find it useless to plead “I am Professor Rose the anti-Zionist! I am not Professor Rose the Zionist.” The killers – in Paris or Toulouse or Copenhagen – will nevertheless reply: “It is no matter. Tear her to pieces, she’s a Jew.”

About the Author: Edward Alexander is professor emeritus in the English department at the University of Washington and the author of a number of books including “The State of the Jews: A Critical Appraisal” (Transaction, 2012).

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Jewish DNA

Rabbi Philip Lefkowitz writes:

Dear Rep. Jan Schakowsky,

I take strong exception to your actions regarding the recent historic and enthusiastically received speech of Prime Minister Netanyahu before a joint meeting of Congress. I was hopeful that in the aftermath of his speech you would realize the folly of your ways in allowing yourself to be motivated by partisan politics – your well-known loyalty to the Obama administration. This has not happened.
Few members of the House or Senate, even fellow Democrats, boycotted the Prime Minister’s speech. You did. Many of those who said they would boycott the speech attended. You didn’t. Few members of the House or Senate made public negative statements regarding the Prime Minister’s speech after it was delivered. You did. Members of the Black Caucus who had threatened to walk out on the Prime Minister didn’t do so. Florida Democrat Corrine Brown a member of the Black Caucus praised the Prime Minister’s speech after it was given. You did the opposite. Yet you claim that “As a Jew, support for Israel is in my DNA.’”

I write not as your constituent, although I’m confident many in your constituency have already expressed to you their anger, shock and frustration regarding the stance you have taken against Prime Minister Netanyahu and the State of Israel. For as in our own nation, in any democracy, the duly elected leaders of the nation speak for that nation. Rather, I write as a fellow Jew and as a Rabbi regarding your claim of an innate support for the State of Israel in your DNA.

Let me suggest that having support for Israel in one’s DNA is always visibly apparent. I recall with crystal-clear clarity, the tears of pride and joy pouring down my grandmother’s wrinkled cheeks every time she had the opportunity to sing Hatikvah. Just seeing an Israeli flag unfurled in a parade brought a deep emotional reaction from her. And while I am not prone to crying in public, I always am overcome by deep emotion when having the privilege to see the “blue-and-white” proudly carried by a fellow Jew in public.

An episode in my youth is worth noting here. When Israel was but a fledgling nation, I recall a young man walking into our Conservative synagogue in a dark brown military uniform. A whisper began to go from congregant to congregant. He is in the Israeli military! People began walking over to him to greet him with a hearty and loving Shabbat Shalom. Extending their hand and embracing his was a privilege deeply relished by each and every person in attendance. The tumult resulted in the Rabbi pausing services for a moment, asking everyone to return to their respective seats and announcing we will all have the Zchut, merit, to personally greet our honored guest at the Kiddush following services. Each and every person lined up to shake this young Israeli’s hand and to thank him for his heroism in protecting the Jewish State. Many stood in line with tears pouring down their face as they realized that were we to have had our own nation and army just a few years earlier, 6 million of our people would not have died in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany. Indeed the Prime Minister took the unusual step of speaking before Congress because 6 million Jews residing in the state of Israel face the threat of extermination.

Congresswoman, you are not only a Jew, you occupy what is commonly known as the “Jewish” seat in the Illinois delegation which was for 50 years occupied by the outspoken advocate for Israel and the Jewish people – Congressman Yates. Your constituency, Jew and Gentile alike, expect you to be in the forefront of those who strongly and vociferously advocate for the State of Israel.

Three possible options presented themselves to you with regard to the Prime Minister’s speech. You could have been an outspoken supporter of that speech- a position your constituency would have wanted you to take. Alternatively, while harboring some negative feelings about the timeliness etc. of the speech, you could have kept them to yourself and as a Jew attended the Prime Minister’s speech. Finally, you could have, as you did, been an outspoken antagonist. The first two options bespeak a supporter of Israel in one’s DNA. The latter does not. I am confident the actions you have taken will long be remembered by your constituents.

As a Rabbi I urge you to give strong consideration to your relationship with your faith and your people. The wonders of medical science have resulted in our understanding the nature of our DNA and even being able to alter it to some degree for our physical benefit. I pray you do the same to your DNA altering it to be more reflective of the Jew’s support one should always demonstrate for the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

Respectfully,
Rabbi Philip Lefkowitz

About the Author: Rabbi Philip Lefkowitz is the rav of Agudas Achim North Shore Congregation in Chicago. During his 43 years in the rabbinate he has led congregations in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom and served as an officer, Executive Committee member and chair of the Legislative Committee of the Chicago Rabbinical Council.

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