I AM A JEW (PART XXVIII - Discussion 4)

As the title shows this is the 28th part (actually the 29^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on Part I and then scrolling upwards or by accessing the label I Am A Jew.

At this point I depart from my debate with Albert Nekimken to give other voices space.

Joel Wiener, of Falls Church, Virginia, reacted with this, after reading "I AM A JEW (PART XXV - Discussion)":

I am a bit overwhelmed by your essays and of course, I admire your search for the facts.  I'd like to comment on one of your replies: 

  "While I am very critical of Israel’s blatantly racist policies, I have always, and continue to support the concept of a Jewish state. Without, at this point, going into great detail, I think that the Nazi era, once and for all, showed that the world needs one state where Jews will always be welcome."

 But does modern Israel fulfill that promise, or does it rather create an opportunity for the world to see what it is like when Jews are in charge of such a state, and to conclude that they are fundamentally a racist and bullying people, and are therefore to be despised?   This troubles me, and the recent resurgence in overt anti-Semitism seems, in my mind, to correlate with the rise in power of the Israeli government and the rise in the use of military might by the Israelis against the Palestinians.    

 It seems to me that Jews have, for thousands of years, lived as a nomadic people who remain physically apart, but are bound together by their cultures and ethnicities, and yet many choose, to a certain extent, to assimilate.   In Israel, there seems to be less incentive to assimilate, so there has been a more dramatic rise in sects and polarization.   I suppose that Israel has not been in existence long enough, or I have not read enough to correct or adjust my perceptions, but you have and I'd like to hear your views about whether Israeli actions foment anti-Semitism.

To which I responded:

The short answer to “whether Israeli actions foment anti-Semitism” is yes, yet your questions raise some interesting and disturbing question that should not be disposed of so simplistically.

Much of what you say is true. But like all, or at least most things in life, there is a balancing act.

Let me break your questions into their component parts.

But does modern Israel fulfill that promise?

When it comes to the primary purpose for which it was formed, i.e. to be a haven for Jews fleeing oppression, the answer is a resounding, yes!

While it has attracted many American Jews, who were not fleeing persecution, “Aliyah”, particularly religious ones, it has been a haven for far more who were fleeing persecution, e.g. from the Arab states, though perversely, to a large extent their need to emigrate was caused by the creation of the State of Israel, since that creation made the Jews of the Arab/Muslim world, pariahs.

Even before Israel became a Nation, and despite attempts to prevent their entry into Palestine, many Jewish refugees succeeded in finding a haven there.

Many Jews who had come out of Nazi concentration camps, and who felt they could no longer live in the nations that were the hosts of their persecution, and who like the persecuted Jews before them, had no other place to go, found a haven in Israel.

The Russian Jews, persecuted by Stalin and his successors, too found a haven in Israel.

So the primary purpose for the founding of Israel was accomplished, and even more important if such persecutions arise again, e.g. in the US, Israel would be an essential haven.

or does it rather create an opportunity for the world to see what it is like when Jews are in charge of such a state, and to conclude that they are fundamentally a racist and bullying people, and are therefore to be despised?  

That is not a fair way to phrase the question! The Jewish State is in many ways better than innumerable states throughout the world, for they are legion. Many of them are Arab and/or Muslim.

But the standard for the Jewish state is different. From my point of view, I expect that state to live up to my ideals, because as a Jew I have a special connection to it, and as an American I don’t want my country to spend untold billions to support policies that I find abhorrent.

A charge has been made that because the world holds Israel to a higher standard than other countries with far worse policies, that this reflects the inherent historic and ingrained anti-Semitism of the world. In one sense the demand that a Jewish should have higher standards is a compliment rather than hostility.

But more important, what is infuriating much of the world, is that while other countries are criticized, ostracized, sanctioned for their behavior, e.g. Russia, Myanmar, South Africa, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and Iran, to mention a few, Israel is given a free pass, and is the recipient, by far, of more American aid then any other country. I believe that it is resentment for this free pass that has started the BDS movement.

Furthermore, Israeli and their apologists’ propaganda has tried to demonize all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic, and when it comes from Jews, as “Self Hating Jews” It is because of the latter that I headed my series as “I AM A JEW” and led into my presentation by demonstrating that I am a proud Jew. I think that demonization has backfired, and the world has accepted the notion that criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism go hand in hand, but instead of deterring criticism of Israel, the world has accepted the Israeli concept that Israel and Jews are one and the same. Of course if Israel and Jews are one and the same, then anger at Israel will lead, inevitably to anti-Semitism.

There are times when it appears that Israel welcomes anti-Semitism, because it wants all Jews to emigrate to Israel, and what better way to drive them to it, than anti-Semitism. It is interesting to note that Israel’s reaction to the attack on the Jewish supermarket in Paris, is to urge France’s Jews to emigrate to Israel

I don’t accept your premise that Jews are fundamentally a racist and bullying people, and I don’t think the world actually sees them that way, because as I have said, Israeli policies are not really worse than most countries, the difference being that unlike other countries Israel has consistently been given a free pass.

I now invite any comments, questions, or corrections from readers. However, in the coming posts I plan to take a break from my focus on Israel, and to address other issues that are at least as important.

I will, in due course, return to the subject of Israel and give Albert Nekimken a full opportunity to air his disagreement, together, of course, with my rebuttals, always interspersed.

I AM A JEW (PART XXIII - Eating Crow!)

As the title shows this is the 23rd part (actually the 24^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on Part I and then scrolling upwards or by accessing the label I Am A Jew.

I have entitled this part “Eating Crow!” because I may have been wrong in one part of my presentations. In "IAM A JEW (PART VI - The Palestinians)" I stated:

As I have set forth, the Arabs of Palestine have lived there since at least 640 CE, whereas Jews have not lived in Palestine until 1882 when the concept of “Aliyah” came into vogue.

One of my blog subscribers, who prefers to remain anonymous wrote at that time:

One sentence in your September 22nd blog gave me pause. You wrote: (he then quotes the sentence set forth in italics above), and goes on to write:

I assume that you do not accept the theory, advanced as fact, I believe, that there is no genetic connection between what we now call Jews, and the Israelites who built the first and second temples; rather those who we now called Jews are either defended from a people who were converted to the Jewish religion by their king long after the exile of the Jews following the destruction of the first and second temples or people, or descendants of people, who converted to the Jewish religion after that time.  I therefore assume that you mean that there where no Jews living in Palestine at any time after, say, the defeat of the Bar Kochba revolt until the late 1880s.  If this is what you mean, I think you are mistaken.

 It is my impression that there have always been Jews in Palestine, albeit not in large numbers.  I have this impression from, for instance, seeing note in the High Holiday prayer books that certain poems or prayers were written by Rabbis who lived in Israel in the 5th and 7th Centuries.  I believe also, that the Jerusalem Talmud was complied in Tiberius in the 4th and 5th centuries, during the time that you seem to say there were no Jews in Palestine.  Being an admirer of your research ability, but not very good at it, I tried researching the question.  Aside from stuff I found on Google what was obviously based in ideology, one way or the other, not in fact, I did come across one essay which seems to be fact based, although it is obvious that the facts the writer found fitted with what he wanted to find.  The citation is here.  If you skim over the “if I forget thee oh Jerusalem" stuff it starts with, there is what seems to be well documented evidence that there have always been Jews, in varying numbers, in Palestine during the period in question.

I also came across another article, which argues that there was a very large Arab immigration into Palestine, starting soon after the initial turn of the century Zionist immigration. If this is true, then your statement about the Arabs of Palestine having lived there since at least 640 CE is not quite accurate, since it would seem that both the Jewish and Arab populations include many recent immigrants and descendants of recent immigrants. 

 And if both articles are correct, then the fact would be that some of the ancestors of both the Jewish and Arab populations of what is now Israel and Palestine have lived in this area for centuries, and most of them, and their ancestors came more recently.

The articles referred to are: “Continuous Jewish Presence in the Holy Land” posted by Eretz Yisroel and “The Myth of Jewish ‘Colonialism’: Demographics and Development in Palestine.” They make a convincing case for the presence of Jews in the Palestininan territory for far longer than I had set forth.

I include this in my writing because I am anxious to keep my facts as accurate as I am able.

However, to the extent that the facts are different from what I had believed them to be, I don’t think that they change the essential narrative. Regardless, of which group was there first, or how long that group had been there, I believe the essential fact is how many of each ehtnic group where in Palestine in 1948, when the UN authorized the creation of the Jewish State.

For that we don’t have to examine the historic record. If we look at my post "I AM A JEW (PART XIV - The Israeli Propaganda Machine v. The Alleged Power of the Arab Lobby)" we find that according to the United States State Department at the time of the partition in 1948 there were “650,000 Jewish inhabitants, 1,300,000 Muslim and Christian Arab inhabitants. I believe that those are the figures that count, not how long their forbears had been there.

At this point I invite all and sundry comments, criticisms, etc. I will publish them and as appropriate will comment on them. 

I AM A JEW (PART XIX - I Almost Wish I Hadn’t Started This Study!)

As the title shows this is the 18th part (actually the 19^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the parts.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Special Bulletin, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV, Part XV, Part XVI, Part XVII and Part XVIII.

As I reach Part XIX of this series, I am beginning to wish I hadn’t started this research. I started researching and writing on this subject because I was shocked at the brutality of the Gaza campaign, a murderous infliction of collective punishment on innocent civilians, having no other purpose than to terrify. The message was, “accept what we impose upon you - don’t resist - resistance is futile - any attempt at resistance and we will kill you, your wives and your children. We will destroy your homes, your infrastructure and make your lives a living hell, and if you thought it was already a living hell, think again, we can and we will make it even worse.

But for all that I wrote about Gaza before, I neglected to mention other horrors.

J Street called attention to the fact that:

Even before the horrible 50-day military confrontation this summer in Gaza, the water situation for the 1.7 million Palestinians who live there was desperate.

 According to UNICEF, more than 90 per cent of the water extracted from the territory's sole aquifer is unsafe for human consumption; an estimated four-fifths of the water sold by private vendors there contaminated. Additionally, nearly 100,000 cubic meters of wastewater are discharged into the sea every day because sewage treatment plants are overwhelmed.

Currently, potable water flows from Israel to Gaza through two pipelines. A third pipeline has been constructed but has not been turned on. Israel could turn the lever tomorrow and double the flow of clean, potable water to Gaza.

 This action is being held up pending broader negotiations that, of course, are complex and may never reach fruition.

That was bad enough!

But my research uncovered so much more. The massacres from the beginning! The ethnic cleansing from the beginning! I almost wish I hadn’t found out.

But what I have begun must be finished! Pleasant or unpleasant, the truth must be uncovered! It must be told.

The inhumanity of man to man is old. But I thought Jews were better than that. And still my research uncovers more. I started with how proud I was to be a Jew. Can all the achievements of all these Jews, from Einstein to all the others wash away the crimes committed in the name of creating a Jewish state. I hear the lament from Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. 

I thought that the destruction of homes of Palestinians who commit acts of terror had come to an end. (See: Part IV where I wrote:

As long ago as 2005 Israel announced that it was halting the demolition of militant’s homes, an implicit admission that this was a policy that had been in effect. See here.

But here is a headline from the BBC.  See here and here.

 Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered that the homes of Palestinians who have carried out attacks in Jerusalem be demolished.

No one has been convicted. And most of the people living there are not even accused. But there is no respect for due process. No respect for Arabs.

Israel is supposed to be the last refuge for Holocaust survivors, but to quote from Haaretz See here or here:

According to the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, 87 percent of Holocaust survivors who request financial aid live on less than NIS 5,000 a month, while 58 percent live on NIS 3,000 or less. Meanwhile, 70 percent of survivors who turn to the foundation cannot afford dental care, and 18 percent need financial aid to pay for eyeglasses.

But where does the Israeli government spend its money, instead of helping Holocaust survivors. According to The Forward: 

“…state spending on the settlers… includes the cost of building homes and other facilities, special hardship subsidies and providing energy, communications, roads and other infrastructure not needed by the military…. They do not include the likes of health, education and welfare spending on the 350,000 West Bank settlers included in the statistics. The CBS data include 19,000 Israelis in the Golan Heights annexed from Syria and, until 2005, 9,000 settlers in the Gaza Strip. They exclude 200,000 Israelis living on land annexed and incorporated into Israel’s Jerusalem municipality.

But where is the money for the Holocaust survivors?

But what about Holocaust survivors in the United States? Some 350 Survivors and Descendants of Survivors ran an ad in the New York Times reading in part:

Genocide begins with the silence of the world, …We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. 

See here. The complete text can be found here.

Well, they do not represent all Holocaust survivors, and I don’t give this group any special standing, but they are entitled to a hearing. Are they right to claim special status because of their Holocaust connection? I would think not, but at least their Jewishness and their Holocaust connection aught to shield them from the charge of anti-Semitism, just as I asserted my Jewishness, and my pride in being Jewish as a shield against claims of anti-Semitism, or of being a self-hating Jew.

But how were they treated? It tells us much more about the unconditional supporters of Israel, then about their critics.

Here were some of the comments by Israelis that appeared on Facebook translated into English:

David Cohen: Those aren’t Holocaust survivors those are probably collaborators with the Nazis.

 Shmulik Halphon: He’s invited to go back to Auschwitz.

 Itzik Levy: These are survivors who were Kapos. Leftist traitors. That’s why they live abroad and not in the Jewish State.

 Vitali Guttman: Enough, they should die already. They survived the Holocaust only to do another Holocaust to Israel in global public opinion?

 Meir Dahan: No wonder Hitler murdered 6 million Jews because of people like you you’re not even Jews you’re disgusting people a disgrace to humanity and so are your offspring you are trash.

 Asher Solomon: It’s a shame Hitler didn’t finish the job.

 Katy Morali: Holocaust survivors who think like this are invited to go die in the gas chambers.

 Yafa Ashraf: Shitty Ashkenazis you are the Nazis.

Please note the inherent anti-Semitism in many of the comments.  The last comment about Ashkenazi Jews (those who came from Europe) were the primary victims of the Nazis and the founders of the State of Israel, but they are now the double victims of Israeli anti-Semitism.

But they weren’t the only ones who savaged the Jews who spoke out.

The Forward published an article by Alvin H Rosenfeld, Professor of Jewish Studies at Indiana University  and author of The End of the Holocaust, which savages the authors of the Times ad under the title: "Moral Emptiness of Holocaust Survivors Who Took on Israel - TheTrue Face Behind a New York Times Ad" and can be summarized by its last paragraph.

In fact, it is unlikely that many people emerged from Hitler’s camps ennobled or enlightened. To believe otherwise and to arrogate to oneself as a “survivor” or a relative of a “survivor” some special access to wisdom and virtue is, as IJSN’s ad shows, little more than moral pretense.

But since Israel’s very founding was predicated on the persecution of Jews in the Holocaust, it is perverse to denigrate the very group whose existence and suffering formed the impetus for the founding of the State of Israel.

Or as one post in the response to the article points out:

This article is a sad, completely ad hominem, attack on this group of Holocaust survivors. These are people who are carrying on a traditional of Jewish social activism; many have heroically taken the tragedy of their own dehumanization and channel that toward decades of work for peace and justice. It is one thing to disagree with them (and to make reasoned arguments to that effect), quite another to launch into a dismissive rant against them that doesn't even consider the content of the letter that they published in the NYT. Trying to end the violence and build some sort of constructive and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not an "anti-Semitic" project. Indeed, it is necessary for the survival of the Jewish state.

 Unfortunately, Professor Rosenfeld essay says nothing useful or constructive about the urgent issues confronting that area of the world. He's more interested in besmirching the reputation of other US-based Jewish intellectuals who happen to disagree with him.  

It is indeed unfortunate that an intelligent, fact based, debate on Israel’s policies cannot be had without this kind of vitriol.

The kneejerk defense and justification for every Israeli action, no matter how ignoble or outrageous, is a sad commentary on the traditional humanism and social consciousness that has so long been the hallmark of Jewish tradition.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.

I AM A JEW (Part V - Gaza Is A Huge Prison)

As the title shows this is the fifth part of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the titles: "I AM A JEW (Part I)," "I AM A JEW (Part II)," "I AM A JEW (Part III)," "I AM A JEW (Special Bulletin)" and "I AM A JEW (Part IV - The Torah & The Talmud)."

And so I refer back to Part I of the series where I wrote in its seventh paragraph:

Every time I see some prominent person, who I never knew was Jewish, described as Jewish I swell with pride. Sometimes I exclaim, “Is everybody Jewish?” Most recently I felt that way when Lauren Bacall died. I never knew she too was Jewish.

I come back to that paragraph because Joan Rivers died recently, and I found out as a result that she too was Jewish as was set forth in the New York Times obituary.

But what also strikes me as I find out that these prominent people were Jewish is that they never seem to have Jewish names. That is because they hardly ever used their real names, which did sound Jewish. According to ABC News:

Joan Rivers Was Not Her Given Name: The comedian was born Joan Molinsky, but at the behest of her agent, Tony Rivers, she adopted a stage name. On a whim, she chose "Joan Rivers," just because it felt right. (and of course it didn’t sound Jewish)

Ditto for Lauren Bacall who I mentioned in Part I of this series. She too changed her name to avoid it being obvious that they were born Jewish. As biography.com advises us:

Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924 to a working-class family in New York City. Her father, William, was an alcoholic who left the family when Bacall was six; Bacall and her mother later changed their last name to her grandmother's maiden name, Bacal, and added the second "l."

There were so many others who changed their names to hide their Jewishness. See here. Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky, Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch, Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler and Mike Wallace’s family's surname was originally Wallik. The famed conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas, while born as Thomas, is the grandson of noted Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, who performed in the Yiddish Theater District in Manhattan.

I could go on and on, but the importance of this is that they changed their names because of the prevalence of anti-Semitism in the U.S.A.

Jews know a lot about the treatment of peoples because of their ethnicity. 

That is one reason why I am so appalled about the treatment of Palestinians by the Jewish state, Israel, and even more appalled at its attempt to avoid criticism by calling all criticism of its apartheid policies by non-Jews as anti-Semitism and by Jews as self hatred. I use the term ‘apartheid policies” knowing full well that Jimmy Carter was subjected to great abuse for using that term in relation to Israel’s policies. But the term, I have concluded is appropriate. 

Let me assure my readers that I, the author of these articles on Israel, am neither an anti-Semite nor a self-hating Jew. 

But the policies of Israel, which have very cleverly been covered up, are appalling.

I have written about some of the abuses, but I never realized just how bad they were until I started the research for this series.

Let me say at the outset that I am not naïve about Hamas. Their charter makes for very disturbing reading. See here. My biggest objection to Hamas is not that they have the avowed desire never to recognize Israel, because in my view that is nothing more than a bargaining position. They, I believe, will recognize Israel when Israel recognizes a Palestinian state within a viable and contiguous landmass. It is their fundamentalist views that give me pause. I have difficulty with the fundamentalist views of that segment of American Christianity, (which I might add are the strongest supporters of Israel) which holds fundamentalist views, and those of the fundamentalist Muslims scare me even more. 

Here is what the charter of Hamas says about the P.L.O.:

…the PLO has adopted the idea of a Secular State, and so we think of it. Secular thought is diametrically opposed to religious thought. Thought is the basis for positions, for modes of conduct and for resolutions. Therefore, in spite of our appreciation for the PLO and its possible transformation in the future, and despite the fact that we do not denigrate its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we cannot substitute it for the Islamic nature of Palestine by adopting secular thought.

But to me that is the more reason to strengthen the P.L.O., and what better way to strengthen it then to successfully bring a free Palestine into being under the auspices of the P.L.O.

But I am digressing from the main topic of this commentary, which is that:

                                      Gaza Is A Huge Prison.

This was brought home to me by an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that appeared under the headline: Gazans demand right of passage to West Bank See here*: 

I cannot improve upon the language of the article and accordingly quote a portion:

Of the 1.8 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, only a few thousand are permitted to apply for an Israeli exit permit allowing them to leave Gaza through the Erez checkpoint. If their declared destination is the West Bank, they are also required to get a sort of Israeli “tourist visa” for the West Bank. The situation is similar to that of a resident of Yeruham or Arad being permitted to visit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem only if he’s obtained a special internal visa. The permit has been dubbed the “checkpoints visa” – and is shown to soldiers so they do not order the Gazan ID-holder’s deportation to Gaza….

And quoting from the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories:

As of November 2007, any resident of Gaza who is in the West Bank must hold a ‘permit to stay in Judea and Samaria,’ and the permit is intended for that purpose only.

And continuing to quote from the Haaretz article:

The visa for Gazans visiting the West Bank is yet another logical step in the bureaucratic evolution of restrictions on movement that Israel has imposed on the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip.

Here are a few of the major chapters in this campaign: Since 2005 (“disengagement”), there has been a sharp decline in the number of Palestinians, as well as in the categories of Palestinians, whom Israel permits to leave Gaza via the Erez checkpoint for the West Bank.

Since the early 2000s, Gazans in the West Bank whose date of return in their permit to cross Israel has expired have been declared “illegal visitors” in the West Bank. Since 1997, residents of the Gaza Strip have been forbidden to enter the West Bank via the Allenby Bridge crossing. Since the early 1990s, Palestinians have only been permitted to leave the Gaza Strip (or the West Bank) with an Israeli permit (a restriction that did not exist in the 1970s and 1980s).

Let me say that I was shocked when I read this, and I hope that readers of this post will, I trust, be equally shocked.

I was, of course aware that Israel had a blockade of Gaza that prevented all supplies to be imported into Gaza including construction materials, foodstuffs, etc. It was the cause of the rift between Turkey and Israel. Before then Turkey had widely been described as being Israel’s closest friend in the Muslim world. NPR put it this way:

Just four years ago, Turkey was considered one of Israel's closest allies in the region. The two countries staged regular joint military training exercises and had an open line of communication among the various divisions of their armed forces.

But after Turkey tried to bring needed foodstuff into Gaza and I quote again from the NPR article:

The Turkish-registered ship Marmara was the target of the Israeli commando raid that left nine people dead and dozens more wounded. Eight of those killed were Turkish nationals; a ninth had dual U.S.-Turkish citizenship. Fury over their deaths has led to the biggest crisis in Israeli-Turkey relations in years. (Ibid) 

But the blockade doesn’t just stop imports, making Gaza entirely dependent on Israel for its needs, it blocks even Gazan fisherman, from going far enough out from their shores to allow for fishing in the most productive areas. After the recent end of hostilities between Israel and Gaza, Gaza won some concessions from Israel on this point, or as Newsweek put it:

Some of the biggest cheer was among Gaza's fishermen, who were able to sail six miles offshore to cast their nets rather than the usual three, even as Israeli patrol boats kept watch, allowing them to return with full catches.

I understand perfectly well that Israel defends all these measures as necessary for its security, but security cannot justify collective punishment, including children, nor the mass deprivation of the most basic human rights to people of another ethnicity and religion.

I have a lot more to write on this subject and I ask the reader to be patient. The subject is worth my time and, I believe, the reader’s as well.

*For those who may try to access the Haaretz articles and find themselves blocked because they are not subscribers, I suggest putting the headline into Google. This usually brings the article up in full without regard to any subscription. But if it doesn’t work, I will supply a copy of the article upon request.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any until this series is complete.

I AM A JEW (Part II)

Comments about Part I:

At the end of my last post entitled "I AM A JEW (Part I)" I concluded with “Please hold your comments, if any, until the end of this exposition, unless you feel that you have something to add to a particular portion, rather than to the whole.”

This prompted some comments, which did, to a large extend, address the first part.

George Garver of Fort Lee, NJ, objected to my taking pride in my ethnicity, writing:

Pride comes from a sense of accomplishment and not happenstance. You had no choice regarding your unchosen heritage. 


To which I responded:

Your point is well taken, at least in theory. But the fact is that all (or at least most) people take pride in their heritage. That is why so many people spend countless amounts of money tracing their ancestors. And our heritage has a lot to do with who we are. 

I am proud to be an American is a common refrain.  

When an American landed on the moon, we all felt proud. That is the way things work in the real world. 

We take pride even in our adopted associations. I am proud to be a Yankee fan. I am glad “my team” won, even though I had nothing to with it. 

Our heritage is a large part of what and who we are, and what we are, if it is positive, is a perfectly natural reason for pride. 

Ideally, maybe it should be as you say, but that isn’t the real world. People take pride in who their father was. The Kennedy clan takes pride in being Kennedys and the public accepts that.

Robert Malchman of Brooklyn, NY, called to my attention an error that I made:

Not to nit-pick, but as Jews, should we not be referring to Jesus as "Christ," which implies that he was the Messiah?   

I'll be interested to see where this is going.  I think there is plenty of blame to go around.

My response recognized my error. Accordingly I wrote:

Your point is well taken.

I should not have referred to Christ, I should have referred to Jesus.

Hal Wolkoff of Montclair, NJ, expressed this view:

I look forward to your further comments.  I am a Jew, probably very similar in my beliefs and political views to you. I strongly support Israel but have a great deal of sympathy for the Palestinian people. When it comes to who is responsible for the continuous violence and deaths of innocents there is no doubt in my mind. The blame belongs entirely to the Palestinian/Arab leadership who continue to reject Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State.

To which I did not respond since it goes to the heart of the issue and my posts are the only way that I know how to respond.

I AM A Jew (Part II)

The early Jewish settlers to Palestine came from Europe. They were the true refugees for whom the state was founded. They are known as Ashkenazi. Many of them, possibly most were, what is known in Europe as Social Democrats. In the terminology of the US they were something akin to New Dealers. They formed the many Kibbutzim, using modern irrigation, to “make the desert bloom” and their organization was strictly socialist, with all sharing equally in the produce of the settlement. 

They were strong supporters of the Labor Party.

But the founding of Israel, while it had a profound impact on Jews fleeing Nazi persecution and even after when the survivors needed to escape from the scenes of the horrors, it had a negative effect on Jews who had lived in peace and prosperity for generations in Arab lands. They suddenly faced anti-Semitism and persecution from their host nations, and as a result they fled in large numbers to Israel, greatly embittered against the Arabs. They flocked to what had until then been a minority party, i.e. Likud. The final wave of immigrants were the Russian, who having lived under an oppressive socialist dictatorship, found themselves with little sympathy for Socialist, or even Social Democratic ideas. They too flocked to Likud.

But even at a very early stage of the founding of Israel, there were three factions, One organized the Haganah, which later became the Labor party, the second was Irgun, which later became Herut under the leadership of Menachim Begin, who later became Prime Minister, and eventually became Likud and a very small group known as the Stern gang. What followed was a series of terrorist attacks. That included in 1948 the assassination of Count Bernadotte, a Swedish mediator, but also included a whole series of terrorist attacks by the Irgun and Stern gangs, which included the famous bombing of the King David Hotel, but many others as well. See here. Relations between Irgun and the Haganah became so bad that there was an armed stand off between the two Jewish armed organizations, which came to be known as the Atelena affair. 

There has long been a debate about whether Arabs left Israel out of their own free will, at the urgings of their leaders or were driven out by Israeli forces conducting ethnic cleansing. After extensive research I have concluded that both are true. What has come to be known as the Deir Yassin massacre is instructive.

I quote from Wikipedia:

The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Irgun Zevai Leumi and Lohamei Herut Israel Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, a Palestinian Arab village of roughly 600 people. The assault occurred as Jewish militia sought to relieve the blockade of Jerusalem by Palestinian forces during the civil war that preceded the end of British rule in Palestine.

Around 107 villagers were killed during and after the battle for the village, including women and children—some were shot, while others died when hand grenades were thrown into their homes. Several villagers were taken prisoner and may have been killed after being paraded through the streets of West Jerusalem, though accounts vary. Four of the attackers died, with around 35 injured. The killings were condemned by the leadership of the Haganah—the Jewish community's main paramilitary force—and by the area's two chief rabbis. The Jewish Agency for Israel sent Jordan's King Abdullah a letter of apology, which he rebuffed.

The deaths became a pivotal event in the Arab–Israeli conflict for their demographic and military consequences. The narrative was embellished and used by various parties to attack each other—by the Palestinians against Israel; by the Haganah to play down their own role in the affair; and by the Israeli Left to accuse the Irgun and Lehi of violating the Jewish principle of purity of arms, thus blackening Israel's name around the world. News of the killings sparked terror within the Palestinian community, encouraging them to flee from their towns and villages in the face of Jewish troop advances, and it strengthened the resolve of Arab governments to intervene, which they did five weeks later. (Emphasis added)

I don’t want to quote more, but it gets worse. Those who are interested can read the rest of the entry.

All this might be dismissed as ancient history, but it is relevant for two reasons. It shows that terrorism is the inevitable method for the weak who feel they cannot succeed without resort to it (The Irish Republican Army, which many Americans sympathized with is another example) and it is relevant because the ruling party of Israel, Likud, is the successor to these terrorists. It’s founding rejects the very idea of a Palestinian state. I quote from the document.

The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting…. The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River.

And so we find the frequent criticism of Hamas in so far its founding charter reads,

Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.

But is that so different from Likud’s claim to all of Palestine including the whole West Bank and Gaza. To expect Hamas to drop this demand can only be the end result of negotiations, not a pre-condition.

The PLO used to have a similar provision in its charter. It provided under Article 17:

The Partitioning of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of Israel are illegal and false regardless of the loss of time, because they were contrary to the wish of the Palestine people and its natural right to its homeland, and in violation of the basic principles embodied in the charter of the United Nations, foremost among which is the right to self-determination.

But as long ago as 1988 it accepted Israel’s right to exist. 

After a two-day meeting with five prominent American Jews here, a P.L.O. delegation led by Mr. Arafat said in a joint statement that the Palestinian parliament in exile last month had ''accepted the existence of Israel as a state in the region'' and ''declared its rejection and condemnation of terrorism in all its forms.''

Where did it get them? Has Israel reciprocated by recognizing the right of a Palestinian Sate? Did this prompt the cessation of Israel’s endless encroachment of Palestinian territory? Has it stopped the creeping annexation of the West Bank? Or for that matter the military occupation of the whole West Bank? To all intents and purposes the P.L.O. has been turned into the Vichy government of the West Bank, and then the Likud government of Israel claims the PLO is too weak to be a negotiating partner.