CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

A review of two new books on Winston Churchill's Zionism.

ANTI-SEMITISM AND ANTI-ZIONISM

Commonalities between Anti-Semitic and Anti-Zionist Discourse - Mitchell Cohen
Anti-Zionism is not in principle anti-Semitism, but it is time for thoughtful minds to be disturbed by how much anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism share, how much the dominant species of anti-Zionism encourages anti-Semitism. And so:

If you judge a Jewish state by standards that you apply to no one else; if your neck veins bulge when you denounce Zionists but you've done no more than cluck "well, yes, very bad about Darfur"; if there is nothing Hamas can do that you won't blame 'in the final analysis' on Israelis; then you should not be surprised if you are criticized, fiercely so, by people who are serious about a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians and who won't let you get away with a self-exonerating formula - "I am anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic" - to prevent scrutiny. If you are anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic, then don't use the categories, allusions, and smug hiss that are all too familiar to any student of prejudice. (Dissent)

ARABS MUST ACCEPT ISRAEL AS A JEWISH STATE

Accept Israel as a Jewish State? by Daniel Pipes (JPost)

Surprisingly, something useful has emerged from the combination of the misconceived Annapolis meeting and a weak Israeli prime minister, Ehud ("Peace is achieved through concessions") Olmert. Breaking with his predecessors, Olmert has boldly demanded that his Palestinian bargaining partners accept Israel's permanent existence as a Jewish state, thereby evoking a revealing response.

Unless the Palestinians recognize Israel as "a Jewish state," Olmert announced on November 11, the Annapolis-related talks would not proceed. "I do not intend to compromise in any way over the issue of the Jewish state. This will be a condition for our recognition of a Palestinian state."

He confirmed these points a day later, describing the "recognition of Israel as a state for the Jewish people" as the "launching point for all negotiations. We won't have an argument with anyone in the world over the fact that Israel is a state of the Jewish people." The Palestinian leadership, he noted, must "want to make peace with Israel as a Jewish state."

Raising this topic has the virtue of finally focusing attention on what is the central topic in the Arab-Israeli conflict – Zionism, the Jewish nationalist movement, a topic that typically gets ignored in the hubbub of negotiations. Since nearly the birth of the state, these have focused on the intricacies of such subsidiary issues as borders, troop placements, armaments and arms control, sanctities, natural resources, residential rights, diplomatic representation, and foreign relations.

The Palestinian leadership responded quickly and unequivocally to Olmert's demand:

• The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee in Nazareth unanimously called on the Palestinian Authority not to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
• Salam Fayad, Palestinian Authority "prime minister": "Israel can define itself as it likes, but the Palestinians will not recognize it as a Jewish state."
• Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization's executive committee: "This issue is not on the table; it is raised for internal [Israeli] consumption."
• Ahmad Qurei, chief Palestinian negotiator: "This [demand] is absolutely refused."
• Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO Negotiations Department: "The Palestinians will never acknowledge Israel's Jewish identity. … There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined."

Erekat's generalization is both curious and revealing. Not only do 56 states and the PLO belong to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, but most of them, including the PLO, make the Shari‘a (Islamic law) their main or only source of legislation. Saudi Arabia even requires that every subject be a Muslim.

Further, the religious-national nexus extends well beyond Muslim countries. Argentinean law, Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe points out, "mandates government support for the Roman Catholic faith. Queen Elizabeth II is the supreme governor of the Church of England. In the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, the constitution proclaims Buddhism the nation's ‘spiritual heritage.' … ‘The prevailing religion in Greece,' declares Section II of the Greek Constitution, ‘is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ'."

So, why the mock-principled refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state? Perhaps because the PLO still intends to eliminate Israel as a Jewish state.

Note my use of the word "eliminate," not destroy. Yes, anti-Zionism has until now mainly taken a military form, from Gamal Abdel Nasser's "throw the Jews into the sea" to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "Israel must be wiped off the map." But the power of the Israel Defense Forces has prodded anti-Zionism toward a more subtle approach of accepting an Israeli state but dismantling its Jewish character. Anti-Zionists consider several ways to achieve this:

Demography: Palestinians could overwhelm the Jewish population of Israel, a goal signaled by their demand for a "right of return" and by their so-called war of the womb.

Politics: Arabs citizens of Israel increasingly reject the country's Jewish nature and demand that it become a bi-national state.

Terror: The 100 Palestinian attacks a week during the period, September 2000-September 2005 sought to induce economic decline, emigration, and appeasement.

Isolation: All those United Nations resolutions, editorial condemnations, and campus aggressions are meant to wear down the Zionist spirit.

Arab recognition of Israel's Jewish nature must have top diplomatic priority. Until the Palestinians formally accept Zionism, then follow up by ceasing all their various strategies to eliminate Israel, negotiations should be halted and not restarted. Until then, there is nothing to talk about.

WEIZMANN'S ANSWER TO AHMADINEJAD

Weizmann’s Answer (Contentions)
It feels a bit grubby to address an argument that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly employed to deny the legitimacy of the state of Israel. But in this instance the Iranian president has said something on behalf of a surprising number of people—people who may not agree with Ahmadinejad’s tone, or the choice of words he employs, but who at bottom are sympathetic to core of Ahmadinejad’s case. He recently used Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day, the annual hate-Israel festival of the Muslim Middle East inaugurated in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini, to offer once again his final solution to the problem of the existence of Israel: Hold a referendum on the “settlement of Zionists in Europe or in big lands such as Canada and Alaska so they would be able to own their own land.”

In Ahmadinejad’s telling, Israel was created because of European Holocaust guilt—ignore his psychotic logic, which also holds that the Holocaust never happened—and so not only is Israel an illegitimate presence, but it is one that Europe and the West have a responsibility to remove. There are of course many layers of absurdity here: the fact that Zionism predates the Holocaust by more than a half-century, the Biblical promise of Israel to the Jews, the fact that the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917, that there has been a Jewish presence in Israel for thousands of years, and that it grew substantially in waves of aliya that started in the 19th century—never mind all of that. Ahmadinejad, with an obviously false note of curiosity, wonders why Jews won’t just go somewhere else.

Chaim Weizmann, the renowned chemist, Zionist statesman, and founding father of Israel, answered exactly this question in Great Britain in the years before the Balfour Declaration. A member of the House of Lords asked him, “Why do you Jews insist on Palestine when there are so many undeveloped countries you could settle in more conveniently?” Weizmann said: “That is like my asking you why you drove twenty miles to visit your mother last Sunday when there are so many old ladies living on your street.”

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: ZIONISM A MENTAL ILLNESS

National Aspirations: A Psychological Problem (BackSpin)

John Whitbeck got op-ed space in the Christian Science Monitor to peddle a one-state solution:

Traumatized by the Holocaust and perceived insecurity as a Jewish island in an Arab sea, Israelis have immense psychological problems in coming to grips with the practical impossibility of sustaining forever what most of mankind views as a racial-supremacist, settler-colonial regime founded upon the ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population.

What Whitbeck really wants to say is that Jewish aspirations for a national homeland are nuts. But being too inhibited to say so outright, he has to rely on the "racial supremacy" charge. See Professor David Bernstein's response to Whitbeck's logic.

OLMERT'S ASSAULT ON ZIONISM

Our World: The Olmert government's assault on Zionism by Caroline Glick (JPost)
Jewish history throughout the ages has proven incontrovertibly that Zionism, the assertion of Jewish rights and control over the Land of Israel and the affirmation of Jewish national identity, is the solution to most of the problems that have beset the Jews since the time of Abraham. In the Land of Israel, as a nation of free men and women willing and able to assert and defend ourselves, the Jewish people flourish on every level.

Disturbingly, with each passing day it becomes more and more obvious that the Olmert government does not believe that Zionism is important. To the contrary, both in its domestic and foreign policies, the Olmert government consistently advances anti-Zionist, or post-Zionist policies, that unsurprisingly increase the dangers to the Jewish State and to the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora.

[READ ON]

ISAAC NEWTON PREDICTED JEWS' RETURN TO ISRAEL

.... AND END OF WORLD.

The world will end in 2060, according to Newton (Evening Standard)
His famously analytical mind worked out the laws of gravity and unravelled the motion of the planets. And when it came to predicting the end of the world, Sir Isaac Newton was just as precise. He believed the Apocalypse would come in 2060 – exactly 1,260 years after the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire, according to a recently published letter. Luckily for modern scientists in awe of his achievements, Newton based this figure on religion rather than reasoning.

In a letter from 1704 which has gone on show in Jerusalem's Hebrew University, Newton uses the Bible's Book of Daniel to calculate the date for the Apocalypse. The note reveals a deeply spiritual side to a man more usually regarded as a strict rationalist. Newton, known as the founder of modern physics, secured a royal exemption from ordination in the Church of England – something normally expected of academics in his day – so he would not have to follow its teachings.

But he confidently stated in the letter that the Bible proved the world would end in 2060, adding: "It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner."

Continuing in a decidedly sniffy tone, he wrote: "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail." The exact words from the Book of Daniel that inspired his prediction are not clear.

But he got at least one thing right – in another document, he interpreted biblical prophecies to mean that the Jews would return to the Holy Land before the world ended. Newton, who died 280 years ago, wrote that the end of days would see "the ruin of the wicked nations, the end of weeping and of all troubles, the return of the Jews (from) captivity and their setting up a flourishing and everlasting Kingdom".

Yemima Ben-Menahem, one of the curators of the exhibition, said: "These documents show a scientist guided by religious fervour, by a desire to see God's actions in the world." The papers – including more prosaic notes about his income and the price of tin – lay in a trunk at the house of the Earl of Portsmouth for 250 years before being auctioned in the late 1930s. Since 1969, many have been locked away in Israel's national library.

NYC'S "END ISRAEL APARTHEID WEEK"

A report from "End Israel Apartheid Week" (KESHER)

Yesterday [Feb. 10] evening kicked off End Israeli Apartheid Week in NYC, part of this year's nation-wide effort by anti-Zionists to install the "Israel is a racist apartheid state" meme into the mental plumbing of as many people as possible. (The next event is tomorrow (Monday) at Judson Memorial Church, if you want to check it out. And you can witness the last gasp of the divestment movement at the same venue on Thursday. More on divestment at an Episcopal church (natch!) on Friday with mediocre Columbia professor Joseph Massad and virulent Chomsky protege professor Tanya Reinhardt. And oh joy! A teach-in in Jersey City.)

Kesher Talk friend Pamela Hall was there with others from the David Project. (Pamela's previous report was from an event sponsored by Rabbis for Human Rights):

We were there as were a bunch from The David Project. PLUS Ms. Charlotte (very scary Marxist) Kates.

It was a tedium. A really boring BORING 3 hours. Two speakers whose accents were so thick mostly what I heard was and in 1967....1967....the four days in 1967...yadaydadyada. The settlers (instead of the Israelis) and the history of why the Holy Land is Arabic. Saw o Mosque of Abraham and then we were reminded that Abraham is THEIR holy father (as the room had a good laugh at the expense of those nasty Jews who think Abraham is THEIR father). The Holy Land belongs to palis. They've been there since...couldn't understand her, but we all know what she's claiming....

Showed the maltreatment of holy ruins by the settlers ...Israelis... (that was rich) by showing the foundation of a modern building build over a ruin. Wasn't touching the ruin. It was still there...whatever... The history time-line that shows the land has always belonged Palis includes...Hebron ...it's is an Arabic word so I guess that's 'proof'.

[Judith: It seems to be one of many Hebrew/Arabic cognates. But if they say the city has always "belonged to Palestinians," that's of a piece with the egregious historical revisionism they are pedaling. Well, "revisionism" doesn't really describe it, it's baldfaced replacement theology.]

Had to stare at a map of Israel where everything was in Arabic accept Hebron. Had to watch a propaganda film that NEVER ENDED. Saw all those nasty children of those nasty, violent settlers tormenting those sweet Pali children with kicks and STONES when all these Pali kids wanted was to go to school. They just want to live free of the occupation. Saw those buffoons called Israeli soldirs tearing down olive trees to build that Apartheid wall and the propaganda-style subtitles enhanced what foolish people these settlers and their soldiers are.

[Judith: See, I know Jewish and Palestinian residents have committed violence upon each other. I'm not even going to contest the content of their films, other than to note that they only show one side. But if they lead off with revisionist history, I then don't care to find out what Jews did to Palestinians. you're going to lie about our history, then fuck you, I don't want to know. Someone who thinks Jews have a right to live in one of our oldest habitations can inform me about abuses by settlers, and I'll listen.]

Our people got a few questions on the floor. They were never answered OR they were shouted down by their ringers in the room as : THAT's NOT A QUESTION.

Then there would be so much noise of people shouting they would move on to the next question. On young Jewish male was actually hurt by the Hunter Security when his question was used to create an uproar Then security roughed HIM up and dragged him from the room. He was respectful and was not the one shouting. I hear we will all be called on by our side to give a report that he was injured by the security.

A collection was taken from the crowd of 55 to 60 and that was revealing. Now we knew who WE were in the room cause you KNOW we put NOTHING in 'the plate'. This bunch is working the message: Palis good, settlers BAD, it's their land; settlers mean, settlers soldiers buffoons, etc, etc, etc...

VIDEO: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE WORLD FROM THE JEWS

Here's a great video sent to me by Sandy D.